How To Use Your Blog to Market Your Business

Have you just started blogging? Or have you been blogging for a while? As you may already know, a blog is an excellent tool to let the world know about your business or your product, to connect with potential customers and promote your expertise. But how can you maximize your blog's impact? Here are five tips to do just that:

- Blog Consistently. Many business owners get excited about blogging, post 3-6 times, and then promptly forget about the blog. I have seen many blogs that were started a year or two ago, have a grand total of five posts, and haven't been updated since sometime last year.

To get the desired effect (search engine and human traffic), you need to update your blog on a regular basis. Search engines love new content and keep coming back to index it. Potential customers also like new content; it's what keeps them coming back to read your blog.

- Use Your Blog For Branding. Your blog is an extension of your business, so make your blog have a look and feel that mirrors that of your business web site.

If your blog is hosted on the same domain as your web site, you should match the look and feel of your web site exactly. This will be more difficult to achieve if a third party provider hosts your blog. However, you should still aim to present the same brand image.

- Use Search Engine Optimization To Optimize Each Blog Post. The purpose of your blog is to get people who are in your target market to read your posts and enter your sphere of influence. Traffic from search engines does not cost any money, and it is a great way to get potential customers to your blog.

Treat each one of your blog posts as a separate file to be optimized for search engines. Use a keyword research tool to find phrases that are related to the main subject of the post, and weave them into the content of the post.

- Have A Special Offer On Your Blog. Do you offer a free special report? Do you offer a mini course as a bonus for new newsletter subscribers? Add the offer to your blog. This will transform people from casual surfers who just happened to find your blog to newsletter subscribers.

- Share Information About Your Events, Products and Seminars. You might think that everyone has already heard about your upcoming teleclass on life and work balance or your e-book about achieving financial success. Not so! The person reading your blog might be hearing about you for the very first time, so they have no idea about your teleseminars or products unless you specifically tell them.

Avoid overselling, as it will dramatically reduce the number of your blog readers. Do, however, let your blog readers know about your seminars and products. If you don't tell them, nobody will.

A blog is an excellent tool to generate additional web site traffic, get new newsletter subscribers and sell more products. Use your blog to introduce potential customers to your business.

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Be Smart With Your Blogging And Get Free Traffic

Once you really start scaling out your new internet marketing empire, one of the first major obstacles you are going to have to cross is what I refer to as the "Content Crisis". Everyone that I know, without fail who has built a successful series of small niche sites has at one time or another had to stretch a bit to add new, informative and entertaining bit of information to their website or blog. We all just hit a wall - it's really that simple. If you cover a particular topic thirteen ways from Wednesday - at some point, topic burnout sets in. Thankfully, the very basic dynamic nature of the web is your best friend, and you can set your site up to simply piggyback off of others within your niche when it gets a little bit sleepy..:-) Let's take a quick look at 2 of them.

1)RSS. Everyone who publishes online has some degree of knowledge (or should!) of RSS - which in our non technical parlance will simply refer to Real Simple Syndication. Essentially RSS, from a publisher's standpoint, simply allows you to aggregate and collect information from around the web in small chunks, usually in the form of headlines and small snippets of content, which you can publish on your site, and will update for you automatically as the originators of the content add more items. Essentially, your site will be augmented with free information and content, published by other people which keeps YOUR site updated with a free flow of good information, AND benefits the other publishers as well as their content is effectively syndicated around the web, extending their reach and circle of influence. A win/win for both parties, and your readers too!

2)Blog comments. Many smart marketers have been using this method for years, and it amazes me how many people I consult with are OBLIVIOUS to this great source of entertaining and interactive content you can enjoy on autopilot. A good blog has an engaged audience. An engaged audience wants to be heard. And the ability to comment, allows them to be. They will interact with YOUR content, with each other, and with industry news. The buzzword going forward in the online marketing space is undoubtedly COMMUNITY. Strong communities make for strong sites, and even stronger bank statements..:-) If you are running ANY form of advertising on your site, do not even consider turning "comments" off on a blog install. Yes it is a pain in the butt to manage. Yes you will get SOME spam, but thankfully not much due to great anti-spam plugins readily available to you for free. But NOTHING kills a conversation quicker than a monologue. Your blog comments are a great source of organic traffic from the search engines and social n etworks, as well as a compelling force in keeping your one time visitors coming back often, interested, engaged and entertained! Good luck and don't forget to ask questions if you have them..:-)

Are you a Guru Groupie? Enough! It's Time For You to STEP up & stake your OWN claim!

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Want To Create The Ultimate Blog

One wonders where all that pent-up rage, radical views, strong opinions and peculiar beliefs would be deposited without blogs. For some people, blogging offers a cathartic experience in that they are able to write about who or what is troubling them. Yet for others, by simply being able to put an idea out there is help enough for their egos and self-esteem. Writing in a blog would definitely be much cheaper than a session with an overpriced shrink. Entrepreneurs, newsmakers, tech tutors and a whole lot of others also employ the use of blogs for profit or for up to date information. There are numerous reasons for putting up and maintaining a blog but all of them have one common goal, how to get your thoughts across clearly and effectively.

Blog 101’s are as ubiquitous as blogs themselves in the Internet. The obvious way to go here is to look for an excellent site that will be able to deliver the goods on creating and keeping up a blog. These sites offer guides, tips, how-tos and even some useful tools that will help you in the wonderful world of blogging. The topic commonly discussed initially is finding a home for your blog or the seemingly thankless job of looking for a host, free or otherwise. You might think that it’s easy enough to look for a host, google “blog host” and you’ll see that it’s not as painless as it appears. The wealth of choices available simply overwhelms the soon to be blogger. Now, let’s say you finally found a suitable home for your blog, the next challenge that you need to hurdle would most likely be the design.

If you build an attractive and well-arranged blog, then they’ll most certainly come. Most blog hosts have built-in tools that will help you with that but the myriad “ready-to-wear” designs will almost certainly baffle the unversed. Blog tutorials have simple yet useful guides about designing blogs that includes topics ranging from text positioning to color schemes. Now comes the best part, content. A truly good blog tutorial site will stand out from other pretenders when it’s able to supply bloggers with relevant information concerning content. Ideas on where to get content are very crucial.

The only way you are going to get considerable amount of traffic in your blog is if people are INTERESTED in it. Your content plays a very critical role in your blog’s success, it is the lifeblood of every single blog out there. If you keep good content flowing steady and fresh, that can only stand to help your blog achieve a level of greatness. Tips on the finer points of increasing traffic for your blog are very abundant in the tutorials. Be sure to take heed because dealing with keywords and search engines will be a joyful task if done properly and with decent supervision.

Bottom line is that blog tutorials are essential partners in your blog making travels because they serve as competent and experienced guides. Up until such time that you get your blogging legs true and steady, I recommend not letting go of these sites.

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Want To Make Your Blog More Exciting

There is nothing worse than coming across a boring blog. The difficult thing is that what is boring to one person might be interesting to another. Therefore, you really need to focus on your readers when creating new text and posts for your blog. If you want the blog to be successful, you cannot simply expect your day to day activities to be enough information to keep the readers interested. If you post that you went to the grocery, came home, and then ate dinner, you can expect the readers to be bored out of their minds. If you find humor in your activities or if you tell them in an interesting manner, you might keep their attention even when using the same day to day activities. If you want to spice up a boring blog, you can also use these tips to get things moving in the right direction.

Allow Comments
One big mistake boring bloggers make is to not allow comments. You should always allow people to comment on your blog. You may not always like what they have to say, but their comments alone will help your blog seem more interesting to anyone who reads it. If you want to be sneaky, you can even comment on your blog yourself, using a different name. This can quickly create a controversy that some readers will appeal to. Try being honest and letting the readers comment themselves, but if all else fails, use the sneaky approach to break the ice. Once one person makes a comment, others will be more likely to comment as well. This will help get things going and make your blog a place to bounce ideas off of others.

Ask Questions
Another great way to provoke your readers to participate is to ask open-ended questions. You can do this throughout your blog or at the end. This will be seen by readers as an open invitation to respond. Your questions will get them thinking about what you have to say, whether or not they respond. They will be more likely to come back to your blog to read more about your comments later on. Everyone has an opinion on everything, so go ahead and ask your readers straight out what theirs is.

Use Pictures
If you want to connect more with your readers and keep them interested, try adding pictures to your blog. Adding pictures is simple through your blogging software. Get a digital camera if you don’t already own one so you can update your pictures frequently. By adding pictures that go along best with the content of your posts, you will be connecting with your readers on a more intense level. They will be more entertained and you will have a more interesting blog. Just be sure that you don’t overdo it on the pictures. Place them in appropriate places and don’t use massive pictures or else you might take the risk of having a blog that take ten minutes to load. Do be sure that you use close-ups however. You wouldn’t want to use pictures that were impossible to see on the screen.

Be Personal
When writing your posts, you should always act as if you were talking to a great friend. Some people create boring blogs by writing as if they were writing a textbook. This is a huge mistake. People most often read blogs because they want to be entertained or gather interesting information or opinions. They do not want to read a blog that sounds like a textbook. Try to be a little personal in your blog. Let your own personality shine through. Allow your individual humor to be seen in each post. Your readers will appreciate your honesty and love you for your casual style.

Use these great tips to spice up your blog if it is hitting the boring stretch. A boring blog is one that pains people to read. Keep in mind that successful blogs will make people laugh, think, contemplate, and gain useful information. You can do all of this using these tips. So, get to work and completely transform your boring blog today! You will see an improvement in your traffic and likely enjoy blogging a lot more than before.

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Want To Know How To Make Money From Blogs

The number of blogs has risen from a few thousand in 2004 to hundreds of thousands today. And when anything grows at this pace there has to be a reason. And just in case if you are still guessing the reasons, then you have probably denied yourself the opportunity of making thousands of dollars with a least minimum effort. Income Sources for bloggers:

1. Ads: This is the most common way that blogs make money. But blogs have come a long way from Adsense and BlogAds. That was a time when these were the only available options but now there are many other ways getting ads for your blogs and one of the most favored is Chitika’s eMiniMalls. Others include Adgenta, Adbrite, AVN etc.

2. Sponsorships: Not many people had explored this avenue of revenue generation for blogs until recently when suddenly both, the bloggers as well as the companies realized that blogs could be an excellent way to advertise and sell their products. The sponsorships are generally on per-post basis.

3. Affiliate Programs: You can tie-up with various affiliate programs like Amazon.com, Clickbank.com, Linkshare.com etc. But these are not just the affiliates but they are just a few amongst the thousands that exist ranging from very small to very large.

4. Services: Bloggers can also make money by selling different types of stuff on their blogs or by providing services like eBooks or some courses or tele-seminars etc.

5. Writing blogs: There are people who need someone to write and post new material on their blogs regularly. If you have enough time then you can make money by writing for someone else’s blog. And if you have the proper knowledge of SEO then you can make a really cool amount of money doing so.

6. Though I won’t suggest you to take up this kind of earning method but recently I came across a couple of blogs that were actually making money from whatever people donated to them. They were offering eBooks and mp3s for free respectively. And well the option of how much to pay was open for visitors. You could even download stuff without paying even a penny.

7. Retailing: Of late there have been blogs that have been trying to sell merchandise too. You can find on sale objects like t-shirts, pottery, designer glassware and other stuffs like that. Though they have not seen much success, but with more publicity and better software support they are bound to become a huge success.

8. Consultancy: It is quite common for experts to start their own blogs for their own promotion but the trend has nowadays spilled over to bloggers with absolutely no background in consultancy making huge amounts of money by charging their visitors and clients in consulting business. This is more so because of the kind of reputation that they have built with their blogs. Blogs have the kind of power that can make you an expert on a certain topic overnight. Being an expert in a certain field can surely make you an overnight celebrity and quite rich too.

So guys happy blogging and money making. Hope even you now don’t miss out on all these numerous money making opportunities that blogs have thrown upon us.

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Making Money Online By Starting A Blog

If you are new to the internet and wondering what an earth this blogging craze is all about, or if you already have your own website and you’re wondering why everyone keeps advising you to start your own blog, read on. I’m going to explain to you what a blog is, why you need one, how to set it up, promote it and of course, make money from it.

Blog is short for “web log” and is similar to an online diary or journal. The craze of blogging began in the very late 1990s and has started to become more and more popular over the last couple of years. Almost everyone seems to have a blog these days, from CEOs of large companies to webmasters, from world travelers to teenagers. Even my Dad has his own blog now! A blog allows you to communicate informally with people via an online journal, but it’s more personal and unstructured than a website and easier and cheaper to set up than a website.

If you have your own website, but haven’t yet started a blog you can easily start one using a free service such as Blogger or WordPress. Try to post to your blog at least once or twice a week on topics related to your website. Blogging will help your search engine rankings and open up the communication channels between you and your visitors or customers, encouraging them to interact with you and give them a reason to return to your site in future.

If you don’t have your own website and are looking to set up a blog quickly and easily I recommend opening a free account with Blogger. You can blog about anything you like, for example a hobby, a vacation, your home town, something political, a sport or your business. Just be sure to pick something that you are interested in and knowledgeable about. You can host your blog for free on Blogspot – all you need to do is pick a name that is relevant to the topic of your blog. Once you have set up your profile and chosen a template, blogging is as simple as sending an email to a friend.

There are many ways to make money from your blog, but here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Google Adsense - this is free to join and easy to set up. The ads will match the content of your blog and you will get paid every time a visitor clicks on an ad.

- Affiliate Programs – sign up for affiliate programs related to the topic of your blog and display links to related products on your blog. Clickbank, Trade Doubler and Commission Junction are good places to start, or do a Google search for “affiliate program” + the topic of your blog to find more affiliate programs. Whenever someone clicks through your affiliate link and buys a product, you will receive a commission. If you are knowledgeable about your topic you could also write product reviews to help increase your affiliate sales.

- Sell Advertising Space – if you have a popular blog you can charge people to advertise on your blog. This could be in the form of a text link, a banner or a graphic.

You are not going to make money with a blog unless people can find it. As soon as you have started to post to your blog it’s time to start promoting it. You can get your blog noticed by…

- Submitting your blog to blog directories – just search for “blog directories” in Google
- Asking other bloggers to exchange links with you – you put a link on your blog in exchange for a link from their blog.

- Writing an article related to the topic of your blog and posting it to article directories. Remember to include an author’s resource box with a link to your blog.

- Pinging blog ping services every time you make a new post – pingomatic.com and pingoat.com are two sites you can use to do this.

- Participating in forums related to the topic of your blog. Put a link to your blog in your forum signature.
Finally, once you have your blog monetized and you have started promoting it don’t forget to post regularly. The most important aspect of every successful blog is frequent posting, so be sure not to let the virtual dust gather over your blog!

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Extreme Blogging And The Many Benefits

Blogs. Most people have either heard of them, read them, or have created their very own. Blogs or blogging has become very popular across the internet recently. Blogging is seen as something to do for fun, for a hobby, or in thinking and reflecting on the experiences you are writing about. This holds truth as some of the most common uses for blogging are personal, yet few realize the power of blogging. Though blogging is a way to interact and connect with others, there are many other uses for it.

Blogging is a great way to share knowledge and gain knowledge. For example, if someone has a question they can ask it on their blog where they can potentially get a lot of good answers and suggestions. Blogging is a good way to communicate with others across long distances. Blogging is, of course a great way of self-expression and self-promotion. It can be a safe haven for some who are otherwise more inhibited to be able to speak their mind and give their opinions on a certain subjects without having to show their face. Blogging can be used to track experiences, somewhat like a diary or journal, where there are daily entries that are dated. Blogging can also be utilized in storytelling. They are used in campaigning to get the word out about whatever the issue may be. Imagine how many people surf the web and can potentially see your issue. Great things can happen with such a huge audience involved.

Blogging can help in building community amongst different types of people. Blogging is also a great way to meet business partners. Some of the up and coming uses include opportunities in corporations and education, entertainment, health care, and government.

Blogging can also broadcast information, such as news rapidly one place to another. Therefore it’s possible to learn about various events before they are even reported through T.V. and newspapers etc. Another benefit of blogging is that it can increase visits to a website, which is great marketing. What better way to get people to your site for free. Blogs are practical everyday tools, like email. The blogging boom is on and it’s wise to get on board while it gains popularity. Whatever your blog is used for, it can help you out in a positive way. Blogging has definitely become professional in its use. So go out and start your blog!

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Why Not Use Blogging To Start Your Online Business

Blogging has been used for some years as a platform for individuals to record chronological publication of comments and thoughts on the web. They usually include philosophical reflections, opinions on the Internet and social or political issues. This article explains how one could go beyond this to capitalise the strength of blogging to enhance one’s Internet business.

A weblog, or more popularly known as “blog”, is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.
The popularity of blog is gaining momentum globally with each passing month. A recent survey conducted by Comscore.com shows the following findings:

1) 50 million of the population in the USA visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005
2) This indicates an increase of about 45% compared to First Quarter of 2004.
3) An average blog visitor spends 23 hours per week online while an average Internet user spends only 13 hours online.

4) Blog visitors are 11% more likely than the average Internet users to have incomes of $75,000 or more.
5) Blog visitors are 30% more likely to buy products or services online.

Anybody thinking of starting an online venture, would be silly not to recognise the importance of blogging being one of the best tools of Internet marketing.

Blogging is a perfect way for the average person to make money online without going through all the troubles and frustration of learning how to set up a website and be an efficient internet marketer.

Let's now talk about nich products. Why do you need a nich product? And what has this to do with “blogging”? You may ask. It is because your online business has little hope of succeeding if you're going head to head with the big boys. As a small Internet entrepreneur, you can never hope to compete with the big boys in terms of the power of pricing strategy and advertising. But you can be successful by finding niche markets or niche products that you seldom find at your local mall in oder to stay away from the empowering presence of the big guys.

Niche market basically is a market with a significant amount of interest online that does not encounter the same competition as in other regular products. You can easily create a niche market based on any topics including even your own hobbies, e.g. gardening, guitar, tropical fish, D.I.Y etc. As long as the topic is being searched for online, you would have a great opportunity of making some profit through adding ads to your blog and making some effort in promoting your targeted affiliate programs and products.

Many internet marketing newbies opt for blogs to set up their niche markets because as beginners, they can very easily add pages, images, banners, downloads, ebooks etc to their blogs. Unlike the regular websites, they do not need to worry about having to understand HTML (the website design language)!
Savvy marketers have discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that is free because you could create your blog almost immediately at no cost compared to the setting up of a conventional website.

Putting information in your blog to help establishing your presence in the Web is now a growing phenomenon. Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to enhance the visibility of your products and services.

With the continuing improvement in software technology, publishing, introducing plug-ins, banners, pictures etc to create a fun and interesting “website” has become a breeze even to those retirees with old and rusty brains.

The more content you add to your blog, the more traffic you get. And you can add these materials almost on a daily basis.

You could get high ranking search engine placement for many internet marketing terms just by designing your posts around certain targeted keywords. This phenomenon is more prominent when handling niche markets due to the lack of competition. Free articles could be easily obtained from many article directories in the web and posted to your blogs for the benefits of your visitors.

There’s almost no limit to what you could and want to do with your blog. You can include your ideas, opinions, expertise in your field of work, resumes, home recipes, pictures, audio or video clips, e-books, poetry, products, services, consultations etc., etc.

What are the main differences between a blog and a website then? You may ask.
Most websites are relatively permanent with only occasional updating. With blogs, you could post any new content almost on daily basis. Also, websites are usually less personal as far as their relationship with the visitors is concerned.

How do you start your first step to set up a blog? There are many host services providers you could join. Among the most popular are Blogger.com and LiveJournal.com. You could start with Blogger.com which many newbies find serving their needs just perfectly.

With Blogger.com, posting your web content is like a breezy walk in the park. Photographs of your produces etc, along with any text, could be uploaded to your blog right away with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Another facility you could use is Audioblogger that enables audio posting to your current blog site with any phone at any time from any place. It is not only effective but also easy and fun. You call a given number, record a post, then your blog is updated with an audioblogger icon and a link to your recorded audio. Your message in your own voice is instantly posted! The beautiful part of it all is the fact that this is totally free of charge!

Blogging has been used for some years as a platform for individuals to record chronological publication of comments and thoughts on the web. Now we know how one could go beyond this to capitalise the strength of blogging to enhance one’s Internet business.

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How To Become Wealthy By Blogging

"THERE are two kinds of knowledge. One is general, the other is specialized. General knowledge, no matter how great in quantity or variety it may be, is of but little use in the accumulation of money."
Web Blogs are online diaries made up of short frequently updated posts. In addition, they are inexplicably popular.

Steve Pavlina's Blog, dedicated to helping you make conscious decisions in your personal development and courageously follow through on them is a good example of a very popular Blog. In February 2005, this site received about 86,000 visitors, in January 2006 about 715,000, and today Steve's Blog receives over 1 million page views each month and is ranked by Technorati as one of the Top 500 Blogs in the world.
It is listed in nearly every search engine because of spider food. New content is added almost every single day. We will discuss that later.

One key advantage of Blogs is that they are easy to update. The other side is that surfers will expect you to update your site very frequently. If you do not they will go somewhere else.

When you sign up for a Blog or create one on your own site use part of the name or a similar name to the name of the sponsor program you are promoting unless it is against the sponsors T.O.S.

This blog, Marketing-Tipps.blogspot.com, showed up in the Search Engines in 3 days. It is not even in the top 10 for most search engine terms yet it consistently produces income, mostly AdSense.

But when you create your Blog or Blogs it is really important that you pick a niche that you know and understand. Ask yourself: Would and does my Blog appeal to me? Is there something about it that excites me? If not, you need to go back to the drawing board.

When you create your Blog, let us say about "mp3 players", and its posts use the galleries and Urls from your sponsors. If they come with a description, use them. If you have a choice between short or long descriptions use the long ones. This is your spider food.

However, do not add them all to the Blog at one time. Add them 7 to 10 at a time. Set you up a schedule. Every second or third day add more. If your sponsor does not have a lot of galleries to use you're going to have to use several sponsors for each of your Blogs to keep them updated on a regular basis. After 10-15 days when the first posts are buried well out of site repeat them. You are after surfers coming from Search Engines and you are laying down spider food. It is a lot like fishing. You are putting out bait both for the surfer and for the spiders or bots from the Search Engines.

Moreover, it is very important that you think about Spider Food. Use descriptions for each of your content with your Blogs name in them. If for example you are promoting Asian content, use many related names in the entries you make on your Blog. This is very important. Go to Google and type in for example "mp3 players".

Write down all the related key words you find on your notepad and as you make entries in your Blog weave these words into your entries. Over the next few weeks, when you do entries work these keywords into your posts. Repeat them. Yes, repeat them. Repeat them and often. When the search engine surfer comes to your Blog looking for an mp3 player he is not going to set there for the most part and read your posts. He is going to go for the links that lead to mp3 player. Therefore, what you really need to keep in your mind is getting him there.

The quality of Search Engine Traffic is high. Although at first you will not get a large quantity of traffic from Search Engines the traffic the quality of the traffic you do get is very high.

When you get your Blog up on the web, there are three places you need to submit it to. The two major search engines Google, Yahoo, and BLOGGERNITY.COM, which is a Blog Directory. Hand Submit your Blog to these three places. Once BLOGGERNITY listed your Blog, go there and vote for yourself. Sign up there for a free account and write a review of your Blog. It does not have to be anything fancy. Just write how you want the surfer to feel about and see your Blog.

Networking!
Make a list of the other Blogs at BLOGGERNITY and contact the owners of those sites (as many as you can). Write them a short email and ask them to do a link exchange with you. Most of them will.
It is very important that you use careful strategy and monitoring in promoting your blog. Use the referrers' script so that you will know what is going on. Keep a paper record of what you are doing.
By now if you have followed the examples I have given, you know how to set up your Blog and how to get traffic to it. If you follow it, you can make money. Again Steve Pavlina: His Blog, http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/, is making $4,700/month with AdSense solely based on the following ten principles:

1. Create valuable content. 2. Create original content. 3. Create timeless content. 4. Write for human beings first, computers second. 5. Know why you want a high-traffic site. 6. Let your audience see the real you. 7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences. 8. Treat your visitors like real human beings. 9. Keep money in its proper place. 10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.

This business model is fascinating. I obviously did not invent it, but I am certainly enjoying the ride. It is incredibly simple, much simpler than running any other business is. The risk is virtually zilch, and there is no overhead aside from web hosting (assuming you already own a computer and have internet access). There is no selling, no products, no customers, no order processing, no fraud, no inventory, no shipping, and no deadlines. And yet you earn income 24/7.

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Is It Worth It For You To Try Your Hand At Blogging

Blogging is definitely worth a try. There are many people who enjoy Blogging, and you will come to know that Blogging can really be one of your hobbies and you can do it as part of fun when you are tired of other activities. Saying that, there are people in Blogging industry very serious about their sites and really work hard to make tons of money, but that takes a long time to establish a career in Blogging.

I would say, that Blogging is fun, because you can choose your own topics and write on almost anything you want, you can learn from different Bloggers the history of Blogging and the way it has reached a pace today.
With Blogging you can write on anything like, advertisement, advertisement reviews, affiliate marketing, article submission, bank blog, blog make money, business consultancy, cash cartes, cash, e-gold, criticism, news, click ad, google adwords, google adsense, half.com etc, this is what www.swapw.blogpspot.com is about.

I have many friends who have been Blogging now for a while, they have developed a deep interest in Blogging, because they can research, write and at the same time earn revenue on different Blogs. You can have many Blog sites with different topics and this is also one of the ways you can earn your income.
One of the fun ways is video blogging and some of it can be seen on the swapw blog, you can earn lot of revenue on video blogging, but it should be something that people would be interested and they would like to watch, and you have to make it worthwhile so that people can really take interest in the videos you upload either on your site or any where like youtube.com and googlevideo.com.

Blogging can also become one of the ways for people to know you, you can create Blogs on your life if it has been inspirational, people love reading autobiographies that interest them, and so if you have stories to tell, it can be love or action story but an interesting one, people will definitely pay their attention to your blogs everyday.

If you are interested in writing on different products than there are many sites that would allow you to write reviews about their products, in fact you can earn good money in writing reviews on products and earn from the top companies who are willing to pay you good money for your write up on products.

Some sites will also give you a HTML code for the products to be pasted on your Blog and people can see that, in this way you are earning income when they buy the product they choose.

So these are only some of the ways of Blogging, Blogging has lot of potential and you can do it, if you are a good researcher and if you really love to write, than Blogging is desirable for you and you can earn good revenue out of your own site, just like every one is earning on Blogging.

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Using Blogs To Market Your Business

Now that blogging has become so popular among everyone from the novice writer to the most experienced journalist, businesses are starting to take notice. A well-written and frequently updated blog can help market almost any type of business. Blogging can help target readers who are interested in a company’s product or service and businesses can keep track of what their readers are looking for through blogging. In addition, blogging can help link together companies that compliment each other very easily.

There is a lot of talk about blogging. Some feel that blogging is just a passing fad, but others feel it is just the beginning. Some business analysts feel that blogging does not significantly help a business market the company. Many businesses feel that this is not so. Blogging can be a beneficial way to mark a business, build an audience and help link in other companies together.

Blogging can help almost any business expose their readers to their services and products. Sometimes with new products, a blog can create interest in something new. Blogging is helpful because it can talk in depth about the product, and it can also give step-by-step instructions on how a certain product can be used. A reader, who is interested in the product after reading about it on a blog, will be more inclined to research similar products on the Internet. This can lead to a more informed consumer and can save a consumer time when shopping or researching a new product. In turn, a company may save time because customers who have read the blog are already informed about the product. These customers can also read reviews on these products and services, which can be helpful in the buying process.

Another great thing about companies using a blog for their products and services is that a blog enables the company and the customer to communicate effectively. A customer can read the blog and comment on it right away. This provides good feedback to the company and they can know what the customers want. Usually blogs will provide places for readers to leave their comments or send emails to the writer. This is a good marketing tool for businesses. People enjoy communicating about products and services that they have had good or bad experiences with and blogging provided the opportunity to do so.

Blogs can also help market a business because it will be included in search engines. When people enter certain keywords, blogs that contain those words will show up. When blogs are updated frequently, search engines can provide your company with a lot of hits. This can lead to many people looking at the company’s blog who might not otherwise have done so.

When companies use blogs, it also has the ability to create a sensation around a product and influence public opinion. This is an excellent tool for companies to use. Because of the huge popularity of blogging, this can be a more effective tool than some forms of advertising. Readers are more likely to share interesting blogs with their friends and this can help companies get the word out about their product.

Another way blogging can help market a business is that blogs often help a company position itself as a leader in a certain field. This means that those who blog can show their expertise about certain subjects and then updates this information on a regular basis. Blogging can help generate leads and send a positive message about your company without spending a lot of money for advertising. Readers can look at these blogs and know that they are dealing with a quality company.

Companies also use blogs to help network with other companies that compliment their business. This is beneficial because they can easily share their links and readers will see all of the blogs that relate to what they are searching for on the Internet. Link swapping is often used in blogging, especially with businesses.

Blogging is proving to be a beneficial marketing tool for businesses all over the world. While it’s a fairly new way for companies and customers to communicate with each other, blogging provides an immediate and unique form of advertising for the company. Customers are able to read and research products and services through blogging and companies can better understand what their customers want.

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Getting Your Blog Indexed And Get The Exposure You Need

A blog is defined as a website that contains information, comments, thoughts and links by a writer. A blog can be a very personal site for writers looking to express their innermost personal thoughts or can be very general. Blog indexing means that blogs are listing on cross Internet searches and search engine sites. There are special sites that lists blogs that makes them easy to find for readers.

When you first start writing a blog, it is usually because you have something you want to express. If you choose to share your blogging thoughts, you will want a steady stream of readers for your blog to be successful. More exposure to your web blog means more readers. Blog exposure is important and one way to get this type of exposure is through blog indexing.

Readers can find a blog about almost any topic in the world and in any language. A blog index helps readers find what kind of blog they are most interested in reading. Some blog indexing sites list several different topics to choose from and then list blogs that relate to a particular topic. For blog writers this can mean increased exposure to a blog site.

Blog indexing can also include indexing your blog pages within your site. When you add an entry to your blog, it will be included with a link on your site. Keeping these links can help readers go back and read your past entries. Many times, when you include certain keywords within your blog writing, a search engine can also pull up your past blog entries. This makes it easy for your readers to catch up with current entries as well.

Web searching through blog indexing is very beneficial. You can have the option whether or not to include searches to your site. When a blog is indexed, it helps readers easily locate your site. If you do not index your site, it still may be found using a search engine; however, the link will be blank if the entry is old or if you have removed it for whatever reason. Indexing your pages and including searches to your blog site means that a reader can enter your blog they are looking for and produce results.

When you get ready to index your blog pages and implement searches, there are few tips that can help readers easily locate your entries. One easy top is to keep your page noticeable. This means that you want to keep your search options easily accessible for your reader. Also, enter your blog on as many search engines sites that you’re possible can. Many search engines sites such as Google and Yahoo have steps you can use to enter your web site on their search engine. This process may take a couple of weeks, but it is well worth it if you are interested in more exposure through your blog.

Another way to increase the traffic on your blog with indexing and searching, make sure all of your links works. Check your links often and make sure that they are leading your readers to your site or to where you want them directed. Also, if you change your web blog location, you will need to update your search engines or include a link from your old site to your new site. If a reader clicks on your link to get to your blog and finds that it is no good, chances are that they will not attempt to find your location.

You can also increase traffic to your blog site by using a blog-hosting site that is easy to use and that offers features such as searches and indexing. There are many blog sites that are available to those that want to blog, but some may not offer the type of features you want to use. If you choose to keep your blog personal and private, then you will not need to worry about indexing or entering your blog on a search engine.
Blogging can be a great way to share your writing with others. In order to make sure that you have the maximum amount of exposure to your blog consider indexing and search engines. This can help readers easily locate your blog and will help them locate interesting entries in the future.

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Which Blogging Platform Is Best For You

Choosing which blogging platform to use is one of the most important decisions that you can make as a blogger. The right platform can make blogging a breeze, and the wrong platform can make blogging a chore. Because the program that you use to blog with is such a powerful part of your blogging experience, it is well worth putting in the time to find a platform that provides your ideal balance between a user-friendly interface and a flexible framework that allows you to make your blog look and feel unique. Finding the right platform isn't always easy, but with a little bit of contemplation and a little bit of research, you will be on your way to finding the perfect blogging platform.

Deciding what your priorities are in terms of ease of use versus customization. Most highly customizable blogging platforms, like moveable type, are a bit more difficult to use than very automated platforms like wordpress. If you are new to blogs and to internet technology, you might want to sacrifice the ability to create a custom background design or to integrate a unique font into your template in order to find a program that will be easy for you to use. On the other hand, if you are a veteran web designer with knowledge of html or javascript, you will probably find the limitations of a user-friendly platform to be frustrating.

There is no such thing as a blogging platform that is objectively the best platform, because every blogger has unique needs. The blogging movement is very much about individuality, so it makes plenty of sense that there would be many different platforms available that are designed to meet the needs of different kinds of individuals undertaking different kinds of projects. This diversity is a good thing, because it means that you will almost certainly be able to find a program that suits your level of technical aptitude.

However, the fact that no two bloggers need the same thing from a blogging platform can make your search for the right platform a bit tricky. When you are reading reviews of different platforms, try to keep your priorities in mind and do your best to take into account the position that the reviewer is coming from. For example, a negative review written by an accomplished software designer who complains that a popular platform is too limited may tell you that the platform in question is ideal for a beginning blogger. There is no such thing as the perfect platform for everybody, so instead of looking for the "best" platform, look for the best platform for your specific criteria.

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What Are The Benefits Of Blogs

Blogs; what good are they anyway? Well, actually blogs are both fantastic whether you are running a business website or you are simply using blogs for fun. In terms of business, blogs can prove to be a supplemental form of advertisement and you will find them to be a unique device that you can use to keep in contact with your clients. Further, in terms of personal use, blogs are definitely an excellent way to stay in touch with your family and friends, even if they are across the globe. Best of all, blogs can often be established for free and can easily stand on their own, without an existing website to support them.

Blogs have become quite popular and more and more blogs are appearing all over the Internet. In fact, the more people realize the great benefits that they can get from using blogs, the more people will be using them. Blogs, not only serve as personal journals, they also serve as business supplements and people love communicating with others by using blogs and allowing others to comment on their postings.

Blogs are regularly updated which means that they have fresh content on them all the time. This makes them appealing to visitors and search engines alike. Every new posting means new content on your blog and if you update your blogs daily or weekly you will see them grow rather quickly. With fresh content, you can improve your search engine ranking. Whether you use the blog alone, or you used it to accompany an already existing website, your fresh content can be used to draw more and more traffic to either your blog or your website, or both.

Additionally, you can add links to your blogs and start a link exchange campaign. In doing so, you will see your page ranking increase in search engines because SE algorithms frequently focus on the number of links that are pointing to your website. The more external links that recommend your site or blogs, the easier your site or blogs are to find in the big search engines like Google.

Blogs can be used to freely advertise your products or services. That’s right, blogs can serve as free web space for you to use to advertisement of your business. Also, blogs are great from providing existing clients with updated information about new products and services you may be offering. Want your clients to share there feelings about your products and services? You can use blogs to receive and share client testimonials. There really is no end to the benefits one can derive from using blogs.

What is equally fantastic about blogs is that there are ways that you can create blogs for free. Sites like Blogger, recently purchased by Google, allow you to establish a blog free of charge. Moreover, there are a variety of layouts, fonts, and templates to choose from and Blogger even allows you to post images. Finally, sites like Blogger give you the opportunity to archive your postings so that visits can return to them again and again.

Finally, creating blogs can be simple fun for everyone. No matter what one’s age is, Blogging is the new wave in Internet entertainment. Friends can create clubs and use blogs to establish them, friends and family can share photographs and sentiments, and finally, personal expression can be satisfied when creating blogs. In fact, if you have a particular passion, why not share that passion with the world by starting one or more blogs? Communicate with people from all over the world that share the same passions that you do!

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Want To Make Money Blogging

After you create a blog that is interesting, now it is time to start making money. The second step of getting visitors is the most important, if you plan on making money. The third step is choosing how you will make money from your blog. You should try to keep your blog on the same topic on all your post, being that you can have an unlimited number of blogs, you can have a blog for any and every topic you choose. Make sure to start a new blog if you are totally off the main subject of the blog that you are posting to.

Blogger and several other free blog companies make it very simple to have a brand new blog up and running in a matter of a few minutes. Try not to post an article about dogs on a blog about golf. Once you have an interesting blog on one particular topic, the best place to start making money is Google AdSense. Blogger has made it very simple to add AdSense ads to your blog.

The ads that show up on your blog will be targeted towards the topic of your blog, which means if you have a blog about dogs, the ads that show up on your blog will deal with pets. It's like Google is paying you to advertise on your blog.

Another way to make money with your blog is with affiliate programs. Companies will pay you good money to advertise their products, and all you have to do is put a link or banner on your blog leading to that companies web site. Once a sale is made the company gives you a commission. That is the reason you should pick one topic for your blog. If you want to have a blog about your life, by all means do it, but have other blogs about specific topics if you want to make money.

Once you find a topic that interest you, look for affiliate programs for that particular topic. With the dog blog example, there are several dog training products that you can have links and banners to on a dog blog that will make good money. ClickBank is the top company when it comes to affiliate products, they have over 10,000 products to choose from. Browse their products to see which ones you would like to promote. Obviously you want to pick something that fits the topic of your blog, but don't limit yourself to just one, you can change a product you are promoting with a few clicks.

The internet is the essence of marketing, by that I mean, every word in an ad matters, every color, where the ad is located on your blog, whether is is blinking or not, and the color of the text. It might not seem like all of those things matter, but the fact is, everything that you decide matters. The good thing is you can experiment with how your blog looks as much as you want. There are several e-books written on how you should place and where you should place them, in the beginning, just go with the basic blog set-up until you get the hang of things.

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Blogs Can Help You With All Your Internet Marketing Needs

The growth and popularity of blogs in general has been phenomenal within a very short period of time. Blogs or web logs as they were previously called is where all the action on the World Wide Web is, right now.
It is amazing how quickly web sites have been relegated to the back seat. Actually the role of web sites is rapidly being re-defined but it is clear blogs will be the place where all the traffic will be congregating for a long time to come. What some thought was a passing fad is clearly here to stay and is a permanent development that has already had far reaching effects on communications and the way we transmit and receive information.

Yet most entrepreneurs who have quickly jumped onto the blog bandwagon do not seem to fully understand and appreciate what blogs are really all about. Worse still, many of those who have remained away have no idea what all the fuss is about.

A clearer understanding of blogs is bound to benefit any e-commerce business owner or online entrepreneur.
Everybody can be a publisher or media owner Probably the most significant impact of blogs is the fact that it is rapidly changing mass media, as we have known it since the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Powerful media companies have been in the hands of a few people who have carefully controlled what we see in our media. Sometimes deliberately to achieve their corporate goals and objectives. Blogs are effectively transferring that power back to the people and away from the hands of a few.

This era of blogs means that anybody can be a publisher or media owner and effectively transmit whatever information they want and push whatever cause is dear to their hearts. The impact of blogs in politics for example has been a clear demonstration of the power of blogging. We have some blogs covering politics that have a couple hundred thousand visitors on a daily basis.

This may be a scary development to many folks including media owners but it presents a number of excellent opportunities for entrepreneurs to reach huge audiences with their messages at a tiny fraction of what their budgets used to be in the days when blogs did not exist.

Breaking news, courtesy of the blog community Further power of blogs to handle breaking news in real time, complete with photographs and video clips, has clearly been evident in retimes. For example during the Tsunami tragedy last December. Footage of the damage being caused by the giant waves was seen in blogs long before the traditional media channels got wind of what was going on.

This opens up a whole range of new opportunities that can be tried out in the years to come. Not many entrepreneurs have realized this yet.

Anybody who didn't have a site can own a successful blog Blogs are so easy to set up, maintain and run that a new breed of online entrepreneurs is on the rise. It consists of many individuals who for one reason or another were unable to set up and maintain heir web sites.

We are now in an era where an online entrepreneur needs little else other than lots of creativity, there is actually so much that he or she can do without a single cent in capital.

Distinct advantages of having a blog Blogs tend to get lots of traffic. Lots more than websites do. Besides search engines seem to love them. Blogs are also able to build up links much more easily than web sites. Thus it is no longer surprising for a nobody-novice to suddenly shoot up in stardom and recognition.
No entrepreneur can afford to be left behind The benefits of a business having in it's stable a blog or two that is capable of attracting huge traffic, is very important and can be extremely useful in helping a business to achieve its' marketing goals and objectives.

Any entrepreneur whether online or offline who does not have a blog to help promote their business is making a very serious mistake that they will definitely live to deeply regret. In fact even playing catch-up with a blog that already exists will continue to be more and more difficult.

There are a number of advantages that blogs have which will continue to be extremely useful to entrepreneurs and webmasters. One of them is the fact that they easily allow for customer comment and anybody can be able to post a comment at your site. In a way this is a form of research and sampling because it enables the business to get feedback and thus be able to gauge the sort of response they will receive when they finally roll out their product or service into the market.

Start using your blog more carefully and watch your traffic and revenues steadily climb as a result.

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Simple Steps To Creating A Profitable Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Do You Want To Blog For Fame Or Fortune

Blogging as we all know has become an outlet allowing most people to express, unwind and unleash the things that goes around in a persons mind for everyone to see. While not most people would appreciate it, this form of activity makes a person expand his knowledge and entertain new insights coming from current events, personal interaction and actual experiences. Most people of today will not waste their time reading what a person blogs or writes but for sure many would be surprised at how informative such composed blogs contain and how people can be able to express their grief or joy from everyday endeavors.

As I have said before, blogging is a therapeutic form of rehabilitation. It allows a sigh of relief in most cases, allowing people to get a load of their shoulders. Blogging has been limited to people who are Internet exposed people, most of which are the yuppies of tomorrow. Some professionals, particularly in the great areas of the United States and Europe have taken this up and most of them have two things on their mind: for personal distinction (fame) or as another source of income (fortune).

Many have claimed that people are earning millions by the day from blogging alone. Some are just in it to gain the exposure they are longing for, something that they fail to achieve in the competitive world of today, particularly in journalism and article writing tasks. It is not hard to distinguish which blogs or compositions are authentic and the purpose of which is to spread information and become sources for future people who blog. It is the content, hence why people say “Content is King”. If it is just money for the sake of placing keywords in a particular article, then writers and bloggers may as well be given a negative attention towards people who search the web for quality written content or blogs. This is a rarity today, the reason being, all they want is to attract people to visit their sites and raise their page ranks as analyzed by Google which will raise the stakes for possible pay per click advertisements. This gives article and content writing a bad name. It deprives the people who really pour out their heart and minds towards sharing towards people what their opinions really are. Blogging should not be treated solely for making money, it should be about a person’s viewpoint, something that is surely different from that of others.

For fame itself, people who love to read what a person writes is more than enough to give due recognition to the author. Quality should never be sacrificed for keyword density as they say. It is not easy to spot a poorly written article. Repetitiveness of words, and totally out of sync compositions are the immediate noticeable marks. So the next time you see such things, expect the blog or composition to be full of non-sense and just go back to the previous page and look for that quality written composition that is worth the time reading. Besides, everyone values their time, hence make good use of it and spot the low quality content right away.

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Optimizing Your Blogs For The Search Engines

Many clients ask me how to drive more traffic to their blogs. By now you have probably heard that blogs are an excellent resource to get leads as well as clients for your business. The best way to do that is by creating search engine friendly blog posts that get indexed in search engines. When people search for information on topics you discuss in your blog it appears on the search engine result pages. Potential customers then are able to read what you have to say and get on your mailing list.

So now it all boils down to techniques that help you effectively optimize your blog for search engines. Here are tips and ideas to do just that:

- Create A Keyword Rich Header For Your Blog. The header repeats on all pages on the blog. By making sure that your header contains targeted keywords, you are able to get more of your blog pages indexed in search engines.

- Treat Each Blog Post As A Separate, Optimizable Page. Use the process of search engine optimization on each blog post. This means that you need to create an optimized title for each post, find targeted keywords for each post and weave the keywords into your post’s text.

- Make Sure That Each Blog Post’s File Name Are Descriptive. Different blogging software behaves differently, but some will call your blog posts 2.html, 3.html, 4.html, etc. As you can see, that is not very descriptive and not particularly helpful to either people or search engines. When you create a post called "How Coaching Helps Business Owners", calling it "how-coaching-helps-business-owners.html" is a much better title than "5.html"

Make sure that your blogging software creates descriptive file names for your blog posts; it is better both for human readers and search engine spiders.

- Get Links Pointing To Your Blog. Quality links to your blog means more blog visitors and higher search engine rankings. Current search engine algorithms value links to your blog, which means that having links pointing to your blog will improve your blog’s search engine rankings.

- Get Your Blog Listed in Blog Directories. Blog directories are a great source of getting unidirectional links to your blog. Since blog directory links many times are unidirectional (they link to you, but you don’t link back to them), they are great for boosting your search engine rankings. Having many unidirectional links pointing to your web site will improve your search engine rankings.

A blog is an excellent marketing tool, but your blog will not attract more leads and clients for your business if you don’t use search engine optimization techniques to optimize your blog and attract targeted search engine traffic to it.

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Getting Started With Your Very First Blog

There is no question that blogging is one of the best ways to get keyword rich content on your site, get your message on the search engines and get traffic to your website. But how do you get started blogging?

When you consider starting a blog there are many options. A great way to get started blogging quickly (and for free) is to use an online ‘standalone’ service like WordPress or Google’s Blogger. These are free, highly customizable tools that support both new and more advanced bloggers. The negative is that you can’t use your website’s domain name. For instance, if using Blogger, you blog address would be something like ‘yourblog.blogspot.com.’ While you can link to this from your current website, search engines won’t know give you ‘credit’ for the extra content since it is a different domain. With creative cross linking however, you can still benefit from the increased exposure you can get from a blog.

These free services provide powerful software tool that balance value, quality, and ease of use. While some people prefer to use more basic blog services, they too can truly benefit from the ‘built-in’ benefits of WordPress or Blogger along with its existing large community of users.

One of the most notable benefits of these services is the ease of use, and advanced functionality of the service compared to some blog software applications. Neither Blogger nor WordPress require you to know any ‘coding’ and allow you to built and post to your blog with easy to use icons similar to what one would see in a word processing program. Having the ability to utilize a program like this allows people to create blogs that are as high tech, and complete as full blown websites.

If you are occasionally ‘offline’ you can benefit from WordPress’s ability to import posts. This means you can put your blog together while you are not connected to the internet and then import it later. If you already use another blogging service such you can also import your posts directly into Blogger or WordPress.
Another benefit of these services is their large widget or element and theme libraries that allow you to instantly add useful features, and professional looking styles to your blog. A very simple drag and drop interface allows you to add features such as an RSS feed with a few clicks.

Another option to consider would be blogging software that you can directly integrate into your website. Some hosting provides such as GoDaddy allow you to use your existing domain name for you blog. The benefit is that the content of your blog becomes part of what search engines see for your domain. In these cases you are more likely to pay a monthly add-on fee to your hosting provider. As an alternative, Google’s Blogger allows you to publish to a FTP site, which means you can blog from your own domain. You lose some of the flexibility of the ‘out of the box’ service, but with a little effort you can have a customized template and pretty easy posting capability that resides within your domain.

As your needs become more advanced or if you are a more technical blogger you may also consider blogging software that can be directly integrated into your website. One to consider is bBlog. bBlog is an open source, PHP/MySQL application. If you don’t know what the last sentence means, then this isn’t for you. If you do know, then you may benefit from the expanded flexibility an integrated application could provide.

In the end, you have a wide, wide range of very inexpensive (or free) options to get started.

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Using Blogs To Get Your Business Noticed

Blogging has become an incredible online marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. A business can save thousands of dollars in paid advertising expenses while gaining valuable exposure and traffic. Blogs are a user-friendly, customizable and flexible medium for effective positioning of your products in the market. Businesses using blogs to promote their business have a definite edge over their competitors and are seeing a number of advantages. To get that advantage, however, they do require careful planning and effective marketing.

Blog postings are appearing in search engine results faster than other website content. Post submitted through blogging tools like Blogger and WordPress are being fast tracked to search engine results. This means more backlinks for your business website and quicker, more up to date search engine placement for your business' marketing message.

Blogs support and even encourage word of mouth viral marketing. According to a recent survey, there are currently 90 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day and 30 percent of internet users are blog readers. The very nature of the blogging space with sites such as Technorati and Digg, quickly spread blog posts to the widest audience. Posts that become popular can quickly spread across hundreds or thousands of other blogs and social interaction sites.

Customer awareness and loyalty are enhanced. Having a open dialogue with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. The ability to respond, almost in real time, to customer questions and comments makes them all the more willing to try your products and services.

Feedback can be instantaneous. Businesses can use blogs and their related comments for product research and to solicit reviews. This rapid feedback mechanism could allow a business to make product decisions based on almost real time observations of their customers’ thinking and behavioral patterns.
Businesses can gain a halo-effect because the 'blogosphere' has the reputation of being a place for reasonable, friendly, helpful and most importantly, personal interactions. Businesses that can embrace the culture of the environment can help assign the same characteristics to their products and services.

Notwithstanding the benefits, like any other business website, it is important that the content be well planned and thought out. Even with the informal nature of many blogs, it is important to remember that they still reflect on the business' image, positively or negatively. The blog should reflect the values and objectives of the business as well as be reflective of the overall marketing efforts of the business.

Blogging is relatively straightforward, but to be done correctly does take effort and learning. There are several blogs dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging. Be aware that blogs may have themes or be community based so make sure you aware of these before putting your business name out there. The easiest way, of course, to become familiar with the tone of the blog or social community is to spend time reading posts.

Like any website there are a number of things to keep in mind. Testing, testing and testing are important to make sure the blog meets business objectives. The tone of blogs may be more subtle to detect than standard websites, requiring frequent tweaks to get it right.

Be prepared in advance for a much higher level of content posting than normal with a more static website. Blogs, to be effective, need regular, even daily, infusions of fresh content to stay relevant and keep visitors' attention.

As with a standard website, be aware of legal issues, disclaimers, notifications, copyright issues or other issues relevant to the business. The informal nature of blogs, as well as the higher volume of updates can create compliance issues if not carefully monitored.

Finally, once a business decides to invest in blogging, there are great ways to spread the word about the new blog. To get the best marketing results, it is essential to actively promote your business blogs through blog search sites and directories. Promotion and submissions should be consistent with your products, services or the theme of the blog to be most effective. Adding exclusive or member's only information can also increase the likelihood that casual browsers will invest the time to follow the business' postings.

Promotion of the blog can be almost automatic be creating and promoting Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds in conjunction with the blogs. Individuals and other, related, websites can view and display blog postings directly from their own websites or personal news readers. This allows the blog poster to essentially push posts to reader's desktops instead of relying on them to visit the originating blog site.

Since search engine placement is essential for traffic volume the blog should make effective use of keyword phrases. Blogs are by definition very content heavy website, which afford amble opportunity to generate keyword rich copy. Keywords should be selected to ensure that relevant traffic is directed to the business blog.

In summary, a blog is a great way to promote a business. A number of advantages can be gained as long as the business plans well and takes the steps to properly promote its new blog.

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Three Simple Steps To Starting Your Own Blog

These days, if you have something to say and want to share it with others, there's an easy way to do it: Start a blog. If you thought only the young or computer-savvy create blogs, think again. Just about anyone can start a blog-and people of all ages are doing so.

What is a blog? A blog, short for Web log, is a Web page where you write about things that are important to you. Many people use blogs as online journals. Some bloggers write about their hobbies. Others use blogs to share their opinions on politics and serious issues, often adding their own comments to news stories.
To start your own blog, just follow these three simple steps.

1. Select a Topic and Blog Hosting Site-The first step is deciding what you want to write about. Next, find a blog hosting site. Many portals, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, offer free hosting. Also, there are specialized blogging sites focusing on specific topics, such as family and business. Do a search to find a site that best fits your topic. Once you've selected a site, you'll fill in some basic information about yourself and your blog topic. Now you're ready to start writing and posting to your very own blog.

2. Add Video to Your Blog-The next step is to add a video to your blog. This is called a vlog, short for video blog. To create one, you can use software such as Vlog It!, from Serious Magic. The software lets you create videos that look like a TV news show. First, connect a Webcam or camcorder to your computer. Next, import pictures or video from your computer, digital camera, camcorder or cell phone. Finally, read your script from the teleprompter included with the software. Because the Webcam or camcorder is positioned directly above your monitor, it will look as if you're staring into the camera.

The program offers special effects and graphics similar to those used on television, so your production looks professional. The technology also has a wizard feature that makes the entire process relatively simple. To learn more, visit www.VlogIt.com.

3. Share Your Blog-Decide if you just want your friends and family to see your blog or vlog, or if you want more people to view it. If you want it to be available to the general public, register with search engines-such as www.technorati.com-that specialize in tracking the blogging universe.

Now that you know the basics, it's time to get creative and join the blogosphere.

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Why Do People Blog To Begin With

Blogs are becoming very popular. The rate at which the numbers are increasing is mind-boggling. Why is this happening? Why every body wants to create a blog? Who else will read that blog? If everyone is busy writing his/her blog why and when will they get time to search for other blogs and read them? Because of this over population and density, will blogging become another failure? Is it a fad, which will pass away? Let us examine?

Why do people blog? Most of the people write blogs to express themselves. They are sure that on their blog they will get what they want printed. If they write articles or columns for newspapers they may or may not get printed. Writing a blog gives the power to each of us to get printed immediately. I personally write my blog to express myself freely and feel good to see that what I wrote got printed immediately.

Another reason of writing in a blog and website is freedom of design, layout and structure. Blogging gives this freedom. It does not need navigation architecture designs of a website nor a structured menu. You write and get printed - as simple as that. This has a flip side also. In a website one can lay out the information in an easy to access and read format. You can lead your reader to a particular page in a website. You cannot do that on your blog.

Do blogs get read? How does one popularize one's blog? These are difficult questions to answer. For most of us, it is difficult to find time and submit our blog in the increasing number of directories. It is also difficult to make sure that our blog will get one of top rankings in a search. Only the search engines know the secret of that and others only speculate. If we try to read the articles written on this subject, not only the quantity but the difference of opinions will leave most of us tired, frustrated and undecided. One more issue- before you decide that you would want to popularize your blog, please think - whether you search for blogs and read them? A lot many of us are so busy writing our own blogs, that we find no time looking for others. Why should this not apply to our potential readers?

Whatever the pros and cons of blogging, one outcome is certain. Blogs give us the opportunity of writing what we want and get it printed.

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10 Steps To Making Money With Blogs

Firstly, we all want to know How to Make Money Online, and one of the best ways I have found is by creating blogs. In this article I intend to show you how you too can learn How to Make Money Blogging by telling you how combining the techniques I have gathered from across the web helps to make me $$$ every day. Secondly, I am not trying to sell you my latest "Get Rich Quick" scheme because I don't have one. Each eBook you read will have a wealth of information within them which will, without a doubt help you to discover the secrets of How to Make Money Online. I am only going to tell you which ones out of the 100's available you SHOULD read if you too want to make lots of money.

I use a 10 step guide to setting up and starting all of my blogs.

I will give you a list of the top 10 resources later that I use and recommend to everyone who is serious about making lots of money online. One of the vital aspects people seem to miss out when they first get into blogging is the fact that their blog must contain information that people want to read.

Many bloggers are looking through closed eyes in this regard and if you browse through 50 blogs you will notice that most will tell you they know How to Make Money with Blogs when really all they tell you is where they went on their vacation or how many cars they have.

Are you ready to learn How to Make Money Blogging?

If the answer is YES then read on and start to make money with your blog. I am not here to tell you how to write your blog, that's up to you, but what I am about to tell you is the 10 things I use to make money on the internet. You can choose to use these techniques or not, that's your prerogative.

Step 1 - Finding a Topic
Turn off your computer, grab a pen and some paper and sit somewhere you can relax but also stay focused (if you are just starting out this step can be a pain because we all want to know How to Make Money Online and we want to know how to make it NOW). Think of a topic you are interested in and write it down (this helps because you will be more committed to trying instead of giving up in a day or two) and also make sure it is something other people are interested in too. A couple of ways I use to think of a topic is by using MetaSpy to find out what people are searching for, Ask IQ to find what's popular and VRE Toolbar to find out how many people search for the topic (this is also useful later on to get traffic). Write down your top five keywords, you will want to use them later in your blog.

Step 2 - Create Your Blog
Find and create your blog online. I like to use Blogger but other popular Blog platforms are Wordpress and Movable Type. You can find all the help in the program you use to get information when setting up the blog. Create your content, make it original, and make it informative. This is one of the main keys to learn How to Make Money with Blogs. You need to include the keywords you wrote down in Step 1 in the content of your blog. Try not to overuse these as it sends out bad signals to the search engines, and this is 100% not what you want.

Step 3 - Go Google
Sign up for Google Adsense and insert the code in the margin of your blog. You can customize your ads in many ways, such as including text links or image links. I prefer the text links only, as they are easier to blend in with your blog and don't take the focus away from the information. Google Adsense will probably not make you a millionaire but it is an instant way of generating a small amount of money.
If you want to track where your visitors are coming from with regards to direct hits or from search engine results then I would suggest you use Google Analytics and again you can get all the help you need setting that up from within the program.
You will also want to add your URL to Google's index.

Step 4 - Find Something to Sell
If you don't want to sell anything and are happy with the income Google Adsense is bringing in then you can skip this step. If you want to maximize your income and truly learn How to Make Money with Blogs you will want to find an affiliate program to join. A couple of affiliate programs I would suggest are ClickBank and Commission Junction. You can sell anything from office furniture, pet supplies, movies and clothing to PC games, Dieting tips and Audio software.

Whatever program you join will give you help inserting the code you will need to insert into your blog, but be sure you do this correctly or you WILL NOT earn money from your visitors. If you do not know how to edit HTML, W3Schools HTML tutorial is a great place to start.

Step 5 - Social Bookmarking
There is no better advertising than word of mouth, but the next best thing is social bookmarking. You will want to make things easier for people to do this. Social bookmarking sites I use and recommend are OnlyWire and SocialMarker and they are used for people to share their bookmarks or websites that they have liked with other people in their online community.

I would not suggest you add your own links to these services, but provide visitors to your website the ability to do so.

Step 6 - Write an Article
Whether your blog is about a specific product, for example a certain MP3 Player you are promoting, or just about giving people information, I would suggest you to write an article or a review of it. Most article directories require articles of 500 words and over so I would use this as a rule when writing to ensure your article is published.

Submit your article to any of the 100's which are out there. I personally use a few of the Top Article directories such as EzineArticles, Article Dashboard, Amazines.com, isnare and SearchWarp. I also use a nifty piece of software called Article Submitter which will submit your articles to over 600 article directories, which saves you lots of time and leaves you to focus on writing your blogs.

Step 7 - Ping The Hell Out Of It
Every time you add new information to your blog, you want to let the blog directories know about it, this is known as pinging. Some Blog providers automatically send out pings when you update, but to be on the safe side you will want to do this manually too. ONLY PING WHEN YOU UPDATE.

There are a couple of Ping sites I use which will send a ping to multiple blog directories at the same time. PingMyBlog would be my first port of call and then if for some reason that site is down I would use Ping-o-matic. Remember, to only ping when you update or you could get blacklisted, and that is bad.

Step 8 - Yahoo! Answers and Forums
One of the easiest ways to get targeted visitors to your blog is to make use of the people you want to target. I would suggest you sign up to at LEAST one forum in the topic you are writing about, and don't just go straight in there and start posting comments for people to look at your blog, they won't.

The secret is to add the link to your blog in your signature and actively become a member of the forum, posting relevant topics and starting debates within them. The more you post, the more your link will show, and if you provide someone with good info the chances are higher they will click your link.

Yahoo! Answers is along the same lines as forums but the beauty of this is it's viewed by thousands of visitors each day. If you don't already have a Yahoo! account get one and then login and search for questions relating to the topic of your blog and answer them well. You can then insert the link to your blog and as with the forums, if you answer well you may have not only earned yourself a point or two on Yahoo!, but also earned a visitor to your blog.

Step 9 - Update Your Blog
This can be by several means, one is to add new reviews or content to your blog, and if you are going to do this I suggest updating every couple of days. This helps to keep the search engines happy as they love to see new and original content.

Another way of updating your blog and keeping the content fresh is to add RSS feeds to it. Make sure the feeds are relevant to your blog and provide visitors with helpful information. Visitors to a World of Warcraft blog don't want to read feeds about knitting, or do they?

Step 10 - More, More, More
Repeat steps 1 - 10, this is the only way How to Make Money Blogging.

Step 11 - A Bonus Step
If you have your own product or newsletter, give your visitors an easy way to sign up to receive updates or information. This helps you to contact the visitor again with more great info or products you wish to sell.
How to Make Money Online is easy if you follow the above steps.

Some important things to remember so you don't get disheartened with your blog is the fact that you will not become a millionaire overnight, it takes hard work and a lot of effort. If you are really serious about learning How to Make Money with Blogs then stick with it and eventually you will have an Ah-Ha moment. This is when things start to work and you think to yourself Ah-Ha, that's how they do it. Your moment could be sooner than you think.

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Choosing Content For Your Blog That People Will Want To Read

Your blogs are a means to make yourself known to zillions of information hungry online audience. But is it always possible for a blogger to trap its writing potential in every subject or area in which he or she writes. The answer is a big No. Though, as a blogger you might be adept in writing collaterally on two subjects, but it is next to impossible to write with equal impact on all the subjects. The basic intention of writing a blog is to do business and make easy bucks, and this is possible if you deliver well and deliver right. You need to get the right content for your blog and keep the interest of the visitors. To achieve this, identify your forte, your area of interests and then strike.

Blogs: How to Make them Interesting and Popular to read

Listed below are some important guidelines that will help you in identifying your strength to write a successful and popular blog:

1.Selection of the topic - Selection of right topics and theme is the most indispensable criterion, to make your blogs successful and popular. Stick to one topic in which you have a basic knowledge. By gradually writing on that topic, you become more knowledgeable, since you do lot of research and thinking on that particular topic. Writing on a well-versed topic is much an easy task then writing on something that you are not fully aware. When you are writing on the subject that you are expert at, you write faster and correctly explain your feelings to the web audience.

2.Flexibility in Your Ideas - Do not make your blogs look monotonous and dull with verbose phrases. Bring variations in your writing. A successful blogger is one who brings maximum variation in the ideas. In this way, you can deliver a great number of well-written blogs with little research and less time. As a creative blogger you can think of bringing any number of variations without changing topics altogether. This will make your blogs appear fresh then ever to your readers. Herein you can feel the pulse of the visitors by referring to the feedback and responses and modify your writing accordingly.

3.Specific Posts for your Blogs - Restricting yourself to your domain enables you to create specific posts. This means you will be having a dedicated audience group that is searching for the topics you write. Increasing keywords in your blogs make it easier for the search engine to deliver just the exact article, as the reader wants to read. Furthermore, by placing ads in your site, specific to your blogs, will help you generate more profits because when a visitor visits your blogs, they are more likely to click on the link of that advertisement. More clicks on ads mean more money and you will earn rich dividends by the blogs.
Keep the aforementioned tips in mind while writing for your blogs. This way, you will be able to write blogs that will earn accolades and profits, besides making your blogs hot property on the Internet.

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Effective And Efficient Blogging

One of the challenges of blogging is to come up with good posts that interest readers and keep them coming back. Sometimes I do not feel like I have good original wisdom. It is presumptuous to think I can have top quality original material all the time.

A second challenge is the time to blog. I run a $1 Billion dollar company so when I decided to blog I knew I needed to figure out how to do it efficiently. My blog is mostly about efficiency and time management; these are topics I study.

These two challenges can be solved with a simple concept. Copy.
Ideas to use when copying are:

1 – attribution. Give the credit together with the link to the original author.

2 – look for something you can add to. Blogs can be synergistic. Take a concept or part of a blog post and expend on it and give your opinions, insights or views. In many cases, this can start a flow of ideas that are enriched from the original post.

3 – You can use either the whole post or most usually just part of it and point people to the original.

4 – I usually ask for permission which has never been denied. After all copying helps the original author and garners them some readership. And of course never copy copy written material without permission (and most blogs are not copy written).

5 – The simplest place to find material to use to copy is by blog surfing although this can mean a lot of irrelevant material to filter. One source of free articles sorted by topic is www.isnare.com.

6 – In many cases the person you copy from will point a link back to you since it is flattering to them. Charles Caleb Colton said “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” (one trick on quotes is to look them up on www.brainyquote.com). These links to you can increase your traffic.

In summary, copying saves time and increases the quality of material on your site. It can even lead to traffic since in many cases you will get link backs from the original site.

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Expressing Yourself By Starting A Blog

Picture these three scenarios:
You are at a costume party in a room full of strangers. You are dressed as an 18th Century dandy; you've studied the mannerisms, have affected the perfect accent and you charm every partygoer you meet. Beneath the facade, outside the realm of this party you may be a banker, a steel worker or an unemployed poet but here and now you are Monsieur Baudelaire, the fop who speaks of temperament and style as the be-all and end-all of a meaningful existence.

You are at work where you are always the no-nonsense professional, respected by peers and underlings and depended upon by your manager to perform your tasks with skill, technical proficiency and a pleasant demeanor -- an expectation that is hardly ever unmet.

You are at an informal get together with family, close friends and neighbors; you talk about sports, literature and fashion with people who know you and who understand your opinions, your quirks and your few flaws -- there is no facade, no pretense, you are unabashedly you!

These scenarios that represent three versions of you in the real world are also three (of many) approaches you can take to presenting yourself to your readers in the virtual world, through your blog: as a character of your creation, as the professional at whatever you do, or as the real, unadulterated you, complete with flaws. Your blog and your blogger persona are your creations and are limited only by your choices. Consider also that whatever it is you write, in whatever form, even if it is spoof or satire, it will be considered by your readers as an expression of your true feelings.

People express themselves in many ways and for a growing number of people the need for some sort of public expression of thoughts, feelings, style or creative expression is filled by blogging. Expressing your thoughts in written words, however, is not as simple a task as it may seem to be; many people, in fact, find that it can take hours to accurately transfer the most seemingly simple thoughts to the written word. Thoughts and feelings do not require the organization or structure that is required by the expression of those thoughts and feelings.

Some things that make the task of expressing yourself through your writing much easier are improving your grammar, improving your vocabulary and practice, practice, practice.

Grammar! As a rule you should always write to your audience -- they are the ones who need to understand you. Perfection may be necessary when you are writing for an audience of scholars and grammarians who require it but, regardless of your audience, the better your grammar the better you will be understood and the easier it will be for you to transfer those thoughts to paper. There are literally hundreds of English grammar guides available online and very reasonable English grammar guides available in bookstores; good grammar is a tool you will never regret learning to use.

Vocabulary! Finding the right words to express your thoughts is much easier when you have more words in your armory to choose from. You may be tempted to learn some suitably obscure words to impress your readership but too much of that will only confuse them and turn them away from your writing. Research has shown that the average adult in the U.S. reads at an eighth-grade level so arming yourself with a recondite vocabulary will not be helpful (nor was our reference to a 'recondite vocabulary' unless you knew that recondite means “difficult to understand”). Arm yourself, instead, with a good dictionary/thesaurus.

Write Often! Practice makes perfect or, to be honest, it at least helps you approach perfection. Try to make a meaningful entry in your blog every day, that may not always be possible but do try! Two of the wonderful things about blogging are its flexibility and availability -- your blog will always be there (baring computer problems) when you need it and you'll find that the more you write, the easier it will be to write. Keep in mind, however, that even a professional writer who writes for hours every day is seldom completely satisfied that the words that came out adequately express the thought that went in so don't allow yourself to get too frustrated, take a short break and then try again.

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