How To Make Money Blogging With Blogging To The Bank Blogging Mastermind Rob Benwell Reveals The Secrets To Six Figure Blogging

  • Popular posts

  • Free money making blog!

    Subscribe Form

  • What am i up to?

Why People Don’t Make Money Online

Making money online is the same as anything else. You find a system, you use it, you perfect it and you repeat it. I’ll be honest with you, it can take some real graft and whilst you can make money out of what seems like thin-air online, the cash isn’t going to fall out of the sky and onto your lap. You have to work for it.

I found a system that worked for me and thats the important first step. Just because others make money with blogs or PPC, doesn’t mean YOU should can or will make money with the same thing. When you are looking for a system, it is important to be realistic but also look for something that you understand and could work with easily. I have never been very technical, or analytical and thats why I do very little PPC; and when I do it, I usually just pay some one else to sort it out for me. PPC didn’t interest me, or gel well with my skill set, so I found something that WORKED for ME. And you should too!

There are hundreds and thousand of people out there right now jumping from opportunity to opportunity. It’s the reason why there is such a massive variety of opportunities and information products out there in this market/niche. There are so many people with little to no focus, always looking for the next bigger, brighter thing that they never stand still long enough to work on a system that they might enjoy or might make them money. They get frustrated and annoyed, and they blame everyone else in the World for their lack of success, except themselves.

Information overload and analysis paralysis are two very easy things to slip into. There is so much to look at  and check out these days and it is getting REAL hard to tell the good advice from the bad. A lot of people in forums and on blogs suggest that you go into a niche or a market that you are very passionate about. I disagree. I think what is more important, is the system you are going to use to run your online business. You have to be interested/good at that before you can start thinking about the niches you are going in.

For example, say I love the dog care niche but I hate writing articles. How happy do you think I would be spending hours and hours of my time writing articles etc? Do you think I would be productive or at all good at it? I doubt it. And that’s important, because when you find a system to work with, the likely hood is you are going to have to work HARD at it for the next few months. I worked hard at blogging and information products for a long time (or it seemed that way at the time). But these days, I just leverage my past success and assets to make sure what ever I do, is easy, fast and profitable. I am grateful to receive so much traffic to my website, and grateful to have so many great subscribers on my email lists. These are two assets that I worked hard to get, and now I have them, I can work less than 4 hours a week if I wanted to. Can you imagine having that kind of leverage?

The truth is, everyone has the potential to do this. Everyone can lead this kind of lifestyle, but it starts by finding out what you want to do, what system works for you and/or what you are good at. Once you have established that, it’s time to work hard at it for a few months, and give your business a chance to grow, before writing it off and blaming some one else for it’s failure.

If you have decided blogging is the system for you, then maybe blogging to the bank is a product you have bought. Hopefully you have found it useful, but more importantly I hope it is something that works for you, and you are working at. And if you have any questions, feel free to drop by here and leave a comment below the posts.

Thanks

Rob

  • 4 Comments

Dude, Wheres My Blog?

Some of you may have noticed recently that this website and blog has been experiencing a lot of down time lately. In fact, a number of you have made your feelings very known and clear on the blog comments and in the emails.

The first thing I want to clear up is this; if you have a question about BTTB, any of our products or this blog, then get in touch with us at support@bloggingtothebank.com. Eddy is the Customer Relations Manager and he will guide you to where you need to be depending on your query. He’s also a very nice chap and is very eager to help all of our customers, friends and fellow bloggers out. Feel free to give him an email.

Secondly, why has the damn blog been down for so long? Well, ever since the dawn of BTTB we have been hosting our website on Yahoo’s unlimited hosting package. It was always very reliable during launches, was nice and robust and we really enjoyed hosting with them. However, when we uploaded this custom wordpress site to their services, little things started going wrong, and needing tweaked. Unfortunately, Yahoo’s support took AGES to address a lot of our problems. We decided it was time for a change, and so we have moved all of our hosting over on to Hostgator servers. Very reliable and excellent/speedy customer support. So we have been moving  A LOT of stuff from one set of servers to another.

Ultimately it has caused some down time and some major technical issues which we can only profusely apologise for. These things do happen, but we took this decision and made this move to improve the reliability of the site, the affiliate program and the blog. It has been a tough transition and we appreciate all of those who have stuck by us. It has caused some major issues and has even prevented me being able to log into the blog back-room area to make this very post!

We are now on a more robust system and things should be a lot better from here on out (touch wood). However, there is another reason things have been going quiet around these parts, and that is due to the fact we have been making some reasonably big changes. We are currently installing a new helpdesk-based support system so as we can better track and monitor all contact made to us, and so that support will be a much easier issue to handle. We will also be making some other large and significant changes to the site in the close future and we encourage you to keep checking us out on a regular basis to keep up-to-date with it.

As always, feedback is gratefully received and appreciated. Leave your thoughts comments and suggestions in the comment section below.

Cheers

Rob

  • 1 Comment

Driving Traffic Using Article Marketing: A 5 Step Plan

Back in the day when I was starting out creating and running profitable niche websites and blogs, article marketing played a massive part in my traffic getting strategies. My approach to it was very simple. Sit in front of the computer for hours, work hard, work some more, apply some trial and error until I found out what worked. Once I found it, I just repeated it over and over again until I started seeing the results I wanted. As you can probably see from my last post here, that hard work has really paid off and I am reaping the benefits of it today.

Truth be told, I could probably never see myself working that hard again as long as I have my business and a good income stream. It wasn’t fun, and at times it could be really boring. But because I put that hard work in at the beginning I am able to live a lifestyle I could only have dreamt of a few years ago. And I did dream, and once I was done dreaming, I took action and turned those dreams into reality!

Why This Matters to You

Now I know sitting here and telling you to work hard and find out what works through trial and error is not going to be popular, so that is why I am not going to do. Today, I am going to share with you some of the benefits of the hard work I put in a few years ago now, and I am going to teach you how to get article marketing right. I am going to talk about the techniques and strategies my team of employees are using today to continue to improve our website search engine rankings, and drive traffic to our offers.

 

Article Marketing Strategy

1.       Do Your Research

When it comes to article marketing, writing articles loosely tied to your nice or subject and pointing back to your website is really not going to cut it. You need to research your keywords and then you need  to research your topic. Here are some excellent keyword tools you can use to generate ideas for article topics:

 

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

http://www.google.co.uk/sktool/

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

http://www.google.co.uk/trends

 

The 4 keyword tools above should give you enough of a clue to see what you want to be writing about. You could also take a little time to check out the most viewed articles in the category you are targeting and look at the titles and keywords used in those.

 

Once you have done the above, depending on the topic or keyword, you might have to do some research. Again, you could use ezinearticles to get a flavour for what is topical, but you could also visit news sites, or read books from a local library to study up on the topic. If you are genuinely an expert in your niche though, chances are once you have some keywords, you’ll have an idea for the kind of content you will want to be producing.

 

By now you will have a list of keywords you could potentially use, and some ideas for content.  You want to find the “long-tail”. This is typically a keyword phrase that extends beyond two or three words.

To find the best keyword candidates, do a search in Google for each keyword, and always put the keywords in “quotation marks”. This will show you the true amount of sites you are competing with. If you find search phrases with under 60,000 competing sites, chances are, you are on to a winner and it’s going to be easier for you to rank your article in the SERP’s for that keyword.

 

2.       WriteThe Article

It’s time to put the fingers to the keyboard and type out your article. Here’s a quick note on how to use keywords in the article:

When writing an article, you don’t want to overload it with keywords and make it look spammy and crummy to the search engines, you want the use of the keyword to look natural and evenly distributed in your content.  So try and follow the following pattern:

A)     Keywords in headline/title.

B)      Keywords in first paragraph.

C)      Keywords in body of content (even just once)

D)     Keywords present in the conclusion.

E)      Use the keyword you are targeting for your site as anchor text in your author’s bio box

 

Don’t overdo it. Try and have the keyword in each of the above section just once.

 

Keep your article tight. Keep it between 400-600 words max. Remember, we’re using this article to encourage people to visit our site. We don’t want to give away everything in this article or it leaves no incentive for the reader to click on your sig link.

 

 

3.       Submit the Article

If you’ve followed the above steps to this point, you are through the worst of it and ready to start submitting your quality article to the directories.

The most important directory is eziearticles.com. Some times, it can seem like an age before your article is approved, but when it is (and only after it is approved) you can then go on to submit your article to multiple directories. Here is a quick list of article directories you might submit to below:

-          http://ezinearticles.com

-          http://goartices.com

-          http://seachwarp.com

-          http://articlebase.com

-          http://articledashboard.com

-          http://buzzle.com

-          http://articlealley.com

-          http://isnare.com

-          http://articlecity.com

 

The above directories should give you something to start with, but there are hundreds of directories out there that you can use, it’s just a case of firing the old search engine up and giving it a search: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=article+directories

 

Here is another tactic we have started to use in the office lately. To make the work load lighter, occasionally we’ll pay and post our articles using services such as http://articlemarketer.com and http://isnare.com  . These services for a small or monthly fee will add your article to hundreds of article directories for you. This cuts down on your workload considerably. This tactic is only for those with a budget to work with.

Alternatively, you could use one of our recently discovered secret weapons if you are looking to turbo charge your backlink efforts.  Go to http://articlemarketingautomation.com sign up for the $47 a month package ad start submitting your articles with their system.

Have a look for yourself; the above link is NOT an affiliate link. This is just a straight-up, shoot-from-the-hip endorsement and recommendation. They have got an excellent network of websites, which they put your relevant content on. So say yours is a health article, then your article will be included on all the websites in their network in the health niche. That is simplifying it admittedly, and you also get some good training on how to use the system when you purchase. It’s a cool approach though and one you should most certainly check out. Using their network (which is always growing) they got on to page 1 in Google in 12 days! Check them out!

 

4.       Promote the Article

This is something that is really not talked about a lot. In order for your article to climb the SERP’s and sit on the top spots for the keywords your targeting then you are going to need to do a little work on the article itself in terms of SEO.

One really quick way to get started with that is to social bookmark it. Now a lot of the social bookmark places won’t allow bookmarks on domains of article directories as this tactic has been slightly over and improperly used. There are still social bookmark sites that do this however, and the trick is not to be overly “spammy”. Remember you are trying to provide, good quality, helpful information.

It is also useful to build some backlinks to your article and you can use pages that you have setup on blogger or Squidoo etc to achieve this.

 

5.       Don’t Spin it, Video it!

Get out the PowerPoint software; get out the screen capture software (camtasia, camstudio, jing, screenflow etc) and video a short 3-5 minute presentation covering the content of your article. Upload your video and distribute it on the main major video directories (includingsites like youtube.com etc) at tubemogul.com. It is a free service and makes mass submission of videos ridiculously simple. Now you have more opportunities to attract traffic to your website/offer!

Video is an under-used medium by Internet marketers and some people have said to have doubled their article marketing results with this little tactic alone.

 

 

So there you go. Five ste[ps (with some unique twists) to help you take your article marketing to the next level and generate some insane traffic for your squeeze page, landing page, whatever. I hope you have enjoyed the content of this post and got some actionable tasks out of it that you can take away now and apply to your business.

The main thing though is to stay consistent and try and get 100 articles out as quickly as possible. If they are of decent quality, you’ll get an influx of qualified traffic and leads to your site over the next few months you decide to implement this with.

Take care for now

 

Rob Benwell

  • 4 Comments

Long Time No See: A Quick Update

The last time I posted on this Blog was around the 11th of May and ironically I talked about how to get past “Blog Writer’s Block”.  It’s been so long since we last spoke, I guess it must have looked like I had fallen to the “block” myself. The truth is though, business has been crazy in the last few months and after all these very long and serious meetings I have been reminded of why I used to work from home by myself!

You see I started out making money online in my late teens and early twenties. I cracked a system which allowed me to pull in thousands of dollars a week using blogs alone and it was amazing. I thought I was dreaming, and I couldn’t believe making money online could be so easy and so straight forward! I went out and shared my knowledge with the World Wide Web with my now famous and Clickbank busting top ten product “Blogging to the Bank”. Since that first release, which saw me rake in thousands of sales and build a sizeable list in the blogging niche “Blogging to the Bank” has become a World famous brand within this industry and I have been able to grow my business off the back of its success for years, releasing another two versions of the original BTTB package.

But the reason why my business has grown so much in the last two years is because I haven’t stood still. Times are changing, the game is changing and it’s important to stay two steps ahead at all times. I have been affiliate marketing, launching SEO, make money online and other related products. I have been developing blogs selling hosting and creating killer offers for my subscribers for the last year now and my business has grown ten-fold!

But these last few months have been really exciting, as I have been branching out into other areas of online marketing completely unrelated to blogging and making money online. I am now slowly developing a diverse portfolio of online and offline business ventures that could see me double or even triple my income in the next year or two.  I am diversifying, and in economic downturns like the one we are currently gripped in, it is ESSENTIAL to diversify your business interests.

So why does this matter to you and why would it even be of any interest?

 Well read all of the above again and keep in mind that I started out as an early-twenty-something kid in a bedroom with a computer and an Internet connection. I started with no money and virtually no idea of what I was doing, but I have turned that into a thriving successful, profitable business in economic circumstances which would make the healthiest of big corporate companies shudder with worry. I employ full time UK staff in an office I run, and I employ a variety of skilled and competent freelancers from around the World. I am the King of my own business empire and YOU CAN BE TOO!

It doesn’t matter if you start out with nothing, and it doesn’t matter if you start out in a bedsit. You just need the right information and the will to do something with it, and in 1-3 years time, you could be the owner of your very own multi-million dollar business. Is that something that sounds appealing to you?

I have been super busy lately, but it’s time to shift the focus back to the blog and it’s time to start helping people like you with your online business again. In the coming weeks, me and my team are going to be dishing out some incredible free content here on the blog and we’re going to be helping you to make 2009 a special year, for your business and your family! Not only that, but we’ve got some incredible opportunities coming up for you blog writers and content creators out there as well that could see you profiting in a matter of days to weeks!

Thanks for reading guys, and if you want to start building your own diverse and profitable online Internet business empire, then don’t forget to sign up to my free ($497 value) newsletter at the top of the blog!

 

Here’s to your success!

 

Rob

  • 13 Comments

Blog Writers Block- Struggling to Create Content?

If you’re anything like me there have been days when you have crawled out of bed, looked at the computer screen, gone to touch the keyboard and NOTHING has happened. You can’t think of a single thing you want to write about, and even if you can, you really don’t have the time, motivation, conviction or patience to research the dam thing and then make a post about it. Sometimes inspiration seems to take a vacation and leave you behind and when this happens I call it Blog Writer’s Block. If you’ve ever struggled to create content on one of your “off” days then this article is for you and will teach you how to get over it and jump back on the metaphorical blogging horse!

Blog Writer’s Block isn’t a life-threatening condition and it is definitely curable. Even the great writer Shakespeare got “writers block” and could struggle to write anything of any value. Have you seen that guy’s plays? Man, they are heavy. And if that guy can write heavy stuff like that with writers block, then creating a bit of content for your blog is going to be a cake walk, so here is how I am able to keep producing fresh content for my blogs.

1. Take a break

Despite being one of the laziest people I know, I still work pretty dam hard at my blogs and business. Sometimes a little too hard, and now and then all you need to get over the writer’s block is to just take a well earned break. Distract your mind from work, relax, chill out and do something fun that you actually enjoy. Then, once you are refreshed and ready to get back to the grindstone then return to the computer, fasten yourself in and get ready to write!

2. Share an Opinion

As a blogger it is almost your duty to share opinions on things and if the above suggestion didn’t work out, then hopefully this one will. Look for articles, new, views, debates, interviews with celebrities in your industry, market or niche. Find something current and of interest to your readers and simply share your opinion on it. Summarize the news, the event or the article (whatever it is) and comment on it. Don’t just repeat the story, the readers could go anywhere to read about it, they are reading your post to see what you think and see what spin you put on it! Surely you could smash out a few hundred words expressing an opinion on something in your niche? If you can’t, then maybe its time to start thinking about why you are in that niche!

3. Lunch?

Have you eaten? Not right now, but before you have started writing. Doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, make sure you are not mal-nourished before bogging. An empty stomach is going to distract you and some foods (such as bananas and fish) actually help improve the performance of your brain! Also make sure (for much the same reasons) you are hydrated and well-watered. And by hydrated and well-watered, I don’t mean have a few sips on some Miller Lite or a Bloody Mary. I mean make sure you’ve drank enough water or healthy fruit juices for the day. Fizzy drinks are okay, but beware of the “crash” after drinking a fizzy or energy drink.

4. Borrow Content

Okay, controversial one here. Go out and look at other blogs and articles over the web. Find some stuff that interests you and look for stuff you haven’t written about before. If the subject matter fits with your blog, do some research and write about it in your own words.

Here is what you make sure you NEVER DO. NEVER copy other bloggers, writer’s authors or publishers. Seriously, don’t be a jack ass, because it will be more trouble than its worth. There is nothing wrong about writing on a similar or identical topic but there is no excuse for straight up copying (stealing).
If you want to make life a little easier with this technique get a program called Dragon Naturally Speaking”. This writes down what words you are speaking in a word processor as you are talking. It makes content creation A LOT easier and less time consuming.

5. Ultimate Super Writer’s Block Tip!

My final tip will probably be the least popular one, but it is an exceptionally effective one. Why so unpopular then? You have to spend some cash.

You see if you really can’t keep up with creating fresh content for the blog and blogging has started to take over your life then it is time to outsource your content creation and just pay someone else to make some killer articles for you. This lets you have more time to go away and look at how to get more traffic to your blog or how to expand your business, or maybe even just gives you more time to spend some more time with the kids, whatever, its up to you and is a sure fire way to break the writer’s block, because now you’re not even having to do the writing!

So there you have it. My five tips to overcoming Blog Writer’s Block. My biggest tip though is to make sure you are not over-doing it and concentrate on the important things in life, in your business and on your blog, and sometimes straining your brain cells for hours every day to make some fresh content is often not the best approach.

As always, if you have got any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below and I’ll get back to you when I can.

Talk soon

Rob

  • 12 Comments

How to Make Money From Your Blog

It just had to be the first ‘real’ post on the Blogging to the Bank blog so lets cut to the chase and talk about how to make money from your blog. Millions of people across the globe own blogs, some of them know they can make money from their blogs and some of them do not.

The humble blog started out as an online diary, a way that ordinary people could express their thoughts online and establish their web presence. Some blogs have made people famous and some blogs have gotten people arrested. The blog has evolved and developed into so much more in the last couple of years though, and now a blog can be nearly anything you want it to be; an online store, a magazine website, a salespage, a membership site or just a blog! This is largely thanks to the emergence of wordpress and the various plugins and templates that have been developed over the years. All of these improvements and new features make it easier for people like you and me to own our own blogs and profit from them, so lets look at three real down and dirty tactics that will make you money with your blog!

1. Google Adsense

This is the fastest way to generate some income from your site, but let me warn you up front, you’re not going to make a lot of money with this method. Its just a real quick way to get started.
Google adsense is a program ran by Google where you put some code on your site which allows Google to place content relevant ads on your site. Every time a visitor clicks on one of those adverts you get a few cents. There are various rules to this program and requirements that your website has to meet (having a privacy policy, not telling visitors to click adverts, placing the adverts in a certain manner) but this is a program you can sign up to very quickly at google.com. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you do or you don’t have, Google doesn’t care, as long as you have some where to put the ads, you can do Google Adsense. It won’t make you the kind of money you need to quit your job but its a start!

2. Sell Advertising Space

This is one of the simplest and easy ones to do. Now before you can sell advertising space you want your blog to be getting a bit of traffic. You don’t need thousands of visitors a day, but the more visitors you have, the more you can charge for advertising. To start off with, I’d recommend joining a couple of forums like sitepoint.com and digitalpoint.com and looking through the “advertisers” section in the market place. There you can see what kind of prices are being charged on websites with or without traffic. So for example, if a website with 20k visitors a day is selling a “text link ad” for $100 a month and your site only gets a thousand visitors a day, then for a similar ad, you should be charging less than $100 a month.

You get the idea.

Go to these marketplaces and see what advertising space is popular with people looking to advertise. Make sure you do your research and find a good price point. Once you have done that, post an offer to sell advertising space yourself. Remember to post your site’s stats up and be honest about your traffic numbers and where possible provide proof.

Make sure you don’t let advertisers pay for too many months in advance. The more traffic your site gets, the better Pagerank you receive, the more you can charge for advertising. Once you have mastered all this you can join various ad networks that can make the whole process easier, pay you on a performance basis or simply get you in front of a larger marketplace.

Some blogs make thousands of dollars a month with advertising in many different obscure niches. The best bit about this, it takes virtually no work to maintain to keep the money pouring into your Paypal and bank account!

3. Affiliate Marketing

If you’ve got a loyal readership or if your blog is getting a reasonable amount of visitors then you might want to write a few posts recommending certain services and products and then provide a link to that product’s website. Of course the link you will provide will be a cleverly disguised affiliate link which will then allow you to make a commission on any purchases made by the visitors that visited that site through your link. You don’t want to make every post an advert though encouraging people to buy products. Make sure you give honest recommendations so as to maintain your integrity with your readership ad build trust. You might also want to try and build an email list using your blog so as you can email your subscribers from time to time with updates on your blogs and affiliate promotions.

4. Write Review Posts

I personally love this idea. There are hundreds and thousands of companies out there looking for people in the “blosophere” to write about their products and websites. They are so desperate for bloggers to talk about them they have even started paying them to do it! And now there are websites that put companies and bloggers together so that bloggers can get paid for a post they make about a company.

Basically you add your blog profile to one of these sites and companies in your niche or market may contact you and ask you to write a blog post in exchange for a value of money. How much money you get paid depends on your Pagerank and how many visitors you get to your site etc etc. Some people make $40 a post while others make $6000 a post. Its easy money once you get into it. If you’re interested in getting into this then go check out reviewme.com and sign up with your blog.

Alternatively, there is another site (payperpost.com) which allows companies to state what they are looking for and what they will pay, and bloggers can take them up on their offers as long as their blog meets the criteria laid down by the company in the campaign description. In fact, there are a lot of sites around that allow for this kind of work, its just a case of using our god friend Google to find them!

Try and not over do it with review posts etc though, as again you’ll lose the trust and goodwill of your readership.

So there are four of the most popular things you can do to make money with your blog. Some you can do today and see results with today, and some that take a little longer. If you’re a smart cookie, you’ll have noticed a trend in all of the techniques I have mentioned. The more traffic your site has, the more money you can make. That really will be the key to your success. You can still make money with a little traffic, and ten invest that little bit of money into generating more traffic. Once you get that traffic you can start charging more and making more money and then suddenly you are in profit. It doesn’t happen overnight, it might take a month or two of work, but it is doable and people are doing it every day.

It doesn’t matter if your blog isn’t the best, keep it simple and get some dam content up on it! Worry about tweaking it and making it uber cool later! Just build some backlinks and get some traffic to that thing!

So I hope this article has helped you out in figuring out what you want to do to make money from your blog. There are other ways you can profit from your blog, but these are some of the quickest, easiest and most basic ways of making with a blog. I wish you all the best, and as usual, if you’ve got any questions or anything to say about my post today, feel free to reach out, get in touch and leave a comment below.

Rob

  • 23 Comments

Welcome to the new Blogging to the Bank Blog

Hey everyone

After two months developing the blog design we’re finally putting it up and making the new blog live…

… Now this is where it gets exciting as the new blog will provide free tips, techniques from me as well as my team as well as post about things going off in the community, my life and in the company

Make sure you sign up to the rss feed at the top and keep visiting back as we’ll be updating a couple of times per week with some awesome content.

Talk soon

Rob Benwell

  • 9 Comments