Guide on How To Make Money While Blogging

Make Money Blogging Without Having To Get More Web Site Traffic

2007-01-11T13:18:00.000+08:00

By Christopher Kyalo

Many people blogging do not make any money from their efforts because they have no idea that they can achieve a lot long before they can get more web traffic for their sites.

If only the millions of people currently blogging could understand that they do not need high traffic to make money, it would make a huge difference. But first and foremost, it is important to understand that you will need to completely change your approach.

The whole idea is that there is stuff that is best suited only to high traffic sites, just like there are things that work best work with low traffic sites only. There are also certain things that work well with both low traffic and high traffic sites. The tricky part is getting to recognize them.

Let me give an example here of an affiliate program that usually works quite well for both low traffic blogging sites and high traffic sites. This is the Google Adsense program. By focusing on high value Adsense keywords a low traffic site can do just as well as a high traffic site that really doesn't bother so much about attracting high value Adsense ads on their sites using the right keyword phrases in their content.

There are many more affiliate programs that will work well enough with low traffic blogging and web sites to make you some money. To find them you will need to study various affiliate programs that are best suited for the audience covered by your site, and then you will need to do intensive and careful testing until you find the right one.

Your chances of success are much higher when you start off knowing exactly what you are looking for. In this case an affiliate program that will work for a low traffic blogging site so that you can start to make money long before you can find more traffic.

Read the rest of this article at the writer's online marketing blog

Comparing Free Blogging Software

2006-12-19T14:27:00.000+08:00

By Don Beavers

With the increased interest in Blogging (web Logging), many web hosting providers now provide an assortment of free usage, open source blogging software packages. Among the most popular of these blogging tools are B2evolution, WordPress and Nucleus. Each of these programs offer similar basic features, so the question arises as to which one is easiest to use and would be appropriate for the requirements of your particular website.

The answer lies in the true purpose of your blog website. If your primary goal is to share your opinions and ideas with the general public, you would want to utilize a different blogging tool than a user who was creating product blogs as a commercial sales effort. A blog for search engine promotion would have entirely different requirements. All of these uses are viable reasons to create a blog, however each requires different features to be successful.

WordPress Blogging Software
Available for free download at: http://wordpress.org/

It is hard to beat WordPress for general personal blogging. WordPress is an open source, state-of-the-art personal publishing platform with a focus on presentation and usability. Everything related to creating and updating your blog is available through an intuitive graphical interface. With WordPress there is no need to compile your work. You simply write your column. You then select the features you want and your blog is instantly created and published to your website.

If you are on vacation, you can schedule your uploads for some date in the future or even email your column to the server! The system allows multiple users with multiple blogs divided into categories and sub-categories. This allows multiple family members or friends to create their own blogs along with yours.

Easy customization and the availability of many "plug-ins" that provide more functionality (add new features as you learn) makes this software a very good choice for most individuals.

B2evolution
Available for free download at: http://b2evolution.net/

B2evolution is another advanced web log tool that features an integrated XHTML validator. It supports recursive subcategories, cross posting and has a really cool integrated "skinning" system.

The "skinning" system allows you to create multiple blogs in separate categories with different appearances for each blog. You simply "change the skin" for the blog to create a totally new look and feel.

The "skinning" feature, combined with the built in multi-user administration management tool, makes the system robust enough for more commercial endeavors, such as product promotion blogs. If you have much to publish with multiple themes, this is the software you are looking for.

Nucleus Blogging Software
Available for free download at: http://nucleuscms.org/

Though Nucleus is an extremely robust blogging tool in its own right, it also contains some powerful features that can provide benefits in promotion of your blog.

Nucleus offers the ability to optimize its URLS, creating simple page addresses that do not have and "&" or "=" characters. This makes the pages search engine (and user) friendly. Another great feature is the ability to show the contents of multiple weblogs on one page. This could allow a website owner to manipulate the optimum text / keyword balance on pages for better search engine rankings.

Nucleus also provides RSS and Atom feeds that can be extremely helpful when promoting a website. If part of your blog's function is to work as a search engine marketing and promotion tool, Nucleus is an exceptional software package.

Each of these blogging software packages offer the basic tools that you would need to create a successful blog and all three are PHP - MySQL open source (free to use) packages. You should try to select the software that helps you achieve the long term goal that you have in mind for your website based on the unique extra features offered by each.

Don Beavers lives in Bryan/College Station, Texas and is an enterprise level PHP-MySQL programmer at both the Shopping Elf Shopping Guide and the Datavor Web Directory.

MySpace: A Viable Marketing Tool

2006-11-26T05:45:00.000+08:00

By Denise Wakeman

MySpace is not only for teenagers and musicians. MySpace is also making a buzz among Internet marketers. At the invitation of Internet marketing guru Marlon Sanders, I set up a profile to see what the buzz is all about. Marlon calls it "...a ‘secret’ networking method the people on the inside are using."

Being the active experimenter that I am, once I got started, I couldn't stay away from MySpace, setting up my profile, posting on my blog, adding events to the public calendar. As I poked around, I thought about how this networking space could work for professionals as a business tool.

It's pretty easy to set up a profile and it's free. If you're using it as a business tool, be professional about the information you reveal. Remember MySpace is ultimately a SOCIAL tool and many people use it to hook up for dates and relationships. If that's not your intent, keep your content business-oriented.

What I noticed in looking at random profiles is that most are sloppy and incomplete. A lot have no information about the person and no photo. What's the point? My sense is that a lot of profiles get set up and then abandoned, much like blogs.

So can you use it as a marketing tool for your business?

My guess is yes, if you're very strategic about how you go about it.

• Use your "About Me" section to talk about your business, products and services. Make sure you have active hyperlinks that lead to your primary website, blog and products. It's a good idea to have a basic knowledge of HTML so you can add images and clickable links.
• Use the blog module to write about your business and events.
• Send "bulletins" through the MySpace system to all your "friends" about your product launches, press releases, events, etc.
• Join MySpace groups that represent your target audience. Participate in discussions and send bulletins to everyone in the group. No spamming!
• Post your events on the public calendar
• As you add new friends, welcome them and you'll be on your way to building a community.

A way to approach this from a business angle is to think of your "friends" as possible joint venture partners and potential business opportunities. And, as we like to say, it's another line in the fishing pond for attracting prospects, building your list and your network. So, is it worth trying out? That's only for you to know. If you like trying new things, if you like testing new systems, then give it try.

For more leading edge Internet Marketing tips go to www.biztipsblog.com . You can also subscribe to The Blog Squad's ezine Savvy eBiz Tips at www.savvyebiztips.com . To learn more about using social media tools like blogs, go to www.buildabetterblog.com . Denise Wakeman is an Internet Marketing expert and founding member of The Blog Squad with over 10 years experience marketing online.

Blogs And Blogging - The High-Paying New Market For Freelance Writers

2006-11-15T16:54:00.000+08:00

By Angela Booth

Freelance writers are discovering a massive new writing market: blogs.

Blogs which attract lots of readers need frequent updates, so blogs are word-eating monsters. Writers who write for the most popular blogs generate an amazing amount of material, anywhere from two to ten or more blog posts (short articles, which may consist of anywhere from twenty to several hundred words) each and every day. This means that every blog needs writers, and because blogs are becoming so popular with Web sites, many businesses and publications are actively looking for freelance writers who know how to blog.

Businesses are discovering the major benefits of blogs

In your Web surfing, you may have noticed that not only do news sites have blogs, but many other sites are also jumping onto the blog bandwagon. Blogs are becoming the new "must have" of the Web world.

There's one reason for this: the Web search engines, like Google and Yahoo. The search engines love blogs, visiting them frequently to add blogs to their indexes. This means that a Web site can get an amazing amount of traffic very quickly. Targeted traffic translates to sales and money. As more and more businesses swarm online, and discover blogs, they hire freelance writers to blog for them.

How much can you earn as a freelance blogger?

The pay for freelance blogging gigs varies, as you might expect. At the top end of the market large companies and blog networks pay $1000 (and more) a week, while at the low end of the market small businesses offer around $50 dollars a week.

Your pay, as a professional freelance blogger, depends on the payment that you negotiate for yourself. The pay you can demand depends on: your blogging experience, your writing experience, your ideas, and most of all, on your confidence in your skills.

A word of warning: don't blog for free. There are plenty of paying gigs to go around, so look for them.

Getting blogging gigs: it's very easy

Getting all the blogging gigs you can handle is easy. I'll run through the simple steps for you.

1. Get your own blog, via a free service like Google's Blogger.com. This blog acts as your blogger's portfolio. It takes a couple of minutes to set up. Post several items to your blog. In the sidebar, place a small "for hire" notice, with your contact details.

2. Look for blogging gigs online using Google.

3. Approach companies and tell them you're available for hire as a freelance blogger.

4. Make friends with other bloggers by leaving comments on their blogs. Let the bloggers know you're looking for freelance blogging work.

If you've read this article and wondered "is that all there is to getting steady freelance blogging gigs?" the short answer is, yes.

There are many reasons why blogging has become popular so quickly, and why blogs will continue to be part of the online environment. No business can afford to ignore blogging, and this means that for the foreseeable future, blogging is a brilliant new market for freelance writers.

Get started getting freelance blogging gigs today. Just follow the simple steps in this article.

Angela Booth is a veteran freelance writer and copywriter. She also teaches writing. Visit her blogs - Angela Booth's Writing Blog at http://copywriter.typepad.com/ and Fab Freelance Writing at http://fabfreelancewriting.com/blog/ for daily writing inspiration and motivation. Subscribe to the Fab Freelance Writing Ezine at http://fabfreelancewriting.com/ezine/fab-freelance-writing-ezine.html to receive "Write And Sell Your Writing: The Power-Write Report" free. It's 21 pages packed with information to help you to develop a six-figure writing career.

How To Be A Blogging Idol Instead Of An Idle Blogger

2006-10-11T20:25:00.000+08:00

By Todd Mintz

To be successful at Search Engine Optimization, it’s important that you continually test out new theories and ideas. Before I use new SEO techniques on a client’s website, I always test them on one of my own. In order to better understand the application of SEO to blogs, I decided to implement the following experiment:

I would create a blog for each American Idol contestant. Using a pseudonym, I would blog each candidate until they got booted off the show.
Once the final 12 candidates were decided, I would step up my posting pace. Being that this was an SEO project, I didn’t aim to provide any valuable insights into the candidates…I only planned to “blurb” news articles that mentioned each contestant.
The goal at the end of the project (besides gaining useful knowledge) was to have 1-2 “sustainable” blogs in place, while generating massive traffic the week of the final show.
Several weeks into the project, I discovered two things:

The Bo Bice Blog received considerably more traffic and better search engine rankings than the other blogs I had created. Bo Bice was the first Idol contestant in 4 years that TOTALLY ROCKED. I very much wanted him to win. So, while keeping my SEO experiment going, I decided to really “blog” about Bo Bice. In doing so, I learned many valuable lessons about creating a successful blog that can generate sustainable traffic, including many repeat visits.

Beginners Lessons:

Have a narrow focus: The quickest way to drive traffic to your blog is through excellent search engine rankings. If you blog about lots of unrelated topics, you won’t rank well for any of your key terms. Even if you don’t know much about SEO, you can still create a blog that will rank well in the search engines. Pick a narrow topic and keep your posts on topic. Choose a group of keywords relevant to your chosen topic and make sure you feature these terms prominently in your posts.

Build a base of content: Unless you already have a built-in audience, very few people are going to read your early blog posts because they will be extremely hard to find in either the blogosphere or the search engines. So, save your best content for when you’ve already developed a steady stream of web traffic. Blogging newspaper articles is a good way to build up relevant content quickly. All you need to do is subscribe to Google news alerts to get relevant articles featuring your top keywords. As your receive new articles, create a blog entry for each article, excerpt a relevant snippet (making sure to credit the source), and comment on the piece. This might not be interesting to your readers…but the objective here is to reach a point where you can start creating original, unique content that people will actually read because your blog can be easily found. For the more advanced beginners, adding an RSS feed that is focused on your targeted niche will also be of great value to your blog.

Try to make several posts each week. You’ll be amazed how much content you can build up in a short period of time.

Monetize your blog (if appropriate): I placed a combination of contextual and affiliate advertising on my blog. The advertising revenue on my blog was poor given the amount of traffic I generated…however, if you are blogging successfully in areas of business and technology, you could make a good deal of money from such advertising. Google AdSense is a ubiquitous way for bloggers to earn money from blogging. Once you’ve placed the AdSense javascript snippet in your blog source code, Google’s contextual ad technology will automatically choose ads relevant to your blog content and when someone clicks on the ad, you get paid.

Advanced Techniques:

“Blog and Ping”: There is a reason why news spreads so rapidly through the blogosphere. When you update your blog, depending on your blog host, a “ping” might be sent to one or more blog search engines that track the blogosphere, showing that you’ve made a new post to your blog. People who have subscribed to your blog, or people interested in your blogging topic, can be notified about your post and read it / link to it. An active course of “blogging and pinging” will help greatly in building links to your blog and generating more traffic.

Websites and software exist that will allow you to manually send pings to dozens of known blog search engines. Ping-o-matic is a website that allows you to ping 18 different blog search engines on demand. I’ve been using RSSSubmit from Dummy Software to submit all feeds to over 70 such services at the push of a button.

“Conventional” Link-Building: To maximize your blog search engine rankings, I strongly recommend building links for your blog just as if it were a website. I did not do this for the Bice blog and that oversight (probably) came back to bite me.

Google’s “Bourbon” update hit several days before the American Idol final and this blog was the only “Bourbon” casualty in my entire portfolio…vanishing from Google the Saturday before the final. My intuition (plus other anecdotal evidence) tells me that had I built a foundation of links outside the blogosphere prior to Bourbon, the blog would not have been hit…of course, I’ll never know. The blog reappeared in Google with its excellent search engine ranking 10 days after the Idol final, depriving me of a tremendous volume of Bo Bice web traffic for the time surrounding the final…Thanks, Google:.)

Linkmarket.net is by far the best link-trading site on the Internet. They now have more than 20,000 sites that are potential link partners. For $24.85 per year, you have unlimited ability to trade links with any site on the network. No matter what your site niche is, you should be able to find hundreds of potential trading partners and generate large numbers of inbound links quickly.

Press Releases: Online press releases are an excellent way to generate notice for your blog. I created a press release announcing the launch of the blog, and once I decided to “actively” blog Bo, I wrote a release each week recapping the show and featuring highlights from the blog. Online press releases can get thousands or even tens of thousands of reads…especially if you are writing on a “hot topic”. Many of the press release readers will become blog visitors.

PRWEB and PRLeap are the two most prominent online press release bureaus. Both allow free submission of releases and both allow you to pay for better “placement”. Your press releases will also get spidered into the search engines and (sometimes) will end up in Google or Yahoo News as well. I’ve seen my Bo Bice press releases as high as #3 in Google News for a “Bo Bice” search.

Best Idea Yet

When my blog reached a consistent 500 visitors a day, I decided to actively solicit posts from Bo’s fans. Sure, most blogs give readers the ability to post comments…but I thought that if I ran the comments as actual posts, I could create a “buzz” about the blog and generate large numbers of repeat visits. I ended up getting 5-15 e-mails every day from Bo’s fans wanting their information to be posted on the blog. So long as the post met my minimum blogging criteria, I ran the submission. Traffic spiked immediately and the quality of the submissions was generally excellent.

My idea worked strategically because the readers unknowingly submitted content that was SEO’ed for the keywords that were the focus of my blog… “Bo Bice”. By running reader posts, I generated large amounts of SEO’ed content that helped generate and maintain my top search engine rankings. And, my “Blog and Ping” strategy ensured that each and every new post (several per day) was broadcast all over the Internet.

Top Search Engine Rankings Confer “Authority Status”

For most of the duration of American Idol 4, I ranked #2 -4 in Google, and #6-15 in Yahoo for “Bo Bice” and I learned such rankings conferred an enormous amount of “authority” in my chosen subject. A sampling of my e-mails I received included:

After Bo performed “Vehicle” by “The Ides of March” (the first time), an original member of the band e-mailed a message to Bo’s fans through the blog. He even asked me if I knew how to reach Bo…which I didn’t.

A CBS Early Show Producer contacted my blog to promote Bo’s appearance on the show…asking his fans to show up at their New York studios.

What’s more, I received multiple messages from the person running the AOL American Idol fan poll soliciting votes for Bo.

Results:

Currently, my Bo Bice blog is generating sustainable traffic with very little work on my part (barring any unforeseen search engine calamity). As the American Idol Concert tour rolls this summer and as Bo gets to work on his first post-Idol album, I expect the traffic to increase.

One doesn’t need to be a SEO ace to be able to create a blog that can generate a large number of visitors. Whether you wish to blog for business lead generation, ad revenue, or personal reasons, if you follow the techniques described above, you can create and sustain a well-trafficked blog by following the techniques listed above.

About Cube Management

Cube Management delivers sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions (whether recruiting, interim management or consulting) that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results. Download the Cube Management Inside Sales Guide and the Cube Management Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guide.

Blogging Versus Email Newletters - Do You Need Them Both?

2006-09-26T03:02:00.000+08:00

By Hans Bool

After you have clicked on the article link and before the text is fetched, you probably think -- "What Do I think about this one?" You must have an opinion even though the issue (of blogging) is still fresh.

I would say; you need only one of them, if not neither.

You need an email newsletter in the case where you think that relationship management is a must for you business. This story didn’t change much. With a newsletter you are able to give prospects and clients valuable information that is not otherwise available. The newsletter should continue news, but also updates and other product information or discounts. Success stories may be included, etc, etc.

With a newsletter you show your public that you are still around. The frequency per issue may vary, but the credibility will increase when this frequency is constant. This requires hard work, and only liable companies are able to do this. This is why most people buy (on the internet); ninety percent out of trust.

If sales is not your first business priority, than you do not need an email newsletter. There are so many other specialized direct marketing companies and focused companies that you should better link to. And you do not even have to write them a letter, you ought to convince them that your service or product is a win for both.

If sales is not your first priority than you can do without a weblog too. There is no need for a weblog, other than that it is just fancy. Choose for one, if you think it will help your business.

© 2006 Hans Bool

Hans Bool is the founder of Astor White a traditional management consulting company that offers online management advice. Astor Online solves issues in hours what normally would take days. You can apply for a free demo account

Freelance Blogging: Get Hired To Blog And Earn Thousands A Month

2006-09-24T08:30:00.000+08:00

By Angela Booth

Blogging gives you a great way to learn some extra cash. You can even turn blogging into a full-time career, or a new business. Getting started as a freelance blogger is simple. All you need to do is create a blog, make a few blog posts (these are your work samples), and then look for blogging gigs.

Create a blog If you don't already have a blog, creating a blog is your first step. You can do this very quickly. Creating a new blog at blogger.com (which is owned by Google) only takes a minute or two. This is your "sample" blog. Think of this blog as your blogging portfolio.

Your blogging topic can be in any subject area that you choose, but give some thought to your potential clients - don't make your blogging topic too personal. If you have expertise in a particular area like finance, technology or health, make this the subject area of your blog.

Write some blog posts Now your blog has been created, it's time to make some blog posts. Your entries are published in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry first. Your first entry can be a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about the general topic of your blog.

For example, if your blog is about dieting, you could summarize the areas (recipes, weight lost tips, health tips) you intend to cover. Or your first post could be an introduction: tell your readers who you are, and why the topic of the blog concerns you. Or you can skip the idea of an introductory post altogether, and just jump into your topic.

Look for blogging gigs Great - you've created two or more blog entries. Now it's time to look for your first blog-job. Your first step is to write a blog post about your availability to blog. You can make this entry detailed, or extremely brief. If you wish, you can add a link to your online resume or CV.

Where do you find blogging jobs? You'll find that several sites have already been set up to match bloggers with companies that want to hire them. Enter "blog jobs" into a search engine to find your initial leads.

You'll also find companies looking for bloggers at out-sourcing venues like guru.com. However, be aware that on these sites, you're competing against others for gigs - don't be tempted to underbid others. Under-bidding is a bad idea because it's terrible marketing. Once you set your price low, it's hard to lift it. Have an awareness of what blogging is worth, and set your price appropriately. Companies which want bloggers don't want the cheapest option - they want the best they can afford.

So there you have it: everything you need to know to get started as a freelance blogger today. Create a blog, make some entries, get a gig. Good luck with your blogging career. If you're a born blogger, you can turn your freelance blogging into a full-time career.

Good luck, and happy blogging.

Angela Booth is a veteran copywriter and blogger. Her ebook, Blogging For Dollars: How to become a career blogger -- in your PJs, if you want, is available at http://www.abmagic.com/Blog/blogging.html You can visit the book's blog at http://www.dollars2blog.com/blog/ Angela will show you how to turn a humble blog into a great career, or a lucrative business.

7 Unique Methods To Make Money Blogging Without Google AdSense

2006-09-23T05:45:00.000+08:00

By Matthew Rhodes

Unfortunately, too many people use Google AdSense on their blogs. 9 times out of 10, they won't even generate enough revenue to get their first paycheck - Google requires you earn $100 before they send you a paycheck. You'll need thousands upon thousands of clicks to generate enough profit to make it a worthwhile business venture.

To start breaking out from the AdSense craze, here is a list of 7 ways you can profit from your blog without resorting to AdSense:

1.) Become an affiliate marketer. Sign up at ClickBank.com for free and find a product to promote on your blog that your audience will be interested in. If you have a large readership, affiliate marketing is the way to go.

2.) Sell Text Links. Allow people to contact you to put a link on your website to theirs. If you have a PR4 or above website, your links are valuable, and you can get hundreds of dollars monthly to sell them. Just make a note about it in your blog.

3.) Offer your services. Everyone is good at something. Talk about what you can offer people in your blog for a small fee - heck, offer to make some blog postings for someone else. People are always looking for fresh content.

4.) Sell your own advertising. Create a short ad in your Navbar promoting a service or product. If your blog is popular, people will jump on this offer like you wouldn't believe.

5.) Sell something odd or unique on eBay, and link to it from your blog. This will get buzz going and you'll profit immensely just by being original.

6.) Compile all of your blog postings over the last year and make a PDF file out of it. Sell the PDF using Paypal, and add "Editor's Notes" to your old postings.

7.) Sell your blog. Build up a huge readership, then sell it to a third party. A high traffic blog pays very well - web real estate is in high demand.

Stop using AdSense! It will distract from other methods (such as the ones listed above) that you will make more money from. Imagine how much more you could earn!

Matt Rhodes is the Editor and Webmaster of Blogging Money Maker, a blog that reveals FREE articles, tips and tricks about how to make money blogging. Go to http://bloggingmoneymaker.blogspot.com for free, profitable information!

Content, Keywords and Blogs I Provoke you to learn More!

2006-09-21T18:36:00.000+08:00

by: Richard Weberg

The imformation I am about to expose to you literally helped my home business and income explode! Unfortunately I had to learn it the hard way and it took me two years to fully understand. I dont claim to have all the answers, I just hope you will take this advice, and learn MORE about it.

You have to be willing to learn and make mistakes if you ever want to be successful on the internet. Building a home business online is no easy task, their will be plenty of potholes and struggles that will present themselves along the way.

What will make the difference in wether you succeed or fail online will be your ability to apply imformation learned, and your ability to adapt and change. So all I can do here is provide you with some imformation and provoke you to learn more. Ultimately it will be up to you, what you do with it. The subjects I want to provoke you to learn more about are content, keywords, and Blogs.

1. On the Internet content is king and always will be.
This is because the Internet is the information superhighway and most people use it for information of some sort. The information on a website is its content. Generally the more useful and interesting content a website has the more successful it will be.

This is because more people will want to visit it again and again, this is especially true if a website is constantly adding more and more content on a regular basis be it blogs, articles, tutorials, news and opinion or whatever. Search engines love sites that are constantly adding fresh content, they tend to spider those sites more often.

Some websites add so much content to their site they get spidered almost daily! An example is Backpage.com, you can place an ad on their site and somtimes it will be indexed the very next day. So my advice to you is learn more about content and ways of adding fresh content to your site and if you dont own your own website, advertise on websites that ad content daily! This will get your ads indexed by the search engines very quickly.

2. Next up is keywords and how to use them. Whenever you post to forums, blogs, link exchanges, enzines, ad boards, ffa list or any other type of site you submit your ads or articles to , make sure you put your keywords for your site in your title and description!

If you only have an affiliate site ask the owner of the program for the keywords he uses to list the site or use a keyword tool from overture or wordtracker to find keywords and phrases that people would use to find your site. Your keywords should also be used in the title and body of any articles you submit for publication on other websites. Search engines love content and it should be keyword RICH, I can not emphasize this enough.

This will not only get your websites indexed faster but it will also get your ads and articles indexed for your keywords! It will also create thousands of links in the search engines, are you starting to understand?

Post your ads and articles on sites with lots of fresh content. Search engines crawl these sites somtimes daily, I have had ads get indexed by google over nite! Backpage.com is one of the many types of sites that get crawled almost daily, because their is fresh content being added everyday. I know I am repeating myself here, but I do not want you to forget this! learn as much as you can about keywords and how to use them to get your ads indexed.

3. Marketing and Blogs? Yes! Blogs have fresh content, and remember content is King. A blog is a frequent, online publication of comments, web links and news. It is an online Enzine of sorts. People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with automated published systems, most notably is blogger.com.

Thousands of people use services such as Blogger alone. Blogs are pure imformation! Here is another hint START A BLOG, search engines Love Blogs! Post fresh content to it regularly, you can even get a free Blog from Google. Blogs are the marketing and imformation trend of the future, dont get left behind! Learn as much as you can about blogs and how to use them and get started right away blogging, it is the future.

To give you an example, the first two years I was on the internet doing business I would go to google once a week and do a search for my sites. The most links I ever had was around 35, my sales were slow and I only made a few hundred dollars in income a month( I was frustrated).

So I started learning as much as I could about marketing on the internet, my focus was on content, keywords, and blogs because this is what most webmasters seemed to talk about in their articles and news letters. After I applied this new knowledge my links in the search engines started growing by the hundreds a week, my income also started growing!

My ads and articles started showing up on all kinds of other sites, this is free viral marketing! See if you learn these three topics well everything else will fall into place. I believe these three topics are the key to all marketing on the internet because you can apply these to everything you do, wether it is email marketing, website design, article distribution, gaining incoming links, or placeing ads.

In closing please remember this their is no magic bullet on the internet, no one method that will make you a millionaire. Dont believe the hype, even though we use hype to sell, keep everything in perspective your not going to get rich overnight.

Everyones learning curve will be different, so learn as much as you can about marketing on the internet and treat your home business like you would treat any brick and mortar business. Just because you work from home dosnt mean it should be any less important to you. The last thing is never quit, it takes time to make the internet work for you. It will work if you dont quit.

Alot of people think that if they sign up for an advertising system on the internet, that it will work over night. It dosnt work that way. I signed up for a message system one time for advertising one of my websites, it took four months before I seen the results, but it was sure worth the wait, patience and persistance is the key. I wish everyone success in all that you do.

About the Author

Richard Weberg is an Internet Marketer and Motivational Speaker
Resources for marketing and promoting your business. Increase your your online business, rankings, traffic and sales http://nehoma.com/rwmy206/

Video Blogging - Is it the Future?

2006-09-18T08:03:00.000+08:00

By Leroy Brown

Everywhere you look, more and more people are jumping aboard the video blogging bandwagon. Matt Cutts, Google’s own SEO expert, has done quite a few video blog posts lately. Just this morning, I read a post at Problogger about blogging tutorials - in video format, called Tubetorial. Some are saying that video blogging is the future of blogging, and that one day that will be the only way to read blogs.

I think that video blogging is more of a fad, or perhaps a niche market. Some people do enjoy the personalization that video blogging offers - so I’m fairly certain that video blogging is here to stay. However, I’m not convinced that there’s a big market for these types of blogs. You are probably wondering why I say this. Why would a person rather read paragraphs rather than watch an entertaining video? Don’t more people watch the news rather than read the newspaper?

Video blogging, by it’s very nature, isn’t a very friendly format. For example - I cannot watch video blog posts from my Treo smartphone - that’s a real problem. Often that’s how I access my RSS reader, or individual blogs. You Tube and Google Videos don’t yet work on many mobile devices, and certainly not efficiently. I also cannot view video blog posts at work. Let’s face it - many people spend some of their work day doing personal things - such as reading blogs. Video and sound do not lend themselves to inconspicuousness. ( I think that’s the biggest word I’ve ever used in a sentence. ) For those people not fortunate enough to have internet access at home, video blogs are not very appropriate for places like public libraries, and other public internet access areas.

In closing, video blogging is an interesting trend - but it’s not the future of blogging. Good old fashioned text is - because it works.

Leroy Brown Blogging Blog

How to Use Simple Tag and Ping Marketing Techniques

2006-09-14T05:17:00.000+08:00

By Titus Hoskins

If you're just heard the phrase 'Tag and Ping' and scratching your head in puzzlement --- this article may be worth your time. Not that Tag and Ping is some magic marketing formula that will deliver untold riches. It won't.

It is just one more marketing tool professional online marketers are using to give their site or sites a competitive edge over their competition. It will help put your site on the Internet map and if done right, Tag and Ping will deliver plenty of very targeted traffic to your sales pages. It will boost your rankings and increase your sales.

Tag and Ping is one of those simple, yet relatively unknown marketing techniques savvy Internet Marketers have been using and trying to keep quiet for years. To truly understand how Tag and Ping works, you will have to know some basic background information on keywords, blogging, tags, and how all these can work in sync to deliver traffic, links and sales to your site.

What are Blogs?

Most web users will know a blog is an online journal where bloggers post their daily or hourly entries (their opinions, views, info, links) on any subject that interests them. The most popular blogging systems are Blogger.com (owned by Google) Bloglines (owned by Ask Jeeves), LiveJournal, and many professional marketers use the free WordPress software which they can host on their own websites.

Each blog has its own RSS feed -- RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication although its original acronym stood for Rich Site Summary. These RSS feeds broadcasts the information in the blog posts to all concerned parties -- those who have subscribed and use an RSS reader or aggregator to view the posts. Or more commonly, they use the FireFox browser, Google Desktop, or MyYahoo to access their favorite RSS feeds. The next version of Windows will have RSS embedded into its operating system.

What are Tags?

Tags are really another name for keywords. Most surfers will know keywords are the exact words Internet users type into search engines to find what they're looking on the world wide web. Tags work in the same way and are a form of social bookmarking, a way of classifying and accessing all that content in all those countless blogs.

Many major blogging directories such as Technorati use tags to serve up the information to its patrons. One simple technique to create a tag in Technocrati:

<*a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Laptops" rel="tag" >Laptops<*/a> (remove asterisks in actual code)

Or if your blogging software supports categories; this will be recognized by Technorati as a tag.

What the heck is a Ping?

A ping is a simple way to notify the different search engines to let them know that your blog has been updated. You call up or ping your blog post.

You bookmark or place an entry in any one of the countless blogging sites such as Technorati, Furl, del.icio.us, Blinklist, Flickr --- you go to these sites and click your blog or tag to inform them you have updated your blog. Many blogging systems will automatically ping your blog updates.

Or you can do this manually, for example Technorati's ping form is here: http://www.technorati.com/ping

Simple Way to Ping

If this is still confusing to you, one simple way to ping your tags/blogs is to use a site like: http://pingomatic.com/

and it will automatically ping your blog in many of the most popular blogging services.

Enter The Online Professional Marketers and It All Hits the Fan

Of course, online marketers have long discovered that the whole blogging system -- blogs, rss, tags, pinging -- is an excellent marketing vehicle. One great marketing system delivering targeted traffic to their products and services.

It really is a corruption or commercialization of blogging and this surely wasn't the idea the original designers of blogs had in mind. But the whole blogging system is so lucrative, many professional marketers (the author is pleading the fifth!) are using blogging systems like WordPress to create mainly marketing sites that may have little resemblance to a real blog. It just uses the backbone structure of blogs, RSS, Tags to give their sites a slight competitive edge in a very competitive world.

As we saw with the 'comment spam' there is a great likelihood that Tag and Ping will be misused and further antagonize the blogging purists. So if you are going to use Tag and Ping make sure you're creating valuable, usable content -- then most sites will want to link to your site anyway. Content is still king no matter what tricks the professional marketers want to use. Always will be!

Using a Simple Tag and Ping Marketing Technique With Technorati

To explain further the whole idea of Tag and Ping. Lets just walk through a marketing system you can quickly create using Technorati, one of the most popular blogging services.

First, sign your blog up with Technorati. This is quite a simple procedure. Just upload a photo, doesn't have to be of you -- your site's logo will do. Register your profile with your 20 or so tags relating to your blog. Make sure these are keywords you're marketing with your blog. Then you have to place the Technorati code on your blog for a link back.

Next, you must understand that Technorati creates a landing page for each tag in their system. This page is made up of four parts:

- Flickr Photos

- Recent blog posts tagged with that keyword or phrase

- Who’s Blogging About sidebar which links to any profiles of blogs

that those same keywords or phrase in their profile

- Links from Furl for the same tag

So to take full advantage and to use this marketing technique you have to sign up with both Flickr and Furl. Your aim is to get your links in all four spots on this Technorati landing page for your tag or keyword.

When signing up for Flickr, many marketers use their site's name for their Flickr username, just use a dash instead of a dot in your site's url. You can use a photo of the product they're promoting to get a link from Flickr in the top spot on the landing page. Pick your tags and description for the product.

Set up a Furl account and download the Toolbar , bookmark a few sites to get the hang of how its done.

Now You're Really To Put Everything Together To Tag and Ping

1- You can start with the Flickr photos at top of the Technorati page.

Just post a photo or cover image into your Flickr account, making sure you tag it and use a catchy headline in your description. Link it to your landing or affiliate page url. Example:

Don't buy another marketing tool until your check out this site.

2 - Next, make the first of your blog posts on your particular subject or product to your blog, making sure you tag it with your keywords and then ping Technorati. Make all your posts good content, reviews, product information or free downloads. Your entry will appear on the top of the list for that tag shortly in Technorati.

3 - Furl your blog post and your landing/affiliate page with your tags to make sure your entry/post is listed the bottom section of the Technorati page for your tag.

To work this system, add another blog post every few hours, Tag and Ping, plus Furl your posts. For better results you can sign up for countless other social bookmarking sites and bookmark your pages. Here are just a few good ones: del.icio.us, blinklist, moreover, icerocket, weblogs...

Flickr, Blog, Tag, Ping, Furl

This is just one Tag and Ping method, professional marketers have countless systems and sites working many variations on this relative new marketing technique. But the information given above should get you started on your own Tag and Ping marketing system.

Remember, blogging and RSS are the wave of the future, make sure you're geared up to take advantage of all they have to offer. You must have at least one blog on your site. Use WordPress if you can -- Blogger will do in a pinch!

Just make sure you're using some Ping and Tag marketing techniques to harvest all those links, traffic and sales for your site. This is one marketing technique you should now be using. Just remember to Flickr, Blog, Tag, Ping, Furl - Rinse and Repeat!

The author operates numerous sites on the web, his first was a general Internet Marketing site http://www.bizwaremagic.com And his latest site is Marketing Tool Guide where you can find all the latest helpful and effective marketing tools, including Free Internet Marketing manuals: Internet Marketing Tools Copyright © 2006 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Case Study to Consider Before Posting Your Blog

2006-09-12T05:44:00.000+08:00

By Josh Grossman

Blogs are quickly making their way into mainstream consumer companies. Once the domain of high tech businesses and political websites, blogs are now commonplace on the web. Some consumer products companies that are using blogs to communicate with their customers include GM, Stonyfield Farms, and Ice.com.

One recent estimate suggests that 80,000 blogs are created every day. Blogs can be used for many reasons including announcing new products or sales, creating an ongoing conversation with customers, posting the thoughts of the company's CEO, or even creating buzz with controversial postings. While businesses can use blogs as a way to enhance their brand, they need to do so carefully. Even though blogs can be created in less than 5 minutes, a great deal of thought needs to be given to them, more than might seem necessary at first glance. My company’s experience with creating a blog can hopefully serve others well.

With all the talk recently about blogs, we wanted to position our flower company, Beyond Blossoms (http://www.beyondblossoms.com ), as on the cutting edge – as more than just another place to buy flowers. We wanted to start a blog to serve as a place to provide unusual and interesting information about all things floral, from flower gardening tips to art exhibits featuring flowers, to fun facts about flowers. It would be a way to interact with customers and hopefully provide content they find informative, useful, and even funny.

We initially thought that getting the blog up and running would be easy, but it quickly became apparent that there were many issues to be thought out. Some of these included whether or not to encase the blog within our existing website or create a separate domain to house it, who would write the flower blog, and what to talk about. Additionally, the company wrestled with what blog platform to use such as Blogger, pMachine, Typepad, or Wordpress.

Ultimately, we decided to bring in a consultant to assist us in the design and development of the blog, blogging expert Paul Chaney, from internet marketing firm Radiant Marketing Group (http://www.radiantmarketinggroup.com ). Besides designing the blog to fit in with the existing template of the business using Wordpress, Paul also helped generate awareness by publicizing the flower blog on various blog search engines such as Technorati and creating a press release to announce it. He also contacted webmasters of other blogs who share similar themes to ours to include a link to us in their blogroll.

What to write about was a hot topic of conversation in our company. We decided that the blog should not be a blatant sales pitch with its only purpose being to advertise the company. The flower blog would serve to communicate our company's love for flowers and deepen our brand's connection with customers. The more interesting content we can provide, the more enjoyable our site will become to visitors, and this should help convert some visitors into buyers.

Ideally a blog should fit in with the brand personality of the rest of the company. If our website was dull, then readers might not understand the blog’s purpose or context, but because the website is lighthearted in tone, we can write about a wide variety of topics on the blog. Recent posts include ones about a new computer game about flowers, England’s effort to improve public bathrooms with fresh flowers, how to plant fall flowers, and rare orchids found in Idaho. Do not underestimate the resources needed for blogging. Posting on a daily basis takes a significant time commitment.

We looked to other companies as examples of how to use a blog that fits in with the brand. Stonyfield Farms (http://www.stonyfieldfarms.com/weblog/ ) features 4 blogs to talk about topics that don't directly relate to its core yogurt product, such as "Baby Babble,” a blog for parents to talk about their babies and "Strong Women Daily News." Here, the company is using its brand position as an environmentally responsible company to entice its customers to share in other "responsible" areas such as parenting.

The NBA blog (http://www.nba.com/blog /) is an example we learned from – to try to avoid. Its purpose is to provide “a varied collection of insiders, media members and fans from around the world who will share their thoughts about the NBA, WNBA, and whatever else comes to mind.” The problem here is a lack of consistency. Posts seem to be put up on a random basis so you don’t know when to come back to read another one. For example, the blog posted on August 26 and then did not have another post until October 18! Why would any visitor keep visiting the site to read the blog if nothing new is posted on a timely basis? Furthermore, some NBA players have recently posted their journals, but there is no signal as to when, if ever, the same or any other player will post another journal entry. Finally, the topics and writers are all over the board – from a writer in France to Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to posts about the WNBA. It all leads to a poor customer experience.

GM and Ice.com both write blogs which have garnered media attention and a ton of buzz. GM has generated a cult like following for Vice Chairman Bob Lutz's weekly controversial observations about the auto industry (http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/ ). Ice.com has 3 blogs, 2 of which are not hosted on the main website itself. Each blog is consistent and clear in its purpose. The company can accomplish various goals in different settings – showing Ice.com’s recent press coverage, a tongue in cheek look at celebrity jewelry, and tips from a jewelry expert (http://blog.ice.com/ , http://www.sparklelikethestars.com/ , and http://www.justaskleslie.com /)

However blogs are utilized, a little extra thought behind it can enhance a brand. Through continually posting new content, customers leaving comments, and the viral nature of blogs, visiting your website can become a "must-see" daily activity for your customers.

Josh Grossman is cofounder of online florist Beyond Blossoms (http://www.beyondblossoms.com ). The company's mission is to send flowers fresh from the farms at low prices and with great designs.

The Monetization Method of Make Money Blogging

2006-09-11T05:35:00.000+08:00

by: Ryen Kim
There could be many reasons why a blogger think of blogging for money. Maybe for the purpose of compensating hosting and domain registrar cost, passive income, or blogging as a full time job. When it comes to the topic, "make money blogging", it doesn't matter what is your purpose. Just apply the methods or programs that make money with your blog.

I found many posts on the web talking about the ways to make money with blogging. Among them the following two articles are worth to read.

How to Make Money with Your Blog: This post gives you clear overview of how to monetize from your blog.
How To Make Money With Your Blog Site: More detailed information of how to's and methods

As Elise Bauer clearly categorized the methods in his "How to Make Money with Your Blog", the ways to make money blogging are:

placing Google Adsense
placing affiliate program links
placing advertisements
placing Paypal Tip Jar for donation

To make a long story short, the ways of making money with blogging can be understood with two streams.

pay-per-click scheme
pay-per-performance scheme

Pay-per-click means that you earn commission whenever your reader click a link you provided. Google Adsense is the best example of this scheme.

Pay-per-performance means that you'll not earn any commissions just by click. You can get commission only when your reader purchase something from the web site that you provided by means of a link. Most of affiliate programs, for example amazon associate program (by the way affiliate program and associate program are the same term), are in this scheme.

While pay-per-click scheme seems easier to perform than pay-per-performance, the latter has sound reason you may have to consider:that is, the amount of commission is much higher than that of the former.Most of case joining an affiliate program is free, so no risk and no catch is involved. But certainly you have to put more effort than you do with Google Adsense. You can regard 'more effort' as a cost of 'free' and 'more commission'.

The bottom line is always to consider running Google Adsense on your blog and if you are looking more income, consider joining some affiliate programs and placing affiliate link on your blog. If you want know more about affiliate program (how it works, how to optimize, etc), you may want to pay a visit Affiliate Business Web Site. Though that web site is not aimed to bloggers, you can find lots of information about how to implement affiliate program.

When you choose an affiliate program, the most important thing you have to keep in mind is that that affiliate program must be related to your blog topic. For example, when you're talking about "car", an affiliate program about "how to make an e-book" does not make sense and won't generate any click through.

As a final word, it can not be overemphasized the importance of your blog content and traffic. Why I suddenly raise these two subject while I'm talking about how to make money blogging? Because...

it is or must be the content that finally lead your readers click the links.

the more traffic, the more chance you get clicks.

To sum up, always provide quality blog with your reader, then add Google Adsense on your blog, join a few affiliate programs and provide those affiliate link on your blog. And the key of choosing an affiliate program is the relevancy to your blog topic.

About the author
Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of Blog Sites and running Hom Based Affiliate Business web site.

Blood Test for Your Blog?

2006-09-09T16:59:00.000+08:00

by: Nick Smith
Are you contributing to one of the estimated 36.1 million (and growing) blogs online? Or are you thinking of entering the fray and starting to publish a blog for your small or home business? Make sure you are publishing the right type of blog for your kind of business, or all that writing time will have been for naught.

The Blog Blood Test
Just as there are different types of blood, there are many different types of blogs, and each serves its own purpose. Giving your blog a blood test will help you determine which type of blog is best for your business and what may be wrong with the one you've got now.

Blog Blood Type 1: Customer Relations - Blogging is one of the best ways to put a face and personality on your business, especially if you operate entirely in cyberspace. Those that best employ their blog in strengthening relationships with their customers spend a lot of time interacting with customers, answering questions, providing useful tips, and keeping them informed of business happenings. These blogs focus less on the company's products and more on the company's culture and outlook. The goal of this type of blog is to engender customer loyalty and establish a consistent flow of interested website visitors.

Blog Blood Type 2: Sales - As you can imagine, most businesses that blog do so because of the perceived benefit to their bottom line. While very little quantitative research has been done with regards to the actual monetary impact of blogging on overall sales, the ubiquity of sales-oriented blogs indicates some kind of return-on-investment. Sales blogs focus on product developments and benefits to the customer. There is less online interaction with customers via the blog as the goal is to move readers off of the blog and onto the product pages. The goal of a sales blog is to encourage visitors to purchase a product, service, or information that the company is offering.

Blog Blood Type 3: Personal Web Journals - These blogs make up the bulk of the 36.1 million web logs online. The majority are personal accounts written without regard to size of readership or monetary value. Many have heralded free blogs as the Internet's greatest achievement, allowing virtually anyone with an internet connection to publish literally whatever they want, and all in a matter of a few minutes. There are as many purposes for personal blogs as there are bloggers. Perhaps the most common theme is the chance to be heard.

I've Taken the Blog Blood Test…Now What?

Which category did your blog best fit in? Did you find that you're writing one type of blog but desiring the benefits of another? If you haven't already started your blog, which type do you believe would best match your writing abilities and desired outcome? Simply put, if you're not writing the best type of blog for the benefits you want, you'll never get them - and you'll waste a lot of time in the process.

If your current blog is doing exactly what you want it to, leave it alone. If you find that some changes are necessary, consider the following questions:

Do I think I can drive actual sales from the blog?
Would I rather spend my writing time interacting with customers (both positive and negative) or writing about my product? (Remember the blood test)
Am I the best person to author my blog, or is there someone else who could do a better job?
Do I want to stage the blog as a company-sponsored communication tool or would I rather it appear as a kind of third-party, objective review?
How much time am I willing to spend writing?
How free do I want to be with regards to frequency of posting and responding to customer comments?

Millions of others are already blogging, but don't let that stop you from starting. Give your business the blog blood test and see which type works best for you.

About the author:

Nick Smith is an internet marketer with an internet positioning strategy. For information about a DNA blood test and other DNA products, visit Genetree.com.

How WordPress outguns Blogger

2006-09-08T07:14:00.000+08:00

By Sherman Hu
5 compelling reasons why WordPress is superior to Blogger for blogging

In a January 2006 survey conducted by WordpressTutorials.com, 48% of respondents admitted to just starting to experiment with blogging.

The purpose of their blogs vary from promoting their products and services, to building a community in their niche market, podcasting, profiting from contextual advertising, and generating additional traffic and exposure to their target websites.

Close to 50% of those surveyed began their journey into blogging with free blogging services such as those offered by Blogger.com, a division of Google.

Over time, many respondents report a lack of features and control that influence their search for a platform that offers them choice, control, convenience and comprehensive features and capabilities. Enter WordPress into the scene.

WordPress is known for its open-source blogging platform, which means a host of developers have contributed their time and programming expertise in molding it to be the best it can be for the community at large. This also means you can begin blogging with WordPress today free.

You can download the files from Wordpress.org, or simply install it from your hosting account's control panel (cPanel) through a feature called Fantastico.

Here are five compelling reasons that set WordPress apart as a superior blogging application.

Choice and control

With WordPress, you own your own blog. Your blog is not dependent on a blogging service's hosting or publishing service. In fact, you can install as many WordPress installed blogs on your host accounts, across as many of your domains as you want, and you enjoy full ownership and control over them.

Here's a shocking but real-life fact. Google has the authority to close your Blogger account if they dislike your blogging practises, or find your blog crossing the lines of their Terms of Service.

I've had numerous discussions with Internet marketers who have had the bad fortune of having their Blogger accounts shut down, thus losing thousands of dollars a month in contextual advertising revenue. Even with repeated attempts to discuss the matter with Google/Blogger, they receive no follow-up regarding their account cancellations.

Now these Internet marketers are all advocates of blogging applications like WordPress, because they have full control and accountability over their blogs.

Cost effective

As mentioned before, WordPress is open source, which offers you a free blogging application to use today. As a result, you can install multiple blogs across your many domains without any concern of incurring costs.

Compared with other blogging applications like Typepad or MovableType (owned by SixApart) that charge a monthly fee for you to blog, WordPress is a free to use application.

Community

WordPress has a strong user and developer community, with comprehensive support and documentation.

With a strong user base, many of the "bugs" get worked out very quickly with revisions. Plus with so many users, there are many guides and workarounds featured on blogs created to help others in the community.

These developers create modules of code, called "plugins", which offer enhanced performance and functionality for your blog. There are many plugins available for free downloads from developer blogs.

Capabilities

Here are a few of the unique features that WordPress boasts:

a. Convenient 1-click install

Installing a WordPress blog is a cinch with its 1-Click Install feature offered via Fantastico in a cPanel hosting company's control panel.

b. Convenience in customizing templates, themes and colors

Easily edit a WordPress blog's templates and colors via cascading style sheets (CSS), that work aside from the blog's main code, so that a change to the CSS enables those changes across the entire site.

In addition, there are many talented creative developers in the WordPress community who create themes or design layouts that enable you to switch your blog's theme with the ease of 1-click. Simply upload the designers' theme, and activate it in your WordPress blog's Presentation Theme control panel.

c. Customize blog directories to "ping"

Pinging is a notification to blog directories that your blog has a new page addition, and encourages them to visit your blog and index it into its database.

Blogger sets a default ping to only one blog directory. This limits your automatic notification for pinging.

In comparison, WordPress offers you a Notification Panel that you can insert additional blog directories to "ping". This offers you a wider base - you're indexed by a host of blog directories - which helps in one-way links to your blog, and expands the exposure of your blog.

d. Connection times

When you're blogging with Blogger, you're dependent on their servers for publishing your posts. Because of the vast number of bloggers using their network, publishing times can slow down to a crawl.

However, publishing with WordPress is reliant on your own host company's server - which is typically much faster. Blogging with WordPress offers almost no wait time, and speeds up your blog publishing.

e. Categories and sub-categories

Categories offer you the links in the side navigation to provide sections that your visitors can click on.

One major frustration with Blogger is a lack of a categorization or sub-categorization feature. To offer links in the sidebar navigation, one has to wade in code to add it manually.

With WordPress, categories come standard. Simply add categories and sub-categories for easy organization and usability for your blog.

f. Comment capabilities

A comment is a feature that encourages your visitors to offer feedback or participate in a discussion about your postings. This feedback gives you an immediate connection with your visitors, and this platform helps you to determine how to serve the needs of your audience more effectively.

With WordPress, you can choose to either receive comments or not. Plus, there are features to help filter comment spam, which is a nuisance when comment spam software or services automatically enter irrelevant comments on your blog to receive links back to their blogs.

As a result of comment spam filtering, you can spend your precious time on productive activities instead of dealing with blog comment spam.

g. Cash-generating flexibility

Marketers and business people consider tools such as the WordPress blogging application with respect to how well these tools serve them to reach their desired outcomes - one of which is to generate profit.

With WordPress, you can easily add contextual advertising like Google Adsense or Yahoo Publishers Network ads. In addition you can add links to affiliate merchants, and also promote your own product and service offerings.

Summary

In summary, this report proves that blogging with WordPress is cost-effective, offers you choice, control, access to a community of users, support, and gives you a host of capabilities to help you save time, save money, while helping you generate revenue.

I encourage you to give blogging with WordPress a test drive on a test domain, or try it on one of your main domain's sub-directories. If you're using cPanel hosting, try the 1-Click install of WordPress. Be courageous in playing with it - it's fun and can lead to a very productive activity.

Sherman Hu is Head Blogging Instructor at WordPressTutorials.com. If you'd like a step-by-step video instructional guide, visit WordpressTutorials. There are 5 volumes of video instruction spanning topics on installing, customizing, utilizing and marketing your WordPress blog. In addition, the Community Central forum offers continued support for your many questions. Lastly, there is a Monthly Blog Review feature that comes standard with your membership, which offers you a monthly, one-on-one, 15-minute web conference session with Sherman Hu. This value-added privilege offers you custom help and support for your journey into blogging with WordPress.

7 ways to use blogging to increase your affiliate income

2006-09-08T07:11:00.000+08:00

By Tinu Abayomi-Paul

How business blogging can increase your profits

Can you use a blog to help you increase your affiliate income? Of course you can. Blogs can be used by businesses of any size to enhance the overall value of a site to its visitors, not to mention increasing its traffic.

Here are a few ideas you can use to create a blog that helps you sell.

1. Use your blog as a traffic generator for your lead capture page.

One clear advantage that a blog has over other ways to manage content is that there are specific website traffic opportunities open to it that you just can't get for a static commercial site.

When you start using those methods, link from every page to your lead capture page and build your list at the same time.

2. Use your blog to create a resource site and multiply your income streams.

If you're really serious about blogging, you can end up building a resource site. Going over a few hundred pages happens fairly quickly if you blog a lot, and when the girth of your site increases at about the same rate as its quality, guess what?

Your site is now a resource site, which has many advantages. People are more apt to link to you, search engines may favor your site, and the mass of your site becomes so overwhelming on a first visit, that it makes sense to your new visitors to subscribe so they won't miss anything.

You can also get away with joining several affiliate programs and link to them from all from your site, as well as in your ezine. The trick is to know how to set it up so that you won't be overwhelming your audience with choices. As we all know, a confused prospect doesn't buy, they go away.

3. Optimize your blog and get better search engine traffic.

While it's true that if you pick the right topic, format, and update systems for your blog, your ability to get traffic from search engines will be a lot easier, there are certain tricks to the trade that can increase your traffic from search engines, and your traffic, exponetially.

4. Be a good blogizen and comment on or about other blogs in your neighborhood.

You don't want to comment or use trackback (a kind of remote commenting) to place links back to your site on other blogs. In fact, that's really just a side benefit. The real return on your time investment will be in networking with other people in similiar markets. These valuable connections are worth a lot more than a one-time link back.

5. Lead the conversation with helpful, linkworthy and newsworthy posts.

Anyone can install WordPress and start blogging, and that's part of the peril. People who become successful bloggers, whether that success comes in popularity or cash, are the people who create unique content, in diverse areas, on topics that people are interested in.

6. Get closer to your audience, and let them tell you what they'll buy.

I had an experiment at my blog recently where I asked my readers what kind of product they'd like to see from me. They told me exactly what to create and how much they'd pay for it.

If you're selling products that are already created by someone else, you can still do this. You have expertise and tools that other people don't know how to use, don't have time to learn, or would rather pay someone else who has figured it out for them.

Save those people time and money, and they'll keep coming back.

7. Combine the forces of your ezine, RSS, and your blog.

Not only can you bring people into your blog via the power of RSS, you can also use your blog and RSS feed to cycle traffic between various other parts of your site, and as we mentioned before, to increase the traffic to your newsletter.

Blogging also increases the points of entry to your site, and helps you organize the topics that are related to your product. With this organization, you can also use a blog to funnel different types of visitors to various autoresponders you have set up for any number of related products.

If you are promoting products that aren't of the same vein, however, you'll want to create several blogs to cater to each audience for best results.

Blogging is for every type of business - it's the strategy and implementation that varies. Use your blog wisely and it can enhance your income in unlimited ways.

You can learn more about blogging free at RescueYourBlog.com.

Finding The Right Blog Template

2006-09-06T07:37:00.000+08:00

By Keith Mallinson

A blog template is the format in which the blog will appear and how it can be used. If you are designing your website and want to include a blog, you will want to choose something that will serve your needs and not just look good on the page. You first need to decide the use your blog will serve.

Will you use the blog to communicate with customers? Will you use it more of a log to track your thoughts and new ideas? Regardless of what you use it for, you will want to find a blog template that suits your needs.

Finding this blog template is not going to be hard. More then likely you will find so many that you won't know which to choose. In order to find a blog template that's right for you, find a website that has them and browse. There is no better way to find what you want then to see one working. How is it set up? Do you like the initial appearance? Do you like how it works? Is it easy to use?

When you have found something you like and know what your looking for, take a tour of the many sites that offer blogs and different templates. You can often find several for free on most sites. Take your time to find the blogger that offers the best solution to satisfy your needs and wants. Doing all of these things can lead to the perfect blog for your website.

Keith Mallinson is author of the article exchange newsletter, offering subscribers up to date information on all aspects of article submissions and use of free articles for search engine optimization http://www.article-exchange.com

Blogophobia, also Known as the Fear of Blogging

2006-09-04T07:42:00.000+08:00

By Michelle Bery

We’ve talked about blogging and though it’s not my only subject of which to converse, it is certainly a fun one. Many people are concerned, or, downright afraid of blogging. But the best way to face your fear is to face it.

What are your blog fears?

First of all, what are you worried about? Are you concerned that you will simply humiliate yourself? Or perhaps give away Auntie Em’s secret blueberry pie recipe by mistake and be ostracized by your family and friends forevermore? Or are you simply not that computer literate?

What ever the case, I have some really nurturing advice my mother would have told me, rest her soul… “Buck up”. Yes. I am not going to deal with your “wah wah” attitude at all. You need to realize that you need a blog, not just “want” a blog but need a blog. If you can’t deal with figuring out which keys on the keyboard to hit, and which way to write and which way to market and which way to get people to even care that you have a blog; well then you better start looking for someone who isn’t a like you; ie, a professional.

This does not mean your nephew because he knows “how” to blog. You need someone who is truly a professional who can market you and you can put your trust in their hands.

Secondly, consider getting a blog that has a point. Too many times, a blog has no purpose. If you just want to talk, well that is great and I bet you can still make money with ads and such, but it’s so much better to have a clue, you know? Have an idea, have a business in mind to help yourself.

I mean, someone that you hire can help you and be a sort of underwriter so to say, but you have to have an idea in your pretty or handsome little head on what exactly your accountability will be, correct? So, what is it that you simply would love to do with yourself? What is your dream, and what goals do you have? Do you have any micro-goals that can help you get off your backside and really take that chance and start a business?

The longer you sit and hem and haw, the more someone else is probably taking ideas that could have been yours, customers that could have been yours and money that could be yours. In fact, the other readers of this are practically stealing from you! Don’t stand by and be a victim!

Another thing you can do is try to blog a bit and simply do NOT let anyone know. Practice practice practice. If you tell no one, you will be in private. It isn’t a risk really, or a throw of the dice; but a smooth business move that you should seriously think about perfecting, thinking through and getting over that darn Blogophobia.

Do not be annoying. Be real. If you want to sell something, you want to be real. Don’t try to be someone you are not-because nothing is more annoying than falsehood.

If you feel like your Blogaphobia is going away, good. Maybe you are seeing that there is nothing to fear. Just have a passion and a dream, have goals, own up if you need to hire someone to help you get your goals and dreams to fruition, and most importantly, be real. If you hire someone, do NOT try to pretend you are more confident than you are. The professional really usually knows you have some key fears, and you need to have an open communication to have a true business partnership.

Stand up. It’s like any other meeting. Now. I mean it. Stand up. Or at least sit straight.

”I am (insert your name) and I have Blogaphobia.” Good. You are on the right path. Now stop the pity party and get a blog. Can you tell me what your blog is when you get it? I’d love to comment :-)

Michelle is a bona fide professional blogger. If you're aiming for six figure online profits then you NEED her fresh, upbeat advice! Read the full version of this article here.

How to Profit from your Home Business Blog

2006-08-31T17:05:00.000+08:00

by: Ian Canaway
How to Profit from your Home Business Blog

A blog is a simple tool which all affiliate marketers should be utilising to explode their affiliate sales.

I set up my blog in about 15 minutes at http://www.blogger.com/ it’s a completely free service, and it’s really easy to set-up. I followed directions on an excellent article on getting a new website listed in Google in 48hrs check it out here, http://www.scamfreezone.com/gg/ . I just followed the advice in the article and got started with no problems in no time.

I've been doing a lot of research with regards to blogging and came across a case of a 19 year old kid who was making something ridiculous like $50,000 a year with a blog on mobile phones, from his bedroom! So clearly there is a good earning potential through blogs, but they do take time to grow and build up a readership. Treat your blog as a marathon not a sprint, because it will take time.

Blogs provide a very simple, quick and easy means to add fresh content to your website. As I’m sure you’ve heard many times over ‘content is king’ in the search engines eyes and if you can provide high quality, regularly updated content your website should benefit with regards to your search engine ranking.

By providing fresh, high quality relevant content you will gain an increase of both first time visitors and repeat visitors, they will come back to check out your new content. Providing it’s interesting, relevant and useful to them. You will begin to build relationships with your readers, increasing your credibility and building their trust in you.

These repeat visitors will be exposed to your messages more and begin to trust you and your recommendations. This in turn will fuel sales and referrals. Just make sure you don’t recommend a product you haven’t tried because if it is bad you will lose all credibility!

Never recommend something you haven’t tried and tested your self.

You want to send traffic directly to your blog, do it through multi-dimensional strategies. Have a subscriber box for your newsletter to build your list from your blog. Use it as an exit pop-up from your main site or thank you page for new subscribers, directing them to relevant content immediately. As once your prospects have got to know you through the blog they are much more likely to explore your website and check out whatever you are offering.

Whenever you sign-up for an affiliate program or buy a product, review it in your blog and be brutally honest, your readers will love you for it. Take a completely unbiased view point and talk about both the positives and negatives of each product. In essence you are providing more of an insight into the product than the sales page itself, almost a sample, this will help convert those prospects that are ‘sitting on the fence’ so to speak. Obviously when you review your affiliate products, make sure that you use your affiliate links.

It has been shown that prospects are 7-10 times more likely to buy from a blog recommendation than from other sources!

Other ways that you can generate extra income through your blog are through the Google ad sense program, selling banner/link space as your traffic increases or as I mentioned earlier by adding you own opt-in sign up form to which you send your newsletter or other targeted offers.

Your blog can be syndicated using RSS, which I won’t go into here, that’s another article. But savvy webmasters can use your blog content on their web pages. This benefits them as they have regularly updated fresh content for their website and benefits you through increased exposure and free targeted traffic.

Be passionate about your blog, love your blog. If you do not then it will become obvious through your posts and you are unlikely to be anywhere near as successful as you could be.

Add to your blog regularly provide good quality content and reviews and you will be on your way to blogging success.

“A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one at all would find fault with what he has done”. -- Cardinal Newman

Get that blog started today!

(Feel free to use this article online and in your email newsletters as long as you leave it intact and do not alter it in anyway. The byline and biography must remain in the article.)

Resource Box:
Ian Canaway is the owner of http://www.asuccesfullhomebusiness4u.com/ and you are invited to come and have a look round his new home business blog at http://ahomebusinessblog4u.blogspot.com/ For home business tips, advice and product reviews. Happy Blogging!

How To Boost Traffic To Your Blog: SEO for Bloggers

2006-08-26T17:13:00.000+08:00

How to use keywords as a SEO technique
What to consider when you choose blog templates
How to construct your blog search engine friendly
Ping your blog

How to use keywords as a SEO technique?

As long as SEO is concerned, the keyword comes at front line. You have to find the target keyword/keywords or niche keywords.

What to do with the keyword/keywords? Please read on.....

Enter keywords in your blog name: If you named your blog for example, "Ryen's blog", it's not a good idea in the view of SEO. Instead name your blog something like "keyword blog". You need to substitute "keyword" with your "target keyword", for example "mountain bike blog", if your blog is about mountain bike.

Enter keywords of your post in title tag: Actually most of bloggers don't need to concern about "title tag" because most of blog hosting applications such as blogger, typepad, wordpress, movable type, drupal, etc... care this for you. But you have to use the keyword in your title and then they will include it in the title tag for you.

Enter keywords in meta description tag, if possible: This may be difficult for most of bloggers because most of blog hosting system don't support this. If this is your case, don't bother with this. To make it possible is almost impossible for the people like me who are not techie at all. But don't worry there is other solution: care your first sentence of the first paragraph.

Enter keywords in the first sentence: Nowadays many SEO experts say that most of search engines don't look meta description tag. Instead they look for the few words in the first sentence. So care your first sentence to include the keywords, make it fit to describe your whole post and attractive.

Repeat your keywords in your post: With this an English grammar teacher may not be happy. But as long as SEO is concerned, it's necessary: frankly to say, you have to. General rule says the keyword density should be about 2-3% of whole words in your post.

You may complain "heck, how do I know keyword density." Well, you don't need to count it manually. There is a free tool to check the keyword density. And actually I don't even check it all the time. I just keep in mind 2-3% and check only for some posts that I think worth checking. Having this in mind, the free tool is here. Type the URL of your post, keyword and click "analyze" button. It'll return you the keyword density of your post. If the keyword density is too low, consider repeat the keyword more but don't repeat too much (more than 3%)

Use your keyword in your blog domain: This improves the ranking of your blog and hence more traffic come to you. If your blog is about "anniversary gift", for example, include it in your domain name so that your blog domain looks like "anniversary-gift.yourhost.com"

Use your keyword in the link title: Many blogger don't know about this!

Which one do you think better, "anniversary gift" or "anniversary-gift.your host.com" as your link title? The former is better. The reason? Because search engines value more. So keep in mind that whenever you get link try to enter your keywords in the link title.

Enter keywords in your file name: When you save your blog, use your keyword.

Which one is better, "mypost98.html" or "anniversary-gift-how-to-choose.html"? This time the latter is better because it includes keywords and hence get better chance to be listed in high rank in search engine.

Enter keyword in alt tag: If you use images in your post, don't forget to put your keyword in alt tag. A 2 cent-tip related to this is that if your Google Adsense doesn't seem to show matching ads with your content, check your alt tag. Maybe it's because you put unrelated words in alt tag.

What to consider when you choose blog templates?

Certainly there is a search engine friendly blog templates. To know whether your blog template is search engine friendly designed, go to Crawler simulation (It's free.) Enter your blog URL and then it'll show you how it looks like when a search engine spider visits your blog site. If you see a lot of html code or java scripts before you see main content, it means your blog is not well designed in the point of search engine optimization. There is a way to hide unnecessary code from spiders, using CSS or div class "hide". Try to make your title tag immediately after head tag and to show up your body content as near to head tag as possible.

How to construct your blog search engine friendly?

Make your blog site structure as simple as possible. This may not be a big issue for bloggers because unless a blogger can design her/his blog system, they have to use a default system. What I mean by this is that most of blog system make permalink be for example, "www.blogcom.com/user/archive/year/month/date/apost.html". See how far the final "apost.html" is from root. It's 5 step further. This is not so good in terms of search engine optimization. You can reduce those steps but you only can do so one or two step because database recognition is concerned behind this story. So the bottom line is that try to make your blog simple but if it's not possible, focus on writing good content. I observed many top bloggers have a bit complicated permalink system yet have lots of traffic.

But if you can make your blog structure simpler without problem, please do so because it is much better for the reader and search engine as well.

Ping your blog

Do you ping? Many pongs will come,then. :-) This may not be an issue if you're using Movable Type, WordPress, Typepad, or Drupal 4.6.0. But consider pinging to Ping-o-Matic!, if your system is not configured to do so. Because it pings to most of important blog search engines and directories in one spot. If your blog application doesn't support to ping automatically to "Ping-o-Matic!", you can do so manually by visiting Ping-o-Matic! Once you type your blog name, blog URL, check where to ping and click "submit ping" button, and don't forget to bookmark. It gives you a convenience because you don't need to type blog name, URL and check where to ping again.

By pinging you make search engine spider crawl you more frequently and make your reader notified faster.

So far you have the most important SEO techniques for your blog. Say, how to use your keywords and where to enter, search engine friendly blog template design, structure and finally ping to "Ping-o-Matic!"
But one thing is missing!

Get inbound links!

Probably it is as important as your blog itself! You can read about this at Traffic to Blog: Part 4

About the Author

Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of Blog Sites and running Hom Based Affiliate Business web site.

How to Boost Traffic to Your Blog:Keyword Research

2006-08-21T17:37:00.000+08:00

by: Ryen Kim

How to use keyword research as traffic building method?

If you are serious to make money from blog, you must think about keyword before you write. And use that keyword repeatedly (more frequently than your high school English grammar teacher would say "it's a good English.") in your blog.

Why you have to use a keyword?

Using keyword in your blog is one of powerful ways to bring traffic to your blog. Why? It's simple. People search using keywords to look for information. If your blog includes those keywords, they will find your blog from the search engine result page and will come to you to find the information they were looking for. But is that really simple like that? Not exactly. Two things must be considered.

The keyword you're using must be related to your blog topic. When you're blogging about 'racing car' for example, if you use 'basketball' as a keyword, it won't help you bring the traffic. Moreover, if the visitor came to you to find information about 'basketball', he will leave your blog having bad impression on you because he couldn't get any relevant information from your blog.

So, the rule number 1 is to use the keyword related to your topic.

Suppose you discovered high demand keyword (a keyword many people uses) related to your blog topic, does using that keyword guarantee you a lot of traffic? What if many bloggers are talking about similar topic using that keyword? If so, although many searchers use that keyword, probably they'll go to other bloggers who are ranked more highly in the search engine than you.

The point is that you have to find the keyword that has high demand but a few supply. In other word, you have to find 'niche keyword.'

How to find the 'niche keyword'?

It's two fold. First, find the demand and then the supply.

How to find the demand of the keyword?

Use a keyword search tool. I found Search It is handy and best of it's free. A con is that an additional promotion page provided by SBI (Site Build It) will be open. But you can close it and that doesn't harm you from using search tool, Search It.

Here is a short introduction on how to use "Search It!"

Once you get through Search It, you will see Search It! window which has 4 boxes. Suppose you want to talk about 'car',
- choose 'Brainstorming' at step 1 box in the "Search It" window,
- choose 'overture suggestion' at step 2 box
- type 'car' (without quote) at step 3 box
- click 'Search It!' button (you may notice that there is step 4, but you don't need to fill it at this stage. If you try write something the program will tell you that you don't need to choose at this time.)
- then a leading page will be open, which explains the technique you are using. Click 'Please .....results.' link to see the result.
- the resulting page looks something like,
  
  Count SearchTerm
  
  3467549 car
  
  1914166 car insurance
- You see the number in Count column? That's the demand of the keyword.
- You also notice that other search terms are shown in the result page. Save this keywords and count somewhere, in case you have to refer it later.
How to know the supply of the keyword?
- For this end, you don't need any other tools. Just go to Google, Yahoo or whatever search engine you like and type car in the search box.
- Look upper right bar of the search result page and you can find something like "Results 1 - 10 of about 301,000,000 for ''car". The number '301,000,000' is the approximated number of supply. For sure, not all of them are blog, but realize that if you talk about car you're just 1 out of 301,000,000. This means that you may not pick up "car" as your keyword and choose other topic if you want many visitors to find your blog from the search engine. This is why you need to save above demand table somewhere.
- Now that you know the topic "car" is too competitive, the next thing you can do is to find the number of supply for other keywords from the table you saved. Continue this step until you find less competitive keywords.
You may choose several keywords and use them in your blog. But remember that if you post a short blog, it's better to focus on only one keyword. If it's long, you may choose primary and secondary keyword.

To sum up,
- Use Search It to find reasonable demand of the keyword related to your blog.
- Check the number of supply from a search engine, for example, Google.
- Choose the keywords that have high demand and low supply.
- Finally use that keyword in your blog repeatedly with the frequency of a bit more than your high school English teacher would tell you.
You may want to know how to write so that you can increase traffic, which is the topic of how to boost traffic to your blog: part 2. You can read it at Traffic to Blog:Part 2.
About the Author
Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of Blog Sites and running Hom Based Affiliate Business web site.

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs

2006-08-16T09:13:00.000+08:00

by: Priya Shah

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page. But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.

Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews/

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.

I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal.
http://www.blogrolling.com

But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.

Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

* Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog. Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

* Link Exchanges:

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

* Trackbacks:

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.
http://www.haloscan.com

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

* Comments:

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. Update frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.

Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.

You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.

For more ways of building traffic to your blog, read the article "How To Build Traffic To Your Blog." http://www.blog-maniac.com/build-blog-traffic.htm

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Priya Shah publishes an internet marketing ezine at http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com by day and doubles as a Blog Maniac by night http://www.blog-maniac.com Blog Brandz http://www.blogbrandz.com is the legitimate offspring of her affair with the blogosphere.

A Free Blog and Make Money Too

2006-08-14T01:05:00.000+08:00

By Jim DeSantis

It's true! You can have a Free Blog and Google will pay you for allowing them to run Ads on your blog. You make money every time someone clicks an Ad, even if they don't buy anything.

I now have 14 blogs, created with very little "techie" knowledge in less than 60 hours of work, each on a specific self-help topic. I started on may 14, 2006. My "On Line Tribune Self Help Newspaper" has many articles, courses, and ebooks, Free and I add new FREE stuff almost everyday . I can tell you, for the most part, once you get past the learning curve, it's fairly easy to do. Look, I'm 63-years old. Don't let your age stand in your way. You can do this too!

A blog is your own address in cyberspace where you can post your comments, ideas, plans, loves, hassles, or pet peeves to share with the world - and - the world will talk back to you! I invite you to take a few minutes and browse the sections of my blog to get an idea of what I have done so far.

What could your blog be about? For example: I told my daughter that she should start a blog on Home Birthing or Midwifery. She does this for a living in Vermont and knows all the inside information. She did it and now has people seeking out her insight. Get the idea? You choose what your blog topic is.

On Line Tribune gives you the most helpful Free resources, that's right, FREE RESOURCES to get you started. My blogs are Free from http://www.blogger.com/start

I learned a lot about the technical stuff by joining Google Groups. Bloggers ask each other questions and learn together and learn from experienced bloggers who teach you how to avoid making mistakes. It cuts down the learning curve significantly! Yes, it's FREE.

Once you build your blog, make sure you add plenty of content. Content is articles by you, or others, that will draw the Search Engines to your blog. A Search Engine got you here didn't it?

If this sounds too complicated, don't worry, be happy! Check it out. Remember - it's totally Free.
Jim DeSantis is a 15 year veteran of investigative reporting. He runs a Self Help Newspaper, On Line Tribune, featuring 14 sections packed with Free articles, courses, and ebooks on a variety of topics dealing with daily life. You are invited to submit your opinion on this or on any other topic to Jim's blog. If accepted, your opinion will be published as a Featured Article.

Want your Free Blog right now? Go to iBlogger.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_DeSantis

How To Choose a Popular and Profitable Theme For Your Blog

2006-08-13T01:15:00.000+08:00

By Catherine Gilmore

Choosing a popular and profitable theme for your blog will determine whether or not you are able to stay in business for an extended period of time. While narrowing down the theme from a list of themes can be a fairly scientific process, choosing the themes on that list to begin with is considerably more experential.

If you're planning to market your own products, you may want to start by finding a need, rather than looking at data. For instance, do you know of a pressing need that many people have?
Could you provide some sort of substantive solution to that need? If so, would a blog be the appropriate means though which to provide that solution? Something might come to mind immediately, but if it doesn't, you can proceed with data-analysis as a means of choosing a popular and profitable theme for your blog.

You can start by using a program like WordTracker to begin choosing a popular and profitable theme. WordTracker will allow you to view a list of the 100 or 1000 most searched topics on the Internet.

You can then break this list down into smaller pieces. For instance, if number 10 on the list is “cars” and you have some sort of an interest in cars, you can then take the keyphrase “cars” and search for it on Wordtracker using overture pay-per-click results and demand/supply analysis called “KEI.”

This will tell you two things: it will tell you approximately how hard it is to penetrate your niche; and it will tell you roughly how much money people are making in your niche. For instance, if pay-per-click amounts are high and have a lot of bid competition, that means that people are making a lot of money in your niche, which is why they are purchasing advertising for large sums of money per click. It also means that you can potentially make a lot of money for serving ads for these advertisers via Adsense and YPN.

And there you have it: through data-analysis and need-analysis, you can begin the process of choosing a popular and profitable theme for your blog. If the topic you select is popular, has a good KEI rating, and has a high PPC rating, you know you have a winner.
Finally! Now You - Or Anyone,Can Make Money From Every Post You Write Through Monetizing Your Blogs For Abundance Of Profits! Click here for details.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Catherine_Gilmore

Communal Blogging - Who Will Win?

2006-08-10T04:26:00.000+08:00

by: Jon Watson
My recent quest to understand and implement trackback on my blog has left me with more questions than answers. It seems that in an attempt to bring relevant blog entries together, there are (surprise, surprise) competing technologies.

First there is the issue of bringing relevant blog entries together. What's the point and should we bother?

I believe that although blogging is primarily a sole pursuit, the ability for people to comment, refute, correct, or admire a blog entry more deeply than a simple commenting system allows is the next step in making blogging more meaningful, and possibly more accountable.

So how do we do it?

The three main players (it seems, feel free to add someone if I've missed them) seem to be Technorati (http://www.technorati.com), Haloscan (http://www.haloscan.com), and native blog commenting systems.

Technorati seems to be popular amongst the established blogging community - the users who understand the Technorati 'Cosmos' and what it means. I think that Technorati is deliberately vague about what their system does and how it does it as there is no documentation that I can find on the Technorati site (other than an 'About' page obviously written by a marketer). I assume that the name Technorati is a play on the word Illiminati which perhaps gives us a hint to Technorati's lack of explanation on how they work. Maybe we're just supposed to 'get it'. While Technorati seems solid and has a large subscriber base, I think (again, no documentation) that only Technorati subscribers are considered part of the 'Cosmos'. There are millions of blogs out there that aren't participating in, and therefore not accounted for by, Technorati.

I just ran across Haloscan yesterday and implemented their trackback system into my blog. Haloscan offers a central commenting and trackback facility for any type of web page, not just blogs. The idea is that the comments and trackbacks of a page are kept in one central repository rather than scattered all over the blogsphere on each individual blog. When considering blogs specificially, I don't see the logic in this. Since all comments must reside somewhere - what's the difference between having them reside on my blog or on some other server? Unlike trackback, I think all blogware supports comments.

The trackback part is interesting because it actually provides a service to people (like me) who don't have trackback available natively on their blogware. It works well, has some features such as moderation, and generally provides what it promises. The only change I would like to see is the ability to implement the trackback code right into my page rather than having it in a pop up window. I really like the commenting/trackback ping layout of Blizza Blizza (http://www.chrislawson.net/blog).

I also ran across a somewhat related technology called Gravatar (http://www.gravatar.com) which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. As near as I can tell, the idea is that you upload a small 80x80 avatar and then Gravatar supplies you with the link to that image. You can then use that image anywhere on the web that you wish. It's a neat idea: creating a sense of continuity for users between blogs and websites, but in the end - it's just a small bit of webspace. Anyone with a blog can probably upload an avatar and use it in the same fashion.

Finally, the last little bit of magic is Google. Google has many 'operators' and one of them is the 'link' operator. Typing 'link: www.somesite.com' into Google will reveal all the sites on the Internet that link to somesite.com. The data returned by Google for my site is much more extensive than Technorati, but it is also very out of date. I know I am linked to (by using Technorati and by discovering it through surfing) yet many of these links do not show up on Google.

So which technology will win, if one does at all? I'm in favour of trackback. It's easy, all the big blog platforms support it, and it has a good format. By that I mean that a typical trackback entry contains a 200-ish word summary of the entry so a visitor can decide whether they want to bother reading the whole entry before clicking on it. As well it breeds inter-linking between blogs of a like nature, or at least between blog entries of a like nature.

Just because I like it doesn't mean trackback is going to win, there are problems with it. Roy - the administrator of a large blogging site called Tabulas (http://www.tabulas.com) - for example, feels that even if he were to implement it natively on Tabulas that very few users would have the technical savvy to figure out how to use it properly, and most users wouldn't bother with it at all. Roy knows his stuff when it comes to blogging, so perhaps he's not only correct - but also echoing the sentiments of many blogware authors.

I guess only time will tell, but for now I'm hoping for trackback as the victor in this little skirmish.

About The Author

Jon is an Internet observer and technology enthusiast. He holds a diploma in Computer Information Systems, has spent time sailing the world in the Canadian Navy, and has been actively web developing and blogging for several years.

http://www.theheatsinkbbs.ca

heatsink@theheatsinkbbs.ca

Should Bloggers be Helping Google Fix Their Page Rank System?

2006-08-08T04:23:00.000+08:00

by: Linda J Bruton
By now, most bloggers have heard the announcement that the Big 3 search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN - have united in support of a new tag that will supposedly combat comment spam. The new tag is a nofollow attribute that can be added to links. When added to links in comment tags, the search engines will ignore them.

An excellent discussion of this new tag and how it works can be found at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728

Google announced the new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/

And Microsoft added their support to the new tag in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx

At first blush, anything that can help cut down the comment spam that most bloggers are daily subjected to would seem to be a good thing. It can be pretty upsetting to access your blog in the morning and find 50 junk comments with links to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your blog has any PageRank, you can expect to find more of this garbage polluting your site every day. Fighting the spread of comment spam has become a necessity.

But after first cheering the proactiveness of the search engines, many bloggers have stepped back and taken a closer look and they don't like what they see. You can read a sampling of their thoughts at Search Engine Watch Forum:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3797

Brian Turner's incisive article "New Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but Fails Blogs" discusses some of the potential abuses of the new nofollow tag:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2005/01/new_nofollow_ta.html

And Jim Pryke's article "Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search Rankings Plummet" makes it very clear that not only will this NOT stop comment spam. But it will actually hurt bloggers as a community:
http://netinstitute.com/archives/2005/01/20/bloggers-cheer-google-as-their-search-rankings-plummet

For an hilarious take on the new tag and how it will get abused, be sure to take a look at Link Condom: http://www.linkcondom.com

I have to agree with these bloggers that the nofollow tag won't even put a dent in the problem of comment spam. You have to realize that the comment spammers who cause the most problems are the ones who use automated bots to spread their spam onto every blog they find. The fact that they find a blog using the nofollow tag won't stop the bot from posting. If you have a popular blog, you'll still wake up every morning to find 50 casino/pharmacy/adult ads on your blog. You'll still have to spend the time deleting those posts to clean up your blog.

You see, the problem to bloggers isn't that those comment links pass PR. It's the fact that those spam posts make your blog look like garbage. Whether the links pass PR or not isn't the big issue for bloggers. It's the time it takes to get rid of unwanted comments and the detraction to their sites. The nofollow tag won't do a thing about that problem. You'll still have the problems, even if you use the tag.

Think about this: how effective have email filters been in stopping email spam? As most of us know, they've hardly done any good at all. Email spam becomes a bigger problem every day. Spammers really don't care if some of their emails are blocked. They just send more of it to compensate. The same will be true of the automated comment spam bots.

The fact of the matter is, there are already much better tools in most blogging software to fight comment spam AND save the time and effort of the blogger at the same time. There are already a number of plugins for WordPress, Moveable Type, and other blogs. There will undoubtedly be more in the future. These tools are already more effective at fighting comment spam than this nofollow tag will ever be.

What is unfortunate is that the people the nofollow tag will really hurt is bloggers themselves. Traditionally, bloggers have read and commented in each other's blogs. And these comments have added value. When I write an article for my blog, I love it when other bloggers take the time to add their insights on the topic I'm discussing. These comments add content to my site and continue the discussion. This is one of the reasons blogs are so easy to grow into topic-specific information-rich sites that are popular with readers. Unlike static sites, they offer two-way communication between reader and blogger. They become communities.

When someone adds this kind of value to my blog, I am more than happy to give them a link to their blog that passes PR. That will help them build the readership of their own blog, grow the community even larger, and add to the richness of the discussion. These are exactly the kinds of links that any webmaster should want on their site!

Adding a nofollow tag to comments can only quash this discussion. It can only discourage commenters with the most to contribute from taking the time to add to the discussion. After all, if the time I spend on another blog doesn't contribute to the growth of the blogging community as a whole or aid in the visibility of my own blog, am I going to spend as much time and effort doing it?

Anything that decreases the open flow of discussion currently enjoyed in the blogging community is a bad deal for bloggers.

The question that should be asked is this: why is comment spam so profitable? After all, if it weren't profitable, so many people wouldn't be going to such ridiculous lengths to do it.

The answer to this is obviously Google's link-heavy PageRank algorithm that forces webmasters to get every link they can to get their site's indexed and ranked. Most webmasters know that in order to get ranked in Google, they had better have a ton of links to their site.

That's the problem with PageRank as an algorithm. It encourages artificial linking between sites that no longer has any relevance whatsoever to the goal of providing good resources to visitors. Do we really believe that most reciprocal link directories provide a resource to our visitors? Not likely! If websites are real estate, reciprocal link directories are the slums, the seedy bars and tattoo parlors on the edges of polite society.

Whole businesses have sprung up as a reaction to PageRank. I'm talking about the link auction and link selling sites. Under the PageRank system, sites aren't being ranked by who provides the best content, but by who has the deepest pockets to buy the most links. Or, in the case of comment spammers, whoever wants to spread their bots all over the internet spamming blogs. This system has over time totally skewed the natural linking between sites that once dominated the internet - the very thing that Google's PageRank system is supposed to reward.

Ironically, blogs are one of the few places left on the web where linking is actually about providing good content to visitors and rewarding value provided on other sites. Bloggers as a group are the most likely to link to sites because of the content value to their visitors. Their links are very likely to be very topic specific. You don't find that on other sites. These are the kinds of links that I would assume Google would want to encourage through their PageRank system, not those junky reciprocal link directories or purchased links.

It would seem to me that the only effective way to cut down on comment spam and all the artificial linking techniques Google purportedly wants to thwart is not by making life harder for bloggers - the very people who link in the most relevant fashion. But at taking a second look at their own PageRank system and whether it is really serving the usefulness of their own search engine and the whole web in 2005.

About The Author

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com.

How to Get Started Blogging in 5 Minutes or Less

2006-08-06T04:21:00.000+08:00

by: Linda J Bruton
I put off starting a blog for a long time because I thought it would be hard. I thought it would be technical. I thought I'd have to install scripts and tear my hair out getting them to work. At that point, most of what I'd read about blogs and RSS was just so much geek-speak.

Was I ever wrong!

When I finally got the courage to give it a go, I went to blogger.com and signed up for an account. To my amazement, I had a blog set up in about 5 minutes. My first post was uploaded to my site about 10 minutes later.

The only thing even remotely technical I was required to do was enter the FTP settings for the website my blog would be published on. But even that wasn't a requirement. With Blogger, you can set up a blog on their site, Blogspot, and not even worry about FTP settings.

Since then, I've started 3 Blogger blogs on different sites. Blogger remains one of the most popular blog applications in the world simply because it is so simple to use and set up. If you're a technophobe or don't have the time to learn something completely new, I would urge you to drop by Blogger.com and take a look. You could be blogging - and enjoying the benefits - almost immediately.

Another very simple blogging tool is Wordpress. This blog is my first Wordpress blog, and I'm very impressed with how powerful it is - as well as simple.

Wordpress is installed on your own website, but don't let that stop you. Most hosts that have Cpanel already have Wordpress ready for you to install. Look in your Cpanel for the Fantastico application, click it open, and then choose Wordpress to install. It will automatically install it on your site for you, and you can start blogging right away.

If your host doesn't already include Wordpress in the scripts on your server, you can still pick it up at:

http://wordpress.org/

Then go to the Wordpress Wiki for instructions on how to install it in 5 minutes:

http://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=5MinuteInstallation

Wordpress is free, open-source software. It is very simple to install, even for technophobes, and has a lot of online documentation. There are also many sites with free Wordpress add-ons and templates. I'm using a template for this blog that I picked up at Alex King's site:

http://www.alexking.org/index.php?content=software/wordpress/styles.php

The Wordpress Wiki is a wealth of information on all things Wordpress, including installation instructions, help files, a long list of template sites, and all kinds of hacks and extras you can use to modify your blog and make it original.

If you're a Wordpress user, another place to visit is the Wordpress discussion forum:

http://wordpress.org/support/

If you're a new blogger, both Wordpress and Blogger are very user friendly. There isn't a long learning curve. And you won't have to learn any new technical tricks. Why not give one of them a try?

About the Author

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to
visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else)
http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

RSS for Bloggers

2006-08-04T04:20:00.000+08:00

by: Judy Webb
While syndication has many applications, we will deal
specifically with its use for blog content and some
technical information will be included at the end of this
article.

If you have any interest in blogs or weblogs as a publishing
format, then you have undoubtedly come across the term
R.S.S.

Under normal conditions, the content of a web page is
limited to one domain, and the visitor to it. To allow the
use of content on a larger number of sites, syndication is
employed.

This is where RSS comes into the equation. A site owner or
blogger using his site as a pulpit for any number of topics
can make his content available via RSS. Once done, his
comments or content will be fed to the news aggregators for
syndication/delivery to those interested in such content.

What is RSS?
"RSS" stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site
Summary. It is a standard for publishing regular updates to
web-based content.

It is a simple technology for sharing and distributing
content like data, news headlines and other web page content
with other webmasters and users.

RSS is like email in that it is used to collect and deliver
content you have opted to receive. News aggregators collect
the "feeds"(syndicated content) from a blog and publish it.
If you have an RSS Reader you can subscribe to the ‘feed’
and receive current up to date content from your favorite
content source.

Using this standard, a blog owner/web publisher can provide
updates, such as the latest news headlines or weblog
postings to those interested in such content.

With RSS, the blog owner could update his/her readers with
new content and use RSS as a means of organizing his content
into a more accessible form to the benefit of anyone wishing
to use it.

Use it, not simply read it!

Uses for RSS:
Get your site listed in search engine and RSS directories.

Use RSS to update your websites with fresh, relevant content
- automatically - without writing a single word. You can
turn RSS feeds into customized HTML and display the feed on
your website.

One of the great benefits of displaying RSS news feeds on
your website is that it boosts your position in search
engines.

RSS will automatically notify the search engine spiders that
you've updated your website content.

RSS gives you a new marketing venue to display your ads,
messages, and news directly onto your subscriber’s desktop!
It will also build your credibility and Brand Name online –
with little effort!

With RSS: If your favorite sites have RSS feeds, you can
subscribe to those feeds in an RSS News Reader. The reader
will automatically check all the sites you've subscribed to
and show you new updated content when it is added.

Potentially hundreds of other websites can publish your news
and articles. This will provide free exposure and free
traffic as a consequence.

News Reader Search – Google search of RSS News
Readers

CaRP - Show
RSS feeds on your website (Freeware)

Grooper
- takes news search results, web pages, and more, and turns
them into RSS feeds. Once you have the data in RSS format,
you can view it with an RSS aggregator like NetNewsWire, or
use an RSS parser like CaRP to display it on a webpage.

Jawfish
- web service, which converts RSS to _JavaScript

A news aggregator is "software that periodically reads a set
of news sources, in one of several XML-based formats, finds
the new bits, and displays them in reverse-chronological
order on a single page.

RSS is a document format that is XML-based.

RSS feed or news feed is essentially a file in RSS format.

XML is a programming language and stands for Extensible
Markup Language derived from S.G.M.L. or Standard General
Markup Language.

A Parser is a computer program

Want to know more about blogging? Download Blogging_Some_Questions_Answered.pdf

About the Author

Judy Webb is a marketing strategy analyst with www.EmarketingExtreme.com
You may reprint this article if done in total, including the resource box

Should You Create a Website or Blog for Your Special Event?

2006-08-03T04:17:00.000+08:00

by: Rick Hendershot
by Rick Hendershot,
TradeShow-Display-Experts.com

This article was originally published in Trade Show Buzz.

A special "Event Website" might be a perfect way to promote your event. But is it worth the effort?

Let's say your company or group decides to hold a special event six or twelve months down the road. Eventually somebody on the planning committee will suggest the group create a special website for the event: "We can create an online registration form, include information about the special speakers and entertainment, post a schedule, and provide links to accommodation, travel agents, etc., etc."

Sounds like a good idea.

But how can you maximize the effectiveness of such a site? Will it be something that people actually refer to and use? Or will creating it just be a waste of time and effort? Do you have somebody in the group who can get this kind of site up and running quickly? Or will you have to defer to your already overworked company webmaster or the same creative volunteers who are always exploited for such projects?

And will anybody apart from a few select insiders (your committee members) actually be able to find the site once it is set up?

Some important issues to consider

Here are some of the more important issues to consider before you go ahead and create another website that nobody looks at.

1. Will its content be "deep" enough to make it more than just an online announcement? Many websites start out as good ideas, but quickly fizzle when their creators realize they don't really have much to say. In the case of event websites, the "depth" of a proposed site will depend on the event itself.

For instance, say your Agricultural Society is running a Fall Fair. Wouldn't an event site be ideal for providing details about competition categories, judging criteria, daily schedules of events, as well as online registration forms, entertainment highlights, and general program notes? In other words, an extended event of this sort provides lots of fodder for making a site "deep" enough to be a valuable resource for visitors and participants alike.

On the other hand if your committee is in charge of organizing a one night Fireworks Display, then chances are the program will be pretty light. There's not much need for a complete website. You would be better off just creating a web page or an announcement and asking the webmasters of relevant sites to give you some exposure.

Of course there are lots of events right in the middle between these two examples. Family Reunions, for instance. What could be better than a "Jones-05.org" site? You could include contact information, program descriptions, historical photos, comments from family members across the country...on and on it goes.

2. Should your "site" be part of another already existing one, or should you register a new domain specifically for your event?

Say you are organizing the 50th Anniversary Acme Widgets Company Picnic. The Company already has an active website -- www.acmewidgets.com. And the company website already has a skilled webmaster. Would it be better to ask your company webmaster to put your event in a directory on www.acmewidgets.com -- for example, www.acmewidgets.com/50th, or www.50th.acmewidgets.com? Or would you be better off to create a brand new "domain" just for the event -- something like www.acme50.com?

First of all, don't worry about the cost to create your own site. Yes, it does cost something to register a new domain and find a host. But these costs are insignificant in the larger scheme of things. You can register a ".com" domain for as little as $12.95 (per year), and an .info or .biz domain for as low as $7.95 or less. And hosting is very cheap as well. The standard these days is about $5.95 per month for a reliable host. Here is an inexpensive source for domains.

Much more important is whether or not your group has the know-how to actually create a website from scratch and then maintain it for a year or more. If you have an experienced web designer or webmaster on your committee he or she will probably be able to set the group up for next to nothing. If you don't, I suggest you find one before tackling the job. This is not the time for flying by the seat of your pants.

If you are able to find someone with the necessary skills, then it's a no-brainer. Go ahead. Register your own domain and build your own site. You won't have to beg your overly protective company webmaster for favors. And just as important, you will be able to register a memorable domain name that will help you in your promotional efforts. Which do you think would be easier to remember and find: www.acmewidgets.com/50th or www.acme50.com?

3. Should you create an Event Blog instead of a normal website? Or both?

Blogs have several advantages over "ordinary" websites. First, you do not need a dedicated domain name, or even space on an already existing site. You can create a perfectly satisfactory blog site on one of the free blog services such as Google's own blogspot.com.

Second, blog entries are usually easier to make than changes or updates to a normal website. Blog posts are made by using a web form. No knowledge of html is required (although it is helpful), and you do not have to use mysterious computer functions like "FTP" to "upload" your files to a server somewhere out in cyberspace.

Third, blogs have a more "happening" chatty feeling about them because they are generally less formal. You bang your posts off as regularly as you can. This allows you to issue regular updates to keep your readers informed as plans develop, schedules change, and so on.

Fourth, blogs have some advantages as far as "networking" and traffic generating are concerned. There are many directories where you can list your blog, and you can network with like-minded bloggers — other people interested in your subject matter. You can also use your blog to do some serious "power linking", as I outline in my series of articles called Power Linking with Blogs.

The down side is that a blog may not be the best place to keep your definitive schedules and descriptions of events — the ones you expect people to refer to as authoritative sources of information. This is more a matter of perception than reality. A blog is quite capable of being home to "static" information which you can readily update and provide links to. But the perception may be that this is transitory and changing.

Unlike most things, I don't know about this one ...I'm just speculating. :D

In the next post in this series I will offer some advice on getting traffic to your event website.

For more information about trade show and event marketing go to America-Banners.com or Display Graphics.

-- Rick

About the Author

Rick Hendershot is a marketing consultant operating out of Conestogo, Ontario, Canada. He publishes several websites and blogs, including Web Traffic Resources, Marketing Bites, SuperCharge Your Website with Power Linking, and many more.

Make Money Blogging Using These Nine Powerful Strategies

2006-08-01T04:15:00.000+08:00

by: Brandon Hong
I'm sure there are more creative ways to make money blogging, the ideas below are meant as a resource pool for you to draw from, and a launchpad to kickstart the thinking process of making money from blogging....

The question "How to make money blogging" sits high on every blogger's mind.

In fact I received many questions on "How to make money blogging" when I conducted my first webcast to answer my subscribers' most pressing questions on Blogs and Rss.

You can make money Blogging in a number of ways, and in this article I share with you up to nine ways in which you can make money blogging.

1. Make Money Blogging by Selling Advertising Space

Before the advent of Blogs, we have e-zines and selling advertising space on ezines was a popular way to earn extra money. If you run your own Blog, you can let others advertise in your Blogs with banner ads, solo ads, sponsor ads, classifieds and so on.

Now that we have Blogs, you can repeat the same business model that e-zine publishers do, that of selling advertising space.

One popular advertising company that helps Bloggers look for advertisers is Blogads (www.Blogads.com).

Besides placing advertisers ads on your Blog, you can also make money Blogging by placing Google Adsense into your Blog.

In my "Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS" Videos, I show you how you can customize your Blog template to include the Google Adsense into your Blog template so that you can make money blogging.

2. How to Make Money Blogging by providing technical services such as Blog hosting or setting up Blog

You can also earn money blogging by providing technical services such as helping people to set up their Blogs or providing your own Blog hosting service.

One example of this is www.typepad.com . This is a Blog hosting service provider that charges a monthly fee. Typepad lets you create your Blog and they will host your Blog for you, and provide you with a number of Blog features.

3. Make Money Blogging by setttin up joint venture marketing

Joint Venture marketing is a powerful marketing strategy employed by many top online marketers.

Basically how joint venture works is this:

You promote person B's products to your subscriber and customer list, and you get a cut from whatever sale that follows from this promotion.

You can apply the principle of joint venture marketing to Blogs as well. If you have a substantial readership to your Blog, you can also promote or endorse certain products to your Blog readers and this way, and split the profits from the sales generated.

This is another way to make money blogging.

4. How to Make Money Blogging from using the Membership model

Over time, if your blog has lots of postings and provide good quality content, you can consider turning it into a membership site and charge access for it, again giving you another avenu

5. Make Money Blogging by turning your Blog contents into products
Another way in which you can make money blogging is to repackage your Blog contents into an e-book or an audio product and sell it. For example, if you run your own Podcasting show or an 'online radio show', you can easily compile your podcast recordings into a CD compiliation and sell it.

6. How to make money blogging by swapping blogs

You've heard of ad swapping when it comes to e-zine publishing, where publishers publish each other's ads in their own e-zines. This way, you save on adveritising costs.

You can repeat the same model to Blogs, as swap ads on Blogs as well. So instead of paying up front, you get to save, which means more money for you to spend!

7. Make money blogging by turning blog contents into RSS feeds and sell it as premium feeds

Your blog contents can be turned into an RSS feed. If the content is good, you can look for web businesses that are looking for good content for related topics and sell their feed to them.

8. How to Make Money Blogging by well, asking!

Hey, who's stopping you from putting a PayPal donation jar or button on your Blog? After all, there are lots of generous people out there you know.

9. Make Money Blogging as an Affiliate Marketer

Another way you can make money blogging is by promoting other people's products on your Blog. This is also known as affiliate marketing.

In affiliate marketing, you get paid a commission when someone clicks on your affiliate link and makes a purchase. Depending on the subject of your Blog, you can recommend products that solve people's problems.

For example, I had a subscriber who asked me how she can blog about cats and make money from blogging about cats.

I shared with her that firstly, perhaps she might want to go niche instead of targeting the broad category of "cats", and using the example of a Persian cat, which is a niche by itself, she can start a blog on Persian cats, providing valuable information as well as recommended solutions and products to the upkeep and maintenance of Persian cats.

About the Author

Brandon Hong is the author of "Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS" Videos E-course and also "Blogs and RSS Revealed" comprising an Ebook and Audio webcast, that teaches businesses strategies of building more responsive buyers and increasing search engine rankings, using Blogs and RSS.
www.blogs-and-rss-revealed.com
www.marketing-rampage-with-blogs-and-rss.com

Avoid "Bad" Manners While Blogging

2006-07-31T04:14:00.000+08:00

by: Jim Edwards
© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.IGottaTellYou.com/blog/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Blogging, the hottest trend in online publishing right now,
is currently spreading like wildfire across the Internet.

A cross between an online journal and a bulletin board,
everyone from rock starts, politicians, business leaders
and your average "Joe" or "Jane" can instantly become a
center of influence online using blogs.

But, as with any social interaction, certain rules apply
(my grandma calls them manners) in order to be viewed as
behaving "properly."

One of the things that gives blogging such strong appeal as
an online publishing method revolves around "comments."

Blogs that allow "comments" enable readers to respond and
elaborate on the information posted by the blog owner.

These comments and the free exchange of information,
opinions, links, and new ideas creates the dynamic and
growing content that makes blogging such a popular online
activity for both publishers and readers.

However, rules and unwritten customs about the proper use
of "comments" on a specific blog are also where most of the
problems and controversy will arise.

Since a successful blog eventually becomes a community of
people (albeit in cyberspace), proper social behavior is
critical to be an effective and accepted member of the
community.

Keep these basic rules in mind when approaching a new blog
that allows commenting by readers so you won't find
yourself on the wrong end of a scolding by people who
operate with a different set of rules than you.

As with any social circle, violating the group's rules and
customs will instantly cause a negative backlash.

** Keep It Relevant **

Stay on topic with the post you're commenting about in a
blog.

Nothing will earn you the wrath and disdain of your
fellow posters and the blog owner faster than posting an
off-topic comment.

** Watch What Others Do **

Different blogs operate under different rules. What rates
acceptable in one blog would earn you a verbal thrashing in
another.

Before posting (especially if you have not posted to a
specific blog before), look to see the types and quality of
posts others make regularly.

Are they long or short?

Do they contain a link to the person's website?

Is there a "signature" under their name?

** Be Polite **

It's fine to disagree with people when making a comment,
whether it's the blog's author or a comment made by another
reader.

It is not, however, acceptable to launch a personal attack
on anyone or make nasty comments in someone else's blog.

If you feel the need to do so, do it in your own blog.

It's the same principle of you can say whatever you want in
your own house, but when you're in someone else's house,
you act right (and better than you do at home).

** You Can't Respond To Everyone **

If you operate a blog and someone asks a question, try to
respond, but both sides should understand that you can't
respond 100% of the time.

We all get busy and a blog, unless it maintains a paid
membership, is often supported as a labor of love.

About the author:
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the
co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to
use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted
visitors to your website or affiliate links...

Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to
your website for weeks, even months... without spending a
dime on advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

Comparing Free Blogging Software

2006-07-30T04:10:00.000+08:00

by: Don Beavers
With the increased interest in Blogging (web Logging), many web hosting providers now provide an assortment of free usage, open source blogging software packages. Among the most popular of these blogging tools are B2evolution, WordPress and Nucleus. Each of these programs offer similar basic features, so the question arises as to which one is easiest to use and would be appropriate for the requirements of your particular website.

The answer lies in the true purpose of your blog website. If your primary goal is to share your opinions and ideas with the general public, you would want to utilize a different blogging tool than a user who was creating product blogs as a commercial sales effort. A blog for search engine promotion would have entirely different requirements. All of these uses are viable reasons to create a blog, however each requires different features to be successful.

WordPress Blogging Software
Available for free download at: http://wordpress.org/

It is hard to beat WordPress for general personal blogging. WordPress is an open source, state-of-the-art personal publishing platform with a focus on presentation and usability. Everything related to creating and updating your blog is available through an intuitive graphical interface. With WordPress there is no need to compile your work. You simply write your column. You then select the features you want and your blog is instantly created and published to your website.

If you are on vacation, you can schedule your uploads for some date in the future or even email your column to the server! The system allows multiple users with multiple blogs divided into categories and sub-categories. This allows multiple family members or friends to create their own blogs along with yours.

Easy customization and the availability of many "plug-ins" that provide more functionality (add new features as you learn) makes this software a very good choice for most individuals.

B2evolution
Available for free download at: http://b2evolution.net/

B2evolution is another advanced web log tool that features an integrated XHTML validator. It supports recursive subcategories, cross posting and has a really cool integrated "skinning" system.

The "skinning" system allows you to create multiple blogs in separate categories with different appearances for each blog. You simply "change the skin" for the blog to create a totally new look and feel.

The "skinning" feature, combined with the built in multi-user administration management tool, makes the system robust enough for more commercial endeavors, such as product promotion blogs. If you have much to publish with multiple themes, this is the software you are looking for.

Nucleus Blogging Software
Available for free download at: http://nucleuscms.org/

Though Nucleus is an extremely robust blogging tool in its own right, it also contains some powerful features that can provide benefits in promotion of your blog.

Nucleus offers the ability to optimize its URLS, creating simple page addresses that do not have and "&" or "=" characters. This makes the pages search engine (and user) friendly. Another great feature is the ability to show the contents of multiple weblogs on one page. This could allow a website owner to manipulate the optimum text / keyword balance on pages for better search engine rankings.

Nucleus also provides RSS and Atom feeds that can be extremely helpful when promoting a website. If part of your blog's function is to work as a search engine marketing and promotion tool, Nucleus is an exceptional software package.

Each of these blogging software packages offer the basic tools that you would need to create a successful blog and all three are PHP - MySQL open source (free to use) packages. You should try to select the software that helps you achieve the long term goal that you have in mind for your website based on the unique extra features offered by each.

About the Author

Don Beavers lives in Bryan, Texas and is an enterprise level PHP-MySQL programmer at the Datavor Web Directory and at the Shopping Elf directory Shopping Guide

How to Build a Niche Site With a Blog

2006-07-29T04:09:00.000+08:00

by: Linda J Bruton
Building niche sites is all the rage these days.

The basic strategy is very simple. Find a niche market that isn't oversaturated. Develop a list of related keywords people are searching on. Then write an article optimized for each one of your keywords. Once you have your articles, upload them to your site. Monitize your site with affiliate links and Adsense.

For this kind of niche site to be effective and make money, it is imperative that you get free traffic, and a lot of it. And that's exactly where a blog can be your best friend.

At its very simplest, a blog is just a structure. It's the bones of a web site. A blog is a simple way to publish and display your content online. Most of us think of blogs as a chronicle of news events, or commentary on news and items of interest. Or personal diaries.

Few people stop to think that you can build any kind of website with a blog. In reality, a blog can be used very effectively to build a niche site. The fact of the matter is, a blog is the easiest way to publish your niche site content. But the biggest reason to use a blog is that it can drive traffic to your site a lot faster than a statically-built site. A niche site built with a blog is a very powerful strategy.

First, choose your niche and research your keywords. Write your first article based on one of those keywords, just as you would when building a regular site. Then set up your blog and publish that article. Your niche site is now live.

To make your site structure the most effective, be sure to choose a blog that allows the use of Categories, such as Word Press or Moveable Type. Use your 10 most important keywords as the name of your Categories. Then file all your secondary keyword articles under those Categories.

Why is this so important? If you keep building your site with keyword-rich articles, eventually you could have hundreds of pages. Each of those pages will have a link to your 10 Categories. And each of those links will use the anchor text of your most important keywords. As a result of all those internal keyword-rich links, your site will end up ranking very well in the search engines for your Category names.

Now it's time to set up your traffic strategy. This is where a blog can really shine. There are many special RSS/blog directories that are hungry for feeds. By submitting your new blog to these directories, you can start getting traffic almost immediately. Quite often these feeds will result in a lot more traffic than all the major search engines combined. This is why it makes so much sense to build your niche site as a blog. You can have twice the traffic, and get it much faster than with a static site.

Here is a list of some of the top RSS/blog directories you should submit your site to:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Once you've submitted your site to the directories, you can get it indexed by Yahoo almost immediately by adding your RSS feed to your MyYahoo page. If you don't have a MyYahoo page, just go to http://www.yahoo.com. Now click on the MyYahoo link at the top and set up your free account. Once you have your account set up, click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.

When you go back to your MyYahoo page, your blog plus your first post should be shown. If you go look at your web stats for your site, you'll find that the Yahoo spider has already made a visit! Your new site should be indexed in Yahoo in just a couple of days. This is a strategy that some marketers were selling for $50 just a few months ago. And it works like a charm.

Every time you add a post, you can alert the RSS/blog directories by "pinging" them. There is a wonderful site at http://www.pingomatic.com that makes this very easy. You just have to type in your blog URL and Pingomatic will send your ping to Yahoo and about 15 other large directories. That will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!

During the first month, I would suggest that you write and add a new article every day. Blogs that are frequently updated get the most traffic. And you'll find that the major search engines will spider your site every day. At the end of a month, you'll have a 30-article niche site that is already getting a lot of traffic. If you've monetized your site with Adsense and related affiliate programs, you should also be making money already.

Once you've started building your niche sites with a blog, you'll never go back to doing it the old way again!

About the Author

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else)
http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

Top 10 Places to Find the Most Popular Blogs

2006-07-28T04:05:00.000+08:00

by: Andy Wibbels
The easiest way to get acquainted with the conventions of the blog format is to start reading them. The more blogs you read, the more you'll get a feel for the depth and breadth of style and subject matter they have to offer.

Here are a few sources:

Blog Monitors

- Blogdex (http://blogdex.com/)
- Daypop (http://daypop.com/)
- Technorati (http://technorati.com/)

These three sites monitor millions of blogs every minute of every day, searching for the top key words being mentioned in blog posts or in the most popular links and sites. It's like being in a huge convention hall eavesdropping on billions of conversations at the same time. This is a fantastic way to do market research and to see what everybody is buzzing about. The collective 'hive' of blogs is often called the blogosphere. Often, links and news bubble up in the blogosphere first, even before they reach your evening television news program.

Blog Search Engines and Directories

- Blogarama (http://blogarama.com/)
- Globe of Blogs (http://globeofblogs.com/)
- The Open Directory (http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/)

Just like web sites, there are also directories and search engines devoted to cataloging the ever-growing global network of blogs. Try searching by topic or geographic location.

Search Engines

- Google (http://google.com/)
- Yahoo! (http://yahoo.com/)
- A9 (http://a9.com/)

As usual, Google and friends to the rescue! These are the more traditional and widely known search engines. Type in some topic and the word 'blogs' and see what results come up. The more specific keywords, the more likely you are to find bloggers talking about what you're interested in.

Blogrolls

And number ten is the blogroll. Most blogs have a blogroll, which is a list of a blogger's favorite blogs and websites. If you find a blog you like, try checking out the other sites that the blogger likes. You might find other valuable sites and blogs to read. The more your read blogs, the more you'll catch the nuances and conventions that have made them the fastest, easiest, cheapest way to publish online.

Copyright © 2005 Andy Wibbels

About Andy: Andy Wibbels is a blogging evangelist and creator of the Easy Bake Weblogs seminar that has helped hundreds of small businesses all over the world leverage blogs and RSS news feeds to increase profits and save time. You can download his free special report on business and blogs at http://easybakeweblogs.com/.

How To Boost Traffic To Your Blog: SEO for Bloggers

2006-07-27T05:10:00.000+08:00

by: Ryen Kim

Let search engine index your blog and let people come to your fresh blog. Though you're in World Wide Web, nobody knows you're there. You need to pull kindly those who are potentially waiting for you but don't know where your are. This objective is related to generally known as search engine optimization (SEO). It's too broad to address all. But the most important things will I talk about. Though they're not all but more than enough will be covered. They are about...

How to use keywords as a SEO technique

What to consider when you choose blog templates

How to construct your blog search engine friendly

Ping your blog

How to use keywords as a SEO technique?

As long as SEO is concerned, the keyword comes at front line. You have to find the target keyword/keywords or niche keywords.

What to do with the keyword/keywords? Please read on.....

Enter keywords in your blog name: If you named your blog for example, "Ryen's blog", it's not a good idea in the view of SEO. Instead name your blog something like "keyword blog". You need to substitute "keyword" with your "target keyword", for example "mountain bike blog", if your blog is about mountain bike.

Enter keywords of your post in title tag: Actually most of bloggers don't need to concern about "title tag" because most of blog hosting applications such as blogger, typepad, wordpress, movable type, drupal, etc... care this for you. But you have to use the keyword in your title and then they will include it in the title tag for you.

Enter keywords in meta description tag, if possible: This may be difficult for most of bloggers because most of blog hosting system don't support this. If this is your case, don't bother with this. To make it possible is almost impossible for the people like me who are not techie at all. But don't worry there is other solution: care your first sentence of the first paragraph.

Enter keywords in the first sentence: Nowadays many SEO experts say that most of search engines don't look meta description tag. Instead they look for the few words in the first sentence. So care your first sentence to include the keywords, make it fit to describe your whole post and attractive.

Repeat your keywords in your post: With this an English grammar teacher may not be happy. But as long as SEO is concerned, it's necessary: frankly to say, you have to. General rule says the keyword density should be about 2-3% of whole words in your post.

You may complain "heck, how do I know keyword density." Well, you don't need to count it manually. There is a free tool to check the keyword density. And actually I don't even check it all the time. I just keep in mind 2-3% and check only for some posts that I think worth checking. Having this in mind, the free tool is here. Type the URL of your post, keyword and click "analyze" button. It'll return you the keyword density of your post. If the keyword density is too low, consider repeat the keyword more but don't repeat too much (more than 3%)

Use your keyword in your blog domain: This improves the ranking of your blog and hence more traffic come to you. If your blog is about "anniversary gift", for example, include it in your domain name so that your blog domain looks like "anniversary-gift.yourhost.com"

Use your keyword in the link title: Many blogger don't know about this!

Which one do you think better, "anniversary gift" or "anniversary-gift.your host.com" as your link title? The former is better. The reason? Because search engines value more. So keep in mind that whenever you get link try to enter your keywords in the link title.

Enter keywords in your file name: When you save your blog, use your keyword.

Which one is better, "mypost98.html" or "anniversary-gift-how-to-choose.html"? This time the latter is better because it includes keywords and hence get better chance to be listed in high rank in search engine.

Enter keyword in alt tag: If you use images in your post, don't forget to put your keyword in alt tag. A 2 cent-tip related to this is that if your Google Adsense doesn't seem to show matching ads with your content, check your alt tag. Maybe it's because you put unrelated words in alt tag.
That to consider when you choose blog templates?

Certainly there is a search engine friendly blog templates. To know whether your blog template is search engine friendly designed, go to Crawler simulation (It's free.) Enter your blog URL and then it'll show you how it looks like when a search engine spider visits your blog site. If you see a lot of html code or java scripts before you see main content, it means your blog is not well designed in the point of search engine optimization. There is a way to hide unnecessary code from spiders, using CSS or div class "hide". Try to make your title tag immediately after head tag and to show up your body content as near to head tag as possible.

How to construct your blog search engine friendly?

Make your blog site structure as simple as possible. This may not be a big issue for bloggers because unless a blogger can design her/his blog system, they have to use a default system. What I mean by this is that most of blog system make permalink be for example, "www.blogcom.com/user/archive/year/month/date/apost.html". See how far the final "apost.html" is from root. It's 5 step further. This is not so good in terms of search engine optimization. You can reduce those steps but you only can do so one or two step because database recognition is concerned behind this story. So the bottom line is that try to make your blog simple but if it's not possible, focus on writing good content. I observed many top bloggers have a bit complicated permalink system yet have lots of traffic.

But if you can make your blog structure simpler without problem, please do so because it is much better for the reader and search engine as well.

Ping your blog

Do you ping? Many pongs will come,then. :-) This may not be an issue if you're using Movable Type, WordPress, Typepad, or Drupal 4.6.0. But consider pinging to Ping-o-Matic!, if your system is not configured to do so. Because it pings to most of important blog search engines and directories in one spot. If your blog application doesn't support to ping automatically to "Ping-o-Matic!", you can do so manually by visiting Ping-o-Matic! Once you type your blog name, blog URL, check where to ping and click "submit ping" button, and don't forget to bookmark. It gives you a convenience because you don't need to type blog name, URL and check where to ping again.

By pinging you make search engine spider crawl you more frequently and make your reader notified faster.

So far you have the most important SEO techniques for your blog. Say, how to use your keywords and where to enter, search engine friendly blog template design, structure and finally ping to "Ping-o-Matic!"

But one thing is missing!

Get inbound links!

Probably it is as important as your blog itself! You can read about this at Traffic to Blog: Part 4

About the Author

Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of Blog Sites and running Hom Based Affiliate Business web site.

7 Tips for Successful Blogging

2006-07-25T11:33:00.000+08:00

by: Michele Schermerhorn
So, you have a blog! Do you have traffic? Do you know how to build traffic to your weblog? There are seven proven methods for building readership of your blog. They start with defining the purpose, or life, of your blog. Then, after you have a blog worth promoting, driving traffic is crucial to your ongoing success at blogging.

Here are seven tips to help you build and hold an audience for your blog:

Tip #1: Provide quality content.

On the Internet, whether you are talking about websites or blogs, a lot of space is given to content. Everyone directs you to provide quality content. But, what is quality content? The quality of your blog’s content is directly related to how well you have defined your ideal audience.

A successful blog is written with a distinct audience in mind. In this way, you can provide content that is unique to your audience’s issues, needs, or desires. If you create content they like and wish to return to read, you have quality content.

The second issue is to stay true to your audience and tone of your blog. If people are reading your blog, it’s because they like your topic and tone. Try not to stray from your typical topics and style too much. This will give your readers a reason to link back to your blog on an ongoing basis, as will posting on a regular basis.

Tip #2: Blog regularly

If you don't update your blog often enough, blog readers will move on to other blogs. There are too many blogs out there competing for attention. Blog readers will go where they can get enough of what they want.

Successful blogging takes a commitment of your time. When you begin blogging and wish to capture an audience, you should be prepared to blog every day. In this way, you can develop an audience who counts on you to help them begin or end their day.

This means you should also try to post at the same time each day. Your readers will get accustomed to your schedule and check your blog at the appropriate time. The time of day is not as crucial as the consistency in your posting.

Since you now have quality content and a regular posting schedule, it’s time to drive traffic to your blog. Your readers will do a lot to promote your blog just by telling their friends. Don’t count on this alone! You need to do some additional work.

When you post, make sure you set your blog to “ping” blog tracking sites every time you add a new post. Think of this as a means to get their attention. The ping says “Hey, we just added a new post”. An alternative to automatically pinging from your blog is to use pingomatic.com. This is a one-stop place to automatically ping everyone you should notify of your new post and only takes a couple of minutes to accomplish.

Tip #3: Mention your blog wherever you can

Mention your blog’s address in your email signature line, in forums where you post, on your business cards, on address labels and in conversations with anyone you meet. Use a tag line under your blog address to further entice them to visit. Mine reads:

Michele Schermerhorn
http://www.imarketblog.com
A sassy little marketing blog

Beyond just mentioning your blog in writing and conversation, you must actively participate in the blogging community too.

Tip #4: Participate in the blogosphere

Get involved in other people's blogs. Visit blogs that interest you and are in line with the general topic of your blog. Then, leave thoughtful comments. Almost every comment option on someone else’s blog will allow you to post your blog URL and your email address. Help other bloggers out with traffic and they will help you.

If a blogger really likes your site, they will add you to their blogroll. A blogroll is generally found on every blog which understands linking to the rest of the blogosphere helps drive traffic. A blogroll is a listing of other blogs. Think of it as a “recommended reading list”. Don’t be stingy with your blog roll either. Add those blogs that you read and enjoy to your blogroll too.

Tip #5: Think keywords when you post

Think about keywords with your use of titles, links and blog posts. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo, like keywords. The more targeted your keywords, the better the chances of your blog appearing in search results. Search results can drive that extra traffic you want.

To increase the value of the key words in your content, make certain keywords are part of the hot link in your posts. Don’t use “click here” as the hot link. You will be wasting valuable real estate in your post. Instead use the relevant keywords for the hot link, like “a great marketing idea. This gives the keywords added emphasis with the search engines.

One last thought on keywords for driving traffic; if you want a real leg up in the traffic game, in your linking code add rel=”tag”. This helps Technorati, a major blog resource, index your blog for their directory. But don’t stop there! It’s time to submit your blog to blog directories.

Tip #6: Submit your blog to blog directories

In addition to submitting your blog to the major search engines, make certain you submit the blog to exclusively blog directories like blogwise, blogcatalog, or bloghub. Many people find blogs through these online directories.

When you do submit your blog to these directories, remember to add a description that will entice your targeted audience to check your blog out. For instance, when I post my blog in blog directories, under description I put “General musings, rants, advice and strategies from a battle-worn veteran of the Marketing Wars, online and off”. Your description should help the potential reader understand your blogging topic and the flavor of how you write.

In addition to submitting your blog to blog directories, join a few of the free or inexpensive traffic exchange sites like blogexplosion or blogclicker.

Tip #7: Use free and inexpensive blog traffic exchange communities

There are many sites which can be termed “traffic exchange” sites for the blogging community. It won’t cost you anything to sign up. At the very least, join blogexplosion, blogclicker, and blogazoo. Once you sign up, you have two options to help drive traffic to your blog. Use both of them!

The first method is to earn credits (guaranteed visitors to your site) by using the “surf member sites” function. As you surf through those sites, you will be earning credits (visitors to your blog). When you find an interesting post, leave a comment as discussed above. When you find a blogger you like, add them to your blogroll and let them know you did.

The second method to drive traffic is to purchase credits. The cost is very cheap for the traffic you will drive to your blog. The more traffic to your blog, the more customers you’ll have. The more happy customers you have, the more they will tell others. The more they tell others, the more customers you get. Don’t you love this dance!

In summary, blogging may not be for everyone. However, it can be a great method for bringing your unique perspective to the Internet. You will surely find others who think the same way you do. Some bloggers will entertain you, some will inform you, and some will drive you to tear your hair out. Decide what type of blogger you want to be and be the best you can. See you in the blogosphere!

About the Author

Michele Schermerhorn calls herself a “Corporate Freedom Fighter” dedicated to freeing cubicle prisoners. She has over 30 years experience in the business world. She is President of Online Business Institute Inc. (www.obinstitute.com), authors a sassy marketing blog (www.imarketblog.com), and regularly conducts free online seminars. Online Business Institute Inc. exists to “Create Successful Online Business Owners One Person At A Time”.

24 Tips and Strategies on How Everyone Can Blog Right and Get Profit

2006-07-24T09:14:00.000+08:00

by: John Teh
By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key
part of online culture. "Blog readership shoots up 58% in
2004 6 million Americans get news and information fed to
them through RSS aggregators But 62% of online Americans do
not know what a blog is." - Pew Internet & American Life
Project

Tip #1 - How and Where Should I Start?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service
such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), or other similar
free services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com or
Blog-City.com. The learning curve for using such free
services allow you to spend more on developing your content
rather than worrying about the advanced areas of scripting,
hosting, or programming.

Tip #2 - The Things You Should Decide to Write About
Although not a required prerequisite for you in order to
write a blog, it is highly recommended to try to find a
topic to write about based on your level of interest and
knowledge. The higher your level of interest, the easier it
is for you to get your quality content posted on your blog.
Always try to choose an area which you can enthusiastically
write about on a daily basis.Try to pay attention to a niche
which suites you well. A niche is basically a targeted
product, service, or topic.

Tip #3 - Always stay on topic.
Opinions are generally accepted but the content of the items
in the blog should all relate to a general theme. The
majority of your readers will be interested in the content
that relates to a specific defined theme or loosely defined
area of interest. Define a topic and try not to run too far
away from it. This will ensure that you create a loyal
following of interested readers.

Tip #4 - Information is king, be informative.
If you are attempting to create the impression that you are
knowledgeable about a specific industry or sector, be sure
that you stay current on news. Checking your facts before
you're giving out an opinion or a product review is always a
good idea, your reputation is at stake. If by any chance
you're utilizing other people's articles for you blog
content, ensure that you follow the terms of usage defined
by the author.

Tip #5 - Old news is not news, but old information can be
recycled and made new. While blogging everyday can be
strenuous and time consuming, it is important that the
information presented is current and accurate. Information,
articles or any other archived resources can be recycled /
modified to add more substance to your content. As long as
they're relevant and informative, there's no reason why it's
not a good approach.

Tip #6 - Be disciplined and stick to a fixed posting
schedule. Realizing that blogging requires time and effort,
don't create unrealistic expectations and be unable to
deliver. If you have worked hard to develop an audience and
a community you don't want to lose them due to lack of
communication. If time is not on your side, take advantage
of tonnes of automatically updating contents which are
available for your blog. Looking at the constantly updating
nature of RSS feeds, other RSS feeds from similar topic can
be inserted within your blogging post.

Tip #7 - Posting Frequency
If your blog content is updated frequently, search engines
will tend to spider the pages at regular intervals. Updating
your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to
readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day
to day making it more appealing to search engines. To keep
your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a
must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You
should try to update your blog everyday with at least 2 - 3
or more daily entries, depending on your daily schedule.

Tip #8 - Quantity matters.
In order to attract the attention of search engines, you
will need to produce a relevant amount of content and
information. A headline or simple sentence is not going to
generate the interest of readers or help with search engine
ranking. Be sure to archive old blog posts to develop a
large portal of similarly-themed content.

Tip #9 - Clarity & simplicity / Short & Concise
Keep your posts and blog entries clear and easy to
understand. Simplicity always produce better results at the
end of the day.

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and
publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if
you can help it). Should you insist on partaking on the
lengthy road, try to maintain a clean paragraphing style,
proper spacing, use different size, color and bold for your
titles as well as the subtitles. Use bullet points, go
straight to the point and never run out of topic. Insert
images to spice up things if you're an avid fan of long
posts.

Tip #10 - Utilize the
and tags
Being one of the few most underutilized blogging formatting
tags, these 2 items can help you on emphasizing certain
points, in the most efficient and striking way. Formatting
is simple and straightforward. Just
Hi
World!
and your message will apear
distinctively different from the rest of your text, thus
gets more attention which it deserves. Take note that the
formatting for these 2 tags differ from blog to blog
depending on how the owner defines the tag in the CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets).

Click the below link if you want to read more about CSS.
==>http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Tip #11 - Keyword-rich.
If the goal of your blog is to increase your visibility,
include related keywords in the title of the blog. Use the
title as a headline to attract interest. Each item post
should have a title that will attract attention but still be
relevant to the post. The title should be no longer than
10-12 words. Experiment with the titles if you must,
possibly try to avoid general and ordinary titles. Try to
include extraordinary and innovative titles to grab the
readers' attention.

Tip #12 - Spell checking and proof-reading.
It only takes a few extra moments and can save you from
having to make embarrassing explanations. The hazards of
Internet is that if you're too late to correct your mistake,
most likely it's already been crawled by the search engines
and read by many. It is extremely essential to think / proof
read carefully twice or even thrice, about what you post
before doing so. Take note of your language and grammar.

Tip #13 - RSS Feeds
RSS to a blog is like fuel to cars. Mostly every single free
blogs or bloggin software out there will have an automatic
RSS feed generating feature. Although it's most unlikely
that you'll find one without a RSS feature, simply leave it
and find a new one, if you happen to come across one without
it.

Tip #14 - The essence of the Internet - Traffic. It's no
secret. You must have traffic to realize the definition of a
blog.. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid and
free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing,
RSS/XML feeds, word-of-mouth, submitting to numerous blog
and RSS directories, etc. RSSBlogsubmit (
http://www.rssblogsubmit.com) provides a submission service
for your Blog & RSS feeds. You should always use your blog
URL address in the signature of your email, forum
discussions, message boards, or any other communication
media. Never forget to share your blog to your friends,
colleagues, and any other invidious that you know of.

Tip #15 - Track Your Blog
Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated
usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com,
ActiveMeter.com, Extremetracking.com or Sitemeter.com will
do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of
your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its
better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic
analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral
information, and search engine information. Visitors,
returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard
for any page counter service you choose.

Tip #16 - Make use of your Blog's statistical and tracking
information. Believe it or not, your visitors' information
from your tracking scripts will provide you priceless
information on how you can attract more readers. Keep note
on the keyword terms used from search engines which bring
you traffic. You can identify relevant closely related
topics which you can venture into and add more variety into
your blog, yet staying very much in topic. Simply put, more
topic coverage and more variety = more traffic. You may
analyze your tracking information further on how you can
strategize your blog's content. You can also apply some
keyword optimization strategies here.

Tip #17 - The essence of your Blog is your Audience, listen
to them. Always interact with your readers who post comments
on your blog. Reply with a brief thank you note or just
simply attend to their questions if they have any. It's a
proven fact when there's a direct human interaction and
knowing the fact that there's a "real human" at the other
end of the blog makes most of them coming back. If your
audience provide suggestions, comments or feedbacks, take
them constructively and inform them if you have any desires
of implementing such ideas on your next update. And of
course, don't forget to thank them for their ideas. If it's
a great idea, why not throw in a free gift? Mention their
website in your blog?

Tip #18 - Create and increase the "Why Must I Return" Value
to Your Blog
Everyone knows the fact that Blogs get a huge level of
returning visitors because of its constantly updated
content. Why don't you add more interesting items to that
return value by having fixed periodical posts / offers, e.g.
Monday Top 10 Tips, Picture of the Week, Free Bonus of the
Month, Free Daily Wallpapers, etc. to give them the absolute
excuse to return to your blog. As long as you can
efficiently and appropriately increase that Return Value
constantly, it is mostly guaranteed that you'll be getting
tonnes of repeated visitors, period.

An advance notice, prelaunch announcement or anything
similar to that also can act as a short term return value
strategy. Encourage readers to comment on your such notices
/ posts. Experiment and play around with this idea.

Tip #19 - Multiple blogs
It never hurts to use multiple blogging accounts to attract
more people. You can even have multiple blogs within
Blogger.com itself, but you may also want to try different
free blogging services such as JournalHome.com,
LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, etc. Should you have the
urge to have multiple similar duplicates of your blog just
to gain more traffic, it is wise to avoid it as search
engines / feed directories might translate that as excessive
redundant information which simply brings you trouble, and
you're tend to get penalized, banned or even accused of
spamming.

Tip #20 - Digital Art, Creative Graphics Another proven fact
- Monotonous and continous display of text will make your
readers run away! Try to include non- advertising graphics,
pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries, but try to
keep them at a limit. Too many graphics also mean slower
loading time and messy text and graphical combination. You
don't want your blog to look messy. Most of the time,
graphics can bring your blog to life. Pictures can make
boring texts interesting no matter how long it is. Graphical
elements are by far the fastest message delivering element
available on the net today. It may deliver various messages
by a split second of a look.

Tip #21 - Maintain a Personal Blog
A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to
include personal experiences which relates to the topic of
your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of
writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-
person narratives. Share product reviews and personal
endeavors, instead of trying to make it sounds like you're
selling.

Tip #22 - Credibility & Popularity
As thing progresses, things need to change in order to cope
with the flow and nature of development. If your number of
readers are reasonably huge, and still using a free blogging
service to get your messages out, you may want to consider
getting your own domain name and hosting plan to have a more
personalized Blog.

Domain names and hosting plans are pretty much
straightforward. Research is all what it takes to get the
best of all the available options. For the most highly
recommended comprehensive listing of Free Blogging software
out there, drop by at http://www.opensourcecms.com/. This is
by far the best place to drop by if you want to get your
research done about which blogging software to choose.
Reviews, ratings, public votes, demos, etc are provided. And
the best thing is, all of them are Open Source, which means
they are totally free. Try going through the server
requirements for each software before purchasing your
web hosting.

Tip 23# - Customize the look of your Blog
If you happen to be using one of the Free blogging services
out there, you might notice that most of us are using the
same template again and again for our blogs. It is well
understood that not everybody has the technical knowledge to
change the layout as how they want it to be, but if you have
the knowledge, by all means try to customize it and make it
look DIFFERENT. You can grab that extra attention, if you're
different in certain ways. Create that image for yourself.

Tip #24 - Blog and Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog
traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking
if you want to turn your traffic into profit. Some of the
recommended income generating sources are as follow :-

Google Adsense, Amazon Associate program (www.amazon.com),
Blogads.com, Crispads.com, Tagword.com, Affiliate Programs
and any advertising related text links can be your place to
start off.

Final #Tip - Conclusion.
Following these blogging tips should make your blogging
experience much more rewarding. Blogging is generally done
out of interest and enthusiasm and sometimes for income
generating purposes. The flexibility of blogging will never
cease to expand. Through time, dedication, and persistence
you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

About the Author

John Teh is an internet blogger enthusiast, exposed to the
fun and possibilities of blogging on the net.
http://www.rssblogsubmit.com

Earn Money Blogging

2006-07-23T06:32:00.000+08:00

by: Nell Taliercio
Creating A Blog For Your Business Can Help You Increase Your Profits

One of the more searched for terms among the major search engines is "blog". The word blog is meant to describe a web log, or online journal, that is used to post personal thoughts on the products and services offered by your business. A blog can also be used to make announcements to your customers and provide them a place to give feedback and make comments. You may include any information you desire in your posts to your blog that are related to your line of business. Articles, questions, and opinions are all appropriate blogging subjects.

Starting a blog is simple and there are several blogging tools available to you. Some are free to use and other, more powerful blogging tools can be found for a small monthly fee. In general, blogging tools are user friendly and do not require the knowledge of HTML or complex computer skills.

Creating a blog can give your business increased visibility and give your subscribers a forum in which to receive product updates, advice on how to effectively use your products, and post questions or comments about your line of business. To bring your blog to the attention of your target audience, you can link your blog to other blogs, include links to your blog in newsletters or on your web site, and you may even want to include a link to your blog in your email signature.

Blogging can help you increase your profits due to increased visibility, which will undoubtedly lead to increased web site traffic and lead to you earn money blogging. Make sure to only include pertinent information about your niche or line of business in your blog.

Most bloggers are happy to link their blog to those belonging to others. The sharing of information and ability to post thoughts and comments makes for a winning situation for all concerned. Starting a blog for your business can be a great way to help you increase your profits and share important information with the public.

About the Author: For more information about home based business go to http://www.mommysplace.net

How to Build a Niche Site With a Blog

2006-07-21T08:45:00.000+08:00

by: Linda J Bruton
Building niche sites is all the rage these days.

The basic strategy is very simple. Find a niche market that isn't oversaturated. Develop a list of related keywords people are searching on. Then write an article optimized for each one of your keywords. Once you have your articles, upload them to your site. Monitize your site with affiliate links and Adsense.

For this kind of niche site to be effective and make money, it is imperative that you get free traffic, and a lot of it. And that's exactly where a blog can be your best friend.

At its very simplest, a blog is just a structure. It's the bones of a web site. A blog is a simple way to publish and display your content online. Most of us think of blogs as a chronicle of news events, or commentary on news and items of interest. Or personal diaries.

Few people stop to think that you can build any kind of website with a blog. In reality, a blog can be used very effectively to build a niche site. The fact of the matter is, a blog is the easiest way to publish your niche site content. But the biggest reason to use a blog is that it can drive traffic to your site a lot faster than a statically-built site. A niche site built with a blog is a very powerful strategy.

First, choose your niche and research your keywords. Write your first article based on one of those keywords, just as you would when building a regular site. Then set up your blog and publish that article. Your niche site is now live.

To make your site structure the most effective, be sure to choose a blog that allows the use of Categories, such as Word Press or Moveable Type. Use your 10 most important keywords as the name of your Categories. Then file all your secondary keyword articles under those Categories.

Why is this so important? If you keep building your site with keyword-rich articles, eventually you could have hundreds of pages. Each of those pages will have a link to your 10 Categories. And each of those links will use the anchor text of your most important keywords. As a result of all those internal keyword-rich links, your site will end up ranking very well in the search engines for your Category names.

Now it's time to set up your traffic strategy. This is where a blog can really shine. There are many special RSS/blog directories that are hungry for feeds. By submitting your new blog to these directories, you can start getting traffic almost immediately. Quite often these feeds will result in a lot more traffic than all the major search engines combined. This is why it makes so much sense to build your niche site as a blog. You can have twice the traffic, and get it much faster than with a static site.

Here is a list of some of the top RSS/blog directories you should submit your site to:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Once you've submitted your site to the directories, you can get it indexed by Yahoo almost immediately by adding your RSS feed to your MyYahoo page. If you don't have a MyYahoo page, just go to http://www.yahoo.com . Now click on the MyYahoo link at the top and set up your free account. Once you have your account set up, click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.

When you go back to your MyYahoo page, your blog plus your first post should be shown. If you go look at your web stats for your site, you'll find that the Yahoo spider has already made a visit! Your new site should be indexed in Yahoo in just a couple of days. This is a strategy that some marketers were selling for $50 just a few months ago. And it works like a charm.

Every time you add a post, you can alert the RSS/blog directories by "pinging" them. There is a wonderful site at http://www.pingomatic.com that makes this very easy. You just have to type in your blog URL and Pingomatic will send your ping to Yahoo and about 15 other large directories. That will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!

During the first month, I would suggest that you write and add a new article every day. Blogs that are frequently updated get the most traffic. And you'll find that the major search engines will spider your site every day. At the end of a month, you'll have a 30-article niche site that is already getting a lot of traffic. If you've monetized your site with Adsense and related affiliate programs, you should also be making money already.

Once you've started building your niche sites with a blog, you'll never go back to doing it the old way again!

About the Author

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

To Join a Blogging Site or Not to Join

2006-07-18T08:37:00.000+08:00

Joining an established blogging site like live journal or
blogger has plenty of advantages, especially for the blog
novice.

Sites that host a lot of different blogs often have
very useful tutorials about building and updating your
blog, and you are likely to encounter a very user-
friendly software interface at an established blogging
site.

In addition, these sites provide a kind of instant
community of fellow bloggers who can provide advice,
insight, and feedback. These established sites often
keep directories of their members, which can be great
news for your traffic logs because it means that other
bloggers on the site will find out about your pages.

However, there are also some downsides to linking up
with a large blogging site. By posting within the
established templates of a site like blogger, you run the
risk of having your blog look and feel like everybody
else's.

The blogging movement is very much about the
creation of distinctive sites and the development of
individual voices, so it makes plenty of sense that many
bloggers would shy away from the cookie-cutter look
and feel that these blogging sites often promote.

Many bloggers feel that the content of a blog is what makes it
distinctive, not the look of the blog, but many members
of the blogging community feel that the visual impact
of a blog should match the originality of the writing.

Blogging News Stories as They Happen

2006-07-17T17:29:00.000+08:00

Blogging news stories as they unfold is one of the most exciting and controversial applications of technology that bloggers have discovered. One thing that makes the blogosphere so active is the fact that it is possible to update a blog instantaneously, so the news on blogs tends to be more current than the news in the paper, or on television.

Unlike news delivered by these other media, news that appears on blogs does not have to travel through a series of editors and administrators before it reaches the public eye. This has some advantages, and some distinct disadvantages.

One of the most notable cases of news hitting a blog before appearing in other media took place in July 2005 when terrorism struck London. As passengers were evacuated from a subway car near an explosion, one man took several photographs of the scene with his cellular phone, and within an hour these images were posted online.

First-person accounts of the catastrophe began appearing on blogs soon after these photos appeared, and people all over the world learned about the events in London by reading the words and seeing the photos posted by bloggers.

The fact that these stories and images were being spread directly by individuals operating without the added filter of a reporter helped to make the crisis feel very immediate to people across the globe. When it comes to blogging, news often appears in a very personal context.

This has the potential to be the beginning of an exciting new era of reporting, one that takes "New Journalism"to it's logical next step by putting the power to shape how the news is written and read directly into the handsof the public.

Many bloggers and cultural commentators who are champions of the weblog movement feel that this growing trend of individuals who getting their newsfrom blogs is a good thing, because it makes the flow of information more democratic.

By decentralizing the control of news, blogs allow more voices to enter the field of debate about important current events. However, many people are adamantly opposed to the use of blogs as news outlets, and there are plenty ofgood arguments on this side of the debate.

Unlike newspapers or television stations, few blogs have fact-checkers, and there is little attention paid to journalistic accountability on many blogs. This can lead to the rapid spread of misinformation, and more than one falsehood has taken the blogosphere by storm.

The questions about whether blogging news as it happens is ethical or not are very complicated, but no matter where you standon the topic of current events blogs you are almost sureto agree that this movement has the potential torevolutionize how modern people get their news.

Blogging for Profit Begins With a Long Term Plan

2006-07-16T17:26:00.000+08:00

Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goalis not far beyond the reach of someone with averageintelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging technology. However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog.

Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons. Often,bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging. The other trap that many bloggers fall intohas to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn aprofit as a blogger, the key to success is to make arealistic plan and stick with it.

To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing thatyou will need is a large readership. The higher yourtraffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you.However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in order to make a profit isnt easy. As more and more blogs appear each day, having a great idea or awonderful writing style is no longer enough to get attention. You need to be able to market your blog effectively.

Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines like technorati, and once your readers know that you update frequently they will return to yoursite on a regular basis.

However, it does not matter howoften you update if nobody is reading your page, so dontskimp on the time that you spend drawing visitors toyour site. To make your dreams of blogging for profit areality, try decreasing your number of posts and usingsome of that time to draw new visitors by setting uplink exchanges with other bloggers, making contacts inthe blog community, and following other establishedmodes of winning traffic.

Of course, even if you are a marketing genius or have areally great idea for a blog, success is not going tohappen overnight. Building the kind of readership thatblogging for profit requires takes time, and in alllikelihood it will be at least several months before youare able to turn much of a profit.
Try to stay committed to your blogging project during this initial rough period.To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.

Blogging For Business Owners

2006-07-15T17:23:00.000+08:00

If you run a small company, you may find that the world of blogging for business owners is a world that youwant to be a part of. Blogging is a great way to get theword out to consumers about your product or service, and it can even be useful for inspiring employee loyaltyand helping you keep your workers at peak morale.

If you are looking for a way to take your business to thenext level, consider what starting a blog might be ableto do for you.

Blogging for business owners has a lot in common withall other types of blogging, but it has its own uniquepitfalls and strengths. The key to having a successful blog as a business owner is keeping your goals clear and concrete at every step of your blogging adventure.

It can be all to easy to get side tracked, especially if you are just learning about the exciting possibilities ofblogging technology, but if you want your blog to succeed you need to stay focused. Write up a plan for how often you will update, how you will promote your blog and retain readers, whether you will feature photographs or video, and other aspects of your blog, and then stick to it with the same kind of determination that you used when you built your company.

A Great Idea For a Blogging Web Site is No LongerEnough

2006-07-14T17:17:00.000+08:00

Because there are so many blogs and web sites about blogs on the internet, it can be tough to distinguish your blogging web site from all of the others. Whether youare starting up a new web site aimed at bloggers orwhether you are looking to make your existing bloggingsite more distinctive, the key to building andmaintaining a site that will capture the interest and attention of the blogging community is finding your niche.

If you can fill a unique need in a way that noother web site does, you'll be able to build a lastingreadership among web surfers. Once you havediscovered a niche, you will still have a lot to do, butfinding your place in the blogosphere is the place tobegin.

Every great blogging web site starts with a great idea,and you can't build a successful site that will lastwithout one. There are many great sites aimed attoday's bloggers, and competition for the attention ofthis growing demographic is fierce. To make yourblogging web site stand out from the pack, you willneed to offer something that no other site is currentlyoffering, or you will need to do the same thing that analready popular site does but in a more impressive orvaluable way.

One way to discover an ideal model for your bloggingweb site is to look at the sites that have successfullycaptured a blogging audience already to determine ifyou can appropriate some of their strategies to helprealize your vision. Of course, you will also need to adda unique flair to your project in order to stand apartfrom your competition.

Many people agree that the websites that do the best in today's market are the sites thathave the most personality. The fiercely individualsurfers who are bloggers are a demographic thatresponds especially strongly to personality, so considerhow you can give your site a unique and attractivefeeling by lending your own voice and sensibility toyour site's design and content.

Once you have a great idea for your site, have pinpointed a special niche that you are well equipped tofill, and have infused the site with personality, the next step is figuring out how to get the word out to bloggers.

In the long run, a great idea just isn't enough to propel your blogging web site to success. You will need to draft a smart and realistic marketing plan in order todraw readers to your site. Once you hook a blogger,your great content will keep them coming back, but it isvital to get that first glance or your site won't have achance to shine.

Blogging's Future: Up, Up and Away?

2006-07-12T04:53:00.000+08:00

by: Dr V P Kochikar

Beyond a doubt, blogging has a bright future. It's tempting to get carried away by all the exuberance being generated.

Bill Gates says blogging "will fundamentally change how we document our lives". Technorati's CEO David Sifry says that there are 11 blog posts being made every second!

While this may well be true, we must resist the temptation to get carried away. Let's analyze blogging's prospects as a 'personal technology', or a technology that individuals use to improve their effectiveness or productivity, or simply to have fun.

All successful personal technologies that gain widespread use (be it the humble pen, the telephone or the iPod), bear certain hallmarks: they are easy to use, fulfil a basic need, and provide a new way to express an existing behavior or habit. Technologies that make the cut on these three respects tend to 'take-off', with their use surging steeply*.

Blogging certainly fulfils a basic need, the need for self-expression and social interaction. It is also more powerful in many respects than other technologies that meet similar needs - the telephone, email or online chatting - in that it is more 'permanent', and allows visibility to anyone who can access the Web. It also provides a new way to exercise our natural propensity to form groups with like-minded folks, by allowing us to form 'virtual communities' on the Web. It also allows people to 'discover' others with similar tastes, wherever they may be in the world.

Well, that leaves ease of use. I am afraid blogging is somewhat less stellar in this respect - while it is simpler than creating personal Web pages, it still lags far behind the telephone and email in ease of use. So, ease of use is the first thing that needs to improve about blogs (I hope the blog tool-makers are listening).

If one is tempted to argue that blogging is already very successful, one only needs to pause to consider the numbers: by most estimates there are around 80 million blogs in the world as of today, while the number of telephones world-wide (fixed-line and mobile) is around 2 billion. This is not to take anything away from the success of blogging, but only to establish (an admittedly somewhat crude) benchmark!

However, we've looked at only half the picture so far - becoming successful. Success brings its own problems, and sure enough, blogging too will need to overcome a couple of challenges that success brings with it:

Better ways to manage 'blog clutter'.

Even with the current number of blogs out there, it is becoming difficult for people to navigate the blogosphere. Telephones or email don't need to solve this problem as they are 'push' technologies, which means that you *want* to restrict who can contact you using these technologies. However, if blogs are to truly live up to their promise of allowing the 'discovery' of like-minded folks, then blog search engines should (and will) get smarter.

Search is of course not the only way to manage clutter - for example, Business Week's Heather Green talks about creating 'influential blogger' lists.

Blogging needs to find ways to enable diverse communication needs

Blogging tools already do a half-decent job of allowing the sharing of digital content. However, as camera phones proliferate, sharing pictures and movies will increasingly become mainstream. Also blogging from heterogenous devices (phones and home appliances come to mind) is likely to need support.

Of course, this piece only addresses blogging as a 'personal technology'. Analysis of its prospects in business - which are fledgling at the moment - is the subject of a different discussion altogether!

_______________

*This is driven by Metcalfe's Law, which holds that the usefulness of something increases exponentially as the number of users goes up.

About The Author

Dr. V P Kochikar’s (read his blog at www.webquarters.com) current areas of interest are in Strategic Foresight, the Impact of Technology on Business and Society, Knowledge Management and Technology Risk Management. He has published widely and serves on the editorial advisory boards and review panels for several international journals and conferences. He has also lectured in a guest capacity at business schools and industry fora in India, the US and the UK. Dr Kochikar has been profiled by Knowledge Management Review magazine, and interviewed by, among others, BBC, Business Today magazine, and the Economic Times. He holds a PhD from IIT Madras, a Bachelor’s in Technology from IIT Bombay and a Master’s in Technology from IISc, Bangalore. Dr. Kochikar is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the Information Resources Management Association (IRMA).

Blogging for Dollars

2006-07-11T04:50:00.000+08:00

by: Sharon Housley

Blogging for dollars might sound like the latest game show or some new drinking game, but it's the latest craze to hit the Internet. Bloggers began blogging for a number of reasons, but as the blog movement has increased in popularity, they have found ways to monetize their blogs and are seeing their commitment pay off.

Whether a blogger's focus is to communicate with customers or just to have fun, they have begun looking at ways to earn revenue from their blogs. The most popular ways for bloggers to earn some added cash for their pet projects are:

1. ) Google Adsense in Blogs
Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve content-relevant advertisements in blogs. If the visitor clicks one of the AdSense ads served to the blog, the website owner is credited for the referral. Webmasters need only to insert a Google-generated java script into the blog or blog template. Google's spider parses the AdServing blog and serves ads that relate to the blog's content. Google uses a combination of keyword matching and context analysis to determine what ads should be served.

2. ) Affiliate Programs (Product Endorsements)
Affiliate Programs work when an affiliate web site receives income for generating sales, leads, or traffic to a merchant website. Generally, bloggers will mention or endorse specific products and if site visitors purchase the product, bloggers will receive a portion of the sale.

3. ) Product Promotion
Businesses use blogs to detail how specific features or product add-ons can increase functionality and save time. Content-rich product promotion will help with search engine placement.

4.) Banner Ads
While less popular than in the past, websites with high traffic levels can still earn decent revenue by selling banner space.

As the Internet evolves bloggers will continue to seek out ways to monetize their opinions and thoughts. Daily journals and online blogs have become more than just a communication means to many.

Copyright 2004 Sharon Housley
Sharon Housley manages marketing for the NotePage http://www.notepage.net and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com product lines. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.small-business-software.net

Blogging: Just How Much of a Phenomenon?

2006-07-10T07:44:00.000+08:00

by: V P Kochikar, Dr.

In a post in my blog, The Webquarters (www.webquarters.blogspot.com), I talked about blogging’s future. Here we will try and arrive at a “measure" for how successful blogging has become, and how much more it is capable of achieving.It is pertinent to note that we are not talking about measuring the success of a specific blog, but of blogging as a phenomenon.

Before tackling the admittedly difficult question of measuring its success, let’s pause and ask, What is blogging? At one level, it is a tool which individuals use for communication and self-expression. Indeed, this was the only use conceived initially. As its usage soared, it also emerged as a tool for on-line 'communities' to interact and disseminate news or useful information. The most recent emerging use (completely unancticipated in the early years of blogging's existence) is for commercial organizations to interact with various stakeholders.

Thus, a reasonably general definition of blogging would appear to be, a technology that lends itself for use by individuals, communities or organizations as a means of communication, information dissemination or interaction.How do we go about establishing a measure of the success of anything? One way is to identify its "potential", and measure what proportion of that potential has been achieved.

For example, if your company sells flat-panel TVs, the potential market would probably be equal to the number of households in the world having a household income of more than a certain figure. If you are trying to popularize a new 'world language' that you have invented, the potential probably corresponds to every human in the world speaking the language.

If you sell beer, the potential sales would probably correspond to each adult in the world drinking 150 liters a year!*However, it is frequently difficult to assess potential in this manner. A surrogate, more practical approach would be to identify the 'best' achieved by anybody so far. If you are an athlete, your 'best achievable' may be the current world record in your event. In the TV example above, the ‘best achievable’ may be the sales volume achieved by the market-leading company.

Thus, the problem reduces to discovering the 'best achievable' usage of blogging. To do this, we must stretch our imagination a bit and ask, what are the "best" technologies** that meet roughly the same needs that blogging does, and what is the usage they have achieved? The “best” technologies we have that allow communication, information dissemination or interaction are probably telephones, email, and conventional web sites.

The number of telephone lines (fixed and mobile) in the world is estimated at around 2.1 billion. Similarly, the number of email users is in the region of 600 million.How many websites exist in the world? Yahoo indexes 19 billion web pages, while Google indexes about 9 billion. Taking the smaller of the two, and assuming the average website has around 20 pages, the number of websites may be approximated as about 500 million.Let’s be conservative, taking the smallest of the 3 figures (for telephones, email users and websites) which is 500 million.

To be play it even safer, let us assume that many websites represent uses that blogs just cannot. So let us say that the figure of 500 million overstates the figure we are looking for by 90%. This leaves 250 million (assuming many websites are defunct, etc.). It appears safe to say that this represents the usage that blogging must achieve. Thus, the “best achievable” number of blogs is, at the very least, 250 million.

The current number of around 80 million thus suggests that blogging has covered about a third of the distance to its “best achievable” usage.Of course, we will be shortchanging blogging if we end this analysis without considering time frames. While telephones have taken 20+ years to reach their current usage (counting only from the time mobile phones were invented), email has taken 15+ years, and the web 10+ years, blogging has been around only 6 years or so.

To dwell a bit on how technologies evolve over time, let us look at an elegant concept, the 'S' curve. What this says, very simply, is that every technology has an initial period during which it grows very slowly. As it improves and gains usage, it crosses an 'inflexion point', beyond which growth takes off rapidly***. Further down, the technology reaches a maturity stage where growth once again slackens.

Metcalfe's Law, which holds that the usefulness of something goes up exponentially with the number of its users, applies during the high growth section.Thus, in S- curve terms, blogging can be thought of as having crossed the inflexion point, and being about 30% of the way to the peak.

In other words, 70% of its potential is yet to be achieved.

If that sounds high, the Czech are reputed to drink 167 liters per capita per year!** As is clear from the context, we use ‘best’ not as an indicator of quality but to mean ‘the one that has achieved the greatest or most widespread use’.*** Not all technologies, of course, actually cross the inflexion point - many (indeed, most) die out well before they reach that point.

About the Author
Dr. V P Kochikar has published widely and serves on the editorial advisory boards and review panels for several international journals and conferences. He has lectured in a guest capacity at business schools and industry fora worldwide. Dr Kochikar has been profiled by Knowledge Management Review magazine, and interviewed by, among others, BBC, Business Today magazine, and the Economic Times. Views expressed in this blog are entirely his own.

40,000 new blogs are started daily

2006-07-09T08:41:00.000+08:00

by: Lois S.

The fact that an estimated 40,000 new blogs are being started daily should be of great interest to anybody already in the web hosting business or intending to go into it. Especially those planning to go into the business as affiliates or as resellers because this group of online entrepreneurs are in a very good position to cash in quickly on this amazing growth rate of blogs with hardly any investment necessary.

While it is true that a vast majority of blogs are hosted free, it is also true that many blogs are gaining high traffic so quickly that they are forced to quickly find paid web hosting as they exceed their allocated bandwidth.

The other fact to bear in mind is that virtually all successful bloggers own several blogs. This is significant because it is not easy to own several websites since lots of technical know-how and time are required to maintain a single website, let alone several. This is not the case with a blog that mainly requires content and very little technical knowledge to run very successfully. In terms of business volumes this simply means that a web hosting business that targets blogs is bound to grow a lot faster than the one that only seeks clients from the ranks of traditional websites.

The other significant factor in blogs that should be of great benefit to any web hosting business is the huge traffic that blogs seem to enjoy almost effortlessly.

All a web host entrepreneur needs to do, is to find a way to advertise their web hosting services to this blog traffic. There are several ways of doing this. You can for example look for acceptable ways of creating as many links from the blogs to your web hosting sites as possible. You can even start your very own blog on the subject.

About the Author
Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for http://www.websitesource.com and http://www.lowpricedomains.com with experience in the website hosting industry.

Earn Money Blogging

2006-07-05T12:49:00.000+08:00

by: Nell Taliercio
Creating A Blog For Your Business Can Help You Increase Your Profits. One of the more searched for terms among the major search engines is "blog". The word blog is meant to describe a web log, or online journal, that is used to post personal thoughts on the products and services offered by your business.

A blog can also be used to make announcements to your customers and provide them a place to give feedback and make comments. You may include any information you desire in your posts to your blog that are related to your line of business. Articles, questions, and opinions are all appropriate blogging subjects.Starting a blog is simple and there are several blogging tools available to you. Some are free to use and other, more powerful blogging tools can be found for a small monthly fee.

In general, blogging tools are user friendly and do not require the knowledge of HTML or complex computer skills. Creating a blog can give your business increased visibility and give your subscribers a forum in which to receive product updates, advice on how to effectively use your products, and post questions or comments about your line of business. To bring your blog to the attention of your target audience, you can link your blog to other blogs, include links to your blog in newsletters or on your web site, and you may even want to include a link to your blog in your email signature.

Blogging can help you increase your profits due to increased visibility, which will undoubtedly lead to increased web site traffic and lead to you earn money blogging. Make sure to only include pertinent information about your niche or line of business in your blog. Most bloggers are happy to link their blog to those belonging to others. The sharing of information and ability to post thoughts and comments makes for a winning situation for all concerned. Starting a blog for your business can be a great way to help you increase your profits and share important information with the public.

About the Author: For more information about home based business go to http://www.mommysplace.net Source: www.isnare.com

Brief History of Blogs

2006-07-03T07:14:00.000+08:00

Do you know the history of blog? I dont really know the history behind the evolution of blog until i found this article. I had learnt that blog was founded in 1999 by smart programmers that creating a solution when they feel tired of updating their website journal using the manual method. To learn more about the history, you can read the attached article below.

Enjoy!
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Brief History of Blogs
by: Andy Wibbels

So where did all these blogs come from? How did they get from an underground geek toy to a mainstream tool that has revolutionized politics, journalism, marketing and the media?I always find that when I learn about a new technology or way of doing something online, the geeks have already been there (and I say the word 'geek' with complete affection - I'm one too!).

Before business became inseparable from the computer, email or the internet, the academics and tinkerers were there first, kicking the tires and playing with the technology. Blogging was no exception.Many of the earliest internet geeks wrote online journals detailing interesting links and points of view. As this was before programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver, everything was done by hand - and that was a huge hassle.

Each time you updated the site, you ran the risk of breaking links inside the website and leaving your readers stranded with the dreaded 'page not found' error. Eventually, the computer programmers and web designers became fed up with all of this manual work and created their own software to automate the process of updating their journal websites. Thus the weblog was born.

In 1999, a website called Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/) launched, offering free blogs to anybody and everybody that wanted them. Blogger provided the blog tool for free as well as the hosting space to host a blog. Millions of people from all over the world logged on and start creating their own weblogs.The largest conversation in the world had begun. Blogs have changed the way academics do research, journalists write, families connect and politicians fundraise. It was only a matter of time before businesses woke up and realized the power of blogging for marketing online.

Blogging provides a way for companies and customers to meet on common ground to talk about what excites them and makes them tick. It also allows them to closely track where and under what circumstances their products are being talked about online.Today, blogging continues to grow at a swift pace with more than 400,000 posts added per day and 12,000 new blogs being created every day. Millions of people look to blogs for a good laugh, a great idea, a fantastic tip or an instant analysis.

The blogosphere doubles in size every 5 months, allowing anyone, anywhere, in any language, to make their mark in the world to share their ideas, passion and products.'Blog' was the word of the year for 2004 according to Merriam-Webster, the famous dictionary publisher. The year 2004 marked a turning point for blogs as a sought after media format.

Now it was seen as a venue for gathering large audiences of devoted readers who used blogs to supplement, compliment and fact-check their nightly news.My favorite milestone for blogging was when 'Blogs' appeared as a category on the Jeopardy game show. I'll take blogging for one thousand, Alex!

Copyright © 2005 Andy Wibbels
About Andy: Andy Wibbels is a blogging evangelist and creator of the Easy Bake Weblogs seminar that has helped hundreds of small businesses all over the world leverage blogs and RSS news feeds to increase profits and save time. You can download his free special report on business and blogs at http://easybakeweblogs.com/.

How To Create Your Own Blog Using Blogger

2006-07-02T06:34:00.000+08:00

From my last post i had publish an article about questions that we should answer first when starting a blog. Have you do it yet? This is very important as from those questions we will know what are we doing. This will also can ensure that we are ready to take the "responsibility" in order to make our aim to make money while blogging is a success.

Today, i found an article that show the step by step guide on how to set up a account at blogger.com . Why i choose blogger? Because of the simple 1-2-3 step to get started and as it owns by google. It will be listed faster than any other blog platform.

If you still have doubt on how to set up your pwn blog. You can consider this report as a guideline.

Happy Blogging!

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How To Create Your Own Blog Using Blogger
by: Matt Bacak

It takes only a few minutes and is easy to setup your own weblog using the Blogger weblog system. By completing only three simple steps, creating an account, naming your blog and choosing a template, you too can join the thousands of people now blogging on the web. Here's a detailed step-by-step guide to help to get you started using Blogger

1. Go to Blogger.com and click on the arrow that says “Create Your Blog Now.”

You'll be asked to create a username and choose a password that you'll use to access your Blogger account; choose a display name that will be used to sign your posts (e.g., moody mom, bloggerx, etc.) and provide an email address. You'll also be asked to check a box indicating that you accept Blogger's Terms of Service . Then click on “Continue” to go the next screen.

2. On the next screen to name your blog (e.g., The Blog Report, Myrah's Insanity Report, etc.)

You can choose any name you wish. After you choose your blog title, you need to choose your URL address. This is the web address that people can click to access your blog. Again, as long as it's not taken, you can choose any address you want. Remember, the shorter and easier to spell the better it will be for people to remember.

Also remember, that many thousands of people use Blogger to host their weblog and it may take you a while to find a web address that hasn't already been taken. Finally, for security purposes, you'll need to provide word verification by typing in the box the word that is displayed above the box on the screen. Then, click “Continue” to move to next screen.

3. On the next screen, you'll need to choose a template for your blog.

This is the design of your blog, what your blog will look like to visitors. Blogger provides 12 different templates to choose from. Pick your favorite. You can change the look of your blog at a later time by choosing a different Blogger template or using of the hundreds of free templates that are available across the Internet. After you choose your template, click “Continue.” Blogger will begin creating your blog.

4. Once it's created, click on “Start Posting” and write your first post for the world to see.

Click on “Publish Post” and Blogger will tell you it is publishing your post. Then click on the “View Blog” tab and you'll find that you're officially a member of the blogging world.

About the Author: Matt Bacak became "#1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets http://promotingtips.com/ Source: http://www.isnare.com/

7 Questions To Ask Yourself BEFORE Starting A Business Blog

2006-07-01T06:09:00.000+08:00

Recently lots of people are getting excited to make money while they are blogging. But, before starting any blog we should ask ourselves a few questions in order to make sure that we know what we are doing and also why we are creating the blog at the first place. This article by Priya Shah had revealed questions that we shoud ANSWER before starting.

Enjoy!

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7 Questions To Ask Yourself BEFORE Starting A Business Blog
by: Priya Shah

Blogging is the latest buzzword in online marketing and PR.

But with so many marketers jumping on the blogging bandwagon, few people are giving a thought to whether blogs are really up their alley, or taking the time to consider the best ways of going about it.If you are planning to start a business blog, ask yourself these questions before you take the final plunge.

1. Do you really need a blog?
Writing and maintaining a blog takes a certain degree of commitment, as well as a passion (or at least a liking) for stringing words into a decent sentence. If you don't enjoy writing that much, you could always create an audio or video blog.But would your business objectives really be served by starting a blog? Or could other methods of online marketing - like SEO, ezine advertising or newsletter publishing work just as well, if not better?

2. Whom do you want to reach with your blog?
The first step to reaching your audience is understanding where they go to find information about your products.If your audience largely consists of people who live in your town or use products that they search for in the newspapers, offline advertising might be more suited to your purpose.If however, your target audience belongs to one or more of these segments, a blog might be just the thing to boost your business.

- Internet users : Does your target audience really use the internet? If not, then starting a blog (or any online activity, for that matter) will just be a huge waste of time and effort.

- Blog readers : Does your target audience read blogs? Or do they prefer to get their information in their inbox? If the latter is true, then an email newsletter might be a better option than a blog.
- Search engine users : A blog is an excellent way to boost your search engine rankings and get listed for a lot of your target keywords. If you know that your audience uses search engines to find information, a blog will increase your chances of getting their attention.

3. What do you want to achieve with your blog?
There are a lot of things that a blog can do for your business. Blogs can help you -
- Increase your visibility and search engine rankings
- Brand yourself, your products, your services, your company
- Build a community and network with people who have similar interests
- Expand your reach to those outside your current sphere of influence
- Establish your credibility as an expert or thought
-leader in your field
- Put a human face on your business
- Reach out to potential customers and stakeholders

Deciding exactly what you want to achieve with your blog can help you get focused, so that you can spend your time and effort in activities that help, not hinder your business objectives.

4. How much time can you spend on your blog?
Serious business bloggers not only spend time writing their own blogs, but also spend a great deal of time reading up on current events and browsing other blogs in their field for information.If you are prepared to put in the time and effort required to do that sort of research, your blog will serve as a good branding tool for your business.If not, you should either hire someone to do the research or seriously rethink your decision to start a blog.

5. What blogging platform will serve your needs best?
Deciding your blogging platform is an important step that you should take only after becoming familiar with the features and benefits of each option.The reason it is so crucial is because it can be extremely difficult to migrate an established blog to a new platform once you have started it. Moving your blog can result in you losing your data, search engine listings and readers, so don't take this decision lightly.Decide which platform will best meet your marketing objectives, time constraints and personal preferences before you make your first post.

According to T.L. Pakii Pierce who writes at "How to Blog for Fun & Profits!" http://blogforfunandprofit.blogware.com, if you are short of time, and want to spend more time writing, then a hosted solution like Blogger, Blogware, Squarespace or Typepad might serve your purpose better.This might also prove a better option if you want to get started as soon as possible, are new to the internet, or are unfamiliar with scripts or code.

If, on the other hand, you're a control freak (like me) and don't mind spending some time and effort to customize your blog, then a server-installed software, like Wordpress, b2Evolution or Movable Type might be just right for you.If you don't want to install the scripts yourself, choose a hosting solution with Fantastico, which comes with a one-click install of a number of blogging software.

6. How do you plan to promote your blog?
Why is it good to know this before you start your blog? Because it will help you decide where best to invest your time and effort when you need to build traffic to your blog.You'll learn more about the methods to promote your blog when you subscribe to the email course below. Some of these tasks can be outsourced, while others you would have to do yourself.Decide what you want to take on and look out for service providers to handle the other functions so you can start building traffic to your blog as soon as possible.

7. How will you assess the success of your blog?
To determine how successful your blog is in boosting your profile or profits you will have to measure your blog traffic and track sales or leads that have come through it.Planning this in advance will help you take more informed decisions about your blogging metrics, choice of blogging platform and degree of customization you require on your blog.

Understand that blogging is not for everyone. It's just another form of communication.Don't get so hung up on the technology that you end up ignoring more appropriate ways of communicating your message.Some things may be easier to communicate face to face, in a conference room, or even through the good old telephone.But if you asked yourself all the questions above and decided that blogging meets all your objectives, then a blog may be just what the doctor ordered for your business.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Priya Shah is a former journalist who writes on business blogging and publishes an internet marketing newsletter. Subscribe to her free eCourse on Blogging for Marketers

What Are Blogs?

2006-06-30T08:39:00.000+08:00

If you still do not know what blogging is all about or still not clear how to create one. I had found this article that give the basic knowledge about blogging.

Enjoy!
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What Are Blogs?

by: Sharon Housley

Having heard the term previously but not having paid muchattention most are just to afraid to show their ignoranceand ask the question, what is a blog? Lets face it; theterm blog does not conjure pleasant images. Blogs are web logs that are updated regularly, usually on adaily basis. They contain information related to a specifictopic. In some cases blogs are used as daily diaries aboutpeople's personal lives, political views, or even as socialcommentaries. The truth of the matter is that blogs can beshaped into whatever you, the author, want them to be.

Where Did Blogs Come From?
The roots of blogging can be traced back to the mid 1990's.Who the very first blogger actually was is unclear, as theart of blogging did not really take hold until 1999. Theoriginal "weblogs" were link-driven sites with personalcommentaries. The very first blogs were human guidedInternet web tours. While initially thought of as diariesor online journals, blogs have evolved into the latestfresh web content.

The Future of Blogs
A buzz word in techie circles, "blogging" is the wave ofthe future. Whether its a fad, or proves to be a new way tocommunicate with existing and potential customers itdeserves at the very least a cursory look.

Why is Blogging Helpful to Businesses or Individuals?
Just as animated .gifs were once cool, blogging is thetrendy thing to do. That does not mean that it is notbeneficial to businesses. Webmasters struggling to keepfresh, attractive content on their websites to lurevisitors back, have found blogs the answer. Content is anecessity for online businesses, both for purposes of beingfound by search engines but also because it gives visitorsa reason to come back.

Now that we have established that blogs are not only trendy but also beneficial to businesses, its important tounderstand how they can be used to your advantage. We currently manage and update three blogs on a daily basis.

The first is our new business blog at http://www.notepage.net/blog.htm . This professional business blog allows us the opportunityto tell potential, or existing customers industry news,updates, or generally how mobile or paging software can beused in specific situations to alleviate problems.

The bottom line is we control the content. Its updated daily,which increases the chances that search engines will spideron a regular basis and it helps with page rank because it's been submitted to all the blogging directories. Initially started on a whim we've found it beneficial to report tips,tricks or make visitors aware of new regulations related tothe mobile or paging industry.

The second blog we manage is at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/blog.htm This blog is less formal and contains marketing tips, orpromotional advice for software developers or onlinemarketers. We found that we had overflow from our monthlynewsletter. Generating a daily blog would require very little effort and would assist us in creating fresh content which our readers told us was of significant interest.

The third blog is a combination of both styles and containstips for small businesses. The small business blog is located at http://www.small-business-software.net

Blogs & Your Business .
The bottom line is you need to determine how a blog willb enefit your business, determine a schedule and adhere to it. Let your readers know what to expect and when to expectit. Blogs provide great supplemental content and directattention to areas of your business that you want toshowcase; you direct the content but let your readers guideyou.

Creating a Blog
There are numerous online tools that can be used to createa blog. We found that because of security concerns, itwould just be best to use a standard html program. In ourcase we used Dreamweaver and create daily posts. Its reallynot much more complicated than typing an email. The contentis then sent via FTP to a web server. If you want to test the waters there are online web-based tool that helps youpublish to the web instantly. The most popular web basedtool is likely Blogger http://www.blogger.com .

Other Advantages to Blogs
While you may initially create a blog for your existingcustomers, you may find that you can attract new customersby illustrating your expertise in a specific field. Thereare numerous websites that act as "blog search engines", be sure to submit your sites to these websites to increase your exposure. This will also help with your page rank andpossibly increase the likelihood you will receive decent ranking with Google. You can also create an RSS feed inorder to syndicate blog content and gain additional exposure.

About the author:
Copyright 2004 Sharon Housley
About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at , and

Why I create this blog?

2006-06-30T08:21:00.000+08:00

Hai.

Welcome to my blog. My name is Asmawati from Malaysia. I am a mother to 2 childrens (Aisyah and Adam). Actually this is my second blog. My first blog was written in my native language i.e Malay Language.

My main objective creating this blog is to make it easy for me to learn more how i (and you) can earn money while blogging. As we know, every year our expenses had increase and with the oil price hike recently, lots of people are looking for side income in order to cover their life expenses.

While internet is the best choice and blogging is one of the most profitable way to earn money, i hope information in this blog can help me (and you) find the great benefit while blogging.

This is not the time for leisure only, now you can blog and earn at the same time!

Till then, happy reading!

Regards.

Blogging: Free Internet Marketing Method

2006-06-27T05:56:00.000+08:00

It's been years since blogging has been practiced. But it's just recently that it has been considered as one of the addicting fads. Many teenagers have resorted to blogging as an outlet for their emotions, a little online nook where they can blurt out whatever just bugs them or whatever makes them feel elated. Savvy marketers have discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that won't cost you a cent.

What exactly is blogging?
Blog is the widely used term that refers to web log. Basically, a blog is an online journal. A blog could be set up to no cost at all, and can be used for just for the fun of it or for business reasons.

Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to boost the visibility of your products and services. Here are a few ways to boost your internet advertising with the help of a blog:

1. Make your clients or customers abreast on your website's alterations. Your new products and affiliate websites could also be announced through your blog.

2. Keep track of your business objectives and plans through open writing. Your blog content can be easily stored through archives. What could be better than searchable information that could be easily accessed by anyone browsing the web, right?

3. Air your opinions, advice or reviews on specific services or products that are related to your business. Publishing is a very easy process with blogging.

4. Include links that will fetch back links and subsequently improve your ranking on search engines. This could be better executed through putting well-written articles in your website. Affiliate links could also be included in your blog to earn more extra income.

5. Collect response through the ability of blogs to fetch comments from your blog readers. You can learn and improve your products and services through with the feedback from your readers.

6. Connect easily with other bloggers. When other bloggers notice that you have something good in your blog, they will put you in their favorite lists that will automatically link you to their blogs.
So, how do you set up a blog? Here are some of the options you can make use of to take advantage of this fun way to advertise your Internet business.

Either you load a blogging software or let a blogging hosting service do it for you. Host services such as LiveJournal and Blogger.com are the most popular in this field. Those hosts will provide you with easy instructions on how to put up your blog.