The value of content is virtually undisputed, and the trend of including a blog with your website is still going strong. The only problem is, with all the blogs out there, how do make yours stand out? And even if you have terrific content, does it matter if you don’t have traffic to read it. Make this the year that you focus energy on bringing yourself more blog traffic.

Find an Angle
If you’re writing the same kind of content that everyone else it, often using the same spammy keywords as everyone else, you’re not offering much to readers. Readers want something unusual and interesting from your blog. If you’re in the business of making money online, use the blog to get personal. Tell stories – both good and bad. Make lists of tips and include your own successes and failures from those tips. Leave generic articles and randomly pulled news releases for the competition. Besides, with your new edge, you won’t have to consider them competition for long.

Be a Blogger
If you’re writing on a blog (or paying someone to write a blog) you need to do more than throw up a post or two a week. If you’re going to blog – blog. Throw your heart into your content and then get out into the community to talk it up with other bloggers. Bloggers aren’t meant to live in isolation. Your blog is designed to be shared – it is written for a community, so you need to be in the community networking and getting to know others who also tool around in the industry. They may be your competition or they may become your partner in your next JV. You’ll never know who’s out there until you start socializing. (more…)

For many internet marketers, AdSense is king of revenues. From small webmasters bringing in a few bucks a day to industry giants earning six figures a month with Google AdSense, the targeted advertising program is a standard addition to almost any website. Of course, ads on your site aren’t the only way to make money with a program like AdSense – many webmasters make money through the referral program offered by Google. Or, at least they used to make money that way – now they make not make anything at all.

Changes in AdSense Referrals
In the past, the referral system was set up so that you earned money after a certain time period for anything made by your referrals. If they earned $2, you earned $2. If you referred someone and they made more than $100, you earned a lump sum of $250. If you really did your marketing and referred twenty-five people who make $100 in 180 days, you earned a bonus of $2000. There was some serious money to be made through referrals, but those days are over now. (more…)