101 Resources for Managing Your Money Online

With a hard-hitting credit crunch beginning to take its toll on the masses, and rising fuel and food costs already causing distress, more and more people are turning to the web in order to cut costs and to make use of the valuable financial tools that exist online. We hope this list comes in handy, and let us know if you feel there are anymore that deserve a place below!

Budgeting & Money Management

There’s an always increasing number of tools and websites devoted to helping you manage your money. Each of these will be unique, but many have similar functions for budgeting and tracking expenses, and some will integrate with your bank accounts. The list includes both free and paid tools:

1. Quicken Online - Manage your personal finances and online banking accounts.
2. Mint - Free personal finance software to assist you.
3. Yodlee - The most comprehensive online banking solution on the market.
4. Expensr - A solid solution for a young adult’s simple finances.
5. Wesabe - Save Money, Spend Wisely and Reach Your Goals.
6. Walletproof - Search for money saving deals recommended by other Walletproof users.
7. SpendView - Analyze your spending in a simple, automated and efficient web based personal finance tool.
8. billQ - An easy way to keep track of your bills.
9. Buxfer - Free online personal finance software for budgeting and expense management.
10. Pear Budget - Start an easy budget for free.
11. Geezeo - Free online personal finance managment service.
12. Mvelopes - Lets you create a household or personal budget.
13. iOWEYOU - Expenses sharing calculator.
14. Billster - Helps people organise their personal and shared expenses.
15. BudgetTracker - An online finance manager.
16. Budget Pulse - An interactive, web-based budgeting utility.
17. Dimewise - Financial management you’ll actually use.
18. Spicy Digits - Managing your recurring expenses is a breeze.

Online Savings Accounts

Online savings accounts offer much higher interest rates than you can get from traditional bank savings accounts, and they can be pretty convenient too. Of course, these banks will not be available to all parts of the world. The list is separated by the US and UK.
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9 Barriers to Success with Social Media

Most bloggers would love to get more traffic with social media, regardless of how much they’re getting now. Unfortunately, a relatively small percentage of bloggers ever see significant results. If you’re looking to get more out of social media it’s important to know what’s holding you back so that you can fix it.

1. Lack of a Network

When most bloggers start using social media they wind up submitting their own posts to Digg and maybe some other social media sites, and they get very few votes. At this point, it’s typical to wonder how others can get hundred or even thousands of votes while your submissions barely get any.

One of the keys to being noticed on social media sites is to build a network. Digg is notorious for favoring users that have a huge number of friends (although changes to the algorithm have improved this somewhat).

A strong network can help you with just about any aspect of blogging, and social media marketing is no different. There are a few specific ways that your network can help you to get some exposure through social media. First, members of your network are more likely than others to vote for your posts.

I’m a frequent user of social media, and I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes my voting decisions are influenced by my relationships with other bloggers. I think it’s only human nature to want our friends to do well, so building a strong network will lead others to look for opportunities to vote for your posts.

Second, many social media sites include a feature for sharing a link with a friend. StumbleUpon’s share feature can be used directly from the toolbar, and Digg’s shout system is also used extensively by many Diggers. The more friends you have, and the better relationships you have with these friends, the more opportunities you will have to request a vote when you need it most. Also, many bloggers send requests to friends via email or IM.

Third, your network will impact the overall readership of your blog. Those who are very well-connected and active networkers tend to have large, responsive audiences. These audiences will be more likely to vote for your submissions without any prompting. On many blogs you’ll see buttons (such as the “Digg This” button) or links to make it easier for readers to vote.

If you’ve been struggling to gain any momentum with social media, take a look at your networking habits. Have you been actively getting to know other bloggers and social media users (this involves more than simply adding someone as a friend at Digg or StumbleUpon)?

2. Lack of a Plan

Social Media Marketing is like any other type of marketing, it requires strategy and execution. If your current plan only involves submitting your posts and hoping that they get a bunch of votes, that’s not much of a plan.

Your social media plan should be defined by what you want to accomplish. The most obvious benefit of social media marketing is traffic, but the traffic means very little if it doesn’t convert into something. Otherwise, you’ll be left with some impressive stats for a few days, but nothing of real value to show for it.

Do you want to use social media to gain subscribers (difficult, but possible)? Do you want to build links? Do you want to brand yourself or your blog through social media? Whatever your goals are, it’s important to understand what is most important to you so you can develop a plan to make it happen.

Your plan should also include the type of content that you’re going to promote through social media. Are you going to use informational posts, resource lists, controversy, humor, news? Find the type of content that will best help you to meet your goals.

The specific social media sites that you’ll be targeting should also be a part of your plan. There are hundreds or thousands of different social media sites, and it’s just not possible to effectively target more than a few. To have the best results you should be an active user at the sites that you’re targeting so you can get to know the users and what types of content work well. Then you can cater your content to that specific audience.

3. Lack of an Audience

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7 Critical Success Factors for Blogs

Every blogging niche is different and each individual blogger has his or her own approach, but in the vast majority of cases there are a few factors that are absolutely critical to the long-term health of a blog. Some of these are obvious, but it can be a good starting point for new bloggers, or a refresher for those of us who have been blogging for a while. Getting back to basics and focusing on the critical success factors can lead to more productive use of our time and a more effective, streamlined approach to blogging.

1. High Quality, Unique Content

The no-brainer number one factor is the content itself. Blogs are all about content, and that’s what readers want more than anything. Regardless of what topic you cover or what angle you take, provide your readers with original, interesting content that they can’t get just anywhere, and you’ll be well ahead of most bloggers in your niche.

Without quality content you can only go so far. Even if you do an excellent job with all of the other critical success factors, your success will still be limited. Whatever you are doing to build and promote your blog, be sure that you’re always focused on providing the best content possible.

2. A Network

Relationships with other bloggers are invaluable. When I first started blogging I had no understanding of how personal it is, and how much your network will have a hand in your success. From the time you start blogging (if not before) you should make a strong effort to interact with other bloggers, especially those in your niche.

A network can help you in so many different ways, including link building, promotion, exposure with guest posts, social media, and more. Networking is so critical that I challenge you to find one truly successful blogger that does not have a strong network of contacts.

3. Consistent Effort

Simply having great content isn’t enough. For a blog to succeed long-term you need to produce it on a consistent basis. That doesn’t mean you need daily posts or you have to constantly be writing. However, you do need to show some consistency to readers and avoid long breaks with no posts.

I have seen a number of blogs over the past year that have put out some really nice content, but they have struggled with consistency. In most cases these bloggers lost interest and moved on to something else (which is fine). But if you want to be successful in the longrun, consistency is a must.

4. Conversion of Visitors into Subscribers

A lot of us bloggers (me included) tend to check our stats on a regular basis. Personally, I set goals for myself each month and I use stats as one of my measuring sticks. However, visitors really mean very little aside from maybe earning you some advertising revenue. Ultimately, you’ll need to find ways to convert those visitors into subscribers.
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How to Attract Advertisers to Your Blog

If you’re a blogger who is trying to make money by selling ad space, chances are you have read some tips from others about how to attract and retain advertisers. I currently have two blogs. One is about a year old and the other is about four months old. One always takes priority over the other. One has no problem keeping ad slots filled, and even generates more interest than I can accommodate. The other has struggled to attract advertisers.

Rather than just writing generic advice about selling ad space, I thought I would share some of the things I’ve learned through my own blogging experience. Because the two blogs are run much differently and because the results are about as opposite as they can be, I think it’s a great learning experience of what sells ad space in real world scenarios.

First to keep things from being confusing throughout the article I’ll give a brief intro to the blogs that will be referenced throughout this post. First, my primary blog that was started about a year ago is Vandelay Website Design. That blog had no advertising for about the first six months, and has sold out all ads spots for the past six months. Traffikd was launched in February with some affiliate ads, but has drawn very little interest from paid advertisers.

1. Earn Respect in Your Niche/Industry

One of the biggest differences between my two blogs is that Vandelay is fairly well-established in its niche, while Traffikd is still a relative unknown. Advertisers are most likely familiar with the top blogs in the industry that they target, but they’re not going to know the smaller ones. Advertisers make an effort to attach themselves to blogs that have earned the respect of their readers and are seen as leaders in the niche.

It sounds somewhat obvious that being a respected source of information will lead advertisers towards your blog, but it’s often kind of an afterthought when you’re reading advice about selling ads. From my experience, this is one of the major factors. Advertisers are willing to pay to be seen on leading blogs, but they’re unlikely to want to spend the time to set up an ad campaign with a smaller blog, even at a low price.

At Vandelay I’ve put in the effort to earn some respect, and the result is ads that sell. On the other hand, Traffikd has only gotten a smaller amount of time invested in it, and the result is that most people still don’t know about it, and ads that are harder to sell.

2. Get Visitors

Advertisers are drawn to those blogs that have impressive stats. I get asked about traffic levels all the time from advertisers. It’s usually the first thing they want to know, even before price. As the number of visitors to Vandelay has increased each month, the ad prices have also increased, and advertisers have continued to come in steadily.

Traffikd on the other hand is currently drawing around 8,000 unique visitors per month, which is not enough to bring consideration from many advertisers. Sure, some individual bloggers and small companies may be interested in advertising to an audience of this size, but other companies that do a lot of advertising online simply won’t feel that it’s worth their time.

From my experience, even low pricing does not make up for a lack of impressive stats. I know from my experience trying to sell ads at Traffikd and from seeing countless other bloggers running huge discounts and special on ads that attract only meager interest. Dropping prices can often show advertisers that something’s not right or you wouldn’t have to drop the price.

If you want to be able to sell ad space and charge a premium, do what it takes to build up some stats that will generate serious interest from potential advertisers.

3. Be Proactive

Selling ads isn’t all about putting up a page with your stats and prices and watching the inquiries and sales as they come flooding in. At first it’s likely that you’ll need to reach out to some potential advertisers to see if they have an interest. The first few months that I sold ads on Vandelay I generated about 40% of the ad sales from proactively contacting those that I thought might be interested. All I did was visit some other blogs in my niche with about the same size audience, click-through on their ads and found some contact information. At first I thought this might not produce results, but about half of those I contacted wound up buying an ad.

The key is to have reasonable prices (not necessarily bargain basement prices) and give them the details of your audience. If it’s a goof fit, there’s a chance they’ll buy. If I had sat back and waited only for advertisers who contact me, I would have had some empty ad spots for a few months.

With Traffikd, I’ve hardly been proactive at all. I haven’t had the time to contact advertisers (even though it only takes a few minutes) and I think the results are there to be seen. When you’re approaching potential advertisers keep your email very brief, but be sure to give relevant details. Quickly explain your audience, list some stats, and give them your various ad options with prices and payment information. I’ve never had anyone object to being approached for this reason.

Those who are running advertising campaigns are frequently searching around the internet for good places to advertisers, so you could actually be saving them some time. Also, be professional. A respectable company will not want to attach themselves to someone who is not professional.

4. Have an Identifiable Market

If you haven’t launched your blog yet, give some consideration to your target audience. If you have already started your blog but you’re having problems selling ads, you may be able to make some small adjustments to your approach that can help you to have a more distinct and discernable audience.
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5 Alternatives to Social Media Marketing

Social Media Optimization is one of the most common methods for getting significant exposure for bloggers. Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Delicious are constantly sending large volumes of traffic to submissions that are the most popular with users.

An effective Social Media Marketing plan can help to take a blog from nowhere to being well-known in a short amount of time. However, social media isn’t a good fit for every blog, and not all bloggers choose to participate. For those who would rather draw traffic in other ways, there are some traffic sources that are capable of giving you the same type of exposure as a front page appearance on a major social media site.

In this post we’ll look at five ways that bloggers can quickly gain tremendous exposure without social media, and without paying for any advertising. Just like social media, these methods won’t be for everyone either, but you may find something that fits very well for your niche and for your audience.

1 - Get Mentioned by Google News

Google News obviously reaches an astronomical number of visitors each month. And as a result, the stories that are mentioned there and the sites that are linked receive a surge of traffic similar to what you might experience from social media. In fact, the audience that reads Google News is a much more diverse, well-rounded audience than that of most social media sites.

Getting mentioned in Google News is not easy, as you may have imagined, however, plenty of bloggers and website owners have been able to do so. Google News only indexes sites that are news-focused, so this will exclude a number of blogs. If you think your blog would be a good fit, they provide some advice and instructions for getting listed.

2 - Submit a Press Release

An effective press release with a significant story to share can also create a large number of visitors to your site and plenty of valuable exposure. In order for a press release to work for you there will need to be something truly newsworthy in the release. Modern online resources make submitting press releases so easy that most editors are flooded with them everyday. Those that have nothing exceptional to say will simply be ignored.

If your press release is able to catch the attention of some editors you could receive outstanding exposure from various types of media and you could get plenty of inbound links as a result. There are a number of services out there that will help you to create an optimized press release and submit it online for you. If you’re interested in writing your own press release, see How to Write a Great Press Release: A Sample Press Release Template.
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