Yes, you are a warm, wonderful human being, but I am going to let you into a secret:  Your marketplace / readers are a lot less interested in you, than they are in their own challenges and problems!

So, if you want your content marketing to engage with them and convert them into clients, customers or passionate advocates, you need to put the spotlight on them and their world.

• Show them how to solve their problems.
• Show them how to overcome their challenges.
• Show them how to benefit from opportunities.
• Show them where the opportunities are, if they can’t already see them.
• …and most of all, show them you are focusing on their world!

Read the blog posts and marketing pages of most websites, and you will usually see pages and pages of information all about the author and their business.  They provide what we call “the who and the why.”  Who they are and why you should buy from them.

Content marketing: Help and inform your readers

Now, if you look at the most popular blogs, you see something completely different.  You see pages and pages of information, which the author has written for the benefit of his or her readers.  You see ALL successful bloggers offer their readers key information designed to; help the reader, make the reader’s life easier, guide the reader and solve the reader’s problems.  They focus on providing great free content and then offer products and services aligned to their content.

So, their content marketing focuses on helping the reader for free, whilst offering paid-for products and services, designed to add value to their readers too,

Take a look at the sites I just mentioned and look at how they speak to their readers.  Look how they offer solutions to their readers.  Check out their tutorials and free guides.  All their focus is aimed at helping and informing their readers.  It’s all about the reader.  It’s also super-effective!

How reader focused is your site?  Are you focused on “the who and the why” or the needs, challenges and opportunities of your target readership?

Here’s a quick tip: If you think you are giving away waaaay too much free information to help your readers, in my experience you are probably on the right lines!

If you want to generate more advertising revenue and affiliate income form your blog, this post is just for you!

I visited a blog earlier, which had Google adwords inserted several times into the post I was hoping to read.  The sidebar was auto-running video ads, which were extremely distracting.  This combined to make the site look cheap and caused me to rethink the quality of the content.  5 seconds after arriving, I was on another site.

Successful content marketing is about putting the content first!

The second site also had ads (affiliate ads this time), but they did not get in the way of the content.  The affiliate ads were also directly relevant to the blog’s content.  My overall experience of the second blog was positive and it was little wonder that it seemed to be massively more popular than the first blog.

The blogs that make the most money are those that put the content first.  As a result, they get more readers and can serve more page impressions and ad clicks.

Content marketing and ad revenue

If your monetization strategy is to generate income from advertising, this does not mean cramming as many ads as you can into every inch of available space.  Your strategy needs numbers.  It needs people to read, share and link to your blog.  And remember, without those links, your blog will get very little search traffic.

People also tend to be very apprehensive about sharing links with their friends, which lead to sites that are lit up with ads and flashing banners, like a Vegas slot machine on acid!

Put the content first.  Keep your blog posts targeted around a theme and then offer ads and products / services that are closely aligned with the content of your blog.  It works for the most successful blogs in the world and can work for you too.  Great examples of this approach include; Seth Godin’s blog, Danny Brown’s blog, Leo Laporte’s TWiT network

Today’s internet marketing post is all about how to boost your income and avoid one of the most common Internet marketing errors.

Don’t turn your posts into ads

Many blogs read more like a series of self-obsessed commercials, than a series of useful posts or articles.  It’s as if the blogger just can’t resist selling his or her services in every post.

Whilst it makes very good sense to occasionally blog directly about what you do or a special deal you may have running, pimping your wares too often will turn readers away.  Remember, your blog needs to be all about them.  If it’s all about you and your services, you will turn people away.

The whole point of content marketing (which is what blogging is), is to write unique content, that will be of value or interest (or both) to your target market.  The way that content is monetized, is to turn your blog into a valuable resource for people who need the kind of products or services you offer.  When your target market arrive at your blog, they should feel as if they have just found an Aladdin’s Cave of great information.  This positions your blog as a valuable resource and YOU as their go-to guy or gal, when it comes to your area of expertise.

So, where’s the money?

The money comes, by making it easy for your readers to see the services or products you provide, as a natural part of their reading experience on your site.  The thing is, although people love to buy things, they hate being sold to! So, instead of making each post read a little like a sales pitch, we use other methods, to transition them from being a reader with a need, to a reader with a need who feels they have just found the solution they are looking for.

Call to action boxes

If you look at the best converting sites in the world, they use a call to action box at the foot of their content, which asks the reader to do something.  There are some massive benefits to this approach, which is why I use them on all my sites.

When you insert a call to action box (see below), into every post, you don’t need to force sales messages into your posts.  Also, because the box is inserted at the foot of every post, people see it just after reading a post by you.  If they have read the whole way through your post, you have clearly engaged them.  This is EXACTLY where you want them to see your call to action.

On our blogs, we insert the following box below every post and people click the link all day, every day:

When people click that link, it takes them to the page on the blog, that markets our services.  It works extremely well, even though it is not intrusive and does not impact the content of the post!

Relevant links

Having a page or pages on your site, which clearly market your products or services is essential.  Not only can interested people go to your navigation bar and click them directly, you can also insert links to them from appropriate parts of appropriate posts.  It’s called contextual linking.  Although you need to be careful not to over use them, when you link directly from one of your posts to a marketing page, it can be extremely powerful.  If, for example, you had just written a post about how your service helped a client, it makes sense to link to the page that markets that service.

Sidebar ads

One of the best kept secrets in Internet marketing is this: The fewer ads you run in your sidebar, the more money you make.

Is the sidebar of your blog a clean, uncluttered area where people can see a few, very relevant, ads?  If it is and you already have decent traffic, you will know it works extremely well.  Many blogs pack their sidebar with 8 or 10 affiliate ads.  This, along with all the usual sidebar functions, can make it hard for people to focus on any one thing.

Find a small number of highly relevant, great quality advertising / affiliate partners.  If you pick the right mix, you can make a very good income.  Just ensure the ads are as closely linked to your blog content as possible.

This is just part one of a series of posts I will be producing on monetizing your blogs