PerformancingAds is a great tool for advertisers looking to get the word out about their product or service. And it is especially effective for running targeted advertising campaigns that focus on specific categories of blogs such as Personal Finance blogs or Auto blogs.

What’s In It For Me?

Always put yourself in the shoes of your audience because they will be asking that question. Keeping WIIFM in mind means figuring out how your blog can appeal to the people you want to reach.

Reading your blog needs to be a rewarding experience for both the regular readers and first-time visitors. You need to demonstrate this through all aspects of your blog, from the design to the functionality to the content.

Once your audience understands why they should be reading your blog, you must move on to what you want them to do on your blog. You need to be able to communicate to the benefits of bookmarking, subscribing, linking, and returning to your blog.

What are the more specific calls to action you wish to achieve on your blog? It could be a Digg or a Stumble. It could be a click on an affiliate link or any other advertisement. It could be directly buying your product. As you become more specific with the expectations you have of your audience, you must communicate them more clearly.

Connecting with your audience is an essential feature of successful blogs. And being mindful of WIIFM at all times is the way to do it.

There are several different ways to look at your blog, and these are the most important ones:

Focus. Do the topics you write about match the general objectives of your blog? Are there categories or areas you might have overlooked so far? Can you handle writing about these new topics should you add them to your list?

Experience. Are your readers having difficulty reading your blog? Do they have trouble finding certain things, like archived posts or that feed subscription link? Do they understand what feeds are? Do you encourage them to leave comments? Do you react to their comments? Is it time to redesign your blog?

Promotion. How popular is your blog? Can other people find your blog through search engines? Who are linking to your blog? Do you link to others as well?

Start by answering these questions to yourself for each of your respective blogs, and then feel free to ask more. Never stop wondering what you can do to improve your blog.

Quality resources vary across niches, but you know a quality resource when you see one. For example, take a look at Brian Clark’s 10 Step Copywriting Tutorial. It’s what everyone turns to when they want to master copywriting for the web.

Or, take Darren Rowse’s Blogging For Beginners. It’s the ultimate resource of new bloggers. When blogging firms hire new bloggers, they always send them over to Darren’s resource.

Both of the examples above feature the content of the author’s themselves. But another type of resource is the “Meta” Resource which links to the best articles on a particular topic. For a great example of this, check out my resource article that lists what I consider the 10 most important articles that all bloggers read. I didn’t write most of the articles on that list, but I know from experience which articles have had the most impact on me and my employees.

Another way to create a great resource is to truly go multimedia by integrating text, images and video into a comprehensive guide on a topic. Recently, I wrote a guide for how to develop such a resource. As an example, I created the basic structure for a resource article on Scottish tartans. While it’s just the basic framework, a more thorough job would certainly get some attention from the online tartan industry.

So there you have 4 examples to help you get a picture of what it takes to build quality resources in your niche. So what are you waiting for? Differentiate yourself as a quality blog by creating top-of-class resources today.

While we still have a ways to go before we’ve populated our directory to the point of satisfaction, there are a few categories where we feel that you can get a clear glimpse at the success of our algorithm and it’s automatic ranking of sites.

Let’s start with the category that includes blogs about science. If you visit this category and visit any of the top 10 blogs, you will be well on your way to some great science blogging.

Similarly, let’s say that you want to see a list of the best search engine optimization blogs and you navigate to the SEO category. Again, we have to say that we’re extremely proud of the blogs that get displayed on the front page of this category. You simply can’t go wrong with any of them, and collectively they are the best of the SEO category.

As the EatonWeb directoy grows, more and more categories will be exactly like the two above. And to be honest, many categories are almost there. Consider the following list:

The best celebrity blogs
The best technology blogs
The best money blogs
The best food blogs
The best travel blogs
The best sports blogs

If you’re looking for the best blogs in any of these categories, EatonWeb isn’t a bad place to start!

He wrote about posting excerpts from his new book last month and also giving a recommendation for a book by author Garr Reynolds.  He built a Squidoo page about that book with an affiliate link to Amazon. 

Guess which book has gotten more sales?  His book or Garr’s book? 

Seth checked his stats and it shows that he’s sold more of Garr’s book than his own book.

What people say about you is much more important than what you say about yourself.

There’s a lot of talk about self-promotion but it’s a lot more beneficial and effective when other bloggers promote you.

When people talk about you and especially when they recommend you, you gain credibility, mindshare, and exposure.

So, how do you get other people to start talking about you?

Unique Content

First, and you’ve probably heard this a million times, write unique content. 

This is easier said than done because it takes work to be creative. 

The key to creating unique content is knowing your niche well.  If you do this, you’ll be able to see which topics, viewpoints, and media formats are not being covered well in your niche.  Also, you’ll be able to gauge your competition.  Can you produce something better than them?  Can you create something different from them?

When you find a "gap" you can fill, you have a much better chance of being recommended because no one else is doing what you’re doing.

For example, in my last blog post, I talked about producing audio and video content.

Many niches don’t have a blog with quality video and audio content.  If you produce multimedia content, you’ll greatly differentiate your blog from the other blogs in your niche.  This leads to people talking about you because you’re unique.

Here’s another example from the make money online niche.  Surprisingly, this niche does not have many good tutorials.  If you write a lengthy tutorial filled with screenshots (like this one), you’ll probably get a lot of links and traffic

Therefore, do some market research.  And then have a brainstorming session and come up with content ideas that aren’t being produced in your niche.

Network

Second, network. 

You may not agree with this but I think networking is more important than unique content.  Networking allows your content to be found.  Even non-unique content can get popular because the blogger that produced the content has many blogger friends.

Networking is simply building friendships with other bloggers in your niche.

Think about how you make friends offline and try to translate those methods on the blogosphere. 

For me, I find out where people hang out and then I go there to meet people.  When I’m online, I do a similar thing.  I visit places where other bloggers hang out to network with them.  Depending on the niche, these places could be a forum or a social voting site. 

Also, I find that I can meet new friends through my existing friends.  On the internet, I ask my existing blogger friends if they could introduce me to other bloggers.

Here are some other ways and places where you can build friendships with other bloggers in your niche.

• twitter
• blog commenting
• email
• link out with trackbacks
• help out another blogger

There’s more that can be said about networking.  Here are 2 posts that can give you more ideas:

• 3 Ways to Immediately Improve Your Networking Skills
• Effective Networking: 7 Ways to Connect With People in Your Niche 

The Final Ingredient: Time

Just like profitable blogging usually takes time, so does getting mentioned consistently by other bloggers.

If you’re only starting out, it will probably take a couple of months of producing unique content and networking before other bloggers start talking about you.

But give it some time and you’ll soon be a recognizable blogger in your niche.

Feedback

What have you done to get other bloggers to promote you?

Produce multimedia content.

You may have to spend time and effort to learn how to produce a podcast or edit a video and upload it to YouTube. But this is a tactic that will pay many dividends for your blog. Here are 5 of the great benefits that come from integrating multimedia in your blog.

1. Reach More People

As bloggers, we probably think people read a lot because we read a lot. However, here are some surprising stats I found from the short ebook Teaching Sells.

• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• 57% of new books are not read to completion.
• Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

Teaching Sells also makes the point that many people learn better through audio or video rather than text.

Think about how many visitors go to YouTube on a regular basis. According to Alexa, YouTube is the 4th most visited site in the whole internet. That’s a huge potential audience that’s worth promoting to. Other video sharing sites like Dailymotion and Revver also have huge audiences.

By producing video and audio, you’ll reach the huge number of people who use the internet primarily to consume video and audio - not text.

2. Stand Out From The Crowd

How many blogs in your niche actually use multimedia on a regular basis? As a full-time search marketer for a company with over 20 blogs, I’ve worked in many different niches. In all the niches I’ve worked in, the vast majority of blogs don’t use multimedia.

Multimedia greatly improves your branding. My company recently rolled out a weekly news show for our celebrity gossip blog. We had struggled with getting links for other popular celebrity blogs. But once we had the show up and running, it was a lot easier to get links.

Webmasters like to link to unique content. Right now, multimedia content is unique content in most niches. Multimedia will help your blog get noticed. Video and audio content will capture the attention of your niche audience.

So, start producing multimedia before the other bloggers do it. Be one of the first in your niche to start a podcast and/or vodcast.

3. Higher Perceived Value

This is similar to the second benefit. Multimedia adds a ton of value to your blog. You can charge more for advertising since you’re reaching more people. You can place ads in your multimedia content. You can even sell your content. And video and audio products can be sold at higher prices than ebooks.

4. Ranking through Universal Search

One thing that hasn’t received a lot of press is Google’s Universal Search. Yet this development will change search rankings for the years to come. Universal Search means that the first page of Google no longer has only text-based pages. Instead, there will be videos, images, books, and even maps.

This means you can upload your video to YouTube and your YouTube URL can rank on Google’s first page.

I did a short YouTube case study back in July for Net Business Blog. Mark from 45n5.com and I targeted the keyword worlds best internet marketing tools. (This keyword actually has search volume.)

We built links to our videos. In three days, Mark’s video got a first page Google ranking. In 11 days, my video also hit the first page.

I haven’t done any link building since then. My video is currently ranked 6th.

So, by creating videos, uploading them to YouTube, and then building links to your video, you can grab first page spots on Google.

Don’t forget to link to your site on your YouTube video. You can’t use anchor text. However, if you type in your URL with “http://”, YouTube will link to that URL. Check out my video for an example.

5. Mobile Content

With the popularity of iPods and other multimedia mobile players, audio and video content will rise in popularity too. Sure, you can read text on iPods. But for the most part, people are not using their iPods to read blog posts. Instead, they’re watching videos and listening to podcasts.

Audio files have an extra benefit because they can be consumed while doing other things like commuting or cleaning the house. The audio book industry is a 800 million dollar industry so there are many people willing to spend money on audio products.

Practical Examples

Here are 3 excellent sites that use multimedia well. Check out their podcasts and videos to give you inspiration for your own multimedia content.

1. http://www.tubetorial.com
2. http://www.techsavvymarketer.com/video-tutorials/
3. http://www.whoisandrewwee.com/category/podcasts/

Also, check out sketchcast.com. It’s another multimedia format that may fit well for your blog.

Good luck with your blogging efforts in 2008!

Help Them Out

One thing I tried that worked was helping a blogger out through a case study.

On Performancing, I was writing a post about how to move a page on your blog from the 2nd page of Google to the 1st page. Now the best way to do “how to” posts is have a practical example. I could’ve used one of my sites, but I wanted to get a link back to Performancing.

So, I wrote a post and used Strategic Profits Blog (SPB) as my example. I picked a juicy 2nd page keyword that SPB was ranking for. Then, I simply gave some practical tips for moving that ranking to the first page.

Here is the post I wrote:
How to Move From the 2nd Page of Google to the 1st Page

Here is the post where SPB linked back (the link is at the end of the post):
Download - Jay Abraham Mindmap + Doctrine 2 Announcement

Tips to Increase Your Success Rate

If you’re not in a how-to niche, you might want to try doing an in-depth review of the other blog. Sometimes that can get a blogger’s attention. Bloggers have egos, you know

Email the blogger and ask for feedback. I didn’t have to do this to get my link back but it can definitely help. I don’t usually ask for a link because that seems too intrusive.

Use social media voting sites to send more traffic to the other blog. To increase my chances of getting noticed, I asked a couple friends to stumble my post. SPB probably checked their stats and saw that they were getting a lot of traffic from my post because of the stumbles. This peaked their interest to check out my post. This helped a lot because I was linking to a particular post. I didn’t have a chance to use trackbacks to gain SPB’s attention.

Pick a blogger that seems like they would link back. Don’t target insulated bloggers. Target bloggers that interact with their readers well and/or link out to other blogs. I had been following SPB and I felt like the blogger would link back to a quality post that gave him good advice.

Feedback

Have you ever helped another blogger and gotten a link back?

However, don’t forget about forum marketing.

Forum marketing has many benefits. If other marketing methods are not working for you, give forum marketing a shot.

I think the learning curve for social media marketing is steeper than forum marketing. Also, you’ll often reach a more targeted audience with forums than with social media sites.

Forum marketing is similar to blog commenting. It allows you to reach a targeted audience. However, forum marketing has an advantage over blog commenting because you can start a forum thread in the topic of your choosing. In blog commenting, you’re constrained by the topic of the blog post.

Tips

Here are some tips for improving your forum marketing.

Some niches don’t have forums. Do a search for [your niche] forum to see if there are forums in your niche.

Make sure the forum has traffic and activity. I like to market in forums that have many new posts every day. Also, you can check Alexa.

The forum you participate in should allow you to market your site. Some forums allow you to put your site in your signature while others don’t allow you to promote your site at all. Some forums even let you to put your add your feed into your profile. Then, the forum software pulls your newest post and links to it on every forum post you make.

You don’t have to create totally unique content. Feel free to reuse your old blog content. However, don’t copy and paste. Rewrite your old content. Google does not like duplicate content. You want your forum threads to get ranked. And if the forum members find that you have been using the same exact content from your blog, you might be labeled a spammer.

However, don’t just start new threads. Find other threads with topics that interest you and reply to the forum posts on those threads. By participating in other threads, you’ll build your reputation.

Feedback

What other forum marketing tips can you think of?

Here are some income streams to consider.

Ad Networks

Ad networks like AdSense are where many bloggers get their start in monetization. Bloggers are attracted to these networks because they’re easy to setup. You simply add a piece of code to your blog and you’re done.

Check out Publisher Spot for excellent reviews of many different ad networks. Also, check out Adify for niche ad networks.

Out of all the ad networks, AdSense is definitely the most popular network. However, many bloggers have AdSense as their only income stream. This is not a good strategy because you can add income streams that can earn as much money as AdSense.

Direct Ads

Direct ads take more work than ad networks. However, if you search hard enough, you can often find other webmasters that are willing to pay good money to place an ad on your site.

You can go to webmaster forums like Digital Point and V7N and create a thread telling everyone that you’re selling ads on your blog.

I like to contact sites directly. If you know your niche well, you should know of other sites in your niche that want more traffic and exposure. Contact static sites, blogs, online stores, and forums in your niche and see if they would be interested in purchasing an ad on your site. It doesn’t hurt to try.

Make sure you have a good advertising page. Here are some examples, Entrepreneur’s Journey and Dosh Dosh. Also, blog about your advertising page and you might get readers to advertise on your site.

Affiliate Products

Whether you sell ebooks through Clickbank or physical products through Commission Junction, many niches can be monetized well through affiliate products.

Go to the above sites and other affiliate networks like LinkShare and Azoogle. Then, find quality products in your niche that you can sell.

To find more affiliate programs in your niche, do a search on Google for “affiliate program [name of your niche]“.

Write reviews for products you would recommend and you’ll increase your affiliate sales.

Some of your favorite products may have an affiliate program. For example, if you’re an SEO blogger, you should sell Aaron Wall’s SEO Book LINK. If you have a blog about blogging, you should sell Yaro Starak’s mentoring program, Blog Mastermind.

Create Your Own Product

The paid content model seems to be underrated. But people are willing to pay good money to have a useful product.

You can create an ebook, videos, audio products, or even a membership site.

There are many advantages to creating your own product. You can set the price. You can tailor it to meet the specific needs of your blog audience. You can refer to your product more than an affiliate product. And you can create an affiliate program so that others can sell your product.

Services

Some niches lend themselves well to selling services like consulting. For example, Chris Garrett uses his blog to sell blog consulting and Patrick Altoft uses his blog to promote his internet marketing consulting services.

Feedback

What income streams have you used to earn money on your blog?