If there is one thing I wish I had learned sooner it is that anchored text links equals money. Getting on the first page of Google also equals money but it is through the use of anchored links that you get your blog or website to move up the search engine rankings. Once you are on that first page of Google for a search term that gets a reasonable amount of searches, then you can start making money.

When I started out with this blog and my BANS niche sites, I didn’t have a plan. I just started writing and hoping people would come. I didn’t understand what it took to make a website show up in Google for the things I wanted it to. I wrote and wrote and Google did send a few people my way, but never over 50 a day. The people that did show up came from a variety of searches that did me no good and I had nothing to sell them anyway. 

If you are just starting a blog, I suggest you pick some topic or theme and stick with it. That is essentially what niche websites are. A niche website (or even a Bans Niche website) is about one theme, one topic, or one product. Everything written should be about that one niche. The goal is to get that blog or website to show up on Google’s first page for what you are writing about. If you are successful, you will then be getting highly targeted traffic of people specifically looking for what you are selling or discussing.

Most people start a blog without a master plan and just hope that they can become famous like some of the top bloggers. Unless you are extraordinary gifted at writing, extremely entertaining, or have in depth knowledge about a topic of interest, your chances of making money that way are almost zero. 

Right now I have started trying to target the phrases “job web sites” and “job search sites“. This blog is  about the work place and and how to work at home so these terms fit right in. The two main ways I have been getting anchored links in the last three months is with Bookmarking Demon and more recently Article Marketer.

I now have two laptops and I have Bookmarking Demon running on my old one most of the time. BD will let you get anchored links on some of the social bookmarking sites and it does it automatically. It even does it while I sleep at night. I wish everything was that easy.

You can read about my ongoing Article Marketer review in the post before this one. As of this date, the final verdict is not in yet but things seem to be going pretty well with AM. In a week or so I am going to have to take a closer look at things to see just how many times my articles are being published and how many anchored links I am getting.

In summary, don’t just start a blog to start a blog. Have a plan of attack and go after some topic that interests you. Make sure there are some affiliate programs you can pitch to people down the line once you do get going and start to get some readers. Get as many anchored text links as you can and work on moving your blog up to the front page of Google for whatever topic and phrases / keywords you choose. Once you get there throw in those affiliate products and start to make some money.