The next leap in earnings from blogs is to come from international visitors. As more and more bloggers across the world realize the potential of making full time income from running niche blogs & making money online, there is a huge potential in increasing your income by effectively monetizing international web traffic.

The Jan 2011 Forbes report indicated, for example, that China has more internet users than the population of US, Canada & Mexico combined, with the total number over 450 million. While China continues to restrict certain types of websites to be viewed by Chinese population, their most popular search engine, Baidu opened up their services to English speaking countries.

Unless you are making the most of such international traffic, you are leaving a lot of monetizing opportunities from your websites & blogs. Here are 10 Effective Blogging Tips to Monetize your International Web Traffic:

Finding Out Where Your International Traffic is Coming From

1. Identifying Sources of International Traffic – use your analytics tools to make up a list of the sources of international visitors to your websites. The “visitor map” section of your web analytics tool would immediately tell you which countries to focus on
2. Check for your International Alexa Ranking – Alexa ranking may not be too accurate but it provides you with some vital statistics on international traffic ranks. (read How to Use Alexa Data for Effective Blogging)
3. Market Research Information – reputed market analysts from Bloomberg, Forbes, eMarketer etc regularly publish stats on countries with growing internet users & the nature of such internet usage

Providing Access to Your Blogs

4. General Technical Restrictions – many bloggers restrict access to foreign traffic through .htaccess configuration purely for security since many countries are blacklisted for hacking other websites. Check your .htaccess file to open up to selected countries & make the most of international traffic from them
5. Blog Usability – though English is one of the most popular international language, there are many international visitors who have to depend on translation services to read & understand your content. It is a good idea to implement translation plugins on your blogs to cater to your global readers

Writing Custom Content for Global Readers

6. Get Your Global Readers Hooked – providing country specific content is a great idea to hook onto your global traffic. Think of content in your niche that could be interesting to someone coming from a different country which may have different business styles
7. Respect the Cultural Practices – many countries have unique social & cultural practices that are reflected in their liking or disliking of your websites. Respect their cultures & if you are not sure whether your style would be accepted by international visitors, it is best to write with a humble tone

Privacy Issues & Data Capture

8. Privacy Laws – this varies from one country to another & could be dependent on the niche you are in. For example, internet privacy laws in healthcare industry are significantly different from those in real estate industry. You have to be mindful of what data you collect & how you use that data so that you do not end up in legal issues from another country
9. Email Marketing Practices – email marketing rules are also different for different countries. In the US for example, the law requires a double-opt-in and email marketers must provide a link to Unsubscribe from their email list, whereas this rule does not apply to many other countries and you end up with a ton of spammy emails from foreign communities who do not care for your convenience or privacy. It is best to let your international subscribers know what they should or should-not expect in emails when they sign up for your newsletters

Global Search Engines for Global Traffic & International Ads

10. Submit Blogs to International Search Engines & Display Global Ads – submit blogs to global search engines (here is a list of major international search engines) once every 3 months. Also look for advertisers & affiliate networks that could help you offer extra value to your international visitors (read Profitable Global Advertisers & Programs). You could program your website in ways to show relevant affiliate programs that are specific to the countries your visitors are coming from

Blogs are a great way to engage international website visitors. There are a lot many affiliate marketing programs that support international web traffic though the CPA rates or the CPC rates for ads still vary widely for different countries. With time we expect more and more affiliate programs to cater to global visitors and more advertisers to have sufficient inventory from across the globe to significantly boost your income from blogs.