9 Ways to Make Money by Blogging

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!!

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

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

A blogging website just about anything

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

ecosway enrich your life

ecosway enrich your life
ecosway enrich your life

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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