Monetizing blogs for affiliate marketing and seo

Kristopher Jones- President Pepperjam Network - Moderator

Speakers:
Tim Jones- Owner, TheRealTimJones.com - Lives in Florida - here is a link to his post on his blog summarizing the talk:

http://therealtimjones.com/2010/01/25/b … eting-seo/ - GO TO THIS BLOG AND READ AND LEARN.  HE HAS ADDED OTHER LINKS TO OTHER BLOGS THAT SUMMARIZED THE SESSION AS WELL.  NOTICE HOW ALL OF THEM ARE PROMOTING EACH OTHER AND LINKING TO EACH OTHER.

John Carcutt- SEO manager, MediaWhiz

Drew Bennett- Owner, BenSpark.com - http://www.benspark.com/

Murray Ross Newlands, blogger, MurrayNewlands.com - http://www.murraynewlands.com/

All of the plug ins, etc. will be on each one of these guys blogs....

Question:  What is the top Blog Software?

Wordpress across the board. 

Why? Great for SEO, Clean, Fully Customizable

Murray, how did you take WP and build the brand MurrayNewlands.com?

Tried to come up with content in his niche that others would want to read and others would want to share
Therefore, the content you share will be content that others will want to share.  They retweet it, digg it, etc.
He interviews other people in his industry as well.
The more that you can help others promote their brand, the more you promote your brand.  They promote you because you promoted them.  Having others promote you is a great way to get promoted.

Drew?  How did you come up with your idea to take a photo everyday and write about it?
He puts is stuff out there and connects with others and responds to every comment and every email.  That keeps people connected and coming back.  He never intended to monetize his site, but people started calling him and asking him to advertise because he had so much traffic.  He only promotes stuff he uses himself.

Tim, someone signs up for WP for free, what steps do they take to get started?
Provide good content and interact with others off the blog?  Also make sure you have a clear niche and a clear set of keywords that your are targeting and categories set up and make sure that everything that you do is geared toward providing good content or sharing good content.

John, what kind of mistakes to people make?

When setting up the site the blog is set up with a robust "no follow, no index" by default.  Make sure to click on the "do you want your blogs to be seen in the search engines" in the dashboard area in Wordpress.  It is highly recommended that you host your own WP blog on your own domain (this goes for both the free Wordpress.com blogs and WP blogs hosted on your own domain.

Don't dilute posts by going off topic.

Murray, what mistakes do you see?
Not optimizing the blog title tage
Not optimizing posts for keywords
Not linking between posts
Not using plug ins that link keywords in the whole blog
Every two weeks he writes a summary post and links back to all the posts on those topics. 

Treat blog posts as short articles using keywords and keyword research.

Participate outside your blog.  Use outside sites like Squidoo, Articles, etc. to drive traffic back to your blog. Even PPC, etc. 

Customize your permalink structure- do not have tags and categories the same.  Try to make your categories uniques.  Your categories should be your main keywords for the blog

Links Apps and Plug Ins for WP
All in One SEO Pack
Google XML Sitemaps
Broken Link Checker- Search engines do not like broken links. This plug in ensures you have none
Best Posts Summary
blog traffic exchange
Wordpress.com stats
WP Super Cache
WP-DB-Backup
Akisment
WP contact Form III
E-mail responder
Disqus
TanTan Noodles
Comment Luv
Tweet this
Tweetmeme
add post footer
odiogo listen button

Links back to the blog. How do they do it?
Make sure to link back with anchor text or keywords for your rank partners.
Find other bloggers in your niche and help each other by linking using keywords you each decide are relevant. 
Also make sure to link to deep pages within your site, not just the home page.
Make sure the site that is linking to you is related to your niche/topic.
Do not only use the same keywords for every link back to your blog.  Change it up.

How do you monetize your blog and how do you balance between providing good content and monetization strategies?

Drew: Write sponsored content, promote sponsored products that he uses himself
make sure it is something he is using himself

Education

How is someone going to search for your keywords?

Treat your blog as a true business.  Do research.  Test and fail.  You are most likely going to have to spend money on research.

Focus on building content that other people may want to link to (reviews, etc, and more)

Integrate product feeds in your specific niche - if you write about something, put a product feed at the end of the post.

Create your own product to promote- answer a question or solve a problem and create a product or course.

Traditional Affiliate Networks- Pepperjam Network/Commission Junction/Google Affiliate Network/ShareASale/Buy.at, etc.
Contextual - Google Adsense
InText Solutions- SkimLinks/ vigLinks/ Kontera
(Widgets) Chitika Shopping Ads
Paid Links that pass link juick like text link ads
Pay per posts (ie . blog reviews that pass link juice)
CPA  Networks - Azoogle, Affiliate.com, clickbooth, etc.
CPM banner / Ad Networks - AdBrite/Valueclick Media / CasaleMedia

Add Product data feeds at the end of your post that may be talking about a particular product or niche.  Use plugins

If you are going to approach a company and ask them to give you a product to promote, make sure that you have a plan, even if you have no products.

The tighter your niche, the more successful you are going to be.  Look for the niche within the niche.

Example: Dog training - too broad - Instead, how to keep your german shepherd from barking (drills down in to a very specific niche within the Dog Training niche)

If you are going to promote a brand, reach out to the company and tell them what you are doing.  They may actually promote your site for you and will link to your site.  Show the product in action.

Your number one goal is to keep people coming back to your site. Continue to provide valuable content on a consistent basis on an ongoing basis. 

Try do develop multiple traffic sources as well as an opt in list.

Tracker
StartPR.com
Search for social tracking sites
Set up a column for yourself on Tweetdeck to track mentions of yourself
Track mentions about yourself.
Video is going to be extremely important for content.

A lot of this information is relevant to APS.  Build a blog all around you and APS and continue to write about your experiences and what you are learning.

Good luck.

Brett