WebSite Marketing Strategy

Most blogs include an RSS feed for their readers, however there is more to your RSS than relaying your latest post. Your RSS feed or email has some valuable blank real estate around your posts that could be put to work to enhance your blog.

Blogging Income:  With prime real estate going to waste it makes sense to increase your blogging income where ever possible. You can either sell advertising space or sign up for Feedburner’s Adsense ads. The good thing about Adsense is the targeting of ads to your content.

Link Building: You can incorporate links to related content on your site. For WordPress users there are several plugins that can help with this process. Placing internal links also adds a little value if your posts are scrapped onto a spam site.

Promotion: You can use the space to promote yourself, your blog or another blog or web site that you control. You can also use the space to promote and funnel readers to dedicated landing pages.

Copyright: The footer of your RSS feed is the perfect place to include copyright information. You can include other statements such as disclaimers in this areas as well.

Special Offers: You can reward your readers by placing special offers into your feeds footer. Everyone appreciates special offers, particularly if they are free.

With these suggestions there is no reason your RSS feeds should be limited to just a relay of your latests posts. Use the space wisely and your readers will appreciate it and you will benefit from it.

One of the problems that some blogs face, particularly if they are popular or in a very competitive niche, is that of security. This blogging tip looks at what you can do to tighten up your security.

Most security issues revolve around two areas. The first is the software itself, for most bloggers that is WordPress. Over the years WordPress has had numerous security issues which have resulted in regular updates to the software.

The second area of concern is at the server level and these blogging tips will address several of those. I know from experience that one of the regular areas to be attacked is are your data files.

Hacker’s exploit your database as the WordPress default table prefix is wp_ .You can change this to a more secure prefix in a number of ways. The most secure is probably by doing it manually. This is time consuming, but then losing your database is probaby more time consuming.

There is very good six step guide to changing your table prefix at t-dot blog - simply follow the instructions carefully and you will safeguard your database tables. There is also a plugin available, however from what I can tell, it seems to have issues for some users.

The WordPress plugin site has a plugin that may be worth looking at. It provides a broader range of security issues including removal of version numbers and file permissions. WP Security Scan  does a good job of securing your blog, however, I cannot stress enough the need to read the instructions carefully before installing and using.

Blog security is a big issue and needs careful actions. The last thing you need is to compromise your blog while trying to protect it. However, if you don’t put in place some security issues, the loss of your blog’s data can cause even bigger headaches. My biggest tip: backup regularly - daily if possible. If your security is compromised, you can at least restore from your back up.

How many categories do you have in your blog design? Too many I bet! Sometime we give our readers too many choices and our selves to much in the way of hard work - at the same time we could be damaging our blogs SEO.

Categories can be a great way to file information. However there are times when people simply overdo it. I have come across sites that 30 plus categories with every post being tagged into three, four or more of those categories. It is not a sensible blog design strategy.

Take blog SEO for an example. For every category you tag a post into, it is potentially another copy of the post - duplicate content. Although duplicate content is not as harshly dealt with as once thought of, you want your link juice going to the post’s page, not spread throughout the categories. You can use a plugin which can help noindex the categories, but you still have the ‘follow’ issue for links.

By having such a wide variety of categories, you can often be left wondering which category to place your post in. The trap in the finish is to tick as many relevant and near relevant as possible. This can frustrate your readers when trying to find specific information. Your blog design should be there to help your readers, not frustrate them.

I recently came across an oldish (Feb 08) post on Pearsonified titled What Every Blogger Needs to Know About Categories which had a novel but sensible twist on categories. Rather than divide categories into the normal type, he has divided them into ‘Must Read’, ‘Worth A Look’ type categories.

It is an interesting concept although as a reader, if I am looking for specific information, that type of filing system would frustrate me even more. Without being too critical, his blog didn’t have a search option either.

The concept itself is interesting and I am sure it could be modified to cover both in contextual categories and the more inviting ‘Must Read’ style of category. Blog design needs to concentrate on the user as well as the search engines. Make the experience easier on your readers and they will happily return. Categories are one area that can be tightened up to improve both the search engine needs and your readers ability to find what they want.

Affiliate promotion has been a popular form of blogging income for many years. For some the income from affiliates seem to run into thousands each month, for others, they are lucky to make cents. What then is the key to making a blogging income through affiliates?

Affiliate income can come in two different streams. The first and most common is through the promotion of products on behalf of another organization. A visitor sees your promotion and clicks through and makes purchase. You get a set commission - end of transaction.

Some sites will pay on further transaction either for life or for a set period ranging from seven day to 12 months. This means that once that customer has made a purchase, they are ‘your’ customer and you will continue to earn commission from any sales to them.

The second form of affiliate marketing is similar to the above with a slight modification - multi level or tiered commission. For these programs, you are not only trying to make sales, you are also trying to get individuals to sign up as affiliate marketers themselves. Commissions differ with a tiered structure. You may earn 5% on your sales plus 5% on the sales that any of your  ‘affiliates’ make - sometimes as deep as three, four or five. The percentage of commission may drop after the level.

Benefits of multi level affiliates is that once you have established an affiliate structure, you can sit back and concentrate on building an affiliate network on another product. The blogging income from the first network, called passive income, will continue for as long as your affiliates keep working for you.

The best products to promote are those closely related to your niche. Visitors are coming to your site already to read your content. They obviously have an interest in your subject matter so it makes sense to sell products in that area.

The second key to succeeding with affiliate marketing is to do some promotion, writing about the products through your blogs and perhaps by undertaking PPC campaigns with the product as your choice of keywords.

Affiliate marketing is not for everyone. It can cost you more than you make initially, however once you build up an affiliate base, your income can grow quite well with little follow work required. These days it is difficult to make tens of thousands through affiliate programs, you can however gain reasonable returns.

Think of your hosting company as your circulatory system to power your blog. If it fails your blog will be in trouble. Same rule applies to hosting providers. If your blog goes down than it really doesn’t matter if you saved money at that point by going with a cheaper less efficient hosting provider. Website visitors do not like to come to a site and see it down. This tends to scare customers and make them run for the hills. In today’s day in age red flags are everywhere and web traffic will weave in out of those red flags. ImHosted is a hosting company that can give you the peace of mind that your website will be up and running at all times. Their team will monitor your site 24/7 to ensure its up time is nothing less than their guaranteed 99.998%.

ImHosted is a one stop shop for all blog hosting needs. Everything from ecommerce website hosting to spam protection features. Their dedicated team of customer service representatives will help you with any of your hosting questions and concerns. Currently ImHosted holds clients in 78 countries and a crew of happy customers. Come over to the site and take a look at the testimonials page and you will see that many others have tried and have been extremely satisfied.

For more information please visit ImHosted and see how this staple in the hosting industry can help you.

When launching a blog it is just as important to know that your blog sits on a solid foundation than the content of the blog itself. Improper hosting could be the make or break factor for the survival of your blog. Jump Launch is a hosting company dedicated towards the survival and up time of your blog. All it takes is for your site to go offline for a few days and you could quickly loose visitor confidence which could quickly result in a downward spiral for your blog.

Jump Launch is so confident in their product and service that they guarantee their product 100%. With the popularity of blogs these days and hundreds springing up every day it is important to stay visible and not have any possibility of downtime for your blog. As aggressive as online marketing is your blog cannot show any signs of weakness because in a visitors eyes that tends to raise red flags. Hosting is a vital component of your overall marketing strategy. Hosting is the circulatory system of your blog or website so make it 100% visible to your audience or they might just end up on one of your competitors.

For more information please visit Jump Launch and take a look at how their products and services can and will help the longevity of your blog.