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Should You Use Adwords To Promote Your Blog?

I have not been blogging so much here because I have been learning about Adwords and creating a new site called Adwords Marketing . This is a subdomain of one of my first sites where I used a character called Genie rather than my own name because I was still shy and unsure of myself and I thought it was cool. I understand now, thanks to the advice of Andy Baird - who took time from his busy schedule to answer several emails I sent him, that branding of your own personal name is an essential part of the overall success formula.

Genie is still fun though, I enjoy having these two lovely Jinn at my beck and call! The idea that Google Adwords is a powerful Jinni who can conjure your hearts desire out of thin air if you are just clever enough to word your wishes correctly, also appeals to me as a relevant Adwords analogy.

So is it worth spending money on Adwords to promote your blog?

This is the question I asked. So lets go through a few scenarios.

If you have a personal blog that you share with friends with no monetization then probably not. You have to learn a great deal about Adwords to be able to use it effectively.

If you do have some form of opt in and monetization on your site, then you need to consider whether  getting fast traffic to your site is worth the time and effort you will spend on learning how to make Adwords work for you to get more traffic to yourblog.

Adwords is not free and simply setting up an account and creating an ad - when you don’t know what you are doing - will cost you more than it may be worth.

If you are prepared to leap in and try your luck with Adwords then you need to start learning about what they call their quality score. This is basically to ensure that even their advertisers provide Google searchers with quality content. You may already have an Adwords account. If so you will have seen the phrase “keywords inactive for search”

A new tool that has recently been released (last Friday) is going to help you immensely with this, especially if you have sites as well as blogs. It’s called

Put On Your Google Goggles,

and its a desktop appiclation that you can use by entering in an ad and an url to see the likely quality score of your landing page. A short PDF report is generated to explain what factors need improving to get your keywords showing great scores. Couldn’t be easier!

For a short time, during the launch of this new nifty gadget, the creators of it, Larry and Amish, are offering a special deal on their main product, an ad spying and ad tracking tool. This deal is so special its almost worth getting it even if you are not sure Adwords is right for you but you are doing affiliate marketing! You can easily find new niches with it, you can check affiliate conversion rates and so much more. So if you have ever been tempted to try this kind of thing, get over and check out the deal, it’s awesome.

Even if you are not yet ready to use Adwords, a peek at the videos on the sales page will explain a lot of info about Adwords quality score and what the Google slap was and why people are still talking about it. It’s a worth a look just for that! You can also use such information to improve your knowledge about SEO.

Here’s a report you can download (no email or money required)
Google Goggles Report .

Or if you opt in at the following page you can also get a resale audio/pdf interview with Google expert Simon Leung about the quality score and how to overcome it. Click here to get that bonus with your report. Also no cost, just the email so I can send you the link.
Nice Guys Don’t Get Slapped

OK. So that’s when not to use Adwords and something new about how to use Adwords -

What about when to use Adwords to advertise your blog.

I guess the time is when you have a professional site that is fully monetized and, especially so, when you are perhaps selling advertising on it, whether that is banner advertising, text links or Adsense. You may need to use different urls rather than just a home page, so using pages for these landing urls may be better. Treat these pages as landing pages and optimize each one for your ad text and specific keyword combinations.

If your blog is appearing for seo terms then you may not need to advertise with those keywords just to get traffic, but aim for a wider variety of keyword search terms than you can seo for. The content network can be good for this as using a lot of keywords for one ad is less of a problem with the content network.

Part of Adwords marketing is working out your visitor value. This basically means that the profit you make from your site is divided by the number of visitors to your site. Those visitors who sign up for your list or perhaps buy from you immediately.

If you make a profit each month of $1,000 from 1,000 visitors a month - your visitor value is $1. This is how you can start to judge whether you can afford to send more visitors using Adwords and how much you can afford to spend to use it. There’s not much point in spending $2 to earn $1. But if you can spend $2 to earn $4 then it’s probably worth it.

So think and plan before you spend and don’t forget to check those Google Goggles out!

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 Best Blogs: Friday Traffic Report - Jack Humphrey

Do you have to choose? Between being an expert and being unique?
Blogging is a performance art, and as all art forms it asks you to stretch yourself to be as real as you can. If you were a singer and you got up on stage and sang in a mousy voice or a breathless whisper, stumbling over the words, umming when you forget some and ahhing through the chorus - as you might, some days at home, when no one is listening - what will your audience think?

That you don’t care, that you can’t sing, that you have no discipline.

This post came to me when I was reading Jack Humphreys blog. I was twittering last night, at least I was reading and following on twitter, I didn’t write much! As I followed the breadcrumb trails of name links and faces onto other profiles, I came across Jack’s profile and followed a link from there to his blog. I have been a fan of Jacks for some time now, I originally discovered him on You Tube when looking for useful videos for the library, and got three solid video tutorials on aspects of blogging. This trail is a very good traffic strategy as no doubt he knows. I was also impressed by his black book and I enjoy being on his list.

He is a generous marketer who offers a lot of free information. 

His blog post Success comes from striving to be the best  struck a new harmony when I read it.  Striving to be best is all that can be asked of us.  Achieving uniqueness in the process is sometimes our reward. Being an expert is achievable for some of us, being great at something is more common and may well be enough, as he says. Being better than some may be all we manage. But being unique - we can all achieve that, all we have to do is be ourselves.

That said, I’ll just go back to that performance art topic. Would you say Dylan was a great singer? (Don’t ask me who Dylan is, Bob Dylan, Google him!) How about Kate Bush? (Yes I know I’m showing my age but it’s hard for me to find such unique examples in more current music, the perfect body and pitch perfect voice are more common in this century’s music industry)… Let’s try Pink then…

They are hardly Pavarotti, Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald or whoever else you might choose as the epitome of a great singer. Yet each brought a unique voice to the art form. Whether through their words, their body image, their lifestyle or their unmistakeable voices, each one had their own pocketfull of fame because they were so unique.

I bet they started out with people telling them they’d never make it. 

I think all people when first blogging suffer a little from stage fright. When there is little traffic at first, blogging can also feel like a soliloquy to an empty theatre. Whether the audience makes you shy, or the lack of it brings you down, remember that poem about enjoying what you do. I don’t remember it exactly, but it went something like…

Dance as if no one is watching
Sing as if no one were listening
and live every day as if it were your last…

Like the snowflake -  you are unique, embrace it.

I have always enjoy Seth Godin’s writing. He manages to make reading about marketing almost as much fun as fiction, and I have taken to heart the allegory of the Purple Cow.

I come from a country which loves to have BIG statues of country themes erected. In Queensland there is a huge Pineapple and at Coff’s Harbour in NSW an enormous banana. There’s a statue of a drovers dog on a tucker box, there’s a huge cow (somewhere), all these things are there to focus a tourists attention on the produce or an event that the area is renowned for. None of them were purple - but they were all certainly big enough to never be ignored.

Advertising is renowned for it’s Big Promise, but the Guinness Book of Records is full of examples where small is used for uniqueness instead - or tallest, shortest, longest, deepest, widest, highest, lowest or neatest. Branding and all the techniques we use to remain memorable to potential customers, is built on something unique. In copy writing a similar principle is called the USP or unique selling point or proposition. That is one thing that this product has that is outstanding. Even if it means making a positive of something someone else may feel is a negative.

Mom bloggers have built names for themselves by joining the unique niche of being moms who are blogging about being moms. Although kids are talked of, a variety of subniches are tucked under this title. There are mom bloggers who are marketers, mom bloggers who do craft, moms into fashion, single moms. Each mom blogger has found a way to be a tall poppy or an expert for something, while enjoying the security and networking of a similar niche, that is, being a mom and blogging.

If you do have expertise in something then sing it out loud. Show the world that you are an expert blogger about that topic. Don’t worry that your blog may get little to no traffic at first. You don’t stress out if no one’s listening when you sing in the shower, however fine it may sound (and it does sound fantastic, singing in the bathroom with a fine reverberation). It’s never a waste of time, although being proactive about some traffic strategies will help you to find your audience.

Call it practice, scales, rehearsals. Use your full voice and don’t hold back. Make sure that it is worth listening to - ie. spell check it, check your information, be creative and try new things, toss in a quote, add a personal story. Read Jack’s post for more specific ideas. Then read it back and ask yourself how you can emphasize something memorable in it or about the theme of your blog.

Each time, look for that one thing where you can say “that is my voice”.

If you can put it in visual terms in your blog theme then you have found your purple cow. We have a fisherman here, who would probably not have made a name for himself in a big way except for one thing. After all there are many fine fishermen here. Rex Hunt however throws his catch back in the ocean quite often, again nothing too unusual about that, but before he does it - he kisses the fish.

Now that’s something you remember when you see it. And when you remember, you remember his name as well. That’s branding. That’s unique. Strive to be an expert, strive to be great but find a way to emphasize something unique about yourself and it may well be a turning point in your blog writing career.

Jack Humphrey has concentrated on Traffic, he’s an expert at it.

But I don’t remember Jack because he’s an expert, there’s a lot of those online. I remember him because he is generous. Because he did not make a video saying how much money he made launching a product. He made a video about a plugin that made it so much easier to embed a video in my wordpress blog. He saved me time, he solved a problem, he asked for nothing more.

So when in my travels, I hit a link to something Jack has created, it’s like meeting an old friend in the street. Sure, I say, I’ll follow along wherever you lead, because I know there’ll be something good there for me to find and the company is fun.

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If you don’t know what a niche is or why you should pick a niche, please refer to the niche marketing articles on the main site for more information. When you understand the principle, you’ll often find that either you know exactly what topic you want to start a blogging business in or you face the difficult decision of picking a niche that you can be successful in.

Some people feel picking a niche market is the hardest decision to make when starting a blogging business . It can certainly be a frustrating process of trial and error before you get the right mix in the complex recipe that needs to incorporate demand, products and a playing field at a level you can compete on. If you pick a highly competitive field with experienced players while you yourself are a mere beginner you are unlikely to succeed. If you pick a low demand niche with only a few products to promote then your results may be insufficient to warrant the time spent on developing a blogging business around it.

Don’t pick too competitive niches to start with

Although high demand niches in topics such as golf, dog training, pharmacy, forex, insurance, gambling, dating, real estate and marketing products have a lot of promotable products and PLR and MRR material to use, unless you have insider knowledge (ie you play golf, you have worked in real estate) then these topics may be just too competitive for a beginner.

Having an inside knowledge of a topic is the best place to start when picking a niche market and you may be surprised to know just how much inside knowledge you already have about a niche that can turn out to be very profitable.

As an example, many people, especially since the release of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” film and book have an avid interest in being more proactive about reducing their carbon footprint and making “green” decisions regarding their waste, their appliances, their heating and water usage and cleaning products - to mention just a few issues. So within the wide topic of environmental conservation there are many small green pastures where someone new can place a toe in the water and get a feel for the potential in a specific niche.

Do pick a niche that you may have some insider knowledge of

Let’s imagine that solar panels are something that this new marketer has either installed (to heat their swimming pool) or is considering using to do so. They make a note of sites they visit and get product brochures as they research for themselves what brand to get and how it can be used. In the process they learn a great deal about the topic so that they can make an informed and economical decision. If that research is expanded somewhat, then the information that has been collected can help someone else reach a faster decision, especially if you draw up a few charts with comparisons. (example: for energy saved, capacity, price, location, installation, weight, modifications to existing structures, solutions for problems that may occur etc.)

So the first place to go looking for a niche to pick is in the topics you may already have done some research or had some education in already. Being an “expert” on a topic is so much easier when you really do know what you are talking about! Making a list of your job descriptions and home improvement skills is a start. It is highly likely that if you have spent time researching a topic, that other people will also have done so, and therefore new people will be starting to. This may be a good niche for a blogging business.

Get new ideas for niches by visiting bookstores

The next step, if this avenue doesn’t throw up something you want to use, is to visit a library, a bookshop or a magazine area in a large newsagency. Wherever there is a large range of books or magazines on a topic, there is likely to be a high demand for niche information within the topic. Make notes about large topics that you might be interested in but don’t leave the store without narrowing down five possible niche sub topics to do some further research on.

Unfortunately, research is somewhat addictive and you will need to be extremely firm with yourself to overcome the mind numbing procrastination that can occur when there is too much to choose from. Imagine Mary Poppins ( or even better the teacher at school that didn’t take sh** from you or the boss who is always looking at his watch) standing over you and commit to decide on five possible niches before you leave the store.

It is preferable to pick one topic with five niches - (example: “native [to specific area] flowers for rock gardens” - succulents, perennials, bushes, rockery landscaping and water features) than to pick five topics with one niche each (example:  “collecting” - [your country’s] stamps, “cooking” - bread recipes, “work at home ” - selling brick a brack on ebay, “cars” - how to avoid buying a lemon, “finance”- setting up a trust fund for your granchildren.)

You can also niche market research to pick a niche using various “analysis” or authority internet sites for inspiration. The page link above has several links to sites that will help you with more advanced niche choices by displaying trends and high search topics.

Keep a niche ideas notepad for future blogging business projects

By all means keep a “niche ideas notepad” with these new great ideas in them but when you are just beginning, diversifying too soon will give you insufficient time on each project to develop it into a business that will make an income for you. Try to pick 5 niches within one related topic at first, so that your site can really offer benefit and diversity to a reader. You will gain by being able to cross promote related niches and also have more approval from search engines for your main topic when you can add internal linking to your promotional efforts.

When you have built your mini “book” made up of niche chapters around a sub topic and monetized it with products or advertising and have spent some time promoting it and building rank and links, only then move on to the next topic to start the process again. You will still continue to promote and maintain your first sites but at a lower level of activity so you will then have time to start and develop the new project. Doing several projects at one time can work for some people, but in general, most people will merely end up with several never finished projects.

The last piece of advice I have is to start as soon as possible to treat your hobby as a business. It is normal to try this and that, and dilly daddle about experimenting while you are learning and it’s a good thing to do, but each new thing you try eats into your time. Incorporating adsense, affiliate products, your own product, a membership site, a forum …. all these things take time. You cannot know if this is how you want to make money until you try it .

It is part of the learning process we all go through, generally on our own without anyone to guide us. Only the written words of prior travellors - most of whom are hoping to be sent a cut of the cost of your education.

Take nothing as given until it has proven itself to you by you doing it.

When it has been proven a good strategy continue your education by investing in better tools and organizing a schedule of work that moves your business forward in the proven direction. When you know something already, stop researching for more information and use your knowledge to improve your business. Further free products are a distraction from your goal and a waste of time that could be spent doing a task that will improve your business. Never forget your goal, whatever it is. Playing the field won’t win the game.

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