BLOGGING

2009-07-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

Teach yourself how to write - easy and fun!

By Steven Neal Wagner

I write often and effortlessly. When someone needs me to write a song, content for an ad, a website or anything else, I never have to think twice. I can do it, I know I can do it and I just do it and that is way it should be with writing.

While I have a great respect for proper spelling and grammar, this article is not going to address those topics as I have evaluated them as being secondary in importance to being able to get your thoughts and feelings and ideas out onto paper easily. Worry later about the spelling and grammar.

If you want to write short stories, novels, songs, poems, web content, work-related projects or even just better letters or e-mails to friends and family, you have come to the write place.

Just as the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single footstep, so the intent to write well and easily also begins with its own "footstep"--the timed writing exercise.

I learned about timed writing exercises in an excellent paperback I found about 20 years ago: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. It is still in print (and I would bet that it has remained in print since it was first published). Go get a copy.

You will find that Goldberg's approach will liberate you and take you up the mountain of writing confidence in a smooth, gradual slope. She dispenses with formal rules of writing (such as sentence structure, paragraphs and other academic concerns) in favor of the raw and the real. Her only rules run along the lines of "Keep your hand moving, don't cross out, don't think and don't stop until the time's up." She has absolute faith in you to discover and build up the mental muscle and confidence that enables you to bypass the internal critic, which she calls "monkey mind."

(I used the exercises in Writing Down the Bones as the underlying steps to creating the lyrics for the songs on my new CD, "Steven Neal Wagner" which you can get by going to http://www.Kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00ZRJDB9 )

There are a lot of people in this world that make things unnecessarily complicated for the likely purpose of keeping other people out of the game. Somewhere along the line, somebody started the falsehood that writing could only be done well by "talented" or "educated" or "special" people. (This lie has made its way into many of the arts.) Certainly, there are some special and prolific writers out there (Stephen King comes to mind) but the truth is that the key to writing is writing. This is so important, I must repeat it: The Key To Writing Is Writing. The timed writing exercise is a very easy to confront method (and Natalie's book is filled with interesting variations on the timed writing idea, too).

"Too simple," you say? Some of the most powerful and most enjoyable things in life are simple.

For people who have gone to college and gotten themselves a Master of Arts or similar writing degree, all I ask is this: Are you writing? Has your college education truly given you the tools to write freely and to your satisfaction? If so, I have no argument. However, I have known more than one college-educated writer who no longer writes or is so hampered by all the rules he/she learned in the university that writing is an unpleasant task.

Rules are great, if they help you produce a product. If they just become a fallen redwood across the path to writing, get rid of them.

Get Natalie's book. Do timed writings. Write, write, write. Then find you are a writer

2008-12-07T03:31:00.000-08:00

Generating Traffic to the Website's that you're Promoting

When it comes to your efforts for generating traffic to your website, you can never do too much to get it. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and there is more than one way to get website traffic. This section is going to show you what they are. So why wait; let's get right to it because this section is a perhaps the most important one. It likely makes more sense to begin at the top.

For starters, you can start to generate traffic with Sub-domains. Sub-domains are websites that are located within a directory of your main site and have their own domain name. This method is a chosen method of webmasters because it is simple to do. Because sub-domains use the same resources as the main website, they are normally much cheaper than getting another hosting account, however it does require more bandwidth use. Their low cost and flexibility make sub-domains a great way to direct traffic to your site without overstretching your budget. When you use Sub-domains as Portal Sites, you should know that one of the best uses of sub-domains is portal websites.

Portal websites are sites that link to your main website and have a similar theme, for example, if your website is about selling cars, your portal website would be about car parts. Basically, they provide another portal, or doorway, for visitors and search engines to get to your main website. So if someone input a query about car parts, the search engines would send them to your website that is about cars. Do you see what I mean? Since creating content for a website takes time, often webmasters simply modify the existing text of the main site and reuse it on the portal site. It is important that the content is not exactly the same and that the portals do not just redirect the visitor's to the main site. Otherwise, search engines may not index them. Portal websites can be submitted to the search engines just like your main site. What this means is that the more portals you have, the more visitors you will get. If your website is doing alright in the search engines, then imagine having five more websites out there for the spiders to find. Five more listings mean that Web surfers have five times as many ways to find your network of websites. You still with me? Portal websites are just like sub-domains but they do not have their own URLs, so it is actually cheaper than subdomains. Search engines and links go hand in hand.

More and more search engine spiders or robots are taking into consideration the number and ranking of sites that are linked to you. By linking your sub-domains to your main site and to each other, the ranking of all of your sites is going to be greatly improved.

Banner Exchange Programs are an extremely popular way to get traffic to your website. Banner exchange programs allow members to share advertising space on each other's websites. Banner exchanges also help you to bring in new clients and customers that you may not have already had. It is like I said in the first few sections; they are a great way to generate traffic to your website, but you may not want to clutter your main site with ads due to loading issues so you have to be careful. Remember the earlier sections that explained the graphical issues that can slow down loading times of your website and force visitors to shut your site down. Portal websites provide a good place to test different programs and direct the resulting traffic to your main site.

You must also try to find Alternative Markets if you want to get your website out there. Search engine spiders will pick up on content variations among your websites. Subtle differences could place a site in a category that you had not thought of and open up an entirely new base of visitors and/or customers. This is again along the lines of finding and writing keyword rich articles etc. that will draw in and attract people to your wares that may not have been looking. For example, when your site is about car parts and you place reviews about cars and articles about cars on your website, it varies your site information enough to draw in potential car buying customers as well. If you are affiliated to a car merchant, this could really boost both of your business. It falls into the category of becoming affiliated with like sites.

Product and Service Specialization is going to be a great asset to your website's traffic. Your main website may have dozens of different products and services. This is great for your business, but when your website is only general, it can hurt your ranking in the search engines. That is why you must focus on one specialization with your website. Specializing allows you to set yourself up as an authority on the product is service that you are selling. Using sub-domains to create sites that specialize in one product or service increases your keyword density and improves your ranking. Plus, many consumers would prefer to work with a specialized business than a one-stop shop because when you are selling everything, it tells them that you are an authority on nothing! Believe me, this is not going to help you in the long run.

Text Link Ads. One of the most successful forms of advertising today is text link ads. They are a bit friendlier for your bandwidth and they don’t take up a lot of space. The can be easily implemented into most page layouts with little effort. Good text links ads offer some information as to why your web site visitor should investigate the offer that is being advertised rather than just saying buy me. A company that wishes to make an advertisement should also supply you with very short text links which only state the product or company name. The reason for this is so that you can implement the links directly into the content of related keyword articles and reviews. This form of web site advertising is a bit time-consuming since it is so hands on, so you really have to choose your products carefully. The information that you supply to your web site visitors will help them make their choices so you have to be honest in your sales copy. If you are successful in this promotion strategy, over time your reviews won’t be seen as hype and bluster, but as a reliable source of information that visitors depend on.

Email Hot Lists are another great way of generating traffic to your website and sell services. What they are is just another form of contact information that you can use to get and keep in touch with new clientele. Using hot lists is not the same thing as a contact list. Email hot lists are things that you pay for from other companies that contain the email addresses of people who are looking to buy or are buying items just like those that you are selling. They are called hot lists because there is no guess work here. Your contact list is from people that meet your targeted audience already. That is why it is so important for you to know who you are trying to sell to.

Building an Email hot list .Are you reluctant to use unsolicited email to contact new prospects? You should be. The last thing you want to do is make all of your potential clients mad launching terrible 'flame campaigns' against you or your company or worse.

About your affiliates. My advice is to not get involved with anything that even resembles spam. However, if you use email lists properly, and in a non-intrusive way, you can make a lot of money and keep perfectly safe in the process.

2008-11-21T17:03:00.000-08:00

Benefits of Blogging and Blog Marketing

By Online Guru of OnlineGuru

You’ve heard about it, niche blogging, but you still can’t see what benefits there are to gain from doing it. I think it is a well known fact within the blogging world that when it comes to turning your blog into something profitable, you would need to target your niche markets.

But some people have gone beyond niche markets and also emphasized the importance of locating sub-niches that also have great potential for being profitable. But first, let’s recap and talk about what a niche is.

A niche is a target market that has good profit potentials and isn’t saturated by your competitors. The idea is to find a market that not only interests you but also one that is unique, allowing you to stand out more.

But of course, you would also want it to be profitable. Meaning, there has to be a decent number of people interested in that niche as well. After all, you are blogging for profit.

Niche blogging would also make your blog more interactive as you get people who are genuinely interested in reading about what you have on your blog. This open discussion would also help in making your blog grow even further.

Niche blogs are also more alive due to this interactivity between you and your readers that other sites don’t offer. This would help you get to know the people who go on your blog even more and learn about the things they like.

Knowing your readers would also help you in improving the kind of articles you have on your site as well as choosing the kind of products to promote.

In no time, you will see the benefits of having this communication with your readers as more and more people come onto your blog. As long as you keep putting up informative and relevant articles, the number would just increase.

So make sure that you keep the articles entertaining and don’t mix it around too much. Keep your blog updated and try to always be ahead when it comes to news. Once people realize that they can rely on your blog for the latest on whatever topic it is you’re writing about, they are sure to come back each and every time slowly building you a loyal reader base.

Another thing that every good blogger knows is to stick to one topic and don’t mix a number of different subjects in one post.

This would distract your reader from the actual point of your post and eventually make them lose interest.

The key to a successful blog is to have the ability to keep the reader interested even when you are writing about just one topic. So choose one that you are very passionate about so that you’ll find various things to write about which are all relevant to your niche.

Make Money

2008-11-07T14:07:00.001-08:00

Hi!

Few weeks ago I discovered Internet Million Dollars website. I read it carefully, but I did not believe. Few days later my friend called me and told me he heard about this book on TV! There was Nikki Tyler -- multi-billionaire speaking about this great book. So I quickly opened Internet Million Dollar website again and downloaded ebook. When I read it I was AMAZED!!! I started to follow step-by-step instruction and IT WORKS!! IT REALLY WORKS!!

PEOPLE!!

I made $11,284 in TWO WEEKS!! It is really incredible :) I am writing here 'cuase I am so happy that I must let everybody know!

THANK YOU GOD!

8 Steps on How To Make Money From Your Blog

2008-11-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

2008-11-06T11:26:00.000-08:00

How Blogging And Deep Linking Correlate With Each Other

By Tom Lindstrom

There is no hidden secret that in order to have success with an online business, you have to be generating continuous traffic to your web site. There are a number of ways you can go about doing this, most focusing on the page rank of your home page and reeling people in to your home page. But one method that people often overlook is the importance of deep linking.

Deep linking is a link to a page other than your home page. It can be so easy to focus all of your attention on your home page, but you want to disperse your traffic throughout your entire web site if at all possible. After all, many times it is the pages within your home page that will generate the majority of your revenue.

With deep linking, you want to build credibility and importance to the internal links of your web site. It is great getting people to your home page, but this does not put them where they can make a purchase always. If you have a number of critical internal links you want to make money from, why not send them to that right away?

So if you are looking to start deep linking, how you can go about getting people to your internal links? Really, you can use just about any other method that you would use for your home page, except change the link. One method that is highly efficient is blogging.

Blogging allows you to talk with people about your entire web site and find out specifically what they are looking for. Then, instead of sending them to your home page to search through all of your pages you can send them to the specific page they are looking for.

Too often entrepreneurs will sell a product to a prospect only to send them to a page to show them everything else they can have. Show your prospects some respect by saving their time and giving them exactly what they are looking for. You will only benefit from it and maybe even have them return because of your courtesy.

There are typically three reasons you would want to focus on deep linking for your web site. The first is if your home page has a high page rank but all of your other pages have little to no page rank whatsoever. Another reason would be if a number of your web pages are not getting picked up by the search engines. Lastly, you should worry about deep linking if you have optimized your internal pages for competitive search terms. While it puts a challenge on you, you can still succeed.

Blogging and deep linking are directly correlated in that blogging can be a great way to inform people about your internal pages and generate traffic to these revenue making web pages. Get out there and let the world know about your entire web site, not just the home page.

2008-11-06T11:19:00.000-08:00

How To Get Guest Blogging Jobs

By Tom Lindstrom

Blogging has turned into a vital piece for entrepreneurs to add to their online businesses. While it is essential to make a post every day to keep a blog going, many small business owners simply do not have the time to do this. Because of this, there is always the demand for guest blogging jobs.

As a guest blogger, there are several benefits. You get to expose your knowledge and content to a new readership that you may have never found yet. And if you work out a deal with the person you are blogging for, you may be able to link back to your blog generating more content.

As the owner of a blog, they benefit from having a guest blogger for a number of reasons as well. It gives the owner a break from posting so they can focus on other facets of their business. In addition, it can be beneficial to get a different writer’s perspective on things and freshen up the site.

So as you can see, it is a win-win situation to find guest blogging jobs. But the real question is how do you go about finding these jobs? There are several ways you can approach this to take on a true opportunity that few even think of.

The first and most obvious method is to keep your eyes open for anything that comes up.Try to post in blogs that are within your niche and do not be afraid to ask the blog owner if they have ever considered hiring a guest blogger.You would be surprised at how often people will make a post saying they will be out of town for a few weeks or are busy with other issues. This is the perfect chance for you to shoot them an email and present your offer.

If you do have a blog yourself, it can be beneficial to post in forums related to your niche asking people if they need a guest blogger. You can include a link to your blog so people can see the quality of your work and how you run your own blog. Even if you do not have your own blog, it is worth it to present an example post so people know how you work.

The most important thing to keep in mind when looking for guest blogging jobs is to be proactive and social. You are never going to find this kind of a job by just sitting back and waiting.You have to be willing to constantly post in other people’s blogs and be assertive. Do not be afraid to ask and always be ready to present examples of posts you have made.

2008-10-31T16:41:00.000-07:00

Blogging is the answer to Earn Money Online

By Princejay Events

Are you one of those who are hoping to earn big money online?

Blogging is the answer to earn money online. Making big money, is another story. But first in order for you to earn money online, either you have to create a website or a blog.

There are a lot of available free blog or blogging sites in the world wide web; few of them are the following:

* blogger.com

* 360.yahoo.com

* wordpress.com

* typepad.com

* blogspirit.com

* thoughts.com

* blogdrive.com

* myblogsite.com

* today.com

* bloggista.com

* richnicheblogging.com

* livejournal.com

* tripod.lycos.com

* thefreesite.com

* and so many other sites.

Just make your search engine work for you.
Once you created your website, you are now ready to make money from it.

Actually, there are few ways in which sites can make money. The two most common ways are:

1. Earn from blog on Advertising Revenue

2. Earn by Selling Goods and Services

Before you start making your blog, make sure to check and visit some blogs to get an idea.

SAMPLE BLOGS:

BLOGS ON AFFILIATE INCOME

BLOGS ON LUNG CANCER

BLOGS ON SENIORS HEALTH INFORMATION

2008-10-31T05:14:00.000-07:00

Making Money on Blogs From Advertising

By Princejay Events

If you already have a blog, now you are ready to start making money from it. But first, make sure your blogs are consistent on its content.

When you visit many websites, you will surely notice that there are numerous links, graphics and banner advertisements displayed on most pages. If you are a newcomer to the scene or on the internet thing, you will surely think that a website must either be created or owned by a big and established company or that the website is popular that they can get many advertisers for their site. This is also true when you watch a TV show or when you scan a magazine or newspaper. The impression of the more advertisers you see, the more successful it is.

The truth on this, anybody with a website or blog can get advertisers. Yes, it is that easy.

For some really famous and established websites, they are being contacted by some companies who offers them to advertise on that particular site, this happens when your website is catering on a specific region or area but this is what you should know, you can get advertising revenues even if you are just starting out and even your blog or website is still unpopular.

The easy way to do this is just to join as an "affiliate" of various sites or networks that offer such business opportunity for everyone. You can join a site like this either directly, or through an affiliate network. An affiliate network is simply an intermediary of the recruitment process, this is where you can select from a variety of advertisers.

Are you ready to earn online?

2008-10-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Building A Huge Opt-in List From Your Blog
By Tom Lindstrom

Having a huge opt-in list can be extremely beneficial for your business. It gives you the ability to capture people’s names and addresses. From there, you can use this information to inform them of new products you have or specials you have going on. In general, it can be a great way to increase the amount of sells you have.

There are several ways you can go about building a monstrous opt-in list, but there are a number of ways you can increase your list just through your blog. And with it becoming more essential to have a blog than ever, it is important you apply these tips to your blog immediately.

The first thing you can do is use a pop up ad to catch people’s attention when they get to your blog. You are probably saying to yourself that these things are so annoying and that is the last thing you want to put on your blog. But you would be surprised at what pop up ads can do for you. All people have to do is fill out their name and email and they can be on their way.

The next thing you can do is place a sign-up form on the top of your blog so people see it immediately. Right when people get to your blog, the first thing they will see is your form. Even if they do not want to sign up immediately, they may be more inclined to do so after reading what you have to say on your blog and begin to trust you. Having it on the top of the blog allows them to see it multiple times as well.

As you are probably well aware of, having a blog gives you the opportunity to talk about anything you want and go in whatever direction you choose. While it is a much more conversational and casual place to talk, you can still promote your business through your blog from time to time. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with mentioning your opt-in list form every week or so.

Lastly, everyone likes free things regardless of what it is. Why not create an e-book or some other kind of product that you can give away for free. Just tell people that all they need to do is provide their name and e-mail address and they can receive the free product. Make sure they know the information is strictly for your opt-in list and nothing else.

9 Ways to Make Money by Blogging

2008-10-06T17:13:00.000-07:00

9 Ways to Make Money by Blogging

By Darren Rowse

Do you want to make money blogging? If you do - you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging - there are tens of thousands of bloggers making money from blogging.

I want to share some information for beginners on making money from their blogs.

I will start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging.
What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though - keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others - the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.

The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last three years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.

I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense

Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more (here’s why) I continue to use AdSense with amazing effect on my other blogs. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.

2. Chitika

Chitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They work best on product related blogs although their recent announcement of their Premium ad unit is exciting as they now offer ads with a non product focus that I’m hearing great conversions on (I have one reader who is getting $28 CPM on this ad unit).Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good. Their Shoplincs product isn’t performing as well as it once did for me - mainly because I’ve been promoting it less and have driven less traffic to it. Over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars - I can’t recommend them enough!

3. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

Private ad sales directly to advertisers have continued to grow over the last few months and as a result they’re now my third highest income stream. I expect them to overtake both Chitika and AdSense in the coming months. This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a campaign or two at Digital Photography School.

4. Amazon Associates

Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it - however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (as I’ve shared previously). This quarter it grew even more than previously as a result of continued growth of DPS where I recommend books, software and cameras.

5. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs

I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs - most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own. These include - - Digital Photography Secrets (a camera technique series), Pro Photo Secrets (a great photoshop product) , Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program (about to open the doors again), SEO Book (Aaron’s legendary resource) and the excellent Teaching Sells course (which just continues to grow in what it offers to it’s members in terms of content).

The great thing about many of these programs is that they are of such high quality that they sell themselves and I am being emailed from readers who sign up to them thanking me for the recommendation!

6. Shopzilla

As I wrote recently - Shopzilla has really impressed me with how it’s performed over the last few weeks. It’s actually doing well enough to debut in this list at #6. The ads are similar to Chitika but the click values have been higher for me to this point. They don’t offer quite as many options as Chitika does in terms of types of ads but for a new ad network there’s definitely promising signs. I’m looking forward to seeing how they continue to develop!

7. ProBlogger Job Boards

The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. It hit me today that the boards are now bringing in around $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are so low maintenance to run. They also offer a service to readers and add value to the overall blog.

The only problem that I face with the job boards is that there are so many bloggers looking for work that the demand for jobs far exceeds the supply. On the good side of things is that advertisers are reporting getting amazing quality of applications.

8. WidgetBucks

Another newcomer to this list is WidgetBucks - another ad network that ProBlogger readers will be familiar with.

WidgetBucks is similar to Chitika and Shopzilla in many respects and works well on product related sites. It does best on sites with US traffic (the reason I’ve not used it as much as I get a lot of international traffic) so if you have a product related site with a US audience it’d be a no brainer to try out WidgetBucks. I’m hoping they’ll continue to expand their offerings in terms of ad types and visitor location.

9. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs

I also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here - and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include ShoppingAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me - not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).
I think that that covers most of it although it’s worth mentioning that last time I did this list I also included TextLinkAds which used to be every bloggers favorite way to make money blogging by selling text links. I’ve stopped using them due to Google cracking down on them (read more about this here) but it’s worth noting that many bloggers still use them successfully - I advise to proceed with caution.

AFFORDABLE Video Social Networking!!

2007-10-28T02:41:00.000-07:00

Hello Bloggers!

FriendsWin Video Social Networking is an AFFORDABLE service that is about to attract masses of people!

The CEO of FriendsWin Paul Nash has raised over $450 MILLION in venture funding in his business career. He is currently raising millions of dollars for the FriendsWin business so FriendsWin will be very successful in the coming months.

On November 1st FriendsWin will be doing a major advertising campaign which will attract thousands of people because of their AFFORDABLE Video Communication Services.

Now many of these new members will want to sign up as an affiliate and they probably won't have a sponsor. So what will happen is that all PAID affiliates will get those new signups in their downline and will receive commissions without even trying!

This is why you need to join FriendsWin NOW right at the beginning and it will only cost you $9.97 per month for the rest of the year.

Just go here and signup ASAP; http://www.friendswinmoney.com

so you can be part of one of the fastest growing teams in the company.

To your success
Shahrir

2007-09-27T10:05:00.001-07:00

2007-09-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

Internet Marketing - Free Internet Marketing Courses, Free Access to 120h Audio Featuring Successful Marketers, Free Money Making Website, Free Internet Marketing Teleseminars.

Instant Video Blog

2007-08-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

A blogging website just about anything

2007-02-02T17:37:00.000-08:00

Everything about anything
A blogging website about just about anything...

ecosway enrich your life

2007-02-02T17:32:00.000-08:00

ecosway enrich your life
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2007-01-28T07:10:00.001-08:00

Easy Website Traffic
Free website resources, including: Autosurf, traffic exchange, banner exchange and much much more. Get your free visitors today. A section of high paying affiliate programs, as well as link generating programs, makes it easy to monetize your website

Splogs and a Side of Spam

2006-11-24T09:09:00.000-08:00

Splogs and a Side of Spam
By Christian Del Monte

If your online, you probably already know what spam is. From Viagra to online gambling, it seems like our e-mail boxes are stuffed with unwanted solicitations everyday. But there's a new kid on the block and its name is Splog. In case your not familiar with the term, Splogs in essence is a Blog that offers real no resource other than trying to trick its visitors into clicking on advertisements or sending traffic to affiliate sites. So why should you care you might ask?

We'll if you use a search engine, the chances are that you've come across a splog or two in your innocent searches. Search results end up tainted because the splogger has a basic understanding on how to make his site come up for your search request. Don't be fooled though, this Blog has little to offer in the way of solving your search request. Typically, content consists of articles, press releases, or marketing mumbo-jumbo that wasn't written by its respectful owner splattered with advertisements for you to click on. So ask yourself this: What's worse? Deleting a spam e-mail or stumbling on a Website that tricks you into thinking it has something useful to offer that you asked for?

Because starting a Blog is free, such as the case with Blogger.com, anyone with an e-mail address and a computer can start a mirad of Splogs with little or no effort. Add that to a revenue sharing program like Google's Adsense and you got yourself a no cost home based business other than your Internet connection.

But don't the search engines care about splogs? You'd like to think so...but no. The reason is simple. More real estate (content) for searches means more revenue opportunity. Plus, most sploggers use search engine advertising to monetize their Splog. So it's a never-ending circle of revenue growth for the search engines. Win-lose, you might say!

Splogs have given birth to its own followings such as Splogspot.com, a search engine dedicated to just searching Splogs. Then there are the opponents such as Splog Fighter that combat Splogs by looking for policy violations and alerting their originating source. However, whether you like it or not, it's becoming a real problem and needs your help.

How to Spot and Avoid

Spotting a Splog can be difficult. However, since we run a Spam free Blog directory and receive hundreds of Splog-like submissions, here are a couple of tell-tale signs of a Splog:

1. Has little or few Blog posts. (one or two months in the archive and are not current)
2. Posts consist of one to two sentences.
3. Majority of the Blog posts are not written by its author. (The source is quoted, but its not by the original author)
4. "Edit me" appears in the left or right column.
5. No "about us" or "about me" page to be found.
6. Advertising seems overly excessive and more emphasis seems to be placed on ads than content.
7. Overall language promotes how to make money with little or no effort.

Although the above list is in no way all-inclusive, it at least points out some shortcomings of common Splog symptoms. If your not sure whether it's a slog or not, the best course of action is to avoid it and not click any of its tempting ads. With your help, we can send a message to the search engines that Splogs will not be tolerated by the masses!

Christian Del Monte: creator of iBlogMarketing.com and Director of Operations for TMA E-Marketing has a B.S. degree in Marketing from Minnesota State University, Mankato. In addition, Christian has over 10 years in personal sales experience and has directed the operations for TMA for the last 4 years.

He has directed and worked on Internet marketing projects for mid to large-scale clients including several fortune 500 companies. Christian continues to head up the operations for TMA as well as lead research and development on vertical search markets and business blogging.

How To Create, Promote And Earn Money From Your Own Blog

2006-11-24T09:02:00.000-08:00

How To Create, Promote And Earn Money From Your Own Blog
By Andrey Yakimov

For starters, what is a blog? In general terms, it is a sort of interactive, regularly updated online journal. A blog owner is called a blogger, the activity of keeping a blog is called blogging, and the blogging community and everything related to blogging is collectively known as the blogosphere.

How are blogs created? There are several options. The cost-free way is to start a blog at one of the countless free blog services, such as the Google service called blogger. Another option is to use one of the free blog scripts and install it at a paid or free hosting service. Such free blog scripts are also numerous, the most popular of them being wordpress. It is also possible to sign up for a paid hosting service with an already installed wordpress blog, but this service is somewhat costlier.

Now let's assume that we already have a blog. The next question is: Where do we get content? Choose the subject for your blog. It may be your professional occupation or hobby. In any case, you must have solid knowledge of the subject. For instance, if you are a proctologist, you may write about hemorrhoids, their treatment, prevention and suchlike as long as these are not scientific articles, but materials written in layman's language. To give you a more practical example, if your hobby is dogs, write about them and people will enjoy it. There is another way to get content. The web has many services offering free articles. All you have to do is select the most interesting ones and publish them. In this way you can quickly fill your blog with content.

Moving on to the question of promoting your blog, it is worth noting that blogs are better indexed by search engines than ordinary web sites due to the specifics of the algorithm used in blogs. For instance, a new article in a well-promoted blog may appear on the search engine results page already on the following day. Of course, this requires registration in special catalogs devoted to blogs, which is what you will do next. Another way is to publish articles with a link to your blog. There are also services meant for just this purpose.

But most importantly, a search engine needs external links to your blog from other web sites. These should be good links generating heavy traffic. What does it mean? It means that ideally the link should be on the web site's main page. What's more, this page should have a PR rating of at least 4 (PR or Google Page Rank reflects the significance of any particular web page). Five or six such links will do more than hundreds of other ordinary links. How can you get such links? There are also various options. For instance, you can find a resource thematically related to your blog and offer its owners to reciprocate links. Finally, you can buy such links. The higher the web site's PR rating, the more such links will cost you.

Now let's move on to the question of how you can earn money from your own blog. The scheme is quite simple: traffic is converted into money. Your income increases proportionately with the traffic volume. One way to earn from a blog is to place ads, which is done most often through google adwords. Another way is to participate in partnership programs associated with the subject of your blog. So if your blog is devoted to dogs, you should advertise flea control products and other dog-related merchandise. A third way is to sell your own merchandise or services. Of course, you can combine several ways of generating income in a single blog. Last but not least, remember that strength is in numbers, which is why it's a good idea to maintain several resources at the same time.

For more information on how to create, promote and earn money from your own blog visit Articleswww.com and Portator.com

Increase Affiliate Marketing Profits With Blogging

2006-11-24T08:55:00.000-08:00

Increase Affiliate Marketing Profits With Blogging
By Anik K. Singal

Do you think it's true that blogging is one of the best ways to make money these days?

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how you put your blog together.

The personal aspect of blogging makes it much easier for readers to consider you as their friend. You should write a blog post like you are actually talking to a person. Give real advice and a lot of information. This way, the people who read your blog become your “friends” and return over and over for continued advice.

Unfortunately, you can’t just stop at blogging! If you want to make money at it, you still need to treat it like a separate part of your business.

Here are a few things you might want to consider adding to your arsenal of blogging tools.

Always remember to include the basics: Put Google AdSense ads on your sidebar; include affiliate links inside your content; and randomly include an affiliate banner or two at the end of your posts.

The most important thing, and the one that is most overlooked, is to find other blogs that are similar to yours and leave comments. Most bloggers love it when people comment on their blog. It shows them that somebody is reading what they write and is interested in the subject.

Informative comments serve two purposes. The blog owner, as well as the reader, may click through to your site and begin reading your blog. By adding comments that include your web-site address, your post gets an incoming link to your web site or blog. That helps you get more search engine traffic.

Be careful when posting comments. Don’t just post a sentence and then add your link. People catch on to this pretty quick and no one will click on the link if they think your comment is useless. Also, if the blog is moderated; your post might be deleted before anyone gets to read it.

For most people, blogging takes some time to become profitable. People will continue reading your blog, they will send their friends to it, and eventually you will get more people linking to you. Ultimately, that helps lead to good rankings.

You can also use trackbacks when blogging. The best-case scenario is that another blog owner will reference your blog in their articles; and then use the trackback function to link to your blog.

Be sure to put a form on your blog that lets people sign up for a newsletter. As more people start reading your blog, and more people link to it, you will start seeing profits from your affiliate links and adsense ads. And, you will make more income from the information you send in the newsletters as you increase your subscriber base. Do you think it's true that blogging is one of the best ways to make money these days?

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on how you put your blog together.

The personal aspect of blogging makes it much easier for readers to consider you as their friend. You should write a blog post like you are actually talking to a person. Give real advice and a lot of information. This way, the people who read your blog become your “friends” and return over and over for continued advice.

Unfortunately, you can’t just stop at blogging! If you want to make money at it, you still need to treat it like a separate part of your business.

Here are a few things you might want to consider adding to your arsenal of blogging tools.

Always remember to include the basics: Put Google AdSense ads on your sidebar; include affiliate links inside your content; and randomly include an affiliate banner or two at the end of your posts.

The most important thing, and the one that is most overlooked, is to find other blogs that are similar to yours and leave comments. Most bloggers love it when people comment on their blog. It shows them that somebody is reading what they write and is interested in the subject.

Informative comments serve two purposes. The blog owner, as well as the reader, may click through to your site and begin reading your blog. By adding comments that include your web-site address, your post gets an incoming link to your web site or blog. That helps you get more search engine traffic.

Be careful when posting comments. Don’t just post a sentence and then add your link. People catch on to this pretty quick and no one will click on the link if they think your comment is useless. Also, if the blog is moderated; your post might be deleted before anyone gets to read it.

For most people, blogging takes some time to become profitable. People will continue reading your blog, they will send their friends to it, and eventually you will get more people linking to you. Ultimately, that helps lead to good rankings.

You can also use trackbacks when blogging. The best-case scenario is that another blog owner will reference your blog in their articles; and then use the trackback function to link to your blog.

Be sure to put a form on your blog that lets people sign up for a newsletter. As more people start reading your blog, and more people link to it, you will start seeing profits from your affiliate links and adsense ads. And, you will make more income from the information you send in the newsletters as you increase your subscriber base.

Anik Singal is an Internet Entrepreneur and expert in affiliate marketing, including the latest web traffic tactics. For a free course that explains how he earned $10,466 in just 60 days using proven marketing principles, visit http://www.affiliateclassroom.com/free-course.html

Optimise Your Blog Traffic and Earn More Money

2006-11-24T08:53:00.000-08:00

Optimise Your Blog Traffic and Earn More Money
By Leanne Williams

When blogging first came to prominence it was little more than a glorified – and public – online journal for many people. However, with its great increase in popularity, it has now become a popular way of making money via the use of affiliate links and advertising programmes such as Google Adsense. If you are considering trying your hand at earning money from blogs, or if you already have a blog set up, it is crucial that you know how to make it a success.

Produce a good quality blog

First of all, it is imperative that you are providing quality content. Make sure you know your subject well so that you can produce a blog which is informative and well written. If you are enthusiastic about your chosen subject, so much the better, as you will know what your target audience are interested in and can tailor a blog suited around those wants or needs.

If you have set up a blog purely as a potential get rich quick scheme and have not invested the necessary time and effort into researching your topic, it will show in your blog. Unless your blog is targeted at a particularly narrow niche there are likely to be hundreds of other blogs competing with yours for traffic, so if you have produced a poor quality site people will have no hesitation about going elsewhere. They certainly won’t be staying long enough to take a look at your affiliate links or click on any adverts.

Update your blog regularly

If you have produced a good quality blog you should receive a steady stream of interested visitors and be earning a little money. However, the bloggers you are probably aspiring to – those who are earning 6 figure incomes from their sites – are earning good money because they are constantly building on their success by constantly adding fresh content, maybe even as frequently as several times a day.

It is in your best interest to keep your target audience hooked, and returning to visit your pages again and again. A regular reader is much more likely to tell people about your blog or link to it from their own sites, and in the long term this is going to be very beneficial to driving up your traffic.

There is a second way in which regular blogging can greatly increase your traffic. There are sites specifically dedicated to bloggers announcing the new addition of content to their sites. Post a link to your new blog entry every time you add new content as when the search engines trawl the internet these links will help speed up the indexing of your pages. Services such as pingomatic.com can help you do this automatically.

Use of keywords

Keep in mind what keywords are likely to draw people to your blog. Within the text, some keywords are going to be given more value than others by the search engines, such as those included in the header, bold text, or those used for hot links. The more emphasis given to the targeted keywords on your blog, the better your search engine ranking will be.

However, try to find a balance between your use of keywords and providing quality content. Over use of keywords can mean the quality of your blog suffers as the text may not ‘flow’ so well. It is also worth noting that if the keyword density is much more than 5% some search engines may regard your blog as potential ‘spam’, and your engine ranking will suffer.

Blog Directories

Seek out blog directories such as blogwise.com and bloghub.com. As well as increasing the number of back links to your sites (thus raising your search engine ranking) you will also be taking advantage of the fact that many people searching for blogs do so through these directories rather than using search engines. This is particularly beneficial if your blog is still fairly new and not particularly prominent on the search engines yet.

Building a succesful blog takes time. Do not be discouraged if it does not immediately attract good traffic as this will come with time and perseverance. Your efforts will eventually be rewarded and with an increase in traffic will come great money making potential.

Leanne has had several articles published on the subject of making money.

2006-11-20T06:50:00.000-08:00

Viral Internet Marketing

Multiple income stream strategy that will help you bring in an income from potentially hundreds of different sources. Additionally acts as an online HelpDesk, which you can brand with your own ID's.

Blogs - Tips to Increase Business Awareness and Profits

2006-11-18T02:47:00.000-08:00

Blogs - Tips to Increase Business Awareness and Profits
By John Sullivan

The use of blogs as part of an Internet business is now regarded as one of the best ways to help promote websites. Blogs are seen from the search engine point of view as important as they are normally updated on a regular basis.

The best way to start using blogs is to focus on one niche for each blog and then to write good content on a regular basis. Once you have a reputation on a particular subject you will receive visitors wanting to read the latest posts.

Try to write informative and helpful posts that will keep visitors returning. It is a good idea to write a snippet (a short version of an article) for example with a link to the full article.

There are many sites to help promote blogs that will bring traffic to your blogs. It is normally a good way of getting targeted traffic to your other websites by linking from blogs.

Search engines like blogs because they offer updated or new content that is useful to their visitors.

Whereas normal websites use keywords as a means of getting visitors. Search engines will display their results based on the keyword phrases entered and then show the most relevant pages that have those keywords in their content.

The advantage with blogs is that it is possible to use tags for posts. Tags operate in a similar way to keywords. For example if a post is made about home theater screens, then if it is posted using that tag then anyone searching on the various sites that use tags will find that post.

The big advantage to this method is that for each tag that the sites like Technorati for example will show the posts with the newest one at the top of the results shown.

So if using a very popular tag or subject then this can be a way of getting a lot of traffic.

It is also possible to receive news of the latest posts from blogs by using RSS feeds, which notifies anyone who adds your feed to their sites. This is a great way to get traffic back to your sites.

Another benefit of using blogs is that visitors can leave a message to posts made. This is a good way to interact with your visitors and can build on a good business relationship.

This is a good way to find what visitors think of your site and what type of information they may be looking for.

When you offer good content that is updated often, then visitors will also start to link to your blogs which apart from giving a feel good factor will help with search engine results.

If people start linking from high Google PR sites then this will really make a big difference in the search engines as this is regarded as an important and relevant site.

It is usually difficult to get many links from high PR sites for new sites but add good content regularly and it will become easier.

John is the owner of 1st Make Money Online, and has spent several years studying the best methods for success online. Blogs

The 5 Secrets of Top Bloggers

2006-11-18T02:45:00.000-08:00

The 5 Secrets of Top Bloggers
By Michael Fleischner

Blogs are becoming more and more popular. If you don't already have a weblog of your own, you've at least posted a comment to one, read one, or heard the term used in everyday conversation.

You may also have noticed that only a small number of blogs are truly known in each industry. As is true with most major media, "the cream rises to the top". The best weblogs have a large following and are valuable sources of information for thousands of readers. There are five primary reasons why some blogs become popular and others don't.

1. Focusing on a Popular Content Area. One of the most important characteristics of a successful blog is appropriate content. In order to gain a large following your blog must cover a topical area that is broad enough to be of interest to a large number of individuals but specific enough to have meaning.

Weblogs that provide information on obscure topics can never have a sizeable audience because the topic is of limited interest. So, if you're going to start a blog of your own, make sure that your content area is broad enough to appeal to a large audience.

2. Content that's timely. The best way to keep your blog readers interested is with timely content. Your blog should cover current events, opinions, and topics. Popular weblogs often comment on current events tied to their particular subject area or industry. Not only is the content meaningful to blog readers, but it encourages them to interact with your blog posts by placing comments.

Timely content is anything that is of current interest. Your best sources for timely content include daily newspapers, magazines, Internet news sites, and industry journals. Be sure to choose timely content that can be discussed and debated. This improves the overall effectiveness of your blog posts.

3. Updated Daily. The blogs that attract the most readers are those addressing popular content areas, covering timely topics, and refreshed on a daily basis. If your weblog adds a new post everyday, then readers have a reason to return. Providing daily updates on a consistent basis helps users to develop the habit of visiting daily. Updated content builds a loyal following while encouraging word-of-mouth referrals about your posts.

4. Comments from Industry Experts. Nothing speaks with more authority than an interview with an expert. The most popular blogs integrate interviews, commentary, podcasts, and other posts that include an expert who offers their thoughts and opinions on a given topic or current event. This is an essential reason why so many people return to the most popular blogs over and over again.

If you're wondering how to recruit experts for your blog, than look to current best practices for blogging and Internet marketing, simply ask. Industry experts are always looking to share their ideas. If you can't arrange for an in-person or phone interview, email the expert a list of questions and ask for their responses.

5. Use Interactive Media and Visuals. It's difficult for blog readers to read flat, boring text day in and day out, regardless of how stimulating a topic may be. The most popular bloggers know this and have enhanced their blogs with audio, video, external links, screenshots, and more.

The best way to improve the overall popularity of your blog is to present blog content in a variety of formats. Visit other blogs and determine what type of interactivity would work best for your blog. You don't need to go overboard, just add interactive content where it makes sense to do so.

By following the lead of today's most popular blogs, your blog can thrive. Follow the blog secrets listed above for enhancing your blog and improving readership. The key is to plan your blogging activities carefully and encourage interaction with your readers. This enhances the overall effectiveness of your blog and makes for a truly great blogging experience for everyone. Happy Blogging!

Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com. He also hosts a marketing blog that provides the latest commentary on the world of marketing. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and had appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit MarketingScoop.com to learn more.

If You Sping A Splog You Spam Ping Your Blog (Weblog)

2006-11-18T02:41:00.000-08:00

If You Sping A Splog You Spam Ping Your Blog (Weblog)
By Tino Buntic

One of the techniques that bloggers use to announce new content on their weblog is to ping it every time they create new content or a new blog entry. A ping is a signal which is sent to a ping server to let it know that a blog has been updated and which also allows blog search engines, like Technorati, to know that there is fresh new content on your blog. One of the most popular free ping providers is pingomatic.com.

This is important to do after each post because it updates search engine databases, which, in turn, can bring more visitors to your blog (assuming that one of your goals is to have more readers of your blog). This is so because a lot of the blog search engines rank freshest (or newest) results first.

Many blogs are monetized by Google AdSense or other PPC or CPM ads and it is, therefore, in many bloggers best interest to draw as many visitors as possible to their blogs in order to earn more advertising revenue. This has led to spinging splogs. A "splog" is a "spam blog," as coined by Mark Cuban. A "sping" is a "spam ping." A sping happens when someone sends a ping even though a new post has not been created. A sping is sent to dupe blog search engines into believing your weblog posts are new and fresh even though they actually are not.

Spinging a splog is in nobody's best interest except for the spinging spammer. The internet is littered with too much spam as it is and spinging does not help the cause.

Tino Buntic invites you to receive free sales leads and free advertising by creating a TradePals professional profile at http://www.trade-pals.com. TradePals provides qualified sales leads to business professionals across The United States and Canada.

Tino enjoys reading blogs and one of his favorites is Ads Of The World.

Blog Spamming

2006-11-18T02:40:00.000-08:00

Blog Spamming
By Kistina Robin

The phenomenal spread of the Internet all over the world has led to countless innovations and practices. In the recent years, another phenomenon has risen to the top of the things to do list on the Internet – blogging. Relatively unknown several years ago, blogging is now one of most common activities online. It is derived from the root word blog, which is actually short for web log – an online diary of sorts. Then there is spamming. Spam, in the broad sense of the word, simply means anything that is junk. E-mails and other information that is repeated and essentially irrelevant are considered spam. Put blog and spam together and you have blog spams.

What exactly is a blog spam? A blog spam is simply a blog that does not have much in form of content. A blog spam exists merely to drive traffic to certain sites. It is in fact used by many people as a SEO technique. Blog spamming is not acceptable to a wide range of sectors. With the main aim of generating traffic, blog spams do not really contribute anything relevant. They exist to provide links to their parent websites and nothing else.

How do you spam blogs? As already discussed above, blogs are normally used to publish information related to website content. Thus content is the most important thing. For blog spams, however, no such importance is placed on content. Thus blog spams may contain just about anything! To increase traffic to the parent website, blog spams are normally filled with only links or classifieds (which actually point to another site). Another aspect of spam blogging is the comment feature. Programs are created to post spam as comments in different blogs. This has become an irritant because spam posted as comments are generally unrelated to the blog topic.

Of course, many legitimate blog hosts condemn spam blogging and are coming up with ways to prevent spam blogging. One of these is through the image verification process where the person posting a comment has to enter a security code before the comment is published. Another one is trough comment moderation options made available in some blogs. Companies which host free blogs are the worst hit by blog spams. However, despite the efforts of these companies to counter blog spamming, unscrupulous individuals somehow still find ways to spam blogs. Maybe this is due largely to the fact that the Internet is a fast evolving technology, and what may work now may not do so the next day. But the best thing you can do is this: provide great content and you will find that there is no need for blog spamming.

5 Reasons to Publish an Executive Blog

2006-11-18T02:36:00.000-08:00

5 Reasons to Publish an Executive Blog
By Paula Skaper

Remember the first time someone told you that by the year 2000 every company would have a website? Remember how sceptical you were? Fast forward to 2006. In the next five years, every successful business will incorporate blogging into their marketing and communications strategies as automatically as they include web sites today.

Most will do it because their competitors are blogging and they don’t want to be “left behind” in the aftermath of technological hurricane. The smart ones leading the pack will profit from their blogs because they know that…

Blogs build brand

Smart companies today are managing their blogs with the same dedication they invest in their television advertising. There are blogs dedicated to supporting a specific advertising campaign (check out chadland.ca for Bell Solo Mobile Phones) and blogs dedicated to supporting corporate positioning in the market place. Soon, not having a blog will be a positioning statement of its own.

Blogging builds relationships

Blogging brings senior executives in direct communication with your customers. It provides a forum for execs to share their ideas, their inspirations and, most importantly, their passion for you business. The result – customers who feel as though they can get to know the people at the helm of your business. And whether the purchase is a $2 tube of chapstick or $2 million ERP investment, we’re always more comfortable buying from people we know than people we don’t.

Blogging is the new cornerstone of effective public relations

It’s crisis time. You need to kick into damage control mode – and fast. Sure you can hold a news conference, place calls to your friendliest journalists, issue a formal statement that you email to key contacts and clients. But that all takes time.

Within minutes a post can be published to your blog outlining your position and letting your customers know where and how to get more information. And with RSS enabled, those same customers will be immediately notified. They might even see your post before the press conference is over.

Search Engine Rankings

A well-managed blog can directly support your search engine rankings. Invest the effort to write regular posts - original content and good information are key. Don’t forget to let your personality shine through – corporate and personal. A unique approach and fresh content are powerful allies in your search engine marketing efforts.

But be careful – like every successful tactic this one has been abused. Simply re-publishing someone else’s content or developing a link farm disguised as a “useful resource” will do more harm than good.

Lead Generation

Bet you didn’t see this one coming! It’s true. Make sure that your blog is interesting to the people most likely to be purchasers of your products or services. Develop an interested audience for your blog, encourage them to subscribe via an RSS feed or an email digest. You get a qualified list of potential customers and permission to put your brand front and centre on a regular basis.

Still not convinced?

Take a look at who’s already blogging? The question should be, “Who isn’t?” In fact, a new directory has launched at iblogbusiness.com. You can also check out these corporate blogs for inspiration:

* Randy’s Journal: by Boeing Vice President Marketing

http://www.boeing.com/randy/

* The Fastlane Blog: posts from several General Motors executives

http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/

* Jonathan’s Blog: by Sun Microsystems President and COO

http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan

* Sweetmantra: Personal Blog of Bill Sweetman

http://www.sweetmantra.com/

* OneDegree: edited by Ken Schafer, VP, Marketing Tucows Inc.

http://www.onedegree.ca

President of email marketing agency Kinetix Media Communications, Paula Skaper is an internet marketing expert. She is an instructor of e-Commerce at BCIT, current President of the IIMA and regularly writes and speaks on issues surrounding every aspect of internet marketing. Paula is also the editor of Digital Conversations, an online marketing resource.

Google Finance: A New And Free Way To Generate More Visitors To Your Blog

2006-11-18T02:33:00.000-08:00

Google Finance: A New And Free Way To Generate More Visitors To Your Blog
By Tino Buntic

An interesting thing happened recently. I mentioned Google in my blog and, shortly after, my blog had a visitor via Google Finance. This was interesting. So I tried a few blog posts that mentioned other public companies and I received even more traffic from Google Finance.

I, by accident, discovered a new and free way to generate some more visitors to my blog. All I had to do was mention a company that is tracked by Google Finance and I would receive visitors.

Here's how it works. Google Finance is a beta product offered by Google that provides information about North American stocks, mutual funds, and public and private companies along with charts, news, and fundamental financial data. If you research any company that is tracked by Google Finance, you will find that at the bottom right-hand corner of the Google Finance page for that company is a section for Blog Posts, providing links to blogs that mention the company so that users of Google Finance can easily find opinions from members of the blogosphere.

What does this mean for you and your blog? It is a new and free way to generate more visitors to your blog if you happen to mention any of the thousands of companies tracked by Google Finance. Of course, mentioning a company just for the sake of mentioning it to generate more blog traffic could be considered spam and is not the right thing to do. But, if you have valuable insight, feel free to do so and you may receive more traffic to your blog.

Tino Buntic created TradePals to provide leads to business professionals and entrepreneurs across North America - without cold calling and for FREE.

Tino also enjoys reading Neville's Financial Blog by Neville Medhora.

Getting Visitors to Your Blog

2006-11-18T02:30:00.000-08:00

Getting Visitors to Your Blog
By Marty Rubenski

You’ve created the perfect blog, packed with useful information. Or maybe you just talk about your family and pets. Everything is great... except nobody reads your blog. If this is even slightly familiar, read these 7 tips for getting the maximum number of visitors to your blog:

1. Quality counts. I’m sorry, but people aren’t interested in what you had for breakfast or the sordid details of your teenage angst. Writing posts that are informative, funny or interesting is 90% of the way to getting visitors. Make every post count. Spend 90% of your time on the posts and the blog traffic will follow.

2. Although you will get most of your visitors from other sources, don’t ignore search engines. They can deliver several hundred visitors a day without too much effort. Include keywords about your topic in at least two posts on each page. For example, if your blog is about sailing, mention the word "sailing" as well as related keywords such as boat, tiller, ocean and yacht. Don’t make the mistake of just repeating "sailing" over and over. Search engines aren’t that dumb. They look for on-topic keywords. Make your titles descriptive. Use "My Greek Sailing Holiday" rather than just "My Holiday"

3. Tell your friends. Tell them to tell their friends. Use this both online and offline. Are you embarrassed to let your friends to see your blog? See tip #1.

4. Get links. Lots of links. Most of your long-term repeat visitors will come from links on other blogs and websites. Use Google to search for blogs and websites in the same area as yours and send them an email telling them about your amazing blog. Offer to exchange links. Many won’t respond, but enough will to make it worth the effort.

5. Get involved with the blogging community. Read blogs on similar topics and ideas and leave meaningful comments on posts you like. Join in the conversations on hot topics. Be part of the community, not just an observer.

6. Write articles on your topic and submit them to the main article directories. Spend enough time to make the quality of your articles the highest you can. Get known as an expert in your field. Add a link and brief description of your blog in the resource section of your article.

7. Post on forums in your topic. Add a link to your blog in your signature if the forum allows this. Getting known as an active and knowledgeable poster will bring you more regular visitors than you realize. Give and you shall receive.

If you would like to get 10,000 visitors a day to your blog within the next six weeks, bookmark http://bloggingonblogging.com

All Blogged Down

2006-11-18T02:28:00.000-08:00

All Blogged Down
By Marilyn Mackenzie

The world certainly has changed. Just the other day, someone I’ve chatted with online for years explained why she had not been more active in a group for thrifty moms. She said she was “all blogged down.”

Bogged down I understood. Moms around the world have probably used that phrase or the equivalent for years.

But “blogged down”? Had she meant that she was up to her ears in making entries in her own blog? Or had she become so addicted to reading the blogs of others that she was neglecting her other activities, both online and off? Good question, right?

Being “all blogged down” probably speaks for many these days, young and old.

For those who do not keep up such things, a blog is a web log, or an online diary or journal. Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary of English defines a weblog as, “a personal web site that provides updated headlines and news articles of other sites that are of interest to the user, also may include journal entries, commentaries and recommendations compiled by the user; also written web log, weblog; also called blog.” That pretty much covers it.

Some folks are addicted to reading blogs of persons they have never met. Day in and day out, they log on to see what others have done in their daily lives or what movies or books they recommend. It’s as if they have become voyeurs.

The Internet has taken over the lives of young and old alike. Young folks rush home, wanting to spend time with online games, at MySpace.com and various chat rooms.

Adults log on, and under the guise of being with a group of like-minded people, spend hours online, often neglecting their families, friends, even jobs.

For the lonely or disabled, having an Internet connection can be a real lifesaver, though. Homebound persons, no matter whether they are young or old, suddenly can boast new friends that they might not have had otherwise.

So, is being connected to the Internet a good or bad thing? The jury is still out on that, I suppose.

For the busy mom, it certainly is easier to shop online than to gather all the kids in the SUV and run to the store. It also spares them having each child beg for toys and snack items.

For the traveling business manager, shopping online, checking stock prices, reading the morning news headlines (or entire newspapers), can be a time saver, while keeping him/her up-to-date.

All in all, I think the Internet has more benefits than liabilities. That is, if we don’t all get “all blogged down.”

Marilyn Mackenzie has been writing about home, family, faith and nature for over 40 years. She is an author on http://www.Writing.Com which is a site for Creative Writers. Her portfolio can be found at http://www.Writing.Com/authors/kenzie

If You Want Free Traffic - You Must Start A Blog Now

2006-11-18T02:14:00.000-08:00

If You Want Free Traffic - You Must Start A Blog Now
By Abdelkrim Tahiri

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.

When you blog, you'll find plenty of search engines and directories that are willing to list you free of charge. For the most part you won't need to link back - you'll get a one-way link from site favored by search engines, often using text that you select yourself.

As blog software matures you can now categorize, and alphabetize your links, and with the ability to ping multiple sources as well as leave trackback links to other sites, you can send your readers through a ring of related, freshly updated information that ultimately leads back to you.

You’ve probably heard a thousand times that it is easier to sell repeatedly to an existing client than it is to find a new one. So how do you get that visitor to come back, and possibly buy again? A constant stream of new information on a particular topic work is enough to keep people buying a daily newspaper, subscribing to a magazine or viewing a television series.

A blog on your site is an easy way to keep your site updated on a regular basis. The upside is that visitors will come by more often. If they find your blog interesting and informative, they may bookmark your site. That means you have a much greater chance of making sales. And you have a ready-made audience for any new products you launch.

With a blog that focuses on a narrow, popular theme, you could be sitting on a gold mine and not even be aware of it. Whether your blog contains tips for newbies in your field, expert advice for veterans, or success strategies that build on each other, you could be in the position to supply a demand for needed information.

Abdelkrim Tahiri likes different blogs about internet promotion. Especially inFrench.visit: promotion-site.blogspot.com

rechercher-sur-internet.blogspot.com

Blogging Tips - 29 Topics and Sentence Starters for Your Next Blog

2006-11-18T02:12:00.000-08:00

Blogging Tips - 29 Topics and Sentence Starters for Your Next Blog
By Rita Wilhelm

Are you a small business blogger who has run out of ideas on what to blog about? Do you have a bad case of writer's block? Here are 29 ideas on what to blog about, along with 29 sentence starters for your next blog.

1. Press releases- making new announcements
2. Thoughts for the day
3. Product comparisons
4. Opinions on a topic
5. Promoting your product or service
6. Sharing thoughts about a recent study
7. Giving links to other similar products
8. Asking people to try a product
9. Sharing positive or negative customer service experiences
10. Providing consultation services
11. Providing information regarding your area, traveling and other related information
12. Giving creative ideas about your business
13. Sharing information on local events or industry tradeshows
14. Latest news
15. Providing tips, FAQ’s and support
16. Providing updates about changes in your website
17. Providing information about projects and their status reports
18. Crisis management
19. Explaining how a typical client would use your product or service
20. Improvements in your product
21. Talk about your pet
22. Getting feedback from the customers
23. Information exchange
24. Creating brand equity
25. Sharing articles
26. Sharing reviews on the latest products
27. Discussing personal, public & government issues
28. Sharing information about the charitable causes your company supports
29. Providing expertise

29 Sentence Starters For Your Next Blog

1. I just read an article by ...
2. Today’s tip is about ...
3. We've outlined many of these steps ...
4. There are a lot of ways to ...
5. What I like about our industry is that ...
6. Most of what I’ve written ...
7. For those who don't know already ...
8. I'm thoroughly impressed with ...
9. Do you really want to make a difference ...
10. We have an exciting new announcement ...
11. There are many proven and time-honored strategies ...
12. Thought it would be fun to share ...
13. An interesting thing happened recently ...
14. The older I get the more I realize that ...
15. Sitting out here by the sea ...
16. One of the best ways to ...
17. Ouch. Not really even a fight ...
18. There's a tremendous swell of interest in ...
19. More often than not ...
20. In case you missed it, I finally ...
21. Have you ever tried to figure out why ...
22. Here is a different twist on the ...
23. You've heard me say that ...
24. It looks like there is ...
25. Knowing what it means to ...
26. One of the earliest lessons I learned about ...
27. Entering the mind of a ...
28. Are you looking for a change?
29. Every so often, I talk with clients who would like to ...

We hope these lists may have sparked some new blogging ideas for you. Use it as a resource whenever you have another case of writer's block. Happy blogging!

Rita Wilhelm helps small businesses with their website strategies.

Major Search Engine Submission: How to Get Listed in Google, Yahoo and Msn

2006-11-18T02:10:00.000-08:00

Major Search Engine Submission: How to Get Listed in Google, Yahoo and Msn
By Rose DesRochers

Bloggers often ask how to get their blog listed in the major search engines.

Here’s how:

1. Submit Directly: Submit your blog via Google’s free submitting form. http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

2. Submit your sitemap to Google. http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/

3. Submit your site to DMOZ, the Open Directory Project. Keep in mind that DMOZ.com is run by volunteers; therefore it may take some time before you are listed and a submission does not guarantee listing.

4. Get a Qualified Backlink: Get linked from a website that search engines crawl regularly and add your link to forum signatures. Google states, “Google's robots jump from page to page on the web via hyperlinks, so the more sites that link to your pages, the more likely it is that we'll find them quickly.”

5. If your blog isn’t already listed in Google’s Blog search engine, you can submit it manually. Add your blog to Google’s Blog Search. http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

It usually takes a new website about a month before it’s fully indexed by Google. Google Blog Search indexes blogs by their site feeds, so be sure that you publish a site feed.

Keep in mind that, while Google dominates the web, it isn’t the only search engine on the web.

Yahoo Search is one of the major search engines and directories online as well, so you are going to want to submit your blog to Yahoo’s Directory. http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?17051064

It could take eight to ten weeks before you are listed in Yahoo.

Yahoo Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo Search. siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

Submit your blog to Yahoo Site Explorer. siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

Submit Your Feed to the Yahoo! RSS Browse-by-Topic Directory. http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/my/cgi_rss_submission

Submit your Media RSS Feed to Yahoo! Search -http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/submit?

You can submit your blog to Msn at http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD

SubmitExpress.com will submit your blog free to the top 20 + Search engines.

If you don’t already have a Technorati account, sign up for one at Technorati.com and claim your blog at Technorati. Technorati is a popular weblog search engine.

Bloggertalk.net offers a list of blog directories where you can also submit your blog to increase your exposure online. http://www.bloggertalk.net/blog_resources-cat-369.html

When submitting to directories, be sure to take the time to read the submission guidelines provided by each blog directory.

Getting listed in the major search engines alone doesn’t guarantee traffic. Your blog content guarantees that. Update regularly, provide interesting content and the visitors will come, as will the spider bots.

Rose DesRochers is the founder of Blogger Talk Blog Community http://www.bloggertalk.net, a friendly fast growing blogging portal, offering bloggers support, advice, tools, tips and information about blogs and blogging. She is also the administrator of Today's Woman Writing Community http://www.todays-woman.net, a supportive online writing community for men and women over 18.

4 Steps For Niche Blogging Success

2006-11-18T02:06:00.000-08:00

4 Steps For Niche Blogging Success
By Khemal Dole

Niche blogging has become an extremely popular method of earning revenue with webmasters and internet marketers over the years. The reasons for this are because blogs tend to be easy to get indexed by the search engines, they are very easy to maintain and update and they provide interaction with the visitors and the owner.

There are four simple steps that you should take in order to be successful with niche blogging and they are:

1) Find a niche. This is extremely important as it is very hard to compete with marketers and companies that dominate the much larger niches and they also tend to dominate the search engines for their keywords therefore making it much harder for you to gain good rankings and drive free traffic from the search engines, there is also the fact that the larger niches tend to have millions of competing websites all trying to get higher up the rankings.

You must choose a niche that you can compete in. You can find niches everywhere such as around your home, in the middle of your town, in shops, on article sites, in newsgroups, in magazines, in newspapers and many more places. Nearly anything that people will seach for on the internet can be classed as a niche market for you to earn revenue with.

Always be on the look out for good niches and never stop looking.

2) The content. People will only enjoy and come back to your niche blog if there is great content on it, I mean, why would anyone want to read a blog that was full of bad information? They wouldn't. You need to research and gain knowledge in the niche that you will be working in and you must be able to provide valuable and interesting information to your blog readers.

You can gain knowledge all over the internet and learn about nearly anything you wish with just a little searching. Look through the search engines, websites, articles and even other blogs.

The more you know about your niche, the more chance you have of providing an excellent blog for your market and gaining loyal readers.

3) The traffic. If you want to earn revenue via your blog then you will need to get traffic to it, there is nearly no other way at all to do it. The good news is that there is traffic everywhere on the internet and it is not particularly hard to get it.

You can get traffic to your blog through link exchanging, banner ads, submitting articles, doing press released, using forums, pay per click, email marketing, social networking and many more methods, all you need to do is find out where your market prospects are and drive them to your blog.

Find websites related to your niche that receive a lot of traffic and find a way for you to gain some of that traffic either using paid methods or free.

4) The monetization. You have to monetize your blog in order to earn money, obviously. You can monetize a blog through a number of methods such as adding pay per click ads to it, affiliate links, links to your own products or resell rights products, accepting paid ads, capturing email addresses and marketing to them and more.

The best way to find out the most profitable monetization method is to simply test them. Test which method brings you the most money and stick with it, all you need to do is switch each method around after a certain time period to find out.

Khemal Dole owns and operates http://www.PaychecksDirect.com, a completely FREE service which helps many first-timers and even experts find their perfect Work At Home job. Visit http://www.paychecksdirect.com right now and see for yourself why so many are flocking to his site.

The Power of Blogs

2006-11-18T02:05:00.000-08:00

The Power of Blogs
By Carol Stack

What do you think of when you hear the word "blogging"? Many people think of a teenage girl's personal diary online. They wonder why any professional would ever have a blog.

Blogs have evolved, however, into a terrific tool to promote anything. Businesses are setting up blogs, as well as individuals, who want to promote their products. Blogs are the perfect tool for anyone who wants a presence on the World Wide Web.

Using free blogging software, such as Wordpress, you can have a site up in minutes. Spend a little extra time creating a header graphic and you can have a professional-looking site up in less than an hour.

Although many people still think "teenager's diary" when they hear the word blog, that is beginning to change. Professionals have found that using a blog to communicate with their audience is a great way to build excitement about an upcoming product launch, keep their buyers informed about updates, or just simply communicate with the world. What an inspiring thought that is - to communicate with the world!

It's true, though, that a blog puts each of us in a spotlight for the whole world to find us. Within a few hours of setting up a blog you can have traffic coming to visit. With a good ping list you simply make a post and dozens of sites are told (pinged) that you have added content to your blog. It really is that simple.

Another way to get traffic is to make relevant comments on other blogs with your blog's URL listed with your name. You can also go to answers.yahoo.com and answer questions in your field, again leaving your blog's URL with your name. If your answer is good, people will be inclined to visit your site to see what else you are saying about the topic.

If you regularly post, get links coming to the site, and provide good, solid content, you should succeed in getting a decent amount of traffic within a short time. There are blogs that are getting about 100 visitors a day after 3 months online and there are blogs getting a million visitors a day after a year. It depends a lot on the number of people interested in the topic.

Monetizing a blog is not hard. If you are selling a product then you will be focused on promoting your product. Don't provide the visitor very many choices except to buy your product. In other words, don't have Adsense or affiliate products on prominent pages. Place them on pages that visitors end up on if they are not interested in your product.

If you don't have a product then you can use an assortment of money-makers such as Adsense, Chitika, and affiliate products. If you go this route, don't depend on just one revenue source. Have several affiliate products, Clickbank products, and pay per click advertising.

There is no reason why anyone with a computer and an internet connection could not make money with a blog. It is very simple. The blog does most of the work. All you really have to do is set it up and then post interesting content. Don't put it off another day.

Carol Stack enjoys writing. She lives with her husband, children, and various dogs and cats in the United States. She has several blogs, including http://www.selfpublishinghelper.com where she posts about online publishing using blogs, article syndication, video, and more.

How To Make Money From Blog

2006-11-18T01:59:00.000-08:00

How To Make Money From Blog
By Benedic Bradson

What is a blog?

A blog is basically a sub-website that describe anything from company profile, opinion, critique or just anything.What good about blog is that it's free and easy to make. You don't need to have HTML basis because this a ready made website, so you just need to construct it online and upload pictures.

How do blog make you money?

1. There are lots of company out there that provide blog services and charge other people when they read your blog. The profit will be shared between you and the blog company. This will be a good opportunity for those who has good writing skill and lot of unique ideas. The trick here is to make a blog that has a valuable information and cannot be found at any other website.

2. There are also companies willing to pay you depending on the number of post commonly known as payperpost. You can be paid up to $100 per post.To find one, just type the term payperpost in Google search box.

3. For a common blog services, you could make use of google adsense which is a very good way to make money online Google will add an advertisement revenue on your blog and pay you when a visitor click on the ads.

4. If you already have a website and want to promote your product, blogging is the perfect way for you. Blog will drive traffic to your site if you put a link back to your website. This is a great way to promote your product the easy way.

Here is some tips on making a good blog.

1. Pick an interesting topic that will attract people. Provide facts and statistic on your content so people will more likely trust you.

2. Provide a keyword rich content on your blog so search engine will more likely find you.

3. Stay fresh with information. Put new things to your blog from time to time to ensure visitor will come back to your site.

4. People will search for information when they are online. So, write a blog on the hottest news so that visitor will visit your site for information on the news.

*********************************************************************

12 ways to Make Money Online

1. Make Money from ebay 2. Make Money with Blogs
3. Make Money as a Day Trader
4. Make Money with Paid Surveys
5. Make Money from Selling Ebooks
6. Make Money from Processing Emails
7. Make Money from Writing Articles
8. Make Money with Google Adsense
9. Make Money as a Mystery Shopper
10. Make Money with Affiliate programs
11. Make Money from Newsletter and Ezine
12. Make Money from Resell Rights Product

For further information on 12 ways to Make Money Online, please visit the Author's website at http://themoneymaker.50webs.com

How to Create a Blog

2006-11-18T01:56:00.000-08:00

How to Create a Blog
By Gijo George

A Blog is similar to a personal website, where you can add whatever information you feel like. Having your own Blog will help you to share your ideas and views on particular topic with the whole world. To get a Blog is as easy as creating an email. To own a Blog, first you have to sign up for an account with a particular Blog provider. There are many players in the field, the most popular one being the Blogger.com.

Once you enter this site you can create your account within minutes. Once the user Account is ready, you can start creating Blogs. For this first login to your Blog account with the created Username and Password. Click on the Create Blog button and type a Blog name. You will get this Blog name if the particular name you requested is not taken by anybody else. Once you own this blog, you can select a template from the available list of templates which are elegant and beautiful.

After the selection of the template, you can start posting in the Blog you just now created. For this, click on the New Post button and start posting your content. After posting the data, you have to publish your posting with a Publish button. You can notice your url in the address bar. You can link this url in your email or in other sites where people will find your site and click it to read your content. Also, every Blog template contains a button called Next Blog. This button will guide the user to the next blog.

Gijo George

Visit http://www.giftsspace.com For Unique Crafts and Gifts from Around the world

Blogs Can Make Money for Clients

2006-11-18T01:54:00.000-08:00

Blogs Can Make Money for Clients
By Aaron Wittersheim

Once a company blog is launched, management quickly turns its attention to monetizing it. Depending on the size and demographics of the audience, it is not unheard of for blogs to earn in excess of $10,000 a month. But although companies have several revenue-generating options to choose from, they can easily go wrong. Savvy managers tap their search engine marketing, or SEM, partner for direction.

Common monetization techniques include:

publishing pay-per-click, or PPC, ads on the blog through programs such as Google™ AdWords; affiliate advertising, through programs such as Amazon® Affiliates; RSS advertising, or placing ads on a blog’s subscription feeds; Selling ad space to strategic business partners or other third parties; Offering downloadable podcasts or research studies for a fee; Offering promotional merchandise; and, Soliciting donations through services such as PayPal®.

Depending on corporate culture and the nature of the market, some options make more sense than others. For example, a not-for-profit can attract sizable donations, whereas a commercial business is apt to put off blog readers simply by asking for them. Packing the page with PPC ads might seem natural on a discount retailer’s blog, but tacky or outright objectionable on a law firm’s. The SEM partner’s role is to sort out the client’s marketing issues and craft a monetization plan that properly blends the ingredients.

Important as the right plan is, the crucial element of blog monetization – and the one so often ignored – is timing. Quite simply, no monetization tool in the world will deliver results until the blog has established an audience. Attracting traffic and building steady readership are where the client needs its SEM partner first and most for:

building search engine optimization, or SEO, into the blog’s programming; implementing reader-friendly RSS subscription feeds; recommending SEO techniques for blog content; developing and executing a linking strategy; registering the blog on important blog directories; and, analyzing blog traffic to pinpoint the most promising monetization approaches.

Rushing to fill a client’s blog with ads and offers, while tempting, is ineffective, even counterproductive. A clean, uncluttered blog layout attracts new readers. On the other hand, blogs that look like an online flea market inspire visitors to click away.

In general, SEM firms should advise clients to take the blog monetization plunge; but look before they leap. A successful strategy has two phases: first build the audience, then, second, go after the revenue.

Aaron Wittersheim is president of Whoast Inc., a suburban Chicago search marketing firm. For more information, visit http://www.whoast.com.

10 Tips On Promoting Your New Blog

2006-11-18T01:48:00.000-08:00

10 Tips On Promoting Your New Blog
By Philip Michael

One great way of getting more traffic and more importantly, making the traffic come back to your site over and over again, is by having your own blog.

The term, ‘Blog‘, is becoming more and more popular, and these days most online companies have a blog.

How can you promote your blog? Once you get your blog known, if you have good enough content, then it will promote itself, thats the amazing thing with blogs.

Heres some quick tips to help promote your blog.

1. Allow your blog readers to subscribe to your own RSS feed. Subscribe with Feedburner. Feedburner allows blog owners and podcasters the ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers.
2. Always set your blog to ping ‘update services’. What is that? If you use the Wordpress software, here is a great explanation, here.
3. Take full advantage of Technorati. For a full explanation of what Technorati is and how it works, take a look here.

4. Use the power of social netwroking sites, such as digg.com, reddit.com and del.icio.us . If you write a great article, submit it to these sites, if they get picked up by them, you will see a massive increase in traffic to your blog.
5. When writing a post, always make sure you link to as many related sites and blogs. Many blogs have a ‘trackback’ feature enabled which can see what other blogs, like yours, are sending visitors to their blogs. They then usually link back to your blog automatically for free.
6. Get your blogs web address in as many places as possible. Use forums, and put your blogs address in your signature.
7. Submit your blog to as many blog directories as possible, such as blogcatalog.com
8. Link to your blog from your websites homepage, and also in the footer of every other page on your website.
9. Get tips from 2 pro bloggers, such as problogger.net and shoemoney.com
10. Finally, and most important, write great content that is relevant to your website, and you will then find your readers will do your promoting for you.

Article Written By Phil From www.adquick.co.uk

Making Money By Blogging

2006-11-18T01:43:00.000-08:00

Making Money By Blogging
By Andrew McNaught

Entrepreneurs make money blogging using two main types of business models. The most common way that people turn blogging into a profit making machine is to contact different companies that will want to reach your readers to buy advertising. Another way that money can be made is to help a single brand improve its image by creating a positive association between your blog and their product in the minds of purchasers. You can make lots of money with either method, especially if you use your marketing skills.

There are two basic ways that you can recruit companies to buy advertising on your site, if that is why you are blogging. If you want sponsors to put ads on your site you can let someone else take care of recruiting them or you can recruit them yourself so that all of the proceeds will go to you. If you don't have time to recruit sponsors, then you may want to do what many other people do. They make money through Google's AdSense program, which has numerous advantages. One of the best advantages is that it takes very little effort on the part of the blogger to start making money. Most people find, though, that they make less money than they had planned from their blog.

A more lucrative way of making money through blogging is by recruiting companies to put their ads and links on your blog yourself. You may want to do this yourself, especially if you have contacts in different companies that may be interested in advertising on your blog. If you have a sales background, you may also do very well in selling advertising yourself. The only problem with selling advertising directly to companies is that it will take a sizable readership to attract the companies to buy ads, and this means that you may have to complete several months of work before you begin to see the money through blogging.

Established companies are trying to find a way that they can get into the lucrative business of blogging. One of the ways that they are getting into the blogging business is by creating blogs to put a friendly face on their company. They will have an experienced blogger create a blog that will appeal to their prospective customers to create a positive attitude about their company and the brand that they are trying to sell. You would be surprised by the number of bloggers who didn't plan on making money blogging that have been contacted by a company with a substantial financial offer to blog for them.

You can make money blogging. You just need to learn about the different ways to make money so that you will be more knowledgeable about the process. Then you can type your way to making money.

Andrew McNaught is a successful webmaster and publisher of Blogging World Online where you can find out lots more on the world of blogging.

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

What Is Social Bookmarking and Why Should Bloggers Care?

2006-11-18T01:42:00.000-08:00

What Is Social Bookmarking and Why Should Bloggers Care?
By Cathy Perkins

What is Social Bookmarking and why should bloggers care? Good questions! It's been around for a long time but is just now coming to the attention of the blogosphere.

Social bookmarking is the process of setting up an account on one or many of the social bookmarking sites like Technorati, Del.icio.us, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Google Bookmarks, Yahoo My Web, Digg, Spurl and many others. These seem to be the most popular. Setting up an account on any of these services is quite easy because they don't want your life story, usually just a user name and password. So - the first time you go to these sites it will take a bit longer but once your account is set up, it's a matter of clicking to the site and bookmarking your page.

Bookmark your page? What page? You bookmark the page of your blog post that you just did. You can put keywords into the form too so others can find your post by keyword. This does two things - you get a link to your post - and we all know how important incoming links are for the search engines - and you make your URL findable by keyword for anyone who uses that social bookmarking service and searches by keyword.

Think of these sites as mini search engines. If you use any of the 'big' search engines to search by keyword you'll get about a zillion returns. How do you choose? Can they all be relevant to what you want to know? Of course not. By using these social bookmarking search engines, the results will nearly always be relevant if the poster picks good keywords and there won't be a zillion returns.

How can you leverage the use of social bookmarking sites? Easy - there are plug-ins available for most blog platforms that allow you to put a line of social bookmarking sites across the bottom of each post. All your reader has to do is click on the icon for the site of his choice and bookmark that post in his own account. Presto - another incoming link!

If you are a blogger, there is really no easier way to get incoming links and get noticed by the search engines. Give it a try!

Cathy Perkins is an author, blogger, and WordPress expert who lives in the beautiful foothills of North Carolina. Watch as she builds her site, http://www.wordpressguru.com from the ground up. You will learn all you ever wanted to know about WordPress and more. Sign up for the WordPress Guru newsletter while you are there.

How to Create Your Own Free Blog

2006-11-18T01:32:00.000-08:00

How to Create Your Own Free Blog
By Joshua Spaulding

So what is a blog? You can think of it as a journal. Although many use them to post informational articles on whatever their topic is, you can use a free blog to post your daily activities or anything you want. Many allow you to post what is called a blogroll. This is a list of links to your favorite blogs or websites. There are many more great features you get and the best part is they are free.

When you create a website there are several things you must consider. You must register a domain and pay an annual fee. You must also pay for a host which can be very costly for a good one. When it comes down to it starting a free blog just makes sense. Why pay all of that money for a website that you must create yourself.

So how do you create a free blog? That is an easy one; find a company like word press or blogger and register. It is that easy, they will walk you through the steps that you need to do in order to get it going. You do not need any prior knowledge of websites, hosting or anything else. Once it is set up all you have to do is post your thoughts in the pre-made template and then click the post button.

If you already own a normal website or you are considering it your site can benefit from your free blog as well. If the two are on the same topic you can use what is called RSS feeds to feed your posts onto your normal website. The benefit to this is that your site will have fresh original content every time you make a post.

Whatever your reason is to get one started it is important for you to know that you do not need any prior knowledge to do so and it is absolutely free. Do find a good place to get started just do a search on any major SE and you should have no problem at all finding one. You may be better off going with one of the more well known hosts but you may be able to find a good one that is just coming up.

Joshua Spaulding is a Webmaster and Author providing Proven Ways to Make Money Online including how to Create a Free Blog. Joshua also runs a Quality Article Directory.

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

Top 5 Tips For Blogging For SEO And Traffic Benifits

2006-11-18T01:28:00.000-08:00

Top 5 Tips For Blogging For SEO And Traffic Benefits
By George Christodoulou

Blogging is one of the simplest forms of publishing content on the internet. They are also amazing food for search engines. Despite this, there is a way that blogs must be created and maintained to make sure that they run properly. You can't just decide that you are going to create a blog and you are going to get traffic because that is just not happening. What you are going to do is follow these 10 tips that aren’t going to make you a blogging master, but will get you on the first step on the ladder to success.

1. Make sure you have a template edited so it is different from the default ones. People who use default blog templates are doomed to fail because they presume the public is ignorant and do not know that 5,000 other blogs look like theirs. Editing is not hard, it takes a little bit of knowledge, software, or some money.

2. Post more then once a day. As soon as you start your blog, start to post 3, 4, even 5 times a day for a month. If you see any blogs out there, you know that they have hundreds of posts. These posts are created over a long period of time. You need to catch up. If you write 5 posts a day for a month you will have 150 posts and that is plenty to get you going.

3. Ping your blog everywhere. This is very important when you want search engines to get to you. Sites that offer you the ability to ping are all over the web. You can even type in, "list of sites to ping" in Google and find some forum thread or other that has a large list of sites to ping to.

4. Use RSS feed and ping it as well. Many people do not know the incredible power of RSS feed. Many blog platforms already start with RSS feed for your blog. This can also be pinged along with your site. Hopefully if your posts are good, webmasters will pick them up and place them on there sites.

5. Use social bookmarking Sites. These social bookmarking sites are amazing. These sites allow people to publicly display there favorite sites on the internet. All you have to do is sign up to one, like www.del.ici.us and join. Then look for the blogging tools and place a button on your site. What this does is tell people to add your blog to there favorites. This brings links, traffic, increased ranking and more.

If you are really interested in learning all you can about blogging you are on the right path. There are plenty of great free resources on the internet; all you have to do is find them.

Free Blog Traffic E-book!
Learn How To Blog Like A Pro To
Generate Thousnds Of Visitors To Your Website Using Blogs.

Thanks for reading

George Christodoulou
(www.internetbusiness-tips.com

Blogging for Beginners

2006-11-18T01:26:00.000-08:00

Blogging for Beginners
By Shane Higginbottom

If writing is an art, then, blogging is ultimate way of using words to convey your personal expression. This is because people who are blogging are very creative individuals, carefully crafting words that would best describe their feelings, sentiments, wishes, desires, and everything in between.

Basically, blogs were first introduced in the mid-1990s. Blogging has exploded into the virtual community making the Internet a increasingly popular source of information. Today according to Technorati there are well over 50 million blogs on the internet.

If you're looking to get started blogging there are two ways you can go. You can get your own hosting with and purchase your own domain name, or you can search for a free blogging provider. In most cases, A beginning Blogger will choose a free blogging platform.

With the onset of blogging in the industry, personal journaling had been a common ground for people who wish to be known all over the world. However, not literally famous as this is not a case on being popular or well-known personality.

Generally, blogs are created for personal use. Like a daily Diary, people write about their daily adventures, thoughts, personal opinions and whatever ideas they want to express online.

As well, since the dot com boom of the mid 90's, with more and more people and companies starting online businesses, blogs have taken on a whole new dimension in providing businesses a chance to boost their online sales and provide a friendly face for their customers. Since that time business blogging has exploded and has come into it's own a viable source of online income not only for the large corporation but for the individual looking for an additional source of income or starting a home based business. This is what is known euphemistically as blogging for dollars.

Business blogging in its very basic form is advertising the services or products of a web site or online business in order to increase that business's online sales.

Not only that, but, business blogging is also a fantastic way of promoting a companies brand identity so that readers will know that a certain company exists online. With business blogs, internet entrepreneurs are also able to create an online presence in the virtual market place by producing article content that is useful to a reader.

From there, you can make money online blogging by simply syndicating your content to your business' web site. This can be done through the use of RSS technology. Many reader of online content get their daily fix of news and updates by using RSS feeds. It is now possible to promote your product or services content and advertising using RSS feeds.

So, now that you are ready to create a blog, either a business blog or a personal blog, you need some basic blogging tips that WILL help you make your blog one of the more interesting blogs online.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Shane Higginbottom specializes in teaching real people how to make money blogging. To get instant access to all of his most profitable marketing campaigns, strategies, tools, and resources that he's used to grow from zero to replacing his income in just over a year visit: http://www.making-money-blogging.com/

The Secrets of the SuperBloggers Revealed

2006-11-18T01:23:00.000-08:00

The Secrets of the SuperBloggers Revealed
By Geoff Shaw

Blogging offers anyone the opportunity to make a good deal of money marketing online. With very little skill a complete newbie can create a website through the use of blogging that will produce high optimized web pages targeting specific topics that will allow those pages to rank well in the search engine listings.

What make blogging even more appealing is the fact that those pages will generally get indexed a lot quicker than pages on a static website.

Some of the biggest money earners on the Internet today are doing so by using blogging as their primary source of content distribution.

Even though blogging has been around for quite some time there are still people who completely misunderstand the importance of having a blog.

I often read where uninformed people are stating that blogging is just a fad that will soon die off. Blogging is far from a fad.

It is in fact just a form of content management - nothing more and nothing less. It is here to stay and will enable those who embrace it to prosper.

We have trained youngsters who have no idea of Internet Marketing, website development, affiliate marketing or the terms, Adsense, CPA, PPC and the like to start making money within the first few days of starting their blogs.

Used in combination with social network sites and the benefits of tagging, blogging is a fast road to success for many people.

Fortunately the techniques are quite simple and that is why anyone from a Grandmother to a schoolboy can have an equal chance of success.

Blogging embraces the whole essence of the Internet, and that is the sharing of information. This has been and will always be what will make the Internet grow.

If you aren't blogging now then you are missing out on life changing opportunities. Geoff Shaw from http://www.shiploadsofmoney.com shares the information that he uses to create a successful online business in his free SuperBlogging series of books and newsletter. There are many different techniques that can have a huge influence on your ultimate success.

Learn the Secrets of the SuperBloggers from the FREE SuperBlogging series of books released by Geoff Shaw from http://www.shiploadsofmoney.com along with his informative blog training newsletter. There are a series of books that teach all the aspects of blogging for money and success, from the basic through to techniques that have never been revealed before.

Increase Affiliate Marketing Profits With Blogging

2006-11-18T01:20:00.000-08:00

Bloggers Vs Internet Marketers - Which One Are You?

2006-11-18T01:12:00.000-08:00

Bloggers Vs Internet Marketers - Which One Are You?
By Gobala Krishnan

What is the fundamental difference between a blogger and an Internet marketer? Is there any difference at all to begin with?

Since I had nothing better to do today, I decided to take the risk of being flamed by hate mail by telling you exactly where the line is drawn. While these are examples from the extreme ends of the online publishing spectrum, I believe you'll see my point by the end of this article.

Nowadays, almost every Internet marketer I know has a blog. However, none of them like to be called a blogger. Most bloggers on the other hand think they're Internet marketers. Those poor misguided souls.

Here's what fundamentally different between a blogger and a real Internet marketer making a living online:

1) Living on Search Engine Traffic

The most obvious trait I've seen in a blogger is their over-reliance on search engine traffic. In fact, probably the only way they know of getting visitors to their blogs is by getting a "degree" in Google, and spending all their time trying to please Big-G.

Internet marketers on the other hand see search engine traffic as just one component of their entire marketing campaign. They have access to a wider range of tools such as articles, joint-ventures, pay-per-click advertising and email marketing to mention a few. They have the knowledge to use them and they do so regularly.

2) Lack Of Control Over Their Mailing List

Another common trait of a blogger is the dependence on RSS subscription services like Feedburner to build a database of potential customers. they're content with the fact that by doing this they will never be able to send messages to their loyal readers other than what they post on their blogs.

When you get to a blog maintained by an Internet marketer, instead of seeing a "Subscribe by Feedburner" form, you'll see a "special offer" or reason to optin, followed by a customized form using Aweber or a similar service. By doing this, the Internet market captures the full details of his visitors and is free to send them emails that were never intended to be published on their blogs.

The Internet marketer also analyzes his list to determine their interests, and provides more value based on this findings. He masters his list and knows that they're his most important asset; not the blog.

3) Reluctance on Promoting Affiliate Products

I've seen so many bloggers state "That's my affiliate link" right after they post it on their blogs. It's almost as if they're afraid of their readers finding out that they somehow benefit by putting that link up. They feel guilty making money from others with an affiliate link, so they clearly brand it as such.

The Internet marketer however has no issues with this. His job is to promote products he feels will benefit his market, and he is not afraid to get paid for it. In fact, the Internet marketer EXPECTS to get paid for his efforts, or he doesn't bother doing it at all.

4) Just Publishing Vs Real Marketing

Most blogger are publishers. They focus on getting content up, and then wait for people to come and chew it up. "Build it and they will come", says the blogger. You can't really blame them for taking that stand, because they lack marketing and advertising skills. They really have no other option.

Internet marketers on the other hand know that the marketing graveyard is filled with great ideas and excellent content that never saw the light of day. They know that they need to get out there and market themselves, their products and their overall brand in order to survive in the long term.

5) Limited Knowledge on Monetizing Traffic

Bloggers know of only one monetization method: advertising. The easiest is of course some sort of contextual advertising like Google Adsense or Chitika. Some even go for blog advertising networks and selling text links on their blog, but at the end of the day, they're still dependent of advertising dollars.

The Internet marketer has more tricks up his sleeve. He knows that advertising income is as stable as a melting glacier, and he diversifies his income by selling his own products or services on his blog. In fact, most of them don't even bother with contextual ads because they live much higher up the food-chain.

Let me just say that a true Internet marketer can make the same amount of money from 3 pages of his blog that the average blogger does with 300.

This article may disgust you (if you're a blogger) or may strike a chord in your inner melody (if you're an Internet marketer). Bloggers may say "Oh... but I get tons of traffic, I make money from Adsense and I'm doing fine. So what's the problem?"

The problem is that Internet marketing is a volatile business. By observing both type of individuals all I can say is that in the next few years, the blogger will still be blogging. But the blogs they write for will be owned by a savvy Internet marketers.

It's just the way it works!

Gobala Krishnan is a micro-niche specialist that coaches Internet marketers to cash in on profitable markets using Wordpress and secret blogging tactics. Get started now by reading a copy of his report "Wordpress Adsense System" at http://adsense.easywordpress.com

2006-10-29T10:43:00.000-08:00

Blog, blog, blog

Why Blogging Is Crucial To Your Business In Today's Business World

2006-10-29T09:16:00.000-08:00

Intellectual people fill the rooms of successful businesses, and they've all noticed the benefits that both formal and informal blogs have reaped in past years. Moreover, they will not stand aside and watch this train pass them buy, so many businesses have also stepped unto the blogging locomotive.

Businesses use blogs for a variety of reasons, from drumming up business to receiving customer feedback to building team morale. They've examined the blogs out there, and they want a piece of the blog pie that has made other corporations, individuals, and groups so successful.

Successful blogs will look inviting and yet professional. Obviously you want the respect from your customers that you deserve, and so a professional looking blog should demand that kind of respect. At the same time you want a place that people will want to visit, so you need to have a casual, inviting feel to the blog. You can achieve this through your color and style choice, so consider these carefully when creating the blog. The professional aspect of the blog will also come into play when you consider its usability: make it user friendly. Consider posting notes from the supervisors or president of the company to start out with and to invite your customers to continue to visit the site.

Businesses use their blogs in more ways than just to touch base with their customers. Some companies have opted for in house blogs that pertain only to employees. This especially works well for larger companies. Many companies offer employees the opportunity to provide feedback about the company along side the customers who can also provide feedback. Such blogs open the lines of communication around the office between consumers and employees.

Some companies also use blogs to solve in house problems. Employees may have the opportunity to share their opinions about a given issue in the office. These kinds of sites seem to work best when an employee can voice his opinion anonymously instead of risking his reputation in front of his fellow employees.

And finally, many companies have used blogs to build team morale. They give employees an opportunity to share the great things about their company, and administration also posts information about the company that pertains to employees and genuinely builds up the atmosphere in the office. These kinds of blogs are used to post events like weddings involving employees or birthdays or birth announcements.

In the end, the majority of those who have jumped unto the blog locomotive have not regretted their decision. Blogs have opened a whole new line of communication among customers, employees, and supervisors and in the end, everyone benefits from better communication. So what are you waiting for? Start blogging today.

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about this as well as business books at http://www.executivebusinessbooksummaries.com.

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

2006-09-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

Link Exchange Directory for the Professional SEO
Quality directory of webmasters actively seeking link exchange. Improve your search engine rankings and link popularity the easy way. Work clever not hard.

How To Develop Income Streams

2006-08-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

How To Develop Income Streams
By Adnan E

We’ve all seen it before. “Lets start a blog or a website that will be really easy to get up and running, then we’ll put some free internet content on it, then we’ll cover the page with Adsense and wait for the millions to roll into the account.”

You tell your friends to go to your site, and maybe click a few ads here and there (which you definitely should not do in the first place seeing as its banned by Google’s Terms Of Service). “Oh Wow! I’ve earned $1 today, that will definitely grow by tomorrow“. Tomorrow comes and goes and the next day passes and soon its a month and you’ve got nothing, nada, zilch.

Apart from taking the “hit and hope” solution to making easy money on the internet, you’ve also done a very silly thing. You’ve relied solely on Adsense to cover your startup costs, your profits and any expenditure that you might run into whilst on the net. What happens when all of a sudden Google bans your account for fraudulent clicks? You’re stuck in the mud with no place to go, and a lot of waiting time if you’re signing up with a new advertising solution. This means no revenue for that period of time, no profit and no growth which is what the entrepreneur name of the game is.

So how do you go about this? Diversify your income! Let’s put the beginning scenario into perspective again. Imagine now that you have your site with not only Adsense, but Text Link Ads as well serving as an extra income stream. Then if you get banned from Adsense then you’ve got the other TLA advertising solution to fall back on, which will prevent you from losing revenue and profit to grow your business.

The phrase “Income Stream” is very popular on the net, but more important in the real world. Having money to fall back on that you’ve created from a different angle definitely can help get you out of a tight situation, and can also build up on the sideline over a few months or years. Everyone wants a bit more pocket money! Whilst surfing the World Wide Web, there are a great many examples that you can profit from and use to your own advantage which can mean that you will increase your chances of conversions or sales. Take the famous Problogger, namely Darren Rowse. I talk about him a lot as he has managed to perfect his Income Gaining Skills due to the way in which blogging supports his family:

* Firstly, Darren uses Google Adsense to provide readers of his blog with a 1 click exit option, or a chance to go to a page that interests them, and that is associated with a specific article

* Rowse also has a handful of affiliate links in his left sidebar which no doubt pay a healthy cut of whatever product is sold to the user that arrives from Problogger.net.

* Problogger also features Adbrite, another text link solution, which handles the processing of payments, links on your site and much more. All you have to do is put a piece of code on your site. Text Link Ads (aff.) also offers services like this and much more, so go on and check it out!

* Finally and most imaginative and ingenious, Darren Rowse setup his own e-course called Six Figure Blogging which helps new bloggers optimize earnings for their blogs, and puts them on the road to earning “$10,000 a month”. Im sure this figure can only be achieved with daily motivation but nevertheless, he probably gets a healthy sum of money for each ECourse sold, another example of yet another income stream.

Now you can see how these very savvy people realise the importance of diversifying income, so maybe you should give it a go too. Try signing up at Text Link Ads and you could also benefit from their affiliate program like I am! As you develop more and more ways of earning money, you will find that having a bad Adsense day won’t feel like such a bummer.

I’m Adnan, a young entrepreneur from the UK. I started on my road to internet success a few years back when I tried to capitalize one of the many latest crazes around at the time. I made quite a bit of money, and it was at this point that I realised that the Internet was for me. Don't forget to visit me at http://www.blogtrepreneur.com

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

The Fearful, Ignorant Guy Has Got A Blog On The Internet. It Must Be Easy!

2006-08-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

by: M6.net

Of all people in the world I was easily one of the most pessimistic about computers, the Internet and now that I even know they exist-blogs. I think blogs are pretty cool but I never thought I could have one. I thought the processes of getting a site; domain name and the actual building of the blog would just be out of my league. I’m a complete novice when it comes to technology, but I do like writing a journal, and I thought having a journal on-line would be both fun and make life simpler for me. No more writing with pens, other people can read my stuff and comment on it, and I could add pictures to illustrate my points and make things look more interesting.

Well, now I’ve got one! It’s awesome. I won’t lie and say it was easy, but I think if you hook up with a good web hosting company it’s not such a daunting experience as you might expect. I got a few work mates to help me. I went through a couple administrative hitches when filling in my personal information forms for the registration-just because I’m a bit silly in the head. We had a little trouble with the blog program we used, but these challenges were eventually overcome. My boss says he’s going to make a simple program that people can hook up easily.

I chose my domain name: thepowerofeverythingthatis.com. It’s my own name-no one else on Earth can have it. I own it. I picked a nice picture out for the background-it looks really sweet, much better than a blank sheet in a diary. I got it from a site that gives photos out without charging a royalty (the first few): www.istockphoto.com.

I just want you to know the great feeling I got when I first typed in my domain name and my site came up! It was the equivalent to a person who’s afraid of heights being accepted into an astronaut’s mission into outer space. Or maybe it was like a turtle driving a Ferrari 300km per hour. Possibly it was like all the ants in the world getting together for peace talks.

It’s a real blast having this blog. I can write on it any time, anywhere, from my laptop, at an Internet café etc. I can write as much as I want, and I’m hoping one day my writing may inspire others to communicate with me about the subjects that I’m interested in.

Look, if you like writing about anything, and want to have your thoughts and opinions on the Internet, maybe meeting others similar to yourself in the progress; you have to get a blog and get it now. Don’t be afraid any longer, the world is in the palm of your hands; it’s time to get on!

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About The Author

Jesse S. Somer is a human hoping to show his fellow Earth citizens the beautiful opportunities the Internet is making available for all our lives.

M6.Net http://www.m6.net

Blog Construction

2006-08-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

Blog Construction

by: Jesse S. Somer

Blogs like all forms of writing are an art form that takes knowledge and practice to do well.

Writing…Blogs…Blogs are on-line journals where people express themselves through writing. Writing…Writing is the process where one puts down words of a language on a format that others can read. This process has not been around very long, to use one of my writing teacher’s favorite sayings, “Writing has only existed for one day in the one year that humanity has existed.” Speaking and thinking come much easier than writing. These processes just flow out naturally like a river of consciousness; sometimes we hardly have to think about doing them. Anyone and everyone can write words down on paper but that doesn’t mean it’s ‘good writing’, myself included. Like most things in life, our society already takes writing for granted which is proving to expose more of our ignorance. Writing is a new form of expression, and if we want to do it in a way that the masses can connect with our ideas, we have to think much more simply and clearly about this art.

Now that was quite a big paragraph, you’ve got to wonder if I really needed to say as much as I just did to introduce this article on the best way to write your blogs on the Web. I didn’t even mention this main idea, and that’s what an introduction paragraph is meant to be for. This is a common mistake in many blogs out there. We try to get too many ideas across in one paragraph, sometimes even in one sentence! The key, as in all things in life-is to keep it simple. Simplicity means that readers won’t get confused about what your journal entry is actually about. Introduce your main general topic at the start, and use the subsequent paragraphs to discuss separate ideas that relate to this topic. Try to tie everything up in the concluding paragraph, your main argument and the reason why you’ve written in the first place.

Grammar and sentence construction are not easy systems to master, especially if you come from a school system that spent more time telling you about historical battles and quadratic equations than on how to read and write. This is a real problem. When we speak we can get messages across to others easily, but if we put these words down on paper, the writing just isn’t interesting and doesn’t connect with people’s curiosities and fascination. When you write you are not talking to a close friend. You can’t use slang and colloquialisms that only your local community can understand. The aim is to connect with all the people in the world, so let’s make it crystal clear and enjoyable to read.

Your computer has spelling and grammar checks, as well as access to a thesaurus. Use them, but remember that the machine can’t decipher all the intricacies of language. Language is a world in itself, and much of its territories are undiscovered by the masses. So, again keep it simple. Short, precise sentences with single ideas are great. Many words in the English language have the same meanings (synonyms). Use the thesaurus so you don’t repeat the same word over and over throughout the text. It keeps the story fresh and doesn’t turn the reader off. There’s nothing more boring than repetition. Using different words can be a lot of fun and a learning experience, just make sure you use a dictionary (also on the computer/Internet) to make absolute sure of the word’s definition.

Readability…Simplicity…Make your blog accessible by all people. You can even take into consideration that many readers will have learned English as a second language. As I’ve said in previous articles, keep to the point-don’t go on tangents. Stick with the article’s topic, and definitely stay within the realms of your blog’s main area. If your blog is entitled “Jazz music”, people who go there don’t want to hear about how your football team won on the weekend! Please be consistent. How irritating is it to visit a blog that hasn’t been written on in months or years?

I hope these little tips will help you on your quest to producing ‘good’ writing that brings new friends and acquaintances of similar outlooks into your world. If you want people to read, the aim is to produce an emotional reaction in your reader. Pretend you are writing to another form of yourself, if it were not readable, interesting and fun…would you stick around?

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About The Author

Jesse S. Somer is a ‘grasshopper’ writer attempting to inform other beginner writers on how they might one day become masters or ‘sensei’s’.
Jessesomer@hotmail.com

16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

2006-08-03T08:33:00.000-07:00

16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog
By Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff
You've got your blog set up and you've started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?

Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.

1. Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.

Http://www.bloglet.com

2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com)

http://www.my.yahoo.com

3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post." Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.

4. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.

http://www.pingomatic.com

5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com

6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.

7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.

8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.

9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.

10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.

11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.

To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm

13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts

14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.

15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).

16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.

Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats: how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter at http://www.sitemeter.com

Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.biztipsblog.com, http://www.coachezines.com and http://www.bizbooknuggets.com

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

Make Money with Your Own Blog

2006-08-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

Make Money with Your Own Blog
By Joan Masterson
Well, basically, setting up a blog means that you are creating a little space of your own on the Internet where you can make posts about anything that interests you. Of course, if you are going to be blogging on a variety of topics, the best way to make money with it would be to have different blogs for different topics otherwise your blog will be just one big jumbled mess that nobody would want to read about.

So what topics should you blog on? Well, I would suggest blogging about your own interests or favourite hobbies. There are always people out there who could learn from your specific experience.

Let's say for instance your favourite passion is your love for dogs. You could blog about anything pertaining to dogs. Do you know how to potty train a dog in a week? Lots of people would love to know how to get their dogs not to do their potty work inside the house :) Or do you have a recipe for a dog biscuit that your dog absolutely adores? There are lots of people who absolutely adore their dogs - I am one! And they do a lot of searches on the topics of dogs, cats, puppies, kittens etc. So why not make some money out of sharing your own knowledge to help those people? Share your tips with them and they will just love you for it!

So, how would you make money out of having a blog even if you don't have a product to sell? One word: Adsense. Adsense is a program offered by Google that pays webmasters and blog owners to display Google ads called Adwords on their sites, and if you have a blog that gets many visitors, they will click on the ads which means that you will earn money from it. To learn more about how to apply for and start using Adsense on your own site, visit : Google Ads

Some tips before you apply for the Adsense program:

1. You have to have an existing blog or an existing site.

2. Your website has to have at least 10-15 pages of relevant content. If you have a blog that you want to apply adsense to, you have to have at least 5 or more posts on your blog.

3. Your blog or site must have a clean, easy to use interface. No under construction pages or broken links, or too many animated gifs, or pop ups.

4. You don't have to have a professionally designed website or blog. The simpler your site is the better for the search engines to spider, and the better it will be for your visitors to navigate.

How to get a blog? You can either have blog that you can host at your own website, like Wordpress Wordpress is an easy to set up php script that is free for download.

Alternatively, you could use any of the free blog services like: Blogger to set up a blog that will be hosted on their server.

So to recap: Select a topic that you would like to blog about, set up a blog, make a couple of posts a day on your blog, wait about 5 days, then apply for the Google Adsense program.

Once you have been approved for Adsense, you should submit your blog or website to the major search engines. If you don't know the major search engines, do a search for "free website submission". You will find that there are a lot of sites that will allow you to use their services for free to submit your site or blog to various search engines.

Their are various blog directories that you should also list your blog with. Once again, do a search for blog directories, and submit your site to all the the ones that you can find.

Tell others about your blog, your family and friends etc. Ask them to tell others about your blog. That way you will start getting instant traffic. Just a word of caution: do NOT ask family and friends to click on your adsense ads, and under no circumstances should you click on any of the ads yourself - that is a sure fire way of getting banned by Google and you will have lost a valuable income source!

Now that you know how to start your own blog, you have no excuse not to make money online! Happy blogging!

Joan Masterson is the owner of http://www.womenatwork.co.za - and http://www.set-4-success.com - sites that offer free work at home resources and information.

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

How To Launch A Successful Blog For Your Internet Marketing Business

2006-08-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

How To Launch A Successful Blog For Your Internet Marketing Business
By Shon Christopher
In internet marketing it is no secret that a blog can increase the amount of traffic you generate to your website. Having a successful blog can be one of the most accommodating marketing tools you will find for your internet marketing business once you get into it. The key is launching a high traffic blog, which will in turn generate more traffic to your website.

When starting a blog for your internet marketing business you want to focus on one theme, or one keyword, just like you do for your website. Obviously there are other forms of the keyword that can be used that are along the same basis, but it is important to stay with one theme as oppose to jumping all over the map.

The next step is determining how you will generate the traffic to your blog. The best way to generate traffic to your new blog for your internet marketing business is through article use. Writing articles is beneficial in a number of ways from the content to the title and even to the resource box. With each article you can include your keywords that you chose to focus on and throw them into your article title and content. You can then include a resource box on the bottom of the article to help promote your blog.

After you have gotten your blog up and running for a little bit you want to keep an eye on your stats just like everything else in internet marketing. You will begin to find where you are generating the most traffic from and you can begin focusing on that area and promoting that more. This will help you prioritize your time and help you avoid wasting time in areas that are not creating any traffic for your internet marketing business blog.

One of the most important things to remember to do is continuously add fresh content. If you simply add a couple new things a month, people will lose interest and not care to read the same thing they found on someone else’s blog a few weeks ago. Give people new and creative content that will keep them interested in your internet marketing business. This will entertain them and force them to return to see what you have added the next week or so.

Starting a blog that is successful enough to drive traffic to your internet marketing business is a lot of work, but if you can get it going it is easy to maintain. Just by adding a few new things a week you will continue to drive traffic to your blog and website. If you are willing to put in the effort, you will be off and running with one of the most effective internet marketing tools out there.

Shon Christopher's making money website will provide you with the tools needed to boost your internet income in no time. With various secrets and tips, you will find informational articles and more to help you become a successful internet marketer. Go here to find more:

http://www.moneymultipliermethods.com

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

High Earnings for Low Traffic Blog

2006-08-03T08:24:00.000-07:00

High Earnings for Low Traffic Blog
By Tengku Nuruddeen

Getting traffic to your blog is not easy. Some blog owners have a problem getting traffic to their blog but still get a lot of AdSense revenue. How they did that? What secrets did they use?

Well actually it is not actually a secret. It’s a lot more common sense. This is the power of leverage. If you are weak on a certain aspect (your traffic for example), you use other things to make you stronger. There are two ways to get high earnings even tough you have a very low traffic blog. Get more clicks or increase the price of each click.

Well there are many ways to get more clicks. Many experts believed that by blending the color of your AdSense ad with the color of your web site, you will get more clicks. This is technically true because people will neglect something that looks like a banner. If your Google AdSense ad is highly visible, people will mistaken your AdSense ad for a banner and ends up neglecting it.

You must know that each ad in your Google AdSense has a different price for each click. Each time people click on your AdSense add, you will be paid regarding to the price of the ad. So you must be thinking, how do you get a high paying ad?

You can get a high paying ad by focusing on a high paying niche. The high paying niche (like the experts said; web hosting, loan and others) will give you better revenue (sometimes even $100 per click) therefore, you don’t need a lot of traffic to give you high revenue.

Good luck!!!

Nuruddeen is the owner of AdSenseJunky. A blog dedicated to all internet marketers who wants to increase their AdSense profits. In this blog you will learn tips, tricks and guide on how to increase your AdSense revenue. All free of charge!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tengku_NuruddeenHigh Earnings for Low Traffic Blog
By Tengku Nuruddeen

How to Get Your Blog Noticed Quickly and Widely

2006-07-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

How to Get Your Blog Noticed Quickly and Widely
By Gregory White
1. Submit your blog to all of the directories listed on http://pingomatic.com/. Pingomatic will ping 15 services all at once.
2. Ping your blog after every post at http://pingomatic.com/
3. Here's a real gem: Submit your blog to http://www.pingoat.com/ Pingoat will ping over fifty blog ping services all at once. So you don't have to hunt for ping services and manually ping them. Pingoat pings over fifty blog ping servers (growing) with just one click.
4. Ping your blog after every post at Pingoat at http://www.pingoat.com/
5. Sign up for a free account at BlogExplosion.com and register your blog there: http://www.blogexplosion.com/
6. Submit your blog to all of the directores listed at http://www.rss-feeds-directory.com/blog_lists.html
7. Sign up for a "My Yahoo" at http://my.yahoo.com/ and attach your blog to your own "My Yahoo" account. This will get your blog included in Yahoo very quickly. This is worth the effort to stop what you're doing right and do it, since Yahoo has a PR 9.
8. Use this code: "http://add.my.yahoo.com/content?url= http://www.yourblog.com/urblog.xml" in your blog to allow others to put your feed on their own "My Yahoo" account.
9. Sign up for a "My MSN" at http://www.my.msn.com/, and attach your blog to your own "My MSN" account. This will get your blog included in MSN very quickly. This is also invaluable because MSN has a PR 8.
10. Use this code: "http://my.msn.com/addtomymsn.armx?id= rss&ut=http://www.urblogfeedaddress.com/urblog.xml" in your blog to allow others to put your feed on their own "My MSN" account.
11. Place the link and description of your blog in your signature, so that any posts to Forums, Outgoing Emails, Autoresponder Courses, etc, will promote your blog.
12. Post a link and description of your blog on each of your sites.
13. Place your blog on all the major search engines. AddMe.com will submit your blog free to the top 14 Search engines here:http://www.addme.com/submission.htm
SubmitExpress.com will submit your blog free to the top 20 Search engines here:http://www.submitexpress.com/
14. Use Article Directories as a resource for articles to post on your blog. Here are a few:http://ezinearticles.com/http://goarticles.com/
http://www.knowledge-finder.com/http://www.informit.com/articles/
15. Locate blogs with a lot of traffic and place useful comments in their comment box. Be sure the blog and your comments are relavent to both your blog and theirs. Senseless posts won't help you, they'll hurt you.
16. Once you get around 5 to 10 posts on your blog, start a PR campaign and announce it to all relevant channels.
17. Make a blog post as often as possible. More than once a day is not really necessary. Remember, if you can't write that much, go to step # 14.
Greg White, Internet Marketer, Author, Consultant and Project Manager has been running successful web projects since 2001. His sites and blogs cover Blog Marketing Tactics, Internet Marketing Tactics and a variety of 'Niche' topics, in addition to starting and marketing profitable web project.
http://www.blogmarketingtactics.blogspot.com/
http://internetmarketingtactics.blogspot.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gregory_White

Make Money Blogging

2006-07-28T17:08:00.000-07:00

Make Money Blogging
By Matt Bacak
You have created a blog and your blog is dedicated to a niche industry. Have you ever thought that the blog could make money for you? We would look here in this article, ways and means, to make money blogging. Lets first have a look at what are the prerequisites for a blog needed to make money:
1. Blog needs to be dedicated to a niche market.
2. Updated regularly.
3. Enough back links (Don't worry for it. Directory submission would be enough to begin with)
4. Good blog host or application (blogger, Xanga or typepad recommended), and
5. High quality articles or news items supported with images.
Get the above criteria in place and Hurrah... You are ready to Make Money Blogging.
Top 5 Ways to Make Money Blogging
Lets now take a look at top 5 ways using which you could make money blogging:
1. Google Adsense
Google Adsense delivers text and image ads to the authorized websites/blogs depending on the content of the website. Small code is required to be pasted at proper locations on a webpage and Google automatically recognizes the page. Google shares the revenue it gets from the advertisers whenever a visitor clicks on these ads.
Google bills advertisers on price per click basis (PPC). Advertisers are required to pay only when any visitor clicks on their ads. They bid against each other for the keywords in order to receive better placement and thus prices for each keyword differ from one another. It is better to choose keywords for your blog which pays high $ per click.
2. Amazon
Amazon Associate program is another important way to make money blogging. The Amazon Associate program gives opportunity to website/blog publishers to promote any product from its inventory by adding a predefined code to their website/blog, which, when clicked by a visitor, takes them to the relevant product page. Once the visitor buys the product, the blog owner will be compensated with a commission.
3. Blogads
You can use Blogads as an effective tool to have a better control over the advertisers in your blogs. You can analyze and compare your profits with any one of your online agencies. Blogads can be simply specified as an advertising service used for the web logs or blogs. From the total money generated by Blogads, it retains 20% of it and the remaining money is paid to you through PayPal or checks.
Alternative Services:
• Crispads is another useful network focused on the blogs. You can put your advertisements in their blogs using Crispads. You can move through their RSS/ATOM feeds that help in generating revenues.
• Tagword – It is similar to Blogads. It makes you select the ads and their price.
Users can place their text-based ads in the site within minutes and the ads will be displayed instantly on the website.
4. Affiliate Programs
Your affiliate programs can help you earn a lot of money for selected products and services. Lot of websites offers you to become affiliate members. These affiliate programs can provide a better reach and an in-depth exposure to the products. The commissions for the sales differ according to the quality of the product, sales and marketing strategy involved. You can gather information related to the commissions by looking into the catalogues of Link Share and Commission junctions.
5. Text Links
Text links has emerged out to be the best form of moneymaking source that you can use instead of cluttering or crowding the page with ads. You don’t have to make these text links prominent within your website. This link can act as an extra value to your site and will also help to promote the rankings of other sites. In most of the cases you will find these text links placed in the bottom of the web pages. The best part of this strategy is that the publishers send and accept links as the market continues to grow.
Matt Bacak, The Powerful Promoter and Entrepreneur Magazine e-Biz radio show host, became a "#1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours. He has helped a number of clients target his specialty, opt-in email direct marketing systems. The Powerful Promoter is not only a sought-after internet marketer but has also marketed for some of the world's top experts whose reputations would shrivel if their followers ever found out someone else coached them on their online marketing strategies.
For more information, visit Bacak's site at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or sign up for his Powerful Promoting Tips at http://www.promotingtips.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matt_Bacak

5 Ways to Create 5 Blog Posts

2006-07-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

5 Ways to Create 5 Blog Posts
By DJ Nelson
A lot of people want to blog because they see it as something they should have, but they don’t want the chore of maintaining one. You have a business to run, you have a family to manage, and perhaps you really don’t enjoy writing. That doesn’t mean that you can’t create interesting blog content to post on a regular basis.
Here’s how:
1. Think of something that really bothers you. Consider why it bothers you and think of how it can relate to your business. There’s your first blog post. For example, I don’t like it when people send me rude emails that I perceive to be short in tone so I wrote a post about how to jerk-proof your emails.
2. For post number two think of a few questions that people ask you about your business. Write down the questions and the answers and there is your second blog post.
3. Did you read something interesting lately? What was it and why was it interesting? Can you find a copy of it online? Find the link and post it along with a quick summary and commentary of why you find it interesting.
4. What’s going on in the media? Think of a popular headline, movie, or TV show and come up with a plan for writing a blog about it. For example, when The Devil Wears Prada came out, I wrote a post called “Are you a Devil in Prada?” which discussed how people should strive to treat each other in business environments.
5. When all else fails, make a list! Think of a topic that you know about and come up with a top 5, top 7, or top 10 list. For example, look at this article.
Donyell (DJ) Nelson is an entrepreneur, writer, and speaker who gives people the inspiration and information to create successful online businesses. She is the host of Bold Business Talk and the author of Jump Start Your Success: 9 Insider Secrets to Running an Online Business. Find out how to jump start your business at http://www.Donyell.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=DJ_Nelson

Turn Your Hobby Into An Internet Blog That Makes Money

2006-07-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

Turn Your Hobby Into An Internet Blog That Makes Money
By Jack Silver
A lot of people have a full-time job making money online. But there is an equal amount of people who see making money online as more of a recreational bonus. So if you have some spare time, have a hobby you love, and like the internet, then you could see some extra cash in your account each month.
The first thing to do is to identify some good keywords for your particular hobby. There are many free guides on the internet which teach you how to do keyword research. Essentially all you have to do is build a list of good keywords (the words or phrases that people type into search engines when looking for a particular topic) and then you’re ready to build your blog.
The second thing to do is to build you blog based on your keywords. Again, there are a wealth of resources available to show you how to properly construct your blog on a foundation of keywords; if you do intend to make good money from your blog, I would strongly suggest doing some research on this or to invest a small sum into an ebook which teaches you how to do it step-by-step. You can build a free blog at Blogspot or Wordpress.
Once you have your blog formatted, you will then come to the fun part - posting! Start writing about whatever you like, upload pictures and articles, and make your blog a passionate reflection on the strength of feeling you have for your hobby.
The penultimate step is to monetise your blog. There are two main ways to do this. The first is to browse sites such as Clickbank or Commission Junction and to find products which are related to your hobby’s niche. The sale of a product you link from your site will earn you a set amount of commission. The second way is to install Google Adsense on your website. This is a form of text advertising where the adverts printed on your site are determined by the common words used on your blog. It’s quite magical, and you will receive money every time a visitor clicks on one of those adverts.
The final step is to drive visitors to your blog. The more visitors you have to your blog, the more money you will make. Your best bet is to start off by joining lots of forums and newsgroups related to your hobby’s niche. Simply add a link to your website in each of your forum profiles, and then start posting regularly to the forums. Alternatively, you can write articles based upon your hobby and submit them to free article directories like Ezinearticles.
This is a very brief overview. Each step is an art in itself and you should realise that building a blog is an internet hobby that makes money. It can be a long process but, ultimately, one you should enjoy. It is always a pleasure to build your blog a little, day after day, and to see more and more visitors arrive. It’s quite possible you can build a big presence online and become something of a guru, but most importantly you will have extra cash rolling in.
Jack Silver works online at home full-time after quitting his job earlier this year. You can read exactly how he did it at his free blog, located at (http://www.moneyinpyjamas.wordpress.com)
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jack_Silver