Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Not all Blog Builders Are the Same; See Why Investing a Little Can Pay Off a Lot

There are a lot of different blog builders out there that are inexpensive and perhaps even free, allowing you to have your own domain name, upload images and even RSS feeds but what they don’t offer you is much freedom to create a blog that is completely your own or ensure that your blog will even be found.



Free blogs can give you the template to start your own blog, but often times you do not get much of a choice as to how it will look and it ends up looking just like everyone else who created a free blog through the service.



With so many blogs starting up each day, 15.5 million blogs according to Business Week, you may wonder how your blog will be found in the cyberspace jungle. For a nominal monthly fee, a professional blog builder will set up your blog with much more than the basic cookie cutter template, one size does not fit all blogs. Blogs gain a reputation and following for their uniqueness and if your restaurant review blog looks like everyone else’s restaurant review blog, how is anyone suppose to find your blog needle in a haystack, so to speak?



Quality blog builders offer unique tools to improve your blog. If your blog is built for your business, you need your blog to be discovered. Business blogs are essential to improving your current business’s website placement on Google search. Some tools you will appreciate that come with creating a blog through a quality blog builder:



Stats tracker
Ability to post blogs from your cell phone
Email through your blog
Make money through sponsored affiliates just by posting ads
Technical support
More options in configurations and more options in advertising
And more options in the amount of traffic you can receive


A lot of your time is invested in your blog. If you are going to build your blog right from the get go, why make your first impression with the online world less than perfect? Get a quality blog now instead of wishing you had.




About the Author
About the author:Melissa Peterman is a web content producer for Innuity. For more information about how to blog builder or create a blog , go to Type Pad.

Simple Ways to Get Repeat Visitors to Your Blog

All successful blogs depend on returning visitors to account for a majority of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they will have. The credibility issue just melts away. Give your visitors a good reason to come back often and they will. Even if you don't monetize your blog you still want to maximize your traffic right? Try the following methods:
1) Start a forum or a chat room When you start a forum or a chat room you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers -- all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Offer a Free Newsletter Use an Optin form to ask for your visitors name and email. Then you can send a newsletter to them on a regular basis. This allows you to keep in touch with them and encourage more visits to your site. Include valuable information and a "soft sell" approach in the newsletter. Offer promotions. Use the newsletter to attract visitors back to your blog not to direct sell.

3) Carry out polls or surveys Everyone loves to offer their opinion. They love it even more when it is asked for. You should definitely consider adding one or both of these to your blog. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved. Be sure your polls and surveys are strongly relevant to the target market of your blog to keep your visitors interested in finding out the results.

4) Update frequently with fresh content Update your blog frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. You don't have to update every day unless you want your visitors to come back everyday. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. It doesn't have to be anything too complicated. Just make sure to posts interesting thoughts on a regular basis and your visitors will come back to see what's new. For more information on blogs please visit My Blog.



About the Author
John Stevenson runs The New Cash Cow the site that shows you how to make the online income you deserve. Go to The New Cash Cow to learn how you can use my strategy to start growing your bank account today!

6 Free Ways To Generate A Steady Stream of Traffic To Your Blog

Blogs have become a world-wide phenomenon that has, literally, been turned into an art form. With programs like Blogger and Wordpress, setting up your own blog is super easy, but getting traffic to it can be a little more difficult. However, there are a few things that you can do to get visitors to your blog. Articles: Since a blog revolves around content, it's always a good idea to balance your more personal posts with informative articles. For example, if you have a personal blog focused on your weight lost journey, compose an article about the health benefits of living a healthier lifestyle, then post it on your blog and allow others to reprint it (with your resource box and link of course) to gain incoming links. Another bonus of articles is that they can work to bring you organic traffic and win you higher ratings in the search engines. Fresh Content: One of the most important things you can do to keep a steady flow of traffic going to your blog, is to update it on a regular basis. Ideally, it's best if you update your blog at least 2 or 3 times a week, and even better if you can do it daily. There are a couple of advantages to this; one is that you will gain a following of readers who will continually return to your blog, and two is that you will be feeding the search engines, thus, maintaining your ranking. Building Relationships: Relationship building is a promotional method all its own, the simple reason being, is that by establishing yourself as an expert in the eyes of your readers, you will win their trust. The trust of your readers is a powerful tool, one that should not be taken advantage of. Your visitors go to you in search of answers to their questions, and they value your opinion and recommendations, which means that they are more likely to click your affiliate links and buy from you rather than the competition. Blog Pinging: This method can be used whenever you update your blog, and should become a part of your blogging routine. There are multiple ping directories. All you have to do is visit their website, type in the name of your blog and the URL, then hit ping. The purpose of pinging is that every time you do this, the directory will ping all of the blog directories in its listing to let them know that your blog has been updated.
Feed Burner: By installing a simple, and free, piece of HTML code onto your blog, your readers can subscribe and have new blog posts emailed to them. This is a great notification system, and will let your readers know that they can go to your blog to read new entries. Blog Roll: This is a very easy option to use, and is already built into Wordpress. You simply add the URL's you want, publish them to your site, and they will then show up under the heading "Blog Roll" on the side of your blog. The way to make this work for traffic is to treat it like a link exchange. Simply contact other blog owners and let them know that you have added their blog to your blog roll, and ask for a link in return.

Blog promotion can be done in the same way that you would advertise your website, and the free options are just as good, if not better, than paid. However, if you want to see results you will need to promote your blog on a regular basis, and understand that it will take time and effort to establish it.



About the Author
Mindy Benkert is a successful internet marketer and mom. In her Free E-Course, she shares 10 Proven Ways To Quickly and Easily Promote Your Blog. Sign up today!

4 Common Blogging Mistakes To Avoid

Are you doing it all wrong? You may be killing your own blog.
You log in to your blog, you write the post, you logout. Standard routine. STOP! Think you are doing everything correctly? Msitake Don't write another blog post until you read this.

Blogging Mistakes #1 - Not choosing the right title for your post

The title is the first contact point between you and your blog readers, if your titles failed to impact the reader, your post might not be read. How many times have you simply chuck in the title after you have complete writing the content? Its very common for top bloggers to use interesting titles to catch the readers attention. Why not spent a little more time on your titles.

Blogging Mistakes #2 - Not using the right targeted keyword for your post

Every webmaster knows that keyword is the key to SEO. Choosing the right target keywords can make or break a website, influences its ranking on searching engines, but do you know that your content should have targeted keywords? How much time did you spent on planning that keyword for your content? Not only is the keyword for your content important, it is essential to tag your post with the right keyword tag.

Blogging Mistakes #3 - Announcing your post

Top bloggers email other bloggers and their readers when they post an interesting article. Ever wonder why some blogger's articles get mention by a few bloggers? Why not try emailing a few other bloggers for your next post asking for feedbacks. If you article interest them you might get a few links and if not you have nothing to loose.

Blogging Mistakes #4 - Returning comments

Blogging is about communicating and building relationship with your readers. When a reader comments on your blog reply them through your comment, email or blog post. Returning comments not only keeps the commenter on your blog but make your blog interactive, and thats the whole point of web 2.0 and blogging.

If you are making the same mistakes, STOP!



About the Author
Bob is the author of the free 3-Page Report:

"The 6 step Internet Marketing System"

Head over to http://www.automatedtrafficmachine.com to get your free copy now before it's gone!


Your Ad on 100's of Engines
$4 per Month or less
Wine Blogs & Reviews
Read wine blogs, reveiws and forums from thewinespace members! All About Blogs
Learn all about blogs and set up your free Wordpress blog Blogs
A great place to get your opinions posted Tobias Zimmergren's SharePoint
Tobias Zimmergren's thoughts on development. Blog and articles about MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 Big Hit Sports
Sports Forums With Awesome Free Contests to win Cash Prizes... for stock quotes news blogs
for stock quotes stock blogs stock potcasts plus more. Leading Aussie Bloggers site
Free blogs for all! Have you had fun today?
Awesome Videos, Top rated music, Intuitive Political Blogs & more

How I Get Traffic To My Blog?

Making money from blogging depends a lot on the traffic you get. The more traffic the more profitable your blog. The number one question on every blogger's mind is "How to I get traffic to my blog?"
Here are some strategy I use. When you developed a good strategy for creating traffic, you get ever increasing traffic.

Before Starting your traffic campaign, you should have a way to measure your traffic performances. Try Google Analytics, its one of the best free tool.

1. SEO, get you website listed in the search engines for specific keywords that relate to your website. Brush up your SEO Basics. 2. Use PPC (Pay Per Click) such as Google Adwords. 3. Free Traffic Exhanges. Try this: 1. trafficswarm 2. trafficroundup 3. trafficpods 4. Post on forums similar to your niche, and have a link in your forum signature file. 5. Email to your friends tell them about your blog 6. Recycle your blog post as articles and have them posted on Article Directories. 7. Some good article directories to get you started: 1. www.eZineArticles.com 2. www.ultimatearticledirectory.com 3. www.submityourarticle.com 8. Link Exchange from other sites. 9. Create links to your blog from web 2.0 social networking sites. 10. blog and ping. Basically, when you update your blog, you can let blog portals such as technorati.com know by pinging them. You can ping a lot of portals at once by using pingomatic.com. 11. Interactions Between with other Blogs.

Try something every day that will help increase the traffic to your blog. use an excel spreadsheet to log your daily progress. Select the techniques that work for you and keep refining them. In no time you be getting a avalanche of traffic to your blog.



About the Author
Bob is the author of the free 3-Page Report:

"The 6 step Internet Marketing System"

Head over to http://www.automatedtrafficmachine.com to get your free copy now before it̢۪s gone!

Blogging - I'd Like To Teach The World To Blog

Blogging can help kids make real money - just look at Carl (The Kid Blogger) Ocab, and David Wilkinson, and dozens more. The adult world needs to take note, because kid bloggers are here to stay, and they will have an impact on the whole blogosphere.

There's been a storm of controversy over kid bloggers this year, with some of the worst diatribes being directed at Philippines youngster Carl Ocab. Now I have to say from the get-go that I'm all for kids starting blogs and trying to make money from them.

Blogging is easy to start, requires little technical know-how and is a great way for kids to get experience online, learning as they earn (or don't!). Blogs provide real, immediate feedback about what makes good content, and what drives traffic, and how to build relationships. The "real world" will judge them purely on their results - a consideration that's actually hard for kids to find elsewhere. The verdict of the blogosphere might be harsh, but it will be accurate feedback in exactly the way that school reports aren't.

Internet marketing is a vital promotional skill, even if your core business is selling pink meringue mice. We encourage the kids in our Cash-Smart Kids program to start some form of online activity in their very first month.

I was tickled pink when I Googled "Carl Ocab" the other day and found a gorgeous guerrilla marketing blog post from a 10-year-old blogger was in the first page of results (monkeylime3tc.wordpress.com/carl-ocab/). Way to generate traffic!

Leveraging off someone else's controversial blog is a technique that adults pay hundreds to learn in weekend seminars. Full marks to James Brennan. (Although he will probably have to improve the quality of his blog content to retain any of that traffic as loyal readers!)

I'm going to swing out and make a prediction (you heard it here first!).

More and more kids are going to start taking blogging seriously as a money-making activity.

This will impact every business in cyberspace.

How?

1. More traffic for everyone
As these kids cruise around looking for ideas to copy, affiliate links, and freebies, they will boost everyone's traffic numbers. But will they convert? Or will they distort the demographic of the visitors who currently click on your PPC and affiliate ads?

2. Growing centres of gravity in the kid blogosphere
Let's face it - kids have more surfing time than most adults. If Ashley Qualls (age 17, making $70,000+ per month from her site) can pull the traffic numbers she pulls for her WhateverLife site giving away My Space layouts, then there are many, many blogging niches which could pull much larger numbers of kid readers than yet another blog about "How To Make Money From Blogging". And putting advertising where kids will click on it has worked for Ashley. But who is best placed to be creating the compelling content for those niches?

3. What happens when you have four million kid bloggers all having flame wars in their posts .... and linking to one another? With enough time on their hands to post five or six times times a day?
Sure, none of us may be interested in who thinks what of whose personal page on MySpace, but the teen and tween demographics are utterly immersed in "who said what about whom" for their every waking moment - blogging is just another medium for that. And with all that traffic and all those links, the serious adult blogs are potentially going to drift downward in the "Top X" lists.

So, what can you do to protect your ranking and revenues?

Only slightly tongue-in-cheek here - get a kid.

Seriously, if a kid has a huge readership, and you're quoted in every third post as their mentor ... ka ching!

Or, use a popular kid as a guest blogger, or start a parallel blog in the kidosphere and have a panel of kids you consult about whether your posts are "lame" in their eyes ... or blog about how awful some of these kid bloggers are and then leap to the defence of others (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em).

No matter how you respond to the challenge, kids are here to stay. Instead of complaining about it, or criticising them, or suggesting that they aren't writing their own stuff, let's celebrate the great leveller that is the Internet, where a 12-year-old can write or speak and have their ideas taken seriously on their merits.

We have long underestimated our kids, but the likes of Ben Casnocha, Ashley Qualls, and the legions of less high-profile under-18 internet entrepreneurs like Carl Ocab and David Wilkinson are proving that teens can do anything an adult can do. Adult bloggers beware - the kid blogger wave is coming, and you either ride it, dodge it, or go under!


About the Author
Free book to download - "Finding The Right Niche For Your Cash-Smart Kid"
Jenny Ford is one of the founders of Cash-Smart Kids, and her blog can be seen at www.RaisingEntrepreneurs.org/blog

Can you Make Money with Blogs?

In this article we look at whether it is really possible to make money with blogs. In short yes it is very achievable, in fact there are a number of ways to do so.
Clearly the more established your blog the greater the level of opportunity. The more readers you have, the more chance they will see your ads and click on them or buy advertised products. Gaining traffic to your blog is another topic but with a little planning and effort you can gain traffic from search engines through keyword targetting and other seo tactics, article sites, social bookmarking sites like Digg and numerous other sources.

One popular way to make money is to host contextual ads such as Adsense or Chitika, to consider just two of the larger possibilities. With this kind of advertising the providor gives you a code snippet to include in your pages. The system will then serve ads selected to be relevant to your content and share the revenue those ads raise with you. Blending the ads into your site well will be important in order to overcome ad blindness.

Another way to make money with blogs is to join an agency like Payperpost. If your blog is approved you can be paid to write posts on various products. You can make relatively large amounts without large volumes of visitors if you have a flair for writing review style posts.

If you have a well established blog with some google pagerank you might also consider selling links from your blog to other websites. Webmaster forums are a good place to find these opportunities and you can get paid easily through your paypal account.

Similar to the contextual ads idea is the affiliate method. If you have a blog on a particular topic you can sign up for an affiliate account with a merchant who has products or services of interest to your readers. Commission Junction have many many advertisers who will pay sales commissions or lead introduction payments all co-ordinated centrally.

There are other methods such as selling merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads etc available from organisations like Cafepress and blog flipping which is the practice of establishing and then selling blogs, has also become popular.



About the Author
Make more money with your blog - just see Work at Home Files - Making Money with Blogs