Niche Blogging For Profit

There are many different ways to market your home business whether online or off. Most important to remember is not to limit yourself to marketing Internet businesses to online marketing and “real world” business to “real world” advertising.

While many brick and mortar businesses know enough to have websites and possibly online shopping carts, few online businesses expand their marketing plan to include offline advertising.

 Business cards are easy and inexpensive to create. VistaPrints offers cards free of cost – you pay only for shipping. Pass these cards out to people you meet at parties, gatherings, work related events and to people you meet throughout your regularly scheduled day.

Brochures (services) or Catalogs (products) – Depending on what your blogs/sites sell you can display brochures or catalogs in local stores.

Flyers – Similar to brochures except flyers are usually one sheet and contain less information than brochures. You can pass out flyers or leave them in doorways to get people to visit your sites/blogs.

Magnetic Signs – Several business supply stores offer custom signs and letters that are magnetized and can be stuck right to the sides or back of your vehicle. You should keep the wording simple and short but that takes advantage of the most space for your money.

As an Internet Marketer you have to take advantage of every traffic source available. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your customer base ends at your desktop.

I am going to get off topic for this one post but I feel strongly that something needs to said about the absolutely awful advertising being used by companies lately. I’m not sure if all the ad execs went on vacation at once or companies are so wealthy and out of touch that they don’t know what consumers want anymore.

First let’s talk about commercials that make the people using the products look like uneducated, embarrassed morons. The woman who apparently uses Glad for everything under the sun is ashamed to let anyone know. The Burger King has a brat for a son and a daughter who won’t eat an apple and parents who don’t understand that a two-year old spinning around with a box on his head is perfectly normal and does not reflect on his intelligence (That one is from a Rhode Island commercial so don’t worry if you don’t recognize it)

So many advertisements promote laziness, lack of family values, dishonesty and disobedience in their ads. As a marketer myself, I understand promoting unnecessary spending and putting the product in the best possible light but these commercials are defeating their very purpose. Why would you want to use a product that you should be ashamed of? Or that makes you seem lazy or wasteful? Worse of all why would you buy and give something to your children that makes them disrespectful and disobedient?

This is a plea that I am sending out. Advertising personnel please come back from wherever you are. Do your market research more thoroughly and realize that Americans no longer want to be portrayed as stupid, reckless or lazy.

Today we are going to cover the last part of the niche marketing concept. – getting traffic and getting readers to keep reading your blog.

The first thing you should when your niche blog is all set up is submit your URL (domain name address, usually www.something.com) to all the big search engines. Here are the links to the ones you should at least start with:

Google: www.google.com/addurl.html

MSN: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WHWL

DMOZ: http://www.dmoz.org/ click on suggest URL

Yahoo!: http://www.yahoo.com/ scroll to bottom and click on suggest site

Currently Ask.com doesn’t accept URL submissions so you have to wait for their bots to crawl your site before you’ll be added to their directory.

You should have added the All-in-One SEO plug-in to your WordPress blog. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend you do so. It will help the search engines notice your niche blog and get you propelled to the top of the rankings faster.

Also, once you have the plug-in installed and activated…you have to use it. Fill in all the appropriate fields for every post and page that you want people to visit. (you don’t have to bother doing this for your privacy page or FAQs or anything like that)

Now that your pages and posts are set up to be picked up by the search engines. And the search engines know you exist, it’s time to think about article marketing.

Article marketing is simply writing short (between 400 and 700 words) articles about your subjects involving your niche. You then take these articles and submit them to some of the hundreds of article directories out there.

There are a few reasons why article marketing is a such an effective method for getting traffic:

• Good article directories already have a high rank on Google and Alexa so your articles will appear on search engines (high up usually on page one) almost immediately.
• Other bloggers and website owners who have related niche sites will use your articles giving your site all-important backlinks and a runoff of their traffic.
• Publishing several articles on a subject makes you something of an expert in the eyes of readers on the web. If people like what you have to say, they will click through your bio link to read more.

Additionally, you may get offers for guest blogging which can be a good way to network and build up your name (or brand) even more. Finally, you can make a decent part time income off article writing with the right site.

I used to submit my articles to a dozen directories but now I just stick to the two best ones (in my opinion):

Associated Content: I love this directory. Not only do you have the chance to get paid up front for your article, they have a huge reader base and they pay for page views  on a monthly basis. I know people who make a couple of hundred dollars alone through AC. Plus they are marketing their site. Essentially, you are getting paid for them to advertise your site! Just make sure you carefully read the terms of service so your articles have a better chance of getting accepted.

Ezine Articles: This directory doesn’t pay for your articles but they have probably the largest reader base and the best ranks through Google and Alexa. Your articles are likely to be picked up through Ezine Articles for use on other sites which gives you an even better chance of getting traffic.

Start with two or three articles for each niche blog. make sure the articles are significantly different from the articles you have on your blog; otherwise the directories may reject your submissions.

Oh I forgot to mention the best thing about article marketing, it’s completely free if you decide to write your own articles. If writing isn’t your forte (strength) you can “farm” out the articles for a few bucks per article.

Once you have a marketing strategy in motion, you will need to periodically maintain interest in your blog through article marketing (one or two a month should suffice) and new posts.

Posting on your blog should be consistent but you get to set the schedule. You can post every day, every other day (which is what I shoot for but often fall short), once a week or even every other week as long as you are consistent. naturally the more often you post, the more likely you will keep interest in your site from your faithful readers (remember- it’s all about them)

Now you have all the basic knowledge to start and run your own niche blog. Good luck and check back often for the latest and greatest tools to help you succeed in the world of Niche Blogging!