Getting to know Google Analytics is important for any blogger, regardless of blogging experience or niche. Utilizing Google Analytics reporting tools can give you and your team a better understanding of what is working for your blog, what readers are interested and engaging in, and where readers are finding you. When you know what areas you’re doing well in and what areas need improvement, you can change your blogging strategy to reach more and more readers.

It isn’t difficult to understand how to use Google Analytics, but it is important to know what you should be looking at. This guide can help you break down what areas of Google Analytics to examine and track, how to create a Google Analytics report, and overall how to get a better understanding of what your readers are looking for.

Getting to Know Google Analytics

Before you can begin doing any analytics tracking, you’ll need to set up your Google Analytics page for your blog if you haven’t already. Setting up your page is easy and the Google Analytics page will walk you through the necessary steps. Once you’re in Google Analytics, you’ll be met with a dashboard full of numbers, charts, graphics and more that explains who is looking at your profile, where those people are coming from, and how long they engage with your blog.

All the information you need is there, but you need to understand where to find it, which numbers are most important to developing a strong strategy for getting new followers, and which charts you should be tracking. Your goals will ultimately determine which areas you will use, but for bloggers, the most important sections are usually the same.

Areas to Track

Before you can begin a strategy to get more blog followers, you’ll need to figure out what you’re doing that is working and what you’re doing that isn’t working. This can be done by looking at a few key areas of your Google Analytics report.

But the very first step you need to take before jumping in to Google Analytics is to determine what your goals are. Growing readership looks different to every blogger and will largely depend on where your blog is currently and where you would like it to go. If you are just starting out, your goals will look much different than someone who has been blogging for years. Your goals will determine your area of focus.

Most Popular Pages

One of the many beneficial measurement tracking components of Google Analytics is page views and the time spent on each page. Seeing which posts are visited frequently and commonly read all the way through can give you an idea of the kinds of posts your audience enjoys.

To find which posts are your most popular, begin on the “Pages” section of Google Analytics. Along the sidebar, find “Behavior,” then select the subcategory “Site Content.” Finally, select the “All Pages” option.

This should pull up a grid detailing your most popular pages, including the number of visits to that page as well as the time spent on that page. There are a few things to consider in this area. If you post a variety of lengths in regards to your blog, the time spent on each page may be skewed. Longer posts obviously take longer time to read, so you shouldn’t confuse long page view times with popularity. You also should consider that certain pages, like a landing page, will probably have more views than other posts, but people usually leave these pages relatively quickly. Use both the time spent on the page and the number of views on the page in relation to each other to determine which posts have received the best response.

Reader Acquisition

Another thing you will want to consider before starting your strategy is where your readers are coming from. This information will be crucial when understanding which social media platforms to target in your strategy to get new followers.

To find a detailed account of your readers, you’ll want to go the “Acquisition” section of the sidebar. Then select “Social.” This will give you an overview of where your social media pages are doing their job of turning posts into views to the website. It will also give you an idea of which social media pages your readers are engaging with and what pages might need an updated strategy.

How to Get Blog Followers

Now that you understand the most basic areas of Google Analytics you should be addressing, you can begin addressing your strategy. Your overall goals will determine what steps you should be taking to get more blog followers.

Create Great Content

The first step in getting more blog followers is to create posts that your readers want to see. This can be done by looking at your popular pages and determining what areas you were successful in. If most of your readers are interested in a particular topic, you should create similar posts in that niche. If a particular category of posts is getting little attention, you may want to consider dropping that topic from your blog.

This pathway is best advised for bloggers who are looking to increase their return readers, get more subscribers, and take blog visitors from occasional reader to part of the community.

Promote Your Blog

If you are looking to get entirely new or more followers and readers, you may want to consider promoting your blog on social media platforms. This pathway can go two different ways, depending on the information given to you from Google Analytics.

If you find that one of your social media platforms isn’t performing to the standards you were expecting, consider doing a promotional post on that website. For example, if you find that most of your social media acquisition comes from Facebook but very little comes from Twitter, consider promoting your blog on Twitter more.

On the other hand, you could promote more exclusively to the social media platform with the most engagements. This could better ensure that your loyal following is getting the most information and updates about your blog, again taking them from casual readers to dedicated followers.

To have a successful blog, you’ll also need to have great web design and make sure your website is mobile friendly, but using Google Analytics can give you a great understanding of where do your readers come from, who are they and what are they looking for.

Google Analytics is able to take the guessing game out of content creation and promotion, given you a clear indication of what content is resonating best with your followers and what social media pages are getting the most traffic. When you understand what is working for you and your blog, you can create a better strategy for targeting and attacking new followers.

To be successful in Google Analytics isn’t difficult. You just need to understandwhat your blogging goals are and what areas on Google Analytics to track. For starters, popular pages and acquisition are the most important. As you continue to understand your audience and readership, this information can be applied in a number of different ways to develop a more targeted promotional strategy.

Every minute, 571 new websites are created, 2,460,000 pieces of content shared on Facebook, and 278,000 messages tweeted (Source:). Having a sharp, professional, website with eye-catching graphics and exciting text isn’t enough these days. With so many websites and brands vying for attention on the Internet, online success demands a comprehensive strategy.

The strategy that you develop for your website should begin before your site is developed. The best-laid plans begin with knowing as much as you can about who your customers are and what they need. Only with this information can you create a website that can answer any questions customers might have before they ask, then make it easy for them to buy what you’re selling. Such a website will also help you identify and communicate your qualifications, uniqueness, and differences from your competitors. Through advanced planning, you can carefully target specific customers and tell them exactly how you’ll serve their needs and create goods, services, and shopping experiences tailored to your market.

Once your website is developed, you need to focus on generating powerful social signals that will propel your site up the ranks in Google. Using the following 12 steps, you can develop a winning strategy to build your brand, increase your presence on search engines, market effectively to your visitors, and retain and grow your customer base.

1. Define your brand. 

A brand can be easily recognized. It has special attributes that differentiate between similar businesses or products in a category. For a brand to exist, a market must be aware of the business, have a positive perception about it, and have a reason to associate with its products and values.

2. Build your brand.

A brand’s presence and appearance must be compatible and consistent with its identity. If you sell off-road motorsport parts and accessories, your website should not use paisley with daffodils. Similarly, content developed about the brand must be believable and use language aligned with your target market’s education and cultural background. Focus on building and communicating areas of differentiation in your company culture, product offerings, service levels, and pricing that that your customers will value.

The strength behind any brand is its power to communicate with customers. The power of a strong communications strategy will differentiate your brand from its competition, give customers a reason to talk about your brand, and generate repeat customers. Strong communications skills also makes brands appear more professional, which leads to greater success.

3. Name your site strategically.

The domain name of your website should be short, memorable, easy to spell, and related to what you sell. Using relevant words to make up the domain name is an important ranking indicator. If your business plans to cater to clients in a particular city, use the name of the city in your domain. Purchasing a domain name that still has some ranking power and has been previously been used can also be advantageous.

4. Design for visual impact.

Across your website, collateral and social media properties should have a consistent look and feel that can be easily recognized. Use the same fonts, colors, and layouts on your website that you use in your print literature and social media properties. Finally, invest in the creation of a professional-looking, recognizable brand logo.

As to site design itself, remember that simple is better. Use only what is needed in terms of images and graphics to improve your central message and communicate it quickly, clearly, and attractively.

Strive for clutter-free pages that offer balance, and use white space and font sizes that are easy to read. Finally, design your pages for mobile devices, and focus onAccelerated Mobile Pages. Your navigation should be consistent and intuitive.

5. Develop and fine-tune onsite content. 

The content you develop for your site must be unique, interesting and targeted. Your content should be created so that the most important information is “above the fold,” or near the top of each page.

In addition to providing relevant, high-quality information related to your products and services, ensure your website contains must-have pages, such as about us, contact us, maps to your offices, your blog, and a publications page. Once a page is created, optimize it for search engines with title, keyword, and description tags, in-page headers, and alternative text tags. Include text links to reference products, services, and other items that have additional content on other pages. Add clickable calls to action anywhere a visitor might be ready to act.

Use Google’s Webmaster Tools to review traffic reports and identify pages with higher than normal bounce rates. High bounce rates may signify the need to improve the content with relevant search terms.

6. Generate social signals. 

To place well in search engine rankings, a site must generate social proof signals, such as inbound links within a blog post, user engagement with your content, time spent watching your YouTube videos, number of quality comments, and social shares on blog posts.

Most experts agree that other social signals, such as retweets, likes, and pins offer little or no direct ranking impact. While Google+ might have some impact, it’s probably limited to a personalized search perspective, and only when individuals are logged into their own Google accounts. Therefore, site owners should focus on generating a rich mixture of links from a diversified set of highly authoritative websites.

7. Include metadata for pictures.

It’s amazing how many paid content writers fail to include metadata in the pictures they use on websites. Copyright information, source URL, keywords, descriptions, and author information can all be stored in an image file. This information, which is also read by Google, is an important part of SEO that should not be overlooked.

8. Develop mailing lists. 

As an online marketer, e-mail lists are one of your most powerful customer retention and generation tools. People who sign up for your opt-in e-newsletter give you permission to market to them regularly. As you develop an e-mail list, design your collection method to incorporate a “double opt-in.” A double opt-in means that instead of directly receiving a welcome e-mail, you receive a second chance to either opt-in or decline first. That means that if you go to a website and sign up your friend, your friend will receive an e-mail that basically says, “Are you sure you’re the one that opted-in, and do you still want to do this?” ESPs especially love double opt-ins because they provide a higher level of security that prevents your list from being used for sending spam.

Be sure that email list subscribers from all sites go to the same master list. Different mailing lists don’t do you much good if you have to create a separate newsletter blast for each one.

Looking for some tips on the best ways to get your site visitors to join your mailing list? Check out these real examples.

9. Create an e-mail newsletter 130.0 / 439. 

E-mail newsletters may sound like an old-fashioned idea. However, they offer one of the highest click-rates at one of the lowest cost-per-lead of any type of marketing. Setting up an e-mail newsletter campaign is easy. Take advantage of any number of email automation applications and services to collect e-mail addresses, develop a professional looking e-mail message, distribute your message to subscribers, and analyze results.

When developing an e-mail campaign, be sure to address the 6 pillars of communication. By including these pillars in designing your message, you will ensure that your message is communicated strategically, accurately, and purposefully.

Once you send out your e-mail newsletter, remember to post it to your blog, Twitter, and other social sites. Doing so will ensure that Google and other search engines will index it.

10. Create accounts on the “Big 4” social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube).

Because each social media site is different, make special thought and effort to develop posts. The goal should be to craft each post so that it supports your brand with useful promotional and informational details.

When setting up accounts, take the time to upload a “cover” photo or graphic. This cover should have a consistent look and feel with your website and other social media sites. It also allows you to brand your page beyond your profile picture and contribute to an attractive, appealing user experience.

At the very basic, you should develop and maintain the following:

• A Facebook page. Regardless of how you feel about Facebook, you still need a presence on it if for no other reason than its easy proximity to hordes of potential new customers.

• A Twitter account. People who dismiss Twitter are not aware of how to use it for promotion. It’s extremely powerful for attracting new fans and keeping your current ones instantly informed.

• A YouTube channel. Videos are such a major part of any company’s online presence that you really need your own branded channel to exploit them successfully.

• A Google+ page

• A LinkedIn page

In addition to these sites, look at other networks. Many social networks that your audience might use are available and deserve your consideration. Two are Pinterest and MySpace.

11. Develop your social media sites. 

Develop your social media sites so that all of them feed viewers into your main site. The key is to make sure that any viewer on any site is aware that you have a website and knows that it’s the main repository of information about you.

Regularly update social media sites with fresh content. Maintaining them with fresh content and attracting new followers requires substantial time and investment. Eventually, you may reach a point of diminishing returns.

You can’t be everywhere at once. Even if you could, it would take so much time that you’d never have any time left to run your business. To meet this challenge, take advantage of online media broadcast applications that make posting updates more efficient. An application like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite allows site owners to streamline the process and save time.

12. Get third party help when you’re overwhelmed. 

At some point, social-media management gets too complex for the business owner or entrepreneur to maintain, and third-party help is needed. This is usually a good thing, since you’ve progressed to a point where your enterprise has grown so big that you can’t keep up. Furthermore, hiring a company that specializes in social-media management can keep you current with new tools and techniques that you might not be aware of. Even when outside help arrives, remember that you’re still the one that drives the bus. Be sure to take part in all strategy discussions, but leave the actual facilitation to the company you’ve hired.

Having a sound social strategy is the key to successful promotion.

If you are looking for proven ways to make your blog’s content go viral, I’ve a 5-step plan for you which can help you quickly create outstanding content that creates a lot of buzz online.

Are you curious to know more about it? Here are 5 simple steps to create epic content. Let’s get started.

Step 1: Coming up with blog post ideas

Every popular post that goes viral online really starts with an idea at first. Coming up with unique, interesting and valuable blog post ideas is no joke. It takes a lot of time to brainstorm viral blog post ideas.

If you are struggling what to write next on your blog, let me help you. Try implementing the following methods and you will find it extremely easy to come up with unlimited number of blog post ideas.

Spy on your competitors

One of the easiest ways to coming up with viral blog post ideas is to spying on your competitors best performing keywords. Find out what are the keywords that are generating huge search traffic to your competitor sites and you can add your own unique flavour to them to create content for your blog.

If you are wondering how to find out your competitors best performing keywords or blog posts, try the following ways.

Popular posts: Almost every blog features their blog posts either at the sidebar, about page or at footer. This helps you quickly find out the best performing postson each blog. Try to analyze 10 to 15 top blogs along with their popular posts and you will come up with dozens of blog post ideas to write about.

SEMrush: SEMrush is widely used SEO tool which allows you to find the best performing keywords of any website. Just enter your competitor’s URL to find out their top posts. It can quickly help you come up with lots of highly profitable keywords.

Come up with your own ideas

When you are free, brainstorm post ideas for your own blog. Take a notepad file and start writing all the questions your audience might have. That will give you an easy way to come up with lots of informative blog post ideas really quickly.

Try writing about your own mistakes you made along the way, the plugins or tools you use or anything that’s personal which helps you connect with your target audience emotionally. It’s a great strategy to know your audience pulse and win their hearts.

Use tools

When none of the above methods work, use tools! Below tools can help you find hundreds of blog post ideas within minutes. Have a look at them and give a try to them once.

Portent: Portent is a free tool which gives you unlimited number of blog post ideas. You just need to enter a keyword and it will give you lots of interesting blog post headlines to write about.

Alltop: Alltop is one of the biggest blog directories that pulls information from all major blogs by showing headlines of their recent 5 blog entries. Topics ranging from marketing to fitness to education can easily give you lots of blog post ideas to write about!

Step 2: Research

This is where you need to spend most of your time.

Pat Flynn once said, he usually spends around 9 to 10 hours for finishing a post and majority of his time is spent on researching.

If you spend more time on doing research about the content you write about, you can be easily able to write blog posts that go viral quickly.

Few people think they can write blog posts in an hour or two but I just don’t recommended that if you want to grab more traffic and exposure to your content.

By taking more time to research, you can help your audience with killer content along with the detailed information they need to solve their problems. You can also be easily able to write in-depth content.

If you are blogging for a while, you might already know the fact that detailed content with 2000+ words usually ranks well in Google search results.

So that’s an added advantage of spending quality time on doing research towrite great blog posts. So what are you waiting for? Next time, do remember to spend more time on research and see the results by yourself!

Step 3: Productivity tips for writing quickly

One of the biggest hurdles most bloggers encounter while creating content is they take too much to write. It’s not bad to spend more time for doing research but you can write blog posts faster if you know few productivity tips.

Here are few incredible writing tips to write really faster.

Outline: Once you come up with the blog post ideas to write about, start outlining the post. Use lots of subheadlines and divide your blog post topic idea into small chunks. Outlining your content makes it really easy to write blog posts quickly.

Get rid of distractions: Turn off all your social media and email notifications. Declutter your workspace and put your smartphone in silent mode away from your laptop or Mac. Getting rid of all the distractions is really the key to write quickly.

Put a timer: It’s easier to get lost in doing unwanted stuff while writing. By putting a timer, you are allowing yourself to focus on finishing just one thing i.e writing. Using a timer like Pomodoro tool can help you work for 25 minutes straight. Then, you can take a 5 minutes break and again start working on your content. That’s how most efficient writers and bloggers write faster.

Find out your own optimal time for writing: Few people write better at nights and the others love writing at morning. Some might prefer evenings or even afternoons. Knowing your own time when you are most creative is the real KEY to writing success.

Write first, edit later: Most bloggers have a bad habit of editing while writing. If you are one among them, stop that practice right now. It can only kill your precious time. Don’t think about editing anything while writing. Just focus on writing. Once it’s done, you can edit it a thousand times.

Step 4: Strategically name drop others

Make it a habit of linking out to other bloggers frequently. Not only external linking can improve your SEO (if done right), it also helps you quickly get noticed by other bloggers.

Name-dropping the influential bloggers in your field is an art.

We all know how crucial influential marketing is. Even one authority blogger is enough to help you boost your blog traffic, subscribers and overall sales.

But… building relationships with the influential bloggers is hard. Because everyone else in your field is trying to grab their attention.

More importantly, most top bloggers are really busy. They are busy in creating content, managing their products, reaching out to others and they have so little time to engage and connect with the new bloggers.

One of the best ways to gain their attention is to link out to the frequently.

If you have a new blog, you can surely link to their blog posts often. But it won’t grab their attention.

What happens when you link out to an influential blogger from a top blog (with your guest posts)? They will surely be glad to respond to your emails when you say about it or even promote your guest posts to their audience. That’s how you build connections with the authority bloggers with your guest posts.

It works like a charm and make sure to name-drop others from your guest posts not only to grab their attention but to build a connection with them.

Step 5: The secret sauce to make your content go viral is to promote!

Derek Halpern says about his secret formula for building his million dollar blog Social Triggers that he spends 80% of the time in promoting his content and the remaining 20% in creating it.

Most bloggers do this completely opposite. They spend 80% of their time in creating content and 20% in promoting it. So if you want to make your blog posts go viral, promote the hell out of them. Here are few effective ways to promote your blog’s content to reach wider audience.

Repurpose your content

Repurposing your blog’s content is the quickest, smartest and better way to make it go viral online. Repurposing your content can help you get more exposure to your blog without posting any new content. Here are few ways to repurpose your existing content.

Create slideshares: Slideshare is one of the biggest marketing platform and can send you thousands of unique visitors if you create compelling slides. You can turn your most popular blog posts into slides. You can simply use powerpoint presentations and upload them on to Slideshare. Here’s a great guide by Ana Hoffman from Traffic Generation Cafe on how to use Slideshare to drive massive traffic to your blog posts.

Turn them into PDF’s or Infographics: Whenever you publish a new post on your blog, spend a few minutes to turn it into a PDF file and upload it to the free hosting sites where people can download them for free. Just make sure to use internal links to your blog posts to drive traffic. This is a great strategy and won’t take much time.

Make videos of your most popular posts: Whenever you write an in-depth post for your audience, try making a video about it and upload it to YouTube. Not only you will get more exposure from YouTube but you can gain some good links from YouTube by placing your blog post links in the video description.

Write relevant guest posts and link to your own content

Guest posting is undoubtedly one of the most effective strategies to increase your blog’s exposure. Not only you get quality links but you can reach out to wider audience by landing on top blogs with your guest posts.

The key to making the most out of guest posting is to write relevant guest posts and link to your own articles. That way you can quickly build some relevant and quality links to increase your search results.

Reach out to other bloggers

Blogger outreach is probably the smartest way to get more attention and links from other sites. Whenever you write a new post, make sure to link out to other sites and follow them via email or social media to connect.

Use email: Write emails to other bloggers. Let them know you like their content and you frequently link out to their blog’s content. Sooner or later they will start linking or sharing your stuff if they find your content really interesting.

Use social media: Twitter and Facebook both are great to connecting with other bloggers. Whenever you see an influential blogger posting a great source on their social media accounts, make sure to leave thoughtful comments. Share their stuff and connect with them always!

Conclusion about creating blog posts that go viral online

Creating viral content is not a rocket science. You need to put efforts and spend quality time to do research about the topics you want to write about.

Influential name-dropping from your guest posts is one of the smartest ways to quickly build connections with the top bloggers in your field.

All the steps mentioned in this guide are insanely useful and practically possible to make your content go popular.

So what are you waiting for? Start creating epic content using the 5-step process mentioned above. Let me know if you have any more content writing tips.

Most website owners and bloggers make money from Advertising Networks. But often, the amount can be awfully miserable. Traffic is an important factor that determines how much one makes from Google Adsense, Chitika, Infolinks, Outbrain, etc but one should not neglect some very vital elements.

While I recommend you grow your targeted traffic so as to increase your chances of getting more clicks, here are some few tips to help get more exposure and increase CTR through performance upgrade.

4 powerful tips to increase your income from Advertising Networks

If you are monetizing using any ad network, it will be pretty awesome to try out some of these tested and result driven tips;

1 – Use a performance improvement apps

Performance improvement apps help you analyze, test and improve the performance of your website.

Recently, I have been working with Ezoic (Google Certified Publishing Partner) on my main blog with Google Adsense and a couple of other networks, and got really fueled. Though making money using this model has not really been my focus, I was excited to see I could add more to my earnings with a few tweaks.

For the most part, I  focus on Affiliate Marketing, sponsored content and creating of my own products.

There are a couple of things to note with performance apps;

• They help you test different elements; Colors, location and size of your ads.

• You can run ads from many different networks from one dashboard.

• Performance apps  help optimize your ads so you get the best results.

• They play well on mobile devices.

Performance improvement apps don’t have to be difficult to use. Generally, you have a few steps to follow once, and the intelligent tool does the rest of the testing and improvement jobs for you:

• Sign up for free.

• Add your site to the platform.

• Get a piece of code and paste on your site header section.

• The tool will then scan your website and locate ad code from supported network (Ezoic supports over 100 ad networks). For each ad code found, a custom piece of code is generated.

• All you need now is copy the newly generated piece of code and replace what was located on your blog.

Once you replace the old ad code with the new one, your site gets to show ads from different networks and through optimization, only the best in terms of content relevance and high paying ads are displayed.

This remarkably increases CTR and overall earnings.

2 – Make use of the most popular posts

This is a strategy most webmasters and bloggers neglect. It’s one of the things I do that has a huge positive impact on my online income.

Some blog posts on my blog really get some exciting amount of readers from search engines. Once I identify these top posts, I make sure I place ad codes within them. Now, given that this traffic drives targeted readers from search engines, the ads displayed gets really relevant and this sometimes generates unthinkable number of clicks.

Here are two things I propose you do:

a – Identify your most popular posts

This doesn’t have to be a difficult step. If you use Google Analytics, you can quickly access your most popular pages. Another quick method (which by the way is what I use) is Google Search Console (Google Webmaster Tools).

• Login to your account here and select the site from the list. (Note that if you haven’t created a GSC account, you will have to do it and add your site to your account).

• On the left menu, go to Search Traffic -> Search Analytics. This should give you a list of keywords and number of clicks they generate for the current month. With this, you can easily know your most performing blog posts.

b – Paste Ad Code on your popular posts

Now, you may have had ad codes on your sidebars or even above the fold. It’s important to actually ad some within the content area of your popular posts to improve relevance and CTR. (Make sure not to overcrowd your contents with ads)

Where you add the code too is important. In this post, Rok Sprogar discussed from his experience where to place the ad code and get the best performance.

3 – Use high-CPC keywords on your articles

Once you signup to an Advertising Network, you don’t pick which ad to display on your site. But you soon find out relevant creatives and links showing up.

That’s because ad networks use advanced technology to filter a huge database of entries in different categories and sort out relevant content for your site based on your content keywords and phrases.

Advertisers on these ad networks pay per keyword and some keywords get high bids than others. Naturally, if you get ads with low bids on your site, your get paid cents per click.

You must not only use keywords in your content for SERP ranking purposes. Also use tough keywords that can trigger high paying CPM ads and make more earnings with few clicks.

How do you get high-CPC keywords?

You may use the Google’s free Keyword planner or some paid software like SEMRUSH. Once you find those relevant high paying keywords, use them in your content

4 – Drive Traffic from  USA, Canada and some European countries

One of the things most of us don’t know is that clicks from some countries generate miserably low earnings. On the other hand, Clicks from USA, Canada and most European countries pay reasonably higher.

One of the reasons is that advertisers believe most readers from some countries with low purchasing power often end up not making a buying decision. So buying expensive clicks from such areas is a waste.

When it comes to making money with a website or blog, you always want to keep your audience value and user experience in mind at all times. The type of ads on your site should reflect the type of content found on there as well. For example, if you have a site on cooking recipes it would be much more relevant to try and promote cooking books and supplies versus the latest best selling movies and DVDs.

At the same time, you also want to make sure you are promoting websites and brands people trust. It’s much easier to promote a site like eBay, that nearly everyone already knows and uses, versus a new website that doesn’t have much trust and branding behind it.

There are many different ways to monetize a site, but being able to offer your audience value and something they are interested in is always going to perform better than just throwing random advertisements on your site. A perfect way to accomplish this, while also aligning your site with a trusted name brand, is to join the eBay Partner Network (EPN) and earning commissions by referring traffic to their site.

In this review, we are going to take a look at how the eBay Partner Network works, how they’ve grown and developed over the years and why they might also be the perfect form of monetization for your site.

eBay Partner Network Review

The concept of eBay is nothing new for the majority of people on the internet. It’s one of the largest online shopping and auction sites on the internet today and has millions of people on their site at any given time. All of this can be seen as a great advantage when partnering with EPN, as it’s a trusted name and site that your audience is probably already using on a daily basis.

Before implementing any type of advertising or monetization on your site, it’s always best to have a good understand of how the program works, when you earn a commission and how to best promote the offer to your audience. These are all topics and questions that we will be covering in the information below.

How much does EPN pay out to their partners?

The most common question with any form of monetization or advertising is how much will site owners and marketers be paid for their efforts. In the case of EPN, partners are paid out a commission based on the revenue that eBay earns from each transaction. This commission amount is in between 40-80% depending on the product category each lead/sale falls into (as seen below). It’s also important to note that EPN partners are paid out on the “eBay Revenue” portion of the transaction and not the final sale of products being sold on eBay.

Commissions are earned a visitor is sent to eBay from EPN partner site and a purchase takes place within 24-hours of the click. For a more detailed look at the current commission payout structures and categories refer to eBay’s rate card and the image below.

When and How are EPN Partners Paid?

eBay Partner Network sends out commissions to their partners on a monthly basis, and as long as the minimum payment threshold of $25 has been met. Payments are sent out via Direct Deposit.

All EPN partners will have access to campaign stats, earnings and payment history through their EPN Publisher Portal.

Benefits of Partnering with eBay Partner Network

With the core basics of the eBay Partner Network all being covered, we can now take a look at the many benefits site owners and marketers have when choosing EPN as their monetization method of choice.

One of the most obvious benefits is the association of the “eBay” name. With over 162 million active buyers on the site and more than 5 million sellers resulting in over $70 billion in annual sales, this is a win-win for both site owners and their audiences. eBay is also a worldwide brand, with complete global reach and over 291 million people actively using their mobile application.

In summary, site owners usually have a hard time finding reliable partners and trusted services to promote to their audiences. Not only is eBay one of the strongest names out there, they also accept traffic from nearly all audiences and locations around the world.

Lastly, eBay is such a well-known and trusted brand, that it’s actually quite easy to promote and earn commissions with as well. Since most audiences already know the name and actively buy from the site, it’s simply a matter of placing their banners or links on your site and sending your traffic over to eBay.

To get an idea of how much your site could be earning by sending traffic to eBay, take a look at the “Earnings Calculator” below (which is also found on the EPN site). Through this handy tool you can pick different items and change the number of how many items you might typically sell. The Earnings Calculator will then show your “Potential Earnings” in the section below.

A good example of this would be if you had a technology blog and wanted to provide a link to eBay for people to purchase computers, laptops or mobile devices. In the screenshot below you can see that a typical “iPad Mini 4” listing on eBay sells for $610.99. Should your site send enough traffic to result in 15 sales of these items, you could be looking at a commission of $453.60.

eBay Network Partner also offers the following features and benefits to their partners.

• Competitive payout ranging from 50%-70% of eBay’s revenue, with double commissions on purchases from new and reactivated eBay.com buyers that you drive from your site

• Over 1,000 new Buy It Now deals posted daily in top categories such as Fashion, Tech, Home, Kids, and more

• Some Daily Deals guaranteed to be best on the web pricing

• Free shipping on all Daily Deals

• Affiliate newsletters with advanced notice on upcoming deals

• RSS feeds available for Daily Deals

EPN Partners can also discover what’s new at eBay, best products to promote and other relevant news and information through their blog.

Earning Double Commissions with EPN

The only thing more exciting than earning commissions with EPN, is earning double commissions!

That’s exactly what EPN is offering to their site partners during the first two months of their account creation.

You can view the full details on how it works below.

1. EPN will double commissions during the accounts first three calendar months. The first calendar month, which begins the day when the EPN application is submitted, plus the following two calendar months comprise the three month period. Please note the first calendar month may be a partial month based on the application date.

2. Double commissions bonus will be applied to the account the same month the earnings were accrued and will be labeled “Double Commissions Bonus”.

3. Double commissions bonus capped monthly at 5,000 (based on account currency).

4. Only new EPN accounts that have been approved and are in good standing are eligible.

5. EPN account commissions will revert to standard EPN rate card at the conclusion of the third month.

6. This offer is not for resale and is not redeemable for cash.

7. This offer is void in the event of fraud, mistake, or any failure to satisfy any terms of the offer.

8. eBay reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to terminate or modify this offer at any time.

Make Money with the eBay Partner Network

eBay is one of the most well-known and trusted websites in the world today. To have the opportunity to partner up with their brand and EPN platform is an amazing opportunity no one should turn own.

To get started, all you need to do is visit https://partnernetwork.ebay.com/en/home and complete the signup details and then log in with your existing eBay account. After the approval process, you will then have access to the EPN Portal Area where you can access your partner links to start promoting eBay to your audiences.

As with all content and monetization, if you want to see the best results, make sure your links blend in well with your content. As mentioned earlier, if you are already talking about a specific topic, product or service, be sure to reference how you might be able to get these same items on eBay at a much better price.

Your audience is probably already using eBay, now it’s time to help them find the best stuff on it!

I’ve been blogging since 1999, seriously since 2005. I started out on blogspot, writing well over 500 posts in a five-year span. In 2010, I finally moved into the 21st century (as demanded by site readers) and had a site designed in WordPress.

Now, I’m having the site redesigned again. One of the main reasons is, it’s notmobile friendly. I tend to be slow about upgrading to new technology because it’s just not my thing. I’m a writer, and spend the bulk of my time churning out content. But I know I’m missing out on tons of traffic by not having a mobile-friendly site, so I’m finally getting with the program.

Also, I want to monetize it more. Other than having a few affiliate links throughout some content, some Google AdSense ads plopped in, and a “Shop” page which contains all of my ebooks and courses, it’s not really monetized effectively at all.

So, for more than one reason, it’s time for a site overhaul, which is already in the works and I’m looking forward to unveiling in the next couple of weeks.

6 Questions to Ask – And Answer -- When Monetizing Your Blog

As I was jotting down notes for my web designer, I had to put a lot of thought into what will go where, and why, on the site. It forced me to really think about how to go about monetizing the site. Following are the four guidelines I used to monetize my new site.

No matter what niche you blog in, it can help you if you’re relatively new to trying to monetize your website/blog.

1. Who Is My Target Audience?

You must know this beforehand – and you must know them intimately. Clearing defining who they are will help you determine what they want, need and will pay for.

2. How Much Do I Want/Need to Earn?

This will be largely determined by who your target market is. For example, my blog caters to freelance writers. It’s never going to earn as much as say, a tech blog because the products and services I monetize my blog with just aren’t wanted, needed or will be paid for by freelance writers.

One benefit of asking this question is that you may determine that you can’t meet your earnings goal with the target market you have in mind. At this point, you may want to target a different group, or adjust your earnings goal.

3. What Products/Services are Successful Blogs in My Niche Promoting?

The “competition” can be extremely insightful in trying to figure out which products and services to monetize your blog with. So look at 5 to 10 of the top blogs in your niche? How are they monetizing their sites?

If they’re having success with a particular product or service, there’s no reason you can’t either (assuming your marketing skills are reasonably good).

What Products/Services Does My Target Audience Already Use?

This is a no-brainer, and it’s the reason why you see so many affiliates for evergreen products and services like webhosting, domain name registration and WordPress themes.

If you have a website or blog, you need these things. This is low-hanging affiliate marketing fruit. Pick it ..and rake in those easy-to-come-by dollars.

4. What Products/Services Will My Target Audience Pay For?

This can be wildly different from those in #3. How do you find this out? A good way is to ask your readers directly. For example, when you send out your next newsletter, stick in a question asking them what they’re having problems with.

Then, find products and services that solve those problems.

For example, one of the problems that many freelance writers have told me over the years that they have a problem with is writing good content faster, without sacrificing quality. So a good affiliate product would be something that helps them to accomplish this goal – perhaps some type of affordable transcription or speech recognition software.

5. What Products/Services Can I Produce for My Target Audience?

As I wrote in last week’s post here on digital sharecropping:

 “As an affiliate marketer, it’s nice to promote the products and services of other, but to diversify, create some of your own. This way, you have complete and total control.”

I have written and self-published over 50 ebooks, and developed a couple of online e-courses, so thankfully, I already have a head start in this area.

6. Who Are the Reputable Providers of the Affiliate Products & Services I Want to Promote?

Be sure to only deal with reputable providers for any affiliate program you sign on with. Following are a few things to check out before signing on.

What to Look for In Affiliate Programs

a) Make sure their products are kept up to date;

b) That they have clearly stated customer service and return policies;

c) That they indeed pay out: I’ve belong to a couple of affiliate programs where I had problems in this area); and

d) That they’ve been in business for a while: It’s hella easy to get into the affiliate marketing game. I like to see some kind of track record before I sign up.

Conclusion

Deciding to monetize your blog is a big decision. It shouldn’t be taken lightly; realize you will most likely have some bumps along the road. That’s fine. Learn from it and move on. Don’t be afraid to test new products – getting rid of what’s not earning, and holding onto those that do.

It make take a few months, or even a few years, but if you follow the steps here – and keep educating yourself about what it takes to effectively monetize a site – you can earn a very handsome living practically on auto-pilot once it all starts to gel. Now wouldn't that be nice?

You’d be hard up to find many websites today that don’t have a blog. And why shouldn’t every company include a blog on its site? Blogs have a number of marketing benefits for companies: driving website traffic, creating customer leads, and solidifying client engagement, among other valuable qualities.

However, sometimes a site needs more than a strong blog to keep its readers or customers coming back for more. Websites must continually strategize new and more innovative ways to present content to visitors. Read the following ideas to discover new ways to attract visitors to your site that bring more value than just another blog post.

1. Create Educational Infographics

Infographics are a great way to present valuable information to readers while building up your company’s branding. With an eye-catching design and interesting data or tips, infographics attract visitors to your site and make your brand memorable. Not to mention, they make great shareable content for social media, bringing traffic to your site for many months (or years) ahead. To find some of the most popular infographics in the industry, be sure to take a look at the selection at marketinginfographics.org.

2. Interview Experts in Your Industry

Conduct an interview with someone who is an expert in your site’s industry, and publish the interview in the form of an article or video, like this one of Seth Godin. It isn’t uncommon for someone to purchase a magazine because they wanted to read the interview with the famous actor or politician advertised on the cover. Similarly, website visitors may be equally excited to read about an online interview you conducted with a known expert in the field relevant to your site. Develop this into a monthly or bimonthly event to keep readers coming back with each published interview.

3. Host a Webinar

Give readers the opportunity to tune in to your website for an educational webinar on a topic that has high search potential. Select focused topics for your webinars that relate to your site’s product or subject and provide educational benefit to visitors. Even though you might be able to present the topic of your webinar in the form of a blog post, unlike a text form article, webinars can be a better and more engaging way to communicate with users.

4. Conduct and Publish an Industry Study

Provide insight into your industry by conducting and publishing industry research and analysis, like this one from a Medicare blogger. Visitors to your site will be interested to learn in what ways your industry or field is changing and growing and what trends are causing those changes. Especially if your industry has shown a lot of profitable growth in recent months, readers will be more likely to follow your company and remember your brand as a leader in the industry.

5. Leverage User Generated Content

A great way to attract more visitors to your site is to put the spotlight on the visitors themselves. Highlight user generated content like user photos and videos, customer reviews, testimonials, and social media tags. Not only does this give your site an element of personalization, but it also establishes a sense of trust between your customers and your brand.

6. Give Visitors Something for Free

Who doesn’t love getting free things? Give visitors to your site insider access to things relevant to your site or product. Free product trials, music downloads, ebooks, high resolution photos, tutorials, or design templates are just a few things you can offer visitors that are little cost to you but provide huge value for your website.

7. Create a Quiz

Quizzes are a great way to attract attention and retain engagement from visitors to your site. Nicole Kleist did a fun quiz entitled “Which Top Blogger Are You?” in the fashion blogging space.

Unlike blog posts, which can steer readers away with lengthy blocks of text, quizzes that evoke curiosity are more likely to keep visitors on your site. Let site users share their answers on social media and encourage their friends to take the quiz too, and you benefit from a growth in site traffic and new customer leads.

There are few websites that can rely on their blogs alone to attract and retain site visitors. Even if you have great content on your website, a blog article may not be the best form to present that content. Experimenting with different ways to present information to your readers or customers is key to keeping visitors to your site engaged and attracting new visitors.

Try out some of the ideas mentioned above on your site to attract visitors, or try coming up with even more innovative (or crazier) ways to communicate to users. You might be surprised at how much site traffic growth you can achieve and how much value you can add to your site by straying away from the usual blog post.

One of the things every one of us online strives for is targeted exposure. In today’s Internet world, there are many ways to get noticed but getting that targeted traffic still remains a difficult task.

People like free stuffs so we want to be able to use giveaways to draw their attention. What you want to do is allow them do one or two tasks and stand a chance to get something valuable for free. That’s just the general idea behind Giveaways.

If you correctly adopt this strategy in your campaigns, chances are that you will see exciting results. I want to discuss a few giveaway strategies that will help you make the best use of the activity.

If you’ve never done giveaways before, I recommend doing something based on these simple tips. Once you see results, you can then scale it.

1 – Give something of high value

The truth is that people like free stuffs but they still want value in whatever they get for free. You may think that by giving away a product for free, your audience is simply going to jump on it without having to spend some money or care about what they get from the free stuff.

That may be correct but the truth is, anyone that enters your giveaway still has to face a cost. The time they put in to get enrolled is a cost factor that should not be neglected.

What this means is if you have to get their attention, you must offer something with an important value to absorb the number of minutes needed to enter the giveaway.

There are many ways to get relevant products to giveaway I don’t need to mention here. However, you may want to start by offering your own products.

FlipHTML5 for instance is giving away copies of their product worth $500 in this giveaway. The value is attractive enough to get everyone’s attention.

If you don’t have a product, you may want to partner with someone or simply buy a product and giveaway the license.

2 – Offer Finance

Whether you know it or not, people are very excited about being given money. That makes any giveaway that offers cash prizes very irresistible.

I have run many giveaways in the past but the most active ones were those with cash prizes. The bigger the amount, the more attention and participation you are going to get.

This is the easiest way to start a successful giveaway. To make it even bigger, you don’t do it alone. You may want to get 4 friends and put together $100 each. That will already make a giveaway of $400 cash prize.

3 – Make it simple to enter

People are often in a hurry to do almost everything in life. That includes entering giveaways. If you make things complicated, you send a huge portion of participants away.

I have used different apps including raffleCopter, kingsumo’s giveaways app, PunchTab, etc. Most of these apps make it a snap for everyone to enter, just with a few clicks and no complex forms to fill.

The viral capacity of these apps comes in to inject a viral strength that makes your giveaway go wild. These apps will generate unique url for each participant, allowing them to share on social media, bringing in more exposure and traffic.

4 – Promote your giveaway

We all know promotion online is the main key to success. There are hundreds of giveaway directories and platforms online to post and promote your giveaway. There are even Facebook groups dedicated to giveaways. I have also had some success using emperola.com and contestchest.com.

Like the idea I brought above, if you partner with other bloggers, that will make promotion more fascinating.  If 4 of you each write a blog post about the event and promote to your communities, you can imagine the exposure of your giveaway.

If you use any of the tools I mentioned above, participants will assist in the promotion as they want to earn more points through referring others, and stand a better chance to be selected.

5 – Do it regularly or during events

The more regular you run giveaways on your blog, the more you are known for it. This builds in you more experience and helps your perfection in the event – practice makes perfect right?

Do it monthly or quarterly. Get your community used to it and they will help you spread the word. That will lead to more exposure and traffic.

Make use of special annual events. Your customers expect some special considerations from you during National and International Events.

Whether it’s an Anniversary, Christmas Holidays, Easter, Black Friday or any other period of the year that makes businesses cut down prices, you will do well adding giveaways to any special offers you may want to give out.

I hope you enjoyed this post.

Kindly share it on social media and drop a comment below and let’s talk about it.