When I first started playing music, way back in that carefree decade known as the 90’s, the most important thing to me was how to find an outlet for the songs I was creating. I wasn’t really worried about image, or brand, of my product. This growth period lasted several years, and I found out the hard way exactly how important branding was. I had to work hard to undo the mistakes I had made.

When you are in niche blogging, and especially in the make money online niche, there might not be a more important aspect of your marketing than branding. More specifically, branding yourself as an authority. How come so many people neglect this part? Because it is one of the most difficult things to achieve.

Becoming an authority on a subject isn’t easy. Many people claim to be an authority when in fact they are nothing of the sort. They are just relaying information. Becoming an authority takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and most importantly, trust from your reader that you are giving them solid information.

People are more concerned with bang for their buck, checking their stats and figuring out how to make an additional couple dollars. If those people focused their efforts on branding, and becoming an authority, they would be earning what they want in a shorter time. If they would apply themselves to the craft of communicating rather than creating some e-book with recycled information, they would achieve greater success.

Here are my top tips to help your brand yourself as an authority.

1. Know your stuff. This seems like common sense but there are many people who claim to be an authority that have no real knowledge in the niche they are talking about. Nowhere on the web is this more obvious than in the make money online niche. Every corner of the web has some guy who claims to be the next big thing. They talk about how they will make millions from their website in the next year. They may tell you that they are going from 0 dollars to a million in a year. They may claim that they will be the next big ProBlogger within 12 months. The problem, is their website is loaded down with nothing but last years advice. And after 2 months of seeing no money, they are done. There are reasons why people read the large blogs. It is not only because they make money online, it is also because their opinion is worth hearing. Is your opinion worth hearing?
2. Take time to build your readership before monetizing. Have you ever read some of the top bloggers personal story? Almost uniformly (with a few exceptions) the blogger will make some comment in their biography along the lines of ‘When I started blogging I didn’t even know you could make money at it, I just did it for fun because I had something to share.’ Too many of the newer niche bloggers completely ignore that fact. They want to immediately call themselves experts at how they will help you make money. This, of course, before they have made money themselves. I used to have this website heavily monetized until I realized that I have yet to prove myself as an authority. So I took all of my ads down. I have focused all my monetizing efforts on the websites I am profiting from and started focusing myself to really give heartfelt advice via this website. A true authority shares their opinion and when it becomes relevant, they they can monetize and profit from their worthwhile knowledge. We’d all like to feel our opinion is relevant, but only after hard work and time is that the case. In the long run, you will make much more money if you take time to build then monetize, rather than monetize from the start while you build.
3. Make sure your image is solid. This is very important in branding yourself and establishing yourself as an authority. I cannot count how many times I have surfed to a blog that is sloppy looking from top to bottom. Yet, they claim they can help me make money? How can they when it is very obvious they aren’t making any money themselves? If a website is overrun with advertisements, have horrible color schemes, bad grammar, or weak articles, I will steer clear and never give it a second thought. In addition, a good domain name is also crucial in establishing authority. I don’t care how great your knowledge is, it will be very hard to establish yourself if your domain is www.ezmonies4you2day.tv.
4. Don’t be boastful and show results. I posted an entire article on this part alone. It is so important to have relevant information to back up your claims. You don’t have to reveal your websites or exact tactics (I have only revealed a few of the websites I run on this website, in fact) but you need to be able to ’show your work’ as my 6th grade math teacher used to say. Bragging is the fasted way to be branded a joke, not an authority. Maybe boasting worked for John Chow, but John Chow has been in this niche a heck of a lot longer than you, rest assured.
5. Be gracious and humble. You can never under-estimate how important humility and kindness are. Just because you feel you are an expert, it takes a real human to understand they are one fish of many in a vast lake. You need to feel honored people come to your website to read your advice. You cannot expect them to. Take time to make your readers feel special.

Why do I feel I am an authority to help you brand yourself as an authority? You have to trust me. In fact, all of those tips come directly from mistakes I made in trying to establish myself in the make money online niche. It isn’t because I haven’t made money online. I have made money online. But just because I know how to do it, or have done it, doesn’t mean I can explain it well or be and authority on making money.

I am an authority, however, on making mistakes. Each mistake I have made, however, has gotten me one step closer to reaching the goals I have set out for myself.

I usually check out about 10 to 20 new blogs a day. Partially because of my ’scoring system’ to comment and establish relationships, but also because I am as curious as the next to see someone elses take on blogging. I am always keeping an ear to the ground to spot the newest trends in earning income, and to see how I can apply them to the other blogs which are more monetized than this one. We are all trying to make money online.

One trend that is driving me absolutely nuts is people boasting and making claims there is no way they can back up. Today, I stumbled upon a very nice and informative blog. It has a slick layout, some good content, but in the header and logo it says it is ‘THE Money Making Site on The Web’. As in this blog author is claiming he is the authority.

Simple research tells me that this website is not doing that great traffic wise. Comments are slow, Alexa rank is middled, and I cannot find all that many links going back. In fact, of the 197 links, almost all of them were comments he posted himself on other blogs.

This type of boastful activity makes me not want to read this blog consistantly. I get the feeling that this person is just grabbing information from a high profile blog, and regurgitating it almost word for word. Maybe when a new blogger happens upon his site, they will feel he has some sort of authority, but quickly that illusion is shattered.

There is nothing really new in the make money online field. Everyone is pretty much just saying the same thing, maybe with a personal touch. Boastful claims just make you look cocky.

That is why I visit websites like the http://www.bloggingexperiment.com. They are getting results, but they are not boastful, nor do they ever claim they are THE authority in anything.

There are common questions that are asked all the time in the blogging world. The question that is asked the most by the niche blogger is “How do I actually make money blogging?”

While there are several different responses, the one that people want to know most about is advertising. Advertising on your blog comes in many forms, so lets get down to it and discuss.

Contextual Advertisement (Such as Google Adsense):
When it comes to simplicity, nothing beats the contextual ad. Whether you intend to make money blogging or would just like monetize enough to cover hosting, contextual ads are the first way to go. Google Adsense is the industry leader because of its simplicity of use, ease in which one can sign up, and the results. The ads are usually perfectly targeted for your website. Other examples of contextual ads are Yahoo Publisher Network, Kontera, and to some extent BidVertiser.

Paid Posts:
Paid posts are not new, but many people are not aware of their ability in generating income. Places like PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews, ReviewMe let the niche blogger who is really just interested in generating traffic and revenue the chance to make a little extra money blogging. The way it works, is you bid on a review, and when the accept it, you have a certain amount of time to display it on your website. Usually, there are some stipulations to the pose (how many words, keywords you have to include) but if your website is generating the traffic, this is a no brainer.

Paid Links:
Paid links are a great way to increase your revenue. The more traffic a site is doing, the more valuable any ad will be on your website. Instead of giving away the links for free, charge a modest fee. Use your blogroll to your advantage.

I will be adding part two shortly, which will focus primarily on 125 ads and affiliate programs

Whenever I get stumped at what to write about next, I do one of two things.

I either stare at the screen until I come up with something decent to write about or I redesign my blog!

Redesigning a blog can have lots of great effects on your sanity. First and foremost, it takes your mind off the content aspect for a least a little while. Sometimes, resting your mind is one of the best things you can do for your blog. It also gives you the chance to flex that creative muscle in ways other than writing. That could be just as important as the rest. Aside from all the mental aspects, it will help your blog grow and prosper.

• After a redesign, your traffic will increase as long-time readers who may rely on just your RSS feed will come back to the site to check out the new layout. This maybe a short lived spike in traffic, but as we all know, traffic numbers are the sold determining factor in generating revenue.
• Each redesign will give you the chance to review your advertisement placements and whether or not your space is used to its fullest. Over time, you will find what type of ad works best in your niche. The same goes for layouts. Maybe the banner ads work better than the 125 x 125 ads. In that case, you could redesign the site to allow for better banner placement or even more banner placement. Plus advertisers always like something new, so older advertisers maybe more inclined to ’re-up’ their ad with you
• After a redesign, you can feel more excited to tell new people about your blog. Although you could be constantly promoting your website, it is easy to tire of it. It is like an band who has been touring on a record for 2 years. They may appear to still love the music, but inside they are clamoring to release something new and exciting. When the new music is released, it is almost rejuvinating to the artist. The same could be said for a blog.

Another good thing about a blog redesign is that you can use and modify pleny of great and free wordpress themes. One of the sites I frequent often is http://www.wpthemesfree.com. They have a lot of great themes.

Once you redesign your blog, you will feel rejuvinated and ready for another several months of content generating!

http://bloggingexperiment.com/archives/how-to-triple-your-current-adsense-income.php

People who have been following this website since the start know that the first ‘make money’ website I stumbled upon was Blogging Experiment. Author Ben Cook had a lot of great advice for people just starting their blog.

Nine months into the experiment, Ben sold his website for 5 figures.

The new author, Max Davis, has already chimed in with some great advice for bloggers.

The link I posted is to an EXCELLENT article about how one can increase their AdSense revenue. Some may find it unethical, but in the cut-throat niche market, it could be a key to success.

http://www.ezmoneyon.net/green-money-free-wordpress-theme/

I was at the Blogging Authority forum and one of their contributors posted a link to their first monetized theme, which they call Green Money.

This is a FREE Monetized theme, which most are, but usually they are poor at best.

When I saw the first screen shot, I really liked the way it was laid out so I decided to download it and apply it to one of my smaller blogs, just to see how it looked and reacted.

It is slick, with great advertisement placements that remind of so many of the ‘problogger’ websites out there. It is easily customized and widgets can be added with no problem.

The thing I LOVE about this theme, is unlike most monetized themes where they try to cram as many ads as possible into a theme, this one makes you feel like your looking at a smooth, regular theme that just happens to be monetized.

It is SEO ready, and I will report back in a few days how the site responds in comparison to the old theme it was running.

When I decided to start creating websites and creating content blogs, I did it for one reason besides the obvious second income stream. It was because I was able to post blogs from work or other locations, which mean I could really maximize my time and earning potential.

One thing that I didn’t realize was the fact that it may prove difficult to do any major editing or customizing from work. Many places of employment do not let you use FTP or other tools needed to get the sites modified. The same goes for a lot of the free wi-fi providers. You may not be techincal, but if you modify websites and read a little about technology you have heard of proxy servers, which help businesses monitor and control traffic that leaves their network. In addition, there are plenty of monitoring programs and other things in place to help companies keep out malicious and unwanted visitors.

I have found a few work arounds that have helped me tremendously. They are all secure and safe, and hopefully won’t get you in trouble from your local IT people. Please be aware if it is against your companies policy, you may want to save any website editing and content posting until you get home.

I have found a great free FTP site at http://www.net2ftp.com. Here, I can use my normal FTP login and password to access my files. It doesn’t not connect through the FTP protocol, it is all done remotely so to the proxy servers and proxy blocking software, it just looks like normal HTTP stuff. There are also no meta tags that end up being blocked by the cookie cutter website blocking programs, so you are pretty safe to travel to this site. They layout is nice, faily painless, with very few advertisments. They give you lots of editing options, folder creation, renaming, moving, and several different means of uploading. You get a fully functional FTP client, in a nutshell. The Java upload tool doesn’t appear to work through my work browser, but the flash one does. Play around a little, you will find this is an excellent tool.

One draw back is while you can upload multiple files at once, you cannot upload entire directories with one click so you do have to do a little manual work to create directories. But if you are in a pinch and really want to get that new theme up, it works fine. The best part is if you are just making simple code modification (like putting in a new advertisment code, changing the color scheme for example) you can do it in your text editor (which every single work computer should have) and upload it that way. Painfree FTP from work. Just the way I like it!

Some hosting companies offer a file manager, and these usually work from most places. Problem is they are pretty weak in terms of user interface. I user Go Daddy, and their file interface is worthless from work. Net2FTP offers full FTP, without the hassle.

Photoshop Express is another wonderful tool that I have discovered recently. Very recently, it just went live yesterday. I spent quite a bit of time on it today, it it blows every ‘virtual’ web photo editor out of the water. Photo editing on the web used to be a myth. Photoshop Express makes it possible.  You can do all your basic editing here so it is easy to customize advertisement banners, logos, pictures or anything else you could need. I used it for the first time to create a logo about an hour ago right from my work computer. It does offer indexing, and you get a 2 gigabyte alotment to upload your photos.

I know there are a handful of other online photo editors out there, such as Pikcik and Photoflxer, but I do not feel they offer the same quality as the new Photoshop Express.

In a pinch, I have used the Roflbot to create banners. If your work has blocked photo editors they more than likely have not blocked the Roflbot. Roflbot is a website that people go to and create those Lolcatz photos that are all the rage now. But they offer a few fonts so you can make simple logos or banners.

A really simple method you can employ is to create your blog posts using whatever word processor you have, and emailing them to yourself. This method got me through many posts before I found alternatives. If you don’t feel comfortable emailing yourself from work, you can always bring a thumb drive. You can find these dirt cheap at almost any store that sell electronics.

What tricks have you devised to let yourself blog while at work? I’d like to hear!

I remember when I was galavanting around in my first rock and roll band. We were all a bit green in the business world, but we were ambitious and thought we definitely would be the next big thing. In hindsight, we really had no idea what it takes to be the next big thing, nor did we have a plan. Then a few months passed, and nothing. We were playing shows, but where were the fans? Where were the record companies handing out the big checks?

Sound familar? If you replaced band with blog, you would have roughly 97.3 percent of all bloggers current plan. I will get back to the blogging aspect in a minute.

In need of a jump start, the band got one great break. We had an opportunity to do a radio station show in Chicago for one of the most listened stations, Q101.  We worked the break, and next thing you know, the radio station put a small amount of muscle behind the band. And the buzz it generated helped us get our feet off the ground. In fact, that one moment probably transformed my entire understading of industry and big business.

For bloggers, finding that break is almost impossible. Takes a lot of hard work and a lot of luck. But there is something to be said for buzz and its money making potential.

Personal experience tells me that if you are in the money-making genre of blogging, or you are just looking to create a website that will generate enough traffic to earn a living, here is some food for thought.

I created a website for a gentleman named Richard Mims. He has been one of the more outspoken people in regards to the Drew Peterson / Stacy Peterson missing persons case. Richard had been on a lot of news shows, speaking about the case and his relationship with the people involved. I created the website to be VERY minimal on monetization, because the intent of the site was so he could speak his mind. The only monetization I put on the website was Google AdSense with the intent to cover hosting costs. The site only ran for one week before I decided to remove myself from it because of the hoopla surrounding the case in general. But the facts are pretty astounding. It shows what a little bit of buzz can do.

I am going to compare two websites. One I created for Richard Mims and one I have been running for about 7 months now.

For the length of this discussion, I will be referring to Richard’s website as Website A. The website was created on Jan 26th. I shut it down on February 1st. The content was pretty weak in general, just someone speaking their mind. It was sometimes hard to read, as this person was not a professional writer to say the least. There was no real SEO configuration because it really wasn’t a niche website, but he had a lot of ability to promote it including several large national news outlets. In the short week it was up, the website did over 32,000 unique visits with over 240,000 page impressions. AdSense registered just over 30,000 impressions as well, so the statistics come pretty close to matching up.

It is against Adsense terms of service to dicuss exact figures, but I will throw out some ballpark figures. Over 200 clicks generated over $50 dollars in revenue in that week alone. The site was configured with one ad block, 250×250 showcasing 4 ads per impression. It basically had the exact same setup as this blog, minus the 125 ads and the banner ad. Pretty minimal in terms of ads, in my opinion.

Website B, which does a lot less traffic, has a lot more monetization in place. It’s specific niche is graphical humor. I have banner advertisment, a couple of 125×125 ads, and a wide range of select placement for AdSense advertisements. There isn’t a whole lot of writing but what is there is a pretty easy read. That website averages less than 10,000 site visits per month, but it generates roughly 100 dollars a month in revenue after hosting costs are factored in. The AdSense click though rate and amount of clicks is right about on par with Website A.

Logic tells me that a website that generates as much traffic as Website A but had the same configuation as Website B would make roughly 300 dollars a week; possibly more if the niche and ad configuation is optimized.

Every website is different, and finding your proper advertisement setup will make a world of difference. But this is proof, once again, that traffic is the main factor in determining how much revenue you will make. As great as your content may be, if generating revnue is your main goal, traffic must be generated.

Hope you catch the buzz!

I have started playing around with Twitter. Basically, it is a microblog/social networking site allowing people to follow you, similar in my opinion to the way you would follow a bloggers RSS feed. I have been hearing the twitter named dropped for sometime now but hopped on the bandwaggon after seeing several of my friends using it in conjunction to their Facebook accounts.

I haven’t quite figured out how I could use it to my benefit blogging, but it is pretty neat to follow my friends daily rantings without having to find them on Myspace and Facebook.

So, like any good blogger, I googled it to find out what all the hub-bub was.

I found this handy dandy article at, you guessed it, ProBlogger.

Seems like another potential promotional tool for those in the niche blogging realm. I am going to spend some time on it the next few weeks and I will report back on my findings.

Been getting a few emails here and there asking why I haven’t posted any new tips or techniques recently.

Quite frankly, I have been too busy with other blogs, websites, work, and songwrting to do much on this site. One of the keys to a money making blog is consistant updates so you keep your readership up. I suppose I have failed recently, but as I stated before, this blog is about tips and techniques, not about me personally making a whole ton on money.

Now that things have slowed down on the other fronts, I will be again updating more frequently, including a case study from a website I ran that proves no matter what type of website you have, buzz alone can generate quite a lot of revenue.