Quality score has a certain stigma to it that often scares people away. According to David Szetela of Clix Marketing, most people make quality score a lot more difficult than it actually is. He says it is, essentially, a way for Google to reward advertisers for writing good ads.

Because Google cannot tell every advertiser all the factors that go into quality score, it often results in confusion. However, if Google did reveal this information, advertisers would get an unfair advantage. As he explains to WebProNews, there are so many other elements that are involved with quality score that the aforementioned factors play a minor role.

Google uses quality score as a rewards system since it wants to provide relevant answers to search queries. The advertisers that are able to help it do this not only receive a better quality score, but also receive a lower price for their ad position.

“Basically, Google rewards advertisers with better quality score and a lower price to do what they should be doing anyway,” says Szetela.

He goes on to say that good quality score has two parts: great ads and acceptable landing pages. People think that by improving their landing page, their quality score will improve as well. Szetela points out that this is not the case. Instead, he says the landing page component of quality score can only hurt, not help.

Overall, having great ads are the key to having good quality score. Szetela recommends including the following elements in an ad:

1.    Keyword in text (preferably in headline)
2.    Reader addressed in first person
3.    Features/Benefits
4.    Call to action

Are you using this information to help improve your quality score?

Over the last few months I’ve been sharing a monthly breakdown of where my income comes from in the hope of illustrating some of the methods bloggers might like to look at when making money from blogging (see previous months linked to below).

The month of July was the second month in a row where eBooks were the biggest money maker for me. Here’s a pie chart showing the percentage breakdowns.

Before I say much more let me show you how the different income streams have tracked over the last 4 months (note I’ve expanded ’speaking’ to be ’speaking and events’ to include the ProBlogger Training Day (which wasn’t a massive earner as we kept the price down – but because it’s something I’d like to try again). I have also added a ‘total’ line to this chart to track total income.

A few comments:

• Obviously there was a big eBook spike in June as we launched a photography eBook that month. July was down on the launch month but still very healthy – partly because of a few specials that I ran in July (I did a ‘Christmas in July’ special as well as offering a few communities a discount on the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workbook).
• AdSense was also pretty good last month – there’s no real explanation for this as traffic was steady. I can only guess that some advertisers were involved in a bit of a bidding war on Digital Photography School which drove prices up a little.
• Affiliate programs were quite down – that can be explained simply by me not doing as many promotions in July – mainly because there were not too many product launches in my niches (for some reason they always seem to come out at once).
• Direct Ad Sales are on the rise and you’ll see this continue to grow next month as I’ve been working with a direct ad sales rep who is now selling ads for my sites which has already led to some new clients.
• Over all it was a good month. While not as spectacular as July it was up on the previous two months significantly.
• Continuity Programs – a few people have asked what they are. In short – they’re membership sites – ProBlogger.com and The Third Tribe.

August is shaping up to be an interesting month. Later this week I’ll be launching a product here on ProBlogger (at a fairly inexpensive price point) which will be interesting to track. I’ve also participated in a couple of affiliate launches and have seen some interesting direct ad sales. I’m not quite sure whether it’ll be as good as July but am working toward it.

How was July for you?

If you’re interested in the previous months breakdowns they’re at:

• How I make money blogging: April
• How I make money blogging: May
• How I make money blogging: June

This Post is from: ProBlogger Blog Tips.

How I Make Money Blogging: Income Split for July 2010

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The Web has drastically changed the way business is conducted. Fortunately, it not only provides many new opportunities, but it also, simplifies certain tasks. According to David Meerman Scott, Author of World Wide Rave and New Rules of Marketing and PR, there were essentially three ways to generate attention before the Web.

As he explains to WebProNews, these ways were buying advertising, the media, which he calls begging, and a sales force. These tactics work well for generating attention offline, but online, it’s a different story. Generating attention online requires marketers to create content just like a publisher.

Scott says the old rules make it hard to generate attention. However, the new rules allow any organization to earn attention, if it creates valuable information. He points out that organizations need to stop thinking like marketers, advertisers, and public relations specialists, and instead, think like publishers.

Once businesses create content, what can they then do to get people to share it? According to Scott, most companies talk about their product, which is not what users want to hear. He advises businesses to create content for their target market, or as he likes to call it, their buyer personas.

“It gets an organization away from talking about themselves in an egotistical way,” says Scott.

In reality, consumers only care about themselves and solving their problems. As a result, Scott suggests that marketers create individualized content for each of their buyer personas.

Once this is done, he recommends creating trigger points to encourage users to share. These trigger points could involve contests, humor, blog posts, videos, and many other ideas. If the content is good, then users will naturally share.

Lastly, Scott says marketers need to point users back to a place where some type of action can take place. Once again, as long as the content is valuable, it will draw users back to make a purchase.

Are you creating valuable content for your buyer personas?

Facebook has a constantly evolving advertising platform, and according to Addie Conner of Avenue100, it provides many new opportunities for advertisers. She tells WebProNews that Facebook reaches an entirely different segment of audience than Google reaches.

Since Google is all about search, people are actively querying for information. On the other hand, Facebook is completely “demand creation.” As Conner explains, Facebook allows advertisers to reach an audience that they couldn’t reach unless they existed across all Google’s content network and all the other content networks.

Google just doesn’t have the data that Facebook has. The social network has access to its users’ demographics, which is very valuable to advertising. Conner says the data is accurate as well.

With Facebook, advertisers can create applications and send users to it. The app engages with users in a way that is unique to them and also unique to the product. Conner calls it, “a different engagement than you are able to get on any other platform.”

She goes on to say that Facebook is actively working to make its platform better for both users and advertisers.

Today I’d like to suggest an exercise to think about the future of your blog. It’s a brainstorming task to get you thinking about the types of products and services you might one day add to your blog.

I remember doing this for ProBlogger 4 or so years ago and coming up with a long list of potential things I could add to the blog including a job board, membership area, eBooks, ‘real’ book, events and more.

At the time I wasn’t ready to add any of these new products, services or featured – but having that list in the back of my mind enabled me to keep moving my blog forward towards achieving some of them.

The other benefit of identifying these potential income streams that you could one day develop is that others may already be developing them. This might feel a little like you’ve missed the boat but it could also be an opportunity as those with these products might be potential advertisers and/or might have affiliate programs that you could promote.

Once you’ve come up with your list of ideas feel free to share some of them in comments below – it’ll be great to see what everyone is thinking.

PS: stuck for ideas? I don’t blame you – it can be hard to think of how to add a product or service to your blog. Check out the list of products and services that other bloggers have added to their blogs in the results of a poll I ran here on ProBlogger exploring this very topic.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Brainstorming Activity: What Could You Sell from Your Blog?

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As Yahoo and Microsoft continue to integrate the terms of their 10-year partnership, there are lots of questions surrounding Yahoo. To shed some light on this area, WebProNews caught up with David Roth, the Director of Search Marketing at Yahoo. Roth provides a unique perspective on these issues since he is both a search marketer and an advertiser for Yahoo.

He says he will likely get one of the first views of how Yahoo Search Marketing will be integrated into Microsoft’s adCenter. As a result, he will be able to see any new features and if there are any bugs. At the time of the recording of this interview, Yahoo or Microsoft had not released any specific dates for the roll out of their integration. Aside from saying they hope to have Microsoft ’s search technology powering Yahoo before the end of the holiday season, the companies have still not released any specific dates for a roll out.

Interestingly enough, last week Barry Schwartz reported on Search Engine Land that Yahoo is testing paid and organic Bing results on its own live search results.

Roth also tells WPN that Yahoo is continuing to push out its brand campaign internationally. He finds it amusing when people talk about global campaigns because he thinks the meaning of a global campaign is somewhat skewed.

“As an advertiser, there’s really no such thing as going global. Going global means local a dozen different times,” says Roth.

When entering a new market, he advises marketers and advertisers to understand that goals will be different, especially in markets outside the U.S. Fortunately, search marketing can support nearly any business goal.

Getting back to the Yahoo/Microsoft partnership, Roth says the pressure is on Yahoo to develop really compelling ad products since it will be pulling back on its development of the search index and search algorithms. He goes on to say that Yahoo has to utilize all the data that both search and display advertising generate and then leverage it to create new ad products. In the future, he believes their ad products will be more sophisticated and include better ad units, behavioral targeting, and more.

Quality score has experienced several changes over the past few years. At SMX Advanced, WebProNews caught up with Benny Blum of eSearchVision, to talk about these changes and how they are affecting current campaigns. As a result of these changes, he believes ad campaigns need to handled differently than they were in the past.

One change Blum addresses is Google’s AdRank algorithm. He says this is a metric that is equal to the product of what you are wiling to pay. In other words, it is your maximum bid and quality score.

Problems arise because it is possible that users could have multiple keywords for the same quality score, which would prompt the same query. This means that you could be competing with yourself and, ultimately, increasing what you have to pay.

According to Blum, an ideal ad combination exists, but you have to find it through research and analysis. Once you find it, he says you can force impressions to go the right keyword ad combination through siloing. In the end, your cost-per-click (CPC) will go down, as your click-through-rate (CTR) goes up.

To do this, Blum advises advertisers to have organized accounts with relevant ad groups. He again stresses the importance of having the right keyword ad combination. After these elements are in place, he says advertisers can utilize negative keyword applications.

In this interview, Blum also discusses the differences in accounts on PCs and mobile devices. He believes the biggest difference is in user behavior and explains how to leverage it.

Are you applying this knowledge to your ad campaigns?

Looking to Hire a Blogger?

If you’re looking for a blogger to hire – the ProBlogger Job boards remain one of the most effective and affordable places to find the. For just $50 your ad for a blogger will be seen by tens of thousands of bloggers.

• the RSS feeds are subscribed to by over 2000 readers
• each job is sent out to my Twitter followers (close to 100,000 people)
• jobs are posted on the ProBlogger LinkedIn group news section (1900 members)

Current advertisers feed back that the quality and number of applicants is high – as a result we have quite a few regular and repeat advertisers.

If you’re looking to place an ad – here are some tips on how to advertise for a blogger.

Looking for a Blog Job?

If you’re looking for a blogging job there seems to be a lot more people looking to hire at the moment.

In the last 7 days alone we’ve seen 24 new blogging jobs added to the ProBlogger Job Boards (there are only 18 listed now as 6 were quickly filled and removed by advertisers).

To stay up to date with the latest blogging jobs simply follow me on Twitter and/or subscribe to the job board RSS feed.

If you’re applying for jobs – here’s some tips for bloggers on how to apply for jobs.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Have Your Blogging Job Advertisment Seen by Tens of Thousands of Bloggers

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A guest post by Jodi Friedman from MCP Actions.

Do you have contests on your blog? Do you ever wonder why so many blogs are doing contests now? One of the reasons is that, when done right, they are a win-win scenario. You can increase your traffic and readership, create excitement, and help promote companies and products.

If you are new to contests, you may be lost and wondering how to get started. Having run very successful giveaways for both national companies and smaller businesses on the MCP Actions photography blog, I have learned skills to make them even more effective. You can see some of my past blog contests and winners announced here.

Before running a contest, work on building your blog traffic and your presence ion social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. While there is no magic number, you want confidence that you will get entries, making it worthwhile for you and the sponsor.

Next, you need to find companies that want to give away products or services. After doing contests for a while, companies find you. But to start, you may want to try the following:

• Contact your advertisers – this is a great opportunity for more exposure than a simple banner.
• If you have affiliate ads on your blog, contact these companies. Again it is a great way to get them more exposure.
• Have a button on your website or blog that leads to a page explaining the benefits of donating prizes for a contest. You can see one in the right column of my blog.
• Make a list of items you feel your readers would like to win. For example, since I run a photography blog, prizes I look for range from lenses for SLR cameras, to Photoshop products, to camera bags, to marketing materials for photographers.
• Once you identify these items, contact the company via email or even phone, and explain what you are hoping they will donate and what you will give in return.
• Clearly show your web statistics, using a tool like Google analytics.
• Explain how the contest will be conducted, links you will provide to their site and any advertising you will include.
• Describe how you plan to publicize the contest.
• If they agree to donate prizes, make sure to keep them posted during the contest. They may end up sending traffic your way too.
• Send a thank you note when the give-away concludes.
• Use your own products for a give-away – if you sell a product, chances are your audience wants to win it. So make sure to give them occasional opportunities to win.

Once you have prizes, you need to organize the contest. How? What? When? Where?

• Where to host?
• Blog – My contests work best directly on my blog, using the comment section for entries.
• For short length contests, Facebook and Twitter are also great venues.
• Forums – if you have a forum, this is an excellent place for holding contests. But remember, not everyone will be able to see it. It can be a great way to get people to join the forum if you publicize it well at other venues.
• Mailing list/Newsletter – you can utilize your newsletter for contests, though where to have people enter can be trickier.
• When to have the contest? How long should the contest last?
• When to start and end a contest: there is no magic to this. So much depends on your traffic.
• I like to start contests on my peek volume days, Tuesday and Wednesday. And I usually end them on a Sunday, which is my lowest traffic day. I often take Saturday and Sunday off from blogging, so this is a “free” space on my blog. Plus it gets people coming to check when they might not otherwise.
• I occasionally have vendors ask if they can do a 1-day contest, which I will allow. The perk to a one day contest is people feel they need to participate right then. Also, no other posts cover the contest up on my blog. This format works great on Facebook and Twitter as well.
• I shy away from 2-day contests, since they would begin and end in prime time on my blog. I have not found a reason to end at a time of high traffic since these posts are often not filled with content.
• Again, this is what works for me. You may find something completely different works well for you.
• How people will enter?
• Darren wrote an article about competitions and said that keeping it simple is most important. And I agree with this, especially on the entry side of things.
• On my blog, I ask a simple, yet meaningful question (or sometimes a few). To enter, people answer the question(s) and add your entry to the comment section.
• Of course if you want to have a photo contest, for example, then you need clear instructions on where to upload photos to, etc.
• Consider offering additional entries for spreading the word, joining your Facebook Page or following you on Twitter.
• How can you publicize the contest? Of course there are dozens of ways to get the word out. Assuming it is a blog contest, I usually do the following:
• Make sure to link to the company providing the prize(s). Remember, you need to add value for the sponsor.
• Post to Twitter.
• Post to Facebook.
• Post to any other social media networks you use.
• Give extra entries to others that post to social networking sites.
• For my biggest contests, I will send out a newsletter, but I reserve that for just a few times a year at most.
• Thousands a day read my blog so many see the contest just by their regular visits or RSS.
• Ask the person donating the prizes can also send out a post or tweet and Facebook about it.
• When will the contest winner(s) be announced?
• Make sure to let your audience know where and when you will announce the winner(s).
• You can announce winners in a blog post, or to get people on your social networking sites, consider occasionally announcing winners on Twitter of Facebook.
• Announcements can be short or you can use them as an opportunity to talk more about the products and company that sponsored the give-away.
• How will you pick the winners?
• In picking the winner, you can choose based on content, voting or random draw (and possibly other ways but these are the ones I have used).
• For content, this could be picking the “best” photo or the “favorite” comment. This is subjective and sometimes can lead to frustration. But I see this done a lot on blogs.
• Voting: On the rare occasion that I do a photo contest, I usually narrow down to the 10-15 best entries (in my opinion). Then I open it up for voting. The perk to this type of contest is contestants help spread the word for you. They tell friends, family and social networking contacts to come vote. This can be very viral.
• Then there is luck… Picking based on random drawing. Most of my contests are this type. I use either a random picker (like random.org) or I have my kids pick X amount of numbers between 1 and the end number of the contest. This gets my children involved and makes things more personal. For huge prizes, like camera lenses and such, I tend to use the online picker so I can show the results in a screen shot.

This post was an overview on running contests. While it is not a full e-book on how to run contests, I hope you picked up some useful information. Please share what works for you in the comments and expand on ideas explained here too.

This post was written by Jodi Friedman, who runs a successful Photography and Photoshop Blog. Jodi is the popular creator of Photoshop actions and Online Group Photoshop Trainings for Photographers. MCP Actions provides great products and resources for both hobbyist and professional photographers who want to improve their post processing and take their photography to the next level. If you are serious about the quality of your images or your photography business, visit MCP Actions.

You can also find Jodi on Facebook, Twitter, and through her RSS Feed.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

The Win – Win Scenario: Holding Successful Blog Contests

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Brands and advertisers are discovering a new space in Web video and sponsored Web videos. Although there are many opportunities in this space, there are some challenges since it is still relatively new.

While at SXSW, WebProNews spoke with Andrew Hampp, a reporter with Advertising Age, about this space. Because there are very few standards, he said Web video is one area of the Web that is often perceived as the Wild West. It is now up to brands and advertisers to determine how they can produce a series of sustainable videos online and generate revenue from them.

According to Hampp, audiences expect TV quality online; however, most brands do not have big budgets to support it. On the plus side, digital spending is increasing. Additionally, people like former NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman are bringing bigger and better talent to the space.

As Hampp points out, as long as there is TV quality talent on the Web, then there would be a TV audience for it as well.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

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