Why are blogs a great marketing tool?
It’s actually pretty simple. Simple to set up, simple to maintain, and simple to learn. The benefit of a Blog is that within seconds what ever you discuss, talk about, blog about is available through the Internet. You don’t need to know any HTML or Programming, you don’t need to have any expensive programs like Dreamweaver or need to know anything about graphics.Â
The word press community offer thousands of useful plugins and themes to make you blog appear and function to your own criteria.
Now the marketing benefits. Through the power of RSS feeds and a few inbound links from other sites, your blog become cannon fodder for the Search Engines.
When marketing a product or service via a blog, make sure you mention your major keyword phrase in your title of your blog post. Add the tags with major keyword phrases. Link inside your blog post to the item or service you are marketing. Bingo.
The results: With in days (depending on your in bound links and keyword terms) you can rank very high already in the search engines.
I always look for something new, something people are talking about as far as my keyword terms. I blog about it. I get traffic. You see, with search engines if a topic or keyword phrase has millions of results, the competition for traffic is huge. However if the topic is fresh and new, there won’t be a ton of keyword terms already in existence and my blog post will rank high in the search results.
The best examples I can offer you are that of newsworthy items or TV related topics. People are interested and do look for more information about those events or “names”. I am big into Reality TV, because a New Household “NAME” will appear every time a new Reality show hits. These Names are now “Searched Keyword Terms and Phrases“.
A great example is Donald Trumps The Apprentice. Every contestant is a new search term. I am sure you can think of something to set up a blog for an go to town with that concept ( something New..something you enjoy…something people talk about)
These Names and Searched Keyword Terms and Phrases, don’t have millions of results in the search engines because of there freshness and unique names. Therefore my blog posts rank for these names. As a result Traffic, as a result of the Traffic – Clickable AdSense income, click-thru affiliate products.
Basically the simplest and easiest thing to market, is something you already know about. Your hobbies, your interests, your pastimes, your experiences. Just blog about it! Use the tools from Blogs For Traffic ( inside websitemonthly membership area) to set up your blog correctly for the maximum benefits.
What are you favorite things? Can you review a product or news item? A Movie? A Book? Do you participate in a hobby, a sport a pastime. Do you just sofa surf? Blog about it, Blog about some more, Continue Blogging about it. Then keep Blogging about the topic. The more your blog the better your results, Don’t give up – Blog it!
Now go out and Blog!! Then Get a few links to your blog via directory submissions, article submission or exchange Links and you are on your way to getting Search Engine Traffic. An in a few weeks, months you will see the benefit of your efforts!!

Hi Ed –
a quick question about monetizing your blogs.
I’ve seen a few scripts that allow use to monetize via adsense, clickbank, kolimbo, amazon…
What about eBay? There’s a a “Build….Site” system using the eBay API and affilliate system, but can it be worked for WordPress? In essence, can a plugin for such a system be worked for WP?
I get that we are monetizing thru the use of incoming feeds – so what about other affilliate systems, like CJ, or ShareASale? Any way to build those into plugins for WP?
Another question, if I can…
Monetizing the site is one thing, but can you go over some ways to build traffic, both long-term and short term strategies?
Thanks again for this great content!
Darrell
Darrell,
There are a few scripts in Website Monthly that allow you to do some cool things with wordpress – you can monetize your rss feeds, add kolimbo products, etc…
For the things we don’t have some of it’s pretty easy – in fact here is a widgets site that should keep you busy for a few weeks
http://www.widgetbox.com/ Everything there from ebay to amazon, to other things.
Each time you blog – if you have set things up correctly like we cover in Blogsfortraffic you are building for the long term. Your pinging update services, allowing sites to pick up your RSS feed snippets, and in general promoting with just a post.
There are other things you should and can do though. Most any marketer is familiar with but here they are:
Submit your rss feeds to rss directories.
Submit your blog to blog directories.
Make comments and do track backs to other related blogs – ie be part of the blogging community – it pays.
You can also submit your blog to directories, submit articles that talk about your blog in the resource box, etc… You can buy links via places like sitewidelinking.com or text-link-ads.com as well.
I tend to make a blog and also make a html site that pulls the rss feeds from the blog – and I promote that html site heavily. I grow two web properties this way and end up happy