Big Foot Web Marketing

The term is bit vulgar – I apologize. This is a term I use when I take a very popular post on a blog and completely pimp it out to squeeze every once of money and value out of it.

There may be better or more effective ways to do it but this is how my mind works and how I get from point A to depositing a cheque in the bank.

To Pimp Out Your Blog Posts

You MUST ave a popular blog with good, solid traffic and lots of quality content. If your blog is new or you don’t have many posts or readers then you will piss people off. You are taking a popular post and totally prostituting it so you better have some quality stuff surrounding it if you want to maintain credibility.
If your blog is new and you dont have a lot of good content- stop reading now and come back in a few months,

Figure out What ARE your most Popular Posts.

These change day to day depending on news and season. I generally just use something like Daily Top 10 plugin for wordpress You can also see what’s going on using Mybloglog or any analytics program. You basically want posts with lots of traffic. This method will also work very well on “Best Blah Blah Lists”, for example “Best Christmas Albums for Jazz Lovers” I may set this up as a test on the site a report back on result despite it not being a popular post (yet).

What Kids of Posts Work Well for Monetizing:

-Product posts work very well. This is why “top” or “best” lists work very well. I may have a popular post on how to stop page rank bleeding but will not get me a great return on any products. This is why if you are going to create “make money blogging” type site forget about the making any money part .
Take a look at your existing popular posts and see if there is a way to include products on the post- software? electronic something? tool? equipment? Beef up the post if you can with mentions of tools or utilities you use. Don’t be obvious about it- only add the info if it enhances the post.

Pimp Out Your Post

Throw every things you got at it -in an intelligent way.

1. Google Adsense – The Best Ad Size to Use for Highest CTR

What is the best Google ad size to use?
The BEST ad to use for Google Adsense HANDS DOWN no questions asked when you want a high click though rate is the 336×280 square. It is in your face but it does work. I wold not wrap your text if you to maximize. The first thing your reader should see when then land on your page is that ad- above the fold and preferably in the middle of the page.

2. Amazon Widgets

– I use a slideshow. I use the biggest size that will fit on my blog. I select 5-16 related products. Using my ” Best Christmas Albums for Jazz Lovers” scenario I would have in my slideshow all the albums listed and then some.
Place this bedside or under your large Adsense rectangle. Don’t embed it in your post. You want these ads above or as close to above the fold as possible.
Amazon recently added a widget for users to to listen to mp3’s- for this kind of post I would ad at the end of post and use some sort of call to action that will get them to listen, Like-” this is my favourite cut off the album- listen to it and tell me what you think” etc.
For the truly aggressive you could offer a contest or promotion and have readers write a review, or a post on their blog about a favorite memory that one of song invokes.

Add product images. If a long-ish post add some product images. Breaking up paragraphs create visual interest. Do NOT go too big and by all means embed and wrap into post text.

Text Affilate Links- Commission Junction, Amazon, etc.

Make sure you link your products to affiliates . I prefer Amazon for lots of reasons. I do a bit with Commission Junction for the really niche products . In a text link embedded in a post I rarely leave the anchor text untouched. I will edit to make it sound more natural and I almost always add nofollow tags.

You can also try linking to presell pages. Link to other posts on your site that review or describe the product in more detail and that pages links to affiliate.

Use Your Posts Popularity to Boosts Other Pages

Use your popular posts to encourage visitors to visit other related post that might be buried. A plugin like Related Posts is limited. With the ‘Best Christmas Jazz list” you could also mention in post that you have a list of “Best Fathers Day Gifts for Audiphiles” or whatever the season dictates.

Popular posts also are a good way to get readers to subscribe to your feed and newsletter- Make sure you are using call to action and not mamby pamby wording.

What NOT to Do to your Popular Posts

Don’t sacrifice integrity of your blog for some quick and easy money on a few pages. I do this to 10-20 pages on a blog where I have all ready established myself to my readers. My blogs are not littered with affiliate ads in sidebar and header. I will say this again you will PISS OFF readers if you do this to all your pages and lose all credibility .

Do not over sell a product or give too much information- This is directly opposite to the idea of linking to a pre-sell page where you go into greater detail about book/product/service. It is a bit fo trial and error.
If I use a popular post to links to pre-sell page then the person who follow the link is all ready pretty intersted and the pre-selll page can tip them over to buy the item. Sometimes.

Mentioning product in a post without giving away too much information may encourage reader to click on the affiliate link and a cookie is dropped and you will get cut of whatever they buy within a time period i.e Amazon is 24 hours and other affiliates can be as long as 30 days. There is no right answer on which is best- it is situational and you will have to test.
I will say during Christmas season getting a reader to click on affiliate link when buying trends are high is more effective then trying to “sell” one specific product.

You can really maximize a popular blog post and drive up its revenue by being aggressive with Google ads and affiliate links. It takes careful balance not to turn off your reader and should be handled with care.

If you want ideas for specific site then feel free to post site info in comments section.

Tags: Blog For Money, Google Adsense, Internet Marketing and Blogs by Lisa Stewart
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Working with some template files (.tpl ) files this week and came across problem with Google Adsense code not showing up.

AdSense Code Not showing Up?

My Adsense code was not showing up when I pasted into some .tpl files
.I knew I was supposed to do something but took me a bit to figure out. The answer was pretty straight forward, need to add literal tags. Literal tags prevent a section of the template from being parsed, placing the contents directly into the template.
Basically- this is all you need to know:

{literal}
ADSENSE CODE HERE
{/literal}

You can open up the .tpl file in notepad or edit in your ftp client as well.

Tags: Google Adsense, Web Design by Lisa Stewart
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As of last Week Google Adsense has made available video units for Canadian sites.
I have not had enough time to tell how effective ( read profitable) they are. Ideally I would like to pop a small video in a sidebar but the formats are just too large.
With this them ( Networker) the largest image I can place anywhere is has to be less than 400 pixels or theme format is scrambled.

Tags: Google Adsense by Lisa Stewart
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Wrapping Text Around Your Google Adsense Ads

This is a more aggressive approach to inserting your Google AdSense Ads into your blog posts. Floating your ads left of your text.You will get a higher CTR on embedded ads like these rather than ads popped into the top or bottom of post. Weigh the benefits of the higher CTR vs. the in your face style Google Ads. A blog that screams MONETIZED may not have the same credibility as one that is more low key. I am reluctant to post ads on this site and I use sparingly. I am much more aggressive with a few of my other sites.

What Size Google Ads Should I Use?

If you are going to to this I suggest you use smaller sized ads, like the 200×200 square or the 250×250 square- especially if the posting area of your blog is not very wide ( like this blog) . It gets repetitive but you really have to test what ads work best where- there is no one magic formula. All the “Make Money Blogging-type” blogs will tell you basics- like ads should be above the fold , in “hot areas” and blend into your site or the reverse and totally stand out, etc. ;the rest is really testing and more testing and using intuition. This is the difference between a 1% CTR and an 8% CTR. All of my blogs have a steady CTR of about 6-12% depending on the blog and the season. I account for the high CTR because of the niche areas of each blog and the ad positioning. These are the MOST important factors. learning whats ads work best mean setting up endless channels and experimenting. This can all go out the window if you decide to switch themes, i.e. Going from a 3 column split theme to a 3 columns or 3 columns theme.

Code for Embedding Google Adsense Ads in Wordpress Blog Posts

Embedding your Google AdSense ads deeper into your post- by wrapping the text- is worth trying. here is the easiest way to do it. If you are using AdSense Plugin, you can set up in there. I do recommend NOT doing that as first- if you use the same code for all your posts you wont be able to track the ads in each post and how they are performing. Set up separate channels and insert the code in several post to see how they do for you. Even better is to put the wrapped ads in post where you have had Google Ads up for awhile and compare results.

Float Ad to the Left:

To float your Google AdSense code to left use this code to float ad to the right

<div style="float:left">paste your adsense code here</div>

will look like this:

to float Google AdSense Code to the right:

<div style="float:right">paste your adsense code here</div>

I have a page set up with some quick and basic HTML cheats, like this one if you need to know some quick HTML code or forget sometimes, like I do

Tags: Blog For Money, Google Adsense, Internet Marketing and Blogs by Lisa Stewart
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