Blogging has become the most innovative marketing strategy since the creation of the Internet and the print sales letter. Blogs are great for online marketing campaigns because they are interactive communities for business owners and their audiences.
Blogs, mostly have been used as substitutes or supplements to websites because they are user-friendly, easy to manage and update, and more cost effective than traditional websites. Most blogs are free, while customized websites can cost thousands of dollars to create and manage. If a business owner has limited funds, she should visit www.wordpress.com, www.livejournal.com or www.blogger.com. I prefer www.wordpress.com because the interface is simple to use. Users also have the option to use a free sub-domain name (www.yourdomain.wordpress.com), select a new domain name through www.wordpress.com (www.yourdomain.com) for $15.00 per year, or map and update the name servers for an existing domain name for $10.00 per year that was purchased through a company such as www.godaddy.com.
Monetizing and Growing your Business:
- Add Google’s famous Adsense program is one of the most common ways to monetize a blog. Revenue is generated on either per click or per impression basis. Advertisements are content relevant and often times geographically specific.
- Sell e-books, courses, reports, or tele-seminars is another way many businesses generate revenue.
- Ask for donations to help support and maintain the site.
- Create an electronic newsletter. Publish it as frequently as you like – one to seven times per week.
- Add affiliate products in the newsletter. www.clickbank.com offers a wide variety
- Large companies offer affiliate programs such as 5% or 10% commission on everything sold through the site. In fact, if you publish a blog on fashion, affiliate with www.bluefly.com or www.bloomingdales.com for extra revenue. To find affiliate programs, visit www.hydranetwork.com, www.commissionjunction.com and www.linkshare.com or contact the company directly.
If you need help building you brand and blog, contact Kristin Marquet at [email protected]
Kristin Marquet
Kristin Marquet serves as the Creative Director of the award-winning creative studio, Marquet-Media.com. She oversees the day-to-day operations of the studio and directs all client accounts and projects. In 2017, she launched the emerging spinoff media company, FemFounder.co that helps creative female entrepreneurs plan, launch, and scale their businesses. Passionate about learning, Kristin has advanced studies in data and marketing analytics. She has attended MIT, Boston University, and New York University and holds degrees in literature and marketing/public relations. She has contributed to Forbes.com, Inc.com, HuffingtonPost.com, Entrepreneur.com, and NYDailyNews.com.
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Kristin,
Great tips. I’d also like to steer readers toward my Guide site on About.com where I am the Guide to Web Logs where they can get tons of additional information about starting a blog, growing a blog, business blogging and making money from a blog. (http://weblogs.about.com)
And if Blogger.com is your choice for a blogging application, I have to do a little self-plug for my book, Google Blogger For Dummies 🙂
You obviously put a lot of work into that post and its very interesting to see the thought process that you went through to come up with those conclusion. Thanks for sharing your deep thoughts. I must admit that I think you nailed it on this one.
There has been a lot of talk recently about how good SEO can actually improve the sales of a business or greatly promote its brand image in a positive way. There are people with strong feelings on both sides of the arguement.
However, one thing is certain, online marketing is growing at dramatic speed. Blogging has long be one of the most popular online marketing approach.
I think for a while, the ads on personal blogs are quite persuasive, as the readers taken the posts as the thinking of the bloggers based on personal experience.
As there are more bloggers simply blogging for money these days, I think it is becoming increasing hard for the readers to believe their recommendation now.