Some very awesome designs this week. So here they are:

In No Particular Order:

By Lucian Dragomir,

By Sayoga D. Sutanto,

By Felipe Rojas,

By Lucian Dragomir (again),

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Wow, it’s been a fast 30 days and in just this short time we’ve covered everything from launching your blog, creating quality content, optimizing your blog for search engines, and making money from your blog!

While this may seem like a lot that we’ve covered, in reality there is much more to blogging. And this ‘much more’ is the one thing that separates successful bloggers from unsuccessful bloggers. So what is this ‘one thing’ that makes a huge difference?

Consistency

Consistency is the key to blogging and not just blogging; being consistent in anything you do will give you results. Many bloggers burn out fairly quick and lose enthusiasm because they do not see results as quickly as they have imagined. So be consistent with blogging, make it as fun as possible and you will see results. To keep you motivated throughout your blogging extravaganza…

Here’s a List of Blogs About Successful Blogging:

• Problogger
• Daily Blog Tips
• CopyBlogger
• Perfect Blogging
• Lorelle on Wordpress
• Chris Garrett’s Blog

There are many more blogs around about blogging and many provide a lot of good information, but I’ve decided to only list this handful because from my experience reading too many blogs leads to a) lots of time wasted and b) very big RSS list in your reader. The few blogs I’ve provided are the ones I find most helpful and easy to understand.

When I wrote “It’s Not Over” I really meant it. Although this blog is more focused on web design and development, I will still continue to post tips and tweaks to improve your blogging experience and results.

Thank you for being part of this 30 day awesome blogging crash course, and get ready for some more fun action in the upcoming weeks!

For our last post on monetization of blogs, let’s summarize what we’ve learned and then top it off with one tip I had in mind:

• There are many types of advertising methods to work with
• Placing Ads where users click is much more effective than where they don’t click
• Adsense works very well when you know how to use it
• Making money from blogging takes time

From this we can derive the conclusion that monetizing your blog is effective and regardless of how you do it, your can benefit financially from your blog whether it be through direct blog advertisements, or indirect methods.

The other part of successful monetization to ads is for the ads to be seen by the appropriate audiences. Certain types of traffic that you will receive will not click your ads, or even see them!

This includes:

1. Traffic from foreign countries - You might think how can I possibly be getting significant traffic from foreign visitors when I don’t even speak their language, but it is very possible. Especially if you advertise in the wrong places. If you’re buying links, or visitors question that company’s sources. Where are they getting their traffic? If you’re using services that provide cheap and paid visitors it is unlikely that you will benefit much from them.
2. Social Networks - Social networks like Digg and StumbleUpon may get you a lot of visitors, but depending on you’re niche, they may not bring in much money. Unlike from #1 in our list, it does not hurt to submit yourself to these sites, but keep in mind that the visitors from these blogs are unlikely to click as a result of their fast paced browsing. They will click through eventually (as a returning visitor) if you:
   • Design your blog properly
   • Give a great first impression
   • Position your ads well
   • Do everything to make the visitor come again

   Most of the time, only when your visitors return then they actually have time to look around and get deeper into your blog. While they’re surfing on Digg and related networks, it’s the same as if they’re flipping through channels.

3. Unrelated Traffic - Some visitors may land on your pages simply by ‘accident’. In that case, if they’re not interested in your niche, they’re probably not going to stay very long, let alone click on anything. This is the purpose of SEO - to filter out as much unrelated traffic as possible and make yourself as open as possible to the traffic you’re really after.

This being said, it never hurts to have any kind of traffic coming in to your site. It does hurt however, to try to focus and expect monetary gain from the wrong traffic.

Now blogging is not a get rich quick thing, but it still strikes me why so many people think it is. Blogging is an actual job you need to take seriously and be consistent about. Almost every post I write on this blog takes me at least an hour to go over, analyze, and put in a format I think is best for readers to understand and enjoy. And so while it is not a get rich quick scheme we’re after, we still want to get somre monetary reimbursement for our time and efforts.

The previous posts I discussed were involved in monetizing your blog directly, i.e. placing ads, banners, etc. In this post, though, I’ll explain the power of making money as a result of your blogging. When you blog, you become the expert in your area, meaning you blog about one market that you know well about (or want to become an expert in) and after some time has passed people will see you as the expert in this area and will want your services.

Services

I’ve already discussed the Essential Pages you need for your blog, but the Services Page is the real catcher. This is where you advertise yourself. Sure, you might not have much, but there’s certainly one thing you can add…that you’re a blogger. Being a blogger means you have good grammar, professional tone, expertese, etc. It won’t matter whether you have little or much education, readers will see your writing skills for themeselves.

Here are a few things you can add to your list of services:

• Paid reviews - Enjoy an opportunity to review someone or something
• Writing Services - business blogging, newspapers, and other various gigs
• Consultation - If you’re the expert in your niche then say so
• Online Resources - If you have an online product such as a script, ebook, video series, etc. include that in your services page as well
• Speaking Opportunities - This doesn’t work on all blogs, but if its a topic that can be talked about, and if you have the

As an example, here’s what I would add to my services page:

1. Corporate Web Design
2. Blog and Website Design
3. Coding Services - XHTML/CSS/Wordpress/PHP
4. Professional Writing Services
5. Content Management System Setup and Management
6. Secure Hosting Provider

The list can go on and on, but I’m here to explain a point not brag about myself. Your blog will greatly increase you customer database as long as you take the time to be the expert in your niche.

I lied.

There’s just no way you can think of every single way to correctly position and place Adsense on your blog in order to get the maximum benefit from it. And that is the beauty of ads, placement, and even blogging in general; the idea of having so many numerous combination’s of the same basic techniques and methods and still have great results. So here we are ready to learn as much about Adsense as we possibly can in one post.

Following the Rules

First of all, it is important to adhere to all of Google Adsense Terms and Conditions as well as Program Policies which every Adsense publisher has agreed to and read when they signed up for Google Adsense. So, long story short, I won’t be going over those, however all tips n’ tricks here will be compliant with the policies I have linked to above.

Ad Color and Blending

For our first tip, is a basic one is to create ad blocks that blend with your usual text. This means to have the same background color as your web page and make your Adsense links blend with your posts. As I have discussed earlier in my post, Using Heatmaps to Effectively Position Ads, make sure your ads match up in color where you think your ads will result in the most clicks based off of heatmap data. Ad Titles should be in whatever colors your standard links are, preferably blue or purple. When users see blue or purple, they automatically associate it with links and are already pre-opted to click.

Ad Size

In your list of choices for ad block size in your Adsense Dashboard, you have many different choices for sizes. Stay away from 468×60 ads because those are so numerous and so generic that 99% of your readers know that they’re ads. When a person sees a 468×60 ad block, their brain associates it with an ad, and ads mean don’t click. However, when a user looks at something like a 336×280 they see the ad links, not the ad box.

Images

Images are great, they work very well as I described in the Styling your Posts the Correct Way post, but they do not work well with Adsense. Image ads are another way of telling readers that this is a banner, so don’t click. For me in particular, when I write this post, image ads remind me of those “Win a Free PS3!!” banners, and like the majority of the people, I doubt you’ll click. For our purposes, refrain from using image ads because they are not nearly as effective as text ads.

Adsense Decoration

If your blog is design heavy, meaning you have a lot of style and decoration, you may consider designing your ad give it more disguise. Readers these days have become blind to ads which is why it is important to make our ads stand out. But this does not mean making it stand out by adding a different background color. This means, adding design. Here is an example:

Limits

Remember that Google Adsense only allows you to place up to three ad units and two link units on one page. You do not have to max out on these units, sometimes only 2-3 is enough. Sometimes only one ad unit may be the best choice. The goal is to provide readers with content and depending on your content size you should place ads so that they’re not overwhelming, but still noticeable.

Final Note

I keep stressing my Using Heatmaps to Effectively Position Ads post for a reason. It is vitally important to run a heatmap to see where your users click. Otherwise your advertising efforts are something along the lines of “worthless”.

I think it’s pretty obvious for everyone that simply ’slapping on some ads’ is not the best method of getting the most revenue out of them. So how do we figure out the best placement for our ads? This is where heatmaps come in.

Heatmaps will essentially show clicks through the use of hot and cold zones as you can see in the image on the right. With heatmaps you can see where users click the most, as well as where they don’t.

From the ‘hot’ zones you can figure out whether or not it is a good placement for an advertisement. Why I say ‘or not a good placement’ is because it’s a fairly straight forward fact that you will get clicks on your navigation menu, so for advertisement purposes, use some logic.

How to use Heatmaps

If you’re not technically-savvy, by which I mean it is not a 5 minute thing to install your own script, you can use Crazy Egg Heatmap to get yourself a heatmap. All you need to do is sign up, put some code in your template file and you’re set to go.

For Tech-Savvy Users: Download ClickHeat, an open source heat map script which will allow you to have your own heatmap. If you’re using a free host, I doubt you’ll be able to run this script due to technical requirements.

Bright Idea! If you can and want to, you may use both of these heatmaps. The limitations of Crazy Egg is the number of page views you can get, whereas the limits of ClickHeat are all the advanced features Crazy Egg has. So if you use both, you can benefit better.

Placement

After adding your heatmap, check it after a few days and you’ll begin to notice a trend of clicks in the same area. In the areas we get the most visitor attention, we want to place banners, ads, and so forth in order to maximize our clickthroughs.

Other Uses

Heatmaps can be used for much more than just ads. Here are some examples:

• Design Use: You want users to click on certain spots on your site, but you see it doesn’t happen. Change your design a bit and see whether the clicks improve or not.
• Page Layout - Seeing where your clicks go will help you determine whether the layout you have (ie sidebar items, widgets, archives, etc.) are positioned properly.
• Subscribe Buttons/Links - Boost your RSS subscriber database by placing subscribe links where readers will click.