Something to Blog About…

It's a well-known fact that the more you post, the more traffic you will get to your blog. Most of the recommendations I have seen from pro bloggers suggest a minimum of three posts a day. At the very least, you should be blogging at least once a day, but 3-6 posts per day is what you need to shoot for.

Why do more posts = more traffic = more money?

Obviously more traffic equals more income potential, so getting more highly targeted traffic is one of our primary goals. Here are just some of the reasons that an increase in daily blog posts might increase your targeted traffic, and ultimately your income:

• If you place relevant tags in each of your posts, you are multiplying your exposure in Technorati by the number of times you post per day.
   
• Each blog post becomes a new page of content on your domain. Properly optimized, this multiplies your potential for exposure in the major search engines by the number of daily posts. 
   
  6 new posts per day x 5 days a week = 120 new pages every month that could potentially get top 10 rankings for their keyword phrase. Imagine the traffic increase you could expect from that 😉
   
• More posts equals more opportunity to get the interest of your readers. Of the 3 or 4 topics you post about on any given day, you have a good chance of interesting a visitor with at least one of them...
   
• If your content is syndicated on other sites, this increases the number of inbound links to internal pages on your domain.
   
• If you are adding 3-6 high quality posts or articles to your site every day, you are increasing your chances of getting 'dugg' or 'trackbacked' by as many times. Being featured on another related blog, or at Digg, not only brings in traffic... it gives your site weight in the search results.
   

Finding Something to Blog About...

Blogging 3-6x/day can seem like an overwhelming task, especially if you are already struggling to come up with topics to blog about once a day. Take a deep breath, shake it off, relax a little (no post has to be perfect!) - and consider these options for finding fresh blog topics easily:

• Look at the top news stories in your niche. You might consider subscribing to specific Yahoo! News feeds via RSS so that you get a constant set of new topics or stories to blog about.
   
• Type your main keyword into Overture, and look for search terms that are popular. If you type in "racking" for example, you find: horse racing, street racing, drag racing, etc. If your blog is about "nascar", your target marketing is interested in: collectibles, tickets, schedules, etc.
   
• See what other bloggers in your niche are talking about. You can create a whole blog post just commenting on their blog post and adding your own views/opinions of the topic. You can also blog it as a recommendation or a resource.
   
• Visit the discussion forums in your niche. The conversations there contain a goldmine of topics and questions that your target market is interested in!
   
• Check in with your sponsors or affiliate programs - is there something new featured, or a special offer running? Blog about it!

I'll be honest with you - I had a hard time blogging several times a day myself up until very recently. I was motivated to blog about 6x/day when I joined PayPerPost, as I sincerely wanted to give the program a fair test.

The requirements at PPP are that you have no consecutive paid posts, and that you can only choose 3 blogging opportunities per day. With every intention of finding out just how much a "regular blogger" could realistically earn with PPP (because I'm in the business of testing 'make money online' programs), I decided to take all 3 opps/day - which means a total of 6 posts/day.

It was a bit of a challenge for me, I admit - but with very positive results so far!

Actually, I should add 'joining payperpost.com' to the list of ways to find creative topics to blog about. Let me give you an example: Coupons, Rebates & Special Offers. This was a 'sponsored post', meaning I was paid $6 to include a text link somewhere within the content of the post.

Getting creative, I wrote an entire blog post around the topic as it relates to us as Internet Marketers. This will interest my target market and my regular readers, no doubt. I also included a whole slew of great keywords that should attract an entirely different crowd: coupon/deal seekers. And of course I included Google Adsense to monetize that segment of traffic.

Six bucks isnt even lunch money - you're right. But the additional traffic, Adsense earnings, and keeping interesting topics in front of my readers... now that's worth a whole lot more. I could even add an affiliate link in there to a cool "free online coupons" program (they have great PPL payouts) and have an additional source of revenue on the page.

Do you see how that works? It's a timely post, as the holiday shopping season is approaching. And in addition to getting the inspiration for a valuable content page on my domain... selecting that topic put my PPP earnings at close to the $100 mark so far for the week. Not bad, huh?

3 days. 100 extra dollars. 13 additional content pages.

Sharing My Results:

I admitted openly that my blog stats were downright sad last month at just few thousand unique visitors. Since I launched this blog in April (approx 5 months ago), I have posted once a day on average - and sometimes less.

So far this month, I have already seen a 50% increase in Unique Visitors. For my simple little blog, that means over 1000 new visitors - with record highs on both unique visitors and the number of pages viewed in the last 3 days (since increasing my post frequency to 4-6/day). Not only are new people visiting the blog, they are reading more pages per visit than usual.

Adsense Impressions have almost doubled, and the overall CTR has risen approximately 42%. My Daily Average for Earnings has more than quadrupled...

But wait a minute, Lynn - I thought you said 'Adsense was dead'?

I didnt, but I did say: It can certainly bring in a few hundred good dollars, so I’m not suggesting you strip it off your blog (that’s entirely up to you). But how many of you could realistically live on what you earn from Adsense clicks at your blog? Not many at all, I assume.

In addition to the increase in Adsense income, I earned a nice sum from other sources as well. I also added plenty of fresh quality content to my domain, got a bucket full of new inbound links to internal pages... and am set up to continue increasing my earnings as the spiders locate and index my content.

Get More Traffic -> Get More Links -> Make More Money -> Get Better Rankings -> Get Even More Traffic -> Make Even More Money...

And that, my friend, is what this blogging gig is all about 😉

Because let's face it: How many of you can afford to just sit around and write all day - no matter how much you enjoy it - for nothing?

Technorati Tags: blogging, writing content, post frequency, monetizing blogs