Archive for November, 2009

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How to Build a Successful Amazon Store into Your Blog

November 9th, 2009

If you have a blog, you’ve probably thought about some ways to monetize your site.  One way that a lot of people earn some incremental income (or really good incomes) from their sites is with affiliate relationships with either eBay, Amazon, or other online marketplaces.  Some affiliate with Buy.com as well.

Amazon has some very useful ways to help you promote their products from your blog and gives you a cut of each sale you make.  It’s definitely not an easy thing to do and can take some work figuring out just what kind of product will actually sell.  

The truth is that not every product that seems to make sense to put in front of your specific audience will actually be a product that sells.  In an article at makeuseof.com, Dean Sherwin has some valuable advice on how to integrate an Amazon store into your site (click the link to read) that will help make sales for you.

Three good points that Dean makes are the following:

  • People are not going to buy a $2,000 laptop through your site.  Just not going to happen–even though it would seem to make sense adding a link to this kind of product in an online review of it.  If people can go down the street to Best Buy or Wal-Mart to buy something, that’s probably where they’re going to go.

That being said…

  • Visitors to your website will buy cheaper items (say around $10) a lot of the time.  They will also purchase items off your site that can generally only be found online.  In other words, if it’s only available online and there isn’t a physical store nearby “competing” with you, visitors may just buy from you.
  • Build a separate page for your store and link to it in your navigation with the word “Store.”  Makes sense right?

If you already have an Amazon store or some products linked from your website or you’re looking for a way to (pretty darn easily) add a store to your site, check out this article.

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Social Media Success Case Study: Web Design Startup

November 8th, 2009

Everyone talks about how it’s possible to build an online business using social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.  Yeah, you’ve heard this stuff before.  But before you click the “back” button and go back to Google to find something else, have a look at a well-written post at inspiredm web design blog about a company that actually used these tools to build a successful business online.

This social media case study differs from most because it actually details how the business owners used different platforms instead of just saying, “Oh it’s easy to start a business online, just get on Twitter!”

On the contrary, this piece is all about how much effort it takes to build a business using social media, which is really the key.

Read Launching a Successful Web Design Startup with Social Media.

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Double Your Page Views with Related Post Plugins

November 7th, 2009

If you own a blog or run an Internet business, you probably spend a good deal of time trying to get people to visit your site.  Once you get them there, why not keep them there?  One way to do this is to provide your site’s visitors with the information they are looking for.

If you can do that, then chances are people will stick around for a longer amount of time and will look at multiple pages, rather than just glancing at the page they landed on and leaving.  The longer people stay on your site, the greater the chances are that they will take action, either by signing up for your RSS feed, leaving a comment, or clicking an advertisement.

One way to make sure visitors to your website get the information they’re looking for is to use a Related Posts plugin.  WordPress publishers can use the “Yet Another Related Post Plugin,” which is the plugin I use on this site.  This will add links to other posts that are related to the post being read.  A lot of the time, site visitors will click on one of these links for more information, thus creating more traffic for you, more ad impressions, and more opportunity for exposure.

Here is what you will see below the footer of your blog posts after you install the YARPP.
yarpp

Those who use blogger or other web publishing or blogging platforms can use the LinkWithin widget.  Both YARPP and LinkWithin are easy to install and integrate into your website.  A few keystrokes and clicks and you will have created more traffic within your website. Linkwithin is very effective because it displays post pictures in addition to the links to related posts, which will help attract more attention and more engagement from your site visitors.

After I installed the related post plugin on this site, pageviews immediately increased by a third.  Some days, it’s increased by 50 or 60% in relation to unique visits.  

It takes a lot of effort to get visitors to your blog or online business.  Why not keep them their a little bit longer.  Using related posts plugins is the easiest way to create more page views, and the best part about it is that it helps your visitors navigate your site to the content they’re looking for.

You may have an older post that doesn’t get a lot of search engine love.  This post may be “revived” when you write something related to it at a later date.  Keeping a healthy flow of traffic throughout your website makes good things happen.

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Posted in website traffic

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