Photo author: dullhunk

Pictures can sometimes make or break your post. A good, suggestive photo can work miracles with your traffic and, implicitly, with your income.

Are you confident that your blog post for today can make you £1? Then why not garnish it with a matching stock photo from one of the many distributors like StockExpert or iStockPhoto?

I don’t mean all the posts, only the ones that are representative for your work - guides, how-to advice, various lists… I regularly use SXC (StockXpert’s free website) and Flickr for the photos in my posts, you should too. But when you reach a certain threshold with traffic and income you can switch to more exclusive sources. One credit with iStockPhoto or StockExpert will run you £1 and $1 respectively (a little less in bulk). This will enable you to download one photo in web resolution (400-500 pixels wide), perfect for blog posts.

There’s only so far you can go with free stock photo sites, as the photographers who post their work on them are usually semi-pros and even pros will hoard their best work for paid stock websites. But as I said, don’t underestimate the power of free photos; just choose wisely.

When you feel confident with using paid stock photo sites establish a photo budget (per month or trimester for example)… say you plan on posting 35 posts the next month and for 15 of those you want to use premium stock photos. Plan ahead and purchase credits in bulk as you can get discounts (5 StockExpert credits cost $4.99, but if you buy 50 at a time it’s only $39.99 - so you save roughly 20%).

Final advice - don’t forget to check out the exact terms of service you agree to when obtaining photos from paid sites. There are limitations to the ways you can use photos; most notably the fact that you usually aren’t allowed to use them in modified works, such as logos, banners and so on. It’s possible to obtain full usage rights, but that usually costs more than a credit worth. Make sure you fully understand the agreement (a lot of Legalese there, but it’s not that hard once you get used to it) and stay within the set boundaries.

And just going out on a limb here, premium stock photo credits could make excellent blog contest prizes…

Photo author: ecstaticist

Back with part two of this series - for part 1 click here

In part 1 I talked about effective ways to start multiple blogs effectively, interconnecting those through cross-linking, hiring writers and directing their work. In this second part I’d like to write more about what to do once you have an established base on which to build on.

So here are a few tips that might help you if you’re asking yourself “OK, now what?”.

1. Start a flagship website/blog for your network.

A place to summarize stats, announce news, in one word - give details about your other blogs and your network. See for example the website of Bloggy Network.

2. Centralized ad sales and serving

Direct ad sales are the most profitable money maker for your network. Unlike running ads for adsense, Chitika etc. you keep 100% of the income, can charge premium rates and can better filter what ads you show Building on the above idea of the flagship website, directing potential advertising customers to a central page where they can see all your inventory can result in increased income. You can offer package deals (for example, if you have 4 blogs on finance you can offer a deal for advertising across all four). For advanced ad serving and tracking you should host your own ad server (OpenX for example is an open source solution with very advanced tracking and serving capabilities. It was known in the past under the name of phpAdsNew).

3. Contests, prizes and giveaways

Everyone loves free stuff and you can gain a lot of readership by holding contests. You don’t have to give away tangible products, like iPods. Try working out a deal with an advertiser where he supplies a prize for a discount in his usual rate and for additional promotion (a mention in the post announcing the contest for example). Again, take the example of a finance blog. You can offer a consulting session with a top adviser, or access to a stock trading course, whatever you can work out a deal for…

4. Use social media sites the smart way

Different social media networks send different type of traffic and the effect on your blog may vary. For example, RollingMarbles gets more traffic from StumbleUpon then from any other network and for a non-news website this type of traffic is better than, say, Digg traffic. StumbleUpon sends a steady stream of visitors as opposed to Digg-fueled “spikes”. Instead of splashing buttons to tens of social media sites on each post, try focusing on the ones that have the most potential for your particular scenario.

5. No surrender, no retreat

Once you’re in this, keep it up. Don’t fold because you haven’t made a profit in your first month. Keep going, but analyze your situation constantly. Maybe your writer on a particular blog isn’t really connecting with the audience. Maybe it’s time to try out a new ad set-up. Whatever it is, tweak it until it works.

That’s not to say that when a blog isn’t performing you shouldn’t be radical in your actions. Flip it*, start again with a new one.

This concludes the RollingMarbles crash course on starting a blog network. In the future I am planning to write in more detail about all the topics discussed in Part 1 and here.

*Flip it - sell it or otherwise try to recuperate as much of your investment as possible.

Due to my hectic program during most of the week, activities related to blogging (not just writing, but administration work, stats reviewing etc.) have pushed me to get an arsenal of tools and gadgets to help me do that on the go. In this post I’d like to share some all of those with you.

1. Option’s USB GlobeSurfer iCON HSUPA

This thing rocks! Together with a 3G+ Mobile Internet Connection (in my case from Orange, but many operators offer something similar) it enables me to blog, browse, administer and in one word be online as long as the batteries on my laptop hold out. Works anywhere (read: anywhere not on the peak of a mountain) and because it is quad-band I could use it in any country on Earth, given I change the SIM card with one on a subscription plan in that particular country so the roaming traffic charges don’t kill me.

If my WiFi router at home allows me to be online even on the toilet (read that somewhere, found it hilarious), this little guy allows me to be online when I’m on other people’s toilets as well…

2. My laptop

OK, don’t kill me, I write on a Dell. I didn’t get a mac because it would’ve cost me a fortune and I wouldn’t have been able to run any of the apps and connect any lab equipment I need at University. Systems Engineering is, for now at least, done on PC’s.

I’m pretty pleased with it, nice battery time and cooling system… no mechanical problems yet, since it’s only 5 months old. It’s a power horse, has 2 gigs of RAM and I can use it for a lot of stuff, from gaming to neural network simulations. Blogging is somewhere in there too

3. My Nokia E70

We Europeans are crazy when it comes to cellphones. I got this thing because of its qwerty keyboard (flip it open - wham) and WiFi capability. In theory I could blog from my phone without any problems, although I never tried it… I still prefer my WUXGA laptop screen to the 352 x 416 of my phone.

4. Odds and ends

Ok, let’s see here: memory stick, memory cards and MP3 player with voice record function for when I get what I think are ideas that’d make good posts. Co-workers can sometimes see me walking along the hallway on our office floor talking into that thing going: “Note to self: write about this or that tonight.”

Right, that’s about it. This is my mobile office that fits into a backpack and still leaves room for a sandwich or two… hope you found it interesting.

Photo author: mollyeh11

Assuming your blog has more than one page of posts you’re going to have some links at the bottom of each page reading to navigate to older posts or to newer ones. They are an essential part of your blog’s navigation and can be useful when trying to keep a visitor on for more.

I have seen my share of instances when those links read something like “Next” and “Previous”, or something similar, which can be pretty confusing at times for the reader. As an example, Josh is reading page 4 of your post index. He worked his way down from the 1st page, trying to take in all the useful info he can get from your blog. He reached the end of page 4 and wants to go to page 5, but isn’t sure any more which link to click,”Next” or “Previous”… he clicks the wrong one and ends up on page 3. Of course, this is frustrating for Josh. Now he’d have to go back to page 4 and click the other link to get wher he wanted to be.

Many times the Joshes reading your posts simply decide it’s not worth it and simply leave, to find the information they need elsewhere. You just lost a few potential page views. Want to avoid that? Of course…

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