Almost everyone is familiar with the concept of blogs nowadays – they’re little pieces of digital land that allow anyone with an Internet connection and a keyboard to share thoughts and feelings on any topic imaginable with a huge potential audience. But to most people, the idea of blogging seems like nothing more than a fun hobby or a convenient way to share their life and personal interests with their close friends and family. However, blogs have a hidden secret that goes far beyond what most people use them for: they can be extremely lucrative. While the vast majority of bloggers only make a tiny profit (if they make one at all), there are some who earn a decent living – sometimes enough to quit their jobs and blog full time. In fact, many of the most successful bloggers earn high six-figure salaries doing nothing but maintaining their blog on a daily basis. Some even make millions of dollars every year. It seems mind boggling, but it’s true. So, how do they do it?

Show Me the Money!
The answer is that almost all of them use the exact same money making methods as everyone else – they just use them more effectively and have a wider audience. Here’s just a few of the ways the top bloggers make money:

• Pay-per-click advertising
• CPM (page-view) advertising
• Banner advertisements
• Affiliate marketing
• Premium content
• Private, paid forums
• Surveys
• Donations
• Selling products or services
• Consulting

As you can see, there are lots of proven ways to make money from a blog. The only problem with this is that you’ll never see a single penny from these revenue sources unless you have one important element: visitors. If you don’t have any readers beyond your mother, your best friend, and your next door neighbor, there simply won’t be anyone to click on the ads or to buy your affiliate’s products, which means no money for you.

Driving traffic to your blog
Unfortunately, just getting readers isn’t enough. You need LOTS of readers – the more the better. But as you’ll quickly find out, obtaining a sizeable, regular audience is by the far the most difficult aspect of blogging, especially when you’re just starting out. To complicate matters, there are millions of blogs you’re competing against (156 million as of Feb 2011), and nearly every niche imaginable already has several blogs devoted it – some of which are already quite profitable and high profile. Breaking into that niche and turning a profit for yourself may seem hopeless, but there are some guidelines you can follow to drive more traffic to your blog.

1. Be original. This is by far the most important tip for would-be bloggers. You can’t expect to make any money, let alone have any readers, if the content you are posting is ripped off from other sites. Readers are savvy and will be able to instantly detect half-hearted writing or content that is not from your own imagination, and once they’ve clicked away from your blog, there’s a good chance that they’re gone for good. If you frequently create content that is original, thoughtful, and thoroughly researched, you’ll have a much better chance at landing a repeat audience than all of the other “copy-cat” blogs. In other words: Don’t write junk. Be credible. Get readers.
2. Write about your passion. Don’t expect to gain any readers by writing about things you’re uninterested in. This might sound like obvious advice, but if you’re only writing for traffic, it will be plainly obvious to everyone who visits your blog. Think about what inspires you and what you find interesting. Then devise a way to turn that into something that will draw readers. You have to think of your blog as a potential full-time job – except you get the freedom to pick exactly what you want to do on a daily basis. Writing about things you like will motivate you to write more often, and regular updates are a great way to pull more and more visitors to your site.
3. Self-Promote. In the beginning, promoting your blog requires the same legwork as promoting a new business. You have to get your name out there in a compelling way so that people will have a reason to click on your blog, and ideally, your affiliate links and banner ads. One way to do this is to get active in an online community that is centered on a topic relevant to your blog. If you blog about digital photography, for example, you might consider joining several message boards and forums related to the topic. Many message boards are read by thousands of people on a daily basis, and having a link to your blog in your “signature” will provide great exposure for it – especially if you become a trusted and valued member of the community.
4. Be controversial. If you’re simply looking for an easy, short-term traffic boost, one of the quickest ways to get it is to write something controversial. You should be extremely careful with this approach (see tip #2) as it can quickly earn you scorn (depending on the subject matter) and you may end up losing the readers you already have. There are countless topics that are considered “hot” at any given time (social issues, politics, war, etc), and delivering a well researched and thoughtful opinion piece about one of these can drive serious traffic to your blog. This works best if it is already tied in with the theme of your blog – in other words, if you’re writing about vegan food and suddenly deliver a manifesto decrying the status of immigration, you may raise a few eyebrows and turn off some of your readers. Tread carefully with this one.
5. Make effective use of SEO techniques. SEO stands for search engine optimization. The more highly optimized your site is for keywords, the higher it shows up on Google, Bing, and other search engines when people search for a relevant topic. Getting a high search result ranking for multiple keywords should be the number one goal of all bloggers. It is the best way to drive traffic to your site. There is a wealth of information on the Internet about SEO techniques, but they all boil down to one thing: proper keyword usage throughout your website, your headlines, and your content. If you can get your blog to the top page of Google, your monthly readership will explode – and so will your income.

Even if you perfectly utilize all of the previous tips and have your blog primed to make money and attract a huge amount of readers, you still have to play the waiting game. Very few blogs become successful overnight. Remember, most of the successful bloggers didn’t turn a healthy profit until after their blog had been up for at least one year.

In this case, patience is the key. Give yourself achievable, short term goals to reach. Try to improve your SEO skills every day and use things like Google analytics to see how your blog is ranking and who is visiting it. See if you can increase the amount of money it makes in a month by 25% — even if it’s just increasing a couple of dollars. And most importantly, keep posting quality content no matter what. Your blog could be one post away from going viral.

What Makes a Good Lead Generation Service?

The internet is replete with companies, services, and websites selling “sales leads.”  While many of these lists are perfectly legitimate as email, direct mail, or telemarketing lists, an important distinction must be made between them and a list of qualified leads.  Wikipedia defines a sales lead as “a person or entity that has the interest and authority to purchase a product or service.”  The question is, “Does that person or entity have an interest in your product or service?”  This is where a good lead generation service comes into play.  If you are considering whether or not a custom lead generation program is right for your business, here are some important items to consider when searching for the right company to produce qualified leads for you:

Does the company you are considering have a proven track record of providing qualified leads?
Does the company or service have examples of demonstrated ROI for its clients?  Do they have testimonials of individuals who have used, or are currently using their services?  These are important questions to ask, a reputable company should be able to provide you with examples of each.

Is it true performance marketing?
The lead generation company should provide you the service and you should pay based upon their performance, only after you have determined that their service works.  In other words, are they asking you to pay in advance for a large volume of leads, before you are able to test the quality of these leads?  A good lead generation company’s product (their leads) should speak for themselves.  (Read more on performance marketing here.)

Here is a list of questions that any good lead generation company should ask you:
What is your budget? This seems obvious, but you would be surprised how many lead generation companies will automatically try to sign you up for a minimum price/volume without inquiring about your budget.  You should be able to negotiate terms that allow you and the company to both profit.
Do you have a website? For online lead generation, having some type of website for potential customers to view is imperative, and this should be one of the first questions your lead generation company asks.
Who is your ideal customer/subscriber? This is a key question.  In order to truly customize a lead generation program for a client, one must have a good vision for whom to target with the initial process.  The more information the lead generation company has, the better they will be able to create a profile that fits this ideal lead, and this will shorten your company’s sales cycle, limit disqualifications, and so forth.
What constitutes a qualified lead for your business? Along with generating a profile for the ideal lead, this is an equally important procedural question because it is the second step in qualifying the ideal lead.  Knowing exactly what information is going to help your company to make the sale, attain the subscription, and so forth will also help to shorten your sales cycle and make it more efficient.

We love to answer questions and help businesses succeed.  So if you have further questions about lead generation, we would love to hear from you!  Even if you are not ready to move forward, please don’t hesitate to contact us by phone, or email.

Simply put, performance marketing refers to any program in which the company marketing or advertising a product/service is paid only when a specific action is completed.  Clear as mud, right?  In other words, the company marketing the service is only paid if they deliver a particular action, in most cases either a lead or a sale.

A lead generation program is an example of performance marketing because the client only pays for the leads which are delivered.  This allows much greater ease in tracking campaign performance as the actual results determine how much the marketing/advertising company is paid, and it mitigates the risk for the client who is not committed to a particular cost which may or may not yield profitable results.

There are two basic models in performance marketing:  Cost per action/sale, and cost per lead:

CPA
In the cost per action/sale model, as the name suggests, the required performance is for the individual to make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, etc…
CPL
Cost per lead is equally straight forward in meaning.  The client is not required to pay the marketing company unless a qualified lead is attained.  This generally means that a certain amount of essential contact information is gathered, along with information specific to the lead’s interest in the product or service.

The advent of performance marketing has created an exciting opportunity for anyone who is looking to promote a product or service.  There is absolutely no reason not to explore the possibilities that exist in the performance marketing realm.  And lead generation in particular, when done properly, has revolutionized many businesses’ profit margins.

The myriad lead generation and performance marketing services cropping all over the internet, however, can make the process of getting started a bit more intimidating than it needs to be.  While selecting the right performance marketing company should not be taken lightly, it does not have to be the chore that it may at first appear to be.  There are a few key qualities one needs to look for.  Please check out our article on choosing a lead generation service here, and please don’t hesitate to give us a call if you have questions.

When it comes to spending money on marketing and advertising efforts, what is the one thing that everybody is looking for? Results. They want to be able to see tangible results from their marketing spend. So how can a marketing company guarantee results for each dollar the client shells out? Performance marketing.

When utilizing a performance marketing campaign, clients only incur an expense when a specified result is achieved. This expense is typically a set dollar amount per action or a share of revenue per sale, which is far more efficient than simply hoping a traditional marketing spend is successful. What is even better is that the client can clearly see their return on investment (ROI). The ability to monitor performance marketing instills a sense of security and satisfaction.

Let’s take a flower shop with a $5000 monthly advertising budget. With traditional marketing, they would most likely split this spend across several media options. This may include TV spots, outdoor billboards, online banner ads, a sign spinner outside of the shop, etc. While this diversified marketing plan may reach the intended audience, it may or may not be effective. Even if it produces results, it is difficult for the flower shop to accurately determine which source brought in the new customers and which source was simply a waste. On the other hand, with performance marketing, the flower shop would see guaranteed tangible results from the $5000 spend. Their marketing company could suggest offering a $5 off coupon to potential customers via a targeted e-mail list. For every coupon downloaded (the specified result), the flower shop would pay the marketing company $5 (the set dollar amount per action). Therefore, each coupon transaction would cost the flower shop $10, meaning their $5000 budget would draw up to 500 customers. Plus, it is easy to track which customers made a purchase as a result of the coupon.

While there are many justifications for clients to implement a performance marketing campaign, here is a look at just four convincing reasons.

The benefits are evident, and with all the risk and responsibility on the marketing company, clients can rest assured that their hard earn dollars are only being spent if a successful marketing strategy is deployed and produces results. It is a win win situation.