By the way, I’m willing to bet that you probably know enough about social media right now to start your own side business.

Without further ado, here are the most influential people in social media.

Jay Baer

8,200+ followers 44,400+ followers 1,360+ fans

Jay Baer is a tequila-loving, hype free social media strategist and speaker. He co-authored The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social with Amber Naslund (she’s coming up on the list too). His blog, Convince & Convert, covers the A to almost Z of everything in online marketing from A/B testing to website strategy.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: The 4 Types of Content Metrics That Matter Why You Need to Turn Your Content Marketing Upside Down Why Critics of Klout Are Missing the Big Picture

Lisa Barone

3,600+ followers 20,000+ followers 293 fans

Lisa is co-founder of Outspoken Media along with Rhea Drysdale & Rae Hoffman-Dolan. Her catchphrase is that while some people save lives, she saves brands. She is known for her honest industry observations, inability to not say what she’s thinking, and excessive Twittering. Her blog, Outspoken Media, covers affiliate marketing, blogging, Internet marketing, reputation management, SEO, and more.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: Mastering the Small Business Link Building Basics Beyond Rankings: Actionable SEO Reports Your Boss Will Love Success Means Getting Dirty With Your Audience

Danny Brown

10,000 followers 30,700+ followers 5,000+ fans

Danny Brown is co-founder and CEO of Bonsai Interactive Marketing which offers integrated social media and mobile marketing solutions and applications to businesses. His blog is featured in the AdAge Power 150 and is one of Canada’s top marketing blogs as well. He’s well-known for his expertise in public relations, blogging, marketing, social media, and oddly enough, sheep.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: How to Use Social Media for Your HR Needs The Only Marketing Tip You’ll Ever Need You Make the Choices

Pete Cashmore

184,111 followers 2,493,926 followers

Pete Cashmore is the founder and CEO of Mashable, one of the largest and most well known sites for digital, social media, and technology news. He has been recogized as one of AdAge’s 2011 influencers, Time’s 100 people in 2010, and Forbes as a web celebrity. He can find his latest on both Mashable and CNN.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: Free Music on Facebook: How Can It Fail? 10 Fascinating Facebook Facts – And What They Say About Us Google+: 10 Things It Does Better

Matt Cutts

102,400+ followers 134,400+ followers

Matt Cutts is the head of the webspam team at Google, and generally recognized as the public face of Google. He’s the person SEOs love, love to hate, and love to mercilessly pick on at the same time. He blogs about Google (of course), gadgets, and SEO at his blog.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: A rel=canonical Corner Case Google 2000 vs. Google 2011 My Thoughts on This Week’s Blekko Debate

Guy Kawasaki

60,300+ followers 402,000+ followers 56,700+ fans

Guy Kawasaki is the author of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, a former chief evangelist for Apple, and co-founder of Alltop.com, the site that brings the top blogs on virtually every topic imaginable together. If you happen to follow him on Google+, you’ll find he updates 10-20 posts per day, numbering them for each day.

Brian Moran

400+ followers 1,700+ followers 83,000+ fans

Brian Moran is perhaps one of the top people to go to when it comes to Facebook marketing. He built his website’s fan page to over 80,000 fans in under 10 months and now helps small businesses get off the ground with their Facebook strategy. His blog, Get 10,000 Fanscovers fan page marketing, Facebook advertising, and much more.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: Facebook SSL: What You Need To Know 7 Types of Facebook Sponsored Ads 7 Steps to a Profitable Facebook Fan Page

Amber Naslund

unlisted followers 43,700+ followers 240+ fans

Amber is the VP of social strategy for Radian6, business and communications strategist, and co-author of the The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social with Jay Baer as mentioned above. Her blog, Brass Stack Thinking, covers blogging, branding, marketing, social media, and more.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: When Even Social Customer Service Isn’t Enough Consider This: 24/7 Access, Work, and Social Media Why You Shouldn’t Rely on a Social Media Ringer

Jessica Northey

unlisted followers 171,000+ followers 3,300+ fans

Jessica Northey is a social media, broadcasting, country and music blogger / journalist who heads up Finger Candy Media. Her business helps celebrities, musicians, brands, and businesses use social media to accomplish their productivity goals.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: 5 Questions To Ask Yourself When Using Social Media Social Media and the Seven Diminutives More Google Plus or Minus from My G+ Circles

Jolie O’Dell

28,800+ followers 419 fans

Jolie O’Dell is a journalist and start-up veteran, computer science student, and tech journalist for Mashable. Her personal blogcovers just about everything a personal blog could cover.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: Google+ Users Are Nearly All Male Why Do People Follow Brands? How Small Businesses Are Using Mobile

Chris Pirillo

53,800+ followers 99,000+ followers 30,500+ fans

Chris Pirillo is technology strategist whom tech enthusiasts trust to answer questions and lead discussions on the latest and greatest tech news. He launched the Lockergnome publishing network and began a web community for geeks. His blog all things tech and geeky!Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: Star Wars Advent Calendar is Jediriffic Year-Round How to Rough It with Technology Building Egyptian Pyramids is Easy… with LEGO

Amy Porterfield

3,500+ followers 20,500+ followers 5,300+ fans

Amy is an online marketing and social media consultant who specializes in Facebook marketing. She is the co-author of the brand new book Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies released in August of this year, and is a regular author on her own blog and Social Media Examiner as well as the creator of the Facebook Marketing All-In-One For Dummies program.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: 5 Reasons Google+ Will Change Your Content Marketing Strategy for the Better

Trey Ratcliff

106,000+ followers 25,400+ followers 24,400+ fans

Trey Ratcliff is one of the most popular photographers on social media, and is mostly known for his HDR and travel photography on Stuck in Customs. He makes some pretty awesome videos using his photography on YouTubeas well.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: Mystery Location Cyborg Fabrication Plant Google Photos Hangout at Google+ Highlights

Corvida Raven

1,400+ followers 7,700+ followers

Corvida Raven’s is a speaker, consultant, and technology blogger whose goal is to educate you on the latest technology in plain English. Her blog, She Geeks, covers education, mobile, social media, web, and much more. She’s been recognized by Fast Company as an influential woman in technlogy, is known as a social influence as well.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: Facebook Messenger: A Dedicated App for Facebook Messaging Tweetbot for iPhone: A Refreshing New Twitter App Twitter Web Intents and How Bloggers Can Use Them

Robert Scoble

143,700+ followers 206,600+ followers 27,000+ subscribers

Robert Scoble is a blogger, technical evangelist, and author best known for his blog Scobleizer. He is a proud employee of Rackspace, and proves just how much he loves talking to other geeks by publishing his own cell number on this blog and social profiles.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: Socialize Helps Make Your New App More Social Shaker Brings New Interactivity to Facebook Facebook’s New Privacy and Sharing Defenses

Mari Smith

20,000+ followers 118,000+ followers 49,000+ fans

Mari is a well-known social media speaker & trainer, chic geek & Facebook passionista, bubbly Scottish-Canadian, co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day and author of The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web, and contributor to Social Media Examiner. Her blog on relationship marketing covers buzz marketing, email marketing, Facebook, personal branding, professional networking, social media, and more.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: What’s So Exciting About Google+ – An Overview Ten Qualities of Social Media Superstars – Featuring 32 Leaders The #1 Mistake On Your Personal Facebook Profile

Michael Stelzner

6,000+ followers 35,700+ followers 59,200+ fans

Michael Stelzner is the CEO and founder of Social Media Examiner, one of the fastest growing blogs that is the authority for all things social media. He also is the author of Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: How to Produce Timeless Content That Helps You Today, Tomorrow and Forever 7 Ways to Get Noticed on Facebook With Facebook News Feed Optimization How to Use Facebook Places and Facebook Deals for Local Business

Wayne Sutton

7,600+ followers 34,800+ followers 790+ fans

Wayne Sutton is an entrepreneur, advisor, and technlogy journalist. He helps individuals, startups, and businesses understand how to communicate on the social web. His blog, Social Wayne, has been ranked in the top 50 best tech and social media blogs on the Internet.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: What You Need to Know About QR Codes 7 QR Code Marketing Examples by Major Brands, Music Artists, and Publications How to Manage Social Media Success Like an American Idol Contestant

Gina Trapani

86,600+ followers 175,700+ followers 915 fans

Gina Trapini is an award-winning blogger, programmer, and co-author of Lifehacker: The Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, and Better. She is the founder of Lifehacker and created the ThinkUp app. Her blog, Smarterware, covers all things to do with great software.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: End Malaria: New Book Saves Lives Open Source 101: My Refresh SD Talk Google+ and Building Better Online Privacy Models

Tamar Weinberg

16,100+ followers 28,100+ followers 1,160 fans

Tamar Weinberg is a social media consultant & trainer, blogger, and author of The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web. She is passionate for anything to do with the internet, social media, blogging, and gadgets. Her blog, Techipedia, covers all things social media and technology.Interesting Tips, Advice, and Shares: Email Overload: The Secret to Getting Inbox Zero Every Time 17 Digital Marketing Experts Share Their Top Tips, Tricks, and Tools The Success of Customer Service is Dependent Upon True Social Engagement

Your Favorites

This is just a sampling of the awesome people in social media. There are many, many others in almost every field, niche, or industry imaginable. So my questions for you are:

• Who are your favorites?
• Who would would you like to add to this list and why?

[Image Credit: Sean MacEntee]

The post 20 Most Influential People in Social Media appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

1. Write something that everyone can follow.

Your first goal in creating a post that has the potential to go viral on social media is to make the content easily consumable by the largest audience possible. This means you need to cater to beginners, intermediate, and advanced level readers in your industry – all in the same post!

If your post is a tutorial, for example, you need to write it in a way that someone new to the process could get started easily with your directions while also including tips and tricks that people who are familiar with the process might not have learned yet.

Content that goes viral does so for a reason – because everyone who comes in contact with it loves it enough to keep the spread happening. Try to ensure that your content will touch base with every reader possible!

2. Make sure your post is complete.

You’ve seen them – the kinds of posts where, after you’ve read it, your next goal was to find out more information. You probably didn’t think to share the post – you just went in search of more details.

This is where the little 300 word, made for SEO posts generally fail. They’re generally too simplistic to the point that they don’t actually give the reader everything they need to be satisfied.

You want your post to be the full guide. You want it to answer everyone’s question before they even get a chance to ask it. You want it to be something that others will think of sharing when someone asks them about that topic. You want it to be memorable.

3. Bring a new concept to life, or tackle it from a different angle.

It’s tough, I know. Most industries are over saturated with content to the point that it doesn’t feel like there is anything new left to offer. But I assure you, there is.

Social media ROI is one of those topics. Everyone writes about it, or so it seems. I read through a lot of posts on the subject, and I came to the conclusion that most posts out there either said it was impossible to determine or only gave you half the steps to start measuring it.

So I wrote what I felt no one else had – a post on how to measure as much of it as you can using Google Analytics. I also kept points #1 and #2 in mind, and voila – with some nice promotional (see killer awesome post promotion process) in two weeks it amassed 1,100+ tweets, 500+ likes, 2,600+ stumbles, 350+ shares on LinkedIn, and at least 100 comments (not counting my author responses) which is not too shabby I’d say.

4. Focus on the network you are targeting.

What if your goal isn’t to have widespread social media coverage, but to do well on one particular social network? Maybe you just want a ton of tweets, a lot of shares, or simply to hit the front page of Digg or a similar network. The key in this case is to keep the above two tips in mind and write your post on that network.

If you enter a contest where the winner is based on the number of tweets, then your task is simple – write a great post on Twitter. Your goal, again, is to keep in mind previously mentioned points #1 – #3. If you have a post that everyone on Twitter can benefit from, that is thorough, and has some unique aspects to it, you can almost be certain that, with the right amount of promotion, that post will make retweet history!

5. Create a mega-list.

While there are definitely some list-haters out there, the consensus is that if you create an awesome list, you’re going to get a lot of awesome social shares. The key to lists, of course, is to make them unique and include lots of valuable information that others don’t.

When it comes to top blog lists, don’t just say “here’s 50 blogs I like” and list them in bullet points. Write a nice description of them, and even include a link to a few of their latest posts. The latter point is key – linking to a blogger’s latest posts will send many of them a trackback which alerts them to the fact they were listed. Sharing at that point takes care of itself – if you have 20 people in a list, most of them will be happy to spread the word that they’ve been recognized for their blogging accomplishments.

If your list doesn’t involve blog posts and track backs, your next goal once it goes live is to make sure everyone on the list knows about it. I prefer tagging people in a Facebook update, tweeting them, or emailing them, depending on our relationship. You can also do tweets like the following.

Check out the Top 10 Twitter Apps including @HootSuite @BufferApp @TweetDeck @CoTweet @Bitly http://bit.ly/q5u1Qr

These will alert individuals and/or brands to the fact that they have been listed so that they will hopefully give you some love from their social accounts as well. It’s a win for them as it shows their audience that others love writing about them, and a win for you because brands especially tend to have large audiences.

6. Publish on a site that is social-sharing friendly.

The last major key for having a socially viral post is to simply publish it on a site that is social share friendly. If that is your site, you must add social sharing buttons to your blog template, either through a WordPress plugin, add-on like Add This, or inserting the individual buttons into your blog’s template files.

If you’re not posting your content on your own site, be sure that your target site has social sharing buttons. I publish on a wide range of sites, and the social sharing of those posts can be almost directly linked to the site’s chosen social sharing buttons. Posts I do on sites that only have Twitter and Facebook buttons only get tweets and likes, posts I do on sites with the StumbleUpon button usually get stumbled, and posts on sites with no sharing buttons usually get minimal social shares (but those also tend to get a lot of comments, so there is a trade off).

7. Format your post beautifully.

Last, but not least, is the overall visual presentation of your blog post. If your post is just one big glob of text with no headers, it loses the scanability that readers (and especially social-sharers) love. If it’s on a site that is covered in ads (think the large, ugly Adsense ads below post headers), then people might not even make it to your content.

Just like people aren’t likely to share an ugly photograph (unless it’s a post about the top 10 ugliest animals in the world), they are just as unlikely to share an ugly post. Even if the site isn’t fancy, a clean layout that puts the emphasis on the content (where emphasis belongs) will help in ensuring more social shares for that content.

Have you ever had a post go viral on social media? What additional tips would you add for creating posts that go wild on social media?

P.S.

I’m willing to bet that you probably know enough about social media right now to start your own side business.

Don’t believe me?

Check out Kate Buck’s new video and see if you’re not convinced that a new (lucrative) side project is right for you.

The post 7 Tips for Creating Posts That Will Spread on Social Media appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

So how do you create a blog post? And not just any blog post, but a successful one? It’s about having a plan, from idea to promotion and everything in between. Here is my blog post process in stages.

The Idea Stage

Ideas hit me all the time – they happen offline when I’m at a conference (for example I will have a TON of ideas during Blog World sessions guaranteed), driving, shopping, or even playing with my dog. They happen online while I’m perusing Google Reader subscriptions, reading other people’s posts, making blog comments, or watching my Twitter list feeds whizz on by.

To make your idea stage as beneficial as possible, you have to make sure that you don’t lose any of those great ideas, whether they are ones that you want to start writing about the moment they pop into your head to ones that you might not actually tackle for another couple of weeks, maybe even months. So whenever you get a great idea, keep track of it – write it on a sticky, send yourself an email, record it by voice on your iPhone… whatever it takes to make sure the idea doesn’t get lost somewhere in your mind never to resurface again.

The key to making your idea stage manageable (especially if you have a lot of rogue ideas that come into your mind all of the time) is to take all of those ideas and get them into one place. My personal favorite tool as you might guess from my previous posts here on affiliate marketing organization and measuring blog growth) is a Google Docs spreadsheet. This spreadsheet has four simple columns:

• Category – mine usually blogging, social media, SEO, photography, or business.
• Site – for some titles, I usually try to fit it to one my own blogs or ones I regularly contribute to.
• Title – the great headline idea.
• Notes – miscellaneous information that will help me when I get to actually writing the post.

The beauty of this spreadsheet is that I now have over 70 ideas ready to go when I need them, and I can easily use the filters to look at them by subject or by the site I need to write for. That little bank of ideas has come in handy, especially for blog contests. I have won two so far using topic ideas I had thought about over six months before the contest. I like to think that I was subconsciously saving them for something special, and my mind knew that the contests were the right time to unleash them.

The Writing Stage

Now, the time has come where I need to take one of my roaming ideas and make it into a real, live blog post. This part is usually a fluid process for me – sometimes I start by just writing out everything, then organizing it into logical sections after the fact. Other times I will start with a clear outline of header points and then fill in the information as applicable. I like to leave things a bit unstructured during this stage because I like the possibility of having a new idea pop up in the middle which either takes the post in a new direction or gets added to my idea list for another post.

One thing I have found is key during the writing stage is to not let any distractions get in the way, and one of the biggest distractions I have found is obsessing about grammar and spelling. Of course, this lack of obsession has led to little oopses here and there in my posts, but I find that when I stop because Microsoft Word has highlighted a bunch of misspellings, I lose my writing rhythm – my mojo, so to speak. So I write in WordPad which doesn’t do any kind of checks, then copy the post into Microsoft Word for the editing portion.

The SEO Stage

Notice I didn’t think about search optimization until now. People (especially SEO’s) may disagree with this, but I find that if you’re not thinking about optimization, you’re fully focused on producing content that people will love to read. If you’re focused on how many keywords you can stuff in your header tags, the title, and throughout the content, you take away from the reader’s experience.

This is why I wait until after the post is complete to work on some optimization. I take that title I generated during the idea process and look at it to see what kind of keyword phrases would go best. In a recent post on my site, the post was about (and originally titled) comparing DIYthemes’ Thesis Framework to StudioPress’ Genesis Framework. Now I could have spent the first chunk of my time figuring out better titles, meta descriptions, keywords, etc. and then wrote the post, but I chose to write the post instead.

Once the post was done, I went over to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and started popping in variations of Thesis, Genesis, premium WordPress themes, and so on. And thus was born Thesis vs Genesis – Comparing Premium WordPress Themes. From there, I formulated the meta description, other keywords, trickled through the headers for a bit of tweaking, and voila. Now my post that was constructed purely for reader satisfaction was also made to be SEO friendly.

The Publishing Stage

Wait, isn’t writing and optimizing the post the same as publishing? Nah. I consider some crucial elements during the publishing stage to happen after the writing, editing, and optimizing is done, but before you actually press the publish (or schedule) button.

One thing you want to do during the publishing stage is ensure your post has some kind of call to action. Think about what you want people to do once they’ve read the post – do you want them to purchase a product with your affiliate link, leave a comment, share it on Twitter, read about your services, and/or buy your eBook. If you want people to do something, you need to make sure your post has links to the affiliate products, a question at the end asking people for their opinions, a social sharing button (or a ClicktoTweet link for sites you have no control over their sharing buttons), a lead-in that leads the reader to want your services, and/or a reason that people should logically continue on to check out your eBook.

After establishing your calls to action, you want to ensure that, at the very least, people don’t just leave your post once they’ve finished reading. The way to ensure this is by having some good internal links throughout your content and at the end of the post in the form of Related Posts (WordPress makes a great plugin for related posts too). Internal links might get readers attention as their going along – hopefully they will open them in a new tab and save them for continued reading, and related posts might take them somewhere else on your site right as they might have been considering moving on to another site.

Other great reasons to add internal links include getting a link back from sites that steal your content (because hey, it’s going to happen – might as well get some value out of it right) and getting a handy trackback alert to sites stealing your content since they’ll be inadvertently linking back to your posts. I’ve found many a thieving websites using this tactic.

Last but not least during the publishing stage is deciding when to actually publish your post. Did you write an amazing post on a Saturday? Then you definitely don’t want to hit the publish button – think about a day during the week that will likely bring you more traffic (I prefer Mondays and Tuesdays for the best posts) and schedule it then. Also consider, for those of you in Triberr or those who have a lot of people automatically tweeting your posts when it goes live, the time you are planning to publish. You want all of those tweets to be seen by your target audience as opposed to going out at 2:30 in the morning when your time zone is fast asleep. I have found 9 AM EST best getting the most social sharing and 12 AM PST best for getting the most comments. More commenters are insomniacs I guess.

The Promotion Stage

This, I must admit, is probably my favorite part of blogging. While awesome content is the only thing that will make you go viral, awesome content will never actually go viral if no one sees it. So unless the world comes to your blog on a daily basis without any incentive, you’re probably going to have to go tell the world about your post through blog post promotion.

I have different “levels” of post promotion processes. I don’t think you bring out the big guns for every post you publish – unless you only publish once a week and every post is 100% gold certified awesome. I, for example, have several posts a week that go live between my site and the others I write for. Although you may your heart into every post, you know which ones are killer awesome and which ones are averagely awesome.

For averagely awesome posts, my post promotion process includes:

• Tweeting the post from my account, usually just once between 7 AM PST and 11 AM PST.
• Sharing it on Facebook, LinkedIn, OR Google+, but not all three.

For awesome posts (once a week), my post promotion process includes all of the above plus:

• Sharing it on two out of three networks between Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.
• Sharing it with my followers on StumbleUpon (not a quick process as I have almost a thousand and I have found that you have to share in small groups in order for the share to actually work correctly and send to everyone).
• Give it an extra tweet, later in the evening or the next day that it goes live.
• Inclusion in my writing portfolio.
• Inclusion in my custom RSS feed for Triberr, Blog Engage, and other social site submission.

For killer awesome posts, my post promotion process includes all of the above plus:

• Sharing it on all three networks between Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.
• Sharing it in groups on Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Multiple tweets with re-worked titles over the course of the next week.
• Blog commenting promotion.
• Direct messaging some partners in social media to see if they’ll help spread the word.

Promotion can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, and then some over the course of the next few days. If you’re entering a blogging contest, you have to step that up ten-fold to ensure you have the most social votes possible to win. And of course, your social promotion isn’t going anywhere if you haven’t built up a good audience, so you have to lay a good foundation before you can have a successful blog post promotion execution.

What is Your Blog Post Creation Process?

That’s the nuts and bolts of my process, from the birth of an idea to the maturation of its promotion. Now it’s your turn – what is your process? What do you find most successful? Please share your thoughts in the comments, and share this post on Twitter for fellow bloggers looking to improve their blog posting skills!

The post Creating a Successful Blog Post – From Idea to Promotion appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

In this post, you will learn what numbers you will want to keep track of, and the free tools you can use to get these numbers.

Blog Statistics and Analysis

The following are important statistics to keep track of for your blog and related social media outlets to analyze the ongoing progress of your blogging and digital marketing efforts. I would suggest recording these statistics once a month within a spreadsheet.

RSS and Mailing List Subscribers – One thing every blogger wants is subscribers, and the change in your number of subscribers shows whether your recent content has been resonating with your audience. If you haven’t already, be sure to burn your RSS feed with Feedburner or Feedblitz to get your subscriber stats. Alternatively, you can just subscribe to your own feed in Google Reader and click on the View Details link. It will show you how many subscribers you have in the Google Reader system.

Posts and Guest Posts – The number of posts you do on your site and on other sites can have a huge effect on your blog’s overall growth. Be sure to note both in your tracking spreadsheet – after several months you may notice a correlation between the growth and decline in your stats based on these numbers alone.

Twitter Followers and Following – Watch your Twitter community grow by using Twitter Counter. When you sign in with Twitter, you can see your follower and following stats for the last three months for free. You can tweet a message from their service to see up to six months of stats as well.

Klout – Connect your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog, and other information to Klout to get an overall influence score which will take into account your activity on each network that you connect to their service. Influence is based on a number of metrics including the retweets, comments, likes, etc. you get on anything you share on your networks and can be a good indicator of whether you are growing your influence as your blog grows. If you’re not a fan of Klout, PeerIndex offers a similar scoring system.

Facebook Fans, Post Views, and Post Feedback – If you have a Facebook fan page, jump into your Insights (which can be found on the right sidebar when you’re logged in and viewing your page. You can view statistics for the number of Lifetime Likes (the number of fans who have liked your page), Post Views (the number of times people have viewed your fan page’s posts in their News Feed), and Post Feedback (the number of likes and comments made on updates to your page) during the date range specified. This will show you if your blog’s fan page is continuously growing in popularity and engagement.

YouTube Subscribers and Views – If you have a YouTube Channel, note your subscribers and total number of upload views to see if your videos are working with the YouTube audience and your own community.

Unique Visitors, Visits, Pageviews, and Bounce Rate – This is where your Google Analytics come into play. If you haven’t setup Google Analytics for your blog, I suggest you do so (assuming you have a blog on its own domain or are using a platform that allows you to include your own analytics code). Each month, enter the above mentioned stats to see your blog’s progress as far as traffic and how well your traffic is staying on-site.

Google PageRank – It’s still back and forth in the SEO industry about the importance of PageRank, but as long as Google keeps updating it, I would consider it something important to note. Essentially it tells you your site’s authority based on the number and quality of backlinks your site has (you can see the correlation between the number of links and PageRank in this chart). You can grab your site’s PageRank by using the Google PageRank Checker site or SEO Site Tools extension for Google Chrome.

Domain Authority, Total Links, and Linking Root Domains – SEOmoz offers free access to Open Site Explorer, a tool that requires no registration to get the minimal details you need for this exercise, but you can register for a free account to get a bit more out it. Using their tool, you can grab your blog’s Domain Authority (predicts domain’s ranking potential based on algorithmic link metrics), Total Links (backlinks estimated by their tool), and Linking Root Domains (unique domains linking to your blog). This will help you see your growth in terms of the number of sites linking to you, hopefully for your awesome content!

Keyword Rankings – If you haven’t already, think about the main keywords that you want your blog to rank for and check your ranking for those terms monthly. Be sure to get an unpersonalized search result by logging out of your Google Account and turning off any search history or personalization preferences in your search preferences. Alternatively, you can download Free Monitor for Google or create a free account at Authority Labs . First you will get a 30 day free trial of their pro account (no credit card information required) and if you don’t upgrade at the end of 30 days, you’ll be downgraded to a free account that tracks the rankings of ten keywords for one domain in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Notes – Finally, you will want to make notes about any significant things you did throughout the month that might have affected your numbers for that month like placing a major guest post, hosting a webinar, unfollowing a lot of people (or following a lot of people), attending a conference, or another potentially major action or event. This will help you down the road in identifying things that have helped or hurt your blog’s progress.

Your Blog’s Growth Measurement Spreadsheet

As I did with my affiliate marketing organizer, I thought I’d create a shareable version of this spreadsheet I use measure my blog’s growth on Google Docs.

If you are signed into your Google account, simply use the File > Save option to save this spreadsheet to your documents and start filling it in with your information.

Excel and Open Office Versions

If you don’t have Google Docs, or would prefer to save it on your local machine, go to the Google Docs version and use the File > Download As to save it as your desired file type. I’d suggest Open Office or Excel if possible for functionality.

How Do You Measure Your Blog’s Growth

Do you use similar stats and programs to measure your blog’s growth regularly? What other stats will you add to your spreadsheet? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The post How to Measure Your Blog’s Growth appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

• You’re about to write a post and mention an affiliate product, then have to spend time to look for the affiliate link for it.
• You’re in need of a new banner for an affiliate product, but have no clue where to get it.
• You’re curious about your earnings for an affiliate product that isn’t under the umbrella of a major network, so you have to search for the affiliate site login, figure out your username, reset your password, and so forth.
• You’re watching your Twitter stream and see someone asking for opinions on an affiliate product that you wrote a review for sometime last year, so now you have to find that review post.
• You’re just shy of your next payout on SamCart and want to do a little push on all of the affiliate products you have under that network, but their promo materials are spread out all over the place.

While some of these things don’t take a lot of time, I’d bet there have been situations where you passed including that affiliate link, banner, checking your stats, tweeting your review post, or making several product pushes because you were too busy to mess around with tracking the information down.

To avoid this kind of problem in the future, why not get all of your affiliate marketing information all in one place? My favorite way to organize is simply using Google Docs. It’s free with your Google Account, and it’s accessible wherever you go, from your desktop at work to your laptop at home or your iPad to your Android when on the go without messing around with USB drives or wishing you were on a different device.

The Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Organizer

The following are important pieces of information I have in my Google Spreadsheet to organize my affiliate marketing resources.

Product Name – Simply the affiliate product name.

Contact (name, email, twitter) – I find that it’s best to keep track of who to contact when you have questions or concerns about a particular affiliate product or program. Most are happy to help you if it means you’re going to promoting their product! I’d also suggest following your favorite affiliate product creators on Twitter – it’s a great way to see if there are any updates to the products, sales, etc. coming that they might not have notified their affiliates about via email.

Niche – If you do affiliate marketing for more than one niche, then this will allow you to filter your programs just for one particular niche when promoting via blog posts, Twitter, and other avenues.

Type – Chances are, your affiliate products are made up of eBooks, events, membership programs, courses, plugins, themes, applications, and so forth. I like having mine distinguished that way if I’m specifically wanting to write a post on top WordPress plugins or themes, I can just filter those types in my spreadsheet.

Network – Most of your affiliate products may fall under major networks like SamCart, E-junkie, ShareASale, and other major affiliate networks, but you can also include links to those that have their own proprietary network.

Vendor ID – Clickbank, for example, has a Vendor ID for different affiliate programs which you can see in reporting. It’s good to have as a quick reference when you’re looking through your earnings reports.

Login & Password – Nothing is more frustrating than having to find login information. I wouldn’t suggest putting your full password in an online document, but instead maybe hints to your password as some networks require funky passwords with caps and special characters while others limit you to a certain amount and specific types of characters.

Product Price – If you are an affiliate for more than one eBook and have the chance to promote just one for a particular occasion, this might help you decide which to choose based on the audience. If you think they’re big spenders, go with the highest priced item. If not, go with the lowest priced one.

Minimum & Maximum Commission – When you’re looking to increase your earnings, the amount you’ll make off a product will definitely influence your decision on how much promotion to do for the product. The more you could make, the more you will probably want to promote it!

Promo Materials, Login & Password – While affiliate products on ShareASale have their banners and suggested text links on that affiliate network, products on other networks such as Clickbank and E-junkie tend to have offsite promotion material links. Some of these are available to the public while others are behind a separate login. Finding these materials (banners, swipe files, etc.) has always driven me insane, so having the links all in one place can be a lifesaver!

Affiliate Link (full & Bit.ly) – Depending on where you want to share your affiliate link, you might want to grab the full thing or just one that you have customized on Bit.ly or another URL shortener of your choice. Note that you’ll also want to follow affiliate program emails religiously and periodically check up on your affiliate links as some products might change affiliate networks. Nothing bites worse than making a sale and then losing the commission simply because the new affiliate network can’t track the old links (but can conveniently still make the sale).

Blog Link – If you use plugins like Ninja Affiliate for WordPress that converts your affiliate links to something more customized, then you can stick that customized URL here.

Review Post (full & Bit.ly) – If you have a review post for a product, you’re more likely to make more income from it. Hence, you’ll want to link to the full URL for the review post in your writing and occasionally reshare the shortened one on Twitter. This will help you keep track of those links.

Video – Videos make for great promotional content – especially if your video shows how easy a particular affiliate product is to use, such as setting up a plugin or WordPress theme. Keep your video links handy to push in a post or share with someone asking questions about a particular product and be sure that your review post link is in the video description.

Minimum Payout – Just something nice to know if you want to figure out how far you need to go to get paid again.

Earnings – Want to know how successful you are with your affiliate programs? Then track your earnings! Networks like Clickbank will let you run earnings reports from the last year, and E-junkie will let you see affiliate-specific earnings from the past few years (mine goes back through 2006). This will give you a good idea which products your audience loves and which ones, no matter how much you push them, are just not making enough income to be worth it.

Updated – This friendly column will remind you if it’s about time to check your earnings, links, etc. to make sure there’s nothing new you need to know about.

Get This Spreadsheet on Google Docs

If you’re not in the mood to create this spreadsheet from scratch, never fear! You can view the Google Docs’ spreadsheet online. If you are signed into your Google account, simply use the File > Save option to save it to your documents and start filling it in with your information.

Excel and Open Office Versions

If you don’t have Google Docs, or would prefer to save it on your local machine, go to the Google Docs version and use the File > Download As to save it as your desired file type. I’d suggest Open Office or Excel if possible for functionality.

Filtering

In the Google Docs version, you don’t need to do anything – just use the arrows on each column to sort / filter. If you download it in another version, be sure to add the Filter back to the header row so you can sort / filter specific information using the arrows. In Microsoft Excel 2007, select the first row and use the Filter option on the Home tab under Sort & Filter. In Open Office Calc, select the first row and use the AutoFilter option under Data > Filter in the menu bar.

Your Affiliate Marketing Organizer

Do you use a similar spreadsheet or other ways to organize your affiliate marketing logins and program information? Is there anything you would add to this spreadsheet? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The post Increase Earnings by Organizing Your Affiliate Information appeared first on How To Make Money Online.