Yes, it’s true my friend. The cash strapped country is now taking to the blogging community for their next source of funds to blow. The first city on the list is Philadelphia, which has already sent out an undisclosed amount of documents to bloggers of all sizes to fork over $300 for a lifetime blogging license. To make things worse, a great majority of these bloggers aren’t even making over $300 with their blogging efforts. Many only making a few dollars a year, but are still required to fork over $300 for their blogger license.

In an article released by CityPaper, Bess is interviewed about her minimal blogging with eHow.com and her own personal, and the $300 blogger license letter she received from the state. Bess says:

“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous,“.

Don’t think your blog is making enough money to be considered a business? An interesting statement from the article states:

“According to Andrea Mannino of the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, in fact, simply choosing the option to make money from ads — regardless of how much or little money is actually generated — qualifies a blog as a business. The same rules apply to freelance writers.”

While a $300 blogger license may not seem like a lot to full time established bloggers, how about the millions of bloggers hosted on free services like Blogspot and Wordpress? Both of these services use ad serving on their sites, so all of these bloggers are potential targets. There is a wide range of speculation and questions to be answered here.

I’m sure this is only the beginning. Once the other states and law makers get wind of Philadelphia cashing in on bloggers, it will spread across the country like wildfire.

If you missed the first post on 10 Tips for Better Blog Monetization, click here to review the first five topics discussed. Today we will showcase the last five topics of discussion for maximizing profits through blogging.

Paid Forum / Membership Areas

One of the growing trends in the “make money online” blogger area has been to create your own membership based forums. I’ve actually joined a few of these forums and found they are well worth the dollar or so it costs per day to access them. From a blog owner point of view, if you can get enough paying members, it’s a great side income and really adds value to your site. From a forum user view, some of these forums offer quality advice and case studies for the low membership fees of around $30 a month.

Google Adsense

Yes, the dreaded and hated Google Adsense made the list! As much as Google Adsense is hated among the “smart” marketers, it is still a great starting point for a new blogger. For a new blogger or site, Google Adsense can quickly show your page stats while giving you a taste if people are clicking on your site, and just visit your blog to see what ads are showing, and you will have an idea on what they are clicking. Whether you stick with Google Adsense and make a few pennies per click, or decide to monetize and sell your own advertising or find relevant affiliate programs… that’s up to you.

Self Promotion & Consultations

Why are most of us blogging in the first place? For many of us, we want to grow our name recognition and our brand. Blogging is one of the cheapest, easiest and fasted ways to get noticed. Once you blog is established, so is your name. With everything now in place, you are in a position where you can start to sell yourself and your expertise. Throw up a “hire me” like page on your site and offer services like public speaking, attend your event and consultation services… see if anyone bites, you may have a whole knew source of income your never thought existed!

Paid Blog Post Reviews

Everyone wants more exposure for their blogs and business, whether it be through text links, banner ads or even review posts. Not all blogs offer review posts, but many do. There are also many “paid post” services available, such as SocialSpark, ReviewMe and many smaller independent companies. You also always have the option to handle review requests yourself. It’s best to only review services and sites on your blog that are relevant to your audience.

Established Blog Flipping

Now that you have a great list of ways to monetize your blog, your last option can be your most profitable. There is a whole industry of single person businesses building up small niche blogs, then flipping them for a quick profit on sites like Flippa.com. Small sites will only bring in so much money, but at the same time I’ve seen blogs sell for over six figures on these sites. Continually build up your blog with quality content, grow your RSS and subscribers, and creating legitimate revenue sources almost always results in a high interest blog sales auction.

There you have it. Ten tips for better monetizing your blog and bring in profits. If you’d like to add anything to the list, feel free to leave a comment. You can also download my free 130 page guide on Six Figure Affiliate Blogging and how 25 other well known six figure affiliates and bloggers are making their money online.

With more online marketers making the move to blogging to build their brand and product base, it’s important to make sure you are staying above the curve with your blog and making the most of it. Besides the obvious importance of having a memorable domain name and a unique blog design, it’s also important to make sure visitors can quickly navigate through your site while hitting they key spots and returning for future visits.

Today I will be focusing on ten (5 today, 5 tomorrow) ways for the new, average or advanced blogger to better monetize their blog for profit. How many of these methods are you currently practicing?

Direct Ad Sales

Yes, we hear it all the time…”I hate banner ads and never click on them!“… sure, as marketers we can see banner ads a mile away and if we click on them, it’s because we clearly want to. From within the affiliate marketing industry, ad networks and product launches love banners, and they are proven to work very well. However, selling direct banner advertising may not be as successful in other blogging niches, such as a sports related site or cooking. You have to test your audience and find relevant advertising and what they are looking for.

Selling direct advertising on your site can be frustrating at first as you will need to establish your site and grow your traffic before placing ads on your site. During my first 9 months of this blog, I focused on my content, growth and readership and had no banner advertising… now ad spots are in demand month after month.

I go into how I setup my direct advertising and my preferred sites for outsourcing advertising, in my free Six Figure Affiliate Blogging guide.

Referral Marketing

The affiliate marketing industry is very unique in how it operates. Not only is “ok” to talk about how much we as individuals/affiliates make, but we like to talk about how and who (what networks) we are using. With so much talk about new campaigns and what ad networks have the best performing offers, it’s only fitting that our readers and other affiliates would follow our advice and join these networks. Fortunately, someone thought of the genius idea to create residual referral program within these ad networks. If you refer a new affiliate to an ad network using your referral url, you will earn 2-5% bonus commission on that referrals earnings.

Having a very tight niche blog on affiliate marketing and how to make money online, it’s not hard to send a decent amount of referrals to a network. Though compared to years past, we are seeing a much lower success rate for new affiliate applications being accepted at networks. Many networks have also lowered their referral program percentages, limited “lifetime earnings” to just a few months, or have even removed their referral program all together.

Build That List!

The success of a blog is all about growth and bringing your readera back on a daily/weekly basis. As important as quality content is, it just isn’t enough. How many of your visitors will simply forget the name of your site, or just to busy to ever return. Building a list is one of the best ways to keep your readers coming back for more.

At some point you probably visit this blog for the first time and you may have remembered some type of popup to grab your email. I’ve used both a lightbox method through Aweber, and my new solution through Popup Domination. Both of these solutions will display a popup like window in your browser after visiting a blog. I set my subscribe form to fade in and display after a user is on the site for 3 seconds. I also limited the subscribe form to display once every two weeks per visitor, so it doesn’t get annoying.

The bottom line here is that lightbox type forms dominate and convert your potential one time traffic to long term subscribers. Many bloggers have seen increases of 100-300% from just adding either a lightbox through Aweber or using Popup Domination.

Create a Free eBook / Bonus

Once someone starts a blog, it’s almost inevitable that they will create their own product or at least a free ebook or guide for their readers. Creating a free ebook is very effective and if you already have an established blog with a lot of content, you can easily go through and collect your best posts, rewrite and update the content, then pull everything together for a free ebook to offer your readers.

Being able to offer a free quality product ties back into having a lightbox subscribe form for your site. What’s the incentive if you visit a site and they just have a form that says “Join our mailing list!”?… almost no one will. Instead, come up with a value for your ebook (or product), then offer it for free to your readers as an incentive to subscribe. You will drastically see your blog numbers climb, while providing a valuable product to your readers.

Guest Posting & Time Management

For anyone that is already running a blog, we all can relate to the dilemma of not having anything to write about. As much as you may want to write a post everyday, it’s better to post nothing then to post crap. One way to relieve the stress of having to come up with a new post every day (or how ever often you post), is to bring in a weekly or monthly guest post. Not only will you provide your readers with an article for the day, but it may come as a new and refreshing source as it won’t be your own.

Guest posting can work in many different ways. I personally receive emails all the time for guest posts, but am selective on which I will post. If you would like to have your guest posts published on another blog, be sure to send the full post in an email, and not just ask if you can write a future post. Many well known bloggers receive hundreds of emails daily and your requests can easily get lost among the madness. If you are looking to spread awareness for your own blog, or bring in new content, guest posting is a win-win situation.

This was Part 1 of my 10 Quick Tips for Better Blog Monetization. Come back tomorrow when I will follow up with six through ten.

For more tips on blogging and how you can make money with your own blog, download my free guide at SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com.

After going through what seems to have been several years without getting hit with a serious virus, this weekend I got nailed with a killer. It was one of those extremely annoying trojan viruses that digs it’s way into your system and causing some serious damage along the way. The fun worst part about this virus was how it would instantly activate itself upon windows starting up, then to make matters worse, it would instantly close out any applications you tried to open and wiped out internet access all together.  The main goal of the virus was to not only infect your computer, but also to make money in the process.

This virus in particular is referred to as a “Security Alert Virus”. If you’ve ever had one of these viruses you already know what I’m talking about. If not, just think about any anti virus software like Norton or McAfee, and how the program gives you an alert when it finds an infected file on your computer. There are many different versions of this virus, but their concept is all the same, which is to look like an active anti virus solution currently on your system. To the advanced PC user and marketer, this may be obvious that it’s not your typical virus alert software… however it is quite convincing to the average PC user. You can see a preview of this concept the right.

No matter what application you try to open, the virus will close it out and say there is an infected file. You are then asked if you would like to delete the file using your anti virus software. If you click “YES”, you are then sent to their anti virus software web site, where you could then buy the software… which I’m sure wouldn’t work anyway. The amazing part here is how the virus pretty much wipes out all of your internet usage, except to access their site and buy the software. As sleazy and scummy as it is, it’s also pretty amazing… and I’m sure very effective!

On the flip side, there are tons of web sites cashing in on anti virus software without being bastards and having to infect computers with a virus to make their living. Web sites dedicated to providing information on how to remove these viruses are also cashing in. Many of these I had the pleasure of visiting while I was in the process of learning how to remove this particular virus for instance. Each site gives a run through of how to get your hands dirty to manually remove the virus, or how you can simply download their anti virus free trial software (which then leads to a sale). No one wants to start messing around with .dll and .exe files, as you can easily mess things up… so it’s not a hard sell for most of these sites since people visiting their sites are already infected and looking for a quick solution.

An excellent example of these sites can be seen at SpywareRemove.com. Nearly all of these sites share the same information on how the individual virus is spread through out the computer, and which individual files you will need to remove. Most of these sites are good information sources and can actually help in the virus removal process, but they all also seem to push their own (or affiliate related) anti virus software solutions.

So there you have two examples of how to make a killing in the anti virus world. One of them is hardcore nasty… not only infecting and destroying computers, possibly planting keystroke loggers in the process (stealing information), but also making money along the way by scaring users into buying their crap anti virus software. The other method, which many of us can relate to in the affiliate world, is to become prominent information and resources sites, while being an affiliate partner with hopefully a legitimate anti virus software (or selling your own).

In short, I was finally able to remove my infected virus by continually trying to stop operations as they started. A long process of restarting the computer, quickly bringing up task manager before applications started to run, once again gaining internet access and updating my virus removal software (though a lot more complicated then it sounds)… and finally removing the virus. Not only did everything turn out fine… but I also got the inspiration to write this post about the nasty and profitable world of viruses and anti virus software.

Jonathan Volk has been extremely successful in the affiliate marketing game, and also for making a name for himself. After starting his blog just a few years ago, he has already passed 30,000 RSS subscribers and already launched two successful programs…. that’s in addition to earning millions of dollars a year through affiliate marketing! Jon is definitely someone to keep an eye on.

The following is my interview with Jonathan Volk from my Six Figure Affiliate Blogging ebook. You can download the full ebook for free at SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com, which includes over 130 pages of content and interviews with 25 highly successful affiliates and bloggers.

Interview with Jonathan Volk

1.) Please tell us a little about yourself.

My name is Jonathan Volk. I’m a “super affiliate”, blogger, speaker and online entrepreneur. I have been blogging about internet marketing and making money online over at http://www.jonathanvolk.com since 2007. I just recently launched two projects: My Free Affiliate Marketing Guide and my complete guide to advertising on Facebook.

You can read more about me over at http://www.jonathanvolk.com/about

2.) When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?

I started blogging back in 2005ish on a blog that no longer exists. It was in 2007 that I decided to blog about my journey to making money online and that is when I started JonathanVolk.com. I have now been blogging for over 3 years, and am loving it. Blogging is one of the parts of my business that is not as profitable as the other areas, but I enjoy it too much to not have it be a part of my business.

3.) When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?

Not at all. Really it was just for fun. It was not until it started to grow to 1000+ RSS readers that I began to realize the potential.

4.) You’ve now established yourself as one of the top affiliate bloggers. What advice do you have for others looking to bring their blog to their top of their niche?

When I first started blogging, I didn’t take the blog seriously. Sure I would blog regularly but I didn’t treat the blog like my other projects. I highly recommend, if you’re going to blog, that you research some of the blog tip websites like problogger.net, dailyblogtips.com, and bloggingtips.com. In order for you to really take your blog to it’s full potential, you need to utilize the resources that are out there.

5.) After successfully launching your Affiliate Marketing 101 guide and Facebook Ads Guide, do you feel either of these products would have had the same success if you weren’t an established blogger and voice in this niche?

I believe a huge reason these products are a success is because I have been able to build a solid following over 3 years. Now, when I launch anything, I have instant access to tell tens of thousands of people who are interested in making money online.

5.) How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?

I use affiliate marketing to make money with my affiliate marketing blog. When there is a product or service that I like I usually make a post or two about it with my affiliate links. This has allowed me to earn a nice blog income – the single biggest source of income from my blog.

6.) In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?

I would say there is no “best” way, only what’s best for you. Some of the ways that I think work best are to use affiliate marketing, sell ads directly, or create your own product.

7.) What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?

If you want to make a blog for more than just a hobby, you should focus your efforts on learning how to build a good blog. This includes installing an email capture, setting up your RSS on feedburner, blogging regularly, making guest posts, etc. Like I mentioned above, check out the blogs about blogging so you can learn how to be the best blogger there is right from the start.

My wife blogs over at BachmansSparrow.com. She has taken blogging seriously and with my guidance from the things I have learned about blogging, she has been able to build quite a blog following in under a year.

8.) Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?

Mentioned above.

9.) Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?

I am going to be launching my own coaching forum shortly for Facebook Advertising. This is a service that will go along side my guide to advertising on facebook. I’m really excited about it as it’s going to the be the first forum of it’s kind. (check out Facebook Ads Guide)

* If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to download my free 130 page guide to “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging“.