**Giveaways and Contests**

Have you all checked out our new Giveaways and Contests page yet? We're spending some time tracking down some of the best Facebook, Twitter and Blog giveaways, and popping them all on one easy to use page, so you can visit some new blogs, find some new brands, and win some great prizes!

Check it out here; Giveaways and Contests.

The Simple Guide to Advertising on Your Blog Part 2!

Hi Cats!

This is you second installment of The Simple Guide to Advertising on your Blog. Make sure you've read The Simple Guide to Advertising on your Blog Part 1 before you read this article!

Ok so this time we said we'd cover

• How to use affiliate programs
• What are the right prices to charge for advertising?
• Tip  HTML Adverts

So here we go!

How To Use Affiliate Programs

Affiliate Programs are a form of advertising, where you're sort of like a sales person working on commission! Affiliate Programs will give you a special link that is unique to you, and if someone clicks this link on your blog and then buys something from the store, you get a little bit of profit as a thanks from the brand!

Some great affiliate programs include;

• Lime Crime
• Mod Cloth
• Commission Junction

If you find an online store you like always scroll right to the bottom and check out the links, this is where stores normally mention if they have an affiliate program! 

It may seem perfect, but there's a few tips you should remember to get the most out of it.

• Place an advert on your side bar using your affiliate link with our tutorial below.
• Write a review of one of your favorite items from the store then link to your affiliate link by writing "Buy it here".
• Do a Youtube Video and post your affiliate link when describing where to buy the item you're demonstrating.
• Link an image of your favourite item to your affiliate link like this;

<a href="YourAffiliateLinkHere"><img src="YourImageURLhere"></a>

If you choose to do some affiliate marketing, make sure you don't make it obvious that you're trying to sell something, and don't mention that you're an affiliate! If you're making a profit it might put people off buying an item. Simply add links in natural places. The affiliate link won't tell your readers that you are working with the company, it will simply link them to the company website and will inform the company that your blog sent that person there!

What are the right prices to charge for advertising? 

This is a difficult subject to advise on! Only you really know how much you're aiming to make from advertising or what your blog is worth. 

As a general rule, in my opinion, I would say;

If you get between 1000 and 5000 visitors a month charge no more than £5 for a month on your sidebar.

If you get between 5000 and 10000 visitors a month charge about £10 for a month on your sidebar.

10000-20000 charge £20 a month. 

20000-30000 charge £30 a month and so on.

This is quite realistic, as you can't expect your advertisers to pay more than they would receive back from sales.

You also need to consider how size affects your pricing. If someone only wants a very small 100px x 100px advert reduce the price accordingly. It is up to you whether you choose to place you prices on a page publicly, or if you want to let people know when they inquire. Either way, it's pretty obvious that if you charge much lower than this you're going to build a good relationship with advertisers and they may continue business with you regularly. But if you think your analytics show that a lot of your readers click your adverts, you can charge a bit higher. 

The important thing is to always justify your pricing by backing it up with your analytics. Make a few graphs showing your blogs growth, how many of your readers click adverts, and what your monthly views are. This is what will attract advertisers in the end, not your prices!

Making HTML Adverts

Here I'm going to show you how to make a very basic HTML advert. 

So if you've managed to get an online boutique to advertise with you, and they've sent you an image to use as your advert, what do you do next?

Firstly you'll want to host the image so you can get a URL for it. The best way of doing this is to upload the image to photobucket, but there are plenty of image hosting sites if you search Google! Just make sure you use a reliable one. I've used Tiny Pic in the past, and they have deleted images and left empty holes on my blog, so ensure your image is safe. It's best to make an account if it gives you the option. Another thing to make sure is that any images that belong to advertisers are private on your account. You don't want to be responsible for other people stealing your advertisers image if they are not happy for it to be shared about!

Once you have uploaded your image might be given a URL for it, if not, simply right click the image and select "Copy Image Location" on Firefox, or "Copy Image URL" on Google Chrome. The URL will be copied to your clipboard.

Use it in this code;

<a target="_blank" href="YourAdvertisersLinkOrYourAffiliateLink"><img src="YourImageURLhere"></a>

You can place this in a HTML or text widget / add-on in your sidebar.

It's as simple as that! Using your Blog stats page you can track how many people click that link, and you advertiser will also be able to use their stats to track how many people clicked your link. Simples! 

Got to ask any more questions about Advertising? Just leave a comment and I'll get back to you asap!

Blog Cat Update

Hi Cats!

 (Image found on Pinterest)

I'm so sorry I've been super busy lately and so I haven't updated a lot! Hence I've decided to open up Blog Cat to guest bloggers! 

If you think you can write a useful article that will help Bloggers in any way, just get in touch! Any articles posted on Blog Cat will be fully credited and you can advertise and leave links to your blog in your article - That means your followers will grow! Sounds good right?

Here's some ideas;

• How to get started with Outfit Of The Day posts.
• A basic make-up tutorial.
• How to advertise on your blog.
• How to attract PR to your blog.
• Getting started with a DSLR camera.
• Some HTML hints.
• How to make a good Blog banner.
• The best places to shop for bloggers.

You can be as creative as you like!

If you'd like to have a go, just e-mail me at blogcat@hotmail.com ! Or if there's anything else you'd like to share with me / you have a request for blog help feel free to contact!

Remember, our Blog Cat Vlogging Blog Hop challenge is still on! Enter here.

You can also vote for your favourite blog in the Blog Cat awards! There's only one day of voting left!

I'm going to add a lot of updates to the site this afternoon, so stay tuned! Don't forget to follow us on Twitter too, so you can get updates as soon as they're available.

Blog Cat x

All about Vlogging + Extended Vlogging Challenge

So, who Vlogs?

Vlogging is video blogging, and it's a great way of mixing things up a bit if you're a blogger!

A lot of us bloggers of course simply write on our blogs, like a diary, but publishing a Vlog to your blog is a great way of letting your readers get to know you personally. You might think it sounds a bit scary; public speaking through a video is a bit different to just simply writing a blog! You might need a little more confidence, but it's going to make your blog a lot more exciting, and increase your traffic!

But I hear people on Youtube like to spread hate!

This much might be true, there are a lot of trolls on Youtube, and the people on there can be hyper critical, but don't worry, Youtube isn't the only way to upload a video! You can do it directly through blogger, simply by clicking the "insert a video" icon!

So how do I begin to Vlog? What should I Vlog about?

Many people simply can't think what to Vlog about! But it's not about staring at a camera and reciting your blog post, using a video gives you heaps of freedom to do a lot of exciting things! Here are some ideas to get you started;

• Try our "10 things in my room" challenge!

Beauty Bloggers -

• Do a make-up tutorial - you don't even have to speak if you're not brave enough! Simply add a music track over the top of your video, and just make sure what you're doing is clear. A good tip is to show the camera each item you're using in close up, try this video for inspiration;

• Make a montage of your favourite make-up looks! Whether you use celebrity photos or your own, using windows movie maker, make a simple slideshow with music flipping through the pictures. Or you could show how your looks have transformed over the years, by doing a slideshow of old photos!
• Review some products. Try them and talk to the camera whilst you do; describe what you think of the packaging, any scents, the texture of the product, and demonstrate using the product.
• Film a local beautician or make-up artist at work with their permission, and interview them at the end!

Fashion Bloggers - 

• Create a video of all your favourite clothes. Show what each outfit looks like on you then speed the sequence up so it's more simple to watch! Here is a good example;

• Interview a local boutique owner, or go and visit a graduate fashion show at your local university and film it, as well as adding a review at the end like a proper news fashion corespondent!
• Do a tutorial on how to customise an item of clothing. You can find plenty of ideas at Instructables, but just take inspiration and be original! 

Lifestyle Bloggers-

• Film you cooking your favourite recipe and act like a celebrity chef for a day! 
• Go to your favourite place in the world and film the view / things you can do / you taking part in activities there. For example, go to the zoo, video you arriving, your favourite animals, grabbing an ice cream in your favourite flavour, and what you bought at the gift shop!
• If you take part in a sport, video and edit a match or performance.
• Review your favourite book and recommend a few others.

All in all, be creative :] Vlogging is almost limitless, and allows you to do a lot in a very small space on your blog! 

Weekly Blog Hop - Vlogging Challenge

 The current hop is from 15th May 2012 to 22nd May 2012.

Find it HERE

This week we're going to have a bit of fun with the blog hop! We've heard a lot about vlogging in the blogosphere, so here's a little challenge!

-You don't have to do the challenge to take part in the blog hop, but only people who do the challenge are entered into the contest!-

The theme is "10 Things in My Room" Simply create a little video or a series of photos of ten items in your room, it can be anything! Maybe you will tell us about make-up, or what's on your desk, or maybe ten of your favourite items of clothing. Vlogging or "Video Blogging" is a great way to diversify the posts on your blog!

Upload your video using either Youtube or Vimeo, then submit the link to your blog post featuring the video into our blog hop!

Here's a great example! But of course it doesn't have to be silent, be as creative as you like!

Blog Hop Contest

Hey guys! If you entered the blog hop last week I'm giving you til 4.30 today to enter the blog hop contest!

Remember, I asked you to simply let me know what blogs you visited and followed, and whoever visited the most blogs gets some ad space on blog cat, and a one to one with me to ask anything they want to know about how to improve their blog!

Find more details on the Blog Hop Page!

Enteries will only be counted in the blog hop comments section!

Request from DianaLuv - How To Place a Button With A HTML Grab Box

Reader DianaLuv (See her blog here) recently asked how to create a blog button with a grab box for the HTML code, like our Blog Cat button grab! Having one of these is extremely useful to let other bloggers share your blog through button swaps, and it's better than an image as the HTML code means the button will link back to your blog!

Here's Blog Cat's button;

Add our blog hop button - 

<center><a href="http://blogcatmew.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="Blog cat blog hops, blog awards and networking" src="http://homestyle-blog.co.uk/Kirstieimages/blogcathopbutton.gif" width="200" height="300"/></a></center> <br>

Good news is it's super easy to make one of these! Just create a HTML widget in your layout, and insert this code; 

<li>Title Here</li>

<div align="center">
<a href="yourbloglinkgoeshere" target="_blank"><img alt="write your blog name here" height="X" src="ImageURLhere" width="X" /></a> </div>
<div align="center">
<form>
<textarea cols="20" rows="6">&lt;center&gt;&lt;a href="yourbloglinkgoeshere" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img alt="write your blog name here" src="ImageURLhere" width="X" height="X"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;</textarea></form>
</div>

Simple hey? Just replace the bold writing with the appropriate links, and replace the Xs with the width and height in pixels you want your image to appear.

Hope this helps! Any questions, write them below and we'll get back to you asap!

The Simple Guide to Beginning Advertising on Your Blog

Wouldn't it be a perfect world if we could quit our jobs and just blog all day? It's a dream job for many, and even those who only want to blog part time would benefit if they could make a little bit extra in advertising revenue. I'm sure we'd all like to think we blog purely for the joy of it, but there's no shame in charging a little for advertising to keep your blog running and to pay for improvements, especially if you put a lot of hard work into your blog. How else are you going to fund that shiny new blog design?

Whatever your motives are, we've written this short quick guide to help you :]

Tip 1: Don't Sell Out

Source: katereece.tumblr.com via tracy on Pinterest

• Before you even think of the rest of these steps consider this; as your blog gets larger you will start to attract advertisers. They will contact you by e-mail, contact form, or even comments.

• Some people will send you articles to put on your site, some people will offer advertising programs, some people will offer freebies for you to review, but don't get overexcited and accept them all!

• Some online companies such as Commission Junction, Google Affiliates / Adsense and Tribal Fusion offer ready made HTML codes from companies that you can put on your site, but the adverts are often ugly, and most people don't bother to click them, so you won't earn a lot of commission unless you're a huge site.

• Write up a description on your blog and Always stick to it. If you're a beauty blog and someone wants to pay you to put up an article about homeware, it's not really relevant to your readers is it? Or if you're a gothic fashion blog and a PR company wants to send you the latest Ugg boots, you'd be letting your readers down if you accepted. Remember why your readers keep coming back to your blog! 

Tip 2: Letting People Know You're Accepting Advertisers

•   Designate some space for adverts which respects your layout and design - don't go crazy and have a big long line of adverts just for the money, blogs which have too many adverts can become very unattractive to readers.

• If you use Blogspot, use the dynamic layout tool to work out the width of your sidebar in pixels, or alternatively, if you are using a mac, you can use cmd + shift + 4 to measure in pixels. Once you know this, you can start to make advert templates.

• Make advert templates in Photoshop using the width you just discovered.  Here is an example used courtesy of Homestyle-Blog ;-

•  This template can be placed where you are happy for adverts to appear! Of course you can be as subtle or loud as you want. The most professional way to put these ad templates on your blog is with HTML, then any advertisers can simply click and be directed to the right place! And because we're lovely, here's exactly how to do that! Insert this code into a HTML widget; 

<a href="mailto:putyoure-mailaddresshere?subject=AdvertisingInquiry">
<img src="putyourimageURLhere" ALT="nameyourimagehere" WIDTH=X HEIGHT=X></a>

Insert your e-mail address into this code, and add your image URL, Image name, and place the width and height in pixels where the X is.

psst! Don't know how to get an image URL? A simple method is to upload your image to Flickr, right click the image when it has uploaded and select either "Copy image location" or "Copy image URL" then simply paste into your code!

• This code will make it so when people click the advertising template image, it will open their e-mail and start a message for them to e-mail you! However, if you'd rather have the image link to another page on your blog with contact details, use this code;

  <a href="putyourpagelinkhere">
<img src="putyourimageURLhere" ALT="nameyourimagehere" WIDTH=X HEIGHT=X></a>

That's all for now guys! But next week I'll be showing you:-

• How to use affiliate programs
• What are the right prices to charge for advertising?
• Tip  HTML Adverts

We hope you enjoyed our guide so far! If you have any requests for future articles and tutorials leave us a comment below!

Blog Hop May 4th to May 12th

Hi Everyone!

Blog Cat's weekly blog hop is up and running again! We did well last week, but we're always looking to do even better, so make sure you share the hop with your friends so we can all network <3 

This week's blog hop also features a great prize! Comment on the blog hop page and let us know all the blog's you visited and followed, and who was your favourite, the person who has visited and followed the most blogs will get 1 week's advertising on the Blog Cat homepage, Twitter mentions and a personalised e-mail from blog cat with some great tips on how to improve your blog and increase your traffic; tailored to how your blog is!

You could increase your traffic, AND find some great new blogs to follow!

We've also got an even better prize lined up for next week's blog hop, so make sure you keep entering :]

Enter the Blog Hop

Finding Something To Write About - What To Do If You're Stuck For Inspiration

Once I read a very successful blogger say "If you don't have anything interesting to say, don't blog about it" or something to that effect... And I suppose it's kind of true. We all have those days (or couple of days!) where we don't really feel like sitting down to write; but we feel obliged to our followers. We might worry, that if we go a few days not saying anything, we'll lose people's interest and loyalty, but you know what else is true? If you blog about boring things and make a whole lot of words about nothing, that's more damaging to your blog loyalty than saying nothing at all!

When we read our favourite blogs, it can look like they have the most exciting lives, so how can you compare if you only go out at weekends? Here's a few tips to really enhance the quality of your blogs when you're going through a dry spot!

Source: socialbliss.com via Tiffany on Pinterest

• You think bloggers go out every day of the week? Wrong! Learn the power of scheduling posts! It's a lifesaver I promise. Basically, imagine this, you have a really boring week ahead, or perhaps you work 9-5 weekdays, but you have the best Saturday planned ever. Last Saturday I went to a fashion fair; that's a good three posts for the week! You could do a post on what you wore to the event, one on what you bought, one as a review of the event, one as an interview with someone you met, one about what you did afterwards, the list goes on and on! 

Source: etsy.com via Marina on Pinterest

•  Plan ahead; a good tip is to create a diary for your blog, and plan in advance. Use Facebook, Twitter and Google to find events, companies and people in your area. If you live near a city, there will be fashion, beauty, music and culture communities you can integrate yourself into. Whether you befriend someone or attend their events, it's all about networking, and the more you network, the more events you'll be invited to, and the more you can fill up your calendar and blog!

Source: meltingpopsicles.tumblr.com via Rebekah on Pinterest

• Try our Blog Quizzes and Tags section! Take part in the event we post, and share your blog posts with other bloggers in the comments section.

• Try guest posting. A guest post is when you invite another blogger to write an article for your blog, they get to link to their blog, but they will link to you vice versa, in the future you could then guest blog for that person. It add variety to your posts, to hear a post from a different point of view. It's easy to start, you can either just e-mail a blog which is similar to yours and suggest a guest post, or alternatively you can write up an article and send it to a few bloggers you like, but remember to only let one of them use the post!

Source: us.topshop.com via Mary on Pinterest

• Write about old purchases and experiences. We do tend to write about shopping hauls, or events we visited at the weekend, but if you've still got photos, or your item is trusty and still in good condition, you can write about old things! 

Source: pictures.whostas.com via Beth on Pinterest

• Still stumped? The final option is to relax and have a really good think! Use Pinterest to gather your inspirations, make a scrapbook, find places you'd like to visit, use Lookbook.nu and Elle.com to find some catwalk or street style make-up and fashion looks to be inspired by, and finally don't worry! If you need to take a week off to recoup, it's not the end of the world. Followers followed you for a reason, and if your content is high quality and good, they will be willing to wait for it!

Getting Noticed As A Blogger - Some Events and Communities to Get Involved In.

There's thousands of bloggers out there, and when it comes to promoting our blogs a lot of us simply use our friends, Facebook, Twitter and Google Friend Connect, and hope for followers! Good news is if you put a lot into your blog there are more options for promotion! We all know by now the fundamental part of your blog is content and design, but even if you do that perfectly you can end up with just a handful of followers! Here are some useful ideas to keep in mind;

1. Use Bloglovin' 

This is a site which lets you follow all your favourite blogs, it then makes a feed of posts from all the blogs you've selected, which is a bit like Google Friend Connect; except you can follow blogs from all platforms, such as Wordpress and Typepad. It means you can keep up to date with all your favourite blogs in one place! And how does this help your blog? Well, you can register your blog with Bloglovin', so people can follow you on their site too. You can also get a pretty button to add to your blog, so your followers can add you to their Bloglovin' feeds too. Try it out, it's quite addictive, and very useful for keeping up to date with blogging trends!

2. Use Bloggers

Bloggers is a blog networking site, it's not really creative nor is it huge but it's great for meeting other bloggers and making more professional connections. It's super good if your run a few blogs, and can lead to some interesting possibilities. I run a few interior design blogs, and I was recently approached by someone who found me on Bloggers, she turned out to be an online magazine editor and I'm now writing an article to be featured in the mag! The great thing is that I don't even actively use Bloggers, it's just a good idea to generally be represented on there. It automatically updates any new posts you put on your blog, so it's a piece of cake really!

3. Enter Aussie Undercover Angels

If you're a fan of Aussie's hair care products, then you might be interested in entering their Aussie Angels program. They selectively pick a few bloggers every now and then to become part of their Aussie Angels community, to enter, all you have to do is create a creative blog post saying why you deserve to be an Aussie Angel, and if you're selected you'll have your blog featured on their undercover Aussie site, and a few shout outs on Twitter.  The whole community and anyone who views the site will be shown some of your blog posts too!

4. Join IFB

If you're a fashion blogger then you really should be part of Independent Fashion Bloggers. Their site provides some great tips for blogging, and you can take part in their forums to network with other bloggers, or stay on the cusp of the latest trends. What an advantage to be the first to break new fashion news to your followers! If you need to learn some photography tips, some tech knowledge to make your blog better, or learn how to make a little money from your blog, then this is a great source.

5. Join the Next Blogger Network

If you like Next, this is a similar program to the Aussie program. It helps Next market their products but it also benefits you as a blogger. Every now and then Next holds blogging events, the last one involved them sending you a sample of their Olympics scarf, which you could feature in a look post. Plus, it was for a good cause. Next also sends an e-mail to everyone in it's blogging network, every now and then, showing their chosen featured blogger, so it's worth getting involved for a potential traffic boost! 

There are lots more programs I'm going to share with you in upcoming blog posts, so stay tuned!