Does this captcha look familiar??

You see them when you are buying online products and are signing up for various forums.. Although recently they have started appearing on Wordpress Blogs!! Could this be slowing down your readers opinions?

Think about it. Your viewers are on your blog and have to enter a stupid captcha form that tests their visual skills before they can submit their opinions. Why should they even bother? With a blog being created every second* (*According to BBC and Technorati’s statistics), there surely must be another blog that offers the same type of content that you do.

Instead of trying to screw spam-bots using the Captchas, why don’t you just install Wordpress’s default spam filter.. Askimet? Then you don’t hassle the “Real” commenter’s that have said their piece on your article, and the ones advertising free viagara are blocked. (Editors Note: For putting the word Viagara in this post, I have no doubt that I will recieve hundreds of bots commenting on this post, trying to obtain links through my ‘no-follow removed’ policy )

So just a warning to everyone that uses the image captchas.. not the ones that ask “Is the sun hot or cold?” - those are all fine and just require a 3 letter answer, don’t expect me to leave my opinion on what you wrote. I just don’t have the time to figure out the screwed up words in your annoying spam filter

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The title says it all. Since the release of WWSGD (What Would Seth Godin Do) Plugin, thats what every blog says. Even if the blogs do not use that plugin, it is still usually on the front page, or after every post. My question is: “How effective is asking your visitors to subscribe to your feed, if they like the content?”

If they arrived via Stumbleupon, chances are they will read your article and “Stumble” something right after, completely ignoring your request to subscribe.

If they arrived via Digg, the visitor will read the article, perhaps subscribe for a couple days, then disappear. The main reason why they subscribed however was to see more articles like the ones they saw on the website… More times than not, the content will just thin out. The person will unsubscribe, figuring out that the story that made it on the front page of Digg was a “One Hit Wonder”.

These cruel blogging facts may astonish you, I’m just the first person to actually write a post about it. So what’s the solution?? Modify the message to reflect something on your blog to make it stand out from the average,

“Your New Here, Perhaps you should subscribe to my RSS feed”

As you all may know are hosting a contest that offers many things to be received by our readers.

The early bird prize winner was: Indocontest@gmail.com and will receive 350 Entrecard credits. Congratulations.

However, Thats NOTHING compared to what we are giving away on our grand prize!! Good Luck To All.

We use Random.org to process our results, for the grand prizes, we will provide a live coverage of the event with a video recording, then you know that everything was indeed random, and everyone had the same chance.

@ Indocontest - Please contact me via email to receive the credits

Like a good vacation, this series has come to an end.

This last post will tell you how to make those new advertisements look good from the start to the finish. In this post, we will find out two little tweaks that we can do to our advertisements to add that extra touch. Specifically, we will learn how to:

• Remove the blue picture borders and
• Add “ALT” tags to help your advertisers with S.E.O.
• Open The Links In New Tabs, So visitors don’t leave your website

Blue Borders - Be Gone!

To remove the blue picture borders, you must see where you have your picture url and add a border=”0″ property to it. Thus making the browser realize that it doesn’t have to have a hyperlinked border, and removes it entirely. As an example, I will use one of my advertisers codes to show you:

<img src=”http://bradblogging.com/wp-content/…/125×125-b.gif” border=”0″ />

The URL is where my picture is located, and right after it is where I would insert the border property, creating the obvious change. Here is the same pictures, one with the border property above, and the other without it (Screenshoted Earlier)…

Show Your Advertisers You Care, Add an ALT Tag.

The second thing to make an advertiser happy is to add “ALT” tags to increase their S.E.O. ranking. To do this simple step, just go to where you will link to the advertisers website and add alt=”Whatever their tagline or website motto is”.. Again I will use an advertisers example to do this:

<a href=”http://www.submit2please.com/” alt=”Manual directory submission service” >

The A href is a link, obviously. The alt will help the googlebot associate those keywords with the website that you are linking to.

Don’t Lose That Visitor, Open In Another Tab!

Finally, to make the interested person not leave your website and let them visit an advertiser, simply add a target=”_blank” after the ALT tag. Example:

<a href=”http://www.submit2please.com/” alt=”Manual directory submission service” target=”_blank” >

So hopefully after reading this series, you have learned a little (or a ton) more than you knew about advertising at the start. Perhaps now you will be able to sell those spots better/faster than you could before. If you missed the entire series, simply keep scrolling down, to read it in reverse order!!

What should our next series be about?? Remember, at BradBlogging(dot)com, we cover everything blogging. Simple as that.

This part of the series will help you find advertisers for your newly created advertisement spots. By doing this, you will generate a profit from your space and possibly pay for your blog hosting/advertising etc. Most blogs don’t have 4,6, or 8 advertisers that will instantly come running to buy your spaces, and thats what this post will help you find

Visiting Your Competitors

Looking at your fellow bloggers 125×125 ads can always help find yourself some advertisers. More times than not, if they will advertise on the pertaining site that you are visiting, they will likely advertise on yours.. Especially if you have a fair price. This is always the best method to use and personally is how I’ve sold half of my advertisements.

Asking Your Regular Reader

If you have a few regular readers that participate in discussions, forum, or posts will likely want to put their ads on your website, because they like the content. They realize that if people see that they actively participate on the website, and have purchased an ad from you.. It might be a site worth seeing in the eyes of a new visitor.

Adding the Classic Nav Bar To Your Links

Whatever you do, please don’t forget to add a link beside your “Home” or “Archives” page to give a potential advertiser an “Instant Link” to your rates and blog stats. Nothing can repel a person faster than having to give up their time to look for a simple link to send you a note

After determining a sensible rate that people will want to pay for to advertise on your blog (see previous post), where should you place them so that they sell? This is the hardest part of the entire process and we will attempt at making sense of it all, by showing you three different spots that are equally effective at giving your advertiser the attention that they will want, but not compromising the quality of your blog.

Position One - Sidebar Advertising - Easy and Classic, You Can’t Go Wrong.

This may be the most common form of where you will see blog ads as its simple and effective. It is out of the way of the main content and title, but is usually beside the R.S.S Feeds and most important sidebar features. So once the visitor is done reading the content (or before they get around to it as their eyes were drawn to that flashy square/banner) they will see the ads, perhaps click one. If they do not click one, they will see the R.S.S Subscription options, ultimately gaining you a subscriber.

Position Two - Above & Below - Possible Annoyance, but Fast Rewards.

Typically, this method is only used for banner advertising and I have yet to see a blog that uses squares. This method consists of having the banners around your content at the beginning and end of the posts. Although this method is great for selling banner space, you have to wonder if ultimately it will lower the effectiveness of your posts & blog design. What is meant by that is regular readers will have to scroll over that banner ad for how ever many months you’ve let the advertiser buy it for.

Finally, Position Three - Content & Title - The Cash Train.

The most valued spot you could place the advertisements would be right in the middle of your content (such as John Chow Content Advertising) which would receive the maximum exposure.. because its right where everyone looks when you read a blog. This could be sold for some major cash if your blog had decent statistics. The other spot you could use in conjunction would be a banner around the title area. This is obviously above the fold and would also be a “Premium Spot” to put in an advertisers product or service.

Design Restrictions - Not All Are Your Best Choice

Now keep in mind when first implementing your advertisements into your blogs is that some of these methods will not work with your design. For example, I wouldn’t use a banner on my website because there is no place to put it, without moving everything around. However, Content advertising could be a future possibility

If some bloggers get greedy, you can really tell that when you visit one. Typically the blog will cram their “above the fold” space with ads, then try to get you to click their adsense located at the end of their articles and on their lower sidebars. There is definitely a line that you can cross, so be cautious when choosing what to do.

Coming tommorow, Part Three - Finding the advertisers to buy the spots that you have positioned perfect and have put in a fair price for a month. Join us, via R.S.S Subscription, Email Inbox Deliveries, or on the website!

A good stream of income can be made from selling advertisements in the forms of banners, 125×125 squares, or even links. The golden question though is how to calculate how much per month you should sell them for. If you go too high, you risk not selling all of your space and deterring potential advertisers.. On the contrary, if you go too low.. Why bother selling it for a measly couple bucks a month? (and quite possibly making readers leave your blogs to click that interesting picture?)

A personal method that works for myself is that you should picture yourself as a perfectly new person that has visited your blog and has just noticed the “Advertise Here!” button on your sidebar. Then being the resourceful person you are, will consider the Google Pagerank, Alexa Traffic Ranking, Monthly Uniques and possibly Technorati’s Authority Ranking. You could then say, “I will pay X amount for this space.. No more, No Less.” which will determine your monthly rate.

Another way to evaluate an appropriate advertising price for one month would to be to calculate a C.P.M. (Cost per 1000 webpage impressions). The only problem with this is when you start to say things like: “Only a .50CPM Rate!” or “This space only costs you 50 cents per 1000 impressions!” is that other people probably offer lower rates, and the advertiser has yet to find them .

Then after setting that rate that you have valued your blog at you realize that nobody bothered to purchase one from you, you many consider lowering it to a fraction of what you “evaluated” your blog to be… Doing this to hastily though might make it seem as if you are desperate for sales. Do this sparingly and only if you really want to sell that advertising space which could in turn be used to show your “Top Posts”, “Top Commentators” etc.

Coming Up Next: Where to place your advertisements.

[tags] Advertise, Advertising, 125 ad, Calculate [/tags]