Getting Traffic 201 - Advertising With Videos

You might not think you can afford to have a smooth, professional looking video advertisement for your website or blog like big companies do.  I mean, having a professional video made just for you can cost tens of thousands of dollars, right?  Well yes, they can actually.  Companies like CocaCola and Intel spend so much money every year on video advertising that it makes my head spin.  The truth is though, that you can have your very own video ad for the price of a Burger King meal.

Head over to Fiverr and check out their video introductions.  For a five dollar bill you can have your own video to upload to YouTube, your blog, or other video sharing sites.

Ok, ok, I know what you're thinking.  How is having a video going to bring me more traffic if it's not on TV in front of millions of viewers?  Well here's the thing: if you upload it to YouTube, then it will be in front of millions of viewers.

In the past I've used my YouTube channel to advertise other blogs of mine like CBSB and Photoshop Helps.  By checking the analytics on my sites I've been able to determine that YouTube has generated huge amounts of traffic for me.  Check out the newest promo video I got on Fiverr for Hot Shot Blogger below:

Granted, you're not going to generate huge amounts of traffic at first, especially if you don't have any YouTube followers.  If  however you upload helpful tutorials about your niche along with your promo videos, use high traffic keywords as tags and a title, and put a link to your site at the top of every description, you will start to see an increase in traffic to your blog.  In time as you add more and more YouTube videos, the traffic will continue to grow.  As a side effect, if you've effectively researched and used your keywords in the video title, descriptions, and tags, then you may one day find your video on page one of Google.

You don't have to purchase every video you upload to YouTube, although, having a professionally made intro and outro in each of your videos will help to gain some popularity.  I mostly use Windows Movie Maker, which is a free software that comes with Windows.  When you do order a video intro or the like on Fiverr, be sure to ask the seller to send you the video in a format that your video editing software can handle.  As an example: often Fiverr sellers want to send me a video in .mp4 format, which just doesn't work with Windows Movie Maker.

What I want you to take away from this post is two things:

1) You can have a stylish, professional advertisement made just for you for the price of a hamburger.

2) Uploading video promos and tutorials to sites like YouTube has the potential to drive large amounts of traffic to your site.

Just because your blog is small right now doesn't mean you have to settle with being mediocre.  So go ahead, go get your video promo and show it off to the masses, and feel like you, are a blogging rock star.

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Money From Micro-Blogs 402 - Don'ts

Now that you know what a micro-blog is and how it can be used to make money, perhaps you've decided you'd like to try your hand at it.  Let's go over some things you should avoid while micro-blogging then.  You may notice many of these things also apply to regular blogs... that's because it's good information.

1) Too Little Content

Avoid starting a blog that you don't plan on putting much content on.  Example: don't start a blog about cars and then only upload 10 posts.  This blog will sit stagnant and never make a dime... and if it does make a dime, it probably won't make anything after that.  Starting a blog with only a few posts and never working on it again is just time wasted that you could have spent updating or blogging on a larger blog.

2) Topics You Don't Know About

Why on earth would you start a blog about something you know nothing about?  I don't know, but some people do.  They probably think along the lines of, "Oh... finance is a hot topic right now, so I'll start a blog about it and make some money!"  Wrong.  How can you write any content if you don't know much about it?  You also don't want to give misleading information.  If you're going to blog, you need accurate, trustworthy information so that your guests will come back, or send their friends.

3) Starting Something You Don't Care About

This goes right along with points one and two.  You may know quite a lot about finance, but aren't passionate about it.  Why write about it then?  It's guaranteed that if you don't at least care about the topic a little, then you'll end up abandoning the blog at some point down the road (waste of your time at that point), or your content will turn out flat and uninteresting, which will leave your blog stagnant with no returning visitors (also a waste of your time).  If you're going to take the time to do it in the first place, then write about what you know, and love.

4) Avoid over-Advertising

Have you ever seen a blog or website where there was actually more advertising than there was actual content?  Avoid bombarding your readers with advertising or they won't stay long, and won't come back.  They're there for actual content, not ads.  Ads are meant to be unobtrusive, and are meant to compliment your site, rather than be the entirety of your site.


5) Avoid grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes.

6) Avoid Keyword Overload

I've come across blogs online before that are nothing more than a post or a page full of a bunch of keywords with no actual content.  Not only does this go against Adsense policy, but any visitors you may have will come in, see that there's nothing there for them to read but a list of words that make no sense, and then leave.  They won't click on any of your ads, and they won't send any of their friends.  Odds are you're likely to get reported, and your blogger and adsense accounts suspended.

7) Avoid Plagiarism

This is the big NO-NO in blogging, period.  If you plagiarize you can get hit with lawsuits, as well as get any accounts you may have with blogger or adsense terminated permanently.  Don't do it!  What is plagiarizing?  Plagiarizing is using someone else's  content without their express permission and without giving them credit.  It would be wise to research how to give someone credit online if you plan on using a quote or something from their works at all.

8) Don't Spam

As always, don't spam the web advertising your blog.  This means you don't want to go to forums and just spam your url all over the place.  The same goes for facebook, the e-mail, or any other place you can think of.

9) Don't ask visitors to visit your ads or 'sponsors'.

This is a big no-no and your adsense account will likely be suspended if you do this because this is a violation of policy.  Other affiliate programs may have different policies that allow you to ask them that, but if adsense finds it on your page and have adsense enabled, you risk losing your account.

While there are many more things that you may learn that will hinder your efforts in making money or running micro-blogs, these are some of the bigger ones that I hope you will avoid.

Check out our other tutorials by clicking the category tabs at the top of the page!

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