Five Beginner's bloging tips

When I was asked to appear on The Lab with Leo Laporte, the producer wanted me to just give three to five beginner’s blogging tips because my session was only six minutes long and there would be not be enough time to go any deeper. I made up the five points I wanted to talk about before the show. However, during the actual taping, Leo was only interested one of them. Since I didn’t get to talk about all five beginner’s blogging tips on The Lab, I figure I would talk about them here.



Beginner Tip #1 - Blog About Something Your Passionate About

If you are not passionate about your topic, you are not going to stick to it. The best way to decide what to blog about is to ask yourself, “Would I do this for free?” If the answer is yes, then you have found your topic. People who blog only for money seldom succeed.

Beginner Tip #2 - Get Your Own Domain Name

While it certainly is possible to start a blog for nothing by using a free service like Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, I recommend every blogger starting out to get their own domain name. The cost is next to nothing and you can still host it for free if you want (Blogger allows that).

If you do not wish to use the Blogger platform, you’ll have to pony up for web hosting but that’s pretty damn cheap as well. BlueFur (they host this blog) has hosting solutions starting at $5 per month and they’ll give you 15% off if you enter JohnChowRocks in the coupon code.

Having your own domain makes you look more professional. While it may not make you a pro-blogger, the ad networks will take you a lot more seriously. Some ad networks will not accept a site unless it has its own domain name. If you do it right, having your own domain and web hosting won’t cost you anything because the income the blog generates will more than offset the cost.

It’s better to get the domain name at the start than down the road. The last thing you want to do is build up a blog with Blogspot, get a ton of backlinks, PageRank, Alexa and Technorati rankings, and then have to move it to its own domain and start over. I’m sure Kumiko can relate. :)

Beginner Tip #3 - Update The Blog Often

A non-updated blog is a dead blog. If you cannot commit to a consistent blogging schedule, then it’s best not to blog until you can. This is where blogging about your passion comes in. If you’re passionate about the topic, then chances are you’ll keep blogging about it. Ideally, you should update the blog everyday.

Beginner Tip #4 - Get To Know Your Readers

Blogging is a two-way street. You cannot exist without readers (well you can, but what’s the point?), and readers don’t exist unless they have something to read. Blogging is about forming relationships. There’s the relationship between you and the readers and relationship between you and other blogs in your niche. It is up to you to get to know them and form this relationship. Many readers have stated that when they’re reading my blog, it’s like a one-on-one conversion. That was not done by accident. It’s all part of relationship blogging.

Beginner Tip #5 - Monetize The Blog With Multiple Sources

When the time comes to monetize your blog, don’t stick with just Google AdSense. There are now tons of ways to make money from blogging. Check out my recommended moneymaker list. If I were to use only Google AdSense, there is no way I would have been able to pull down nearly $12,000 last month. Google accounted for less than 10% of April blog income. Do not put all your eggs there.

I use eight different methods to make money online. Only two of them are banner ads. During the Lab interview, Leo pointed that my blog doesn’t looks it has that much advertising at all. When he found out how many different advertising models I used, he was shocked. The key to monetizing a blog is to run as many advertising products as you can get away with while still providing a good user experience.

These were the five begginner’s tip I wanted to get across on The Lab with Leo. However, the only point I was able to talk about was the last one, which isn’t that surprising since everyone wants to know how to make money online. I hope that the next time I’m on the show, I’ll be able to talk more about the other tips.

Source Articles : Jhon Chow

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How to Start Video Blogging?

Videoblogging is the next generation of posting ideas and products over the internet. Everybody knows about textblogging. Now they use videos for a better way of expression. This form of communication may entail a lot of resources, but it is all worth it. If pictures say a thousand words, videoblogging exceeds that by far.

A videoblog requires larger disk spaces on websites, a faster server, and a whole new set of programs to support it. Videoblogs can be fed through RSS. This is technology of syndicating your website to other RSS aggregators.

Videoblogging works with people on the internet expressing their selves. Now if you put this on a business prospective, you are up to a lot of benefits. Think of it as a powerful tool in making showing your prospective customers your line of products or your services. It’s just like showing a commercial all for free. And if you videoblog through RSS, then most probably you are getting your target market.



People like to see what they are going to buy. Some would like to see proof and be sure that they are getting their money’s worth before shelving their dimes on it. All of us know the influence of a thirty second commercial. The effect of videoblogging is similar to that. You show your product, people watch it. If they like it, they buy it. If you present it good enough, they’ll buy the product even if they don’t need it.

Now on the web, things are pretty much static, unlike in television in which all are moving. If you post something that is mobile, it would most likely catch attention. Now imaging your product parading in all it’s royalty through videoblog. You’ll get phone call orders in no time.

If your business is just starting up, you can create a videoblog right at your own home. All you need is your web camera, microphone, video software, and lights. For as long as you know how to use your camera, then you can create a videoblog.

Invest in a good web camera. The higher its resolution is the better the output. And you like to present your goods in the optimum way so get the best one possible. Make a short story, or just capture your goods in one go. Just make sure you are getting the best profile for each. Get those creativity juices flowing.

Lights are important in a production. Make sure you illuminate entirely the area you are going to use to create videoblog. The brighter the area, the crispier the images will be. You can also use lighting effects for added appeal to the presentation.

Should you require sounds for your videoblog, you need a microphone. Record you voice as a voice over for promoting the product and its benefit to consumers. Sounds are as important as videos on a videoblog. It is advisable to make your sound effects as enticing as the video.

Your video editing software can be any program. You need this to finalize your work. You can add sounds, delete some bad angles, or insert some still pictures in there too. Some programs are user-friendly and can be used even with zero knowledge on video editing. Even simple video editing programs should do the trick. Select your background carefully too. The light affects the presentation so make sure that the background and the light complements each other.

Videoblogging is a great tool but it also has it downside. It may slow down the computer so other may steer clear of it. Download time may also be time consuming especially if customer is still on a dial- up connection.

But don’t let those stop you. Let videoblogging be an alternative for you, though it is best to still keep the text and pictures present in your presentation to accommodate all possible viewers of your site.

Nowadays, the more creative you are in presenting your product to the market, they more you are likely to succeed. Videoblogging offers an interactive way of selling. You involve the customers. You instill in them the advantage of your goods. And at times, those are enough to make a sale.




Article Source : article city

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Tips To get More From Adsense

All webmasters and site owners who have been trying to earn from their sites must be aware of a monster called Adsense.

Adsense has presented a new and easy opportunity to earn money from your site. Adsense virtually allows any person who has built a content site or a blog to earn money, just by placing some code on their web pages. Adsense has given the ability to the web masters to concentrate on their sites rather than wasting time on trying to figure out what advertisements to put on their sites.

There are many web masters who make living on Adsense, but there are also many web masters who spend lot of time on figuring out the magic trick to earn from Adsense. Making a good living from Adsense might seem difficult but it is definitely not impossible.

Just placing Adsense code on your site is not enough if you are looking at Adsense as your only source of income. You need to experiment a lot with Adsense formats, placement and choice of keywords.

Whatever topic your site deals with, you should take care to build page around a specific topic. This ensures that the Adsense ads placed on the page, are relevant and useful to the visitors wanting to know more on the topic, and these visitors will eventually end up clicking the Adsense ad.

You should take care when placing your Adsense ads. If you read through Google help on Adsense, you will find the heat maps suggesting the best locations for your adverts. It is a proven fact that, one place the visitors look first on the site is the top left position. Since this is the place that will have the visitor's attention, it definitely helps to place your Adsense ads there.

You should also consider placing the Adsense ads on high traffic pages. You will be able to identify the most visited pages on your site by looking at the logs or even your Google Analytics account, which provides you page by page details of visitors.

Though the banner and skyscrapers adverts look pretty good on your site, you should try to avoid using those on your site. Such banners are usually ignored by the visitors. Do you recollect clicking on any banner on a site you visited recently?

You should also use the Adsense formats to make sure your Adsense ads blend with your web pages. Google provides you different palettes to try font colors, backgrounds and borders. There is no point in placing an ad on the page which does not blend with your site and will effectively not be clicked by any visitor.

Another important factor ignored by most of the webmasters is the Adsense preview tool. Google provides with an excellent tool to help you preview the ads that appear on your page. This tool allows you to see the sample ads and formats, preview colors on your page, check the destination of the ads and geo targeted locations to see what visitors in other countries will see.

Besides the above mentioned factors, it is also important to have a definite focus on what you want to achieve. No matter how busy you are, you should always spare some time to experiment with the Adsense ads to improve the CTR. Whatever experts say, just following the basics, is really the magic of making more from Adsense.

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How To Start Adsense

Starting an AdSense website is relatively easy. However, there are plenty of things that may go wrong, especially if you're doing it for the first time. For one, most AdSense businesses crash down before they can really take off. The number of impressions and low click-through rate often changes what seemed to be an excellent business idea into nothing - unless you call earning $1 a day a profitable business venture.

What is AdSense?

90% of problems with AdSense businesses is caused by the fact that AdSense businessmen-to-be don't know much about what AdSense is and how it really works. While you definitely don't have to know all the technical details, it is an imperative that you understand all the basics.

AdSense is an advertising program run by Google. Webmasters who decide to take part in it add a special Java script to their websites that allows AdSense to display ads on the webpage it is installed in. The ads come from advertisers who have subscribed to the AdWords program and placed there their own ads. Then AdSense program places them at the AdSense websites that seem to be the most appropriate.

The advertisers pay either per each click on their ad or per thousand impressions (thousand people who have opened your website with the ad on it). A fraction of the price they pay goes to you - the website owner. Google acts only as an intermediary and editor, it is neither the source nor the real provider of any ads.

How Google knows what adverts to display on your site? Everything begins within the AdWords program. When advertisers create their ads, they also choose key phrases that are relevant to their ads. For example, if one creates an advert of a snowboarding website, he will probably choose such key phrases as "snowboard", "snowboarding", "snowboard styles", "snowboard course" etc. When a website is signed to the AdSense program, a special robot (=internet program) called Metabot "reads" your website in search for keywords (=words used in the content). Then it sends a signal to AdSense to send you the adverts that are triggered by the key phrases you have used in your website.

Starting an AdSense website

Build a site: while you can put AdSense ads on virtually any website, in 99% of cases you won't make any real money out of it. In order to start a real AdSense website that will become a steady income stream, you have to remember about:

*popularity - check what people look for on the Internet and build your site around one of the most popular topics. Use Wordtracker or Nichebot and take a look at the most often searched keywords to get some ideas.

*relevant content - AdSense is not an artificial intelligence and certainly not a mind reader. You have to put a lot of content that speaks about the website's topic AND USE THE KEY PHRASES! Otherwise you risk that some ads may miss your website and you get others that are irrelevant to your website. This may greatly decrease the click-through ratio. A tip: do not use the content you can find on the Internet, even if it is marked "public domain" - Google loves fresh unpublished articles.

*proper ad placement - most people who browse the website look at the upper left corner of screen first, then at the mid-upper part and lower left and only lastly at the lower right part of screen. Make sure that you can place your ads where people look first - this increases the chance they click on them.

Registration process: registration process is very simple and, what's even more important, free. Go to www.google.com/adsense and complete the registration form. Just remember that you have to add the provided script to your website before you get any ads displayed!

Get the traffic: now, when you have a decent website and relevant ads all you need is people who will visit your site and click on the ads. If your website attracts 1000 visitors a day, you can count on it to bring you a healthy profit. There are dozens of methods you can use. Among the most popular are: adding links to web directories, writing articles to article directories and getting links from other, relevant sites. It is probably the most difficult part of all AdSense business, broad enough to be discussed in another article.

Warning: angry Google = no income

During all the process there is one thing that you have to remember about: don't do anything that is prohibited or unadvised by Google. First, most of such practices won't give you any real profit. Second, if you make Google angry, they will simply ban your site from from their search engine, wasting all the hard work you've made and forcing you to start everything all over again. Trespassing Google regulations - clicking on your own ads or installing any robots who can do that for you - will always be swiftly punished. No courts, no lawsuits, no nothing - your website will be immediately and irreversibly banned, people cease to visit it and your income drops to zero in a matter of days. A few dollars more are just not worth wasting months of your work.

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How To Recruit Network Marketers

A problem network marketers have is the tendency to oversell the network marketing opportunity. Such high pressure sales tactics, though possibily effective, is not duplicable by everyone on the team. Other members will use their own methods, and when this happens, duplication does not necessarily occur, because of the human factor at play.

One way to ensure duplication is to write a guide book that belongs to the team. Everyone follows the same manual and acts in a similar fashion.

By having everyone on the same page, this ensures that everyone is on the same tempo and frequency and sells the business opportunity with the same method. One company I know uses the ABC method, and preliminary background of the prospect is necessary before hand in order to best present the biz op to him. In this case, A is the presenter, B is the introducing party, and C is the customer.

A second way is to build a website that is able to accept payment via credit cards.

All selling is done online and through the internet. With the internet overtaking the world and online credit card transactions becoming more acceptable..people are comfortable to join network marketing companies online. The good thing about this is that there is less coordination needed between various networkers. All selling is automated.

A third way is to not sell the business opportunity. Yes you heard right. Do not sell the business opportunity. Instead focus on selling the product.

When people start using the product and like what they have, they will be convinced enough because they know the company is not based solely on recruitment but a quality product they can sell and make money from. One network marketer i know, only focused selling his products online and made $500,000 worth in sales.

Lastly, once you're able to sell the products well, people will be drawn to you when you tell them you can give them the exact blue print and tactics you use to command such high volume turnover. By focusing on the product rather then recruitment, this concept will draw people to join under you to learn how to make money from sale of products.

By following these ideas, you will have a less stressful time building your network marketing business. Any of the points can ensure a rejection free network marketing experience. When I used point number 2, I personally brought 20 people into my network marketing business in 2 weeks.

If you could take your network marketing business to another level, by making it easier for not only you but the rest of your team, and quickly grow your business by leaps and bounds through the power of duplication via the internet, would you implement it? Because i'm a fan of the internet, I encourage you to bring your Network Marketing business online and harness the power of the Internet.

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Adsense - The Powerful Passive Income Generator!

Adsense - The Powerful Passive Income Generator!
By: Matt Bacak

Webmasters have a revolutionary new method of collecting income from their websites.

Whereas in the past advertising revenue was reserved for those sites with large a coming and going of visitors, now even teenagers are making a quick buck with their online hobby blogs. People place adsense on their online family photo albums, their blogs and their business sites. The minimum you would get, even with a small amount of traffic, is for adsense to pay for your hosting costs.

Adsense revolutionized the world of paid advertising; banner advertising is based on the number of visitors you attract to your site, so the number of "banner impressions" dictate the revenue you receive. Google Adsense is quite different; it is the number of visitors that actually click on the advertising that determine how much you earn.

There is also a great disparity between payouts; because advertisers bid up the price for certain keywords, some ads pay more than others. As such, a site with few visitors but expensive keywords in their google ads can potentially still pull in a hefty payout.

Google really has taken the web by storm; attracted to passive income, more and more people are seriously capitalizing on their Google adsense advertising. Some of the highest earners manage to attract enough visitors to make a four figure monthly income, just from using adsense alone! This is not one of those get-rich-quick schemes and Google's adsense success is largely thanks to the fact that Google already enjoyed a fantastic reputation before introducing the program. They are a publicly traded company with physical headquarters. This, and the fact that anyone can apply to use adsense for free, has caused millions of people to sign up. For google it was a smart move, because now they extend their presence to countless websites and generate millions of dollars in advertising revenue. People were never reluctant to sign up, because the program is free. Google benefits by more people using adsense, so offering it for free was the best thing they could do.

One of the driving forced behind the program are its relevance to each and every page on a website; the program picks up keywords appearing in the website copy and automatically displays relevant ads. This increases the chances of people clicking through, and the webmaster collecting more revenue.

People are leveraging their income by operating several websites and attempting to attract as many targeted visitors as possible; in many instances we can observe that people work hard at a site, then once it is established they can largely leave it alone, yet still collect significant checks.

A major concern for entrepreneurs was the danger of a competitors ads showing up on their site; thanks to the adsense feature where it only displays relevant advertising. However this problem was solved by offering webmasters the option of filtering out unwanted ads. They can submit the URL of the competing site in their account, and any ads from the website will be blocked.

Google recently came out with a new feature: small targeted keywords based on the site's content are displayed; then as people click on those, a page opens showing a variety of pay-per-click ads based on that keyword. This gives webmasters the chance of displaying more advertising in less space.

Adsense also adds creditability to your website; the more focused the content, the better the ads will be and this encourages people to built high quality websites. These make the net a better place and generally provide a free service; site owners can afford to share their expertise or passions because they can receive indirect revenue's. The visitor does not pay for the information; instead the advertisers do, making the website's existence possible in the first place.

It is no surprise Google adsense is the most widely used form of advertising; they have created a program that is beneficial to both advertisers and users with their "no click no pay" mechanism, or more popularly called "pay-per-click". Advertisers do not pay for ads that are not drawing visitors, and website owners are paid more for each click than they would if the system were based on the number of people viewing the ads, instead of clicking on them.

All in all Google adsense has developed itself into a powerful tool, used by large corporations and the kid next door. They have truly revolutionized how the web thinks about advertising and made the process more profitable for site owners, while less costly for advertisers.

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3 Business Models For Creating Wealth On The Internet

3 Business Models For Creating Wealth On The Internet
By: Sean Gum

The Internet has the potential to make you rich! I am sure you have heard it over and over again. Everybody knows you can get rich using the Internet, but how?

Over the last 8 years, I have researched hundreds of Internet business opportunities. I have purchased dozens of Get-Rich Information packs. I have listened to over 100 audiobooks on how to prosper using the Internet... I've been to countless seminars, some costing as much as $3,400 to attend! And I've tested all the tips, tricks and techniques to find out what works and what doesn't.

What I discovered was that there are three distinct business models that you can use to create wealth with the Internet. I've used all three to create an income stream of over $1 million dollars per year.

And I do it all from the comfort of my home, with no employees.

Would you like to learn how?

In this article I will give a brief overview of each of the three business models. Then, in upcoming articles I will discuss each model in greater detail along with direct links to resources I have used that are working for me RIGHT NOW!

*** ONE SECRET That All 3 Models Have In Common ***
As you learn about all of the models, you will notice one thing that they all have in common. That one thing is called "leverage."

What is leverage?
J. Paul Ghetty once said, "I would rather have 1% of the efforts of 100 men than 100% of my own efforts."

J. Paul understood leverage. Some of the models that I will present will leverage the efforts of hundreds and even thousands of other people to produce an income for you.

In other business models we'll use computers and technology to create leverage.

In either case, leverage allows you to earn money while you sleep, while you vacation, while you spend time with your family.

Leverage is the secret to financial freedom!

*** Business Model #1 - Network Marketing ***
Network Marketing, or Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) has bloomed into a multi-billion dollar business. Even with all of this success, we still run into people today that call it a pyramid-scheme.

Network Marketing allows you to start a business at home that is similiar to a franchise. However, there is no franchise fee of millions of dollars. Instead, you pay a small entry fee, some as low as $35 to become a distributor. However, you get the backing of a major corporation to support you and to help you build your own home business.

You also get the opportunity to go International with your home business with some network marketing companies reaching into 60 or more countries!

MLM has come a long way, baby!

The unique thing about Network Marketing is that your upline is actually motivated to help you succeed. (Unlike a BOSS who doesn't want you to know what he knows - or you'd take his job!)

I have been (and still am) involved with 3 different network marketing companies. I will tell you about the good, the bad and the ugly in an upcoming article on Network Marketing.

*** Business Model #2 - Affiliate Programs ***
Affiliate programs have become very successful over the years. In fact, we started our own affiliate program several years ago, and saw it grow to over 3,000 affiliates in less than a year.

Basically, affiliate programs are ways that you can promote somebody else's product or service and get paid for it.

This is usually done by a banner ad, or announcement to a customer or other specialized list.

If you currently have a high traffic website, you should be participating in at least several different affiliate programs. Nowadays, there are networks of affiliate programs that take the threat of not being paid out of the picture. (It used to be a problem when everyone was running thier own.)

If you have a lot of time on your hands, and no money at all to get started in Network Marketing, than this is a great option to start out with.

I will tell you where to find these networks and how to get started in an upcoming article on Affiliate Programs.

*** Business Model #3 - Information Marketing ***
This is the model I am currently using to build my next million dollars, while my business partner spends his time building our Network Marketing businesses.

What is Information Marketing?
Basically it is taking something that you love doing and writing articles, ebooks and even creating teleseminars and live seminars.

It might sound like a lot of work, but you start small and work your way up.

I will be showing you how EVERYBODY has at least one special skill or ability that can be turned into an ebook and sold online. Really!

I recently attended a seminar that cost $3,400 to attend. This 3-day seminar was packed full of hundreds of tips and techniques to build an Information Marketing business.

I will be passing what I learned onto you through several upcoming articles.

All of the business models that I have presented have the power to create six and even seven digit incomes in as little as 9 months!

I will go into *much* greater detail on each of these three business models in upcoming articles on each one. I will also be providing updates of current progress to those of you on my mailing list, so be sure to join!

God bless

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Make Money Blogging
By: Matt Bacak

You have created a blog and your blog is dedicated to a niche industry. Have you ever thought that the blog could make money for you? We would look here in this article, ways and means, to make money blogging. Lets first have a look at what are the prerequisites for a blog needed to make money:

1. Blog needs to be dedicated to a niche market.
2. Updated regularly.
3. Enough back links (Don't worry for it. Directory submission would be enough to begin with)
4. Good blog host or application (blogger, Xanga or typepad recommended), and
5. High quality articles or news items supported with images.

Get the above criteria in place and Hurrah... You are ready to make money blogging.

Top 5 Ways to Make Money Blogging
Lets now take a look at top 5 ways using which you could make money blogging:

1. Google Adsense Google Adsense delivers text and image ads to the authorized websites/blogs depending on the content of the website. Small code is required to be pasted at proper locations on a webpage and Google automatically recognizes the page. Google shares the revenue it gets from the advertisers whenever a visitor clicks on these ads.

Google bills advertisers on price per click basis (PPC). Advertisers are required to pay only when any visitor clicks on their ads. They bid against each other for the keywords in order to receive better placement and thus prices for each keyword differ from one another. It is better to choose keywords for your blog which pays high $ per click.
2. Amazon Amazon Associate program is another important way to make money blogging. The Amazon Associate program gives opportunity to website/blog publishers to promote any product from its inventory by adding a predefined code to their website/blog, which, when clicked by a visitor, takes them to the relevant product page. Once the visitor buys the product, the blog owner will be compensated with a commission.
3. Blogads You can use Blogads as an effective tool to have a better control over the advertisers in your blogs. You can analyze and compare your profits with any one of your online agencies. Blogads can be simply specified as an advertising service used for the web logs or blogs. From the total money generated by Blogads, it retains 20% of it and the remaining money is paid to you through PayPal or checks.

Alternative Services:
* Crispads is another useful network focused on the blogs. You can put your advertisements in their blogs using Crispads. You can move through their RSS/ATOM feeds that help in generating revenues.
* Tagword - It is similar to Blogads. It makes you select the ads and their price.

Users can place their text-based ads in the site within minutes and the ads will be displayed instantly on the website.
4. Affiliate Programs Your affiliate programs can help you earn a lot of money for selected products and services. Lot of websites offers you to become affiliate members. These affiliate programs can provide a better reach and an in-depth exposure to the products. The commissions for the sales differ according to the quality of the product, sales and marketing strategy involved. You can gather information related to the commissions by looking into the catalogues of Link Share and Commission junctions.
5. Text Links Text links has emerged out to be the best form of moneymaking source that you can use instead of cluttering or crowding the page with ads. You don't have to make these text links prominent within your website. This link can act as an extra value to your site and will also help to promote the rankings of other sites. In most of the cases you will find these text links placed in the bottom of the web pages. The best part of this strategy is that the publishers send and accept links as the market continues to grow.

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

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13 Steps To Successful Blogging

13 Steps to Successful Blogging
By: Ant Onaf

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

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

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

3) Update Daily (nothing less)
This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily. Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries. Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.

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

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

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

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

7) Multiple blogs
Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13) You're a Professional
You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain. Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines.

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

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

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What Is Blogging Thing Then?

What Is This Blogging Thing Then?
By: Martin Andrew

Everybody is raving on about blogs, it seems everyone has one, and it seems that everyone is telling you that if you want to get on in Internet Marketing you need one too!!

But what exactly is this Blogging Thing?

OK well like everything else, theres the Long answer, the short answer, and Martins Answer(often quite similar to the long answer, only, well, better:-) )

Blogging, Like MOST of the other New Trends, isnt actually new at all. Blogging has actually been around for quite some years now, I would probably say its Infancy was pre-2000 if I really wanted to push it back.

A Blog, or Weblog, is qute simply an Online Journal or diary.

BUT, thats not what people nowadays mean, when people talk to you about blog and blogging, they are really talking about using this blogging software to run your sites.

The Simplicity and design of the software enables even the most technically challenged to add updated fresh content to their webpages, basically if you can type and use Word, you can run a Blog, this in turn is why it is becoming ever so popular, and also why most people do use it for, or at least most people *Were* using Blog and Blog software to run little Personal Diary Blogs.

However, what it really is, is a way to have a regularly updated website related to your business or theme at the push of a button.

Here are the three most popular "blogs" at the time of printing this, they probably will remain like this for a long time, but although these are "Blogs" they are more along the lines of an actual real content website, rather than a personal diary type blog.

# 1
Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things
67,001 links from 19,265 sites.

# 2
Engadget
65,581 links from 14,884 sites.

# 3
PostSecret
PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
By frank warren
21,503 links from 12,892 sites.

The MAIN Difference between a blog and a standard website, is the fact that bloggers tend to be more personal, tend to leave more of a personal stamp on their work. Thats why those first two sites above are WAY more popular than if they had just been a standard impersonal website.

DON'T let this blogging craze confuse you, its really not that complex, or infact that different to things you may already be used to, dont worry about this whole "Blog Revolution" thing, it is more of an evolution than a revolution, and the evolution involves websites and online business in general, not blogging on its own, blogging has simply become a tool to enable the following things -

Through free services such as Blogger, anyone anywhere anytime can start a website, without having any technical knowledge.

Through blogging software, it has become easier and easier to add fresh orginal content to your website on a regular basis,

Bloggers share information, ideas and thoughts with eachother through reading eachothers blogs and talking about them on their own blogs,

Those are the simple elements of what blogging is.

When you start looking at the software running the blogs, and the functions it has, you can see even more benefits, and why it is much much more than just "a Weblog" I am talking about, I want you to understand that blogging is an ESSENTIAL part of your entire marketing campaign, along with Article Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and all the other aspects I cover, blogging is essential.

BECAUSE, Not only does your average blogging software enable push button content updates, BUT it also has the ability to do a MULTITUDE of the mundane tasks we have to undertake to build our traffic up to our websites.

Your blogging software can pretty much take care of all your on page search engine optimization AUTOMATICALLY!! All you need to do is post new content!!

Blog softwares can automatically reformat your content into different code types readable by different types of technology, with a little help, your blog could kick out pages viewable in Web Browsers, Palm Pilots, Mobile Phones, and perhaps the best one at the moment is RSS!!

Yes, your blog will easily produce a reformatted version of your webpage that can be syndicated by other sites, read by people directly on their desktops, and much more!!

I do cover a wide range of advanced blogging tactics which I won't go into here as I would be here for TOO Long!!

Quite simply, a blog, is a software to Power your websites, how you decide to use it is up to you, but one thing I WILL STRESS here at the end is that the whole idea behind the fact that blogs are easy to use is to use them well, and update them regularly, to see the full benefit. Its because of this fact, that a good blog should be updated regularly to get the most benefits, that most blogs are really quite a personal type weblog but DON'T let that start to limit your thinking about what you can do with a blog, look again at the top 3 blogs, go to Technorati.com and look at the biggest blogs.

Don't you think, actually, that most of the big blogs look more like a magazine now, rather than a journal or diary?

Remember what I said about evolution and not revolution?

You can use a blog for whatever you want, all I stress, is MAKE SURE you use it, and use it every day(or as often as you possibly can regularly)

Thats it for that, more will come soon, thanks for reading!

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