Debt Prison

This article is about my personal experience in maintaining this blog, while trying to write quality (reader helpful) posts on various subjects, in an effort to generate some monetary profit. I hope this post will help new bloggers acquire useful tips to assist them in their quest for meaningful blog posts.

A great blog post could almost be compared to a purifying religious experience. In a sense, you empty your heart, soul, and beliefs into readable material in hopes that it will somehow influence the minds of your readers in such a way, which makes you feel like you’ve impacted their lives in a positive manner. This is no easy task.

The more time, passion, and research you put into a blog post - the more redeemed you will feel after completing it - and the greater the post will be regarded by your readers. First, I will discuss what I have found to be successful hints, and secondly I will discuss the effects of adding google ads to my blog posts.

Acquire your own, unique domain

I began DebtPrison.net about two years ago. Having no knowledge about website building, blogging, or Wordpress, I initially bought a domain name on a two year contract and then solicited a host. Domain name was around $60.00 (this covers two years) and is $5.95 per month for hosting (prices will vary per provider). In addition, html codes and all the other good stuff was Greek to me, so I’ve learned as time has progressed. Time estimates would put probably hundreds of hours of my personal time just to see what is before you today. It was a full year after creating the initial template and article “5 ways to get out of credit card debt” that I even realized I could access the wordpress blog creator function. It was there the whole time under administrative tools for the website and thus http://debtprison.net/wordpress was created.

I believe that purchasing your own domain name and host leads to better ranking in Google for your blog content. I can’t prove this - but have consistently seen my website ranking higher for certain keywords than blogspot.com or wordpress.com webpages. You can create your own blog at wordpress or blogspot for free and immediately begin blogging, this is what the majority of bloggers do.

For an example of this go to google and type in “How to settle your debts on your own” and look at the Debt Prison ranking. Yes I know, it helps a lot if the google searcher types in the exact title of your post - but my site brings in dozens of hits a day from various debt related searches. Notice the word dozens, that’s all I’ve acquired so far. Yet my site is producing profit already, and the google ads were added to my blog only two months ago.

Create a domain name consistent with your content

The title of your domain creates an interesting phenomenon. For example, since the word ‘prison’ is in my domain name, google searches regarding prison consistently ranked my website high. I finally decided to capitalize on this by writing the article “Can you go to jail for not paying your debts?”  This article consistently provides me with some ad revenue through the google ads placed throughout the article. You may also notice some google ads on this post……..well I would like to humbly recommend that you click on one of these ads and even read the content on the newly opened webpage. This action will likely prove a positive experience for the both of us. I’ll go ahead and say “Thank You” in advance. So keep in mind - the more likely your content is reflected in the domain name, the more likely this will increase your google ranking.

Keep your content consistent with your posts’ title

You probably learned in school that if you write a paper on Ronald Reagan, don’t go off on a tangent about Robert Taft. Keep the reader material on target and focused on satisfying the expectations put forth in the title. In my article, “How to deal with collection agencies” I tried to stay on target, keeping all material relative to successfully dealing with collection agencies.

Keep in mind that if a reader locates your webpage through a search engine, comes to your site, and then finds subject matter different from that for which they were seeking - they will simply close the page and move on to a blogger that is a better writer.

Remember blogging is writing and you will improve with time, I certainly have (my ability to locate synonyms has improved greatly).

Create a title that incorporates keywords

In the above example, “How to deal with collection agencies”, I could have reworded the title and thus my ranking would have changed as well - depending on what the google searcher types into the search engine. Another article that I like on the same subject is “How to fight back against collection agencies” at Broke-ass Student. This article covers much of the same content as my article but is titled differently. Depending on what the google searcher types in to the engine, her article might be ranked higher than mine. Think about what a person would type into a search engine that will lead them to your article.

Have the first and second sentences ‘repeat’ the title and content info

It is a good idea to reword the title and place it in the first sentence of the blog post, this sometimes makes my initial sentence longer, as I also increase the length by adding more ‘keywords‘ in the first and second sentences.

Also, keep in mind to add keywords and unique phrases throughout the blog post. So, in an article about the price of college - you could say ‘college prices are high’, ‘the price of college is too expensive’, and so on - keeping in mind to weave these phrases intelligently into the post so it isn’t noticed by the reader. This will increase your google ranking as searchers inevitably type these exact phrases into the engine.

Try to write a 2,000 word post or longer

Google seems to automatically rank longer posts higher - at least initially. By writing 2,000 words you are providing enough content to pretty well cover most subjects, without boring your reader. Don’t forget, blogging is about supplying readers with valuable content. A short, ill prepared blog post will not provide value to anyone nor convince them to return to your website. This article is over 2,600 words and was written in about four hours. Writing an article about blogging has been on my mind for quite a while.? So the layout and ideas for this article have been rehashed in my mind for weeks. Last night I had spare time and creative energy - so I let it fly Blogging has become a passion for me of late, it turns out I like to write.

Passion

Write on material that you feel passionately about. When I began DebtPrison.net, it was developed because I thought no one on the web had the material that I wanted to produce. But you can’t get ranking without incorporating Wordpress or another blogging function for the site. If you use wordpress.com or blogspot.com for example, this is already taken care of for you. These blogging functions make your articles appear on google blog searches immediately when you post them - so the information gets a jump start, even though google may not crawl your site for a day to two.

My best articles have been on subjects that I feel passionately about. Probably my best two articles (from a language and flowing of material perspective) are “Do we have Private Property in the USA?” and “Rudy Giuliani will convert America into a Police State.”. These articles however, fail to produce any results as far as traffic is concerned. What is interesting about these two articles is that they are both around 2,000 words and were written in 3 hours respectively. The point is - when you feel passionately about a subject, stop and write about it as soon as possible. You don’t have to post it immediately, and shouldn’t until you have adequately reviewed it.

Write blog posts that are honest

Don’t write lies or go on and on making accusations without including links to other web pages which can back up what you say. For example, a link from the Washington Post describing the value of the deflating dollar would be a good resource, not a link to some other blog with only more ‘opinions’.

You want to write information that provides your readers with value. If you write blogs with integrity and back up your info with sources, you will be respected and your material will work its way up the google ranking system.

I have used other people’s content on my blog but I clearly indicate that the info is not my original content and direct my reader to a link where the original article was found on the web. I do this when I feel that another author has adequately covered a subject that I?d rather not go into detail about myself. This helps your readers jump over to other sites that may be of similar interest and helps all of us in the blog community create a spider web of referrals from which we all benefit.

Ways to pick up additional traffic besides search engines

Use websites like Digg.com and stumbleupon.com to add your articles to a database where viewers ‘rank’ your article and thus the number of hits will increase - this will drive traffic to your website. Also, regularly submit articles to blog carnivals to the appropriate carnival. Do not submit articles to a carnival that has nothing to do with the subject contained in the blog carnival. They either won’t include it, make fun of you, or both. Also, try and get your articles/posts included on another ‘High Traffic’ website.

For example, my article “The blimp for Ron Paul and December 16th” was put on the homepage of ronpaulforpresident2008.com and brought about 600 hits to my site for this addition. I didn’t know anything about this website. The administrator for the site found it on Digg.com or a google search, liked it, and added it to his ‘high traffic’ site. This brought me a lot of new visitors. I sent the admin a ‘Thank You’ email to let him or her know how appreciative I was for the attention. This encourages me to write better, high quality, honest content that benefits my readers.

On a not so popular website, another article of mine was added. Remember the “Rudy Giuliani will convert America into a Police State?” Well, about a month after I wrote the article I put it on digg.com just to try and drive some additional traffic to my site. In a couple of days I noticed a trackback to one of the prisonplanet.com spin off’s (probably ran by the same Alex Jones). Since the media loves implying that Alex Jones is insane (especially Fox News - they really hate the guy, he says that 9/11 was an inside job) some bloggers may have a problem with such a website adding your personal material to their front page or news section. Personally it didn’t bother me - after all, I had the courage to write and publish it on the web; my intention was for people to read it. Just giving you a heads up. People that like your material (or don’t like it) will republish it or add links to their articles to yours. This is to be expected - just remember - maintain honesty and integrity to what you write and then stand behind it.

Another important task in blogging is to thank visitors for visiting your website. When a reader takes the time to leave a comment at the bottom of an article, I always email the reader, thanking them for visiting my sight and adding their opinion or ideas. This gives readers a positive impression of your website - since you personally took the time to email them. Do not try and ‘thank’ all readers at once with a blanket email which could give a reader everyone else’s email address in the process. Maintain the privacy of your readers email.

Use Networking sites to share your best blogs with friends and family. Often after writing a post I will log into myspace and create a bulletin. For those of you who aren’t aware of this function let me explain. On myspace you have a list of ‘friends’ which is simply other myspace account users who you know or have met ‘looking’ for friends on myspace. When you send out a bulletin all of the users on your ‘friends list’ receive the bulletin. So after a good blog I create a bulletin, give a brief intro, and create a link to the article on my website. This can really help drive additional traffic to your site as well. If these other myspace users like your article - then they may also create a bulletin, include your link, and send it to all of the people on their friend list. You can achieve a lot of exposure this way.

Use google analytics to create topics for blog posts

Google analytics allows you to add a google html code to the header of your website. Analytics will then give you detailed information about all traffic that comes to your website. For example, it tells me how many hits per day, how many times each pages are viewed, what country the searchers were in etc. etc..

The most interesting function that I’ve found is the part of analytics where it shows you what a person sitting in their home, typed into the search engine that brought them to your website. On many occasions I have seen that readers came to my website looking for certain subject matter that I have not covered. If I see a pattern (many readers looking for info about a specific topic) I might decide to write a blog post about that subject. That’s what led me to write “Can you go to jail for not paying your debts?”

So take the time to learn what information your web readers are interested in finding, and write some articles that will satisfy these users.

Adding google ads to my posts

It was quite a task figuring out how and where to place these google ads. At the top of this article you will see an image ad just under the header section (Financial Advice….with a hint of Free Market Politics). I like an image ad here because it gives some color to the opening page of my site - so it doesn’t look too boring. I also try and place one set of text ads near the beginning of a post and then at the end. Besides that’s all google ads will allow on one page I think. I’m sure there are ways around this but I really don’t want to spend any more time on ad placement, the current appearance is pleasing to me.

The first time I saw money in my google ad account it was just a few cents. That has quickly turned into quite a few dollars. What I can tell you is that I probably only have five articles that provide me with ad revenue. These are the articles that go into detail about solving debt issues - so a reader is likely to spend more time on the article and read other posts throughout my site. The more time a reader spends on your site, the more ads they will look over, and perhaps click on them. These five articles are also timeless - the value of the information is valid for years probably - and they consistently show up in google searches about debt related issues. The article’s I’ve written about news that ‘just happened’ don’t generate ad revenue, since the reader is quickly trying to grasp the latest news opinion and move on. It does help generate traffic.

Another interesting thing has happened recently. Bear in mind that my blog is only three months old. I have been solicited by email to allow certain ‘debt companies’ to place advertisements on my site. In return they would pay me x amount in dollars. The other day a company contacted me about permanently buying some ad slots on certain debt articles for $75.00. I have turned down these offers so far. Don’t be in a hurry to permanently sell your web space for a one time fee - this could prove to be a mistake on down the road.

Conclusion

I hope this article assists you in creating meaningful posts. My blog is three months old but already receives thousands of hits per month. My average ad click is one click per seventy visitors. By keeping my readers on my site longer (writing more articles about debt) the average ad click has improved. Lastly keep in mind what I said about providing readers with value content.  Don’t write junk, anything worth writing is worth writing correctly. Bad articles will leave readers with a negative impression of your site. Also, create a unique header image so that readers will ‘remember’ having been to your site before. Go forth and be debt free!

Discuss this article, share ideas, and meet new people at Debt Prison Forums.

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Tags: blog, great, post, write

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 9:33 am and is filed under Self Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.