Internet and Technology

These days everyone has a blog but most of them float unread out on the internet cloud. So the big question I keep hearing is how do I get more traffic to my blog? The answer is simple, and if you are willing to put in a little time you can do it for free as well. Blogs are more or less just like any other website out there. Sure they are designed to make it easy for bloggers to post news, images, and video without much computer savvy but in reality they are just user friendly mini-websites. So now that you have one you want to get more traffic to it so here’s a few of the free and basic first steps to increasing your blogs traffic. #1 Blog About Something People Care About Seriously – if nobody cares about your blog because it’s just random talk about what you ate that morning you aren’t going to pick up a lot of traffic. However, regardless of how weird your interests may be someone out there also cares about them. So this one is an easy – just blog about something that someone else can relate to. #2 Submit Your Blog to Directories This one is also easy but takes a bit of time. There are a lot of free services out there where you can submit your blog to. They are basically like giant phonebooks for blogs and once you add your blog to their service more people will be able to find your blog. You’ll be able to categorize your blog and many of them let you use your own “tags” which are basically key words. Just jump on your favorite search engine and type in something like “free blog submission” and you’ll find lots of sites which can help you out. #3 Have a Blogroll Blogs often have a list of links somewhere that lists the other blogs or websites that are related or that the blogger enjoys visiting. If you want to help increase traffic find some sites that will trade you a link on their blog for one on yours. Don’t get too carried away with this though as you can actually lose traffic if you abuse this. This is where you start to get into the internet’s deeper and more inner workings so for brevity we’ll just leave it with this: you don’t want more than about 100 links on your front page or you might actually decrease your chance for big traffic. #4 Submit Your Blog to Feedreaders Most blog services have the ability to create a “feed”. You might hear people talking about RSS, syndication, or feedreaders. Basically what this means is each blog creates a list of what posts have been added to it much like headlines for a newspaper. You can find sites out there like the Blog Directories which you can submit your blog feed or RSS to. If you do this they’ll pick up your headlines and people can then dig through them for interesting blogs. The best part about these feed systems is that most continue to check your blog for updates so once you’ve submitted it you can just reap the benefits! #5 Blog Often and When Appropriate One mistake some people make with blogging is blogging when they have nothing useful to say just to get another “post” on their blog. If you are doing this then you are going to have a hard time making fans who are interested in saving your page in their favorites or bookmarks. However, you want to often update your blog. If you don’t post regularly then you’ll bore your fans. Blog often, but make sure you’re blogging something of interest. #6 Make Sure Your Blog Has a Theme If you’re blog is all over the place you’ll have a hard time putting together a fan base. You may get a few hits here and there by random people but you want to build a community. To do that you’ll probably want to pick a few categories you’re going to post about and stick with them. If you are the type who likes to make random posts sometimes you could just make a category called Random Thoughts or something along those lines but again be careful. #7 Pingbacks and Trackbacks If you want people to visit your blog then visit other blogs that are related to yours and get involved. You’ll find that people often leave comments with links back to their own blog or another related blog in the comments. These are part of the pingback/trackback system which can be a lot of fun and also get you a lot of additional traffic. Avoid spamming though as you’ll just irritate potential friends and you’ll likely have your comments removed and lose your comment ability. #8 Appearance Matters Every blog service offers templates which can make your blog look unique or have a style you feel fits. Often you can also customize your blog with custom graphics and tinker with the layout. While this can really help your blog be careful that you aren’t making it irritating to potential readers. Not many people want to come to a blog that hurts their eyes to look at or which has loud music they don’t like. There you go, 8 simple tips on how to increase your blog traffic. The last thing to remember is that building up your blog traffic is going to take time. Depending on the potential number of people interested in your topics and your other blogging related skills it could take weeks and even more likely months to really get things going. If you blog it, they will come!

A blog is an online journal usually a single page that you can post practically anything that you want. The simplicity of blogs is what makes it attractive to the new person coming online and has no html experience and no website. Blogging makes it possible for an individual to go live on the web within minutes of setting up his or her blog.
There are numerous blogging websites to choose from on the net. This gives first time users the option of joining a blogging community that appeals to their interests.
Experts predict that blogs will eventually take the place of conventional websites because of their simplicity and virtually no maintenance.
Features like audio and video blogging make for added appeal as well as the ability to add mp3’s sometimes referred to as Blog Radio.
In its basic form a blog contains these features:
* Title- pretty self explanatory-this is what your post is about.
* Body- this is whatever it is you want to say.
* Trackback- whenever another blog or website puts the urls of your blog on their site, this is called a trackback.
* Permanent link- every post you write has a URL.
* Comments- this allows readers to respond to your blog post.
Another advantage of blogging is that there are only a few templates to choose from. This eliminates the complexities of numerous individual pages. Making it easier for blog users to create new pages, as it already has fixed settings that include: slots for title, body of the post, category, etc.
Bloggers have the freedom to express themselves how ever way they want, and the best thing about blogging, is that most blogging sites are free.
Just search any blogging directory and you’d get a listing of a lot of blogging sites that are available on the net. It’s easy to search a blogging directory, for more detail visit www.atoz-about-rss.com because it is organized according to category. This way you would get exactly what you are after. Blogging is really for everyone. It is fun, simple and easy.
Blogs have become an advertising medium. Getting traffic to your blog can be alot easier than getting traffic to a conventional website. A lot of entrepreneurs benefit from blogging by promoting their businesses on their blogs, for more detail visit www.your-own-blog.com with millions and millions of people logging onto the net everyday, blogging has become a lucrative move. Some bloggers who run online businesses promote their merchandise online.
Since all posts are archived, educators use blogs to document lessons. This gives students, who may have missed a lesson or two, the ability to access those lessons and easily catch up with their assignments.
But by far, the most popular blog type is the one that takes the form of a personal journal. This is the kind that is usually used by first time bloggers. Individuals who want to document the daily struggle of their everyday lives, poems, rants, opinions, find that blogging offers them a medium in which to express themselves.
Bloggers usually communicate within themselves. This is one of the appeals of blogging. It creates a community of people sharing their ideas, thoughts, and comments with each other.
Blogs varying in topics, themes, and set-ups, can be found in blog directories. First time users who want to get an idea of what the blogging world is all about can browse through a number of blogs using these directories. This way they’d get an idea of what these blogging communities are like.

www.blog-and-ping.comwww.profit-pulling-toolbars.com

Blog is basically an online diary which usually comes in the form of a website. Users can add postings from time to time. Blogs include photos, text etc. Blogs are in different templates, designs, background colors. You can create your own blog. There are websites like blogger.com which is owned by Google. It allows you to choose blog address and control your blog and post messages on to your bog. Other web users can subscribe to your blog and you can edit or control the comments. Blogs are in the form of personal diaries, new diaries, specific diaries some of them could be highly technical. RSS FeedsRSS (really simple syndication) is a style through which users can easily read your web feeds. With RSS Reader you can automatically download stories, news, blog feeds to your desktop. For SEO, you can begin to really get your blog postings subscribed by creating information and appealing blogs. This will result in giving your information, links and site information out to the masses. Blogs are search engine friendly as they always contain the new content which is interlinked. Some successful blogs even come in the top of search engines on certain common searched keywords or terms with less effort as compared to websites. You can promote a site with a blog in an inexpensive way. For more resources visit at www.bloggers-guide-to-profit.com. Blogs are easy to keep and update. It can be maintained by even those who do not have knowledge about creating a webpage. Anybody can run a blog as it’s easy to update, edit text, add or remove links from pages. From SEO point of view blogs are simple and cost effective way for achieving search engine ranking, online feedback and product or service sales. Blogs encourage repeat visits because they provide the fresh content. You can include links in blogs to make it popular from SEO point of view. You can feed blogs into other people RSS Feeders. In this way your blog becomes syndicated (subscribed to).Use of blogsNowadays people are making their own personal blogs. Some blog interpret people personal thoughts, activities, and reactions. Some are in the form of a family news letter and some promote as their personal hobbies. Other use is blog helps in building online communities of people with similar interests. Blogs are also used as a news source in the form of online news papers. The big news agencies now have online news blogs of their own. Webmasters helps in providing webmasters adding content to their sites. Blog becomes powerful source for SEO when it has keyword rich content and in imbedded links Thus Blogs provide quality search engine optimization.Future of blogswith the increase in the internet users there is increase in internet journals too. Most of these are in the form of blogs and now there are millions of blogs on the internet. And this figure is going to increase in the future. So the popularity of blogs is ongoing to grow at a faster pace. The reason for this is that blogs are gateway for visitors of a site to communicate and leave feedback to the publisher of the website. Webmasters use blogs to get ideas feedbacks about the new products from the site visitors. This has made the blogs the most precious marketing and SEO tool and its importance is going to grow in the near future.

Blogs are a great way to share ideas and get indulged in discussions on different topics. One can write blogs on any topic ranging from technology and life to health and relationships. The process of blog writing involves owning a web space without any charge and writing on the topic that caters to your interest. These blogs then can be submitted to blog directories where the interested readers can get a chance to read your blogs. Readers comment upon the post that has been submitted and sharing their views regarding the topic being discussed make you recognizable on the web. The world of blogging has been greatly expanding and at times do lead bloggers to the way of earning fame by TV or newspaper interviews.The popularity of blogs has also become the latest craze among the businesses with ecommerce websites. For more results go to www.building-blog-empire.com. Blogs are favorites among web crawlers as these blogs are regularly updated and help in gaining higher search engine ranking. Submission of blogs in blog directory helps in growing traffic as fellow bloggers are normally curious to check blogs of other bloggers and click on links of blogs at the blog directories to read them. More clicking on the blogs leads to blog marketing. Moreover, one can also search for blogs easily at any of the blog directory as there are search options available that save time and exhaustive searches. Blogs in these directories are categorized into different groups such as photo blogs, writing blogs, poetry blogs, technology blogs, motivating blogs and many others.It is important to update a blog frequently so as to get good traffic or regular readership. This will ultimately lead the blog to be enlisted with search engines and might also become a good source of your additional income. You can also visit us at www.profit-pulling-toolbars.com. There are also RSS blog directory that allows readers who like your blog to subscribe with your blog feed and receive an update whenever a new post has been posted at your blog. RSS blog directory are therefore a great way of informing the interested readers of the blog about the new post and that their comments are keenly awaited, thereby increasing the traffic at the blog.Making a blog and its submission to a blog directory can easily be carried out, which is another factor that has accounted for the popularity of blogs these days.

Perhaps you’ve heard of blogs, maybe even read a few, but haven’t started blogging yourself. Learn why you should get started today.Perhaps you’ve heard of blogs, maybe even read a few, but haven’t started blogging yourself. A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a type of website in a journal or diary), displayed in a reverse chronological order.where entries are made (such as

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic .For more details visit to www.blog-link-generator.com. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photograph (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (pod casting).

Today blogging has become a phenomenon, and for good reason. Blogs give individuals the ability to easily communicate to mass audiences whenever they feel the urge. This ability is what makes blogging truly unique – not requiring any technical knowledge of web development, design, or management.

Maintaining or posting to a blog is very rewarding and carries a variety of benefits, here are just a few:1. Blogs are easy to create. Unlike starting your own website, Weblogs can be created in just a few minutes. Some Sites allow you to register and start your own blog for free. All you need is an email and a topic to start blogging about.

2. Blogs provide a dialogue with prospects, customers, and friends. Blogs are now being used as a communication vehicle to share important information with customers. Because blogs can be updated in real time, businesses are finding Weblogs to be one of the quickest and most accurate ways to distribute their message.

3. Blogs are here to stay. Blogging gives you the ability to publish your thoughts in real time, whenever and where they like. If you enjoy writing, want to share your ideas, or even learn more about a particular subject, contribute to a blog on a regular basis. Now that blogs have become popular, you can find a blog directory that can help you locate Weblogs by category. Find one aligned to your interests and post your comments. They’ll remain on the web indefinitely.

4. Blogs can drive traffic to your website. Using a blog, associated with a particular topic, can drive additional traffic to your website. This is essential for anyone seeking new leads for their business or has an interest in generating online sales. For more information logon to www.greatblogbox.com .The benefit of using a blog to generate traffic is that Weblogs attract a different type of user – one that is very focused on a particular subject. These users are more prone to take interest in what you have to offer and convert into paying customers.

5. Blogs give you the flexibility to post whenever, wherever. When authoring a blog, all you need is an Internet enabled PC to post an entry. This level of flexibility removes many of the barriers associated with traditional forms of communication. Some blogs even allow you to make a post via email. Simply construct an email and send it to the blog address. The result is an instant post to your blog.

6. Establish yourself as an expert. By keeping a blog up-to-date, and contributing in an area where you have experience, you can quickly build your reputation as an expert. Once you’ve establish yourself as having knowledge in a particular subject area, you can begin contributing to other web sources such as news articles and interviews.

7. Generate Ad Revenue. The beauty of a blog is that you can attract those interested in a very specific subject area. This is an ideal market for online pay-per-click advertising like Google Adsense. You can easily integrate Google Adsense into your blog – many blog hosts provide it as a built in option- and generate ad revenue. This is a great way to provide value to your readers while generating revenue for your business.

These are just some of the benefits of creating and contributing to blogs. You will find that Weblogs are a great way to share information with others who share similar interests. It’s also a great opportunity for you to learn.

Ask this question of any SEO expert and they will tell you “fresh content” and “backlinks”, other than Google took over Blogger. The last one is the favorite as no one can argue with that.

Search engines like fresh content as it is valuable for their users, and links show that other sites or blogs (and not just your own website) think that the information on your website is useful to their readers.

A blog can be an individual’s viewpoint, a life journal, a school girl’s diary, a poet’s space, an artist’s expression, or just about sharing your moments with family and friends. One can share information, pictures and even videos with no previous knowledge of designing and programming.

Companies use blogs to promote their latest products, introduce new services, announce upcoming events, share event pictures and videos, announce special offers/discounts, run opinion polls, introduce new team members, special announcements, build loyalty, and invite their customers to leave comments and give testimonials.

Bloggers believe that blogs are being taken more seriously as information sources. One in five bloggers don’t think that newspapers will survive the next ten years. Half believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years.

Bloggers are most open to receiving marketing messages from other blogs. Even non-blog web content is more influential among this group than traditional media sources for brand information.

Home businesses and young entrepreneurs use blogs to increase awareness and attract traffic to their online business, new ventures, and daring expeditions into the unknown.

Professionals use blogs to brand themselves, create awareness and credibility, make money (yes that’s possible), and share their knowledge and experiences.

Housewives use blogs to share cooking tips and recipes, their children’s growing moments, travel log of the last trip, and shopping expeditions.

We SEO experts use blogs for achieving higher rankings for specific keywords. Unbelievable, and yet in many instances my blog link appears higher on search engines results page than pages that I optimize personally for the same keyword.

Getting started with blogging is relatively easy. You can sign up with blogger.com or other such blogging platforms.

If you don’t own a domain name for your blog, no worries, you can start with a free subdomain with Blogger.

Lets look into some interesting statistics on blogs.

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay!

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008) – Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US – Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million – Total internet audience 188.9 million

eMarketer (May 2008) – 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users) – 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

Universal McCann (March 2008) – 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US – 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US – 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report is now available. For a detailed report go to technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

The report states that Brands make up a major part of bloggers’ online conversations. More than four in five bloggers post product or brand reviews, and blog about brands they love or hate. Even day-to-day experiences with customer care or in a retail store are fodder for blog posts. Companies are already reaching out to bloggers: one-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

But wait, that’s not all. The report also states that Blogs are an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. The majority of bloggers we surveyed have advertising on their blogs. Marketers realize that bloggers are creating high quality content and attracting growing, loyal audiences. So there is potential for profit from blogging. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

Well you are convinced, and you start writing periodically, uploading photographs and videos and have shared your blog link with many friends, but a few months down a nagging worry start to hit you (this is for those who don’t track their readers using tracking software’s like Google Analytics) that you are writing for “you” alone and your mum who thinks “my son is the best”.

While there is nothing wrong with writing, just for the pleasure of writing, I am sure you all want to reach out and touch someone else with all your hard work. The real challenge is to get your target audience to read your blog whether its family, friends, colleagues, or readers around the world who would be interested in what you are writing about.

Trust me even friends will betray you if what you write does not make them want to come back, so pay close attention to the questions below and answer them as honestly as you can.

-What would make your blog special to your audience? -Why would they want to bookmark your blog? -Why would they want to link to it and tell others? -What is my ultimate goal for this blog?

While the first 3 questions require you to dig down deep inside your minds and hearts, the last question is most critical. What do you ultimately want out all the hard work, late nights and coffee cups invested into your blog?

Well, whether your blog is for the purpose of sharing knowledge, gaining credibility, increasing visibility and rankings, building customer loyalty, sharing information, making money, or assisting our fellow men in the journey of life, the bottom line remains search engines love blogs, and so should you.

So keep writing!

http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/seoblog.html

Anyone can make money blogging; you can even earn enough to quit your present job if you do it right.  But you should be careful with books or courses promising to make you rich overnight.

You might have seen or heard of reports about bloggers making several thousands of dollars every day.

What you don’t know is that it might have taken them many years, or they might have to spend several bucks, to accumulate enough backlinks and traffic. Perhaps they might have their own websites or JV partners, where they can leverage from each others’ assets.

If you’re just starting to blog and you don’t have your own network yet, don’t worry. In this article, I’ll show you how to make money blogging using 5 simple steps. As long as you’re willing to learn and take action, you can skyrocket your earnings in no time.

Step 1: Decide the specific topic or niche of your blog. 

Your blog topics should be something that both you, and your audience, are familiar with or passionate about.

Let’s say you want to make money blogging about video games. If you’e a WarCraft fan, and you understand the game from top to bottom, you’re more likely to come up with beneficial content than if you were to write something completely uninteresting or foreign to you.

Step 2:  Create a professional-looking blog.

Choose an eye-catching design and style for your blog. You can find free themes and plugins on the internet, so you can build attractive blogs and maximize their full moneymaking potentials.  

Step 3: Post valuable, entertaining or controversial content on your blog. 

It’s better if you write the content yourself, so that your personality may shine through. But in case you can’t think of any ideas or you’re pressed for time, you could always outsource the task to a dependable freelancer.  Remember, if you want to make money blogging, you need to invest time and/or money in providing excellent content.

Let’s say you have a WarCraft blog offering free tips for a soon-to-launch ebook, what’s a good plan?

Well, you could write 300-600 word quality articles related to your World of WarCraft blog, and post an article at least 5 times a week in it. If you give quality content, your credibility or authority level shoots up.

Getting people to write comments is an excellent way to get free content and make money blogging. People love to join hot discussions. Encourage comment posting by offering certain prizes for blog commenters of the month. For example, you could give $50-$100, gift cards to Amazon, or copies of your own products (in case you don’t want to offer money).

By posting valuable content and encouraging comments, you’re slowly building a network of fans to your blog.

Step 4: Monetize it.

There are a number of ways to make money blogging through various monetization streams.

You could promote your own products related to your content. If you provide good solid information and they’re satisfied, they are more likely to buy from you.

If you don’t have your own products, you could buy products with resale or private label rights. But if you don’t want to go through any hassles, you could simply promote affiliate products related to your content. 

You could also post Google adsense on your blog, so you can make money blogging whenever someone clicks on those ads, even if they didn’t buy anything.

You can also make money by using pay-per-action programs. These programs usually pay you more than adsense, but less than the normal affiliate programs. How do you earn with pay-per-action programs? Every time someone does a specific action that the advertiser intends them to do (whether it’s filling up a form, downloading a report, subscribing to a list, etc.), you get paid a certain amount. 

If your blog becomes popular enough, you could also offer advertising space where marketers will pay you to put their advertisements in your blog.

Step 5: Bring in the traffic.

There are different techniques to generate traffic and make money blogging.

Set up your blog posts to be “pinged” automatically to a list of ping sites every time you make a new post. Pinging is a method that allows your content to be indexed faster by the search engines.

Use Google Adwords or other pay-per-click methods to advertise your blog. When people search for certain keywords related to your blog, your pay-per-click ad comes out. You only pay every time someone clicks on your ad.

Create informative or entertaining videos, advertise your blog in that video, and upload them to video-sharing sites. Youtube may be the most popular one, but there are other sites worth uploading your videos to. You may use a free service like tubemogul.com to simultaneously upload your videos to a variety of video-sharing sites of your choosing. 

Submit your blog to blog directories. Simply search for “blog directories” in Google and you’ll get a list to submit your blog details to. 

One of the most effective ways to make money blogging is to contact other bloggers and set up a proposal – you put their blog link on your blog, and vice-versa.

Write articles and submit them to article directories. You can then advertise your blog in the resource box.  You could even use your blog content as articles to submit to article directories. But that’s not all…

You could maximize your content to its full capacity by converting your articles to powerpoint presentations and posting them at slideshare.net. You could also convert those powerpoint presentations into videos, and then post them to various video-sharing sites.

Use various Web 2.0 methods to make money blogging.  Bookmark your links at social bookmarking sites like digg.com, stumblepon.com, propeller.com, and many others. However, you should always observe proper netiquette. Most, if not all, of these bookmarking sites prohibit any marketing activities. But you can get under the radar if you give first, become a helpful part of the Web 2.0 community, and bookmark a lot more non-self-serving sites than self-serving ones.

These are the 5 simple steps to make money blogging. Hope you find them useful and may you earn a lot of money with your blog.

As you know, blogging is one of the best ways to increase traffic flow to your new online business website (“Um, what’s blogging?” – if you don’t know much about writing blogs, please read this article first.) Once you write your first entry, you start wondering, what is the best place to post a blog? What are the top blog sites that could aid the marketing of your online business?

Here is a list of the best free blog web-sites that I use myself and recommend to my team members:

“Oh no!” – you say. – “So many sites to sign up for! I hate that!” No worries – I recommend you use the free version of the software called Roboform (http://www.roboform.com/) for all of your Internet sign-ups. Roboform fills out your forms automatically with a push of a button, which reduces your sign-up time to a few seconds per website.

Generally, it’s good not to make your blog sound too promotional, with no more then 2 links to any one web-site per entry, but Wordpress and Hubpages are especially strict when it comes to blog content. Make sure you don’t put anything that sounds like a “direct sell” onto those websites – otherwise your entries will get deleted and your account could get suspended.

If you like to write your entries in Word Document and then post them to the blog web-sites, make sure you preview your blogs before posting them. Blogs imported from Word tend to show up with a bunch of gibberish HTML codes, visible on top of the page. You would have to go to the blog edit window, and remove those manually. Once you post your entry on one of the websites I would recommend to copy and paste it from that site for when you start putting your blog on others. That way, you will be rid of the Word HTML codes forever.

Posting your blog manually to all of the above web-sites will take anywhere from an hour to 3 hours, depending on how fast you can work. My team and I have cut our posting time to 30-45 minutes, using a great free blog disseminator (a service which auto-posts blogs to various web-sites for you). I strongly recommend blog disseminators to anyone who values their time.

A quick note about the disseminators: they don’t auto-post blog tags – only the body of the blog – so make sure you put your tags underneath every entry. I advise my team against using simple one or two-word tags, the reason being, that they act as keywords for search engines and if they are too general, your posting will not get nearly as much traffic. For example, try googling the keywords “blogging”, “blog” or “online business”. There are millions of search engine results for each of them. What is the chance that YOUR blog will show up on the first page?

Instead, try using longer tags. Think of something an actual person would search for in Yahoo! or Google. For example, good keywords/tags for this particular blog are:

Where to post a blog, best websites to post a blog, top blog sites, top blog web-sites, the best place to post a blog, marketing a new online business, online business marketing, blogging for a new business, writing a blog for a new business, how to post a blog, new online business marketing tips, best free blog sites, best free blog websites

If you haven’t yet joined an online business opportunity, make sure you ask your team leaders for help with blogs, as they are extremely important to your development as a marketer. For example, I provide my team with links to various blog directories and with detailed tips on how to avoid common blogging mistakes. Remember that the more blogs you write, the more people will go to your website. I would recommend writing a blog every other day for the first month after your start/join an opportunity.

I hope this was helpful to you! I wish you best of luck in your blogging endeavors.

Brad Smith

blueoctopus@cox.net

Brad Smith is a marketing expert with a revolutionary cash gifting system that has helped thousands of people create wealth on the Internet. There is no product involved and one doesn’t have to be a computer wiz to be successful at it. On Brad’s web-site http://ToGiveAndToReceive.com, you can learn about how cash gifting can aid your financial situation without considerable money and time investments.

Someone asked on LinkedIn: “If I wanted to have a successful blog that potentially made money, what would I do?”First thing’s first, after figuring out what it is you’re going to write about and designing the blog and hosting it somewhere (I would suggest purchasing a keyword-rich domain name rather than hosting it free on Blogger or some other blog site), the most valuable thing you can do is add buttons and links to your blog to allow users to subscribe to it in as many different ways as possible. Some people use services like Bloglines, some people use an RSS app, some people use Firefox live bookmarks, but not all of these people are savvy enough to know how to subscribe to a blog without a specific sub-to-this-blog link for their preferred RSS reader. A great resource to help you make these different links is Feedburner.com. Feedburner also allows you to design email signatures with animated headlines from your blog, and many other different ways to publicize and monetize your blog. Plus, it lets you watch the traffic and subscription trends for your blog’s feed.Next, you want to research keywords to find a keyword that relates to your subject matter that people actually search for, so that if you find yourself in the top ten rankings on Google for said keyword, you will actually get traffic from it. An awesome tool to help you figure this out is Wordtracker GTrends which is here: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/Once you find your keyword or key phrase, you want to make sure your blog’s code is search engine friendly. You want to make sure your meta tags are within search engine guidelines, that your keyword density is appropriate for your subject matter, and that all of your titles have your keyword or key phrase in it. A good way to get a head start on this is to have your blog’s backend hosted by Blogger, while the blog itself is published on your own domain. I say this because Google owns blogger and as such, the new version of blogger features extremely Google-friendly code.After this, you need to get some links pointing to your site from good, Google recognized sites that relate to your subject matter. The best way to do this is to search on Google for your keywords or key phrase and ask the top ten ranking web sites to link to your blog. You may have to be creative about this, using what we like to call link bait. This can be anything that entices another web site owner to link to your site. Because your site will be new and most top ten ranking sites know a thing or two about search engine optimization, you probably won’t be able to just get a link exchange – no one wants to link to a brand new blog for two reasons, one is that new bloggers have a tendency to lose interest after a while and you find yourself linking to a blog that never gets updated, and two is because the site has no Google PageRank. If you offer your potential linkers something else, you may have more success. For example, I once ran a campaign for a client that swapped links for a discount on my client’s products. Whatever it is you swap for a link is up to you, be creative.You want to add your web site to blog directories and blog resources such as Technorati. If you haven’t spent literally a week straight doing this, you haven’t found nearly all of them. There are so many! Your best bet is to search Google for a list of blog directories.Ask your friends or colleagues to Digg each of your blog posts using digg.comAdd links to the bottom of every post that will allow readers to add to delicious, post to facebook, myspace, stumble upon, etc. Use as much 2.0 power as you possibly can. Get a Twitter account and tweet as much as you can, follow as many users as you can. Make sure every profile you’ve ever made for yourself or your business on any site, has a link to your blog. Make sure your blog address is everywhere, when you comment on others’ blogs, when you talk in forums, etc.You want to make sure you have an advertising policy available on your web site for potential advertisers to read, and as many different ways for them to contact you.When all of this is set up and ready, it’s time to send out a Press Release. Make sure it is enticing and boldly underlines how this blog is different and why people will want to read it. Submit your press release to as many press release distributors as possible. Again, just search on Google and you’ll find a ton. Some cost money, some are free.Now it’s time to post. Make sure your posts have personality. No one wants to read a dry technical blog. You want to make sure your own personality comes out in each and every post. Also, the more controversy, the better. A controversial post will entice readers to send the link to their friends and family in either horror or pride – both are equally as good! It will also encourage comments and repeat visits when something heated has been posted to the comments and the poster wants to come back to check the responses. It will also encourage repeat commenters and some will be compelled to subscribe to your blog. Make it controversial enough and you may even hit the mainstream news, such as Michelle Malkin did recently when she objected to the scarf Rachael Ray was wearing in a Dunkin’ Donuts ad.Submit all of your article length posts to article databases utilizing the author’s bio as a spot for a link back to your blog. Hopefully people will syndicate these on their own sites keeping the bio in tact and thus, creating more links to your blog.Some people use traffic exchanges such as BlogExplosion or Blog Soldiers and while it does actually increase your traffic, most of that traffic is useless. The only one I have ever found that actually results in real readers, is BlogExplosion.com. These sites are not entirely useless, however, as they do have directories that your blog is submitted to when you join. And there are no obligations after joining, so I would suggest doing so just to get into the directories as they are even more links to your blog.Make sure you blog regularly, but not too much. Many people subscribe to RSS feeds as a much faster way to get their daily reading in. Blogs with a lot of daily headlines, generally get skimmed and sometimes just deleted when there’s no time. But blogs that only have a post a week, can tend to be forgotten about. My suggestion is to keep it to once daily, and at the very least, 3 or 4 times per week. If you are going to be unable to post for a period of time, vacation or something, post and let your readers know so that they don’t think it’s just another blog gone stale.In the meantime, add Google Adsense to your blog, perhaps Amazon a-store and any high-quality affiliate programs that can relate to your blog’s subject matter.If you keep all of this up, you will have advertising revenue. The key though, is patience. Keep at it and don’t get discouraged. Publicizing any web site can take months upon months before you see results. But once you do, it’s highly worth it. You may even want to design and sell your own merchandise for further revenue.

One of the questions I see frequently asked on online discussion forums is, “Can You Really Make Money from Blogging?” People want to know if there’s some way to profit from the time they spend maintaining their web logs or personal online journals.My answer is an emphatic “YES,” because I do it… everyday!Today I’ll share with you how I do it.Let me begin by saying that I don’t make thousands per month from MOST of my blogs. However, I do have many making hundreds. Since I don’t put in a lot of time maintaining them, and I enjoy blogging, I consider the money a bonus. I blog while sitting in my yard with my laptop (on a wireless connection)… watching the clouds roll by. Another bonus I get from blogging is that it helps my regular websites that are set up as my “money machines.”The search engines visit my blogs more often than they visit my regular sites, and they follow the links from my blogs pointing to other sites. Some of these links point to my sites, and some point to sites of partners. This does help the search engine rankings of these sites MASSIVELY.How Do I Monetize My Blogs?I monetize my blogs by creating blogs on topics people are searching for… and that they are spending money on. I know which niches are hot to an extent based upon what my research proves pay-per-click advertisers are willing to spend their advertising dollars on. I run Google AdSense ads on my blogs. You can visit www.bloggers-guide-to-profit.com  I simply insert these ads in my menu bar and other strategic places on the webpage. I also experiment with other paid advertising on my blogs.I sell affiliate products from my blogs. I simply find affiliate products at places like PayDotCom.com and Commission Junction. I incorporate these into my blogs. I do things like product reviews, how-to articles, etc. You can also locate suitable affiliate products by typing your target keywords + “affiliate program” at any major search engine. This should point out numerous websites with suitable affiliate programs to you.How Do I Setup/Host My Blogs?I have blog hosted on some of my own domains using Moveable Type. This is just one of many great pieces of blogging software. You have other choices… my programmer recommended this one to me.I also have blogs hosted for free on Blogger.com. I have them on Blogger.com because they are incredibly easy to set up and maintain. A secondary reason I have them on Blogger.com is that Google OWNS Blogger.com and they index webpages hosted on their servers OFTEN and FAST!The secret to getting Google and Yahoo! to visit your blogs often is a technique called “blogging and pinging.” It’s a method of notifying all of the major search engines, and blog directories, each time that you update your blog. The search engines come to take a look and they follow links from your blog to spider other blogs/sites. It’s very powerful. I won’t go into too many details on blogging and pinging here. If you want more information on that topic I invite you to drop by my free, Internet marketing discussion board and ask any and all questions! It’s at: http://WillieCrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgiExamples of Profitable Blogs?I know, you want to see examples of profitable blogs To show you how simple it can be I’ll show you just ONE. It s less than 2 months old The problem is that as soon as I show a site to anyone as an example, it’s instantly ripped off. So, I’m going to “sacrifice” one making me about $60 per day from affiliate product sales and about $20 per day in AdSense revenue. That site is at: http://cure-nail-fungus.blogspot.comThe above site currently ranks Number 6 on Yahoo for the term “cure nail fungus.” It’s a small niche but one that makes me $2400 per month… just from that one blog.If you searched on the same term at Google, this site is not very highly ranked. However, THIS page is Num ber4:http://www.chitterlings.com/no-more-nail-fungus.htmlThat happens to be one of my pages too I won’t tell you what ALL I’m up to on that page… that’s another article. The technique involves using your own domains to promote affiliate products rather than advertising someone else’s domain… so it improves your link popularity.I’m not going to show more of my blogs because that just invites competition. Instead, I’m going to answer another question you have to be wondering…”How do I find time to maintain all of these blogs, even if they are profitable?” Well, first of all, I don’t really need a lot like the “sacrificial lamb” that I showed you above to keep me satisfied.I do have a number of secret weapons though. One is called Auto logger. You can check it out at:http://WillieCrawford.com/auto-blogger.htmlWhat Auto logger does is allow me to queue up a number of posts for my various blogs in advance. It lets you queue up “articles” which can really be anything you want. Then you tell the software at what frequency to make a post.My Auto logger account allows me to automatically post to an UNLIMITED number of blogs.WARNING: A program like Auto logger can get you in trouble if you misuse it! If you use it to spam or abuse the search engines, it’s just going to get you banned. If you use it to abuse the blog hosts, they’re just going to delete your blogs. Here’s how I use Auto logger:I have sites where I discuss Internet marketing… as just one example. On these sites I share many of my articles and tidbits. I simply queue up these articles/tidbits to post at a given frequency. This frequency can be a set number of hours, days, weeks, or months. So theoretically, I can set up a blog, pre-schedule 50 posts, and not touch it in months, while it is automatically posted to for the next 50 intervals.Auto logger even lets you set it to start rotating through the posts again when they run out, if you want to. I personally wouldn’t do this since you’d just be posting duplicate content.Auto logger allows you to insert RSS feeds right into your blog posts. So in addition to posting articles you can also auto-update by adding new RSS feeds at a set interval. Since I HATE sending my traffic to other sites (without reciprocation), these RSS feeds generally pull from MY sites. That way, my traffic is only sent to my other sites. If you don’t even feel like queuing up a lot of posts, you can go to a site like Elance.com and hire someone else to do it for you… or just hired your kids to do it for you. It can be as easy as you want to make it.OK, I’ve just proven to you that you can make money off of blogs. In-fact, you can make more money than many people make off of their REGULAR websites. It just takes a little thinking outside the box!It also takes not being too greedy. You can log on www.blog-link-generator.com What I just showed you works for me because I’m not doing anything that’s likely to get me banned from the search engines, Google AdSense, Blogger.com, or any affiliate program. It’s only when you get carried away, and do things that harm the search engines that you “shoot yourself in the foot.”Set up blogs providing useful content. Make regular posts to these blogs but not in a manner that seems unnatural. By that, I mean don’t auto-post twenty times in an hour, or post every hour for a month! No human can possible post to a blog at these rates for long, so the search engines detect something is “wrong.” They don’t generally prohibit you from using tools to make your job easier… just don’t get carried away!There are actually, thousands of people earning a living doing things similar to what I just shared… but with little twists. I’m meeting up with many of them in New Orleans in September. You’re invited to join us. We’ll basically be sharing how we make a fortune off of niche websites and programs such as Google AdSense.