Lijit: A Great Search Tool for Bloggers!

Have you seen this little box on my sidebar? I hope so! This is a new and improved way that you can search my blog and actually find what you’re looking for!If you’ve searched on my blog in the past, you will know that my Google search just wasn’t doing the trick and I just couldn’t figure it out. It couldn’t find anything. Ever. I even reinstalled it and it still didn’t do what it was supposed to do which was help you find what you’re looking for.   

When I heard Lijit.com share with us at the Savvy Blogging Summit, just what their search could do, I was hooked and couldn’t sign up fast enough for this FREE service! Just what grabbed my attention?

• Lijit allows your readers to search not only your blog, but anywhere on the web you can be found. Yep, that means Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, del.icio.us, YouTube- other blogs that you write for, you can create your own search engine by telling Lijit where to look.
• Lijit also keeps stats for you. Want to know what your readers are searching for? Lijit will let you know. As a blogger this is very helpful. If you’re here looking for information about traveling to Atlanta and I haven’t written any posts on that topic, but we’ve been there, I know to get busy because there is an interest. Of course I want to write about what interests you.
• You can earn revenue when you choose to enable Lijit ads- but you are not obligated to do so.
• Lijit is FREE, no need to pay to have an alternative to Google.

There you have it, why I chose to switch from Google search to Lijit. If you’re interested in learning more, you can visit www.lijit.com and find out if Lijit is for you. In the meantime, I hope you do take advantage of my new search feature if you’re looking for something specific on my blog- I know it’s been incredibly beneficial for me!

So, what do you think? Interested in giving Lijit a try?

Savvy Blogging Summit: Let’s Talk about Community, Personalization and Monetization Part II

Last week,  I covered some of the key points that J.D. Roth brought up at the Savvy Blogging Summit opening presentation. I couldn’t wait to attend the rest of his workshops after listening to him that first night. Not only that, but I began to feel that maybe I really could take my blog where I’d like to see it go.   

I heard a lot of the same ideas reiterated among several of the summit speakers and sponsors, which included getting personal- sharing your story and building community.

So how does a blogger go about building community?

1. Know who your readers are. You can do this by conducting a survey,  reading their blogs, interacting on a Facebook page and adding an online forum or community to your blog.  
2. Respond to personal questions and reply to your readers. I try to do this. If you email me, I WILL email back. If you comment on the blog, I try to comment back here, on your blog or shoot you an email.
3. Focus on a story and sharing. I guess this is kind of what I do with Field Trip Friday, but on a small scale. I post what we’ve been up to and ask you to link up field trips and outings that you’ve been on with your family. I have a few ideas that I’d like to try in the days to come that would allow each of you to share your stories as well so I can learn from you too.
4. Encourage guest posts, ask your readers questions and include links and round-ups to your readers blogs and projects. You’ll also see more of this in the days to come. And, if any of you are interested in guest posting, I’m open to that too!

So, what about monetization? That’s a controversial term here in the blogging world. Some bloggers are making money, some are opposed to making money. Me? I’d love to earn some gas money without turning my blog into an online commercial.

What steps can you take in the quest to earn a dollar? First, you need to think about the big picture. Where do you see your blog down the road? Think in terms of 5-10 years. Where do you want to take it? If you’re going to effectively monetize your site, you need to realize that advertising is not evil but you do need to make some choices.

1. Limit your ads. Too many ads will cause confusion and your readers won’t be able to make a choice.
2. Determine which of your pages get the most traffic and advertise on those pages. In fact, while you’re finding your top page, figure out your top five pages and monetize them all.
3. Find ads and affiliates that are relevant to your site and share your values. If my primary audience is for those interested in family travel, I probably don’t want to advertise Pampers.
4. Keep your ads above the fold- the part of the blog that readers can see without scrolling down-  for the best results experiment with the size and placement of the ads.  
5. Share your experience with the product you are trying to “sell”. If you really like it, write about it and include links. Just remember that if you are selling something, per FCC guidelines you are obligated to let your readers know.

For those opposed to ads, there are steps you can take to monetize your blog without the advertising. Here are some other ideas that some of the bloggers at the Savvy Blogging Summit shared:

1. You can sell products from your blog.
2. Find direct advertisers.
3. Sell e-books or offer information products.
4. If you have a large number of readers, you could choose to add premium content. This would essentially mean that you would offer those guests, members or readers a service in exchange for x amount of dollars a month, year, etc.
5. You can become a brand representative for a specific product or company.

I hope that you’ve learned from some of the ideas I’ve shared with you. I learned so much from the conference and really loved the tips that other bloggers offered.

Do you make money from your blog? What are some ways that have worked for you?    

Savvy Blogging Summit: Let’s Talk about Community, Personalization and Monetization Part I

I arrived at Breckenridge with an incredible altitude headache. Something I hadn’t really anticipated. I checked into my room at  Beaver Run Resort and drank massive amounts of water before the reception with Chris from Escalate Media Affiliate Network. One of the many great things about the summit is that it offered many opportunities to network not only with the other attendees, but also with the sponsors. If monetizing your blog is something that you’d like to consider, you may want to check out Escalate and the companies that they work with.

At dinner I met Amy of The Finer Things in Life, Tara of Feels like Home, the author of Bucksome Boomer’s Retirement Journey (who doesn’t use her name on her blog, so I won’t mention it here) and  Debba of Girlfriendology. I’d love to direct you to the other bloggers that I shared a table with that night, but unfortunately I didn’t collect business cards from all of them and I really am terrible with names.  We also had a special celebrity of sorts at our table, J.D. Roth, author of Your Money: The Missing Manual and owner of the award winning blog, Get Rich Slowly.

J.D. was also our opening speaker and it was  listening to him share openly, honestly and passionately about doing what he loves, blogging,  that I realized the Savvy Blogging Summit was really going to be something special.   

I walked away with some key points that night and some were reiterated throughout the weekend.

1. Be yourself and have fun. If you don’t enjoy blogging, why are you doing it? 
2. Tell stories to engage your readers and build community- you’ll hear about this later.
3. Create the best content you can. Content is key, this is what will get readers to return to your site. 
4. There’s always room for improvement. Take writing classes at the local community college or read writing manuals- strive to be the best writer you can be. 
5. Don’t listen to the naysayers. 
6. Blogging is not a competition, do you realize how huge the world wide web is? Find bloggers that you can work and network with.  
7. Don’t ignore your readers, interact with them- preferably on your blog. It’s important to build a community. You want your readers to come back. Often.
8. It’s okay to have a niche blog and occasionally write about other things. Write about things you are passionate about.
9. Edit, edit, edit! Need I say more?
10. In J.D.’s words:  “Assume that no one reads your blog , assume that everyone reads your blog.” In other words, don’t assume that your friends are ‘up to speed’ with your life because you blog about it or that you’re the ‘big fish’ when meeting new people but at the same time don’t write about that family member or next door neighbor that really annoy you because you never know when they will stumble upon your blog

If you want to take your blog a step further, you can join me in reading the following resources that were recommended: 

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland and On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser.

I can’t wait to continue to share more with you and hope you’ll stop back for Part II,  but I’d also love to hear from you. What tips have worked for you when you’re blogging? Do you plan your blog posts or just write what happens to come up? What do you do to stay inspired? Do you deal with blog critics?  How do you interact with your readers?

*In compliance with full disclosure, this blog post does contain affiliate links.