3:00: This panel is being led by Jason Rosenbaum, George Nasser, Karl-Thomas Musselman and A.J. Shuler.
3:11: A.J.: FireDogLake started a group called Common Sense Media.
3:16: You have to build traffic, build a name and build a brand.
3:17: Corporate advertising averages about 8% online. Political campaigns are only 1% of so. This is changing, however.
3:18: Use standard ad sizes so the organization doesn’t have to redo their ads to fit you. There are also some advanced technology tools that optimize advertising.
3:20: It’s virtually impossible to do it on your own, as a single blog. Advertisers want to buy larger bundles of online space.
3:21: Jason: Making money blogging is very hard. Something more likely is a personal brand, where you can make money doing speaking or writing books or getting movement jobs.
3:22: Making money networks. Pay-per-click: You make money when a user clicks on your ad: Adsense, Kanoodle, Chitika.
3:23: Affiliate marketing: You makemoney when a user buys a product. Amazon, Ebay, Shareasale, CommissionJunction, Linkshare.
3:24: Display advertising: You make money for every ad impression you serve. Valueclick, Right Media, CommonSense Media. These tend to be only interested in sites with higher traffic. Right Media takes most people.
3:25: Text Links: You make money for selling text links on your blog: Text Link Ads, Text Link Brokers.
3:26: Sponsorships: You make money selling sponsorship ads on your blog: Blogads, Direct sponsorships.
3:27: Pay-per-post: You make money writing about certain topics on your blog: PayPerPos, SponsoredReview.
3:28: Where do you put your ads? Ads that get seen most, get clicked most. Ads that get clicked make you more money.
3:28: The closer ot your content, the better. Even inside the content works well. You want your ads to be above the folder — Assume 800×600 and you should be able to see the add without scrolling. Track your clicks with sites like CrazyEgg.
3:29: The best place for ads is right in the middle of the page right above your story. Near the comments, above the content and to the left work well also.
3:30: You want ads that blend into your design. You want same colors & fonts.
3:31: ProBlogger is a great source for monetizing (he makes six figures a year through blogging). Others include abestweb.com, Google Analytics, CrazyEgg.
3:39: George: Marketing and selling premium content. You can also include a donation system.
3:42: What helps my site? 1. Keyword use in title tag. 2. Anchor text of inbound link (meaning the text that is highlighted — use keywords that relate to the topic). [1&2 are much more useful than the rest of these]. 3. Global link popularity of site. 4. Age of site. 5. Link popularity within the site’s internal link structure. 6. Topical relevance of inbound links to site. 7. Link popularity of site in topical community. 8. Keyword use in body text. 9. Global link popularity of linking site. 10. Topical relationship of linking page.
3:50: What hurts my site? 1. Server is often inaccessible to bots. 2. Content very similar or duplicate or existing content in index. 3. External links to low quality/spam sites. 4. Participation in link schemes or actively selling links. 5. Duplicate title/meta tags on many pages.
3:54: Meta tags don’t really work any more. Quality of content has little affect on search engines, since bots have no ability to determine this. It helps with human beings linking to you, though.
4:00: Excessive cross-posting of entire posts can do some damage to google results.
4:01: Direct contact with others and building relationships is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site.
4:05: Reaching out into the communities that might value what you are doing is very important.
4:06: Marketing is not advertising: Branding, positioning, authority, earned media, community activity.
4:15: Unique content that you can get quicker and more accurately than other sources are also good for driving traffic.
4:16: Your internal linking structure actually helps with Google traffic, linking to other pages in your own sites helps.
4:16: Social bookmarking sites such as digg and reddit drive traffic and help search engine rankings as well.
4:17: For audio/video/pic objects, alt tags are useful.
4:17: Some blog platforms can automate links to previous related posts (which helps with internal link structure).
4:20: Blogads will take you about 3000 a week. But they should be actual relevant posts.
4:23: Get others to cross-post round-ups, it helps with links and helps drive traffic and build the community.
4:25: A weekly thank you to advertisers on your site thanking them and giving them a link is greatly appreciated and drives repeat business.
