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Must-Have Resources for Serious Bloggers

Following is a list of resources, guides, books, and services that we’ve found useful and recommend any serious blogger to check out.

They’re focused on making your blogging easier, getting more visitors and web site traffic, and making more money from your blog.

Blog and Web Site Hosting

When we first started looking for a good web host a few years ago, we asked around and got a general shoulder shrug from most of our friends. Yeah, they all had one host or another that was “OK”, but nobody could tell us”the best one to go with”. So after a LOT of painstaking research, we ended up with a “short list” of possible contenders. These are “the ones to choose from”.

  • HostGator – Solid, reliable, and very inexpensive: as low as $5/month. And a unique feature that other low cost web hosts don’t have: you can sign up monthly, no commitments.
  • ServInt – Great high end web host, starting at $49/month. Solid, reliable, and very knowledgeable support staff. This is the must-have web host if your website is getting over 100,000 page views/month.

We started with HostGator and stayed very happy customers with them until we passed 100,000 page views. After that it was time to move up from a $5/month hosting plan, so we upgraded to ServInt. If you’re looking to upgrade to a high end, mission critical web host, then ServInt is your best bet.

If you’re just starting out – or you’re looking to keep your costs as low as possible while working with a solid, reliable web host, do youself a favor and get started with HostGator.

In fact, HostGator is currently running a special promotion: less than $7/month – with no long term commitments, or $5/month for a longer term. You just can’t beat that for a solid, reliable web host when you’re stariting out.

Affiliate Marketing Guides

Where to Find Good Affiliate Programs

  • Adult Friend Finder (warning: adult dating site, NSFW). Read our review here…
    If you want to make significant money online, consider this… Adult Friend Finder is the most popular sex and swinger online dating site, with over 20 million members and 30,000 photos uploaded every week. Obviously if you have issues with sex related topics, this is not for you.
    However, this is by far one of the best converting affiliate programs anywhere. Get this: when someone signs up with them, you’ll get just under $100; even if that person only pays $19.95! Wow!
    Sign up for the Adult Friend Finder affiliate program here. WARNING: there is a big gotcha with Adult Friend Finder that they don’t want you to know. If you want to actually make any real money with this program (I mean 10x what you would make otherwise), then after you sign up with them choose to be paid “per completed order”. The default pay “per click” or “percent” options will make you virtually nothing.
  • Clickbank – search their marketplace for digital products to promote, i.e. eBooks.
  • Commission Junction – another large affiliate marketplace, used by many online dating websites. We think of this as a decoy in a way, since we haven’t know anyone to actually make any substantial money with this site.

Writing and Copywriting (How to Write Effective Headlines and More to Captivate Your Readers)

Copywriting is one of the most overlooked but actually crucial skills for any online marketer – if you have a website or blog, that means you!

  • Proven Headline Templates – OK, I think the actual name of this guide is “Headline Templates That Will Make You Rich”. Fact is, these templates should be manadtory reading for anyone trying to get their content, articles, or ads noticed whether online or in print. This is an awesome guide that we have used regularly to quickly pick from proven, headlines to use for our own article headlines. A must get!
  • Copyblogger.com – Great resource for learning the fine points of writing good, engaging “copy”, especially as it pertains to blogs
  • 7 Day eBook Guide – Find Out “How to Write and Publish your own eBook… in as little as 7 Days”. We downloaded this guide when we were preparing our first eBook, and it was very helpful.

Blog Hosting Options (Free and Paid)

Although not the recommended option for the serious blogger long term, if you just want to set up a blog – Right Now – whehtehr to play with or to actually blog with, Blogger and Wordpress.com are a great step by step easy option to get something up and running fast.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Get more Blog and Web Site Traffic with Social Media

  • Digg
  • Propeller
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Download Web2Submitter to really increase your traffic with Social Media.Web2Submitter makes it quick and easy to submit your posts to social media sites fast, semi-automatically. Check out the video for the real scoop. I only wish we had this tool when we were first promoting Ask Dan and Jennifer though social media!!

Google AdSense Resources

  • Michael Cheney’s AdSense Videos – watch Michael as he walks you step by step (in excruciating detail) through getting the most out of Google AdSense. It’s amazing what difference placement can make, and just how many options there really are.
  • Keyword Elite – find the high paying Google AdSense keywords to really increase your earnings. More importantly, quickly identify all the best keywords for your niche BEFORE you invest a lot of time and effort.

Make Money Online – with Your Blog Through Text Links

  • Google AdSense
  • Yahoo Publisher Network
  • Amazon Affiliate Program
  • Text-Link-Ads – Don’t sit around waiting for advertisers to come to you. People are out shopping for link ads RIGHT NOW in marketplaces like Text-Link-Ads. If you’re not in there, then someone else is going to get paid to put links on THEIR site today. Disclaimer: these “text links” are technically against Google’s policy and can hurt your natural traffic from Google and other search engines.
  • Chitika – easily add interactive product comparison shopping to your site and product reviews. A must have for product review blogs and sites that mention specific products.
  • AuctionAds – add eBay auctions to your site and make money as a high traffic eBay affiliate

Examples of Successful Blogs

A successful blog can be in virtually any topic / niche, as you can see in the examples below…