The May edition of the Blogging Tips Blog Carnival is here! Here’s the way this works – You, the blogger, have submitted your top blogging tips. I’ve gone though, weeded out the off-topic rants and spam and put them in a pretty little package for you. This Blog Carnival covers money making tips, writing tips, traffic/SEO tips and a few other oddities that didn’t cleanly fit into a category.

Use this to gain a few tips, improve your blogging and discover some new sites!

Money Making Tips

1. Marcus Hochstadt gives a great post on how he’s banking by blogging. I Made $13,692.59 In Profits Last Month, So What?, saying, “Find out how Marcus Hochstadt makes thousands of dollars online.”
2. Wilma Janszen shares 9 ways to make money as a blogger Make Money Blogging: Make Money Blogging.
3. Zork Brauk has written a creative post on generating extra cash on the side… UFO Recession Tip 73 – Top 10 Blogger Recession Tips to Make Money, saying, “Competition is stiff. There are over 112 million blogs listed on Technorati at the end of 2007! We see you and we know that not every blogger is making money.”

Writing Tips

1. Shamelle has written a really cool post called 6 Things Simon Cowell (Of American Idol) Would Say About Your Blog!
2. Steve Osborne, a freelance writer and writing instructor with over 20 years of experience tells how Short Paragraphs Attract. Long Paragraphs Intimidate.
3. Jason shares a few tips on how to use your writing to draw readers in and keep their attention: Be a Blogger – How to Write for the Web
4. Colleen M. Johnson gives a quick list on Blogger Brainstorming, saying, “Got blogger block? Ten tips to get you blogging.”
5. The Whited Sepulchre offers tips for when you’re out of time and motivation and need to get a post out: Things To Write About
6. Cindy King shares a Book Review – Letting Go Of The Words – Writing Web Content That Works By Janice Redish, saying, “Letting Go Of The Words is a must read for anyone involved with a website or blog. This is not about the tools you need or anything technical. This book is about web content and information strategies. It’s about “planning, selecting, organizing, writing, illustrating, reviewing, and testing content”…that gives readers a successful and satisfying web experience.”

Traffic and SEO Tips

1. Riggie Freyer gives some excellent tips for getting backlinks from high Pagerank sites: How to Get Do Follow Links with High Pagerank.
2. Raivyn has written an great post on How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Through Word of Mouth Marketing.
3. Bryan presents a video case study on a blog looking to bring in more traffic Case Study: Make Money Online Blog Wants More Traffic.
4. Mert Erkal has submitted an old post, but he still has some good tips: How I Quadrupled My Blog’s Traffic In 3 Months.
5. Praveen shares a Simple Trading System: Using Long Tail Keywords to Help Create Blog Posts and Articles that Attract Search Engine Traffic.
6. George Tzenos gives a basic overview of generating traffic via viral marketing Spread Your Word The Viral Way And Boost Your Traffic.
7. Aaron Anderson talks about how Entrecard has increased his traffic, comments and RSS subscribers: Traffic Experiment Results: 308 Visitors In 6 Days
8. Brian Terry’s article: Become a Listbuilding Genius is focused on collecting e-mail addresses. This may be more useful for affiliate marketers, but, if done right, could be beneficial for your blog.
9. Ian Richardson gives some tips on getting better search rankings. Get Good Search Ranking
10. Craig Andrews offers his viewpoint on using direct e-mail to market your blog Proper Direct Email Marketing For An Internet Business (Don’t Kill Off Your Email List!).

Other Tips

1. SpiKe Introduces A New Way Of Prioritizing to make your blogging more productive.
2. Tim Gary tells of how positive thinking has affected his life: “six-pack” follow up – dang if it doesn’t work like it should!.
3. Cindy King presents Website Design – How To Hire The Right Website Designer For Your International Audience.
4. Rebecca shares some basic tips on on starting a blog: Instant Readership with a Travel Blog
5. Woman Tribune presents how they are Addicted to Entrecard.

If you liked any of these sites, leave some comments share some link love. If you want your post to appear in the next edition submit your article here.

When I resurrected this blog at the beginning of this month, I decided to redesign the whole site from the ground up. One, I wanted a fresh start. It feels good to have a new design. If you don’t like the way your blog looks why would you want to put your efforts into it? I also wanted to ensure that this new theme would be better from a monetization standpoint also. Who doesn’t like more money?

In my search for a new template, there were a few key things that I was looking for. If you decide to change your theme too, make sure the following is true if you want to grow your blog and make more money!

Make sure your RSS button is visible

Until you have thousands of pages indexed by Google (and even when you do), your best bet for having an active organic blog is by having an active community of subscribers. The best way to grow this is by consistently promoting your RSS feed. Throw it in people’s face…

Subscribe to my feed!

…you can also accomplish this by having a subscription button in a prominent place. On WallerBlog dot Com you can see it proudly displayed on the top right. My RSS subscribers have increased 50% in the last 15 days that this template has been live. Make sure your RSS button is in a visible place.

Make sure the majority of your advertising is above the fold

Whether you’re monetizing your blog with Adsense, affiliate programs or private ads, all will earn you more when they’re above the fold. These ads will have greater click through rates. This obviously earns you more money on CPC advertisers like Adsense and gives you a better chance at making some cash on an affiliate sale. It will also earn you more on private ad sales. Advertisers that get good traffic from an ad are happy advertisers. Happy advertisers are more likely to renew the ad on your blog. Keep your ads above the fold.

Make sure your new theme is sticky

Let’s face it, the majority of us live and die by the traffic sent via search engines (read Google) and this group is a fickle bunch. When searching for something, 75% of people will spend no more than a few seconds glancing at your site to see if it has whatever they were searching for. What they see in those few seconds has to grab their attention. This does not mean to blind them with your amazing color scheme. (Here’s another incredible use of html.) Make sure that your site loads quickly, is easily navigable and, most importantly, is readable. This keeps people on your site longer which increases the odds of you either gaining a new subscriber or making more money! (That’s the whole point, right?) Make sure your theme is sticky.

If you’re just starting a blog or you’re thinking about remodeling, be sure that you pick a theme that will help and not hinder your blogging. The design you choose has a tremendous impact on your ability to gain new subscribers and generate revenue.