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Return To Old Customers

Posted by Shannon Lilly in Making Money

Some of you may have noticed that POB has sold its first advertisement (one of many to come). Market Leverage was kind enough to buy our 468 x 60 advertisement for the next year. This is extremely good news as it means POB is now already averaging $50.00 per month right off the bat! Not very often does a blog start making a income so early in development, I am very passionate about POB and the people behind it so this should just be one of many great things to come! Today I want to talk about some ways to make income from past customers who purchased ads from you before. You seem a bit skeptical but don’t worry I got your back on this one, its really quite simple to make money online once you understand some basic principles. Lets take it step by step and see how I approached ML and hooked em into the idea for buying the ad.

The Approach

The first thing I did was make sure to email Dina at ML and not the general ML email box. Get personal with the people who are advertising with you, get to know them and never be afraid to say thank you and always be polite! Here is the email copy/paste from outlook directly to all of you to see!

Hello Dina, Its Shannon from InfectedByBugs.com

I am contacting you in regards to a new project me and a few other bloggers are starting. We have started the site www.piratesofblogging.com to provide a resource where multiple people are giving input on one subject! We are considering allowing a company to get in on the ground level of the project so you get max benefits as the site grows!

Basically we are going to allow one company to buy out either our 468 x 60 or 2 of the top 125 x 125 banner slots on the site for the entire first year! We know you may be a tad skeptical but rest assured this site is going to be BIG! There is only one other site like it that I know of and it has grown into a major player in the MMO niche. I am actually in communication with that blog owner so I am sure to get the people to this new blog right off the bat!

Anyways, check out the site and let me know if you would be interested! I will give you a great deal and I believe it will be the best purchase you could make because there is no telling how big this site can get with 5 or more bloggers working on promoting it!

As you can see I made this very personal, I started out with her name and ended by reassuring her that I am the owner of InfectedByBugs where you already have purchased advertisements from me.

The second thing I did was tell her some basic info about the new blog and how I believe it will benefit them, I was totally truthful in what I said and that is the number 1 thing you can do! ALWAYS provide accurate honest info to people you take money from otherwise you may be labeled as a user which is not good in our line of work.

The third thing I did was start talking about the available ad slots and I also mention how big this blog could be because of the multiple people promoting it! Its like a 5 for 1 deal, anyhow I then ended with reassuring Dina that the site will get huge and I will give them a great deal on ads since they purchased from me before (which I did).

Tying The Strings

After you send out the initial email you will either get a yes or no to the question, if the answer is no rework the email and send it out to other companies that have done business with you in the past. You could even make up a nice email to send to new partners your interested in having advertise on your site, you may just be surprised how great of a response you will get!
That’s really all there is to it, making money is easy as I said once you understand some basics. Here is a basics list and be sure to print it out so you don’t forget!
  • Be Kind At All Times
  • Be 110% Honest And Go Out Of Your Way To Ensure They Know Your Honesty
  • Be A Person Of Integrity, If You Say Something Follow Through

3 Comments »

Grab The Attention In A Second

Posted by Shane in Blogging

Grabbing a readers attention is a very important to becoming a successful blogger, it is an art that many people work on for years and still fail to perfect. There are many of tips and tricks that can be used to grab the attention that may turn the reader into a subscriber. I am going to show you some of these little tricks and hopefully you will quickly see the difference. I am going to talk about all the tips within one phrase, as many people find phrases easier to remember subconsciously (It is very important to make blogging almost like a second nature).

“From The Top Down”

This is a phrase that you often hear for different reasons, in the blogging world it helps to always remember it. I often use it as one of my Golden Rules of Blogging (which I may talk about another time).

Header

The first thing that the audience see is usually the logo or header, this means that a lot of effort must be put into it to make it something everyone remembers.

I have carefully chosen a few examples.

logos

As you can see some of these stand out more than some of the others, so it is very important to make one that stands out as much as possible. This is the part worth spending money on.

Post Titles

The next element on most blogs is the title of the latest post. Many people, including myself, often use dull titles such as:

  • Site Review -
  • Latest News
  • How to …

Most readers would look at the title and skip the post or even the whole website. It is very important to choose catchy titles which are unique. Some examples of these include:

  • 10 Ways To Sell A Site In 10 Minutes
  • A Look Into
  • Ever Wondered How To Do … ?

These may sound like adverts you would see on T.V but that is exactly what you want to do.. successfully sell each post to the readers. It is sure to grab the attention. Now you have the attention you need to keep it!

Content

The content of each post is obviously the most important element. If the reader is reading a post then it means you have their attention, so straight away you need to impress the reader and keep them reading. To do this you need to make sure your post is original and unique, even if it is just from a different viewpoint that many other bloggers and posted about.

One good way of coming up with ideas for your posts is asking questions to yourself. When your walking around doing your everyday work just start asking questions which may help when you blog, for example:

  • Why is my friend’s page rank so low?
  • What did I struggle with when I was new?
  • How could I help other people?

All these kinds of questions would help give you ideas of what to write about.

Another very good way to interest the reader and keep attention is to include pictures, clip art is often used and works very well, as this visually attracts the reader to the post. Both Shannon Lilly and Mark Cuda use clip art and both say its worth it! Maybe I should start listen to their advice..

I hope you all liked this post, I enjoyed writing it.
Shane Hudson

5 Comments »

GraphixDot.com Free Webhosting For 50 Posts

Posted by Shannon Lilly in Reviews

This is a paid review, however this review is of my honest opinion and has not be altered because we were paid to write it. If you would like to have your site reviewed please contact us today and we can get right on it!

Today we are looking at GraphixDot.com, GraphixDot is a user forum that is still relatively small but its growing daily because they are giving out free web hosting to anyone who completes 50 posts! I have gone to the liberty of finding the stats which you get in the free hosting pack, here they are in no specific order…

Free 50 Post Plan

  • 1000 Megs Of Storage/month
  • 2500 Megs Of Bandwidth/month
  • Cpanel
  • 15 MYSQL DBS

Since this is a review we have to give our honest opinion and imo this is a great offer for anyone who is just starting out on the web or who cant afford a really good web host! GraphixDot servers are fast and don’t slow down at all from what I can see.

Although they are only giving out the stats above to those who make 50 posts they also run several contests to up those stats and even double them in some cases! In fact one of the contributors of this blog uses the GraphixDot hosting, you can check out his free hosted blog right here.

However if your a professional looking to keep a website up and you never want to be at risk of ever losing any info then you will need to get a GraphixDot pro plan! Although GraphixDot is a free host first they offer better solutions to those who simply need better servers and support!

I can tell you first hand the owner of GraphixDot is a honest guy and won’t ever take your money and run! Trust me on this one!

Aside from what GraphixDot actually offers posters for posting the forums themselves are pretty neat. They have some good sections and lots of freebies like tutorials and scripts that you can download and use on your own site.

Design / Monetization

Design wise GraphixDot has a unique mascot and excellent design that makes your mouth water! Its easy on the eyes and even easier to see everything laid out in a pleasant fashion.

Althought GraphixDot is new I believe its important to monetize a site at the start instead of waiting till later down the road. You have probabally heard this same advice from other bloggers before but its a key to long term success. I remember when ebay used to be a simple design and then bamb one day tons of stuff all over the place making it very confusing to do and move until you relearned your way around things.

Additionally after GraphixDot creates some ad spots on the site I suggest filling atleast a few of them with affiliate banners so you can hopefully make some income off the site while you wait for advertisers to send cash your way.

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