1. Leave a comment on this post to let me know that you are entering. Feel free to say what you will do with the business cards if you win

2. Leave a useful and interesting comment on another recent post on this blog. I’m looking for comments that add something to the discussion.

There are three prizes up for grabs. The winner (as judged by our panel of one - me) will get 500 free business cards from Uprinting, and the two runners-up will get 250 cards each.

Closing date: Wednesday 15th October. UPDATE: The competition is now closed. Thanks to all who entered. Winners will be notified soon.

Uprinting provides business cards on a range of stocks, including eco friendly business card printing.

Digg For Writers

A friend of mine has recently started a site that could be the solution to this problem. It’s called Wrideo, which is free to join. Site owner Achilleas Tsoumitas thinks of it as a place where writers can show off their best work to other writers. Put another way, Wrideo is like Digg for writers. Once you have created an account, you can submit useful content so that others can vote for it and can comment on submissions. The best posts will appear on the home page or on the home pages for the initial categories: writing, freelance, ghostwriting, home business, publishing, marketing and monetization.

Feeds Galore

One of the things I like about the site so far is that you can grab feeds for each member of the site, as well as the individual categories and popular and upcoming stories. Site members can also create profiles which include their latest submissions. I think the site has a lot of potential and have been talking to Achilleas about ways to make it even more useful to writers. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Launch Contest

The site will only work if there is a thriving community of writers, so to kick things off, Wrideo is offering a prize for the member who signs up the most members by October 31. Writers love to read, and you’ll be able to indulge yourself with a  shopping spree on Amazon. There are three prizes of $50, $30 and $20. You don’t even need a special URL. All you need to do is sign up,  link to Wrideo from your website, or add a submit button to your posts on writing and your referral will register automatically. The more you promote the site, the better your chances of winning. Spread the word on your own blog and see if you can win. Full contest rules are here.

One good reason to use Squidoo is that you can get a web page to promote yourself without the hassle of getting hosting. Although I always advocate buying a domain name and creating a blog or website, Squidoo can be a good starting point for getting the word out about your writing services. The service is based on the premise that everyone is an expert in something and you are sharing your expertise with the world. Promoting yourself with Squidoo can be done in a few simple steps. All you need to start is to get an account and write your bio.

Step 1: Write The Content

This will change depending on whether you are creating a biographical or an informational lens. If you plan to provide information, write an article on a specialist area that you want to promote. Fill it with details that will be useful to readers, because if they like it, they will help with the promotion.

Step 2: Create A Lens

This is simple. Once you sign up for an account, you are invited to create a lens. You need to give it a title and add appropriate keywords (you can edit those later) To help you, Squidoo also provides a few templates to get you started or you can go freestyle (which is my favorite option). You can add different sections to your lens for including text and photos, RSS feeds, affiliate products from Amazon, Ebay, Cafepress and more. There are dozens of things you can add to your Squidoo lens.

Once you have decided what to add, preview the order of the modules, rearrange them (this will make sense when you’re doing it) and click save. You will have a page with several boxes to add content. The top box allows you to add an introduction and photo, a table of contents and links to related lenses. Once you have more than one lens, you can cross link them in this box.

Step 3: Add The Content

Your next step is to put your article in the boxes. I usually put each paragraph (or couple of paragraphs) in a new box with a subheading. This makes it into a good web article. You can use HTML in the boxes for links and bulleted lists. A good tip is to save each box when you have finished with it and to click ’save this draft’ at the end of the page to keep your changes. Don’t worry; it won’t be live till you publish.

Once you’ve done that, you can add a few more items. I always add some Amazon books and my blog’s feed, but you may have other products to promote. Once you’re done, preview the lens, and publish.

Step 4: Promote

When you have the lens, promote it in all the usual channels (see my Promotion Is Free series for ideas) as well as within Squidoo itself. Look for active groups on Squidoo and join them. The members will visit your lens and may favorite it, giving the lens more prominence. Email your friends and let them know you have a lens. The more traffic your lens gets, the higher your lens rank and the more prominent it will be. You will also make money from the products you promote in Squidoo - and you won’t even need an affiliate ID.

Step 5: Repeat

The more lenses you have, the more promotional juice you get. People with dozens of lenses make money from them and also attract attention from clients. You can too - and all you need to invest is your time.

Over to you, now. I know a couple of regular readers use Squidoo all the time, so if you have tips to add, please feel free to do so in the comments. I’d love to know how you have used Squidoo for promotion.

(Want me to create a lens for you? Here are several I created for Julie-Ann Amos)

Today I’m going to talk about traffic widgets. These are little snippets of code that you put on your website, perhaps in your sidebar, to bring traffic to your site. This a free way to promote your site. There are dozens of traffic building widgets out there and I have tried quite a few. They all work pretty much the same way. You sign up for the site, add your blog with information about it, and put the widget in your sidebar. The idea is that your posts or headlines will be shown on other blogs, while you will showcase others’ posts and headlines on yours.

The key to using these systems successfully is to choose the right category for your blog. In the past, I have found that being lumped in with different kinds of blogs means that the people whom I would like to connect with don’t see my blog. However, I will say that if you have a new blog, or a blog in a popular area such as blogging or technology, there may be some merit in using widgets.

I wasn’t always a cynic. I tried widgets and enthused about Blogrush, Entrecard and others. However, I didn’t find that they worked well for me so I have decided not to put any more on this blog. So why am I mentioning a promotion technique that I no longer use? Because it might work for you. For every person that says that a particular widget doesn’t work or is a waste of time, there are dozens more who enthuse about it. So I’m leaving the choice up to you, and I’m inviting anyone who has used traffic widgets before to weigh in with their opinion.

If you’re promoting yourself as a writer, then you can’t ignore social networking. The question is where to start and which sites to choose. I am not going to pretend that I could ever answer this question to everyone’s satisfaction, so instead I’ll tell you about the sites I use and how I use them.

Many of the social bookmarking sites allow you to add friends, to join groups and to interact with others who share your interests. I have done this on Digg and StumbleUpon, though I haven’t done much on some of the other sites I use. If you participate in the social side, then eventually your friends and fans will help to promote you (you have to help to promote them too).

When you approach networking online, there are many options. I use LinkedIn for business networking. I don’t post status updates often, but I have a profile, resume and recommendations so that potential clients can check me out. If you are running a writing business, then don’t ignore LinkedIn. High-end clients may well use it to find you.

I also have a Facebook profile. Facebook works on the premise that the people you add will really be friends, and that’s mostly true of my profile. I don’t use it heavily, but I occasionally share a link with my friends, which they may then share with theirs. Some people use Facebook aggressively, but I take a more hands-off approach.

At the moment, the big buzz is in microblogging. Check out microblogging services such as Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, Jaiku and others where you can connect with the blogosphere and also share your stuff. Take the time to fill out your profile, brand your page or make it look interesting, and share content that you think is good. Join in the conversation and you will soon build up a fan base and a network of friends.

Some people spend a couple of hours promoting themselves through social media. I don’t have that much time, so I help myself with some useful tools. If’ I’ve written a post that I want to add to the social bookmarking sites, I use Onlywire to submit to several sites at once. I use the StumbleUpon toolbar for quick stumbling of others’ content. I participate in conversations on Twitter and Plurk (you can use Ping.FM to send status updates to several services at once. I know that people have found my site this way. I’ve also made connections with people who offer work. That’s how I know that promoting with social networking really works - and it’s fun too.

In the first part of this series I suggested that writers start a blog as a virtual shop window for their writing services. If you’ve done that, then you are now part of the blogosphere, and there’s more to participating in it than simply having a blog. Blogging is all about conversations with your readers and with the writers of the blogs you read - and joining in with those conversations can bring huge promotional benefit.

To get started, use Technorati or a blog search engine (Ask Blog Search and Google Blog Search are my favorites) to find out which blogs are publishing in areas that you’re interested in. These may be writing blogs or blogs in your area of expertise. Technorati displays an authority ranking which tells you which blogs are most linked to by others. Visit these blogs and leave useful or relevant comments on any posts that interest you. When you do this, you can include a link to your blog in the appropriate field on the comment form. This doesn’t always give you Google juice, but it does bring you traffic.

When those visitors arrive at your blog, have something of quality to show them. Respond to comments left on your blog and, if appropriate, point readers to other useful resources you have published. This will build your readership, increase traffic to your blog and make your blog rise up the search engine rankings.The reason that this works for your writing business is because clients read blogs too. More and more of my clients are coming to me through this blog. When they search for ‘online freelance writers’ my blog appears in the top 20. (I’m working on moving to the top 10.) This can happen for your chosen keywords, too.

Social bookmarking is another free self promotion technique that writers can use effectively. It’s also an excellent way of keeping track of your writing research, though I won’t say much about that here. If you’re interested I wrote a post on Why Writers Should Use Social Bookmarking which explains that function in more detail. So, what exactly is social bookmarking and how does it help you promote yourself?

What Is Social Bookmarking?

You’re probably familiar with using bookmarks or favorites in your browser to mark the sites you want to find again. Social bookmarking works in a similar way, but online. You can use a site such as delicious, which is one of the best and most popular examples, to store links to content that you like - and there’s no reason why it can’t be yours. You can use tags, as you do for blog posts, to categorize the content that you post.

Where the promotion comes in is with the social aspect. With social bookmarking sites you can choose to share some or all of your bookmarks with others. People who like the things you bookmark can become fans or friends, and you can participate in groups based on your interests.

Choosing A Social Bookmarking Site

There are many, many social bookmarking sites, but you have to be careful which ones you choose. For example, if you promote your own links too heavily on StumbleUpon, you will be penalised. Some sites regard self promotion as akin to spamming, but there are plenty of sites where it’s ok to push your own stuff. Some of the sites I use include delicious, Digg, Mixx and BloggingZoom. I also use several social networking sites, though I will cover those in another post.

Getting Started With Social Bookmarking

To get started with social bookmarking, choose the services you like best and sign up for accounts. With some sites you can import your browser bookmarks so that you can use those online too. I’ve found this feature quite useful in the past. Then start bookmarking any of your content that you think is worth sharing. Posting quality links usually results in traffic to that site or resource. (Watch out for the Digg effect; if you are running a Wordpress blog, using a plugin such as WP-Cache or WP-Supercache will stop your site from buckling under the flood of traffic.) Submit your posts regularly and you will get more readers and more links in the search engine results.

Remember to participate in sites which are very social. Leaving comments on the links others submit will help you become a part of the group and will also increase your visibility.

Follow tips for good web writing to write a good article for article marketing. Finish it up by writing a brief call to action, inviting readers to get more information on your site. You will be able to include at least one link in this part of the article, though many directories forbid links in the article body itself.

Getting Started With Article Marketing

The first time you try article marketing, you will need to take the time to sign up with an article marketing site. My favorite is EzineArticles, because it’s easy to use, has articles of a decent quality, and gives you quick Google juice. In other words, when you publish an article there, you will find it listed on Google within a few days. Other well rated services are IdeaMarketers and GoArticles. Once you’ve registered, publishing future articles will be even easier.

Why I Like Article Marketing

There are two reasons why I like article marketing. The first is because I can write about anything I like. It gives me a chance to spread my wings and try writing about new topics. In other words, it’s good writing practice, with the added benefit of having articles that I can add to my portfolio. I have used the articles I have published on EzineArticles to land gigs before.

The second reason I like article marketing is because of the links I get to my site. Article directories supply content to thousands of sites. Although the links aren’t always good quality, they do result in traffic to the sites I promote - and that makes it even easier for people to find me online.

Getting The Most From Article Marketing

For best results, write several articles. I have written more than 40 and have placed these on various article directories, some of which still come up on Google when people search for my name. Others I know have written hundreds, and they really sing the praises of this strategy. Article marketing works because it promotes you both directly and indirectly. Although I don’t write as much for directories as I used to, I sometimes recycle useful blog posts to get some additional attention for my blog.

Article marketing is good because it is free, it uses skills you already have and it sends traffic to your site. Believe me, that traffic keeps coming for a long, long time. I am still getting traffic from articles I wrote three and a half years ago. I have used these articles as samples of my work, and to get people to see more of my work. You can do the same.

Which Forum To Choose?

For the purposes of promotion, you need to find a forum that is active. Check to see how many threads there are with recent posts to see if the forum is active. Look at the number of users at the bottom of the forum and see when the last person joined. All of this will tell you whether a forum is alive or dead. If it’s dead, move on swiftly. If it’s active and you like the look of it, then sign up. So, how does joining a forum help with promotion? The secret is in the sig.

The Secret Of The Sig

When you join a forum, you get to set up a profile with information about your name and your interests. You can also create a signature that appears at the end of any forum posting you make. This is a good opportunity to create a link to your site. Not only will it help forum users to find you, but many forums are indexed by the search engines, so you will get some Google juice from the posts you make.

No Hit And Run

It’s not good manners to link drop and run. To get the best out of a forum you have to participate fully in it. I often fall into the trap of signing up for a lot of forums, then finding that I don’t have the time to participate. That’s a mistake. The whole point of forums is that you have to join in with the conversation and get known. It’s better to find one that you like and stick to it. If you don’t want to drop by ten forums a day, sign up for the RSS feed so you can see what discussions are live and decide which ones to take part in. Plenty of people have used forums to find jobs and to connect with people they want to work with.

Here are some of the forums I have joined, where I have learned a lot about writing and blogging and made some good friends and connections: Authority Blogger Forum, About Freelance Writing Forum, WAHM.com Forum. Joining forums won’t suit everyone, but they are good places to keep up to date with what’s happening in the writing world and promote as you participate. Have you got any useful forums to add to this list?

Getting Started

So what do you need to make yourself known as a freelance writer? Think about it from the prospective client’s point of view. When they eventually find you, they want to know who you are and why they should hire you, what you have done and how to get in touch with you. They will also want to see examples of your work. That means that at the very least you need an about page which talks about your background and experience, a resume page, which gives more detail about your published clips and other relevant information, and a contact page with a contact form and any other contact details you want to release. If you also want to include your rates, then many people find that helpful too.

Adding Content

Use your posts to keep adding examples of your writing, and soon you will have a freelance writing blog with a respectable amount of content. It may take an hour or two to get the pages written to your satisfaction, then it will take only 10-15 minutes every time you post (depending on the length of the post and how often you post.)

Shop Window

So, how does this help you with promotion? In order to promote yourself, you have to have something to promote. Think of this as your virtual shop window, inviting customers to browse and buy. Once you have this set up, you can use some of the other free promotional methods I’ll be discussing to get more people to see what you have to offer.

From my experience, when you’re starting out as a freelance writer, you don’t have a big budget to take out full page ads to proclaim your arrival. That’s why I’ll be concentrating on the free promotional methods that worked for me when I started freelancing. I won’t stop there, though, because there are a few new outlets that I think any writer starting today would do well to consider.

I’m going to keep these posts short, concentrating on saying what the promotion method is, how to do it successfully and any pros and cons. By the end of the series I hope you will have a few methods that will help you to make the next leap in your freelance writing career. If there’s anything you particularly want me to cover, feel free to let me know in the comments. And for those of you who already know all this, feel free to chip in with your stories on which methods have worked for you. Look out for the first post tomorrow.

There are a number of issues to consider when promoting yourself. For example, do you want to promote your name or brand yourself so that your business can continue in the future? Although in the past I have always said that writers’ names are their brand, recently I’ve been persuaded that there’s a lot of value in having a brand for your writing business that’s independent of your name. I won’t go into details here, but this post by James Chartrand makes the point.

Have you actually decided what aspect of your services you want to promote? As a writer, I could promote myself for:

• writing ebooks
• writing search engine optimized web content
• handling an article marketing campaign
• writing researched articles on a variety of topics
• writing travel pieces
• writing academic papers

This is just a sample, but you get the idea. In promoting myself, I need to decide whether to promote myself as an all round writer or to focus different types of promotion on different areas.

Once you know what services you are promoting and how you will brand yourself, it’s time to decide on the most effective method. You can promote yourself in a number of places and in a variety of ways. Rather than list them all here, I’ll be starting a new series on this blog next week, looking at some of the free ways that you can promote yourself. I’ll tell you which ones I’ve used effectively, and which ones have not worked for me - and why.

In general, self promotion has worked well for me. I have not spent any money on promoting myself, but my promotional efforts have helped clients to find me, as well as writers looking to offload some of their extra work. I’m pretty happy with the results so far. I’m sure you will be too.

This is the brainchild of Collin LaHay (I’ve written some posts for him over on Mixed Market Arts.) The idea is that anyone with a quality blog can have the chance to promote the blog free and get more subscribers and more traffic. For once, you don’t have to install a widget.

There’s a neat feature where you get additional promotion if you make it into the most trafficked blogs each month. The counter resets at the start of each month to give new bloggers a chance. I’m going to try this, and I’ll report back later on whether I’ve had any success with it. It looks good so far.

Check out my page here. By the time you get there, I should have added my feed and some categories. See you there.

I really enjoy writing that newsletter, which is full of tips to help you manage your writing career. Here’s an index of what’s been in the first 21 issues, up to December 2007.

Writing Lab News Index

• Are You A Writer? - December 2006
• Are You Sabotaging Your Goals? - October 2007
• Beef Up Your Blogfolio - March 2007
• Best Ways to Generate New Article Ideas and Topics - August 2006
• Blog Your Way To Working At Home - February 2007
• Break It Up: How To Write A Good Ending - November 2007
• Copyright Law: A Quick Guide For Freelance Writers - June 2006
• Diary Of A Working Writer - Monthly
• Ebook On Legal Services - July 2006
• Feature Writing For Freelance Writers - March 2007
• Five Essential Reference Tools For Writers - May 2007
• Five Ways to Become Published - January 2007
• Five Ways To Kill Your Blog - December 2007
• Free Resources For Writers - March 2007
• Free Resources For Writers - May 2006
• Free Resources For Writers: June 2006
• Freelance Writers - Four Reasons To Get On The Net - May 2006
• Freelance Writing Inspiration - April 2007
• Getting Some Linky Love - October 2007
• Get Paid to Write: Web Writing - April 2007
• Get Paid to Write: Writing For Magazines - May 2007
• Get Paid to Write: Writing For Newspapers - June 2007
• Ghostwriting Ethics: Do You Have Any? - December 2007
• Ghostwriting Guide For Freelance Writers - February 2007
• Great Gadgets For Freelance Writers - December 2006
• Guru and Elance: Are They Worth It For Writers? - June 2006
• Help! I Can’t Write - How to Set Writing Goals - October 2007
• How Can I Find Markets For Freelance Web Content Writers? - July 2007
• How Have You Promoted Your Writing Today? - September 2007
• How I Get Paid To Blog - May 2006
• How I Put My Site On Steroids - Update - December 2006
• How Much Does Freelance Writing Pay? - August 2007
• How To Build A Portfolio That Gets You The Job - November 2007
• How To Cope With Writing Burnout - June 2007
• How To Create The Ultimate Home Office For Writing - September 2007
• How To Find Blogging Success - November 2007
• How To Get Fair Pay For Freelance Writing - October 2006
• How To Get Web Hits And Keep Them - February 2007
• How to Grow Your Own Furniture - October 2006
• How To Manage Writing Time - November 2006
• How To Organize Your Day To Become A Successful Freelance Writer - May 2007
• How To Plan Your Freelance Writing Career - July 2007
• How To Promote With Article Marketing - September 2006
• How To Promote Your Way To Freelance Writing Success - July 2007
• How To Promote Your Way To The Top Of Google - May 2007
• How To Set Up A Writer’s Home Office - November 2006
• How To Write Copy That Pays The Bills - April 2006
• How To Write Money-Making Copy - July 2006
• Keeping Fresh As A Freelance Writer - December 2007
• Learn To Be A Successful Writer - October 2007
• Living The Freelance Writing Dream - August 2007
• Making It As A Freelance: The Art of the Interview - July 2006
• Paid Blog Posts - And Not With Blogitive - September 2006
• Press Here To Make The News - August 2006
• Quality Pays Off In Freelance Writing - January 2007
• Remind Me Why I’m Still Awake At 2 a.m.? - September 2006
• Resources For Writers - April 2006
• SEO Tricks - August 2006
• Setting Priorities For Writing Work - September 2007
• So You Want To Be A Freelance Writer? - April 2006
• Standard Rates for Freelance Writers - November 2006
• Still Earning One Cent A Word? - August 2007
• The Net Value Of A Writing Assignment - July 2007
• The Revamping of My Freelance Writing Career - October 2006
• The Writing Brief: Questions To Ask - November 2007
• Three Quick Ways To Create Freelance Writing Clips - August 2007
• Three Ways To Improve Your Time Management - December 2007
• Tips For Successful Proofreading - April 2007
• What Are You Offering Your Client? - September 2007
• What I Learned From Writing Reviews - February 2007
• Who Owns My Writing? - December 2007
• Why Freelancers Should Write For Free - June 2007
• Why Freelance Writers May Be the Poorest Internet Entrepreneurs - June 2007
• Why I Like Text Link Ads - May 2007
• Why Guest Posting Is Good For Writers - November 2007
• Write Really Great Keyword Articles - October 2007
• Writer promotion course - May 2006
• Writing Articles for Newspapers - January 2007
• Writing Communati - June 2007
• You Know You’re A Freelancer … - September 2007

As you can see, there’s a lot of good info in there (even if I say so myself). The newsletter is free, so sign up. I’ll even make it easy by including a sign up form in this post.

The 850 visitors we are talking about in this article are, as I like to call, organic visitors. They are neither sponsored visitors, nor social media users spending .025 second on your site. They are pure organic visitors with an interest for your site. In this article you will learn the different strategies I used to attract 850 quality visitors by using free simple methods available at your fingertips.

The post gives a breakdown of the steps the writer took to attract more visitors to his site, one of them being guest blogging. It’s certainly worth reading, as you might pick up a couple of new ideas.

Benefits Of Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is writing blog posts for other blogs. There are several benefits of doing this:

• it puts your writing in front of a new audience
• it brings new readers to your blog
• it’s another place for clients to find examples of your work
• it’s a way to connect with other bloggers both within and outside your niche.

How To Get Guest Blogging Gigs

There are two ways to get guest blogging gigs. One approach is to look around for bloggers who ask for guest bloggers. They are most likely to do this on their own blogs, so if you subscribe to blogs, you will soon find out if they are seeking guest posts. Some bloggers ask for guest posters because they want to vary the content; others because they are going on vacation; still others because they are building a community site.

The other approach to getting guest blogging gigs is to find some blogs that you like to read, and where you think you could contribute something, and offer posts to them. There are few bloggers who will turn down the chance to get a good quality guest post.

Guest Blogging Tip

When selecting the blog that you’d like to contribute to, consider what you are hoping to get out of it and choose your blog accordingly. If you are guest blogging to get backlinks, then choose a blog with a good search engine ranking so you will get the benefit. If you are blogging for influence, look for a blog that’s influential in your niche.

Once you’ve landed a guest blogging gig, remember that your first guest post is your most important, so make sure it is a good quality one. Let the blog owner take a look so that you can be sure you have written the right kind of post. It’s sometimes tempting to keep the really great posts for your own blog, but if you put a great post on someone else’s blog, then you will reap the rewards of their readership and their traffic.

Guest Blogging In Practice

I’ve been doing a lot of guest blogging in the last few months and I have seen great benefits, both personally and for Get Paid To Write Online. My blog now has a higher profile, as well as inbound links from some well respected blogs. I know that guest blogging has brought new readers, many of whom have stuck around. I also see the increased traffic when I check my stats. Many of my new visitors come directly from my guest posts on other blogs.

As a freelance writer, I have also seen guest blogging lead to new opportunities. Some of these have been for paid blogging gigs, while others have been for different types of writing. Guest blogging is helping to move my freelance writing career in the direction along the path I want to follow.

Now, I’ve been talking about copyright again, but this time it’s to Sologig News. Jeremy Schnitker emailed me last week with a few questions about this important issue for freelancers. I was pleased to be asked. You can read the full interview on the Sologig site.

Let’s start with a bit of show and tell. Some of the posts that caught my eye were:

• So How Did I Double My Subscribers in a Week?
• Want To Quit the Day Job But Can’t Afford To? Maybe You Can…
• A, B or C? Grading Potential Niches / Markets

The titles are self explanatory. This blog is a mine of information on making money online, promotion, business and blogging and her most famous series is the Twitter Guide. Although this is not a writing blog, I know that many of you, like me, are concerned about promoting yourselves. Caroline’s blog is bound to give you some ideas.

Technorati Tags: blogging,promotion,caroline middlebrook

If you’re stuck for ideas on how to self promote, there’s a mega list of suggestions at 120 Self Promotion Ideas for Graphic Designers & Freelancers (Free or Almost Free).

There are so many free ways to self promote on this list that there’s no excuse for not doing it. I have bookmarked the list and plan to try a few new ones; why don’t you?

A lot of people find my blog when they are looking to make money online. In fact, they want to know how to do it. While that’s not the main purpose of this blog, like many others I want my blogs and sites to serve three purposes. First, I want them to be useful to the readers; second, I want to use them to promote myself as a writer and blogger;  and third, I want to make some passive income (who wouldn’t?)

When I began my online existence, I was very much influenced by Rosalind Gardner, a super affiliate who had made half a million dollars in a year from her online activities. I wanted to know how I could do it too and I downloaded her excellent Super Affiliate Handbook and set out to take a crash course in online marketing and promotion. I learned a lot from that book that I still use today.

Building A Blog Identity

Around the same time, I set up my first blog, with the aim of bringing some traffic to my site. What I didn’t realise at the time was that a blog needed an identity and a purpose to be truly successful - and to make money.

It’s not a case of ‘build a blog and they will come’, but rather of laying the foundation with good content and telling people about it so that a few people might stop by. And if people don’t come to your blog, you can’t make money with it. In spite of all the claims of the Adsense revenue share blog sites, you need to promote your blog and have good content to get a regular audience. Then people might start clicking on your ads or asking you to promote certain resources.

Another temptation is to take advantage of every opportunity going so that you can clean up as soon as possible. However, there are two risks to doing this. One is that you might end up cluttering your blog with ads and posts that have little relevance to your readers, and the second is that you might actually lose readers in the process.

Selective Promotion

A better approach, I find, is to be selective about what you promote and what you advertise on your blog or site. Now, I don’t want to be hypocritical. I have other blogs where I am less choosy about the content, but those blogs are not as successful as those where I exercise some discretion. It’s a slow approach to earning from a blog, but I believe that this method results in a quality blog with a sustainable readership. I have actually turned down offers that I didn’t think would fit in with this blog.

It’s the same with choosing affiliate products. I have promoted very few on this site. In fact, all I have are a few badges in the sidebar. However, I have used those services and can genuinely recommend them. I’m also prepared to discuss the negatives, which means that people can trust me to give an honest opinion of a service or resource. I got more sales when I did a review of Rosalind Gardner’s book than when I put a pre-prepared ad on another page of my site.

Creating an online presence has been a great learning experience for me, and I’ve shared what I’ve learned in some of my posts on promotion. What are your tips for making your writing site or blog make a little money on the side?