10 Ways You Can Use Blogs Right Now

Now that you have got a basic understanding of the ins and outs of blogs, and some options available, you're probably wondering: How does this help my business? How does it help me to stand out?

1. Team Communication. Companies use blogs internally to communicate project status to stakeholders and managers. It beats clogging everybody's email with mass broadcasts. It allows these missives to be archived, indexed and easily searched.

2. Enrich Your Clients. You can easily link to articles and resources relevant to your readers and their needs. You can more easily attract experts to provide value-added content to your audience.

3. Get to Know Your Customer. Nobody buys from someone they don't know. Blogging allows you to demonstrate your expertise and point-of-view quickly and easily. In addition, blogs allow the customers to receive your updates in the format they choose.

4. Collaborate. You can create your own marketing buzz to drive attention and buyers to your products and services. Some companies use internal blogs to report on projects or to track work groups distributed around the world.

5. Research and Development. Weblogs are the perfect forum to test out new ideas and receive instant feedback. You can allow others to see how you develop your products and services, and at the same time, they can tell you how best to serve them.

6. Go Global. Blogs, like other online media, allow you to take your business and ideas to a global market. Translation services are getting better every day, allowing more people to read online content in different languages. I've helped bloggers from New York to New Zealand, from Indiana to India.

7. Hidden Entrance to the Press. Journalists are busier than ever and blogs provide a virtual directory of pundits on any topic. You and your company can be the content expert they're looking for. Furthermore, if your company is talked about in the blogosphere it could end up using that exposure as a back door to the press.

8. Get Published. Publishers are turning to blogs to find new writing talent. Blogs can give a publisher a taste of your writing style as well as a sample of your depth of knowledge. Content specific blogs show a a commitment to a certain topic or subject matter.

9. Write your book. Let your readers help you write your latest book or article. Post chapters or ideas, then let readers help you in researching, testing and suggesting ideas. Or, use a blog after your book is published to update the material or to answer questions from readers.

10. Success Stories. Invite clients to blog about their successes with your products and services - it's like a living testimonial that never ends. As clients share their experiences, your prospects can see first-hand how you can help them, too.

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

How To Make Money With Blogs

Making money from a blog requires skill, luck and work. In this article we describe how it can be done.

Let's first look at the sources of revenue which are available for blog authors.

Ads

By placing ads on a blog it is possible to generate revenue from visitors who click on the ads. The most common source for ads is Google's AdSense. By signing up to Google AdSense and placing a small piece of code on your blog, Google will display their ads on your blog. Advertisers who signed up for Googles AdWords program pay Google for each click on ads and Google shares this revenue with blog owners displaying the ads. Google does not disclose how the revenue is shared – they encourage you to sign up and try it out so you can see how much you generate and then decide if it is for you or not. Google places ads on webpages so they match the content on the page. A blog about traveling would therefore attract ads for airplane tickets, hotels etc. Since Google shares their revenue with you and since you want to generate a lot of revenue, you need to produce content for which ads pay well. There are tools available for determining for which keywords there is the most competition among advertisers – content for such keywords will be content that generates the highest revenue. The revenue generated per click can be anywhere from a few cents to several dollars, depending on the advertiser competition. Normally, relatively few visitors to a website or blog will click on ads. There are ways to optimize a blog or website for achieving higher click through rates. You will be able to find varied (and sometimes contradictory) advice on what is the best strategy. Follow the links below, to sign up for Google's AdSense and for tools for finding the keywords for which there is a lot of advertiser competition.

Affiliate programs

Affiliate programs are a type of partnership, where are seller of a product shares the revenue generated from a sale with the affiliate who sent the customer to the seller's website. The percentage of revenue given to the affiliate can be from a few percent to as much as 75 percent. Affiliate programs are often supported by the company handling the online payment, who then takes care of paying the commission to the affiliate the minute the customer makes payment. An owner of a blog can become an affiliate of one or more sellers and send visitors to the sellers' websites, thereby generating revenue for the owner of the blog. Affiliate links (i.e., links from the affiliate to the sellers' websites) are easier to disguise as normal links, than ads provided by Google. The affiliate can create the links, so the customer may not even notice that the affiliate is affiliated with the sellers' websites. For this reason, a higher click through rate can be achieved this way than through ads. You can expect that only a few percent of visitors following your links end up making a purchase. So also for this option, a large amount of traffic is needed to generate good revenue. Follow the links below to learn more about affiliate programs and how to find products to promote.

Getting traffic

No matter which option for revenue you choose, the key to generating serious money is to get serious amounts of visitors for the blog. This means that your blog needs to be interesting for the reader and not just look like something made for you to make money. For this reason, you need to keep the amount of ads and affiliate links to a minimum. You need to produce content which appeals to readers and to add new posts regularly to keep visitors coming back. Topics like politics, religion, gaming, gossip, arts, sports - to name just a few – seem to be popular topics. You need to select a topic which you yourself find interesting as this will make it easier for you to write articles that others will find engaging too. Blogs with a good amount of graphics seem to attract more visitors than blogs with a small amount of graphics. Besides having a blog which is interesting and make visitors return, you can get visitors using advertising, link building and other techniques used also for "normal" websites.

In this article we have explored some of the ways you can make money from blogs.

Author Info:

Andrew Nielsen is the author of The Online Business Builder - a bestselling eBook about teaching readers how to make money on the Internet.

The Basics of Blogging to Niche Markets

In the previous article, we discussed how blogs can help you generate traffic for your main website. But what if you don't have another site? Or what if you want your blog to be your main website, the exclusive carrier of your moneymaking ventures?

This can be achieved, of course. Such is the versatility of web logs.

Standalone blogs are best utilized for online businessmen or women who have decided to pursue what many people call as nicheing. Yes, the word is ungrammatical, but it is a term that many Internet marketers have come to embrace with fondness. Nicheing involves the creation of many sites that cater to particular niches. Niches, of course, are very specialized markets, most of which are so obscure that they do not garner the attention of businesses, hence creating high demands with low supplies. The purpose of nicheing is to find these markets and provide for their needs. These enterprising businessmen would earn through the following ways:

* Creating and eventually selling products that aim to serve the said niches.

* Selling existing products that the said niches need.

* Providing for information that the members of the said niches can access for free, and enrolling the site that contains the information in a Pay Per Click (PPC) program like Google AdSense.

Regardless of what path the online entrepreneur decides to take, he should first create a site that serves as the repository of his commercial methods. Niches can be very rewarding. Since there is but a few competitions in the field, your search engine placement is sure to be higher than usual. Traffic should also be at a sustainable level since the members of a niche have nothing else to visit. This will mean a greater possibility for more sales, if you're selling a product, or a higher Click Through Rate (CTR) if you're enrolled in a PPC program.

Now, making a site can be quite cumbersome. You have to deal with the aspects of web design, graphic creation, and content writing among other concerns. What more when you have to create numerous sites for numerous niches?

Thankfully, blogs will make things a whole lot easier for you. Every online marketer who has attained success with niche marketing can attribute this to their proper exploitation of blogs. Whereas it would take you a couple of weeks to come up with 10 websites, it would only take you a couple of hours to come up with 10 blog sites. The sheer convenience and ease of web logs have made nicheing a very potent business model.

Blogs can very much substitute for a regular website. As we have previously discussed, high quality content is, ultimately, what will drive traffic to your site, and this kind of content can easily be carried through a blog. Also, you don't have to change the entire page whenever you want to update your content, as you would with a regular website. With blogs, all you have to do is to write your update in a designated box and press the publish button. Of course, different blogging software have various features, but none comes more loaded than Wordpress (www.wordpress.com).

Blogging is the way to go if you want to create, and maintain, several niche sites. And Wordpress is the weapon of choice for most Internet marketers. To fully realize the potentials of the medium, therefore, you should be able to exploit all the features that Wordpress does offer. Again, David Pankhurst's excellent report on powerful Wordpress secrets (http://www.malkeenan.com/top10tricks) will help you excel in this area.

Look out for the next article, where we're going to discuss how you could efficiently integrate the Google AdSense program into your blog, and make it a passive income generating machine.

About the Author:

For More Free Resources visit www.freeearningtips.com

History of Blogging

Blogging, what is it? You’ve heard talk about blogging but are one of those people who don’t quite understand what it is. That’s alright, as we’ll go over what a blog is, the history of blogs, what they are used for and why they are important to your online business.

What is a blog ?

A blog is essentially like a journal where people can post their thoughts and have them read and commented on by anyone.

What is a blogger ?
A blogger is someone who creates a blog and posts on it.

Brief history of blogs.

Weblogs, simply known as blogs now, haven’t been around for that long. The roots of the blog can be traced back to 1994 when people kept online journals (diaries) in which they wrote about things in their life. Contact:www.profit-puling-toolbars.com .Our current blog has been around for an even shorter period of time. In 1998, Open Diary created a site in which its users could post blogs that had the ability to be commented on by other people.
The popular free blogging site called Blogger was created in 1999 by Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan. Blogger was later purchased by Google in 2003.

Despite the fact that blog sites have been in existence since 1998, they have only been popular for 5 or 6 years. In 2001, how-to-blog manuals were published and the phenomenon has only taken off since that point.

What are blogs used for?

In the very beginning, blogs were usually used to talk about a person’s life. People would make blog posts about things happening in their life, thus using the blog as a public journal. For more details:www.bloggers-guide-to-profit.com.Over time, the use of the blog evolved. People began using the blog to post their opinions about everything from politics to religion to sports to music, among other things.

Nowadays, blogs are even used to make money one 20-year-old makes $5,000 from Google per month because he has Google Ads on his blog. Businesses have also begun to effectively use blogs for their own purposes.

Why are blogs important to your online business?

Millions of people from all over the world read blogs every day. Those who have a blog are given a lot of exposure there is the potential for them to have millions of unique readers each day.

Can you imagine having a million people see your business’ name each day? That sounds pretty incredible, doesn’t it? Yet, that’s exactly what could happen if you create and maintain a successful, well-read blog. And that’s actually a pretty easy thing to do.

So how exactly can you use the blog to help your online business? Well, you can use it in a variety of ways.

You could:

• Use the blog to discuss things related to your field of business. For instance, if your business provides web hosting services, you could discuss things related to web hosting, thus showing potential customers how much of a guru you are.

• Let your employers have their own blogs to talk about your services/products. The more active blogs that reference your business, the more exposure you’ll get.

• Use your business blog to keep current customers updated on new services/products available.

• Post news about your business, as well as start rumors about potential happenings in your online business.

• Get feedback from current and potential customers on your products/services. For instance, you could make a post on a new product, giving details about it. Then your existing customers or potential customers could give their opinion on it.

• Promote your online business on your blog by making blog posts with information on what your business offers.

• Install Adsense on your blog and make extra revenue from ads clicked, thereby helping your business to be more profitable.

There are really a lot of possibilities to how you can use a blog to help your business, even more than those listed here. Blogs that are hosted on your site (by using a program like WordPress) can help your site achieve a higher ranking in search engines. This is because blogs are search engine friendly (Google is known to list them after only a few days, whereas it takes regular web sites weeks to appear on a search engine). Having a high search engine ranking is crucial to having a successful online business. Blogs help you to increase your ranking, which will increase your business.

The great thing about blogs is that they are easy to use and also very effective. Start a blog today and watch your business’ notoriety grow.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
www.blogers-guide-to-profit.com www.greatblogbox.com.

Blogging Guides-Create A Blog That Is Successful!

They provide all of the tips you need to design the best blog. You can learn about creating, designing, and managing your blog. Guides teach you everything you need to know. You can find out about discussions and you can also learn the best techniques you need to know in order to promote your blog properly. Blogging guides can help you learn everything necessary to have a successful blog. You'll learn why blogs are so popular today, and what they're used for. For more results visit us at www.building-blog-empire.com. You'll learn how you can integrate blogging into your site so that it becomes more successful, too, and attract more traffic.Blogging guides will help you choose the proper blogging platform for your blog. You can add a hosted or self hosted solution to your site. You should figure out the design of your blog and you can hire someone or choose through a list of blog designers customized to fit your needs. There are many logo designers you can hire and premium websites with amazing blog designs.

The platforms for your blog can be found in just about every price range. And you'll need an FTP client so that you can upload files to your blogs. You'll also need a text editor, so that you can design and code your site. Of course, there are many options available where you don't need to know any HTML at all. It's also easy to add photos to your site. You can use your own or find free photos available online. Make sure that you're not infringing on any rights when you use photos you find on the Internet. Blogging guides can show you everything you'll need to know to create the most successful blog you can have.

In addition, blogging forums are becoming popular today. They are a way for people to get together, discuss hot topics, and chat with like-minded people. Of course, you can also chat with people who oppose your views, because it may give you a different perspective. You can create your own forms, and blogging guides will show you how to do this. You can also create chat areas; blogging guides will help you get the most out of them.

Blogging guides can also help you find useful tips and information on promotion. You can submit your blog to RSS feeds, communities, galleries, web promoters, directories, and many more places. Blogging guides can help you glean useful information on blog promotion, so that you can promote both your blog and your website successfully. You can also check it out at www.greatblogbox.com. You'll need to know what sites online will allow you to submit your blog. In addition, you'll need to submit your blog to RSS directories so people can find your feed. These methods can provide many benefits, especially when it comes to generating large amounts of traffic to your site.In short, blogging guides tell you what you need to know in order to properly both create a blog and make it successful. If you don't know anything about blogging, you can start by getting a guide and then following what it says.

About Author :
www.blogers-guide-to-profit.com www.blog-and-ping.com
Author Profile: 16352

15 Tips to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engine Optimization

Blog SEO is one of the most effective way to build automated traffic to your blog. You might have learn some basic SEO strategy, but have you heard that blog has a very different way that allows you to get your blog on the first page very quick and easy.

Most blogger will rush to build backlinks, but they will discover ranking is hard and struggling because they have forgotten to do some “On-Blog Optimization” that would help them to get to the first page few times quicker. These On-Blog Optimization are:

1. Use Domain Name That Contain Keywords

Domain name gives you a huge advantage to get to the first page on the search engines. I've seen websites that have only few links that rank higher than sites which have hundreds of backlinks. The difference is just these sites domain name contain their keywords. This makes the search engine thinks that the domain name is dedicated to show only contents about the keyword.

2. Does Your Blog Title Contain Keywords?

Type keywords in your blog title. When the blog title is your keywords, the h1 tag and title tag on your blog will become your keywords. Each page of your blog will link back to the main page of your blog with the keywords too. All of these gives you extra SEO benefits to your blog.

3. Does Your Tagline Contain Keywords?

Every Wordpress blog's general setting, you'll realize something below your blog title called 'Tagline' or description in other blog platform. Tagline is another important location to type your keywords. Make sure get it done.

4. Do You Miss Out Ping?

Ping is a important function of each wordpress blog will have. Every time you publish a new article, your blog will ping itself to inform few websites you've created new information on your blog. Ping also helps to inform search engines you updated new information on your blog. Search engines like websites and blogs that update themselves frequently because they offer their users up-to-date and quality information. Search engine will usually rank your blog high if you ping often. Remember to import more ping services in your setting.

5. Are You Using Duplicated Contents?

Beware of duplicated content on your blog. Try not to reuse your own or others' content on your blog. Reusing same content doesn't help in ranking because search engines don't index many pages that contain the same content because it might annoy their users and it might be a way to avoid spammers to increase their page by duplicating same contents.

6. Applying The Technique Of Keyword Density

Do you mention your keywords in your blog? Repeat your keywords often. Try to keep your density of keywords above 2% and below 7%. It means you got to have keyword you aim for 3 to 6 times in every 100 words you wrote. The more often you use the keywords in your post, the more the search engines thinking your blog is relevant to the keywords. Many people already aware of this method, this makes some internet marketer stuff keywords in their page. Google penalize page that overuse this method. Try to keep it below 7%.

7. Relevant Keywords

Since many people discover the keyword density method, Search engines have created a different algorithm that can judge websites' content by the amount of relevant keywords. If you are using Wordtracker or Google Keyword Tool, these tool is able to give you many other keywords that are related to the keywords you aim for. Use some of them in your articles too. For example, you'll see “pimple” and “blackhead” as related keywords when you search for acne.

8. Speed Blogging

If you post a new article on your blog 3 times a day on your blog or more, Google think that your blog have the latest news about a topic and always provide fresh contents. As a result, you'll rank easier. If you have a new blog, start posting once every 3 days and increase your post to once a day after 1 month. If your blog has been there for certain period, it's up to you.

9. Page Volume

Another tip many Black Hat SEO trick users know is increasing the volume of web pages. However, we try to do it in a white hat approach by posting more new articles. The more pages your blog has, the more content rich and informational the search engines think your blog is. As a result, your blog will be ranked higher.

10. Is Your Page Long Enough?

Publish posts have contain more than 250 words to get your page indexed quicker and stay in Google longer. As I mentioned, there're many spammers who use the technique of increasing blog page quantity to manipulate search results. They might simply use a few words to publish a page. Search engines have ways to calculate the words to ensure it doesn't happen.

11. What Sites Are You Linking To?

Do you know that your blog will get lower ranking if you link to a spam site or bad site? It is the same the other way round. If you link to a high authority site, your blog will have a higher ranking too. I haven't did any experiment to prove it yet but I am a strong believer of this concept.

12. Interlinking

Is your blog posts linking to each other? Interlinking is a tip many internet marketers apply to increase Blog SEO traffic from keywords you don't aim for. Although backlinks from the same site is not as good as back links from other websites, they are useful in ranking too especially you are able to have it done automatically with blogs. Use “Similar Post” plugin and create links to your popular posts at your sidebar.

13. Change Title Tags On Each Of Your Posts

Another tip to get more search engine traffic from untargeted keywords, it's crucial to have the title tags of each of your blog post start with the post title first. You can use a free plugin called “All In One SEO Pack Plug in” that will do this automatically.

14. Create SEO Friendly URLs

The url of each of your blog post will not contain any keywords which people would search in the search engines in it by default. It might be something such as http://your-blog.com/?p=123. To make each of your blog posts more seo friendly, it is important to change your blog's url to keywords. You can go to the blog's settings and customize the permalink into “/%category%/%postname%”. This permalink structure will turn change the url of your post into urls that have the words in your post title.

15. Does Your Blog Has A Map?

Having a sitemap on your blog will definitely help you to rank faster because robot bots from Google could only crawl certain amounts of links. If your blog has a good site map that allows the bots to crawl your blog easily, more pages will get indexed and continue to get a lot of traffic from the search engine. But creating your own site map requires.

Alex Liu is a full time blogger who specialize in Blog SEO to increase blog traffic. He shares tips and strategies to get traffic to blog at his blog-http://blogtrafficgeek.com

Article source : www.articlebase.com

Searching For Information In Blogs

There are all kinds of blogs like personal blogs, topical blogs, culture blogs, political blogs, science blogs, educational blogs, news blogs and much more. One of the things these blogs have in common is that they are generally good sources of information. Not only are they good sources of information but are good sources of up-to-date information at that.

People looking for an alternative source of information will find that blogs can sometimes offer a more in depth view or a refreshing take on current events. One of the major benefits of information from blogs, specially from personal, cultural and political bogs, is that it gives readers insight on the locals’ viewpoint. For example, although news sites can offer accurate information and report facts and statistics about important events such as the 9/11 attack or the latest Tsunami tragedy that hit Asia, personal blogs of people who were actually there or knew someone involved in the tragedies offer a deeper and more compelling insight on the events. Reading political blogs would also give you a chance to know what ordinary citizens of a country really think.

The downside with information from blogs is accuracy. Since most blogs are subjective, information garnered from the blogs can be lopsided and even exaggerated. Most blogs do write about facts but give commentaries as well. When reading opinions and commentaries be discriminating and do not believe everything written without thinking or checking out the facts by reading other blogs and sources.

One problem with extracting useful information from blogs is knowing where to start. With more than 10 million blogs online it is impossible to search for specific information without the help of a good blog search engine. A good blog search engine, however, will weed out most of the noise and point you to the blogs that contain the information you need.

To help you search for information found in blogs, here’s a short list of the best blog searching tools on the net right now.

• Google blog search – google blog search is the fastest blog search engine at the moment and returns incredibly relevant search results.

• Technorati.com – Technorati.com is the most established blog search engine. It gives back the most number of results and has the most features among blog engines. However, it can be slow and returns quite a number of irrelevant links.

• Yahoo! Blog Search – Yahoo’s blog search is a new feature added to its news search. The search result page is divided into two columns with the left column containing news results and the right column containing blog results. Yahoo! blog search is best for people who need current information but are not very particular that it be from blogs.

• Feedster is one of the oldest blog engines. One of its useful features is that it caches blog pages. Feedster would be useful for people looking for blog posts that have been deleted or edited.

• BlogPulse is a search engine most useful due to its extra tools that allow users to do things other blog engines don’t like create graphs and plot log buzz for search terms. It also has a Conversation Tracker that’s gathers related blog posts converts them to threaded conversations. This cool feature allows readers to follow topics they are interested in more easily.

• And to apply for a Blog Review and possibly win an award, go to Bloggy Award!

Author Info:

Tom Takihi is the proud owner of the Discover Network. For more information on this topic, please visit the dedicated portal http://www.DiscoverBlogs.info website.

"Blogging" For Fun & Profits"

Unless you've been under a rock for the last year, you've heard the term "blog" once or twice.

To most people, a "blog" simply represents a glorified online "diary" where geeks, computer nerds, and lonely teenagers record their thoughts in cyber-space.

However, many people don't realize that "blogs" are quietly revolutionizing the way companies and customers interact about everything from existing products to new ideas and improvements in customer service.

In short, "blog" style communication has come of age and anyone with an online business better sit up and take notice fast!

In the beginning, "blogs" were basically an online diary to record your thoughts; but "blogs" have now evolved into dynamic websites that non-technical people can update immediately without html editors or ftp programs.

Blogs allow their authors to make instant website updates through a computer anywhere in the world with a Web browser and Internet connection.

Blogs also allow readers to respond to the author's posts, provide additional information, links, expanded opinions, and more.

In short, an active "blog" creates an interactive community with the author as the hub and the readers as the spokes of the wheel that keep the whole cycle turning round.

Unlike traditional "static" web pages where content rarely (if ever) changes, an active blog evolves in a state of constant and never-ending renewal.

With blogs, smart online businesses re-discovered a principal that small "mom and pop" stores understood for years: know your customers and stay in close tune with their wants, needs, and desires.

Large companies throw billions of dollars down a black hole every year to literally "guess" what people want to buy. Most call it the "Marketing Department."

On the flipside, smart online businesses understand that blogs allow you to avoid guessing what's on your customers' minds and provide an active and up-to-the-minute means for them to tell you exactly what they do and don't like about your services, products, and virtually any other aspect of the market.

This lightning fast communication makes it possible for small companies to literally snatch huge market share away from more traditional companies.

Blogging also has a distinct advantage over traditional email newsletters in that subscribers can get udpates without having to receive an email message. Through the power of RSS (real simple syndication), subscribers get notified of updated content though an rss news reader.

Bottom Line: publishing a blog with an RSS feed that your readers can subscribe to means your content NEVER gets blocked by a SPAM filter.

Blog software basically comes in 2 flavors: hosted and stand-alone. Hosted blogging solutions make it extremely easy to get set up with a blog, often in just a couple of minutes.

If you know how to type, you can create a blog. Log on to Blogger.com and you can set up a blog free of charge and start posting in just a few minutes.

Blogger.com (owned by search giant, Google) will even host your blog on their servers.

Typepad.com, which charges as little as $4.95 per month, is also an excellent hosted service offering additional features that enable you to quickly get your own blog up and running.

The alternative is stand-alone blogging software installed on your own website.

A very popular solution is Moveable Type, available from moveabletype.org, which provides a very versatile and powerful suite of tools for creating a full-featured blog to rival that of any size company in the world. Which ever blogging solution you choose, if you plan to successfully conduct any form of business online, understand that a "blog" must form an integral part of your
overall plan for customer communication and interaction.

About the Author

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

How Blogging Can Get You More Free Website Traffic Than Expected

If you're starting a website and are in dire need of free website traffic, blogging is one of the best routes you can take. Through blogging you have the power to create new and enticing content on a daily basis to generate high traffic. Blogging allows you to see what your readers want to know and respond to them almost instantaneously; giving them the much needed personal attention to become successful. There are, however, a few steps you will want to consider when you start blogging in order to receive the most free website traffic.

The first step and one of the most important steps to succeeding in blogging is keeping it up to date. You have to post on your blog daily to provide your readers with fresh content. If you give your visitors new information, they will be more inclined to return to your blog to see what else you have to offer the next day. By posting every day and answering any questions you may receive, the return traffic base will give you a large amount of free website traffic.

What you post on your blog doesn't necessarily have to be about your website or product every time. Obviously you want to post often about your website and keep people informed with new offers and promotions you may have. However, posting on current information around the world or products that are similar to yours will provide your readers with a little bit of variety to spice things up. This is a sure way to be successful with blogging.

A great way to get free website traffic and returning traffic is by getting people involved. Encourage as much reader participation as possible. Don't be afraid to ask questions about any topic that comes to mind. Asking for feedback on your website or how you can better your blog is another great way to get people talking on your blog.

Dropping a post from time to time asking if anyone has any questions about anything is great way to show that you care about your readers needs and want to see them succeed. Remember, there was a time when you had no clue about internet marketing or blogging or how to run a home business. It is guaranteed that there are some people on your blog that feel the same way but may be afraid to ask a stupid question.

If you have to remember to be patient; you're not going to have a large readership right off the bat. Give it time and you will notice an increase of readership, which will lead to an increase of free website traffic to your website as well. The key to be successful with blogging is keeping everything personal and showing you care about others' success as well. This will get you the most free website traffic possible.

Copyright ? Melody Heddings

Source: Free Articles

To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: http://www.HomeBizMadeEZ4U.com

Before You Learn How To Blog, You Better Learn What A Blog Is (and Isn't)

Thinking about starting a blog, are you? Before you learn how to create a blog, you had better get an idea of what a blog actually is and how it is fundamentally different from other online presences. That's exactly what I'll be reviewing in this article.

A blog, short for weblog (web-log, not we-blog), is an online journal. Blogs are specialized forms of web sites, so they typically contain text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, or other media related to their topics. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning "to maintain or add content to a blog."

Blog entries, or "posts," are usually displayed in reverse chronological order, and posts are assigned to categories to assist with organization. Posts refer to individual articles, or writings, in a blog.

Blogs differ from traditional web sites in several crucial ways:

* Blogs are usually updated very frequently, with inactive blogs being updated several times per month, and active blogs being updated many times per day.

* Most blogs allow readers to post comments and respond to posts. This dialog is encouraged because interactivity is an important part of many blogs, and also one of the leading sources of tips and new content.

* Blog writing tends to be much more personal than traditional web writing. Traditional web writing is politically correct sales or marketing copy, whereas blogs have a very intimate voice.

* Blogs tend to be more opinionated and partisan than web sites, and most blogs are tightly focused on a niche.

* Blogs commonly offer RSS feeds of the posts and comments contained within them.

RSS feeds?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of feed formats used to publish blog content. Feeds make it easy for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually.

Feeds can be aggregated in a feed reader, a web page or portal page, or a web browser. The feed reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds. In essence, it's a way for your favorite content to be "pushed" to you, or in this case, a way for your subscribers to get your content pushed to them as it's updated. In a nutshell, feeds make sure that your readers receive your content as it's published.

Blogs range from personal journals intended for close friends and family, to influential and significant media journals, to informal communication channels for companies. Blogs exist in about every shape, size, and topic imaginable.

The power of blogs is that they allow millions of people to have a voice. Blogs are fluid and interactive, consisting of two-sided conversations rather than broadcasts. Blogs are fundamentally changing how we use the web, so get your blog started or you'll be left behind!

By: Jared Conley

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Jared helps new and aspiring bloggers learn to blog professionally and profitably with his blogs how to. You can learn more about one of the leading blogging programs available today by downloading the FREE guide on how to blog for money at Jared's site.

13 Steps to Successful Blogging

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

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

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com, etc. The more blog accounts the better. You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

8) Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You're a Professional

You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "Old Blog has been moved to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link for future reference: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

About the Author

Ant Onaf is the owner and founder of www.JournalHome.com He is an online internet marketer, content writer, and IT consultant. Ant Onaf has years of IT-related experience and Internet-related experience. His ingenuity, dedication, and passion for technology, internet marketing, & writing have made him a monumental icon in the World Wide Web. His blog can be visited at http://www.journalhome.com/AntOnaf

Advantages of Blogging

In the 'good old days' - about three years ago - you used to keep in-touch with your customers using phone calls, email messages and face to face meetings. Nowadays the world has changed. People expect even more frequent updates, yet it's nearly impossible to meet with every business contact on a regular basis.

Thankfully, blogging has come to the rescue. Setting up a blog on your web site - and having an associated RSS feed - means you can keep in constant touch with your clients and potential customers. Plus you don't have to email them and they can get your latest news without having to visit your web site. Whenever you add new content to your blog, the RSS Feed automatically gets updated in everyone's Reader program or web browser. That means you are guaranteed to be able to keep in touch with clients and prospects. You don't have to do anything other than produce the content. Equally, you don't face the problems of email filters and anti-spam programs blocking your email. Furthermore, people tend to read RSS Feeds because they have subscribed to them whereas they tend to ignore non urgent emails.

As you can see, there are several advantages to Blogs and RSS Feeds. But it doesn't stop there. Search engines love them. That's because blogs provide fresh and new content - precisely what searchers are looking for. Hence the search engines are actively pushing blogs higher up the search engine ranking. This means if you don't have a blog for your business, you are seriously reducing your chances of a high search engine ranking. You need a blog nowadays to get noticed by the search engines.

So how does this all work? A blog is really a fancy name for a web page that gets updated regularly. It's nothing special. There are several methods of writing 'blogs', but they are nothing more than computer programs which allow you to easily update a web page.

However, for keeping in touch with your customers, RSS is the key. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What this means is that your blog can be automatically delivered to people who want to read it - you don't have to send it to them and neither do they have to come and collect it. All they need is the address of your RSS Feed and their RSS Newsreader can do the job for them.There are several RSS readers available and new web browsers incorporate the ability to read RSS feeds and keep them updated.

So, blogging is essential. Not only does it improve your web presence, it also means you can keep in touch with clients and prospects more easily. And all the marketing research you can find will tell you that keeping in regular touch with your customers is an important component in gaining new business. So get blogging!

Author Info :

http://www.building-blog-empire.com

http://www.blog-and-ping.com"

Are you Blogging too?

Blogging has become lately one of the most popular activities people do on the internet. You might ask yourself why blogging is useful and to whom. First of all you have to know that there are different types of blogs. There are personal blogs that people use in order to express their feelings, their opinions regarding certain subjects or regarding their life. There are also some kinds of blogs that contain important news from different domains like politics, economics, fashion, sports, weather etc. All in all, you can find almost everything on these blogs. But blogs are not only a source of information. You will be surprised to see how many advantages a blog can bring.

Since blogs appeared, the relationship between companies on the market and their customers has seriously improved. Throw blogs, companies receive almost instant opinions from the people they sell their products to. That is why they can adapt their strategies and improve the quality of their services more rapidly.

Blogs create links between people and between different products. You will always find on a blog some related links that will prove to be very useful in case you want to find out more information about a subject. In time, you can discover new people that share with you the same passions and believes. This is how you have the chance to meet new people and make new friends from all over the world.

The great part about blogs is that they always give you access to the archive. In other words, everything that appears in a blog remains in there. The archive is organized chronologically so that it can make your search easier. The database is enormous and as I said before, it is almost impossible not to find what you’re looking for.

A blog maintains your company’s image. A well-done blog is a sign of responsibility, credibility, hard work and interest for the customers. Media will also react positively to blogs and websites, mostly when a company with prestige is involved.

A blog sells your products better. Companies can reach their clients easier and the impact is much higher. When people are visiting a blog they find essential information about products and they can also see pictures of them. They don’t have to waist time on going to the store and buying those things. They just give a click on the item and they see it and then they can order it and receive it at home.

Moreover, companies can make a lot of money by selling their free space for publicity. Use your advertising space in order to make money. This is how you can drag the attention of other people too and make them become your customers as well.

The main idea is that companies should invest more in their blogs because they can bring them a lot more profit. A high quality blog is the guarantee for success. Nowadays, the technology has rapidly evolved and that is why companies have to adapt to new needs that people have. A blog is a modern type of strategy, but its efficacy is much higher than the classic ones.

Jim Dilivio has been getting the best out of online marketing for more than five years. Affiliate marketing is not a difficult task if you do your homework. To ease into affiliate marketing checkout my Store Stacker site for more information.
Article Source: http://www.articlesphere.com/Article/Are-you-Blogging-too-/165510

6 Tips For Great Content

The blog has now become a marketing tool for many marketers who want to sell their products or services online. It is phenomenal in effect and has brought various successful stories for marketers engaged in different marketing online activities.

Blogging has much to do with conversations. Your blog must attract readers and bring in the traffic. What is essential to achieving this goal is to pay much attention to your blog content. It can affect the outcome of your marketing campaign. Listed below are a list of tips for great content. It is by no means exhaustive.

(1) Content must be of value and informational

You can write on any topic that is relevant to your niche. The posts must be informational and should provide value to your readers. The content must be interesting and satisfying to readers. If readers are satisfied with the content, they will return to your blog for more information.

(2) Content should be unique

One of the important tips for great content is that it should be unique, besides being of value and informational. Content that captures the interest and satisfies your readers will surely bring about a loyal readership. Readers will return for more. New readers will be added through time.

(3) Blog should be updated

It is intrinsically the nature of blogging that your blog be updated regularly with new posts. New posts are what readers are expecting to see when they return to your blog. They will be delighted to find new refreshing material. Even the spiders of Google will be pleased to know that your blog is being updated regularly with fresh and new content.

(4) Build your reputation

Whatever you are posting in your blog matters a lot to your reputation as the provider of quality content. With links pointing back to you, your blog will experience an increase in traffic, which will in turn raise your ranking. Always ensure that your content is of quality as this will boost your reputation.

(5) Build up your credibility

Building up your credibility as an author is one of the tips for great content. Readers will respect you as the expert in your field. They will come back to you should they need help.You are perceived as the best author who can help them with your knowledge.

(6) Provide mind-provoking content

Content that provides for interaction will help generate traffic for your blog. Mind-provoking content that encourages debate and discussions is a good food for thought. Readers can participate and contribute their views thus paving the way for better interaction, which eventually will lead to increase in visibility for your blog.

Content for your blog is important to your readers. The posts must delight them with great content, and only then will your readers respect you for what you have provided them with.

By: jeremy3737

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

For latest updates on how to increase traffic, raise page ranking, write effective articles and powerful squeeze pages, create explosive blog marketing system, learn about viral marketing, and bring in massive income from your internet marketing business, please Click here. Webmaster: Jeremy Long Chia Teik.

Blogging: The Best Way To Increase Your Profits

Blogging these days has become a pride procession in today’s online business world. Blogging is used for way more things then it was used to. Before many people would use a blog to write down their daily thoughts or personal experiences. Today, it is actually used to promote online business, bring in traffic to a website and even make a fortune off of.

There are more people that are tapping into the good effects that blogs have on their business. There are actually people out there today that are profiting big time on the internet by just using blogs alone. I have actually been able to learn how to profit from blogs. For more details go to www.atoz-about-rss.com. Today, I would like to go over the basics of how you can make money with a blog and then go over the top thing that can either make you money or not from blogging.

So, the way to get started here is to obviously make you a blog. You can do this by heading on over to Blogger. That is a site that is owned by Google. If you use this site you will have a better chance at ranking in the search engines, especially Google themselves.

Blogs are easy to set up and are also free to use as well. You are going to have to choose a topic that you would like your blog to be about and then write some content about it in your blog over a period of time. You should update your blog at least 3 times a week.

After you have some content you should now start recommending an affiliate product that people can learn more from. You can find some affiliate products that relate to your blog topic in Clickbank. If you haven’t heard of affiliate products before, they are products you can sell for a commission.

Another way to make money from your blog is with Google adsense. These are Google ads that you can place on your blog. Whenever someone clicks on your ad then you will get paid per click. Blogger has an easy layout so that you can add the adsense easily to your blog. For more information simply go to www.your-own-blog.com. The number one thing that is most important is the promotion of your blog. You have to promote your blog and get the word out there that your blog is in business. Without anybody knowing about it they can never visit it. Some free ways that you can drive traffic to your blog is with articles, social bookmarking sites, forums, press releases and even from other blogs.

Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Davinder singh

Blogging – Knowledge for Beginners

Instead of writing text, some bloggers choose to make their blogs more audio friendly by using spoken word entries, this is called audio blogging.

Basically a blog contains the following features:

Title - This allows you to label your post.
Body - This is the content of your post.
Track back - Other sites can be linked back to your blog.
Permanent Link - Every article that you write has a URL.
Comments - This allow readers to post comments on your blog.

One of the advantages of blogging is that it is made of only a few templates, unlike other websites that are made up of numerous individual pages. This makes it easier for blog users to create new pages, because it already has a fixed setting that includes: slots for title, body of the post, category, etc. For more details go to www.atoz-about-rss.com. This is especially useful for first time users, since they can start blogging right away. They can choose from a number of templates that blogging websites provide.

Anyone who wants to start a blog can do so by becoming a member of a blogging website of their choice. Once they've become members, they automatically become a part of that particular blogging community. They can browse through other bloggers pages and link them back to their own blogs. They can also make comments on other members' blogs.

Blogging is not just limited to personal usage. There are a lot of blogs that follow a theme such as: sports, politics, philosophy, social commentary, etc. These blogs espouse on their specific themes. This way blogging becomes a medium in which people can share their knowledge and opinions about a variety of themes and topics.

Some bloggers even use their blogs as a means to advertise. Some authors advertise their books on their blogs, while other bloggers use their blogs to shed light to currents issues, events, news and catastrophes.

Nowadays in education, blogs also play an important part. Professors use blogging to document the lessons that they have discussed and taught, this way students who have missed classes can easily catch up with their assignments.

A lot of entrepreneurs benefit from blogging by promoting their businesses on their blogs, 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, while others profit through advertisement.

The most popular blog type, by far, 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, and 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. To know more about it simply visits www.your-own-blog.com. 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.

Blogging is popular all over the world. Blog is short for the term Web Log. There are no rules when it comes to blogging. 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.

Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Rashimadan Lally