Enkay Blog

Free Advertising Credits

I noticed that some of you were a little skeptical in wanting to enter the contest that I have running so I decided to give you a reason to experiment with affiliate marketing. Yesterday, I mentioned that in order to make money, you have to spend money and because I want to help you out, I’ve put together a list of a few ad networks that are offering free advertising credits for you to try them out.

I have tried out Adwords and Facebook but in this list I’ll also be including the MSN AdCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing as well. This post includes a total of $225 worth of Ad credits for all the major publishing networks out there. Here is a list:

Facebook - $100
To get your $100 Facebook credit, you have to follow a few steps and to help you out, I’ve created a small step-by-step list for you since this one will require you to be familiar with facebook a little. First off, you have to have a facebook account before you are able to do this but here are the steps:

1) Add the VISA Business Network application and complete their registration process
2) Once the registration process is complete, wait for an email
3) The email will include a code such as 1111-2222-3333-4444
4) In Facebook, at the bottom of any page it will say “Advertising”
5) Once you’ve set up your ads click on the Billing tab at the top
6) Then click on “Funding Sources” and select “Enter Coupon Code”
7) Your funds will be added to your account

Google Adwords - $50
Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter and Yahoo Search Marketing as not as complicated as Facebook in order to get your free credit however, Facebook does offer a lot more money to experiment with. Adwords is offering $50 and all you have to do is sign up by clicking on this link. You will be required to pay a $5 activation fee.

MSN AdCenter - $50
MSN AdCenter is also currently offering $50 and all you have to do to receive your free credit is click on this link and complete the sign up process in order to get started. You will be required to pay $5 as an activation charge which is quite common and click here to sign up.

Yahoo Search Marketing - $25
Yahoo offers a much smaller advertising credit compared to the others and I’m not really sure why considering that it does compete with the rest but based on my research, they started off at $200 of free credit and have slowly trickled down to $25. Either way, it is something and can help you get started and all you have to do is click here.

Conclusion
So hopefully this post can help you get started by providing you with quite a bit of free credit so that you don’t have to risk as much money. Be sure to know that some networks will ask you for daily spending limits instead of monthly spending limits so keep monitoring it in order to avoid spending too much of your own money without realizing it. Either way, its not that complicated and if I can do it, then anyone can! Hope you guys have a great weekend!

Making Money with Affiliate Marketing

Before I begin speaking about how you can make money with affiliate marketing I wanted to let you know about the contest. Ive gotten a few entries into the contest so Im going to try to put up a leader board every so often to keep you updated about the contest results. If you haven’t entered the contest yet, go here for more details.

Now lets talk about Affiliate Marketing. Here are a few tips to help you out

1) Finding The Right Marketing - There are many ways you can market the offers that you select to promote. You can use Facebook, Myspace, Google Adwords, etc. among many others. The idea is that some promotional methods may be better than others. You could have a really well established email list that you could use or choose between the advertising mediums I’ve mentioned. Its all about picking the right method.

2) Picking The Right Offers - Some people get caught up in CPA but instead pick the offers that you think will work the best or will sell the best based on the target demographic or your email list. You need to pick offers that will sell the best so, for example, if you are advertising on Facebook you have to realize that the biggest demographic is between ages 16-25 and so you would have to pick offers to sell to that demographic so you would pick offers like student loans over offers for better insurance.

3) Dont Be Skeptical/Afraid - The reason why most people dont really take to affiliate marketing that quickly is because theres a financial input required and some people are not ready to take on that risk. There will be a post tomorrow about how you can get some free credits to try out different publishing networks such as Facebook, Adwords, etc. For those of you who want to give it a try or are unsure of how it works and just want to get some hands on experience then experiment with a small amount of money just to get a feel of things. Its sort of like investing your money, you win some and you can lose some but one you know the formula then all you’ll be doing is winning, so dont be afraid to spend a little.

So hopefully this post gives you a little help regarding affiliate marketing. I’ll have a post tomorrow about different coupons for ad publishing networks so that you can get a head start on your affiliate marketing career. Anyway, hope you guys have a good weekend and I’ll post for you tomorrow!

Setting Your Advertising Prices

Advertising on my blog is getting more and more popular and as I browse around other blogs I try and see what ad pricing looks like and so far I’ve been impressed with some of the deals you can get but some blogs, I’m just not even sure how to describe it. The point is that, you cannot set your advertising prices at a level that is beyond what its worth. Same thing goes for any kind of commodity in your daily life. Example, if cereal was now $20 a box for something that originally cost $3-$5 a box, you’d either be really desperate to buy it or you’d stay away from it completely. Thats how advertising works. Maybe I can help you in setting your advertising prices:

1) Don’t Start Too Early - Sometimes, its not bad to advertise ads for 1 cent or $1 but you have to realize that it makes for a bad impression. Most advertisers may think that you perceive your ad to be worth nothing at all to be charging a dollar or less for it. Don’t start too early. Wait till the time is right.

2) Dont Start Too High - Problem is, that you don’t know what the right value is so you start off too high in the hopes that it might make advertisers believe that the benefit derived from buying adspace must be because of some great statistics. Don’t set your price at a certain level just because you think the ad is worth that much. Base it on actual statistics.

3) Look At Statistics - Look at what your statistics are and make sure that your statistics match the price. Think about whether the price is fair per subscriber or for your alexa and technorati ranks. I base it upon subscribers and unless I’m 250 and over, I won’t change the price of my ads. Even still they won’t increase by more than 20% if anything but even that is debatable. You want to entice your advertisers into realizing that the ad is a good value for the money.

4) Compare with Similar Blogs - Another idea is to see blogs that you believe are your competitors or are on the same level as you are. See their prices and compare them to what you had in mind. If your price is above average then you need to reconsider the pricing. If its below average then consider whether you want to sell it for that price or raise it to the average of other comparable blogs.

5) Would You Buy It? - The best way to see if your price is right is to decide (leaving your bias out) whether you’d be willing to pay that price for the ad. If you think that its a good deal then the price is right. If you think its over priced then its time to re-think the pricing. Its just that simple.

Is The Price Right For You?
So hopefully those of you, who don’t have your ads priced as yet or are re-thinking why advertisers are not sticking around, its time to re-evaluate your pricing based on my list. Have you seen overpriced ads? Do you think your advertising prices are worth it? Let me see!

Being A Famous Blogger Means…

So, I figured I’d take a twist on the generally serious posts and write a post on the lighter side. No, its not a b.s. post, its just a post that is a bit more comical than usual. When you meet me in person you’ll realize that I joke around quite a bit and make random comments. My friends say that the smile on my face never disappears and that I’m hilarious - it would seem like a good compliment only if they weren’t lying! Just kidding. But anyway, I wanted to check in with you about what being a famous blogger entails. I mean it can’t be easy not going to work and sitting in front of a computer (as you usually do on a Saturday night) and check emails and write posts and go for extravagant dinners. That job description sounds EXHAUSTING.

Either way, being a blogger is one thing and being a famous blogger is another thing. You’re recognizable, People look up to you and you’re invited to speak at conferences and have dinners and spread your wealth (of knowledge, not real cash since we all know how cheap bloggers are).

A famous bloggers life is definitely not as easy as it looks. Imagine sitting on your laptop or desktop and constantly responding to emails, addressing concerns, writing interesting posts, preparing powerpoints and speeches and presentations and actually presenting in front of hundreds of people? Its definitely not easy. People always tell me that “how hard can it be to sit on your butt all day and warm a chair?” Well, if you stop and think for a minute, it can be a lot of work depending on what you got on your plate.

Now I’ll have to say that the pay for being a famous blogger exceeds the pay that the average Joe (not Normal Joe.. Average Joe) makes. The idea of being a famous blogger sounds really great to a lot of people but theres work involved. Its not all about driving fast cars, owning a nice home and smoking a cigar all weekend long.

I’m a part-time blogger and my life is just as stressful (mainly because of school though) but what is your perception of famous bloggers? Do you think that its easier than it looks or harder than it looks? I always think that you can look at it either way but theres no doubt, quite a bit of work involved depending on how popular you are. For all those like myself who are on the quest to being famous, hopefully we can see ourselves at the top of the mountain one day.

How Many Posts Is Enough?

This topic is something I haven’t discussed before and I know that recently there are only a few blogs that have had to come to terms with the idea of how many posts a day or per week was enough. A lot of the top bloggers that blog full-time write a few posts every day but most of us who have our blogs as more of a part-time job or hobby only post once a day and some of us even 3-4 times a week.

The question that comes up is how many posts do I have to write per week? Well, there is no real answer but anybody will tell you that writing fewer and fewer posts every week won’t help you retain readers and you’ll soon disappear into the blogosphere dust.

Heres what happens if you write too many posts - If you’re the kind of person that puts out content more than once a day, you’re actually exhausting your content unless you’re a top blogger. The reason top bloggers are able to churn out more than one post a day is because they have a lot more time to do activities, have lunch and do things that would be interesting to read about or watch a video about.

If you’re not a top blogger then writing more than one or two posts a day could mean that you’re finishing up all your good ideas and resources way too quickly and that could lead to the demise of your blog much faster than you’d imagine.

Heres what happens if you blog too little - If you blog too little and you’re not a pro-blogger then you’re actually not able to retain your audience. Basically, if I began to blog once a week then my reading audience during the week itself would be very very low and you don’t want that as an aspiring top blogger.

On the other hand, if youre a popular blogger and you decide to slow down blogging for a SHORT PERIOD (notice, not forever, but for a short period) of time then you should do okay. You’ll still lose traffic but you’ll be able to regain it fast enough once you start back. The story is completely different for new and aspiring bloggers because you just won’t keep your readers engrossed enough.

What if you blog once daily? - This is the scenario that most of us “mid-bloggers” use. I consider myself a mid-blogger because I’m not like John Chow but I’m also not a new blogger. If you blog once daily, you’re able to keep your audience hooked with a new article or post every day and that means that your traffic is highly stable and you have lots of return visitors.

This has been the most favorable for me in order to maintain my blog. I’m sure that if I started to slowly climb the top blogger ladder that I would automatically raise the number of posts I did in a day from 1 to maybe 2-3 per day.

I realize that many of you blog 2-3 times a week or something in that range but this was mainly to focus on some of the more common ways that people go about blogging. I wonder what your thoughts are on this and whether you think blogging once a day is enough or does someone like me need to blog more? Let me know! Have a great weekend everyone. You’ll be seeing the contest results on video this weekend so Good Luck!