Blogging is hard work, and I’m not just talking about the writing part. Keeping your blog looking good and running smoothly is a real challenge, and I thought I would share some improvements you can make to your blog to make it more effective and easier to read.

1) Make sure to use paragraph headings, and just being bold isn’t enough

Headlines need to be darker and larger to stand out - people jump from section header to section header.

2) Show your best posts

Most bloggers show their best posts (if at all) on the sidebar navigation or on top. this is the wrong place, it should be at the bottom of your posts. Reason: whatever brought the visitor to your page in the first place, is why he is there. He first wants to deal with that, then he can turn attention to other things (but he doesn’t want to have to remember that you had some good posts up top and therefore scroll back up. Your best posts have proven to overall get you the best engagement with visitors, so you should always bet on them (would you bet on the horse that never ran a race yet you like? Or, on the horse that ran 50 races and won 35 of them?)

3) Timely relevance is key

Group similar posts for various occasions (e.x. - holidays, winter, breast cancer awareness day), put them in a table with an outline, add an image which delivers immediate understanding, and urge visitors to prepare themselves for the occasion by reading some of those posts.

4) Call to action

When you link to other posts within your post, try to use action words (such as “learn about blogging�) instead of just plain nouns. You’ll get a higher click-through rate, since the reader knows what to expect to receive from clicking the link.

5) Get a custom wordpress theme

Let’s face it - Ferraris are memorable because they are rare. In my testing, the default theme had an 80% bounce rate, while my custom theme instantly lowered my bounce rate to 50%, gave me 15% higher pageviews per visitor, and increased the amount of time spent on the blog by a whopping 98%.

6) Show them your good side

Add a photo of yourself on the main page or the about us page. People are reading your blog. People like looking at people a lot more than at text. Make people happy. It lets them attach a face to the name and the writing, and they will remember you better.

Easy as Cake - Not Quite

Never buy into any idea that offers an easy way to make money on the internet. A lot of people have bought into the simplicity of AdSense as proclaimed by various sources, but the reality is vastly different. People are fast realizing that there are various prohibitions put into place by Google, when it comes to utilizing AdSense and the answer to how to make money with AdSense is not as easy as they thought it would be.

The Prerequisites

If you want to make money with AdSense, you not only have to stringently comply with the various AdSense policies but your website must also duly comply with all the policies underlined by the Webmaster of Google.

You must understand that only if you can attract many visitors to your site, will your AdSense endeavor be successful. This can be achieved through a combination of techniques like Search Engine Optimization, Article Submission, Link Exchange, Pay per Click and various others. Moreover, the layout of the web pages is such that they must blend in with the Ads that you host on the site. Make sure that your Ads cannot be ignored; this is one of the important pointers that must be kept in mind in your quest to learn how to make money with AdSense.

Tackle the Competition

Many a times, and I would go so far as to say that it is a common enough occurrence; when you start hosting the Pay Per Click Ads you will find that there are many Ads from your competitors. Learn to host these Ads on those pages that are not as successful for you as the other pages. Otherwise you can put off posting those ads till the time you are busy enough so that you can at least earn some amount of money off your competitors. When you think about how to make money with AdSense, you must keep a watch on the Ads of your competitors.

Not a Money Making Machine

The purpose of Google AdSense is not only offering a monetary advantage to the people who host the Ads, but also to offer a promotional advantage to people who want their Ads to be hosted. Never think of it as a machine that churns out money. You have to put your question of how to make money with AdSense in perspective. The program is multi-beneficial and hence has to be worked upon, learnt, and expertly handled before you can think about making substantial earnings. Patience and Hard Work are the keys here.

Many people have considered signing up with Pay Per Click as a good way to make money online. While it is still entirely possible to use this method as a profitable means to make money online, there are a few things that you have to consider if you are to get the most out of it.

One of the first things that you have to realize is that the days of using Pay Per Click to make money online easily are over. There are far too many online marketers - most of them new to the business - that have grand plans of earning big money by way of pay per click advertising with Google AdWords and by buying traffic on Google. While it is indeed the fastest way to draw traffic to your web site, it is by no means easy. Sure you can buy loads of traffic fairly easily, but making money with pay per click is another matter entirely.

You also have to keep in mind that Pay Per Click is not a get rich quick scheme. This is another common misconception and one that far too many people have learned the hard way. It is certainly true that pay per click is still a huge market with a great potential for opportunities and financial rewards, but if you are expecting to get rich quickly it simply wouldn’t be too realistic to expect that. Furthermore, it appears that new advertisers - especially on Google - are in fact at a huge disadvantage as far as Pay Per Click is concerned.

While we are by no means telling you that you should discount Pay Per Click outright, it is important to figure out how it can best work for you in order to maximize its potential to earn money for you. There are still many web sites that make a lot of money through Pay Per Click advertising and it is possible for it to work for you as well. You do have to be aware that the success of Pay Per Click varies from market to market, with some areas enjoying huge success and others failing miserably. In some areas it can even take months and months before these efforts begin to show profits.

The key to make money online with pay per click is figuring out a method that will helps you hone in on effective keywords and combining them into effective ad groups.