This week’s featured blogger is: Brett Martin of This Mama Loves Her Bargains

Why did you start your blog?

A friend suggested I start a blog to share some of the deals I find and it has kind of taken off from there.

What is your blog about?

Deals, reviews, giveaways- so far, mostly geared toward kids and kid related things but not limited.

What Platform is your blog hosted on?
Blogger

What blogging tip would you be happy to share with other bloggers on the Blog PR Wire?

Publicize your blog, tell your friends friends and ask them to tell friends. I have a fan page on facebook, and I use twitter to get my blog out there. I’m still pretty new so it’s a work in progress.

Tell us a bit more about your blog and your goals for the year.

I would like to continue growing the blog, and become more established in the blogging community.

Brett is a stay home mom with 3 children under the age of 5. She has a love for shopping and an adoration of a good (great!) deal. A firm believer in word of mouth marketing, Brett practices that belief religiously. She also love taking photograph of her children, and one day hopes to get back to taking pictures of other things, when she’s not chasing a 2 and 4 year old and wearing an 8 month old.

Brett, is just one of many bloggers you can reach through the Blog PR wire at BlogPrPitch.

A National Day of Clean Energy
Saturday, June 19 Nationwide

$5,000 Free Solar Sweepstakes at www.solarday.com

————————————————————

(San Francisco, CA) – What’s new for SolarDay 2010?  How about a national Solar Sweepstakes.

It’s free to enter the $5,000 solar sweepstakes on the SolarDay website www.solarday.com  to win a chance at a $5,000 credit off a residential or commercial solar installation for homeowners in the U.S.

Really Reducing Your Monthly Energy Bills

Why enter?  Energy prices are going up, again.  People with solar installations on their homes and businesses can dramatically reduce their monthly energy bills.  And, there are many incentive and rebate programs that can reduce the cost of a solar installation by nearly half.  Plus, new programs allow you to pay off your solar installation through your property taxes and other methods.  Some solar companies will install a solar installation at no cost – and simply charge you for the electricity you consume – at a guaranteed rate with no surprises.

And, we need a national day of clean energy so we options to fossil fuels and oil.  Just look at that spill in the Gulf.

You Can’t Win if You Don’t Enter!

Check out the SolarDay 2010, Solar Sweepstakes at: www.solarday.com .

Somebody will win a $5,000 credit for a home or business solar installation.  With existing government rebates, that credit can be worth close to $10,000 off the cost of your installation.

PLEASE Help Us Spread the Word about SolarDay 2010
John Reed
Media Outreach Publicist
SolarDay 2010
(415) 846-4862
jreed@elevatorpr.com

Ahh Traffic. Whether you consider yourself a blogger or a publisher, TRAFFIC is the key to earning revenue.

You have the content. You write on your blog, but all the content in the world won’t  help you earn revenue of you don’t have traffic. And not just ANY traffic, you need the RIGHT traffic for the offers and advertisements you are promoting.

Unique visitors. Having Google followers or Facebook fans doesn’t qualify you for large ad buys. Having a LARGE volume of quality UNIQUE visitors does.

‘A unique visitor is a statistic describing a unit of traffic to a Web site, counting each visitor only once in the time frame of the report. This statistic is relevant to site publishers and advertisers as a measure of a site’s true audience size, equivalent to the term “Reach” used in other media’. – Wikipdia

Qualifying visitors. Qualifying visitors are the one who will interact and follow through with your ads.  You can have 100 visitors click on an ad, but if the advertiser doesn’t see an ‘action’ on their side you will soon find that  advertisers are no longer interested in your blog.

The key in earning advertising revenue on your blog  is to know your visitors.  Knowing where they come from, what they do on your site, and where they go when the leave.

Gathering this information is not as hard as you may think. Simply set up Google Analytics.

Set up up analytics today if you haven’t yet. When an advertiser calls, you need to know you traffic trends.

Didn’t win but still wanting a Premium Word Press theme that takes your blog to the next level?

Check out Theme Forest for themes like these ones :

This week’s featured blogger is:  Jessica Hills of A Few of My Favorite Things.

Why did you start your blog?

I actually started blogging to keep my family and friends updated on my family.

What is your blog about?

I started blogging about the things I love – photography, interior design, fashion, crafts, etc.

What Platform is your blog hosted on?

Blogger

What blogging tip would you be happy to share with other bloggers on the Blog PR Wire?

Blog about what you love.
Make new friends.
Join McLinky parties to generate traffic and get your name out there.

Tell us a bit more about your blog and your goals for the year.

I am mostly promoting my photography business with my blog. I use it to connect with other people, get ideas, and share what’s on my mind. In the future, I hope to possibly open a little etsy store and sell some of the crafts I make.

Jessica Hill is a stay-at-home mom, part-time photographer with interests in interior design, fashion, crafting, thrifting, and lots of other things. She loves her religion, family, and life in general. She loves to share these things with others and organize all my thoughts on my blog.

Some people hate them. However they have proven to increase conversions from my experience.

If you are looking for a way to draw attention to a specific piece of blog news this Free WordPress Plugin will create a clean simple dhtml popup box easily and quickly on your WordPress blog.

You can see a sample at: Her Affiliate Manager

Like anything, the key is to not overuse the feature and this handy free wordpress plugin allows you to set how and when your visitors will see the box.

All of the settings you need in a wordpress pop up plugin are included. The only draw back, is that you are limited in the actual presentation/design. This free wordpress plugin creates simple basic html bloxes.

Worth checking out.

If you have any questions about the Blog PR Wire please check our FAQs or contact support.

For questions about Mail Chimp please visit their website.

“If you could pick ONE way to earn revenue on your blog what would it be?”

Not so long ago, I participated in an Affiliate webinar and the one thing I walked away with was – do NOT limit yourself to one revenue stream. Whether your ad revenue is CPC, CPM. or CPA based (the best plan has a bit of everything), you should have a few different streams. Why? Because the rules can change.

If all your revenue is ‘review based’ and the FTC changes the rules. You could be left with no revenue. If all your revenue comes from your blog or website ads and Google changes it’s algorithm. You could be left with NO TRAFFIC and no ad revenue.

So here is my quick list of advertising revenue tips for bloggers:

1) Onsite ads: Consider installing an ad server such as openx (free) so that you can monetize your onsite ad placements. Include CPC, CPM, and CPA ads to learn what will convert on your site. (Remember onsite ads only work if you have quality traffic. If our advertisers don’t see results from their ads they won’t return – or worse they will tell others that their ad dollars were wasted when they didn’t convert ruining your credibility as a publisher.

2) Email & Newsletters: With the creation of blogs came RSS feeds. Many bloggers focus on the number of RSS feed subscribers they have. If your focus is just readership this is good. If your hope is to create revenue through advertising and sales. RSS feeds may not be the right solution. (Okay, they are only part of the solution.) My time spent behind ad servers evaluation opens,impressions, click throughs, and actions leads me to believe that EMAIL campaigns still work.

Of course I am referring to emails sent to your subscribers who have double opted in. Not sure how to do that? Try Feedblitz or Mail Chimp.

3) Social Media: Social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Ning are great places to earn revenue. Consider utilizing Ping.fm and Hootsuite. Two simple free tools.

One quick post note, If you do not understand how Internet advertising works it’s time to learn. Advertising online has established guidelines, serving technology and it’s been around for quite a while.  To be treated as a professional publisher, one needs to know the industry.

Yes, you are a blogger. But you are also a ‘publisher’.  It’s being a publisher that earns you revenue. (Unless you are working as a blogger for someone else.) If you want to earn revenue on your blog, then you need to learn more about being an Internet Publisher and run your blog as a business.

Have more questions ? Send us a @blogprwire and I will consider making your question a blog tips post.

Blog PR Wire is inviting all of their registered subscribers to help us get the word out about the Blog PR Wire to other bloggers and of course there is a prize! You can win your very own premium  Dynada WordPress theme.

Features:
* 10 styles and color, easy to choose style/color via admin theme options.(one click from a blue theme to a red theme!)
* Ability to rotate sliding images on your WordPress Home page.
* Homepage Template with 3 sidebar position, one for right side and two sidebars for below content.
* 5 Page Template with its own right sidebar position.
* Blog Page with custom category, just create a page and tell it which categories to include. Perfect for multiple blogs.
* Portfolio Page with custom category, just create a page and tell it which categories to include. Perfect for multiple portfolio page, sub-page and more.
* Supports nested comments with Gravatars.

Click Here to see a LIVE demo |  Click Here to see screen shots

What we LOVE about this theme- It’s multiple page templates! Ever wondered how some blogs have different layouts in one theme ? This pne does just that. You can select different WIDGETS to display on different pages.

So how do you win ?

Register as a blogger on BlogPRWire.com (be sure to verify your email). Then post a comment letting us know you are registered and you are entered!

Want to earn MORE entries ? Simply Tweet out the contest (no more then once a day) and come back and post the link to the tweet.

Your tweet should include our @blogprwire id and the URL: http://bit.ly/cgbGtf   Or just use:

Bloggers – win a PREMIUM WP theme http://bit.ly/cgbGtf via @blogprwire

Good LUCK !

Contest closes April 30 2010 11 59 PM PST.

Promoting your blog. Creating a network. Just seeing some really great blogs. Those are a few of the things that happen at the Ultimate Blog Party.

Of course you can win prizes as well.

I have participated in the Ultimate Blog Party for the last few years with my blog. This year I decided to participate as a ‘mompreneur blog’ and I listed the Blog Tips blog under the Mompreneur Linky. So I thought maybe this intro should be a bit more ‘business like.

We are hosting our own little contest here. Simply comment on this post  and share a tip for promoting your blog. One random winner will be selected at the end of the blog party and receive three free dedicated PR Pitches (one per month) via BlogPrPich .

Enjoy the party … we are off to find some great blogs.