Make Money Online (part 9) - Directories Submission I

It is longer time from my last post. At last part I wrote about Entrecard as possible source of traffic for your blog. For better traffic it is also important to have backlinks on your pages. Only web with existing backlinks is visible on internet and has some value for search engines. Usually backlinks are more important to mark your page as valuable source, than good source for traffic.

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There is more possibilities to gain some backlinks for your pages. I will show you more ways, how to gain them. In this part I will show you the basic one. I will show you how to submit your blog to various directories. It is not easy to promote your blog. Submission to directories is very time consuming process. There are many important questions, before you start to submit your blog. I will try to define them and answer on them.

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1. When to start to submit my blog? Answer on this question is simple. You need to have some content before submitting your blog. Owners of directories usually approve only submissions with some valuable content.
2. In how many directories I need to submit my blog? Simply said more is better. It is good to submit your blog to directories permanently.
3. Where to find directories? You can find them of course on my pages. Go to my SEO directories list. There you can find thousands of them.
4. How to choose right ones? There are more opinions on this question. It is good to choose directories with high Google page rank of course. But many directories has high page rank only because they were created on strong domains. These domains usually drop down in short time. Sometimes it is better to choose new directories, because they usually grow faster and you will be approved sooner. There are of course very strong old directories. I recommend you order my list by Website Force. It is my own complex rank for pages.
5. How to automate submissions? As I said above, submission is very time consuming process. You can do it yourself, or you can choose from thousands of submission services. Many of them offer you submission to thousands directories for very good prices. But usually quality of these services is very poor. These submitters usually use some software to automate this process. The software can submit your blog to many directories but with low success rate. Owners of directories hate these SPAM submitters and usually decline such submissions. I can offer you truly manual submission service for affordable price, but here is not place for ads. You can also try to submit your blog yourself using some software. You can do it with better success rate. The best way is of course manual submission. You can do it with help of online tools and add-ons for Firefox. How to do it I will show you in the next paragraph.
6. What are important data for submissions? When you are submitting data to directories, you need to enter data to submission forms. Some from them are very important, and they must to be chosen very wisely. Especially anchor text (Title in forms). Anchor link content have to be keyword for which do you want to be visible in search engines. It is rule not to use the same anchor text for all submissions, but vary it with more keywords. Also description can be important. Sometimes you need to enter keywords in submission form. These keywords help you find your page in directory itself.

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At next parts of these series I will show you, how to prepare your submission data, how to install add-ons, that will help you with your effort, and how to submit your blog or web to directories.

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Used terms and abbreviations
Backlinks
are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.
Add-ons
are installable enhancements to the Mozilla Foundation's projects (and compatible variants such as Portable Firefox). Add-ons allow the user to add or augment application features, use themes to his or her liking, and handle new types of content.
The anchor text
or link label is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the Anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines.

Make Money Online (part 8) - Entrecard Phenomenon

In my post How to use widgets for increasing traffic I described 4 basic social networking sites. BlogRush, BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog and BUMPzee. Main source of traffic from these sites was from Last visitors widget, except of BlogRush with Other blog posts widget. In this post I want to write about next social networking site Entrecard.

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You can see Entrecard widgets on many blogs now. It is phenomenon of last year in the blogger world. From my experience, Entrecard can very successfully increase traffic, especially for new blogs or sites. Entrecard has 3 basic ideas:

1. Earn credits from adding link on my site to another site.
2. Earn credits from dropping other widget cards.
3. Earned credits I can use to buy ads for my site.

It is very simple view on the system. Entrecard has much more possibilities how to earn or spend credits. More info how to work with it you can find bellow or in Entrecard Official E-Book .

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After pressing Sign up now! on Entrecard main page you have to fill registration form. Before filling data prepare your card, 125*125 image, that represents your blog. Make it as attractive, as it is possible, because it must attract visitors to click on it. After filling data and pressing button Signup it is time to add a widget on your blog.

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To add the widget on your blog you need code, that you can add on your blog. To do it, click on link Get code in header of page. Then choose type of widget and copy the code to clipboard. To add it on your blog, go to Blogger pages and add code to template just as you did it while adding AdSense code.

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After successful adding widget on your blog it is time to earn some credits. You can do it simply by dropping card on another blogs, or approving ads on your site. Ad will be shown in your widget for 1 day. Go to Dashboard page, where you will find all necessary links.

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When you want to advertise your blog to spend your credits, go to Campaign page. There you can choose blogs where your ad can be shown. There is important how much credits you can spend. Each blog has own price for advertising. This price is generated from blog popularity. You can advertise on more blogs, but your add will be shown only after approving by owner of site.

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Now I want to describe main advantages and disadvantages of Entrecard.

Advantages

• Excellent source of traffic
• New feature: Add more than one blog to an account
• It is register also new blogs or pages

Disadvantages

• You have to spend a lot of time by dropping cards
• Not very well targeted traffic. A lot of visitors visit your page only for dropping card.

If you try Entrecard is on your decision. And it is also your decision how much time do you spend by dropping cards. My opinion is, Entrecard is very good source of traffic, especially for new blogs.

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Used terms and abbreviations
Social Networking
Communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.
Widget
is an element of a graphical user interface (GUI) that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box.

Make Money Online (part 7) - Monetize Blog with AdSense III

In the last post we generated ad code for your blog. Now, it is time to add this code on your pages. From Google AdSense Program Policies you know, that you can add up to 3 ads on each page.

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You can do it in 2 manners:

• Straight to blog post With this approach you will add ad, while you are writing new post. Advantage of this manner is, that ad is better inserted into existing text, and can be on the hottest place of blog, as you can see on the heat map from previous post. You can also change position of ads in various posts. Disadvantage of this approach is, that you must know basics of HTML, and your post will be worse editable in Blogger. Next disadvantage is that visitors don't like ads composed in text, and can reconsider, if they return back to your pages in the future. You also must check number of ads for each blog page.
• Update template of blog Second manner is to add your code to template, and it will be shown on each page of blog. Advantage is that you must do it only once. When you add code to header of your page, there are still on good place. In your posts will be only text and not ad code. Disadvantage is, that you will gain probable less clicks like with first approach. If you want to add more ads in template, you must find next places for them in template. It means, that you must know basics of Blogger template code and HTML.

I prefer second approach and in this post I will show you how to insert ad into header of page, what is one from the best places on page.

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To find right place in blog template is not easy. Various templates can have various template code, but there is possibility of Preview and it will help you a lot.
Go to Blogger.com pages and login there. Select your blog, and click on link Template. You will see simple editor with your template. There, you have to find right place for your ad code. Template is divided to more parts. On top is usually CSS styles code.
HTML code with body of your page starts with text <body>. You must add your code somewhere between this tag and </body> tag.
To find header of your blog in template, try find something like:

<div id="main">
...
<Blogger>

If you will you find it, then with high probability you have right place for your code. It will be placed between these 2 tags.
If not, find only:

<Blogger>

and try ad your code bellow above this tag.

Insert on this place code:

<div class='adsense' style='text-align:center; padding: 3px 3px 3px 3px;'>
Your ad code here
</div>

Then press button Preview. In new window you will see your blogger with changed template. On place where you can see text
Your ad code here
will be your ad. If you think there is not right place, try to change code above, until you are not satisfied, with place of your ad. When you will be satisfied replace text Your ad code here with your code from AdSense. Then press button Save Template Changes. Your changes will be saved. If you are noticed that you must republish your blog, do it by clicking on the link for republishing.

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I hope, that you found right place for your ad code with help of this post. If you want to add more ads on your pages, do it similar and carefully choose right place for them. Pages filled with many ads are not very interesting for visitors, and you can harm your blog. Less is sometimes more. After ads publishing you can check your AdSense reports in next days. Time shows you, if you choose right ad formats and places. If not, you know how to change them now.