They say the way to make a small fortune in publishing is to start with a large one. But not for everyone. Some authors get more money from their blogs than from their royalties.

Here is how they do it.

Step One

Before you can start to monetize your blog you need traffic. You need thousands of visitors coming to your blog each month before you can expect to make money. If you sign up for our free Author Tech Tips newsletter you will get a free ebook on how to boost traffic to your blog.

The equation is simple: more traffic = more money.

Here are a few more articles to help you boost traffic:

• 5 Keys for Magnetic Blog Titles (very important!)
• 5 Things Visitors Don’t Want From Your Author Blog
• The Best Way to Track Site Statistics
• How to Track Your Author Website’s Effectiveness
• How to Track Your Message Online

Amazon Affiliates

Some authors I work with make more money from Amazon’s Affiliate program than they do from their royalties. If you have published a book and are not apart of Amazon’s Affiliate program you are missing out.

The key is to have your website that acts as a magnet. Anyone interested in your book should come to your website first. Then they click the Amazon link to buy the book. This can more than double the amount of money they make on each book.

You will need great content and great SEO for this to work. You also need to be a member of Amazon’s Affiliate program.

How to Join Amazon Affiliates

1. Sign up at affiliate-program.amazon.com. After you sign up you will see a gray bar at the top of every amazon page.
2. Find your book on Amazon.
3. Click “link to this page” on that gray bar at the top.
4. Use this link on your website. You can right click and copy link if you just want the URL and not the HTML.

Amazon gives you between 4-8% on the price of the cart. That means that if someone buys your book and another book then you get twice the commission. If they also buy a new digital camera you would make even more.

Have you ever used Amazon Affiliates? What do you think?

Recommend Other Books

Do you recommend books or other products on your website? Did you know you can make money on that as well?

The Amazon Affiliate program not only works on your own book, it works on every product on Amazon. One book I recommend a lot is Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. Every time I link to this book I use my special affiliate URL that Amazon provides.

Are there books related to your topic you blog visitors would appreciate? Are there other authors who write similar types of fiction?

Some blogs, like Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen, have a list of recommended books on the sidebar. These carefully selected books not only make Garr money, they also help him build relationships with the authors of those books. Many of those authors recommended Garr’s book, Presentation Zen, on their blogs when it first came out.

Other Ways to Make Money on Your Blog

There are dozens of other ways to make money on your blog. The book ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income has a lot of great advice on how to make a lot of money off your blog. That link for ProBlogger is an Amazon Affiliate link. See how easy recommending books is?

E-Books & Digital Goods

One popular way to to put together an ebook to sell for $20-$100 off your blog. The nice thing about selling ebooks and and other digital products like mp3s is that the money you make is virtually all profit. There are no paper costs or shipping costs.

E-junkie is a company that will handle all the details for you. All you need to do is upload your ebook and then e-junkie does the rest.

Premium Memberships

I’m not a big fan of this model but I have seen it used effectively. A premium membership for your blog means you set aside some content only for paying members. Then you have them pay a membership fee to get the exclusive content. This is a lot of work for you. You must create enough exclusive content to be worth the membership fee while also providing enough free content to attract more members. But if you have the time and or a lot of content people are willing to pay for this can be a great deal.

What do you think?

• Do you make money off your author blog?
• How do you do it?
• Have you had good luck with Amazon Affiliates?

Related posts:

1. 6 Things Readers Want from Your Author Website
2. How Connect Your Blog to Facebook
3. Why Your Blog Should Be Your Book’s First Draft
4. 5 Things Visitors Don’t Want From Your Author Blog
5. 7 Blogs Every Author Should Follow

One great way to improve your writing is to learn from the best.

Here are seven blogs that not only are good examples of excellent blogging but will also help you hone your craft and sell more books.

We recommend that you subscribe to these blogs through RSS. If you don’t know what RSS is then check out our helpful guide. We have also provided a place to subscribe by email if you are just not ready for RSS.

Blog #1 Michael Hyatt

• Address: MichaelHyatt.com
• Why? Michael is the CEO of one the biggest publishing houses and he has great insight on the industry and how it is changing.
• Subscribe: by RSS by Emial by Twitter by Facebook

Blog #2 Seth Godin

• Address: SethGodin.typepad.com
• Why? Seth Godin is one of the most popular bloggers on the web. He is a good example of how to blog well. He  has great advice on how to market your book, yourself and your ideas.
• Subscribe: by RSS by Emial by Twitter by Facebook

Blog #3 Copyblogger

• Address: CopyBlogger.com
• Why? CopyBlogger is the best site for learning how to write good blog posts. Not only will following this blog (and reading the most popular posts) improve the quality of your blog posts but your overall writing as well. Highly recommended.
• Subscribe: by RSS by Emial by Twitter by Facebook

Blog #4 There Are No Rules

• Address: blog.writersdigest.com/norules
• Why? Not only does Jane Friedman give great advice on writing she also collects the best tweets from the week and posts them on Fridays. She follows Twitter so you don’t have to.
• Subscribe: by RSS by Emial by Twitter by Facebook

Blog #5 Rachelle Gardner

• Address: cba-ramblings.blogspot.com
• Why? Rachel is a literary agent who has great advice on how to improve your writing, get an agent, and find a publisher.
• Subscribe: by RSS by Emial by Twitter by Facebook

Blog #6 Author Tech Tips

• Address: AuthorTechTips.com
• Why? We help authors timid about technology. Our goal is to make promoting your work online easier and more fun. We also cover some industry news as it relates to technology.
• Subscribe: by RSS by Emial by Twitter by Facebook

Blog #7 Wild Fire Marketing

• Address: wildfiremarketing.blogspot.com
• Why? Rob Eagar specializes in helping authors sell tons of books. His blog has practical advice from speaking to radio to how to execute a successful book signing. Also, check out his guest posts for Author Tech Tips.
• Subscribe: by RSS by Emial by Facebook

Bonus Blogs

Ok so there are more than 7 great blogs for authors. Here are some more you should check out.

• Advanced Fiction Writing (highly recommended!)
• Kill Zone (Thriller Writers Blog)
• Pro Blogger
• Newbies Guide to Publishing
• The Writer’s Keep
• So You Wanna Be Published?
• The Beacon Blog for Writers
• Vonda Skelton

What do you think? Are there any good blogs we missed? Post them below in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Author Interview: Mary DeMuth
2. Why Your Blog Should Be Your Book’s First Draft
3. How Blogging Got Me Published
4. 5 Things Visitors Don’t Want From Your Author Blog
5. How to Write for the Web (a guide for authors who learned on typewriters)

So you want to promote your blog on Facebook?

Learn how to update your friends when you have new posts and make it easy for them to spread the word about your blog.

In this post you will learn how to make this happen automatically.

The Hard Way

The hard way to promote your blog on Facebook is not really all that hard. You just have to manually click “share” for each post. If you are not sure how to do that check out our guide to sharing links on Facebook.

The Easy Way

The easy way is actually a bit more work at first. It involves connecting your blog to Facebook. But, once connected everything runs in the background. Automatically. That’s the AuthorTech way… minimum work in the long run.

So here is how to do it:

Step #1 Sign up For NetworkedBlogs

NetworkedBlogs is a Facebook app that connects your blog to Facebook. It will also let you follow other blogs like Author Tech Tips.

Once you visit the NetworkedBlogs app page on Facebook you will need to click “allow” shown above.

Step #2 Pick Popular Blogs to Follow (optional)

Network blogs will now show you a list of popular blogs and suggest that you follow five. You can easily unfollow a blog and you may find one you like. When you are done look for the big next button at the bottom of the page. You won’t find Author Tech Tips featured as a popular blog but you can still follow it.

Step #3 Follow Blogs Your Friends Follow (optional)

NetworkedBlogs will now show you a list of blogs your friends follow. Like in step #2 you don’t need to follow any of these blogs if you don’t want to. When you are done browsing look for this link at the bottom of the page.

Once you click on it you will go to the NetworkedBlogs homepage which is where the real magic happens.

Step #4 Add Your Blog to Facebook

Once at the NetworkedBlogs Homepage you will want to add your blog. It is as easy as clicking on the button shown below.

Once you add your blog you you need to type up your blog’s information.

This is fairly straight forward. Try to pick topics people will search for. This will help boost your blogs visitors.

Fill out all in info underlined in red. You will then get an offer to join Trackle. You probably want to decline this offer. Trackle will email you every day if you accept.

Step #5 Verify Your Blog

Once you add your blog to Facebook you need to prove it is actually your blog.

There are two ways to do this:

1. You can add a widget to your blog
   • Benefit: The advantage to using the widget is that it can help you turn blog visitors into blog subscribers. Not everyone has an RSS Reader but most everyone is on Facebook. You can see what the widget looks like by looking at our sidebar. –>
2. You can get 10 friends to vouch for you.
   • Benefit: Getting your friends to vouch for you is that they will likely become your first 10 blog followers.)

The Author Tech Tips recommendation is to do both. Ask you friends to verify you and then while you are waiting go ahead and add the widget.

Was This Helpful?

• If you get stuck leave a comment and we will help you get unstuck.
• If it worked leave a comment and let us know. Or better yet rating for Author Tech Tips on Networked Blogs.
• Feel free to leave a link to your blog and show off your NetworkedBlogs widget in the comments.

Related posts:

1. How to Create a Facebook Page in 3 Easy Steps
2. How to Get Twitter to Update Your Facebook Status
3. How to Sync Your Address Book With Facebook
4. How to Pick The Right Facebook Page Title
5. 7 Ways to Integrate Facebook into your Online Platform

Mistake #1 Descriptive

When you were in school your teacher probably taught you the purpose of a title was to describe your writing. Your teacher was wrong. Descriptive titles are boring.  The purpose of a title is to tell readers why they should bother to read your article.

The Internet uses tags and categories to describe content. Don’t waste title space describing content too. People do need to know what they are clicking on. So, describe the value of your content. This is a subtle difference that changes everything.

• Bad Title: Baby Boomers & Social Security
• Better Title: Why Baby Boomers Don’t Deserve Social Security
• Best Title: You tell me by leaving a comment

Mistake #2 Lack of Focus

Many titles give you no clear idea what the blog is about. While the titles avoid describing the content they also avoid describing the value of the content.

Burst Blog has a good list of unfocused titles and how to make them better:

• Bad: “Breaking News”
• Good: “Iowa Caucus: Prognostications, Results and Breaking News“

• Bad: “Month/Year in Review”
• Good: “Year in Review: Best Homebuilding Products of 2007″

• Bad: “Weekly Book Review”
• Good: “Book Review: How The Dead Dream by Lydia Millet”

Mistake #3 Too Clever

So someone sends out a Tweet that says “Who’s Your Daddy (link)”. Are you going to click that? Maybe. But  you have no idea why you should bother to read the post. Clever is good. Too clever is fail.

• Bad Title: Who’s Your Daddy
• Better Title: Is Satan Your Daddy?
• Best Title: You tell me by leaving a comment

Mistake #4 Generic

Generic titles are like clever titles but without the clever. Giving a post the title “Follow Me” will not get anyone to click.

• Bad Title: Follow Me
• Better Title: How I’m Going to Change the World & Why You Should Help
• Best Title: You tell me! Leaving a comment.

Mistake #5 Cliche

If other people are using the title don’t use it too. Even if its the greatest title ever if you’ve already seen it so has everyone else. Your an author you can think up something original.

• Bad Title: Shock & Awe
• Better Title: 5 Things that Shocked me senseless
• Best Title: You tell me! Leave a comment below.

If you want ideas on how to write titles that will draw people in check out our post on Magnetic Blog Titles.

What do you think?

What makes a blog title bad? What do you think would be better titles for the examples above. If the title is too vague feel free to come up with your own content.

Related posts:

1. 5 Things Visitors Don’t Want From Your Author Blog
2. How to Pick The Right Facebook Page Title
3. 5 Keys for Magnetic Blog Titles
4. How Connect Your Blog to Facebook
5. A Ninja Writing Guide – For Authors Who Want to Blog

7 Reasons To Blog Your Book First

1. You start building a platform right away.

Platform is the first thing publishers look for. No platform? No contract. Your platform is how many people listen to you on a somewhat regular basis. As you blog regularly you will gather a faithful group of readers which will be the beginning of your platform.

2. You find out what connects and what doesn’t.

When you write you have no idea what people like and what they won’t. Your editor can help, but you are both shooting in the dark. On a blog the stats show what connects with your audience. More importantly, you find out what doesn’t connect. Your book will dramatically improve if you remove the boring content.

3. Blogging allows you to enhance your message with media.

Is there a video that helps you prove a  point? If you have a blog you can embed it. Try that with a paper book.

Click here to view the embedded video.

4. Your message gets out right away.

The publishing industry moves at the speed of a blind turtle. If everything goes well, it will be years before it hits store shelves. And that is if you work hard and get all the right breaks. If you want to reach people tomorrow start blogging today.

5. Your blog creates a rally point for your following.

Assuming you spend the $20 a year to buy YourBlogName.com, you will be able to use your blog as the center of your platform. Got a radio interview? Push your blog. Writing an article for a magazine? Put your blog in your bio. As people come to your blog and subscribe you get their permission to contact them when your book comes out.

6. You get instant feedback.

The comments you get on your blog will help you find logical flaws, and answer people’s questions and objections before they have them. Did something not make sense? The commentators will let you know.

7. Your blog will boost your credibility.

As an unpublished author it can be hard to build credibility. But, if you are the editor of YourBlogName.com suddenly people will treat you like the expert. The key is to have your blog on YourName.com. A free blog will not boost your credibility. You need your own domain name.

Will a publisher buy my writing if it’s published online?

In a word, “yes.” I have clients who have sold their blog’s as books and can point to many bestselling books that were blogs first. Free is not your enemy. Obscurity is your enemy.

Your book will have exclusive content. Save some of your nuggets for your book. Plus, everything in your book will be edited and focused. Remember all those stats and comments from benefit #6? They will help you hone your message. Plus, your editor will add value to the book by cleaning up your language.

What do you think?

Do you think this will work? Do you know someone who has sold their blog to a publisher? Do you have a blog you want to get published?

Related posts:

1. 7 Differences Between Published & Unpublished Authors
2. How to Make Money With Your Author Blog
3. 3 Baby Steps to Get Your Book Published (for those who don’t know where to start)
4. How Blogging Got Me Published
5. How Connect Your Blog to Facebook

Stop using google image search. Using those images is often illegal and they are not the best images anyway.

Here are a dozen sites that are better and legal.

1. Stock Exchange

Of all of the stock photo sites on the web sxc.hu is the best. It has high quality free stock photos. But be careful. The first row of photos cost money. Clicking on them will take you to a different site where you have to pay. Most of the photos we use here at AuthorTechTips.com come from sxc.hu.

2. Flickr Creative Commons

Flickr has a huge selection of photos mane of which are protected under the Creative Commons which means you can use them legally as long as you attribute the photographer.

3. EveryStockPhoto.com

Every Stock Photo searches several other stock image sites for you. It does not filter offensive images, so use with caution.

4. MorgueFile.com

Morgue File has many photos that you are free to use commercially without attributing the photographer. The photos are mostly snapshots and not true stock photos.

5. FreeStockPhotos.com

Not only does Free Stock Photos have some great nature photos it also has a list of over a dozen other free stock photo sources.

6. IconsPedia.com

Icons Predia has the best selection of free icons. If you want to add a cool Twitter Bird to your website this is the first place to look.

7. BiblePlaces.com

If you need biblical photos BiblePlaces.com is a great place to start.

8. NASA

I’m not sure how this happened but if the U.S. government takes a photo they often release it into the public domain. If you want high quality technology or space photos you can’t do much better than NASA.  

9. StockVault.net

StockVault has 13,000+ high quality stock photos. The photos are high quality but low selection. The site does not offer safe search so use at your own risk.

10. FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Freedigitalphotos.net has high quality photos but the selection is not great and the terms of use require a link back to use the photo for free.

11. FreePhotosBank.com

FreePhotosbank has a lame selection of mediocre photos.

12. HistoricalStockPhotos.com

If you want vintage photos Historical Stock Photos is the site for you. Don’t expect much color here.

Related posts:

1. 9 Premium Stock Photo Sites
2. How to Get Your Avatar to Show Up Everywhere
3. 8 Quick Search Engine Optimization Tips:
4. How This Little Orange Icon Can Save You Time

Don’t waste your time doing things on your author blog that turn your readers away.

This post gives you five things your readers don’t want from your author blog.

1 – Posts Over 1000 Words

People have no patience for long posts. Even 500 words is pushing it. If you have 1000 words to say and can’t cut anymore break your post into several shorter posts. For some comparison this post is less than 300 words.

2 – Long Paragraphs

People have no patience for long paragraphs either. Use no more than four lines. The “enter” key is your friend. Remember: It’s all online so you don’t need to worry about wasting paper

3 – Boring Titles

The temptation when writing a blog post title is to describe your post. Never do this. People won’t read your post if the title is a description. Instead tell your readers why they should read the post. Better a long title that sells than a short title that describes. For tips on writing better titles read 5 Keys for Magnetic Blog Titles.

4 – Generic Posts About Being a Better Christian

If you have a Christian audience the thinking is to write a post on some generic subject like grace or love. The problem is that your audience already listens to hours of generic sermons every week.

You must be very specific if you want people to read your work. You need to know who your target audience is and who your target audience is not. It is better to thrill a small group than to please a large group. If you thrill someone he will spread your message. If you please someone she will just consume your message.

5 – Unedited Short Stories

As much as your readers would love to read your short stories and guides they don’t want to read typo ridden overspeak. If you are going to have a goodies section make sure you only have publisher quality content.

Related posts:

1. Top 5 Blog Title Mistakes Authors Make
2. 5 Keys for Magnetic Blog Titles
3. 6 Things Readers Want from Your Author Website
4. How to Make Money With Your Author Blog
5. The Best Way to Track Site Statistics

What do your readers want? Without knowing the answer you can’t make them happy. Tracking your site stats allows you you to make adjustments to thrill your readers.

If you want advocates you need to read this post.

Hits Are Misleading

Tracking hits gives you an and incomplete picture. Many of your “hits” come from non-human visitors called spiders. These “bots” collect information for search engines or leave you spam comments. It is important to know how many humans visit your site, what they look at and why. Tracking Hits doesn’t answer these question.

Comments Don’t Match Traffic

Comments are also a poor way of tracking traffic. I have a page on ThomasUmstattd.com that is my most visited page. It gets hundreds of unique visitors every week. But it only has one comment. I have other posts that get no traffic but have over a dozen comments.

Analytics Are the Key

An analytics package like google analytics tells you much more than just how many hits you have. It answers more than just “how many” but also “who,” “where” and “why.” Here are some popular analytics solutions.

Analytics Solutions:

• Google Analytics – Free, accurate and easy to setup. Google analytics makes it easy to track the stats for several sites all at once. AuthorTechTips Pick!
• Woopra – Free, fast and snazzy looking.
• SiteMeter – SiteMeter has been around for a long time. Free package does not give you much info though.
• WordPress.com – If you use wordpress.com you already have an excellent analytics package. They even have a great video explaining how to use it.

Google Analytics

Google analytics will give you the following information and more:

• Where your visitors come from. Which sites refer the most people to your blog?
• What your most popular posts are.
• What search engines your users are using.
• What keywords they search to find your site. Use this information to focus new content on those keywords. If you can “own” a word or phrase in google you win.
• What part of the country they are from. You might be surprised how many international readers you have.
• What browsers they use. Make sure your blog looks good on those browsers. Not everyone uses internet explorer.
• What pages they visit and in what order. Do people just visit one page and bounce away or do they go from page to page?
• What pages have the lowest bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your website after visiting that page.

What do you think?

What do you use to track site visitors? Do you like it?

Related posts:

1. How to Track Your Author Website’s Effectiveness
2. How to Track Your Message Online
3. How To Setup Google Analytics on WordPress (Video)
4. 8 Quick Search Engine Optimization Tips:
5. 7 Ways to Send More Traffic to Your Website During a Radio Interview

There is an art to getting listed high in Google. Here are 8 things that can help improve your “Google points.”

Remember: There is no magic bullet for getting high search engine rankings. It takes a while to accumulate “Google points.” Be patient.

If you have your blog hosted on a site like TypePad or Blogger you are limited to the first 5 tips. You need to host your own site to be able to use tips 6-8.

8 Easy SEO Tips:

1. Provide remarkable content.  The more remarkable you are, the more links from other sites you will get. There is no substitute for having awesome content. Remember, for someone to visit your site it must be the most interesting thing on the internet for that person at that time. Otherwise, they will go somewhere else. No amount of SEO will fix boring.
2. Tag each post. 4-5 tags is ideal. Tags are like keywords that link your posts to each other. Click on one of the tags for this post and it will show you all the other posts with that tag. 
   
3. Put each post in a category. Try not to use more than two categories. The principle here is many tags, few categories.
4. Keep your comment section free from spam. Google doesn’t like spam. If your site feels spammy you get negative “Google points.”
5. Use headings <h1> instead of making text bold. Whatever you put inside a heading tag gets bonus “Google points.”
6. Use Friendly URLs. Don’t have www.YourSite.com/?p=123. instead use www.YourSite.com/2008/post-title/
7. Incorporate an XML site map. If you have WordPress the Google XML Sitemaps plugin will do this for you automatically.
8. Make sure each page title corresponds with the title of that post. If you use WordPress, the All In One SEO Plugin will do this for you automatically.

Did this make sense? Feel free to leave questions in the comments section if it didn’t.

Related posts:

1. 5 Things Visitors Don’t Want From Your Author Blog
2. The Best Way to Track Site Statistics
3. How to Write for the Web (a guide for authors who learned on typewriters)
4. Top 5 Blog Title Mistakes Authors Make
5. 7 Blogs Every Author Should Follow