Written on June 29th, 2007 at 01:06 pm by David Shawver

AdSense launch Referrals 2.0

Adsense 39 comments

AdSense have today announced that they are expanding the previously closed beta Referrals 2.0 program to be available to all AdSense publishers. This newly expanded Referrals is going to take a while for publishers to get their heads around but the basics of the expansion are that now instead of only being able to recommend and earn money from a handful of Google related products that you’ll now be able to refer your readers to thousands of products on a CPA basis (ie you get paid when your reader takes some action specified by the advertiser (like buy something).

The AdSense blog has more information on referrals 2.0:

Expanded product inventory: While many of you have had success referring one of our Google products, some of you weren’t able to find a product that fit the context of your site. Referrals 2.0 offers products from thousands of AdWords advertisers, so you can find the right ads for your sites.

Category and keyword targeting: With thousands of products available, it can be difficult to decide which ads will perform best on your site. That’s why we give you the option to refer products by category and keyword. You can narrow down the types of ads you want to display and let AdSense figure out which ones will perform best on your site. Whether you want ads for a specific category, advertiser, or product, referrals 2.0 will give you the control to decide.

Ad unit optimization: It can be tricky picking the best ads for your site, so we’ve included ad unit optimization for referrals. When you create a new referral ad unit, simply select the Pick best performing ads option. We’ll then compare your selected ads to other relevant ads, and serve the ads we expect to perform best on your site.

Better targeting for pages with multiple themes: With standard contextual targeting, ads may not match up directly with the text around them if there are a number of themes on the page. With referrals, you can select unique “keywords” for each ad unit to narrow the targeting directly to the theme you want. Better targeting means higher earnings for your site.

Greater compensation for high-quality traffic: Since referrals are paid on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, your traffic matters. If the traffic you send to advertisers is more likely to turn into a completed sale or lead, you will earn more with referrals.

Add your seal of approval: Unlike AdSense for content ads, our program policies allow you to make specific references to referral ads on your site. If you endorse the product that you are referring, feel free to let your users know. By adding your personal review of the products you refer, you can help your users make more informed choices.

My referrals 2.0 is already activated and an initial look at it is a little overwhelming. Th eother first impression is that for some keywords that I’m interested in there are a severe lack of products listed - I’m sure this will change as more advertisers jump in. I’m going to have to sit down for a couple of hours over the weekend to learn how to use it before I can really make much more comment on it than that.

I am excited that they’ve expanded referrals in this way and suspect it will increase earnings quite significantly if publishers can find products that relate strongly to their topic (always a key).

For more information on referrals 2.0 check out the AdSense Blog and the newly updated Referrals Help area.

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Written on June 29th, 2007 at 11:06 am by David Shawver

enternetusers Goes Mobile

enternetusers Site News 6 comments

If you’re a blackberry user you can now follow enternetusers via that device as a result of the network to which this blog belongs, b5media, Going Mobile. b5media now has over 200 blogs on a variety of topics - all of which can be read on the go from your blackberry. Other platforms will be supported in the future (I’m looking forward to being able to use my Nokia N95 at some point).

If you want to try Viigo to follow enternetusers’s feed from your Blackberry you can get hooked up with everything you need to do it here. I’d love to hear how you find the experience.

Disclaimer - I’m a VP of b5media

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Written on June 29th, 2007 at 10:06 am by David Shawver

9 Reasons Why I AM An Amazon Affiliate

Affiliate Programs 30 comments

John Chow today posted a post outlining why he’s not an Amazon Affiliate. It’s a good post in that it gives an insight into his approach to affiliate marketing. The best point John alludes to is that Amazon doesn’t ‘fit’ with his blog. He makes more from other better targeted affiliate programs than Amazon.

However the Amazon Associates Program is well worth considering for some bloggers. I use it and this month it’ll earn me over $2500 USD - not my biggest income stream, but not the ‘pennies and dimes’ that some say it has the potential to earn.

To bring a little balance to the debate over the Amazon Affiliate program I thought I’d give a few reasons that I am an Amazon Affiliate:

1. Amazon is a trusted Brand - I surveyed some of my readers a year back and asked them to give me a list of online stores that they had made purchases from in the last 12 months. Amazon came up number 1 as the most popular shopping destination mentioned. Readers know Amazon and are familiar with it - they trust it and do spend significant money there.

2. Commissions - John writes that he’s not satisfied with a 4% commission. He’s right in some ways, 4% isn’t that much when you’re selling a $10 book - however when you’re selling a Get a Price on the $5000 Camera or a $25,000 Tractor (I know someone who does quite well out of ride on mowers and tractors) it certainly adds up. Not only that, the 4% rate that John talks about is the base rate. Unfortunately it is as high as it goes on consumer electronics - however on most other products there is a sliding scale where the more you sell the higher your commission goes to. Sell more than 6 items in a month and your commission goes to 6% - sell over 630 and you’re up to 8% (the rate I’m on). The 4-Hour work Week that John uses as an example earned me around $1 a book. Still not a lot - but I did sell 100 or so of them (after my interview with it’s author) which not only earned me $100 but also helped push the numbers of sales up for the month, moving me into the next earning bracket.

3. People Buy More than One Item - the great thing about Amazon is that you don’t just earn a commission on the product that you people to, but anything that they buy once they’re at Amazon. I did an experiment earlier in the year where I published a review of a digital photography book on my blog and placed a tracking code in the link to see how much the review earned me specifically. What I found was that the product in the review did quite well - but the sales of other products that people made once they got to Amazon was actually much greater than the sales of the actual book. People went on to buy all manner of products (other books, electronics, cosmetics etc) - I earned a commission on each one of them - now that’s passive income. You earn a commission on anything that a person buys within 24 hours of you sending them to Amazon.

4. Easily Integrated - There are more and more plugins and tools that have Amazon Affiliate integration built into them to help you easily place links in your blog posts. I use ecto for Mac which has a tool that searches for products and links them in in just a couple of clicks. WP has plugins also. The affiliate links already mentioned in this post took seconds to integrate in.

5. Payment Options - Amazon pays their affiliates in a number of ways. One of the things that I like is that they give you the option to be paid in products instead of cash. I don’t do this every month (I couldn’t spend that $20,000+ a year at Amazon… well maybe I could) but occasionally do and use it as prizes for blog readers. I recently offered DPS readers $500 of Amazon products in a forum signup competition. The prize is paid for out of my affiliate earnings.

6. Small Payments Add Up - In my early days of making money from blogs I didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing my income streams as much as I (and other full time bloggers) now do. I needed to earn money somewhere and even the small amounts that Amazon brought in were better than nothing. Over time these payments began to add up. In the early days I didn’t even earn enough for a minimum payment amount and had to wait a few months before they’d pay me - but those pay outs were milestones that I celebrated. If I’d not gone with Amazon because they didn’t earn me a lot I might not have gone with any ad networks or affiliate programs - sometimes you have to take what you can get.

7. It’s an Investment that Matures Over Time - My approach with Amazon is to treat it a little like a savings account or an investment that you put a little into each week and which matures in it’s earnings over time. What do I mean by this? I add links to Amazon over time and find that in doing so I’m creating more and more doorways into the Amazon store. Each time I do I increase the chances of sending someone to Amazon and seeing returns on those visits.

8. The Holidays are Boom Time - While I’m really happy with the way my Amazon Affiliate income is growing ($2500 a month is so far beyond what I’d ever expected from it in the early days) it’s worth noting that things really fire up in the lead up to Christmas and the holiday season. Over the last few years I’ve noticed significant jumps in Amazon earnings in December (as much as 100%). The key is to plan ahead (make sure your links are all up to date a couple of months out) and run a few Christmas specific posts in the lead up to the Holiday rush (start to prepare as early as October/November).

9. Wide Array of Products
What initially attracted me to using Amazon’s Affiliate program was the breadth of products that they had in their system. This is a great thing if you’re niche is narrow or quite obscure as many bloggers find it difficult to find affiliate programs to match their blog’s focus. Blogs like John’s and mine here at enternetusers do have an array of options for affiliate programs (which is why I don’t use it a lot on this blog and make most of my earnings from Amazon from product related blogs) but many bloggers don’t have the luxury of being able to choose high paying affiliate programs because they simply don’t relate to our topics. Amazon then becomes one of the more attrActive options.

So is the Amazon Affiliate Program for you?

I can’t answer that question for everyone - I won’t pretend that it works brilliantly on every blog but I know quite a few bloggers making significant earnings each month from the program. Blogs with a strong product focus can do quite well through the program if links to Amazon are well integrated into posts (see some of the links below for tips). I would advise moderation in using the program - don’t place them in every post you write unless they are relevant. Links placed in genuinely helpful reviews do better than links and banners in sidebars.

The best way to see if it converts is to give it a go.

How to Make Money from Amazon Affiliate Program

I’ve written numerous tips on how to optimize a blog for earning money from the Amazon Associates Program. I hope that some of these posts help you increase your earnings from the program:

• 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on your blogs (not Amazon specific but the principles apply)
• How to Dramatically Increase Amazon Affiliate Sales with Bestseller Lists
• The Secret to Increasing Amazon Associate Earnings - Time

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Written on June 29th, 2007 at 12:06 am by David Shawver

Two Tips for Increasing RSS Subscriber Numbers

RSS 39 comments

Over the weekend I managed to increase the number of subscribers to my Digital Photography School RSS feed by around 15%. Before Friday it was sitting at around the 20,000 subscriber mark and 3 days later it’s just over 23,000 subscribers.

How did I do it?

I did two things.

1. I Emailed Unverified Email Subscribers

At DPS I Actively promote a Feedburner service to my readers that enables them to be emailed at the end of each day that I publish a post with a notification of what I’ve written. I promote this service here. People subscribing to this service are counted as RSS subscribers by Feedburner.

A few weeks ago I was digging around the administration area of my Feedburner account and noticed that while I had around 3500 people subscribed to this service that over 800 of them had not verified their subscription.

Feedburner has a double opt in system in place where subscribers need to give their email address and then confirm it from an email. Over 800 hadn’t clicked the link in the confirmation email! Over 800 people that wanted to me to email them every day to notify of them of my latest posts weren’t getting the emails.

When I realized this I promptly emailed Feedburner to see if they had a way of me reminding these unverified subscribers to confirm their subscription. Feedburner promptly replied to let me know that they didn’t have the ability to do this - but that I could do it manually by exporting my subscriber list, extracting the email addresses and then emailing subscribers myself.

This sounded like a bit of an arduous process so I left it for a few days - but after a little consideration decided it would be worth the effort to do. It took me about an hour to do it (I had a few email issues that day) and since doing so have noticed quite a few of the 800 are now getting the daily emails.

2. I Promoted the Feed

The second thing that I did last week was a special post on the DPS blog titled How to Connect with Digital Photography School.

The post was simply a reminder to readers of the different ways that they can hook into DPS. In the post I highlighted my RSS feed, the daily email updates, the weekly newsletter that I send out, our forums as well as a short blurb on social bookmarking.

The main aim of the blog was to educate readers on how to connect more deeply with the blog.

The response was quite amazing. I received many emails from regular readers thanking me for helping them participate in the community more. It struck me that while I’d been working incredibly hard to provide readers with digital photography tips that I’d not really taken the time to help new readers learn about how to use the blog.

I suspect that many bloggers fall into a similar trap - because most of us deal with RSS every day and have a reasonable idea how forums, newsletters and blogs work we can easily forget that many of those who read our blogs don’t know where to start.

Update: I’ve answered a lot of the questions that readers asked about this post in an update post here.

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Written on June 28th, 2007 at 10:06 am by David Shawver

What Social Networking Sites Do You Use? How Do they Benefit Your Blog?

Social Media 73 comments

I’ve noticed over the last month that the numbers of requests to connect (or become friends) on social networking sites has dramatically increased. Every morning when I go through my inbox I find I’m approving more and more of these requests from and LinkedIn and even when I head over to I’m finding more and more friend requests (those links are to my profile pages if you’d like to connect).

What interests me is that while Facebook is on an overall growth surge at the moment that LinkedIn is sending me just as many connection requests this month - if not more.

I’m interested to hear what social networking sites people use, how they use them and if they’ve seen any tangible benefits of doing so - particularly for their blogging.

I’ve had a few low level benefits of being involved but am yet to see many tangible results.

One technique that I’ve seen a few friends using on LinkedIn is asking their connections questions through the ‘answers’ feature. While most of the questions I see asked are fairly basic, I wonder if there is some scope there to draw people together in some way that might benefit the blog. I’m still thinking that one through.

Keen to hear the experiences of others.

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Written on June 28th, 2007 at 06:06 am by David Shawver

91% of enternetusers Readers Don’t Fake It

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 32 comments

A few weeks back I asked readers for their opinion on a reader question - Should I Add Fake Comments to My Blog?

125 comments were left and I thought I’d sum it up with a quick graph to help visualize how people answered. I think this speaks for itself:

Note - I changed the question slightly because of the way most people answered the question.

Update: If you want to know more about people’s reasons for using fake comments or reasons for not using them - check out the original post on the topic and the comment thread.

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Written on June 28th, 2007 at 12:06 am by David Shawver

Dating Tips for Bloggers and Advertisers - Presentation and Notes

enternetusers Site News 18 comments

For those unable to get to the Future of Online Advertising but wanting a bit more of a glimpse of what took place - you might be interested in seeing the powerpoint and keynote presentations from those presenting.

They have now been added to main page underneath the names of each speaker. Mine is here (pdf) - I hope you can make some sense of it! Here’s a short (ish) summary of what I said for each slide:

1. Title Slide - made a few excuses for my terrible flu-ish voice.

2. Dating Tips - I get asked by bloggers how to find advertisers for their blogs and get asked by advertisers how to interact with bloggers. Sometimes I feel like a dating consultant - hence the title of my presentation - dating tips for bloggers and advertisers.

3. How Much do Bloggers Earn? - to put the talk in context I thought it worth sharing this graph of how much bloggers earn (taken from a survey of enternetusers readers)

4. Direct Methods vs Indirect Methods of Earning Money from Blogs - another slide to help put the tips that I share in context. Selling advertising on a blog is just one of many methods of monetizing a blog. Bloggers need to know that they have a variety of options open to them. Advertisers need to know that they’re not bloggers only option and that they might need to compete to get their attention.

5. Tips for Bloggers Looking to ‘pickup’ Advertisers - subtitle page

6. Tips for Bloggers:

• Build a Brilliant Blog - the best way to attract advertisers is to build a blog that they’d be proud to associate their brand with
• Be Contactable - I am still amazed by how many bloggers don’t have a way to contact them. It’s hard to ‘pickup’ when you’re not contactable
• Get Your ‘About Page’ in Order - many advertisers will do a little research of you and your blog before advertising with you. Make sure your About page has good information and consider making one specifically for Advertisers with relevant demographics and metrics of readership.
• Know your Metrics - you need to have basic information on your blog’s traffic on hand so that you can quickly provide it to advertisers. Many are working last minute on campaigns so to have a document that you can sent them quickly on hand is worth preparing.
• Be Selective - don’t clutter your blog with irrelevant or ‘cheap’ looking ads. Everything that goes on your blog will help sell it to advertisers - including the other ads that you have. Less ads on your blog helps ’sell it’ to advertisers.
• Go with a Niche Approach - the more targeted the topic of your blog the more attrActive it will be to advertisers in that niche.
• Know How Your Ads Convert - do a little testing to see how ads in different positions on your blog will perform (more on how I do this in the next slides).

7 - 10. CrazyEgg - one of the tools that can help you to analyse how ads work (or don’t work) in different positions on your blog is CrazyEgg. This tool tracks where people click on your blog. Not only that - the new ‘confetti’ tracking tool identifies where different types of traffic click (based upon where they come from, what browsers people are using, their window size etc). It’s a really useful tool not only for testing ad positions but anything design related (PS: Crazy Egg currently have some special prices for enternetusers Readers).

11. Full list of tips for Bloggers - There were a few more tips for bloggers here:

• Position Position Position - key factors to consider with regards to positioning of ads include that above the fold is best - but other hotspots are often around comments at the end of posts.
• Offer Package Deals - sometimes advertisers will up their spend if you offer RSS ads, posts announcing campaigns, ads in newsletters, text ads etc.
• Start with Small Advertisers - while it’s worth approaching the big advertisers in your niche I find that it takes a while to grow a blog to the kind of level that will attract them. In the mean time approach smaller advertisers. This will help you monetize your blog earlier, get your readers used to ads and could even attract larger advertisers.
• Collaborate with Other Bloggers - if you don’t have enough traffic on your own, why not get together with a few other bloggers in your niche to approach advertisers.

12. Tips for Advertisers looking for Bloggers - Subtitle page

13. Why your next ‘date’ should be with a Blogger - a few reasons why advertisers should consider advertising on blogs:

• bloggers are connected, trusted and influential
• blogs are targeted
• blogs are conversational spaces
• blogs are read by bloggers - viral in
• nature bloggers are early adopters

14. Tips for Advertisers looking to advertise on Blogs

• Consider Blogs - for the above reasons
• Make it Easy for bloggers - some advertisers make bloggers jump through too many hoops to get ads up on their blogs. Advertisers need to keep in mind that most bloggers are working alone, don’t have backgrounds in advertising or marketing and are working part time. Consider the language you use and the demands you place on them.
• Add to the conversation - blogs are conversational and interActive spaces. Consider how to engage in this conversation rather than just slapping up a banner ad above it.
• Be Relational with Bloggers - bloggers will be much more open to interacting with you if you engage with them in a friendly, honest, transparent and open way.
• Be Relational with Readers - develop campaigns that are personal and engaging rather than ’spin’
• Be Transparent - allow bloggers to disclose their involvement with you. Be open and honest with bloggers and their readers.
• Be Relevant, Honest and that Connects - (oops - bad grammar there) - in the ads that you run, don’t go for the ’spin’/marketing/overly produced ads - but develop ads that fit with the blogging style on a blog. The more relevant you can make it to readers the better.
• Test the Trust Factor - not all bloggers are trusted and not all bloggers will have a voice that you’ll want to associate your brand with. Dig in their archives, check their comments section (comments are a great barometer of a blog) and research their reputation a little before slapping your ads on their blog.
• Think Outside the ‘banner’ - While banner ads can work on a blog perhaps there are more creative and effective ways to interact with blogs. Sponsor a series of posts, put up a prize for a competition, give some readers a product etc
• Be Playful - blogs are places that you can experiment, push the boundaries and get a little creative.
• Involve the Blogger - Personalize - Bloggers know their readers best. Involve them in the designing of your campaign.

15. Contact Details

I hope that that has conveyed something of my presentation. It’s always hard to write up something that you’ve said a few weeks back but that was the main gist of what I covered.

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Written on June 27th, 2007 at 03:06 pm by David Shawver

Speedlinking - 27 June 2007

Pro Blogging News 15 comments

• Shoemoney has a good post on the value of speaking at conferences. He’s asked some key bloggers what they think about the topic. I think that it can be a valuable way of reinforcing your brand and have written more in the post.
• Raj shares 7 Suggestions for Making Your Blog Writing More Accessible for your readers with some good suggestions.
• PC World has written a piece that someone more cynical than me would call pretty smart linkbait - 100 Blogs we Love.
• Blog Tutorials asks if Link Trains are the Chain Letters of the Blogging Age? I’m not really into them - my approach is to invest your time into quality content and the links will come - it’s a much more sustainable way to build a blog up. I’ve seen a few bloggers get into serious trouble issues with disappearing from Google for engaging in link building strategies - why take the risk?
• The Contest Blogger is a blog about all the blogging competitions going on around the blogosphere.
• Martin writes a guide to Alexa - will a blog ever make it to number 1? Highly unlikely.
• Beth has a good Screencast which Demystifies Google Analytics. It’s not blog specific but a good introduction.
• Avinash has more metrics talk with his post on Bounce Rate (he asks if it’s the Sexiest Web Metric Ever? - I’m not quite sure if it’s sexy - but it is useful).

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Written on June 27th, 2007 at 09:06 am by David Shawver

AdSense add Corner Styling Options to Ad Unit Setup

Adsense 14 comments

If you log into AdSense today and create a new ad unit you’ll be given the choice of creating ad units with rounded corners.

You’ll now have three choices:

Square

Slightly Rounded

Very Rounded

Access the different options through the ‘Setup Tab’ of AdSense but keep in mind that if you have a blended approach to creating ads (your borders being the same color as the background of the ad and your blog) that having square or rounded corners doesn’t matter in the slightest as you don’t see them.

PS: see full sized versions of the new AdSense ad unit styling options here.

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Written on June 27th, 2007 at 12:06 am by David Shawver

10 Ways to Maximize The Value Of A Product Review

Affiliate Programs 17 comments

The following guest post has been submitted by Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar

Most serious bloggers occasionally find opportunities to review some sort of product related to their blog niche, whether it be a book, a piece of equipment related to their blog’s area of expertise, or so on. I often see these used as off-the-cuff posts with at best an affiliate link to Amazon. These posts are usually quite forgettable, and for good reason.

I’ve found, however, that I can often use a well-written review in a large number of ways that can drive traffic to my blog over a long period of time. Here’s the procedure I usually follow when writing a killer review that will excite and entertain my regular readers, bring in new ones, and also earn some money via affiliate sales at Amazon. To illustrate this, I’m going to give an additional shout out to a friend and another enternetusers guest blogger, Penelope Trunk, and discuss how I wrote and then utilized my review of her book, Brazen Careerist.

1. Focus on a product that you’re passionate about that also relates to your blog

I’m the author of a personal finance and personal development blog and I’m also an avid reader, so the big products that I usually find that I’m passionate about are books on those topics. Before you even start thinking about putting forth the effort to writing and marketing a really killer review on your blog, you need to ask yourself if the item in question really stirs something inside of you. If it doesn’t, it’s going to be hard to convey any sort of feeling or emotion about the product, and it is that sense of emotion that really captures readers and makes for a killer post. If you’re not feeling it, you can still write a review, but don’t invest the time in turning it into a real anchor post.

2. Write the review

When you write a review that you intend to use as anchor content, you should make sure that it covers the product in detail (I usually move through a book chapter by chapter), clearly relates your own views on the title, and also ties into some of the content you’ve already written. Since the piece will probably have some length to it, you should also use bold to highlight the main points. Another useful tip: I often link back to my own anchor articles when writing reviews of products so I can highlight specific points and illustrate how the item I’m reviewing is connected to the overall message of my blog. Want an example? Here’s my review of Brazen Careerist.

3. Include affiliate links in the review

When you’re reviewing an item, including affiliate links that enable the person to buy the item is mutually beneficial: your readers have the opportunity to investigate and buy the item, and if they choose to purchase it, you get a portion of that purchase price. I typically just stick with Amazon’s affiliate program on my blog because of the book selection (my primary review area) and the ubiquity of Amazon - everyone seems to have an account there so it’s easier for people to order the item if they want it. Within the review, I usually just link every instance of the book title to the Amazon page for that book.

4. Connect with the author or creator of the item

If the item’s author or developer has a blog, be sure to include a link to that person’s blog in the review. Not only is it informative to your readers, but the author will also get a trackback or pingback when you post the review. It’s also worthwhile to send an email to that person with a link to the review if they have an online presence - most of the time, they’ll read the review and on occasion you can begin to build a collaboration with that person.

5. Include links to other reviews of the book

This is especially true if the reviews are on blogs near your topic area as it helps to connect you with blogs of similar topic and provides more information to the reader. Also, linking to sites that have a collection of reviews (like Amazon) adds value to your review as well. You only increase your own trustworthiness if you openly show your readers other perspectives.

6. In a separate post, give away the item

Unless you’re adamant about keeping the item for yourself, you should always give away the item you review, but do it in a separate post. When you actually ship the item, keep both the receipt for the postage and also the receipt for the item and save them - in most countries, you can deduct both from your income tax return on your blog income. Earlier articles at enternetusers are loaded with suggestions on how to do this - here’s how I gave away Brazen Careerist. A well-positioned giveaway can generate more links for your anchor article and also build up interest among regular readers.

7. Submit your long review to appropriate carnivals

Product reviews, no matter how good they are, typically don’t do extremely well on social bookmarking sites, so with individual reviews, I focus on submitting them to blog carnivals. Stop over at blogcarnival.com and find a carnival or two that matches the topic that your review covers and submit it. It’ll get you a small number of visitors and also some backlinks that will help your review appear higher in Google when searchers type in the book name.

8. Announce the winner of your giveaway

This provides yet another opportunity to give attention to your review. List the person that won the giveaway in a post and also link to their blog if they have one - there’s a good chance they’ll link back to you and perhaps to your review as well. It also reinforces the positive traits of your blog - you’re giving away stuff and providing good content.

9. In future posts, refer back to the item

If you’ve written a solid post that extracts the valuable points from the book, you can easily refer back to the book’s review for illustration of various points. For example, when I mention the power of networking with others, I refer back to my review of the book Never Eat Alone, where I extracted a ton of good information about how to network with others in good taste. And look - I just had another opportunity to link to that review, because it’s a perfect example of how a well-written product review can also educate on a certain topic.

10. A collection of review posts can make for another great post

Quite often, an individual product review won’t draw a ton of links on its own. What really attracts people on blogs are places where information is organized and intersected for them in an interesting way. A good way of doing this is taking a number of reviews and collecting or ranking them in some fashion. There are many ways to go about this - creating an “essentials” list, creating a “top ten” list, and so on. The point is to provide links to a number of reviews, along with thumbnail sketches, in a framework that will interest others. An example of what I’m talking about is my own ranking of 26 personal finance books. I have been reading a personal finance book a week for six months, so I took the time to rank them. This post turned out to be rather popular.

The main take-home message here is that product reviews can easily be anchor content and can also provide some affiliate sales, but the keys are quality, sincerity, and promotion. If you’re not sincere and honest with what you’re saying, it will undermine your credibility, so be sure you are strongly familiar with and sincerely like (or sincerely dislike) a product before reviewing it. When you’ve written the review and you know it’s good, though, don’t hesitate to let the world know.

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