web analytics

Blog Goals: Let’s talk about them.

30 Aug By 13 Comments

When I started out as a blogger I did a terrible thing. I started out with a goal to monetize.

Trust me, I heard the gasps. HOW DARE she want MONEY. OMG. TERRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See back then I owned a crafting store online and handmade items. This was before Etsy developed and eBay was still sorta cool. I eventually branched off and opened my store and to my credit, was successful. But my back and body and time were being eaten alive by the crafting bug and I quickly found my weekends were covered more in hot glue and post office boxes than family time. I needed a change, but I also needed something to replace my income as a result of that change.  Around the same time I was looking for an alteration in my online life. As a retail owner I had often relied on blogs and had tentatively started one. One thing led to another and I just bit the bullet on it.

Now blogs have been around, well, probably forever.  Since I have only been in this space for a little over 4 years, I cannot even possibly pretend that I was on the forefront of any new and wonderful thing. That being said, media was just moving into this space more actively and bloggers were cautiously being used to fill advertising, reviews, giveaways, consulting, and marketing. I came in at the beginning of that phenomenon.

Back to monetizing.

As a longtime online community owner (quite prior to a blogger), I have always been interested in using my time to connect to others with same interests. In the short and long term, I wanted a blog where I could share my personal thoughts, a community space where I could create and share knowledge with like minded people, and of course a way to work from home and contribute to my family.

Over the years I have managed to do all of those things, but it hasn’t been easy or without sacrifice and hard work.

I mention this because recently a few things have come into my life over and over again and it’s bloggers asking around me:

How do I be successful online? Is there a secret?

The reality is there is no answer to that question until you can define what SUCCESS is to you. Or rather, what are your goals.

  • Is it money?
  • Is it trips?
  • Are you a marketer?
  • Do you just want to share your kids?
  • Do you want to connect?
  • Do you want to grow an empire worth millions?
  • Do you want to showcase your crafts or sell your products.

And unlike people in my past that made me feel this way, there are no wrong and no shameful answers behind your reason online, but you must define it.

BLOG (inspiration) CARNIVAL

That is why for the blogging carnival this week, I want you to go back to your blog and write about WHY you are a blogger and WHAT you want to achieve for yourself. Think about your goals and share your short and long term goals.

Feel free to also talk about how you got started and how those goals have changed over the years. I look forward to hopping to everyone’s blogs and checking it out, so link below! The usual blog hop rules apply. If you write and link, please try to visit and comment as well to support those bloggers.

If you do not have time in your schedule to write a full post, please feel free to add your goals in the comments, but I do encourage you to define them and write them.
 

 



Filed Under: All About Trisha, Blog Resources

Ninja Affiliate Tutorial 101

27 Jun By 18 Comments

Recently I wrote an article about how to improve your bottom line as a blogger in 30 days. In that article I mentioned using Ninja Affiliate and have since had a few people ask me to explain in detail how to run the plugin once installed.

I am happy to help, so here is your Affiliate Ninja for Beginners tutorial. Feel free to ask questions in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

1) Purchase (my affiliate link if you want to support this site) and install.

2) Once installed, go to your Tools and there you will find your installation.

 

2) Once you click on it, you will be presented with these options on the top:

3) I am going to show you how to add a new link that will help you customize your affiliate links and track if your traffic clicks. Keep in mind this also helps you set up ads and even put on nonaffiliate links so you can see the ROI when you review blog, do giveaways for brands, and more. You do not have to be making money on a link to track if your blog visitors are clicking.

Click Add New Link and you get this screen:

Now the breakdown of what this all means:

Let me stop here and explain further.

I am going to use my Ninja Affliate link as an example. The actual affiliate link is http://www.maxblogpress.com/go.php?offer=momdot&pid=31

I want to convert that to a new link that can be tracked on my end, so I change it to http://www.momdot.com/loves/ninja  or http://www.momdot.com/recommends/ninja  etc.

The link itself is up to you.

You can type in http://www.momdot.com/hates/thedentist  for all anyone cares. You are basically telling Ninja to convert one link to a new link.

It works the same way as tracking places like bit.ly or ow.ly.

You don’t have to use an affiliate either. You can use http://www.facebook.com/yourpersonal page and convert it to htp://www.momdot.com/loves/facebook and that will tell you how many go to your facebook page when you connect your new link.

Get it?

On with the show:

Now cloaking is for people that do now ant anyone to know there is an affiliate link involved, so you can check that if you want. I do not. The other part is adding keywords. If you add keywords here, what Ninja will do is find every word on your site that matches and converts it to your new link. Let’s say I want to change the word “Facebook” on my site to my facebook fan page. I can set up an affiliate ninja link and it will scour my site and insert it automatically on those words.

Staying with the same example, this is what it would look like on my end:

If I press “add link” it will now search my site and change all the words I listed to my fan page.

4) Now you ask…why go through all the trouble to change links? A few reasons.

One, if you have a large site and are just now starting to get involved into affiliates, you can take 20 minutes and set up keywords that will autoconnect in your past blog posts and start creating you some income. Don’t worry, you can go in to specific blog posts and turn OFF the ninja if its a competing link to an article you wrote, etc.

Two, you get to track how many people are laving your site and where they are going. This is especially good for marketing and showing an ROI on your site. You can connect the new link to pictures, graphics, ads you create, links on words, or even give to someone else so you can track a campaign from their site and how often you are being clicked.

This is one of the pages in my affiliate ninja tracking. It shows me how many unique and raw clicks and gives me options there on the right to edit keywords and more (off screen)

5) Once a link is set up, you can use it without connecting keywords. You can set it up and just connect it in a post.  In a blog post, you have two options. You have a drop down right in your post that will allow you to add links that are already set up and change the keywords right there (note the drop down):

Or you can link the old fashioned way:

Last but not least, you can exclude links that are auto generated from specific blog posts if you like. Just open your post and scroll to the very bottom:

I think those are the basics of using the plugin. Feel free to ask questions!

~trisha

Filed Under: All About Trisha, Blog Resources

5 ways to increase your blog revenue in 30 days

11 Jun By 64 Comments

I am going to talk about something I dont talk about often on my blog: Money.

Now many bloggers won’t touch the topic of money. It’s one of those things that can make anyone from the smallest to the biggest blogger uncomfortable. But the fact is, at the same time, so many bloggers are seeking to make a living online and so many have questions on how it’s done. And while some are successful (and many, many others are not) these are all legitimate questions that the community shouldn’t be afraid to answer. As an established blogger, I want you to know that myself and many of the other money makers on the community forums are interested in helping you grow your online presence and make money.  I hope this article serves as a spot for someone to launch from what they are already doing to improving what they are already doing.

5 ways to increase your blog revenue in 30 days

has moved…click above to read!

 

Filed Under: Blog Resources

A new way to monetize your network!

24 May By 1 Comment

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of IZEA for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

As a blogger, surely you are well aware of Izea. If not, you need to get to getting on that! Izea owns Social Spark and SponsoredTweets, both great sites that help bloggers interact with brands and also bring brand awareness to consumers. They also help online sites monetize their communities and bring in a passive income to help support the ongoing maintenance of being online.

Whether you know of those two sites or not, I wanted to share with you a new site that Izea has in the works! Izea has launched Staree , a photo and video share service that allows you to earn while doing what you already do anyway-sharing.  With online presence in everyones lives and a real staple in how we interact on a daily basis, there is nothing more important than finding somewhere to put your videos and pictures where you can send them out into the World Wide Web. 

Even better, Staree is helping users monetize their videos and pictures by bringing in advertising income during their social networking and sharing.

The more views you get, the more advertising income you make!!!

Check this out:

staree_user_interface

staree_user_interface_earnings

 

Now you are saying "Wait, I have hoards of photos and videos online!!!! I can earn income?"

YES.

Getting started is easy.

Head to Staree and apply. Applying is simple because you can do it via your twitter or facebook account and they are sure to approve you asap. You can use the site directly or through apps. The more people view your content, the more you earn!!

There are celebrities already capitalizing on it as you can see:

dot_com_30_rock

christi_lukasiak

As someone that makes an income online, I wanted to express that spreading out how you make it will really help you grow. While there is no one surefire way to make a certain amount of money, there is a way to make sure you are doing the most to optimize your time online.

Good luck and let me know how it goes for you!

 

trisha

Visit Sponsor's Site

Filed Under: Blog Resources

Baby, You Give Review Blogging a Bad Name

27 Nov By 121 Comments

When starting out doing reviews for companies on your blog, it can be pretty overwhelming at first.  You receive all these ‘free’ items in the mail in exchange for your honest opinion of the item after trying it out.  It sounds pretty easy doesn’t it?  And so, people (mostly moms) flock to WordPress (as they should) or Blogger and create their own blog.  Once you start pumping out a few reviews, more and more can come your way.  Soon, your house may start to get a little crowded with all those items.

What’s a blogger to do?

Here comes the morality question of the day:

Is it ever ok to sell your review items?

Read the rest here!

 

Filed Under: Blog Resources

How to secure a sponsorship for a convention

25 Oct By

 With conventions around every corner, bloggers are all abuzz about sponsorships, scholarships, and partnerships with companies to help pave the costly way.

I wanted to bring in a few ways to work with Public Relations and companies in order to secure sponsorships for the conferences that would benefit both parties. Do not kid yourself. Sponsorships are work. They do not come with a signed check for you to do what you want, but instead are based on an exchange and terms of the sponsorship.

Here are a few key points to assist you in your journey.

This article has moved. Please read more:

How to secure a sponsorship for a convention

Filed Under: Blog Resources Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to get into review blogging

24 Oct By

 As is evident here on momdot, there are bloggers of all types that are wild on the net. From mom blogs to adoption blogs, to specialized fields, and contest hosters, there is a bit of everyone. But no one is more revered then the Review blogger. The blogger with free product to test, to show, to give. It’s what Christmas dreams are made of, right?

Well. Sorta.

Getting into review blogging isn’t much different then getting into any other types of blogging. It simply takes dedication, time, and tenacity, but you have to have the drive to do it.

First things first.

1) To be a review blogger, I believe its fair to say…you should be fair! Don’t just take “free” products and say wonderful things-especially if they are not wonderful. Nothing is worse then a sell out. While its honorable to find the good things in each item, its also smart to let your readers know if there are parts of what you are sharing with them, that you don’t like. You want them to come back to you as a reputable source of information.

I know I have done reviews on items and have had visitors say they purchased based on my review. I know I can stand behind those purchases and try to give as much information as I can.

2) Second, be fair to your sponsors. While its up to the sponsor to decide if your a good fit for their product, if you don’t like it, contact them and let them know, send them reasons why you didn’t like it, and give them an opportunity to make things right. I always try to give the sponsor a heads up to make sure there wasn’t a unique problem with the product I received first. I have had shipping errors or even my own mistakes in usage that have affected my view.

3) Third, review blogging is not as glamorous as it seems. It takes time, dedication, willingness to really test out a product and find its pluses and minuses, and then conveying that to a reader in a way that they understand the product. It sometimes takes me hours to write a review post. Make sure you take personalized pictures of the item, which are so much better then just a pro shot from the sponsors site, so your users can really see the product in “real life”. You should use professional editing programs like Adobe.

Many people do vlogging reviews as well. On products that really deserve some testing, like a stroller, its nice to see the product in action. Also, don’t take so many reviews that you are overwhelmed and cannot give proper attention to each product.  I have been there and it can be frustrating. The second you feel like its a bother, you need to take a step back. Its OK to say NO.

To assist the beginning blogger, there are quite a few companies out there that work with bloggers on reviews, that you can sign up for.

1) MomCentral: Mom Central has a mom testing panel and they send out products and information for bloggers to blog about. They guide you with the links they want shared and the company information. You also generally get paid in amazon gift certificates for your assistance. You can accept what you are interested in, and not sign up for the rest. They send out a variety of helpful links and products weekly and can be great for a mom who not only wants to review products, but to make a few amazon dollars in the process.

2) Team Mom: Team mom sends out samplings to its bloggers directly to their house, wtih press kit information on the product and gives you a time frame to blog it in. In the past, I have worked with them on Cabbage Patch and the Bubble Maker. Team Mom allows you to be open and honest about your opinion and encourages both sides of the story

3) MomDot! We host a VIP network on our momdot blogging forum and a review network via Brandfluential.

Now you will find reviews all over the net, paid, unpaid, free products, or even moms reviewing prizes they won or products they bought at the store. Keep adding content, keep working on your craft, and keep building your traffic.

A great way to start is to actually pick products around your home that you love and you hate and talk about them. Make sure you link back to company websites and provide information on where to purchase the products. Eventually, google picks you up and you start to attract PR reps, who are constantly on the prowl for online talkers.

PR reps can really be wonderful for a blog. They offer chances to work with large prizes, and have multiple giveaway winners. They often come to you many times a month and give you many opportunities to review awesome products and great giveaways. You can accept those if they pertain to you or pass and wait for the next one. MomDot currently works with 100s of PR reps and they have brought this site amazing product, trips, and ambassador programs. PR reps can be a wealth of information.

But single handedly, the best way to get reviews, is to ask for them. Its not really a mystery behind finding a sponsor. You simply find the type of product you are interested in, and approach the company in doing a review. In the beginning, you may hit some road blocks like low traffic, but doing exchanges and getting to know other bloggers is a great way to boost that. There are so many social networks like twitter, ning sites, facebook, and StumbleUon, that the opportunity is always out there to bring in new people to your site if you work at it. Providing good, changing, and honest content is one of the best ways to keep people returning time after time and build a network of interested consumers. Also, working with small mom based companies or hand made products, is a nice way to get started.

While it can be nerve wracking to simply ask a company for a review, remember that most companies need to put their product in front of an audience and gain exposure through google ratings, links, and branding. Be confident in what you are providing, let them know your interest and why you believe that product would be beneficial to your user, and overall, sell yourself! I try to take the time to personalize my pitches just like I enjoy when PR takes the time to personalize a pitch to me. Get a media kit and keep it updating. You can edit PDF files and search pdf files and its easy to attach them to make it easy for PR firms to keep on file. Remember, the worst someone could tell you is no.

One thing I like to do, is run a contest along side a review. I love to test a product and then give someone else an opportunity to win it. While its not a requirement by any means, I always ask a company for a review AND a giveaway side by side. Its usually a stronger feedback over all for our sponsors and also allows you to build up some contests on your blog as well. Plus, its fun to be Santa Clause on some days.

The more you start to do reviews and giveaways the more organized you will need to be. Make sure you have a program like excel or even get onto google where you can create spreadsheets to keep track of your posts, winners of contests, dates of publishing and all your pertinent information. If you do it on google, its easy to online document review and download your tables into a file on your computer for further research and updates.

One last thing. While it may not be proper protocol to go to a bloggers site and click on all their sponsors and ask them each for a review or giveaway, its a great way for a beginning blogger to know which companies are outright sponsors of blogs. Check out the sidebar links of review and contest bloggers to find a good start of companies that are interested in supporting and participating in mom bloggers. Remember that as a blogger, its our job to get the information out there if you are a review or contest blogger, so you should welcome when another blogger discovers a link on your page and helps that company move forward to a new spot on the web. We should not be selfish or afraid or upset when we see our sponsors on a variety of sites, but rather, excited that we had a part in a company getting their name out there.

My motto is Desire Creates the Power. So work at it, live it, breath it, and it will become!

Happy Reviewing

Filed Under: Blog Resources Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Newbie Blogging 101

24 Oct By

It happens every day. You hear of a mom blogger that you never knew existed and she is now everywhere and you wonder, now how do I do that?

What does she have that I don’t have?

Marketing online can be quite scary in a sea of thousands upon thousands of blogs and finding where you belong can seem a daunting task. While I don’t know a specific number, I would venture that just as many blogs are abandoned as start up on a daily basis.

A blog, much less a successful blog, can be quite a bit of work.

Here are a few tips to ease the burden and give you some food for thought while creating your blog:

1) Define success: This goes back to when you were a child and your parents asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up. Have some goals to define what success is to YOU. For some, that may mean monetization. For others, comments. For still others, contacts and opportunities with companies is where they are happy. Generally all of those things interact with each other on some level, but you will need to know which is most important to you in order to outline how you will achieve it.

Simply put, you can’t move towards something if you don’t know where you are going.

One thing I caution against, especially as a ‘newbie’, is to define who you are based on your traffic. This is a mistake that PR makes as well. Building up a steady flow of inbound visitors takes links, google love, interesting content, social networking, and time. If you check your statistics every moment, they are very likely to frustrate you and cause you to lose focus. Checking once a few times a week is more than enough to stay on track and gauge your growth.

2) Find your niche (otherwise know as you can’t do it all/be it all): There are moms out there that write books, moms that do speaking engagements, moms that solely work on their blogs, and that is great, but I will tell you this:

You can’t do it all.

You can try, but you will either:

a) fail

or

b) be stressed, overwhelmed, or family-less

 This article has moved. Read more of

Newbie Blogging 101 Here

Filed Under: Blog Resources