Better Pictures = Better Traffic= Great Blog

This article is guest posted by Deidra Wilson

You work tirelessly on your blog. You research your keywords, build links and pour through your analytics with the skill of a surgeon. Do you put the same amount of effort and thought into the pictures you post on your blog? As a Las Vegas wedding photographer, photography is my job. I do however have the constant demand of providing my blog’s readers with relevant and unique pictures. Good pictures on your website are a key part of making money online.

That old adage ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ very much applies to how your readers perceive your blog and your brand. Load up a popular news website – any of them. You will see current, relevant and well composed pictures to support their news.

If you were constantly presented with an 8 year old stock image that has questionable relevance to the subjects, you would view that news brand as not being a major player. By taking a few easy steps, you can start taking your own pictures to complement your blog posts that will make your readers come back again and again.

1) It is not the tool in the bag, it is the skill of the person using it

Everyone owns a digital camera. The one you own will do just fine – you do not need to rush out and spend thousands on professional camera gear to produce quality images. Some of the favorite photos I have taken have been shot with a variety of camera phones, $10 old film cameras and even Polaroids.
Point being, if you have a simple point and shoot camera, you can take great pictures with it. Set your camera on automatic, resist the urge to use any of the factory ‘scenario settings’ as the landscape setting might work one day, it might be terribly wrong another day due to available light.

2) Hit the lights!

Lighting is half the battle in photography. Sometimes I can be found simply waiting on light when I am on an outdoor shoot, the perfect moment does not always come (usually at dawn or dusk) but when it does it can be magical. For basic images indoors, keep your flash on but try and add as much additional light to the subject area as possible.

When you turn off the flash on a simple point and shoot camera, it overcompensates by keeping the shutter open longer to allow more light in. That almost always results in a blurry image unless you are using a solid tripod and remote shutter control. Experiment with using simple household flashlights or other on hand light sources, when in doubt, flip the switch for your overhead lights.

3) Avoid the ‘stock’ look

Stock photography is just that – it’s stock. You want to take and provide your readers with unique photos that they have not seen anywhere else. If you are taking a picture of a shoe for example, what do you think your readers would find more appealing? A heavily flashed picture of the show on your kitchen table or a more interesting picture, an intimate close-up taken in an environment where you would expect to see that shoe used – a basketball court, running, etc.

If you run a blog about basketball and you are talking about shoes – take a picture of a basketball shoe on a basketball court. Don’t stop there, get creative with what you do to that shoe (or your subject). Toss the shoe up into the net, hang it with fishing line, etc.

Your readers will notice the extra effort in your photography that supports your blog posts. Happy readers translate into more readers and more links each and every time.

© Make Money Online

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How to Make Your Blog Disappear Completely (And Never Be Viewed Again)

This make money online article is guest posted by Carol Wilson

As a kid, you probably wished you could turn invisible. Who didn’t? As an adult blogger, you probably feel invisible on a regular basis, and direct all your energy toward more views. It’s easy to be overlooked—there are millions of blogs to read, and billions of people poring over them, only giving half a second’s glance before moving on to the next one.

Hopefully you read the title of this post and thought, “But I don’t want my blog to disappear completely and never be viewed again!” That was the correct response. If you want your blog to get more attention and be consistently great, such that readers keep coming back (and bring more readers with them), then the following list should point you in the right direction.

For the sake of clarity, I’m just going to go ahead and remind you that this is an ironic list. If you don’t want to disappear from the blogosphere and go forever unnoticed, DO THE OPPOSITE OF EVERYTHING THAT FOLLOWS:

1. Indulge in your narcissism.

Everyone hates narcissists, especially on a website that’s supposed to be about helping others. Keeping an online record of how you solve your personal problems might be personally therapeutic, but it is socially irrelevant, and professionally alienating and boring.

Even if you manage to expand your meditations on your problems to include universal problems others can relate to, you still aren’t fulfilling the basic purpose of a professional blog—offering advice, tips, and solutions to your readers that are important to them.

Writing “I just improved my SEO ranking by 20%” is a sure-fire way to get people to never look at your blog again. If you’re trying to eject your dedicated readers and keep new ones away, definitely never say things like, “Do you wish you could improve your SEO rankings?” Never address or focus on the readers if you want them to abandon you; this will attract them, and probably even keep them reading.

2. Be as pretentious as possible.

Nothing screams elitism and alienation like pretentious language and ideas. Talk about your niche as if everyone knows everything about it, and never condescend to give them necessary background information.

Exclude anyone who isn’t also an expert, and solely discuss obscure, erudite, and impractical topics in a way that is inconclusive and meandering. Doing all of these things will almost infallibly make all your readers jump ship, and effectively deter new ones from ever repeating one visit.

Conversely, respecting your readership enough to introduce topics that are relevant to their everyday experience, explain them thoroughly in a friendly, familiar tone will probably keep readers reading, and might even inspire them to encourage others to visit your site. If you want to preserve the deserted aspect of your blog, better not do this.

3. Hack away any visually attractive design elements from your page.

In fact, try to make your page as visually confusing as you can. Intentionally place ads in inconvenient places; use garish color schemes; arrange your content in disorienting ways—anything you can do to keep the experience challenging and frustrating for readers will help keep them far from your blog.

Never take the time to make your blog look respectable, clean, attractive, or beautiful; this will only frame your blog with pleasing images, and give your readers an all-around extraordinary blog experience, which will certainly convince them to make repeat visits and spread the word.

If you follow these steps, you’ll have zero followers in no time, and you can watch as your blog’s livelihood shrivels to nothing. However, if you don’t want to just stand by and let your blog become invisible, don’t follow these steps—do the opposite of what you see here, and you’ll be on your way to a popular, successful blog.

This is a guest post from Carol Wilson who writes for business insurance. She contributes articles about a variety of marketing, business, stock market, small business topics. She can be contacted at: wilson.carol24 @ gmail.com.

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How Blogging Helps in Educating Your Customers

This make money online article is guest posted by William King

Online business and internet marketing is thriving in a splendid manner in today’s world. When you run a wholesale business, it is best to maintain a blog on your website as it can help you keep customers informed about your products, services and new offers. Also, people trust and connect to information on the net more than any other source.

When customers are looking to buy a product, they prefer to look it up on the web and read reviews as they do not have time to go from shop to shop to inquire salespeople. All it takes to find relevant information today is just a couple of strokes of the keyboard. In such a situation, you can use your blog for educating your customers as well as generate some traffic to your website.

Buyers trust reviews and comments which they read on blogs and forums. Wholesale suppliers thoroughly depend on their credibility. If you too are a supplier, then you should consider running a blog as it will help your customers gain more belief and confidence in the quality of your brand.

Positive comments act as boosters as potential buyers get more convinced to make the purchase. Blogs attract and educate customers as they learn to trust budding wholesale businesses. In fact, this is the cheapest method of marketing for beginners. All new businesses need to create an impression in competition to other established organizations.

Blogs come in especially handy in today’s world since, people are becoming increasingly busy with tight work schedules and time constraints. If customers want to make a large scale deal with your wholesale business, they will want to know about your company in detail. When you have a well managed blog, such big deals can be won easily.

In other words, you can also use your blogs to impress prospective clients by sharing detail information on your company, policies, products and unique features beforehand. Effective presentations focusing on your company’s strong points and offers can be prepared by using multimedia, graphs and images to make it more appealing.

Customers can also get to know about the various reward programs and attractive deals offered by the wholesale company through their blog. Reviews, discussions and comments on the organization’s blog tempt and lure all kinds of customers.

Both old and new customers will benefit by visiting the blog of a wholesale company. Blogging is quickly becoming one of the most dominant methods of marketing which has proved beneficial for both buyers and the sellers.

William King is the director of an online B2B Wholesale portal, wholesale suppliers, manufacturers and distributors. As an entrepreneur and a businessman, he likes to share his extensive knowledge of wholesale industry trends and frequently writes on marketing expertise for various internet marketing related blogs.

©Make Money Online

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The Best Swapping and Trading Sites

If you have lots of stuff you want to get rid of – or stuff that you’d love to get but can’t afford to buy – then swapping and trading websites could be for you. There are loads of different swapping websites on the internet. Some of them are general and have categories for all sorts of things, while others are more specific and only allow you to trade certain items, such as books, DVDs or comics. Read on to find out about some of the best swapping and trading sites around at the moment.

Freecycle

Freecycle is probably one of the biggest and best known trading sites around and it’s always full of really interesting items. The website is not-for-profit and its aim is to get people to recycle stuff (hence the name) by giving it away for free rather than sending things away for landfill. This means that Freecycle can be particularly good for things such as furniture and TVs, as well as other home furnishings. Obviously, the quality of items can be somewhat hit and miss, but you can often find some real gems on there, quite often in your local area.

Swap.com

If you’re interested in swapping and trading entertainment then swap.com is a good option. This site allows you to trade things such as books, DVDs, CDs and video games. All you need to do is list the ISBNs of the items you’d like to trade and the site will generate a list of comparable items that you could get in return. Then you can just browse for what you’d like and someone should hopefully accept your trade. It’s a simple concept and the list that the site generates certainly saves time when it comes to searching for items you can trade for.

thredUP.com

This is a good swap and trade site for children’s clothes that gives you the chance to check out what other people are offering and, if you like what they’ve got, you just have to pay $13 per box. In return, you’ll have to send off a box of your own kid’s redundant clothes, but you can do this free of charge. When you consider how fast children outgrow stuff, the opportunity to get some great stuff really cheap is definitely appealing to many.

Whatsmineisyours.com

If you’re interested in swapping things such as furniture and clothes, whatsmineisyours.com is a good option. It’s really easy to search through the different categories to see what’s available and there’s even an instant messenger feature built into the website, as well as a chat room to make communication between site members really easy.

u-exchange.com

This site is a little bit different as rather than swapping items of clothing, books or furniture, it lets people swap houses. Of course, this isn’t a permanent thing, but the site lists people all over the world who are willing to swap houses for holiday exchanges. This means that if you’re looking for a budget getaway and if you are willing for someone else to stay in your house while you’re away, this could be a really good site for you to check out.

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Top 5 US Based Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are something that can benefit many websites and they offer the potential to earn cash – something that certainly appeals to many. If you sign up to an affiliate program, you’ll be asked to display advertising (such as links and banners) on your site. Then, when web users click those ads, you’ll get paid for it. There are lots of affiliate schemes around so it can be hard to know which ones are worth your while; read on to find out about the top 5 US-based affiliate programs.

Google Affiliate Network

One of the biggest affiliate programs around is the Google Affiliate Network. For companies looking to advertise through the program, you only have to pay based on conversions, so if no one clicks on your ads, you won’t have to pay anything. If you sign up to the program as a publisher and agree to have ads on your site, you’ll earn money based on performance and the cash will be paid into your AdSense account. The Google Affiliate Network has lots of benefits, including the Google Display Network, which is the #1 ad network in the world. The scheme has more than 100,000 affiliates.

Commission Junction

Another good US based affiliate program is Commission Junction. This was founded in 1998 and has more than 66,000 affiliates as well as around 3000 merchants, making it a fairly sizeable affiliate program. Like the Google scheme, Commission Junction is performance based and it also has an international reach, with access to the UK, Germany and France as well as the US. Some of the most sought after brands use this scheme and it is known for good returns based on advertiser performance.

LinkShare

You could also check out LinkShare, which has been going since 1996. They run one of the largest affiliate programs available on the internet and they actually pioneered online affiliate marketing back when it all began. Pay is based on performance and there is network access to countries such as the UK, Canada and Japan as well as the US. LinkShare is known for good service and innovative advertising, so it is a good site to consider if you want to get involved with an affiliate program.

ShareASale

Established in 2000, ShareASale has more than 300,000 affiliates and upwards of 2600 merchants, making it one of the largest affiliate networks around. It works with large and small merchants, and is also one of the cheaper schemes for merchants, who also benefit from the wide range of affiliate sites. ShareASale also has a comprehensive support service for the merchants and advertisers that form their affiliate network.

Share Results USA

Finally, Share Results USA has network access to the UK and Canada as well as the US. They provide all the software that participants need in order to take part in the scheme and their management services help to support the generation of targeted web traffic.

These are just a few of the best US based affiliate programs and they’re definitely worth checking out if you are interested in becoming an affiliate.

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Using Fiverr and Similar Sites to Make Money Online

There are now hundreds of ways to make money online and, while most of them are never going to make you rich, they can offer good ways of getting a bit of extra cash and even building your experience in an area of work you’re interested in. These are the sorts of benefits that you can get from Fiverr and other, similar websites. Read on to find out more.

What is Fiverr?

Fiverr is a fairly simple concept. It’s a website where users post details of things that they are willing to do for $5. This could include things such as ‘I’ll write an article about making money on Fiverr for $5’ or ‘I’ll give you three top SEO tips for $5’. You can tailor what you offer to do according to your skills and experience. Then, if someone selects something that you have posted, you keep up your end of the bargain by doing whatever it was you said you’d do, and then you get $5 for it.

This is not really a website to make huge amounts of money on, but it is quite good for earning quick, small amounts of cash on a regular basis if you have skills to sell and know what you’re doing. Plus, if you get a good reputation for giving good value for money on Fiverr, people will be more likely to select you when they are in need of something, meaning that you could boost the amount of money you are able to earn.

There are lots of different things you can offer to do on Fiverr. There are lots of writing offers, for instance, as well as lots of people offering to do product reviews or test websites for $5. There are also some quirkier advertisements on the site, such as people offering to sing Happy Birthday, draw pictures of your pet or send you straw decorations through the post. This means that there are loads of opportunities available and other people also post things that they’d like from other people (such as ‘I’m looking for someone to give me cloud computing advice’ or ‘I’d like some cupcake recipes’). If you find a request that you could fulfil, it could make you money.

What other sites are there?

As well as Fiverr there are some other, similar sites that also offer you the opportunity to make money by offering to do things for other people.

For instance, TenBux is a similar site that gives you the chance to make either $5 or $10 for doing various microjobs. Zeerk is another popular website that gives you the opportunity to make up to $25 for every gig you complete, meaning that it offers you even more money-making opportunities.

Other similar websites include GigHour, where you post the gig you’re willing to do then sit back and wait for someone to ask you to do it. GigBucks gives you the chance to earn between $5 and $100 per gig, depending on what you do and UpHype can earn you $8, $16 or $24 per gig. They’re all definitely worth checking out if you’re looking to make some money through the things you do best.

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