Blog Commenting

If you are familiar with the general layout of a blog, chances are pretty good you’ve seen a place where you can actively participate and share your comments on the topic being discussed.  Each individual blog has it’s own style of displaying comments, but the whole idea is pretty much the same.  It is most common to see a link at the end of each blog post, giving you the opportunity to leave your opinion.  There are some who just enjoy participating in the discussion, but the main reason people participate is to leave a link to their own website with hopes of getting some traffic.

Now before going you go wild and start leaving comments on a bunch of blogs, you should learn the right way to do it.  I can’t tell you how many times I see people go about this all wrong.  Commenting the wrong way will just be a waste of your time and energy.  Remember, you are trying to build traffic and make some money during the whole process.

Begin the process by doing a little research.  Search for active, current, and popular blog posts that are related to your own niche.  You want to find posts where you can provide at least some intelligent feedback.  One line comments that aren’t very informative will simply be overlooked.  Comments such as “nice post” or “thanks for sharing” really don’t add much to your credibility.  You don’t have to write an essay either.  A brief informative comment on a relevant topic can drive significant traffic to your website.  The blog post you are commenting on should be on a high traffic website.  Leaving a comment on a website with little to no traffic won’t produce results.

Engaging in the conversation with a helpful comment will spark interest in who you are and what you have to say.  It even works great if you sometimes question the original authors perspective on the topic.  Adding a little fuel to the fire and starting a little debate can also put you in the spotlight.  Just always remember to be professional, polite, and informative.  This will help you come across as someone who has a good degree of knowledge on the topic being discussed.

It is important to stay on topic and follow through with this process.  This method of driving traffic has proven to be highly effective, over and over again.  It is very simple to do, takes very little time, and once again…it’s free!

I have had much success using Google AdSense, but I am very careful when choosing which sites I want to display ads on. Below you will find 5 reasons why you should not use AdSense on certain websites.

1. Google AdSense Can Be Bad For Business

Did you know that you could be severely harming your business by choosing to display Google AdSense on your website? I know, you’ve probably read countless articles and e-books claiming you can become a millionaire through AdSense. I am not here to say this can’t be done, but at what cost to your business?

I’m quite confident in saying that Google AdSense can be bad for your business.

I’ll set up a little scenario to help you understand how Google Ads can be bad. Let’s say you own John’s Used Cars, a used car business. And let’s say that you have one of the nicest looking used car lots in town. Your car lot is set up better than the rest of the ones in town.

Now picture all your cars lined up nicely on the lot, all waiting to be sold. Except there is one thing different about your car lot. Next to each car you are selling is a billboard, or a sign with an advertisement on it if you will. Each advertising sign that is next to the cars you are selling is telling your potential customer to check out another used car lot down the street. Sounds a bit silly doesn’t it? Here you are displaying your cars for sale, surrounded by signs advertising sales at other used car lots down the block.

Now apply this scenario to your online business. If you have a nice looking website created for your business, full of high quality content, why do you want your content surrounded by advertising links to other relevant websites? You are literally telling your customers to go somewhere else and shop. And what’s in it for you? A few pennies here and there when the visitor to your website clicks a Google AdSense ad.

What you just did is sent your customer away from your site, a really big mistake. This is bad for your business, because you set yourself up to lose potentials customers, sales, and leads. All the time you have spent trying to drive traffic to your site goes down the drain.

2. Google AdSense Unprofessional?

I’m willing to say that if you have Google AdSense ads plastered across your site, your site falls into the unprofessional category. I know many will argue about this, but in my view it’s true. People who use AdSense will go hog wild and begin placing ads carelessly throughout their website. This is usually done because others say earning money through your ads is all about placement. This is true, however your nice looking website has now become a huge bulletin board of advertisements.

Google AdSense does allow you to customize the look of the ads you place on your website, but only to a certain extent. Let’s go back to the used car lot business that I mentioned a few moments ago. Let’s say there are two sales people working at this used car lot business. Both sales people are dressed very professional, however one is wearing 25 buttons advertising other businesses. Which sales person would you be more comfortable with? Without being too judgmental or bias, it’s pretty safe to say that you’d rather be approached by the sales person who is dressed professionally, without all the buttons.

3. Google AdSense Creates a Distraction to Your Visitors

How many times have you visited a site about a certain topic, only to be bombarded by ads for another topic? It happens all the time. If you have a website about video games, why have a bunch of advertisements for wedding dresses? There is usually some sense of control, but there are times when the ads just don’t match up to the content. I think this is a HUGE problem, and creates an unnecessary distraction to your site’s visitors.

It’s crucial that you grab the attention of your visitors within the first few seconds, otherwise you just may lose a customer. If you focus on creating a web site with less distractions, you will more than likely have better results in the long run.

4. Google AdSense Can Cost You Advertising Money

Using Google AdSense can end up costing you more than you think. This applies to many web site owners who use Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to drive traffic to their site. PPC can be a highly effective form of advertising, but you just might be throwing everything out the window when you use PPC advertising and AdSense at the same time. Imagine you are spending a specific dollar amount on PPC advertising each day, yet the majority of your traffic that comes through PPC ends up clicking on the AdSense links on your site. Where’s the benefit here?

You just spent advertising money to bring a visitor to your site and immediately send them somewhere else. You didn’t capture any leads, make any sales, and just drove the customer away from your business. NOT good! Yes, you can earn money from the AdSense ads that are being clicked, but they aren’t worth nearly the same amount value as a good lead you might have captured during this process.

5. Google AdSense Can Cause Lack of Focus

This one is important to you as a web site owner. It’s very easy to lose focus while creating a decent quality web site. Many will lose focus on creating good content, and will constantly be looking for ways to increase revenue through their AdSense ads.

This is fine if you have a website with a sole purpose of earning money through AdSense ads alone, but if you have a website for your business, you’ll begin to lose focus on creating content that can increase the revenue for your business. And the whole point of creating a website for your business is to build your business, build a customer database, and earn money.

So there you have it, some of my reasons to think twice before adding Google AdSense to your business site. I am not here to tell you that you should never use Google AdSense to earn money. You just should be cautious when it comes to using this method to make money.

Just about everyone wants to implement the most cost effective techniques when promoting their product. Thankfully there are plenty of low cost and even FREE methods of promotion that you can implement. FREE is always good, right? Well, it’s good to some extent. I find that some of the free techniques are easily abused, and this can do more harm to your marketing campaign than good in the long run. Many who see a free advertising opportunity will get carried away and instantly begin to turn their advertisement into SPAM. Two words for you, not good.

I know not everyone has the time and unlimited financial resources available to create the most perfect campaign, but if you want to get the most out of your promotion, you’re going to be required to put a significant amount of effort in to it. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t receive the results you want. There’s times when marketing campaigns go good, and time when campaigns go bad. My advice is to roll with punches and keep trying.

If you are working with a limited budget, the possibility of obtaining good quality targeted traffic to your site through low cost marketing is achievable. You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money to get your promotion in motion. All you need is a little bit of confidence and clever thinking to get the ball rolling. As I have mentioned many times in the past, writing articles is a highly effective method of free advertising. If you aren’t able to write articles, you can outsource this for a very low cost. Article marketing will bring a decent amount of targeted traffic to your site and should not be overlooked.

Once you have some original articles written, you can distribute them to a few article directories. It won’t be long until you see a nice steady stream of traffic flowing to your site. The key to this free method of advertising is high quality and original articles, distributed to high quality article directories. EzineArticles is a good place to start.

Another free method of promotion is through the use of blogs. I know many internet marketing professionals who despise blogs. But the fact of the matter is they are pretty much here to stay, and they work! If you have limited funds and are seeking ways to promote your products or services for free, blogs are the way to go. You can setup a free blog through sites like Wordpress, or Blogger. Keep in mind that if you use a blog, stay professional. Stay on topic with the product or service you are marketing. Always remember to include the link of your own web site on your blog. And also remember to keep your blog posts a bit interesting. The whole idea is to provide high quality content, just like when you are writing your articles.

If you still are convinced that blogs just aren’t for you, try setting up a free Squidoo page, or a page at HubPages. Both these sites are free for you to use, and they offer you a huge audience to market to, right up front. Another advantage of utilizing these sites is that you don’t have to be a web guru to get your page started. They make it extremely simple to get started, and you’ll be able to promote your product within minutes.

And of course you can expand your ideas through the use of social media marketing. This option is completely free, and extremely effective. Use tools and resources such as Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious, etc. Chances are you’ll have positive marketing results if you utilize these tools. Just remember, don’t spam.

There are many more free and low cost methods of promotion, but these are just a few to get your creative thinking process in motion. Remember that you don’t always have to spend your life savings on advertising. Think smart, be creative, utilize resources, and put it all into action!

I think if you want to stand out from the rest you have to take a whole different approach to the topic you are writing about. For example, one of the hot searches this very moment on Google Trends is “what does the secretary of state do”. That means a whole lot of people are searching this phrase right now, primarily focused on finding out what the Secretary of State does.

People with web sites that follow the trends will be quick to post this keyword phrase on their own site, eager to get in with the web surfing crowd. The whole goal for the web site owner is to get their site out in front of the rest. The owner of the site wants to build traffic, and if their site ranks well they will be able to get indexed pretty quick.

But what if they would just take a whole different approach and make it a bit more interesting? Stand out from the rest! Instead of simply throwing the search topic around carelessly, like “what does the secretary of state do”, incorporate this into something of more interest. Expand a bit on the topic. Yes, you’ll want to answer the question that is being asked, but throw in some additional helpful and useful information for the reader.

If you can be unique and offer up something more related to the topic other than a carbon copy article of your competitors, you’ll have an edge. It seems like quality news has been placed on the back burner. This is where I see a significant opportunity. If you maintain a website that is up to date with the current hot topics and trends, why not try and take a whole different approach. Be creative and try and do something different with your articles. Give some thought and write an attention grabbing headline. I believe if you can offer content that is of better quality than the next guy, and “think outside the box”, you’ll be able to grab a bit more attention right from the very beginning.