Make Money Blogging

10 Signs That Your Blog Is On The Right Track

2009-10-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Starting a new blog or growing an existing one can certainly be frustrating, as it may seem like you are not on pace to achieve your goals. Like anything worthwhile, building a solid and effective blog will take some time and hard work. As Daniel wrote recently, it gets easier with time if you can stick with it.

I see many bloggers completely give up or seriously slow down their activity because they feel like they are not getting anywhere, when in my opinion they are on the right track.

Hopefully if you are doing the right things and making progress you will recognize your growth and accomplishments, but not all do. Here are 10 signs that your blog is on the right track. If several of these items apply to you, don’t give up just because the achievements are not coming fast enough. I think if you give it some time and continue to work, you will reach your goals in time.

1. Growing Subscriber Count

If your blog’s subscriber base is growing, even slowly, you are making some progress. Gaining trust and subscribers is not easy, so try not to get your expectations unrealistically high. If you have realistic goals for subscriber growth you will more likely be able to feel good about your progress and stay consistent with your blogging.

2. Increasing Numbers of Inbound Links

Links are important for any blog. They help with click-through traffic, search engine rankings, and recognition. For bloggers, incoming links are also representative of how well you are known in your industry and your number of links will grow as you start to become recognized as an authority.

3. Increasing Numbers of Valuable Comments

If your blog is receiving a decent amount of thought-provoking comments, that is a good sign that people are reading and paying attention to you. Comments are the lifeblood of blogs, and those that have a lot of valuable comments from readers become even more useful for readers.

4. Increasing Visitors, Pageviews, and/or Pagviews Per Visit

Many bloggers are stats junkies. While growth in traffic isn’t always representative of meeting or surpassing your blogging goals, it certainly isn’t a bad thing. Hopefully, over time your blog stats will increase as more and more readers visit and subscribe to your blog.

5. Consistent Posting

If you are posting consistently on your blog, you’re already one step ahead of the vast majority of bloggers. It sounds pretty easy, but consistent posting is a huge challenge for many. If you’re able to keep posting consistently, good things are likely to happen.

6. Improving Quality of Articles

Quality is always going to be a somewhat subjective issue, but I think most bloggers can look back through their archives and get a pretty accurate idea of how the quality has trended over time. I know that when I look back at my first few months of blog posts I’m kind of embarrassed at the low level of quality, and I don’t think I’m alone. Growth in quality is natural as you will become more knowledgeable about your topics and as you learn about blogging and writing in general. Take a look back at how your quality of writing has improved and I think you will be encouraged to keep going and see what happens.

7. An Ability to Clearly Define Your Niche

One of the most overlooked items when starting a new blog is being able to accurately define the audience that you will be targeting. As time goes by, you’ll learn what types of content your readers appreciate (and what they don’t respond to) and you’ll most likely get a better idea of where you fit into your niche. Knowing your place is very important for branding and creating a blog that is appealing to the readers that you are targeting. If you know precisely where you fit into your niche, you’re on the right track.

8. An Increasing Network of Bloggers

Networking is probably the most crucial aspect of blogging outside of content creation, and in some cases it can be even more important. If you are continually meeting new bloggers and strengthening the relationships that you have made, you will drastically be in a better position for the future. Building a network will help you to learn from others, gain valuable and loyal readers, increase inbound links, increase votes at social media sites, and much more.

9. A Knowledge of at Least 1 Specific Way to Get Targeted Readers to Your Blog

As you continue to blog, you will learn more about traffic generation and getting people to read and recognize what you have written. If you have even one specific method that consistently helps you to reach your target audience, you are better off than most bloggers. Maybe you have spent some time writing guest posts for other blogs in your niche, maybe you’ve had success with leaving intelligent and relevant comments at other blogs, or maybe you’ve developed a strong profile at a niche-specific social media website. Whatever the source is, if it is something that you can continue to use in the future, you are one step closer to blogging success.

10. Achievement of Goals

Many bloggers have long-term goals, such as making a living with a blog, or getting 10,000 subscribers. But what many bloggers lack are short-term goals that will help them to take the necessary steps towards those long-term goals. If you are setting monthly goals for blogging revenue, subscribers, traffic, etc. and you are achieving those goals, don’t give up because you are not getting to the long-term goals fast enough. Take pleasure in meeting your short-term goals and keep challenging yourself.

Why Bloggers Should Have a Privacy Policy, and 9 Points to Include in Yours

2009-10-12T07:09:00.001-07:00

With the way technology is evolving these days, it is no surprise that people are worried about online fraud, identity theft, and the misuse of their personal information. They need to be assured that sensitive data will be protected when using technology, and this applies to web surfing as well.
One of the easiest ways to fix this problem is the creating a Privacy Policy. After all, most major websites have privacy policies, so why shouldn’t blogs? This is especially true when many readers will give you their e-mail address and other personal information to interact with the website, whether it be by posting a comment or signing up for an online newsletter or e-mail RSS feed.
Creating a privacy policy isn’t too difficult. The document should be unique to your blog, but there are a number of issues that all privacy policies should include:
1. Explicit that you won’t sell or give away any user’s e-mail addresses. This is self-explanatory, people don’t want their e-mail addresses to spread across the web, so don’t release e-mail addresses.
2. Make sure to talk about how you may collect information on the browsing habits of users and share this information with advertisers. Also mention that your site may use cookies. Talk about all types of information that you collect (e.g., browser, operating system, IP address, country) and how this information is used.
3. Make sure that you say that you are NOT responsible for the privacy policies for any sites you link to.
4. Reserve the right to change the Privacy Policy at any time.
5. Make sure to provide some method of contact for users concerned about your blog’s privacy policies, preferable inside the Privacy Policy itself.
6. Make it easy to read and understand. If you throw in a lot of legal jargon, people won’t understand it and it will be useless.
7. Obviously, make sure to follow all outlines you set for yourself in the Privacy Policy.
Some points added by Daniel:
8. Depending on the content of your site you might want to add that the use of your site is intended for people who are eighteen (18) years or older (I am not talking about porn… but rather language that might not be proper to kids, or business websites or blogs where the user engage in financial transactions, for instance).
9. If you plan to contact people that access your site for any reason, make sure to add a clause mentioning that. Some bloggers contact people leaving comments on their blogs, for instance.

10 Essential Legal Points for Bloggers

2009-10-12T07:04:00.001-07:00

Every day, millions of bloggers post content online. Millions more people read and comment on blogs. With all that communication, some interesting legal issues are bound to arise. This article looks at 10 major legal points that bloggers must know and offers some suggestions about how to work with them.
1. Develop a “legal consciousness” about blogging. Like any publications, blogs frequently create legal questions. However, there is no need to fear those issues. Instead, being aware of the possibility of such concerns will help you identify them and manage them effectively. This article presents some of the most common legal issues that arise.
As you read it, consider how those issues apply to your blog. Also, it is good to develop the habit of looking for legal questions as you post new content on your blog. Using the major points in this article as a guide, you can ask yourself, “Are there any potential legal problems here?” whenever you update your blog. This simple practice will help you identify important legal questions and resolve them before they have a chance to cause problems.
2. Read carefully and understand the agreements related to your blog. Depending on how you host, manage, promote, and monetize your blog, the exact agreements you enter will vary somewhat, but here are some common agreements that will affect most bloggers:

Web and blog hosting agreements, including terms of service and acceptable use policies;
content-sharing agreements and licenses;
syndication agreements; and
affiliate, revenue-sharing, and advertising programs.

You should assume that these agreements are valid, enforceable contracts that you must follow. Of course, if you have questions about any agreements or policies or their validity, you should consult with a lawyer to learn about your rights and duties. However, it is reasonable to expect that in most cases you will have to abide by these agreements as you operate your blog, so it is worth your time to become familiar with them.
3. Adopt basic legal policies for your blog. Most blogs can benefit from a “terms of use” agreement. This policy explains how visitors to your blog may use your site and its content. It is the fundamental agreement between you and visitors to your site. The particulars of terms of use agreements vary from one blog to another, but some common provisions include disclaimers of warranties on any of the content, limitation of the blog publisher’s liability, restrictions about how the blog’s content can be used, netiquette policies governing comments posted on the blog, and so forth.
A privacy policy is also an important document for blogs today. Participants in blog conversations are concerned about identity theft and the security of their information. Establishing and following a privacy policy for your blog assures visitors that their personal information will be protected and encourages them to join the discussions at your blog. Here at Daily Blog Tips, Aditya Mahesh recently outlined the basic points that all good blog privacy policies have. Following those points will give you a great start on developing a privacy policy for your blog.
User-generated content (UGC) is becoming an increasingly important source of potential legal disputes. Content-sharing sites may be the most obvious example of participatory media and UGC, but blogs allow users to generate content in the form of comments. A useful policy for UGC will answer the following questions:

who owns the content that users post?
how can the blog’s publisher use the UGC?
how can other users use the content?
do visitors to the blog have the right to change or remove their content?
how will you handle UGC that infringes upon another person’s intellectual property rights or is illegal?
how will disputes over UGC be resolved?

Please note that the questions listed above are just starting points. A complete UGC policy will answer those questions and several others that apply to the particular kind of blog you publish.
4. Protect your copyright in your original work. Unfortunately, a lot of blog content is being copied and used all over the Web without the permission of the content’s creators. Preventing copyright infringement and plagiarism can be difficult and costly, but there are some simple things you can do to address the problem.

display a copyright notice conspicuously on each page of your blog;
register your copyright in your blog with the United States Copyright Office or the copyright registration authority in your country;
license your work to your blog’s visitors (Creative Commons offers a number of standard licenses that you can use, if you don’t want to create your own from scratch); and
learn more about the problem of online plagiarism by reading authoritative information, such as Daily Blog Tips’ “Blog Plagiarism Q & A” and Jonathan Bailey’s PlagiarismToday site.

5. Respect others’ content and do not infringe upon it. You can avoid many disputes in the blogosphere if you respect others’ copyrights and trademarks. Here are a few tips to help you avoid infringing on others’ intellectual property.
For copyrights:

assume all content, whether online or offline, is protected by copyright unless you are certain that it is in the public domain;
get written permission to use copyrighted content and store that writing in a safe place in case you need it later;
always acknowledge the source of content and, if the copyright owner requests a certain format for the attribution, use it;
follow best practices related to copyright law; and
be extremely careful about “fair use” of copyrighted works. The legal factors that determine whether a given use of copyrighted content is a “fair use” may look simple and obvious, but they can be very difficult to apply in practice. If you are unsure about whether your proposed use is a fair use, consult with a lawyer. Even if you are sure that you are making fair use of a copyrighted work, you will still be wise to do everything you reasonably can to obtain written permission to use that work, to avoid the possibility of disputes later.

For trademarks:

show the trademark symbol (”®” for registered trademarks, and “TM” for common law trademarks) immediately after the trademark;
follow the trademark owner’s guidelines for using the mark in blogs and commentary (for an example of such guidelines, see the LEGO® Fair Play policy); and
do not suggest that the trademark owner approves of your content, endorses your site, or is affiliated with you. Instead, display a statement prominently that says you are not affiliated with the trademark owner and that the owner has not approved or endorsed your blog or its content.

6. Before you post statements of fact, be sure those statements are true. Obviously, very few bloggers will intentionally publish false information. However, in the rush to cover topics quickly, ahead of other bloggers and ahead of the mainstream media, bloggers face increasing pressure to “get it first and get it right.” Unfortunately, though, sometimes speed comes at the cost of accuracy. Sacrificing accuracy can cause at least three big problems for the blogger.
First, someone may accuse the blogger of libel because he or she misstated the facts.
Second, you and your blog will lose credibility. In the short term, lost credibility may cost you readers and advertisers. In the longer term, lost credibility may affect your ability to successfully publish other blogs.
Third, if you are selling goods, services, or information through your blog, misrepresenting certain facts can subject you to liability for fraud and violation of applicable consumer protection laws.
7. Consider special problems that can arise in the workplace.
Several disputes have arisen between employers and employees over blogging. Some bloggers have even lost their jobs. There are a few basic rules to follow in the workplace to avoid problems.
If you are an employee, don’t blog on your employer’s time or using your employer’s computer systems or network, unless you have your employer’s explicit written permission. Such practices are likely against the employer’s rules and you probably don’t have any legal right to use the employer’s equipment for personal blogging.
An exception to this general rule occurs when you are writing content for an official company blog that your employer sponsors. In that case, you have the employer’s permission, but you should verify that your blog postings comply with the company’s policies for online content. If you are not sure about the applicability of your employer’s policy, ask your manager.
If you are an employer, make sure your employees understand your company’s policies about blogging. Your blogging policies should be in writing and you should ask employees to sign a statement that says they have read and understood the policy and agree to comply with it. As with any other policies, you should enforce your blogging policies consistently and fairly.
8. If you publish a collaborative or group blog, make sure all the contributors know their rights and responsibilities concerning the blog and its content. The more people you have contributing content to a blog, the greater the potential for disputes. To avoid conflict, it is useful to develop a written agreement with the other bloggers that addresses, at a minimum, the following points:

who owns the copyright to the individual blog posts?
who owns the copyright to the blog as a whole?
can individual bloggers republish their blog posts on other blogs or in other publications, whether online or offline?
under what circumstances may individual bloggers remove their blog posts from the group blog?
do bloggers retain any interest in the blog’s content, including in their individual contributions to it, after they leave the blog?
who is entitled to revenue that the blog generates?
who is responsible for paying the blog’s expenses?
how will disputes among bloggers be resolved?
how will the various affairs of the blog be concluded if the blog ceases publication?

9. Blog anonymously, if your identity, reputation, or personal safety are at risk. In some cases, the only reasonable way to communicate your message–and to make it likely that you will be able to continue blogging–is to blog anonymously. While some countries, such as the United States of America, guarantee a legal right to communicate anonymously, exercising that right on the Internet is not necessarily easy because a blogger may leave various clues about his or her identity at numerous points in the blogging process. While a complete discussion of the technical means to blog anonymously is beyond the scope of this article, here are two resources that will help you navigate those technical issues.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)
Reporters Without Borders, “How to blog anonymously,” in Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents.

10. Learn more about the basics of the laws that affect bloggers. There is much more to the law of blogging than a brief article can cover. Moreover, as blogging becomes more popular, blogging law is developing rapidly. Therefore, learning about the legal issues of blogging is an ongoing process.
Happily, there are several good resources available to help you stay up to date on legal matters. One source of information is bloggers’ conferences and conventions. Those meetings often hold sessions or workshops that present the latest legal developments that bloggers need to know. Additionally, there are several online publications that explain the law in much greater detail and provide a variety of examples to guide you through the legal maze. Here are a few samples of those texts.

Daily Blog Tips, “12 U.S. Laws Bloggers Should Know“
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Legal Guide for Bloggers
Colette Vogele, Mia Garlick, and the Berkman Center Clinical Program in Cyberlaw, Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution

Bonus tip: Get periodic legal checkups of your blog.
Although this article presents a do-it-yourself approach to identifying and managing the major legal issues you are likely to face as a blogger, you can also benefit by having a lawyer conduct a legal checkup of your blog periodically, perhaps once each year. An increasing number of lawyers now offer preventive services such as legal checkups and those preventive reviews can help you identify and correct potential legal problems with your blog and learn about some of the more recent developments in the law that concern bloggers.

7 Things to Avoid While Leaving A Blog Comment

2009-10-12T06:56:00.001-07:00

Many people already wrote about the rules of blog comments before. Most of them, however, focused on the so called blog comments etiquette. That is, they told you how you should always add value to the discussion, respect the other people, never feed the trolls, be genuine and yada yada yada.

While that advice is solid, I feel that it lacks some practical sense. There are other points that I see people doing almost daily when leaving comments, and they can be equally annoying for the blog owner and for the other readers and commentators. Below you will find them: 7 things to avoid while leaving a blog comment.

1. Using the bold or italic attributes to highlight your whole comment

Blog comments can send good traffic to your website, and if you manage to catch people’s attention with your comments, this traffic might increase. Now, attention should be grabbed with a funny or interesting comment, and not by making your comment text bold or italicized.

Use bold only or specific words that you want to put in evidence, and italics on names and titles of books and similar.

2. Signing your comment

As you probably have already noticed, most comment forms ask for your name on the first input box. That is, you already signed your comment even before writing it, so there is no need to finish the comment with your name a second time.

Apart from being redundant information, it is also annoying for some people. For more on this topic read “If You Sign Your Blog Comments, You Are a Dork.”

3. Including a second (or third) link to your website

The previous point applies to website links also. Most comment forms allow you to include a URL that will be used to hyperlink your name. If you include that URL at the end of your footer a second time it will give the impression that you are just spamming the comment section for some links.

4. Leaving a comment without reading the article first

Common sense you say? I wouldn’t bet on it. I have seen a huge amount of comments, both on my and on other blogs, from people that had no clue about the topic of the article in question.

Sometimes they knew what the article was about, but they interpreted the message from the author on a completely different way.

If you are going to leave a comment, make sure that you have read and understood the article to begin with.

5. Leaving a one-word comment

It might be the case that people leaving comments such as “Great!” or “Thanks!” truly read the article and mean it. Regardless, those comments will be considered as spam.
Just take the effort to come up with a complete sentence, will you?

6. Leaving a second trackback

If you link to another post on your blog, your blogging software will send a notice to that blog, which will in turn create a link pointing back to your post on the comments section. This is called a trackback.

Sometimes trackbacks will not work, and in this case you could leave a comment mentioning that you wrote about the post in question. If the trackback worked, however, you would be spamming that blog by leaving a second comment with a link pointing to your article.

7. Leaving a comment as if you are the know-it-all guru on the subject

Whenever I come across a comment that begins with “This is just stupid…” or “You are so wrong…” I already arm myself against potential nonsense ahead.

If you disagree with the opinions of the author, express it politely. Even if you are right about the issue you will be seen as a jerk if you come with the I-know-it-all attitude.

Just take it easy.

Update: Obviously these are my opinions, so feel free to disagree. And if you are guilty of one of these points, remember that it is not a big deal. Just keep it in mind for future comments!

Six Rules of Blogging (That Also Apply to Twitter)

2009-10-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve been blogging for around 4 years now and despite all the changes we see in technology and software, the ‘rules’ to a successful blog tend to have remained the same. Yet, while the rules haven’t changed much, a lot of our traffic generation methods have. Gone are the days where 50 votes would guarantee a Digg homepage or you could place some technorati tags in your post and get thousands of visitors.

Each niche is getting more competitive by the day but it still doesn’t mean you can’t stand out from the crowd. One of my favourite new sites for creating relationships (hugely important) and getting website traffic has actually turned out to be Twitter. For the last few months, the micro-blogging has been in my top 5 referring sites, sending thousands of visitors monthly.

In this post I want to look at six common rules which can help with your blogging and also benefit the Twitter users of you out there who want to drive more traffic back to your site. Please note that I use the term ‘rules’ loosely, everyone has their own way of doing things and there will always be exceptions but you’ll probably find that these work well for you.

1. Provide Value

Let me ask you all a quick question: Why do you read Daily Blog Tips? I can safely assume you’re a blogger, but what is different to the hundreds of other blogging blogs out there? While answers to this may differ, the underlying factor is that the site provides value to you in one way or another and you don’t want to miss it. That is the single most important reason anyone subscribes to a blog.

They get value, whether that value is in the form of humour or in the form of how to make money, that’s what people want. Instead of getting into blogging to think of how you can benefit (mindshare, income etc) look at how you can benefit your readers. How can you make someone laugh, how can you make someone more money or in the case of this site: how can you help somebody become a better blogger?

If you offer constant value to your readers, you’ll give them an important reason to stick around.

Twitter Tip: Instead of just linking to your website all the time, why not help people out. Ask people who you can help them or even just inspire people with some motivational quotes.

2. Don’t Flood Readers with Posts

I’ve ran a number of blogs, from ones that focus on internet marketing, one that covers self improvement and for a while I even ran a celebrity blog (which I quickly sold). What I’ve learned from this is that certain types of blogs have a different level of posting frequency. If I only wrote once per week on a celebrity gossip blog then readers of the site are going to miss out on all the news.

However, if I run a site about personal development and write a 3,000 word post everyday, that’s going to be far too much for people to digest, and I’ll probably end up repeating much of what I’ve already said. Unless you run a news blog that needs to be updated multiple times per day, try to find a nice posting schedule that you can keep to. I tend to post around 3-4 times per week on my main sites.

Twitter Tip: Overactive users tend to get unfollowed. This has been minimised by tools like Tweetdeck, but if you are tweeting 10 x per minute (some people really do this) then you are going to clog up the twitter ’stream’ and people will stop wanting your updates.

3. Take Part in the Conversation

This point is relatively obvious so I’ll get straight to the point. Blogging is not just about you and it’s actually not even just about your readers. It also includes the conversation that goes on between your blog and others in the same industry. Read the blogs of others and leave comments to let them know what you think of their sites.

Link out to others and you’ll find that people will start linking out to you; you can even go as far as connecting with other blog authors on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and stay connected that way. Do not think that your industry is confined to your blog; there’s a whole world out there.

Twitter Tip: Get to know the people that follow you and follow the leaders in your industry. I’ve made many friends this way that has led to Re-Tweets and even backlinks from their websites.

4. Make Your Blog unique

There are a lot of things you can do to make your blog stand out:

Have a unique design
Write long, detailed posts in a niche that writers short informative ones (or vica verca)
Implement an idea nobody else uses like the bloggers face-off or a list of top blogs
Bring in authority figures for interviews
Offer content in different formats such as audio and video
Give away a free eBook for more in-depth topics like this one I did on how to make friends

Despite new blogs being created every single day, it doesn’t mean you can’t stand out from the crowd. Make sure you offer pure value consistently with a splashing of the above and you can’t go far wrong.
Twitter Tip: Make your profile stand out by adding an image and a creatively designed profile. It looks far better than a generic offering and shows you really care about getting involved.

5. Make it Easy for Readers to Connect

Quickly think of some of your favourite blogs that you read regularly. DailyBlogTips? TechCruch? ProBlogger? Something that I find in common with people and their favourite blogs is that they know a lot about the author, and feel like they ‘know’ them a bit. For example I just know that the author of this site is Daniel and he lives in Brazil. I just know that the author of ProBlogger is Darren Rowse and he lives in Australia with his wife, V.

Do you make it easy for your readers to get to know you and connect? Some easy ways to do this include having an informative about page, using your name on posts and blog comments and even sharing your personal stories at times in your blog posts.

Twitter Tip: A good way to tell people about you on Twitter is to fill in your bio, but you can also include a link and use this as a specific ‘twitter landing page’ that quickly tells people about you and your website. This is usually far better than just sending them to your homepage.

6. Make Content Easy to Read

There is nothing worse in my opinion than content that is just split into huge chunks of text with no line breaks. Even a post like this which is well over 1,000 words, is easily scannable due to the ‘list’ format and the bold headings.

Some tips on making your content easy to read include:

Spell-checking your posts before you publish them
Use bullet points where necessary
Create sub-headings for longer, in-depth posts
If you are doing a list post, separate the points with bold headings for people who scan / skim
Include paragraph breaks after every 3 or 4 sentences
Read the post yourself to see that it all flows properly

Twitter Tip: Although nobody expects you to write perfectly with 140 characters. Try to make sense and don’t shorten every single word, use multiple tweets or direct messages where possible.

37 Ways to Make Blogging Easier

2009-10-12T06:43:00.001-07:00

Plan out content with pen and paper.
Dedicate time each week to think of ideas.
Make it easy to record ideas.
Build a life of unique experiences.
Use WriteRoom for typing.
Set limits on the time allowed for writing.
Always have a large backlog of content.
Follow a lower frequency of posts.
Capture interesting tid bits you find with Evernote.
Be passionate.
Write about a broader niche.
Take extended breaks.
Don’t write till you drop – stop writing when you’re on a roll.
Follow clear structures in your content (headings, sub-headings, bullet points etc).
Pick a predominant medium.
Ask visitors what they want.
Make every piece of content count.
Never stop reading and learning.
Set higher standards for yourself as motivation.
Forget word count – say more with less.
Identify the time when brainstorming for you is most effective and stick with that.
The moment it’s not fun: STOP! (and come back to it later)
Experiment with different mediums.
Clear your head with exercise, good food and a glass of water.
Write down EVERY idea, no matter how silly it may seem.
Clear off other items from your to-do list.
Ask visitors to help with research – have them send in quotes etc.
Believe in what you’re saying.
Be both topical and non-topical.
Don’t overthink it – your content is not set in stone.
Think in lists.
Always be creating content (if only in your mind).
Trust that what you have to say is important.
Plug your niche(s) into the Adwords keyword tool.
Monitor what related blogs are saying.
Add variety to your workflow.
Be ruthless. If you’re not feeling an article, delete it.

5 Quick Ways to Improve Your Blog

2009-10-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

Let’s say that you have a few hours free and you want to dedicate it to your blog. It’s not enough time to take on a major project such as building a new theme or completely redoing your categories/tags (at least not if you have a large site), but you want to do something to make your blog better.

If you find yourself with that blessing, here are five things that you can do right now to improve your blog, all of which take less than an hour and some only take a few minutes.

Best of all, doing these things will, in most cases, have an immediate or near-immediate impact on your site. Making it more approachable with better content.

So here are some ways you can improve your site right now.

5. Tweak Your Theme

You might not have the time you need to overhaul your theme completely, but what about tweaking it a bit? Why not see if you can improve your site’s typography, thus making your text easier to read? Maybe it’s time for a better logo?

Though, in a perfect world, the look of a site would not impact the way it is read, appearance matters a great deal on the Web, especially when it affects readability. Take a few moments to look at your site, analyze what its weakest points are visually and address them.

Even if it is as simple as adding new RSS buttons, it can be a huge help.

4. Run a Site Speed Test

How fast does your site load? What’s slowing it down the most? If you don’t know, run a site speed analysis and find out. Then all you have to do is eliminate whatever is slowing you down and you should notice a drastic difference in your site’s speed ,all without moving hosts or paying more money.

If you have files that are slowing you down but can’t remove them, consider hosting them on Amazon Cloudfront or Rackspace Cloud to greatly increase their download speed cheaply. Also, be sure to optimize images as needed to keep them from dragging your site down.

3. Tweak/Add Static Pages

Though most people read blogs for the day-to-day content, most people become regular readers, at least in part, due to something available on the static pages of your site.

If you check your traffic stats, you’ll likely find that your static pages are among the most popular on your site but, since they aren’t being constantly written, they fall out of date.

Take a few moments to update or add to your static pages. Write a little bit about yourself, include a picture if you can to forge a more human connection and add pages that compliment your regular blog topics. It works great.

2. Add a Feature

Though adding features to your blogs recklessly can get you in trouble, especially with your site’s speed and appearance, if you have been wanting to add Twitter interaction or a new widget, now is a great time.

Since WordPress and other blogging platforms make it so easy to add plugins, widgets and other elements, if you want to try out a new tool or service, you can do so with relative ease and safety. However, be sure to closely monitor how it affects your site and ensure that it does more good than harm.

1. Brainstorm

Though brainstorming isn’t as immediate with its gratification, it is something you will see benefit from tomorrow and for a long time moving forward.

The problem is that, if you’ve been blogging long enough, idea generation and blog post writing are likely part of the same process. If you don’t constantly have ideas ready when you wake up in the morning, you spend time coming up with ideas that should have gone to writing and crafting the perfect post.

If you brainstorm in advance, you’ll find that your posts are much higher quality. They are better thought out, have much tighter writing and tend to wonder off course less. If you post every weekday and you take an hour now to come up with 15 good ideas, you’ll have three weeks of high-quality posts in your future.

What can improve your site more than that?

Bottom Line

When it comes to making your site better, it doesn’t take a lot of time, just a lot of heart and willingness to sacrifice a few moments to spend on things that are not directly related to blogging.

Best of all, these are just some of the things you can do to make your site better. There are plenty of other things that you can improve on the quick. You just have to b

2009-10-10T09:39:00.001-07:00

WordPress Setup - www.myblogusa.com

Do your homework first and read about others’ mistakes
Choose a reliable web host
Choose a good domain name
If you need inspiration, check this list
Register and keep your domain name with a registrar
Always install WordPress in the root directory
Update your ping list

Themes & Design

Check & Validate

Plugins

Install Akismet
Install WordPress Database Backup
Install Subscribe to Comments but leave it unchecked
Install Chunk URLs
Install Related Enteries and consider setting it to 3
Install Custom Query String
Install Jerome's Keywords
Install sig2feed

SEO & Analytics

Install Google Sitemap Generator
Install Enforce www Preference
Optimize your Meta Description Tag
Setup an optimal URL structure
Make category pages display excerpts
Setup any needed 301 Redirects
Create a robots.txt file (and here is a collection of different ones)
Modify your title tag to be optimal
Remove the hyperlink from the single post titles
Offer email subscriptions
Install the Feedburner Replacement plugin
Add the Google Analytics plugin and track your stats

How to Blow Out a Blog - Make some money

2009-10-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

Introduction
- Blogging is web writing for a personal, informational or commercial purpose. Some people
  use blogs just to keep an online diary, but many are starting to use them to to sell products and report information. Whatever your purpose, if you want your blog to be seen by the masses and/or earn money, here are some easy-to-follow steps on how to blow out your blog.
Step 1: Optimize your Blog
- Search engine optimization (SEO) is important so that people searching the web for various subjects (that you write about) can find your blog. It's very desirable to have your blog rank on the first page of Google and other search engines.
How to Find the Best Keywords
- You need to find effective keywords for your blog. The best tools to find strong keywords are Wordtracker and Trellian's Keyword Discovery Tool. Keyword DiscoveryThey both require payment in order to use their services, but you can use their trial versions to see if you like them. Free online services for keywords include Google Adwords Keyword tool and the SEO keyword suggestion tool. SEO Book: Keyword Suggestion To Another great tool for free keywords is Google Trends, which gives you the top 100 keywords being searched for at any time. Google Trends: Homepag
Where to Place the Keywords
- Once you have determined which keywords are most applicable to your blog, the next step is placing the keywords in the correct areas of your blog. Most SEO experts agree that the following areas of keyword placement are important Google search engine ranking factors.SEOmoz: Google Search Engine Ranking Factors
- The title line (at the very top of the browser):
- Keywords in the body text:
- Anchor text of inbound link:
- Page URL (web address):
- In addition to the upper part of the web site, you want to place keywords in the following areas of your blog:
- (H1 or H2 tags):
- Domain name:
- Within bold type:
- Image and "atl" tags:
- Another area of your blog to optimize, seen only by search engines is the meta tags.Search Engine Watch: How To Use HTML Meta Tags - Meta Tag Overview In your meta description tag, write a one or two sentences (200 to 250 characters) describing your blog using keywords.Search Engine Watch: How To Use HTML Meta Tags - The Meta Description Tag In your meta keywords tag, enter specific keywords and common misspellings of keywords.Search Engine Land: Meta Keywords Tag 101: How To "Legally" Hide Words On Your Pages For Search Engines - Should You Use It? Sure, For Misspellings Keep in mind that Google doesn't recognize these meta tags, but Yahoo! search and other search engines do, and that's millions of users.Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Answering more popular picks: meta tags and web search Yahoo! Search Help: How do I improve the ranking of my web site in the search result
Use Specific Keyword Phrases
- One final word about keywords, always try to go for specific phrases, not general terms. For example, don't use the word "lawyer" as a keyword, be more specific, like "personal bankruptcy lawyer Seattle." The word "lawyer" could be a search term for a 16 year-old doing a paper for high school or an old lady looking for a TV show with lawyers.SEO Book.com: Keyword Value Pyramid
- However, someone searching for "personal bankruptcy lawyer Seattle" has a very specific need, they are looking for a personal bankruptcy lawyer in Seattle. Keep this in mind when you read about how to make money with your blog.
Step 2: Make Money with your Blog
- If you want to earn money from your blog, there are some powerful ad programs that you can place in your blog to create income. Some ad programs pay you per click of the ad, while others pay when a user clicks through an ad on your blog and makes a purchase.
Popular Widgets | Add a Link
- A Digg Widget allows you to display the top stories on the popular community web site.Digg: Create a Digg Widget No need to update this widget, Digg automatically "talks" to this widget and gives it new stories. Several othe
- A Twitter Badge allows blog visitors to see all of your postings on this fast-moving community blog.Twitter Support: Put your Twitter updates on your site or blog You must join Twitter before installing this widget.
More Ad Programs for Your Blog
- Yahoo! Publisher Network
- Similar to Google Adsense, Yahoo! offers an ad program called the Yahoo! Publisher Network which also displays ads that are relevant to your blog's content.Google Adsense: Homepage Yahoo! Publisher Network: Homepa Like Google Adsense, you earn money when visitors on your blog click on the ads. The same principles of ad placement and blending mentioned above also apply. However, you cannot use both of these programs on the same blog posting per their terms of service.
- Chitika Premium Ads
- Chitika Premium Ads are actually widgets and offer multiple products and a mini-search engine, all in one ad. Chitika Premium Ads are not contextual (based on your blog's content), so you have more control over which ads appear on your blog. Here is an example of a Chitika Premium Ad.Chitika: Chitika Premium Ads
- Affiliate Ad Programs
- Linkshare and Commission Junction represent numerous affiliate programs, from Apple Computers to British Airways. Commission Junction: Homepa After joining Linkshare and/or Commission Junction for free, you can apply for the affiliate programs that you're interested in advertising on your blog.Linkshare: Publisher Help Center :: How do I generate revenue? Commission Junction: About Affiliate Market
- Some companies will accept your affiliate application to advertise their products, while others may not, it just depends on their requirements.
- Amazon Affiliates
- Some companies, such as Amazon.com, work directly with you, without a middle-man.Amazon.com: Homepage Like the programs above, href="https://affiliate-program.amazo... Associates will provide you with HTML code for ads (text or banner) that you can place on your blog.Amazon.com Associates: Links & Banners Here is an example of an Amazon.com banner ad.Amazon.com: Homepage
- Text Link Ads
- Text Link Ads is an increasingly popular affiliate program that provides text ads for various companies and their products.Text Link Ads: Homepage Text Link Ads sends you the HTML code for various ads, but you place only the ones that you want on your blog.Text Link Ads: Homepage
- More Ad Programs
- Other popular ad programs include: myblogusa.comValueClick Media: Homepage
Text Ads vs. Banner Ads
- In many of these ad programs, you usually have the choice between using a banner ad:
- or a text ad:
- Text ads (words that link to advertiser site) generally have a greater click rate than banner ads because text ads seamlessly fit into your content and do not look like ads.Business Wire: iPerceptions Study Uncovers Consumers' Real Online Ad Preferences
Step 3: Driving Traffic to Your Blog
- Once your blog is optimized and your ads are up, you need to bring traffic (visitors) to your blog. A great way to do this is by posting your blog on community web blogs and bookmarking sites; these are online town halls where people read and post stories. This is also called "social networking."Pro Blogger:
Social Bookmarking - Getting your Blog Noticed
Community Web Blogs and Bookmarking Sites
- There are new community web blogs and social bookmarking sites starting up everyday, but you want to focus on popular ones such as: Digg, Reddit.com, Propeller, Yahoo! Buzz, Mixx, StumbleUpon and Delicious.Digg: Homepage
- After joining a community web blog(s), the next step is to post an enticing headline (also known as "link baiting") about your blog's topic. This headline may also include a short synopsis and should always include a link back to your blog. For examples of good headlines/link bait, go to Popurls where the most popular posts from the most popular web communities are updated.
- You do not want to blatantly spam a community web site. This activity will likely get you banned from the site. Your post's headline and synopsis need to sound legitimate and interesting on their own merit; so stay away from posting things like "Check This Out!" That's a no-no. You must be subtle about it. In the marketing world, this subtle approach is called "viral marketing.EcommerceTimes.com: Tell A Friend: Viral Marketing Packs Clout Online
- Here is an example of a community blog post:
- If people click on that headline/link, it will take them to the full article on San Vicente Media.San Vicente Media: Blog
- Whether you use text ads, banner ads or a combination of both, it's important to try to match your ads with the content on your blog posts. Also, always place at least one ad "above the fold" which is the part of the computer screen that appears when you first log onto the web site.Performancing.com: Above vs below the fold ad pricing
More Places to Link and Plug Your Blog
- News Aggregator Sites
- Submit your blog posts to news aggregator sites where a real live person will decide whether or not your blog post should be published. Some of the top news aggregator sites include: Truemors, Fark and Tailrank.Truemors: Homepage If your blog post is published, it could drive quite a bit of traffic to your site.
- Blog Syndication
- Join Blogburst, an online service that syndicates blogger content to major newspaper web sites such as USA Today, Reuters, Fox News and more.Blogburst: Blogger Overview This exposure can bring traffic to your web site (via your byline on the newspaper web site) and the top bloggers are actually paid by Blogburst.Blogburst: Rewards Program FAQ
- Submit your blog posts to article directories. Pro Blogger: How To Market Your Blog in 2007Most of them do not pay, but many will allow you to include a link back to your blog. And there is always the possibility that your content could be reposted (over and over) via these article directories. A very popular article directory is Ezine Articles.Ezine Articles: Homepage
- Directories and Search Engines
- Place your blog (and its RSS feed) in blog directories such as Blog Catalog, Technorati, Blog Flux Topsites and others. Your blog gets exposure to other bloggers, improved ranking on search engines and more traffic.
- Enter your blog in Google's Sitemap Submission, which will enable Google to find your blog much easier and index all your blog posts quicker.Google: Webmaster Tool Tour Also, Submit Express offers a free directory submission service that submits your blog/website to more than 40 search engines.Submit Express: Free Website URL Submission - Submit Google, Yahoo, MS
- Website Communities
- Join a popular website community such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can create links to your blog in these heavily traveled communities.MySpace: Homepage
- Press Releases
- Write a press release about your blog. A press release alerts journalists about an interesting story; if they decide to write an article about your blog posting, that could drive in a lot of traffic.
- You can distribute your press release to journalists through these 20+ Free Press Release Distribution Sites or pay a fee to a company such as PRWeb for writing and/or distribution to media outlets.Mashable: 20+ Free Press Release Distribution Sites
Step 4: Keeping and Growing Your Blog Traffic
- Now that you have traffic coming to your blog (hopefully), you want to keep your audience coming back by doing several things.
Update and Bookmark
- Add new content frequently. If you don't, people may assume it's a dead blog and stop logging on. Remember, the web has a huge appetite for new content. You want to update 2-3 times a week, unless you're running a news blog, which would be daily.
- Add bookmark features for visitors to bookmark your blog; this helps your blog's search engine ranking and increases web traffic.Caroline Middlebrook: 20 Do-Follow Social Bookmarking Sites That Actually Work (and how to bookmark QUICKLY)
- The easiest way is by installing ShareThis and/or Social Marker to your blog.ShareThis: Homepage These features allow users to bookmark your blog on popular community web logs such as Digg.Digg: Homepage
Video Blogging | Add a Link
- If you're not the shy type, try adding a weekly video blog post to your blog. By adding this feature, you can actually speak to your visitors and create a more personal touch. Blogger Darren Rowse created a video, which he placed on his blog ProBlogger an
- You can also place your video blog on community video web sites such as Revver and Metacafe, which will actually pay you for traffic.Revver: General Questions Metacafe: Help Blog: Metacafe's Producer Rewards P
Google AdSense | Add a Link
- Google Adsense is the most popular ad program on the web.Google Adsense: Homepage After you sign up (for free), Google Adsense will generate a unique HTML code for you to insert into your blog posts.
  Pings, Trackbacks, and More
  Pings
  A "ping" is a signal sent from your blog to blog directories when your blog has been updated with a new post.Blogtonomy: What is a blog ping To send out pings, just copy and paste this list of ping services into your blog's ping function.Daily Blog Tips: List of Ping Services Also enter your blog in these popular ping services: Ping-o-Matic!, Technorati: Ping and Google Blog Search Ping Service.To ping your RSS Feed, try FeedBurner's PingShot.FeedBurner: PingShot Overview and FAQ
  Trackbacks
  Activate the trackback feature on your blog. A trackback is when another web site links to your blog and your blog becomes "aware" of this external linking, automatically.Cruftbox: How Trackback Works The trackback feature makes a note of this, usually in the comments section of the your blog.
  Related Posts
  Add a "Related Posts" section at the bottom of each of your blog posts. If someone wants to read more about the topic that they have just finished reading, then they will click to another entry on your blog, increasing your page view count.Blog-Tutorials: Related Posts Links: Make Your Blog More User Friendly Depending on your blog platform, this may require a plug-in or you can manually create it.
  Subscribe to Comments
  Finally, a powerful option for your blog is the "Subscribe to Comments" feature.ProBlogger: 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky Some blogging platforms have this feature built in, while others require you to add it via a plug-in. Every time there is a new comment in the chosen blog post, the subscriber receives an email and a link back to that blog post.
- Step 5: Add Widgets to Your Blog
  A widget is gadget for the web. By adding widgets to your blog, you can bring fresh content (created by others) to your blog for visitors to read. Most widgets reside in the left or right column/margin of your blog, depending on your blog platform.The Chitika Blog Archive: Blogs and Widgets By BUMPzee
- RSS Feeds | Add a Link
  Most blogs come with an RSS Feed, often called "Really Simple Syndication." XML.com: What is RSS With an RSS Feed you can syndicate your blog to anyone who subscribes.XML.com: What is RSS When people sub
  FeedBurner is a free web tool that you can install on your blog to manage, analyze (subscriber stats) and publicize your RSS Feed.FeedBurner: About FeedBurner XML.com: What is RSS You can also place a
- Technorati | Add a Link
  Create a bookmark feature for users to link your blog to Technorati.Technorati: Front Page As mentioned earlier, Technorati is a blogging directory that keeps tabs on the blog community.Technorati
- Money Making Widgets | Add a Link
  Google AdSense for Search is a mini Google search engine for your blog.Google: AdSense for search - web search right from your site - AdSense Help Center Google: Homepage When your visit
  ScribeFire QuickAds displays ads within a widget and you get a commission if someone clicks through your blog and buys an item.ScribeFire: QuickAds
  You can also get a sales commission through aStore, a widget for those signed up in the Amazon Associates program.Amazon.com: aStore for Amazon Associates Amazon.com: Associates
  Another fast-growing widget ad program is WidgetBucks.WidgetBucks: For Bloggers
- Step 6: Incorporate Multimedia Into Your Blog
  As blogging becomes more and more sophisticated, more bloggers are adding multimedia (audio and video) to their blogs.
- Helpful Widgets | Add a Link
  Do you want your blog visitors to call you or send you a text via your cell phone? Then install jaxtr, a widget that allows blog readers to call your cell phone, but doesn't disclose your phone number.jaxtr: How it works 3jam allow
  Your blog users can find out the price of gas with Gas-Cost.net, various time zones with ClockLink.com, or the weather with iBegin Weather.Gas-Cost.net: Homepage ClockLink.com: About Clock Link
  You can create online surveys and polls on your blog with PollDaddy or Visu.PollDaddy: PollDaddy Surveys - Get feedback Visu: Homepage These widgets are customizable, so you can create any poll or survey
- Google Video Units | Add a Link
  Another option is adding other peoples' videos to your web site and earning money via Google's Video Units.Google: Video Units You need to have a Google AdSense account and a YouTube account (both are free) to sign up
  Placed on your blog, the AdSense Player features YouTube videos with Google AdSense ads at the bottom of the screen.YouTube: Homepage Google: Adsense When visitors click on those ads, you receive
- Podcasting | Add a Link
  You can also add podcasts to your blog. A podcast is an audio file and can include music, spoken word, anything audio. You can create a podcast with an audio recorder/microphone that is built into your computer or with an external audio recorder/microphon
  Once you have your podcast posted in your blog, you'll want to list it in podcast directories such as iTunes, PodcastDirectory.com and Podfeed.Net.Podcast411: DIRECTORIES Apple: iPod + iTunes
- Step 7: Analyze Your Blog Traffic and Performance
  Are any of the aforementioned steps working? To find out, check your blog's traffic info. Most blog platforms come with some type of basic traffic measuring feature, but to get more specific info on your traffic, consider these programs below.
- Popular Analytical Traffic Tools
  Google Analytics
  Google Analytics is a free service primarily used for web sites, but you can use it for your blog as well.Google: Analytics It tells you how many visitors came to your blog, how they were referred, each blog post visited, etc.
  Yahoo! Web Analytics
  Google's prime competition is Yahoo! Web Analytics, a pay service, primarily used by e-businesses.Yahoo!: FAQs This high-end tracking system tool uses "first cookie technology" to track visitors, returning visitors in real time. This service is for bloggers who are seriously trying to make money from their blog.
  If you're looking for a free traffic analytic service from Yahoo!, then try MyBlogLog, which gives you blog visitor stats and has its own community (great for plugging your blog!).MyBlogLog: Homepage
  PostRank
  PostRank is a free online tool that analyzes your blog posts and ranks them by the number of comments and bookmarks.PostRank: What it is You can quickly see which types of posts your readers respond to and which ones they do not. This is a great way to see what types of blog posts are generating buzz!
  Feedburner
  FeedBurner was mentioned before as an RSS management tool.FeedBurner: Blogs It can also track your RSS Feed traffic and tell you how many visitors have subscribed.FeedBurner: And There Was Much Rejoicing: New FeedBurner Statistics This tool also tells you how many visitors clicked through your RSS feed to your blog posts.
- More Traffic Tools
  Open Web Analytics: Homepage
  Clicky: Web Analytics 2.0
  StatCounter.com: Free invisible Web tracker, Hit counter and Web stats
  Mint: A Fresh Look at your Site
  Sitemeter: Counter and Statistics Tracker
  Note: Most of these analytical tools work the same way. They provide you with an HTML tracking code that is placed on each blog post that you wish to track.

The Complete Guide to Video Blogging

2009-10-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

Video blogging is nothing new — after all, video has existed on the web long before YouTube. But video equipment is now cheaper, post production software more accessible, and online platforms on which to distribute video — such as YouTube — are easier to use than ever before. Still, only some of the many people posting videos regard themselves as video bloggers.

Even though the notion of video blogging itself isn’t new, the actual endeavor is still novel to many people. This guide will explore concepts behind video blogging and the tools for creating and distributing that content.

Video Blogging is Still in its Infancy

Robb Montgomery, CEO of a public charity that promotes journalism education called Visual Editors, said in an email interview that web video consumption overall is a booming phenomenon but maintains that we are still at the beginning of an emerging art form and story form with video blogging and it may be too early to generalize about long-term effects.

It may seem surprising that video blogging hasn’t take off considering how cheap the equipment has become and how easy it is to shoot, edit and post video online. According to Adam Singer’s Future Buzz blog, some reasons it hasn’t include: it’s time consuming to produce compelling video, video is not searchable, and pros still have an advantage.

But the demand is there. In August, more than 161 million viewers watched an average of 157 videos per viewer, according to data from the comScore Video Metrix service. A whopping 81.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video and the average online video viewer saw 9.7 hours of video in August.

Video viewing doesn’t show signs of slowing, but what about video blogging?

Web Video Puts People on Equal Footing

Video on the Internet does two things — it puts people on equal footing versus the top-down communication of broadcast media and it allows for direct talkback from the audience.

Michael Rosenblum, CEO of Rosenblumtv, said in an email interview, that the only reason people used to differentiate between average person and journalist is that access to the equipment and the ability to publish was just too complicated and too expensive. He said that went away with the web, which gave anyone the ability to write or publish whatever they wanted.

“Now that freedom comes to video — as the cost of cameras goes to next to nothing and the web carries video with the same fluidity that it carries text,” he said. “What we are looking at here is the true democratization of video — a real ‘free press.’ This, I think, is a very positive thing.

“The move to video blogging, just getting started, is to my mind the same as the move to writing books post-Gutenberg. It took the printing press to liberate writing from the few literate monks; now the web will liberate video from the few ‘video literate’ TV types,” said Rosenblum, who just launched an online video training site called the New York Video School.

What Makes a Good Video Blog

With lower costs for equipment and software, anyone with a video camera phone could become a video blogger. Technical barriers to video production are getting lower, but the big question is, what makes a good video blog?

Ryanne Hodson, a video blogger, editor, and trainer who, with co-founder Michael Verdi, launched Freevlog.org in 2005, said the number one tip for video bloggers is to be passionate and to cover topics they care about. She and Verdi, along with Diane Weynand and Shirley Craig, wrote the book Secrets of Videoblogging. “Be excited about something and go out and capture it,” she said. “If you have something to say and you want to share it, you have a venue.”

Montgomery said that most web video needs to get to the point right away. “Hit them with your best sound bite and start your story arc there to pull them in. People make a go or no-go decision usually within the first 10 seconds. Once you have them, standardizing on story length becomes less important. The key is to know how to keep the story moving at a good pace,” he said.

The length of video clips can vary depending on the style of the video created, but always keep your audience in mind.

“We live in a world of rather short attention spans. We find that two minutes or so is the ’sweet spot’. The whole notion of hours is kind of an abstraction. Think of music. Most songs are three minutes long and that works great, and delivers a great story and experience for the listener,” Rosenblum said.

Josh Leo, who has been video blogging since 2005 and has four vlogs, said good videos are a mixture of the basics of good production: editing, good, clear shots, and good lighting. Beyond that, he adds, it’s an incorporation of one’s personality. “You can create a copycat video, but you’re contributing to the noise,” he said. “It’s not about the quantity, but the quality.”

Leo tries to post a video every other week. He said he learned to improve his videos through trial and error — posting, watching them, and posting again. “The important thing is to post something and learn as you go,” Leo said.

Creating a Video Blog

Montgomery said choosing a video camera depends upon your beat, style, audience and frequency of posting. “I have seen people be effective with a mobile cam or laptop camera. At the other end of the spectrum are solo video journalists who have the chance to make high-quality stories from the field with small cameras like the Sony A1U and about an equal dollar investment in microphones and Final Cut,” he said.
The software Montgomery recommends is a mixture of low-cost and professional applications: Final Cut Studio, GarageBand, iPhoto, Fission, and Audio Hijack Pro for editing and audio.

Leo said that during his first three years of video blogging, he used a Sony Handycam for shooting and iMovie for editing. He now uses Final Cut Pro, an HD camcorder, and an iMac.

Hodson said she likes the Flip cam and Sanyo’s Xacti HD cams. She said Mac users can use iMovie and PC users can use Windows Movie Maker, and a step up from those are Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere Elements.

Rosenblum said Flip cams and the JVC HM100u are great, and noted that shooting in HD is important for certain types of video blogs. “HD is necessary if you want to sell the content for broadcast, and the market for that is expanding all the time. So if you are going to buy a camera, I strongly suggest HDV,” Rosenblum said. He said he loves Final Cut Pro because it’s simple and accessible, and users can start editing from the first moment.

But it’s not just about the video — audio also matters, according to Montgomery. “It is far wiser to invest in microphones and recorders that capture high-definition sound than it is to go for a camera with high-definition pictures and a small lens,” he said.

In the end, though, video blogging is exploding because the barriers to entry are so low. “The bottom line is, if you want to get into video blogging it is remarkably simple and very, very inexpensive,” Rosenblum said.

Distributing a Video Blog

Hodson posts her videos on YouTube, Blip.tv, Archive.org and embeds clips on her blog. She also likes using Flickr for video and photos because she can email them from her iPhone 3Gs, then Flickr sends a link out to Twitter. But, she stresses, no matter where you post your videos, you should add your video clips on your own web site or blog as well.

Rosenblum said he loves YouTube because it is simple and so easy to embed, and that quality of Vimeo and Blip.tv is great and fast, while Montgomery said he uses Vimeo for its quality and YouTube for its search.
“It really helps if you engage with your audience in social media. I got 9,000 YouTube views in one day for my ‘Obama in Cairo’ report (second only to Al Jazeera) because I used Twitter, keywords and other social media to promote the publication at the right moment and in the right social space,” he said.

Leo posts his clips to Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook and his blog sites. He points out that people are loyal to their video providers, so uploading to multiple sites is smart. “It’s just giving people the opportunity to choose how they want to view your video,” he said. “Not everyone uses an RSS feed. Find who your audience is and post it to where they are.”

Video Blogging Tips from Robb Montgomery:

- Only avoid using a tripod when it is impractical
- Be yourself
- Avoid trying to copy TV news formulas
- Film exciting and visually interesting B-roll
- Audio matters for brand identity

Facebook Widget: Embed your Facebook Content Anywhere

2009-10-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

Facebook recently released two rather robust widgets: the Fan Box and the Live Stream Box, both of which allow Facebook features to be embedded on other websites.

Today, Facebook launched two more widgets as part of a new centralized widget page where you can grab various Facebook content for quick insertion into a TypePad () or Blogger () hosted blog, or embedding on a site that supports it.

The two new widgets are a Photo Badge, which shows off photos from your albums, and a Page Badge, which shows basic details about a Facebook Page, like its logo, status, and number of fans. All of these widgets join Facebook’s long existing Profile Badge in the new widget area.

The Photo Badge seems most likely to take off out of the bunch – after all, Facebook has become an enormous photo sharing site. But in terms of functionality, the Fan Box and Live Stream Box are most impressive, while the others offer very little in the way of customization or interactivity.

It seems perhaps like one area of Facebook () that has been ignored for too long, as widgets will only further broaden the reach of the world’s top social network.

Visit: http://www.myblogusa.com

25 Great Blogger Widgets - Use them to make more money

2009-10-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

Many people think that Blogger lacks in all of the extra goodies you can add to other platforms like WordPress, but it simply isn’t true. By using widgets you can customize your blog as much as you like by just adding little snippets of code to the sidebars.

Visit: http://www.myblogusa.com

Allow users to talk to you via IM, see what your most popular posts are, or even read news from sites such as Mashable. With these 25 widgets, you can create an even more powerful way of communicating with your visitors, just make sure you don’t overload them with too many!

Communications Widgets

Google Talk – Give visitors the ability to talk to you via Google Talk directly from your blog sidebar.
Jaxtr – Create a widget that allows people to call you on the phone without revealing the phone number to them.
Meebo Me – Meebo Me will allow you to create a chat box that you can install on your Blogger page, giving you the chance to converse with visitors to your site.
Skype () – The official Skype widget allows you to create various buttons that can show your current status and also allows people to just click it and give you a call.
Tag-Board – Allows you to add a real-time chat board to your blog that your visitors and you can use to converse.

Social Widgets

Delicious Linkrolls – Share your Delicious () bookmarks with the world with this easy to install linkroll widget.
FriendFeed Widget – Share all of your FriendFeed () activity with the readers of your site.
Google Friend Connect () – A makeshift social network that runs across any site that has installed Google Friend Connect. You can join a site, see the other members, play games and more.
LinkedInABox – LinkedInABox retrieves your LinkedIn () profile to display on your blog, allowing people to look through things such as your specialties and experience.
MyBlogLog – If someone visits your blog that is also a member of MyBlogLog, their avatar and username will appear in the box. You can then click on any person to check out their profile on the service.
Twitter () – Add your Twitter stream to your blog and display anywhere from your last tweet to the last twenty. Also gives a link for people to be able to follow you.
Share on Facebook – A simple widget that allows your readers to share items from your blog on Facebook ().
SocialFeed – A miniature lifestreaming widget that broadcasts your activities on sites such as Twitter, StumbleUpon (), Last.fm and so on. Has several different skins you can choose from.

Utility Widgets

Add This – The popular social bookmarking button is available for Blogger accounts.
Easy Comments – This widget allows you to add commenting to any page of your site by placing the widget at the bottom of a page. Allows people to say if they liked the comment, includes comment threading and more.
Google Search () – Add an AJAX powered Google () search box to your blog that you can allow to search the web and your blog, or even just restrict it to the contents of your site.
Popular Posts – This widget will take a look at your comments, up to the last 5,000, and generate a list of which posts had the most conversation around them.
Recent Comments – Display the most recent comments on your blog in this widget so that readers can join in the conversation.
Related Posts – Not so much a widget as a hack, this will give you the related post functionality that so many WordPress () powered blogs use.
ShareThis – The highly customizable green button that ShareThis is known for can be added to your blog. Choose if you want it for social bookmarking, users emailing your posts and more.
Shout List Icons – Be the king (or queen) of social sharing with this widget that generates icons for over 30 social sites your blog can be added to.
Tag/Label Cloud – Gives you the ability to install a traditional tag cloud in your sidebar so people can see what you write about the most.

Miscellaneous Widgets

Flickr () – You can generate an HTML or Flash based badge of your photo stream to share your images with your visitors.
Mashable () – Yes, now you too can share the best web-related news on your blog with the Mashable widget.
Picasa Albums – Display your public Picasa albums in your blog sidebar with this handy widget.

All you need to know to start your own Blog or make it better. Earn Money doing your blogs.

2009-10-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

Introduction: What is a Blog?
- A blog (weblog) is a special type of website that displays entries or posts in reverse chronological order. The most recently written post appears at the top. The posts themselves consist of text, images, links to other websites and, typically, a means for readers to leave comments about the post.
- Blogs can function as online diaries, soap boxes, journalistic ventures or internet scrapbooks. They can cover any number of subjects from pop culture to politics to what you had for lunch yesterday.
- All you need to start blogging is an email address and something to say. There's more than one free blogging service that can have you up and running in under five minutes. No technical expertise needed.
Step 1: Define Your Niche
- Before you create a blog, it is important to decide on the theme or subject area your blog will cover.
Defining Your Audience
- Are you creating a blog primarily to keep in touch with family and friends? Do you want to create a blog for people in your profession or who share your interests? Is your blog an extension of your business?
- Who your audience is will determine which type of blog host you use, the content of your blog, whether or not you publicize your blog and what success means for you in respect to your blogging endeavors.
  Choosing Your Subject
  If you want your blog to be more than an online diary or a means of staying connected with family and friends, you will need to decide what subject matter your blog will cover.
  
  How focused your blog is on a particular subject is entirely up to you. Your blog can simply cover the stuff that is interesting to you and need not be defined beyond that.
  
  If, however, you would like to target your blog to a particular niche or audience, here are some questions you might consider:
  
  What are you interested in?
  
  What are you an expert in?
  
  Would your occupation be an interesting subject?
  
  What do you think is currently missing online?
  
  Do you have a goal that you're trying to achieve that could be documented online?
  
  If you need some inspiration, check out some of the most popular blogs on the internet through Technorati's Popular Blogs page or the Webby Awards' list of blogging nominees.
  
  NOTE: Take heed if you choose to blog about your workplace. Unless you password protect your blog, it is a public document. Most employers are web savvy, and even the most well-intended comments could run afoul of your workplace's rules and regulations. Don't end up like this guy or this guy or this gal.
- Free Blog Hosts | Add a Link
  Blogger
  
  LiveJournal
  LiveJournal.com is a free service for all your journaling and blogging needs, offering privacy controls, photo storage, publishing tools, style templates, and online communities for just about every interest imaginable.
  livejournal.com
  
  Google Pages
  
  WordPress.com
  
  Xanga
  Xanga is a community where you can start your own free weblog, share photos and videos, and meet new friends too!
  xanga.com
  
  Windows Live Spaces
  
  Diaryland (Online Diary)
  
  MySpace (Social Networking site that includes a blog function)
  See what’s happening on MySpace! Find friends & classmates, meet new people, listen to free music & build playlists, share photos, watch videos, start a blog, read celebrity news, get cool apps, free IM & more…
  myspace.com
  
  Vox
  
  Wikipedia: Developer-Hosted Weblog Software (Free and Paid)
  
  Tumblr (Tumblelog)
  
  AOL Journals
  
  Multiply
- Step 2: Name Your Blog
  
  There's no limit to what you can name your blog. Some blogs have names that relate to their subject matter - Cute Overload, Treehugger, PassiveAggressiveNotes.com. Some blogs have completely nonsensical names that are just plain catchy - Boing Boing, Small Dead Animals, The Coming. The easiest way out may just be naming your blog after yourself.
  
  Whatever you decide, keep in mind that a blog's name should ideally be memorable, short, easy to spell and free of hyphens.
- Checking Your Name's Availability
  Technically, you can name your blog whatever you'd like. However, there are limits to what your blog's URL or web address can be.
  
  Most people like their blog's name to match its URL address. For instance, the URL address for the blog Boing Boing is www.boingboing.net. The URL address for Bookslut is www.bookslut.com.
  
  If you are using a hosted blog service such as WordPress.com, Typepad, Blogger or Vox, you have two options. When you create a blog through these services, you are assigned a web address, which will look like this:
  
  www.yourblogname.wordpress.com
  
  www.yourblogname.typepad.com
  
  www.yourblogname.blogspot.com
  
  www.yourblogname.vox.com
  
  If you don't mind having your host service's name in your web address, than you can simply check your potential blog name's availability when you register for an account. This is the simplest solution, particularly if this is your first blogging experience.
  
  If you'd like your web address to read "www.yourblogname.com", you will need to purchase a registered domain name.
  
  You can check the availability of a domain name at one of the following sites:
  
  NameBoy
  
  DomainsBot
  
  Whois Source
  
  Once you've found an available name, you can purchase it from one of several online hosting sites including GoDaddy, pairNIC and Network Solutions.
  
  After you set-up your blog with Typepad (Pro, Plus or Premium Levels), WordPress.com or Blogger, you can "point" your newly-purchased domain name to your blog. We'll cover how to do this in Step 4 as it differs from service to service.
- Step 3: Choose a Blog Host
  
  There are several different kinds of services that will help you create and maintain your blog. Which service you choose will depend on the purpose of your blog, your budget and your technical abilities. (Don't worry! There are plenty of free services.)
- Hosted Blogging Platforms (The Easy Route)
  If you are creating your first blog or don't have a great deal of technical expertise, than a hosted blog service is the way to go.
  
  A hosted blog service essentially "hosts" your blog at their domain. They make creating a blog easy by providing well-designed templates, a web address and rich text editors that allow you to create posts without any special technical knowledge.
  
  With a hosted blog service, you can have a blog up and running in less than ten minutes.
  
  Some of the most popular hosted blogging platforms include WordPress.com, Blogger, Typepad and Vox. In Step 4, you'll learn how to create an account with each of these services.
  
  Pros to Using a Hosted Blogging Platform:
  
  Many services are free or inexpensive to use.
  
  They make your blog easy to set-up and require to little to no technical expertise to maintain.
  
  Cons to Using a Hosted Blogging Platform:
  
  Blogging hosts are not as flexible design-wise as their server-side counterparts. While many provide beautifully-designed templates, they are not fully configurable. If you have a great deal of technical expertise and would like total control of your blog's look, you may feel limited by a hosted blog.
  
  Blogging services incorporate their host name into your URL address. (Ex. www.yourblogname.typepad.com) If you purchase your own registered domain name, some services (but not all) will let you "point" it toward your blog. Purchasing a registered domain name for a year will cost you about $10, and some technical proficiency is required to use it in lieu of the URL address your blogging host provides.
- Server-Side or Stand Alone Blogging Platforms (The Professional's Route)
  Because this instructional is intended for beginners, we'll be concentrating on how to use the hosted blog services, but it's good to know what a "server-side" or "stand alone" blogging platform is.
  
  This type of blogging platform is hosted by you on your own domain. This type of platform allows you to have full control over the design of your site and will use whatever domain name you've purchased.
  
  To use this kind of blogging platform, you will need to subscribe to a hosting service like Blue Host, Dream Host or Laughing Squid and download a content management system or blogging platform like WordPress.org or Movable Type.
  
  This route is more costly and demands a certain amount of technical literacy. In exchange, you get a fully customizable site in your own name, which makes it the choice of many (but not all) professional bloggers.
- Online Diary Services and Tumblelogs
  
  If you're not especially interested in capturing a large audience or view a blog as a means to connect with family and friends, you might consider an online diary service or tumblelog as an alternative to a conventional blogging host.
  
  Online Diaries
  
  Online diaries are exactly that - a journal of your thoughts and experiences aimed at a small, targeted audience. Technically, this is a blog as well, but one that is primarily used to network with friends in an online community. The two most popular online diary services are LiveJournal and Diaryland.
  
  LiveJournal can be used as a blogging service, a private online diary or as a means of social networking through LiveJournal's many online communities. It is free to set up and relatively easy to use.
  
  Diaryland has an even simpler interface than LiveJournal and functions purely as an online diary. You can browse current members' diaries here.
  
  Tumblelogs
  
  Whereas blogs are thought of as online journals or publications, a tumblelog is simply a scrapbook. Tumblelogs provide a place to post the random photos, videos, quotes and links you come across online. You can also post a traditional text blog post, but tumblelogs favor the mixed-media approach.
  
  Tumblelogs require less forethought, maintenance and care than traditional blogs.
  
  The most popular tumblelog service is Tumblr.
  
  Tumblr is free, easy to use and can be set up in less than five minutes.
- Step 4: Create Your Blog
  
  This section will cover how to set up a blog using four different hosting services - Blogger, WordPress.com, Vox and Typepad.
  
  We'll be looking at these four services because they're four of the easiest, most popular and least expensive options for first-time bloggers with little or no technical expertise. A more complete list of both hosted blogging platforms and server-side blogging platforms is included in the Resources section of this page.
  
  All you need to get started with all four services is an email address. If you don't have an email address, you can sign up for a free email account with Google Mail (Gmail), Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or AIM Mail.
- The Components of a Blog
  Most blogs are made up of three components - the header, the sidebar and the posts or body of the blog.
  
  The Header
  
  A blog's header is the equivalent of a newspaper's masthead. It contains the blog's name rendered as text or as text combined with a banner image.
  
  The Sidebar
  
  A sidebar runs along one or both sides of your posts. A sidebar might contain any number of items including a short bio, a blog roll (a list of blogs that you enjoy reading), a search box, ads and an RSS button. RSS stands for "really simple syndication." Adding an RSS link to your site allows people to "subscribe" to your site - updating them whenever you've posted something new.
  
  The Posts
  
  Posts make up the body of your blog. Posts can include text, images, video and even streaming audio. Most blog posts also include a way for readers to comment on the post.
- Which Service is Right for You?
  Blogger
  
  Pros: Free; No tech expertise required; Can use registered domain name
  
  Cons: HTML knowledge required to modify templates and use many sidebar add-ons
  
  Ideal User: First-Time Bloggers
  
  WordPress.com
  
  Pros: Free with some advanced design pay options; No tech expertise required; Blog traffic statistics built-in; Easy-to-use sidebar add-ons; Can use registered domain name
  
  Cons: While WordPress.com's interface is simple, it's not as simple as Blogger's. Some knowledge of tech- or blog-related jargon is helpful. Templates are not fully modifiable unless you purchase CSS editing options. Knowledge of CSS required.
  
  Ideal User: Savvy beginners. Because WordPress also produces a server-side blogging software (WordPress.org), WordPress.com is good for users that may eventually want to switch to a stand alone host.
  
  Vox
  
  Pros: Free; No tech expertise required; Built-in social networking functionality; Integrated with popular online media services like Flickr and Photobucket
  
  Cons: Not an ideal platform for a public or general subject blog; Templates cannot be fully modified; Ads embedded at bottom of page; Cannot use registered domain name
  
  Ideal User: Beginners looking for a social networking option and who have accounts with online services like Flickr and Twitter
  
  Typepad
  
  Pros: No tech expertise required; Broad menu of sidebar add-ons; Blog traffic statistics built-in; Full Photoblog capabilities and photo album interface; Can use registered domain name
  
  Cons: Cost (Four Pricing Levels from $4.95/mo - $29.95/mo); Basic HTML required to use all of the available sidebar add-ons; Some knowledge of tech- or blog-related jargon useful; Limited design flexibility at Basic Pricing Level; CSS knowledge required to modify templates at Pro and Premium Levels
  
  Ideal User: Savvy beginners who would like their blog service to grow with them as their technical skills evolve
- Important Blogger Links
  Take a Tour - Getting Started - Help
- Signing Up and Choosing Your Template
  Go to the Blogger site.
  
  If you have a Google Account, sign in to Blogger by entering your email address and password in the upper right hand corner.
  
  If you do not have a Google Account, get started by clicking on the Create Your Blog Now button.
  
  You'll be taken to a screen that asks you to create an account. Here you will need to enter in your pre-existing email address, choose a password, choose the name that will be displayed when you publish a blog post and accept Blogger's terms of use.
  
  You will next be asked to name your blog and choose your blog's URL address. (If you've purchased a domain name that you would like to use in lieu of the Blogger address, you can click on the Advanced Blog Setup link for assistance.)
  
  Next you will be taken to a screen that lets you select a template for your blog's design. Pick one, and remember that you can always change it later.
  
  Once you've chosen your template, you can start posting.
- Your First Post
  
  Blogger uses a rich text editor that operates exactly like a word processor. What you see is what you get.
  
  Enter a title for your post in the Title field and begin writing.
  
  You can insert images or video into your post by clicking on the Add Image or Add Video icons on the upper right side of your text editor. (If you know HTML, you can view your post's source code by clicking on the Edit HTML tab.)
  
  When you're done writing your post, click on the publish button or save your post as a draft for later publication.
  
  You will then be given the option to view your blog, edit your post or create a new one.
  
  Whenever you're ready to write a new post or manage your old ones, simply click on the Posting tab of your Blogger interface.
- Exploring Your Settings and Template Tabs
  You'll notice that in addition to the Posts tab, you also have a Settings and Template tab at the top of your Blogger interface. (On your Blogger Dashboard, these appear as the Settings and Layout links.)
  
  Under the Settings Tab, you'll find all kinds of options to help customize your blog. You can control how many posts appear on the front page, how frequently your posts are archived and whether or not your blog is added to the Blogger directory.
  
  You'll also be able to add an RSS link to your blog through Blogger or FeedBurner and control the terms under which viewers can comment on your posts.
  
  Under the Template Tab, you'll have the option of switching templates, choosing the colors that fit your blog, adding or deleting information from your sidebar and, if you know HTML, actually editing your template's source code.
- Your Profile Page
  To create a profile page to go along with your blog, go to your Dashboard. You will find a link to Blogger's Dashboard in the upper right hand corner of your screen.
  
  On your Dashboard, you'll see the option to edit your profile in the right hand corner.
  
  Click Edit Profile. Add as much or as little information as you'd like your readers to know about you on your Profile page.
  
  This profile is what readers will see when they click the About Me link in your blog's sidebar. This is a default setting in your Blogger template. The About Me link can always be removed by clicking on your Templates tab and editing your Page Elements.
- Deleting Your Blog
  You can delete your blog at any time by clicking on the Delete This Blog button at the bottom of the Basics page under the Settings tab
- Important WordPress.com Links
  Features - FAQ
- Signing Up and Choosing Your Template
  Go the WordPress.com website. Click on the Sign Up Now button.
  
  On the next page, you will be asked to create a user name and password, give your email address and agree to WordPress.com's Terms of Agreement.
  
  On the next page, you will be asked to choose your blog's domain name and title as well as set your privacy settings. Once you've filled in these fields, simply press the Sign Up button.
  
  On the next page, you'll be asked whether you want to write a post, choose a template or visit your blog's main administration page.
  
  Clicking on the Change Your Template link will bring you to a page that allows you to choose from any number of WordPress.com's pre-designed templates. (Keep in mind that your template selection will be relatively limited and not especially flexible without the purchase of a Custom CSS Upgrade.) Choose the one you like best. You can always change it later by clicking on the WordPress.com interface's Presentation Tab.
- Your First Post
  WordPress.com uses a rich text editor that operates exactly like a word processor. What you see is what you get.
  
  Enter a title for your post in the Title field and begin writing.
  
  You can insert images into your post by clicking on the Add Image button. If you know HTML, you can click on the Code tab to edit your post's source code.
  
  When you're done writing your post, you can either save it as a draft or publish it to your blog by clicking on the appropriate buttons immediately beneath the text field.
  
  You will then be given the option to view your post.
  
  Whenever you're ready to write a new post or manage your old ones, simply click on the Write tab of your WordPress.com Dashboard.
- Exploring the WordPress.com Dashboard
  The other tabs that run along your WordPress.com Dashboard allow you to switch templates, upload a picture to use as your blog's banner, manage comments, control your settings and update your profile page.
  
  You also have the ability to set-up your registered domain name, if you've purchased one, by clicking on the Domains link in the Options section of your Dashboard.
- Your Profile Page
  
  In WordPress.com, you have a behind-the-scenes profile and an About page. A link to your About page automatically appears in your blog's sidebar.
  
  To edit the information that appears on your About page, view your blog by clicking on the View Site link at the very top of your Dashboard.
  
  On your blog, you'll see an About link in the sidebar. Click on this link. It will bring you to your About page and give you the option to edit this entry.
  
  Click on the edit this entry link. It will bring you to a text editor that will allow you to create your About page.
  
  Whenever you need to access your About page again, you will it find under the Write tab of your Dashboard at the Write Page link.
  
  To edit your behind-the-scenes profile, which is not linked to from your blog's homepage, click on the Users tab and then the Your Profile button. Don't forget to click the Update Profile button to save your changes.
- Books on How to Set Up Your Blog | Add a Link
  ''Blogging for Dummies''
  
  Blog 101: Why You Need a Blog and How to Make it Successful
  
  ''Blogging Tips: What Bloggers won't tell you about blogging''
  
  ''No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog
  
  ''Blogging for Business''
  
  ''The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintain Your Blog
  
  ''What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting''
  
  ''The Rough Guide to Blogging''
  
  ''Clear Blogging''
- Deleting Your Blog
  You can always delete your blog by clicking on the Delete Blog button under the Options tab of your Dashboard. Your blog will not be deleted, however, until you click on the confirmation link sent to you via email.
- Important Vox Links
  Take a Tour - Getting Started with Vox - Vox Help
- Signing Up and Choosing Your Template
  
  Vox Tutorial with Chris Abraham
  
  Go to the Vox site.
  
  Click on the Start a Vox Blog link to sign up for an account.
  
  The Vox sign-up page will ask you to create a user name, submit your email address and accept their terms of service. You will also be asked for your gender and birthday.
  
  Once you've inputted this information, you will be sent an email with a verification code and link to confirm that you're email address is legitimate. Check your email. Click on the verification link in your email. It will take you to a page that gives you three options - creating your Vox profile, setting up your Blog's look or writing your first post.
  
  Click on the Set Up Your Vox link to choose a template for your blog. The templates page will let you create the look and feel of your blog's layout and design. You won't be able to alter the templates in any substantial way, but you can control the contents of your sidebar and customize a banner if you choose.
- Your First Post
  
  To post your first entry, click on the Compose a Post link at the top of the page.
  
  The Vox text editor is a simple, word processor type interface with special buttons along the top to help you add different types of media to your post.
  
  Enter a title in the Title field and write your post.
  
  Insert any images, video, audio or Vox Collection you'd like. You can also add "tags" to your post to make it searchable by other Vox users.
  
  Click the Save button when you're done to publish your post.
  
  You'll be given the option of viewing or editing your post, bookmarking it online or sending it to friends.
  
  Whenever you'd like to write a new post, click on the Compose a Post link at the top of your Vox Dashboard.
- Exploring Your Vox Dashboard
  Your My Vox drop menu allows you to access to all of your posts, uploaded files and profile. You can play with the layout and design of your page by clicking on the Design button.
  
  Next to your My Vox menu are buttons for Neighborhoods and Groups. Neighbors appear on your homepage and consist of family, friends and other Vox users that you add to your page. Groups are Vox users organized around common interests.
  
  You can also send messages to family, friends and other Vox users through the Vox interface by clicking on the Messages button in the left hand corner of your page.
- Your Profile Page
  To edit your Vox profile, click on the Edit Profile button located in the My Vox drop down menu. You'll be able to enter in as much or as little information as you'd like, but remember that because Vox emphasizes social networking, your profile is an integral part of your blog's homepage.
- Domain Mapping
  Vox does not offer a domain mapping option at this time.
- Deleting Your Blog
  You can delete your Vox account at any time, by clicking on the Account link in the upper right hand corner of your Dashboard. On the Account page, you'll find a Your Account link at the bottom of a list of links on the left hand side of the page. Click on Your Account, and a Cancel Your Account option will appear directly beneath it.
- Important Typepad Links
  Features - Pricing - Getting Started with Typepad - Typepad Support
- Signing Up and Choosing Your Template
  Go the Typepad site.
  
  Click on the Free Trial or Sign Up buttons to sign up for an account. (Typepad is a pay service with four different pricing levels ranging from $4.95 - $29.95 per month. There is a free 14-day trial period. Your account can be canceled at any time.)
  
  On the sign up page, you will be asked to submit your email address, create a blog address and agree to Typepad's terms of service.
  
  On the next page, you will be asked to choose a pricing plan and submit a valid credit card number. You will not be charged until after your free trial ends. (Canceling a Typepad account is not a hassle and can be done with the click of a button.) Review the pricing plans carefully as some plans offer features that others do not. For instance, only the Pro, Premium and Plus plans allow you to assign a registered domain name to your site.
  
  After entering in your credit card information, you will be asked to design your blog and assign its privacy settings. You will choose from a number of design and layout options as well as decide whether or not you want your blog to be public, public but unlisted or password protected. Don't worry about which template you choose. You can always change it later. Whether you choose to make your blog public or private is entirely up to you and depends largely on your blog's content and target audience. You can change your blog's privacy settings at any time.
  
  You will then be asked to confirm your registration. Once you've reviewed your information, click continue. You will be brought to your Typepad Account's quick start page.
  
  Keep in mind that you won't be able to see your blog online until you've written your first post.
- Exploring the Typepad Dashboard
  You can start a post by clicking on the Begin a Post button, or you can explore the full menu of text and design options by clicking on the My Weblog link in the Quick Start box. (This link will change to reflect your blog's name once you've assigned it one by clicking on the Configure tab and filling in the Weblog Name field.)
  
  Clicking on My Weblog (or your blog's name) will bring you to your blog's administrative dashboard.
  
  You'll see that you have two sets of tabs. The top level includes your Photo Albums, Typelists and account Control Panel. The second level includes your blog's design and post-related options - Compose, Design and Configure.
  
  Starting with the top level, the Control Panel button lets you control your blog's settings, account information, statistics and personal profile.
  
  Typelists are lists you can create and add to your blog's sidebar. Typepad has several built in options that let you add your favorite books and records from Amazon.com. A Typelist can, however, contain anything you want - a blogroll, text, a picture, a search bar, etc.
  
  Under the Configure Tab, you'll find options related to the way your blog archives posts, what it is named and how it is publicized. You'll also find an option to add a feed or RSS button to your site so that readers can subscribe to your blog's posts. If you choose a Pro, Plus or Premium plan, you will find an option to "point" a purchased domain name to your Typepad site.
  
  To play with your site's design, click on the second level Design tab. You will be taken to a menu that allows you to manipulate your blog's design by adding new text to the header, choosing a new template or rearranging your sidebar's contents.
- Your First Post
  
  On the second level of tabs, click on the Compose link. This will bring you to Typepad's text editor.
  
  Enter a title in the Title field and choose any categories you want to use to archive your post form the drop down menu.
  
  Type text in just as you would on a word processor.
  
  You can add images, and if you know HTML, you can edit your post's source code by clicking on the Edit HTML tab.
  
  Once you've finished writing, click the Save button. This will publish the post to your blog. If you'd like to save the post as a draft, you can choose that option in the drop down box on the lower left hand side of the text editor.
  
  You can view your blog at any time by clicking on the View Weblog link in the upper right hand corner of your page.
- Your Profile Page
  You will find a link to your Typepad Profile page under the Control Panel tab of your Typepad interface. If you'd like to include a link to your finished Profile page in your blog's sidebar, you can add it by clicking on the Select Content link under the Design tab.
- Basic HTML for Bloggers | Add a Link
  Blogger: How Can I Learn Some Basic HTML?
  
  ProBlogger: Basic HTML Tags
- Deleting Your Blog
  You can cancel your Typepad account at any time by clicking on the Control Panel tab. There you will an Account Info sub-tab. Under Account Info, you will find the Cancel Account link.
- Step 5: Write Great Blog Posts
  
  In the world of blogging, content is king. If you want to generate an audience for your blog beyond your immediate friends and family, it is essential that your posts be well-written and provide value to readers. It's also essential that you update your blog with new posts on a regular basis. Creating a blog is easy. Maintaining a blog is hard.
- General Tips on Writing a Blog Post
  Be Passionate. You're writing a blog because you have something to say so say it with style, enthusiasm and grace. Your voice is the only thing that will make your blog stand out for the millions of others out there.
  
  Be Funny. Never underestimate the power of humor in blogging. Humor makes your posts enjoyable to read and more likely to be linked to by other bloggers.
  
  Be Consistent. It's important to post on a regular basis so that your readers keep coming back. Don't post if you don't have something to say. No content is better than bad content, but maintaining your blog should be a priority if you wish to reach an audience beyond your peers.
  
  Be Useful. Provide value to your readers. It might be entertainment value or educational value, but reaching out to readers means giving them something they need but didn't have before - an insight, a joke, a tool or a new way of looking at something.
  
  Be Readable. Remember that you're writing text for people reading from computer screens. Your posts should be short and easy on the eyes. If they get lengthy, consider breaking up the text visually with bullet points, images or selectively bolded text.
  
  Be Responsible. Blog posts almost always contain links to other websites. It's important to give credit where credit is due and link back to a site if you've used it as a reference.
- Popular Types of Blog Posts
  Lists
  
  People love lists. They are easy to read and fun to write. Lists are often linked to by other sites and can help your blog gain attention online. The best lists are original, comprehensive, provide value to readers or are just plain funny.
  
  Reviews
  
  You have an opinion, or else you wouldn't have started a blog. Review films, books, gadgets or whatever else might be pertinent to your blog's subject matter. If your reviews are thoughtful enough and your blog gains a following, you may even be able to solicit companies for products or materials to review.
  
  How To
  
  "How To" posts provide value to readers, and if done well, have a longer lifespan than your average blog post. They are frequently linked to by other sites and allow readers to benefit from your expertise.
  
  Attack Posts
  
  While they should be managed carefully, there's no denying that posts which attack a story, product or person can generate attention for your site. Combine this with the list strategy, and you've got your first "10 Things I Hate About..."post.
- Step 6: Build an Audience
  
  It's estimated that there are over 71 million blogs in the world with another 100,000 being created daily. Standing apart from the crowd isn't easy, but if you do decide that you'd like to cultivate an audience outside of your mom, here are some tactics you might consider:
  
  Add your URL to Google. This tells Google's army of robot spiders to check your blog's content - adding it to Google's search results. To maximize your rank in Google's search results, be sure that your posts' headlines are clear and on topic. Keywords are more important than cleverness.
  
  Claim your blog at sites like Technorati and Blog Top Sites. These are blog directories that allow people to seek out blogs on subject matters of interest to them. You can also apply to be added to the moderated directory Blogarama or try a relatively new service like BlogRush, which will advertise your blog's content across a network of related blogs.
  
  Remind your readers that if they like a post, they should add it to sites like Digg, Delicious, Netscape, StumbleUpon, Ma.gnolia or Reddit. These services can help attract new readers to your site.
  
  Link to other sites. The owners of the sites you link to are likely to check out your blog particularly if the link from your blog drives traffic to their site.
  
  Become a regular commenter on blogs that cover similar topics to your own. You're part of the blogosphere now and therefore a potential player in a community. Provide useful and thoughtful comments on other people's blogs, and it's all the more likely that they will check out yours.
  
  The old-fashioned way. Tell everyone about your blog. Add its URL to your email signature. Put it on your business cards. Network at blogging conferences. Kiss some hands and shake some babies, or is that the other way around?
- Step 7: Measure Your Traffic
  
  Blog hosts like WordPress.com and Typepad keep track of your stats for you. They will tell you how many people have visited your site and when.
  
  If you'd like a more in-depth set of statistics including where people are visiting your site from, what pages received the most views and detailed graphs of your site's popularity, there are a handful of free services you can use to track that information.
  
  The most popular include Google Analytics and Site Meter. Both services give you step-by-step instructions in how to set-up their services on your blog although some familiarity with basic HTML coding is helpful.
- Step 8: Monetize Your Blog
  While you shouldn't quit your day job, there are a handful of quick and easy ways to monetize your blog. A basic knowledge of HTML coding is helpful when using these services, but most blog hosts will walk you through how to add these services.
  
  Google AdSense
  
  Google Adsense will search your blog and add ads relevant to its content. These ads can appear in a number of different text and image configurations. You make money when people click on the ads.
  
  Yahoo! Publisher Network
  
  Yahoo!'s version of AdSense.
  
  Amazon Associates
  
  An Amazon.com program that places ads relevant to your blog's content on your blog. You make money when readers click on the ads and make a purchase through Amazon.
  
  Adbrite
  
  A network that lets blog owners sell text ad space directly to advertisers.
- Legal Resources for Bloggers
  
  There are some legal issues that all bloggers, but particularly those aspiring to capture a large audience, should be aware of. Most deal with the use of images, video and audio files. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a complete legal guide for bloggers online.
  
  You may also want to copyright your own original work through Creative Commons. Creative Commons offers several different kinds of licenses. Some let people use your material freely but with attribution. Some let people use your material for anything but commercial purposes. You can check out the full list of Creative Commons licenses at their website.http://www.myblogusa.com

Important Blogging Statistics

2009-10-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
Over 57 million Americans read blogs.
1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
9% of internet users say they have created blogs .
6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog .
Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs .
Over 120 thousand blogs are created every day .
There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day .
22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs .
37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 .
51% of blog readers shop online .
Blog readers average 23 hours online each week .

In my efforts to convince my clients that having a professional blog is a good thing, I’ve been trying to find some compelling stats that indicate the state of play out there. At last I’ve found them!

Here are some worldwide and US figures to chew on (if you have any Australian ones I’d love to see them!).

Blogging grew 68% in 2008
346 million people worldwide read blogs
77% of active web users read blogs
184 million people say they’ve started a blog

The average blogger in the US:

51% male (which means there are a lot of female bloggers too - yay)
Aged 35+ (58%)
Aged 18-34 (42%)
College educated, 74%

17 Statistics to Monitor on Your Blog

Today your task in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge is to spend some time looking at your blog’s statistics/metrics package to see what you can learn from it.

I encouraged participants in 31DBBB to make sure they had a metrics package installed on their blog before they started so I hope you have at least a month’s worth of stats to look at. If you’ve not got a stats package installed yet you should get one on your blog ASAP as it’ll help you track how it is performing.

Take some time out today to do a little analysis of your blog’s statistics. There is a wealth of information in them that can be incredibly useful.

Important Note: this exercise tends to become more useful over time. If this is the first time you do it then hopefully it’ll be illuminating - but the longer you have been collecting metrics on your blog the more useful it can become as you track trends and see patterns over time. As a result - this type of exercise should be something you build into your regular blogging routine (I try to do an in depth review each month).

Some of you will be used to doing this type of analysis so you won’t need a lot of help in doing it - but if you’re new to this here are a few metrics to pay particular attention to:

Overall Visitors - this is the metric most of us probably look at the most so I’ll start with it. Are visitor numbers on the increase or decrease? What might be the reasons for these changes (ie could it be tied to frequency of posting, topics, other sites links etc).
Most Popular Posts - what posts are being read more than other posts? Knowing this is important for a couple of reasons. For starters it gives you a hint of what topics you could write more on - but secondly it gives you some key pages on your site to optimize (ie think about how you can drive people from these posts deeper into your blog).
Referral Stats - what sites are sending you the most traffic? If it’s another blog or site, perhaps you could develop a relationship with them to see this increase. If it’s Search Engines, how can you adapt the posts to see it rise even more using.
What Questions are being asked? - what questions are readers typing into search engines to find your blog? These could make great future posts.
What Keywords are sending traffic? - knowing the keywords that people search for to find your site is very useful. It helps you to know how to optimize your blog for SEO even better and can give hints on what content to write more of.
What seasonal traffic is there? - are there any seasonal trends that you should be aware of and could use to capture more traffic? What caused the bumps in traffic and how can you prepare yourself better for next time those conditions might happen again.
Daily/Weekly Trends - another trend to watch is what traffic does over different periods of time. What are the most popular times of day? What days of the week are most popular? Knowing this gives you ammunition in planning when to release new posts.
What’s Your Bounce Rate? - metrics packages like Google Analytics provide you with a ‘bounce rate’ stat which measures how many people arrive at your site and then leave again without viewing any extra pages. I find this a key metric to watch and attempt to change. Set yourself some goals to get this rate down and the page views viewed per visitor up by making your blog sticky.
Page Views Per Visit - Similarly to ‘Bounce Rate’ - This is a good one to watch over time as it shows you whether those coming to your blog are going deep into your blog’s content or simply looking at the page they arrive on. My goal on my blogs is to see this number increase over time. For tips on how to increase page views also check out 4 Quick and Simple Ways to Increase Page Views on Your Blog
Time on Site - Another stat that can give you a sense on whether readers are engaging with your content is to look at how long they stay on your blog. The longer they are staying the more likely it is that they’re reading, commenting and interacting (or that they forgot to close their browser).
New vs Returning Visitors - This one gives you a sense of whether you’re succeeding in converting people to loyal visitors.

RSS Stats - If you’re using a tool like Feedburner to manage your RSS feeds you’ll have access to more useful information. Feedburner provides you with the number of subscribers but also what posts people are reading most of (again showing you what content people are engaging with most which gives you some good information on what type of content is working best).
Outbound Clicks - Not every metrics package will give you this type of information but if you have access to it knowing what links on your blog people are clicking to leave it can be very useful. It’s not that you want to stop people clicking links - but knowing what links they click on can give you some useful information on what motivates your readers to click a link and what type of information they want more of.
Where are People Clicking on Your Page - not all stats packages track this but some like Google Analytics or packages specifically for it like CrazyEgg will create heatmaps or visual pictures of what people click on when they visit your blog. I find CrazyEgg’s heatmaps better than Google Analytics but you do need to set it up on specific pages of your blog to be able to see them. This is very useful information when thinking about the design and layout of your blog but also can help you test how to layout posts to see where people click.
Exit Pages - A similar metric is knowing what page on your blog people are leaving from. A couple of years ago I checked my stats and noticed that the % of people leaving a particular page on my blog was triple other pages. When I investigated I found that the page had some very bad formatting issues on it that made the page almost unreadable - I was able to fix the problem and keep more readers engaged as a result.
Monetization Stats - many of you are looking to make money from your blogs so it’s also important to pay attention to any stats you have at your disposal on how your blog is performing in this way. The metrics you have at your disposal will vary from income stream to income stream but if possible try to work out where on your blog the income is coming from specifically. For example if you use Google Analytics and AdSense you’ll be able to see what specific pages are earning more than others. Otherwise - use what ever channel or tracking options your ad network or affiliate program gives you to help you work out which posts are performing.
Other Stats - There are plenty of other stats that can be revealing when you dig into them. Knowing the Geographic regions of your readers can be helpful as you think about content but also is useful if you’re dealing with advertisers, knowing the screen resolution and browsers people are using to view your site is good from a design perspective etc. Also worth doing from time to time is looking at other stats like how many posts you’ve done over time (post frequency can help you monitor how you’re performing personally) and how many comments you’ve had on your blog over a period of time and on which posts (which can be a great indicator of what kind of posts are working best on your blog and how reader engagement is going).

What Would You Add?

There are many other types of metrics that most statistics packages will provide you with. Feel free to share the metrics that you check most often and how you use them to improve your blog in comments below. Also let us know what tools you are using to check your blog’s metrics.

Warning: Don’t become a stats addict. Most new bloggers go through a period where they are checking their stats every hour. This is pretty normal but over time can add up to a lot of wasted time.

I personally try to do a quick check of stats throughout the day 2-3 times (just looking at traffic numbers mainly to see if there’s any spike in traffic that I need to know about) and then month put aside an hour or two to go deeper and look at some of the above statistics.

What a Blog Can Do For Your Small Business

2009-10-08T10:29:00.001-07:00

The blogging movement is picking up speed as businesses begin to realize the benefits of blogging. Discover what a business blog can do for you.

What is a Blog?

According to Pyra Labs Blogger, "A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically—like a what's new page or a journal." The term is actually weblogs coined by Jorn Barger in 1997.

The boom of weblogs happened in 1999 when several companies & developers made easy blogging software and tools. Since 1999, the number of blogs on the Internet has exploded from a few thousand to over 100 million.

Blogs can fall into two general categories.

Personal Blogs: a mixture of a personal diary, opinion posts and research links.
Business Blogs: a corporate tool for communicating with customers or employees to share knowledge and expertise.
Business blogs are sweeping the business community. Blogs are an excellent method to share a company's expertise, build additional web traffic, and connect with potential customers..

What does Blogging Provide to Small Business?

Blog software is easy to use. Simply write your thoughts, link to resources, and publish to your blog, all at the push of a few buttons. Blog software companies such as: Movable Type, Blogger.com and Typepad all offer easy blogging tools to get started.

Blogging is a low-cost alternative to having a web presence. For small business owners without the time to learn web html or the money to hire a designer/developer, blogging offers an inexpensive method to get your company's name out on the Internet.

Updating the weblog is a much quicker process than contacting a web designer with changes or doing the coding and uploading yourself.

Business blogs provide your small business with a chance to share your expertise and knowledge with a larger audience. A powerful benefit for consultants and knowledge workers.

Examples of Business Blogs

Gizmodo is a weblog about everything about gadgets and gizmos for those who want to remain on the cutting edge of consumer electronics. As a web magazine, Gizmodo is quickly building a specialized audience in consumer electronics with an advertising business model.
Research Buzz is an excellent resource tool for Internet research. An information provider, Research Buzz provides advertising and a special paid edition of their newsletter.
Joel on Software is a blog that displays Joel Spolsky's knowledge and views on software development. The blog acts as a method for Joel to highlight his expertise and promote his small business, Fog Creek Software.
Jupiter Research, a top business market research company has a blog for each company analyst. The weblog provides analysts with the means to connect with their audience on a regular basis.
Loosetooth.com Shop Blog, by Brandy Agerbeck, is an online art shop blog that provide customers with a way to get to know the store owner. This blog is an e-commerce site with buy and shop options.
MacroMedia the software company provides a customer service blog for users and staff to share solutions in an organized fashion.
Blogs do have a downside. Blogging does not provide the functionality of web pages, has limits for e-commerce solutions and can be time-consuming with regular posts. But with minimal costs, it maybe advantageous to start blogging. Is your small business blog ready?

Blogging Can Supercharge Your Home Business

2009-10-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

Benefits of Blogging for Your Home Business

Blogging is opening up doors and generating interest for home-based businesses far more than most other free or nearly free tools. Beyond driving traffic toward a business website by helping gain search engine attention, blog marketing has a number of other benefits for entrepreneurs, as well.

Benefits of Blogging for Home Business

Blogging provides several benefits for home businesses or online businesses on restricted budgets because:

Blogging can provide a great forum for a small or home business owner to discuss their products, services or industry in a straightforward, easy-to-understand manner.
Blogging offers small business owners a very accessible promotional tool for upcoming events or other noteworthy goings-on.
Blogging provides a platform for a home business owner to become viewed as an expert on the topics at hand. Who better for people to turn to for advice on selecting a perfect MP3 player, for example, than a small, home-based business owner that deals with these machines day in and day out? Business owners are experts on their products or services and there is nothing wrong with them playing this fact to their advantage. If the knowledge is there, leveraging it is simply smart.
Blogging opens the door for small business owners to directly engage clients, customers or readers. The simple beauty of blogs is that most of these tools are interactive. This means readers or clients can leave comments or even ask questions directly (unless the administrator turns off the ability of visitors to post comments), which the writer or writers of the blog can then answer. This is a fantastic way to develop rapport and most especially credibility. If a commenting area is not attached to a particular blog set up, it is relatively simple to add in to ensure maximum interaction.
Blogging provides a means for a home business operator to connect with its customers and prospects. Getting acquainted with your clients and prospects is beneficial because it allows them to view you as accessible and can build credibility and because it allows you to hear first-hand what your customers and prospects really want.
Blogging can offer an outlet for a little bit of fun. The typical set up for a blog – even those used by some of the world's most noted newspaper journalists – is very friendly and conversational. This means small business owners are free to have a little bit of fun with these tools along the way. This type of endeavor is often considered one of the most enjoyable for home business operators. Since it can actually pay off with more business, it's a smart step, too.

The key in really making a blog work for a home-based business is to work at it earnestly and add to it on a consistent basis. Regularly updated blogs with lots of activity tend to attract far more search engine than those that aren't updated - a level of attention that's achieved faster than websites, which is a very good thing for a home-based business. And, if you are willing to commit your own time and you’re even a half-decent writer, bogging doesn’t have to cost anything. As a means of promoting your home business, it doesn't get much better than that.

10 Ways to make your Blog more Attractive to Advertisers

2009-10-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

1. Have an “Advertise with Us” Banner on your site

This is the single most important issue. It should click to an Advertising information page and have an easy way to contact you for more information and rates. Key points: Make it a graphical image or a tab. Keep it above the fold.

2. Keep the ads on your site specific to your site

Don’t have smiley ads and wallpaper ads if your site is site is about mobile phones.

3. Show them the banners

If you currently have no paid placements on your site, put up house ads or partner ads in the same spot you would run a paid spot. (A house ad refers to banners for other products or sites that you or your company own)

4. Throw up a free bonus ad.

By putting a free advertisement on your site, you may not only encourage similar ads or competitors to that product, but the company you added for free may decide to advertise with you. Ask for full disclosure of the performance of the campaign in return. (Total clicks, total purchases etc. ) Key points. Put the free bonus up with a direct URL without tracking tags or affiliate tags.

5. Show your site stats.

You need to show at least the basics for site statical information: Monthly unique visitors and total number of impressions are the 2 key ones. Other less important can be Google PR & Alexa rank.

6. User demographic information. Know your audience.

The bare minimum is Male/Female % and average age of your readers. Other potentially useful information includes geographic, HHI, single/married, number of kids. etc. How do you get this info? You can do site polls, survey’s, or get more detailed stats from ComScore or Quantcast.com

7. Have an ‘About Us’ section.

Clearly explain who you are and what your site is about. And also why you are an ‘authority’ on what you are writing about, and why anyone should care about what you have to say.

8. Don’t use Google AdSense on your site.

OK, this could be the most painful one for most people especially if you are generating a few hundred bucks a month from it already. But Google ad sense devalues your site and makes it look unprofessional. You have to ask yourself, “Do I want some real revenue from my site or Google’s table scraps.”

9. Keep your blog on topic.

If you are all over the map in regards to topics about which you talk about, advertisers won’t know if they are a good fit for your site.

10. Keep your blog professional.

If you are talking about your cat, (Matt Cutts), ranting about your drive to work, swearing or bashing every product you can think about, it will scare away advertisers.

Video Creating a Blog List with Blogger

2009-10-07T17:37:00.001-07:00

Ever wanted to add a blog list or blogroll to your blogger blog? Check out this video tutorial!

Uploading a Video with Blogger

2009-10-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to upload a video to your Blogger blog? Check out this video tutorial!

Video of Adding a Google Gadget to your blog

2009-10-07T17:31:00.000-07:00

Add thousands of Google Gadgets to your Blogger blog by following this video tutorial!

A Video on How to create a blog with Blogger

2009-10-07T17:28:00.000-07:00

Need help getting started with Blogger? Check out this quick tutorial!

Blogging - What is the Meaning of Blogging?

2009-10-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

Definition:

What is Blogging?

Blogging is the act of posting content on a blog (a Web log or online journal) or posting comments on someone else's blog.

Why Blogging is so Popular

Blogging is very popular today because it allows people to interact with each other. Blogging has also become a popular search engine optimization (SEO) tool because search engines like Google and Yahoo know that a blog is frequently updated with content or visitor comments, so their spiders visit blogs frequently looking for new content to include in their index.

Additionally, blog content can be delivered automatically via electronic RSS (Really Simple Syndication) data feeds. Visitors subscribe to a blog's feeds in order to stay up to date with content that's being posted on subjects that interest them. Blog feeds are then read by what's known as blog feed reader software, widely available for free, so users can scan for recent blog posts of interest on the blogs to which they subscribe.

Finally, blogging doesn't require that writers and contributors know a lot about HTML (Web page code). If a blogger or visitor can fill in an online form, they can blog and post comments on other blogs.

Pronunciation: blahg - ing

Examples:

The About Home Business home page content is a perfect example of blogging. Each posting written by me is dated and presented in chronological order. Each post has a link visitors can use to post their own comments. When I write and publish these posts using blogging software, I am blogging. When my visitors click the link and leave a comment, in a sense, they too are blogging because they are interacting with my blog.

Effective Blogging for Home Businesses Information on Blogging to Make Your Blog More Effective

2009-10-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

Effective Blogging for Home Businesses

Information on Blogging to Make Your Blog More Effective

Many small and home business owners have heard the buzz or read information on blogging but haven’t yet taken the plunge. The fact is that blogging is easy and can be a very cost-effective way to drum up interest in your home business and get traffic to your home business website. Blogging can also be a way to start a home business by itself. But just having a blog related to your home business and your website are not typically enough to make it pay off with interest, traffic and even sales. If you want results, you need additional information on blogging that will help make you more savvy about blogging and how blogging can be used as a very effective marketing tool.

Blogging Can Be Cheap and Effective with Good Information

Most home business owners hear the word "marketing" and they start hiding their checkbooks and breathing a bit rapidly. Don't panic. Remember, that marketing your business is necessary to get customers and that your business will not survive without them. In terms of cost, blog marketing is probably the second least expensive form of marketing after word-of-mouth promotion, and the truth is, other than your time, blog marketing can be done for free. Plus, all kinds of information on blogging is available to help you get the most out of it.

How to Make the Most of Your Blogging

In order to get the most out of your blogging efforts:

Create solid content people want. The key is to write information (or have it written) that focuses on the business at hand, its products, services and even the industry as a whole that are engaging and “link worthy”. The idea is to promote yourself and/or your home business as the go-to source - the expert - on the topic. Keep the content relevant, topic-driven and even a little lighthearted.

Remember that "information" in your blog can include articles, breaking news related to the focus topic, lists, how-to pieces and even videos, podcasts and humor pieces. If the right kind of information is placed on a blog and the material is kept fresh and engaging, chances are other bloggers will want to link to it. This can and often does drive traffic to your blog and, as a result to your Web site (if you have one connected to the blog), and can improve natural search engine rankings for both your blog and your website, increasing the chances that searchers will find your home business.

Consider search engine optimization when you're developing information you're going to use in your blogging. That means focus your content and post titles on keywords that prospects would be likely to use to find you. It also means incorporating some SEO tips into your blogging. Choose relevant keywords and phrases and work them in naturally. Loading content with keywords for the sake of rankings can drag down the quality and even backfire as far as search engine traffic is concerned. Your visitors won't appreciate it either.

Create promotions, surveys, contests and quizzes as appropriate for your home business. This blog marketing technique can only pay off well if other sites pick up the news and spread it around the Internet. Tools that can help ensure this happens include using online press releases, article directories and even having contests or promotions hyped by readers on social networks or social bookmarking sites like Digg or StumbleUpon.

Advertise and build backlinks. Although pay-per-click advertising campaigns have traditionally targeted websites, they can also be used for blog promotion where the cost justifies the benefits of the incoming blog traffic. Sometimes these campaigns are worth considering for a blog that is up and running, ready for visitors and contains content that would encourage those who click through from your ads to take some type of action – such as request an estimate, participate in a contest, become a paying customer, click through on an affiliate link, etc. You can also seek out links from other blogs, post comments on other blogs and forums that contain links pointing to your blog (where permitted), or consider placing a paid ad on a related blog or website.

While the "if you build it they will come" mentality works wonders in the movies, it does not always work in the blogosphere. However, some quality information on blogging and some ingenuity can really make blogging effectively a reality. Not only will blogging be more fun for you, it can pay off in a very big way with increased earnings for your home-based businesses.

Blogging Can Supercharge Your Home Business

2009-10-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

Blogging Can Supercharge Your Home Business

Benefits of Blogging for Your Home Business

Blogging means that home business owners looking for a quick and easy way to drive traffic to their websites can put away their checkbooks. There is a very cost-effective method for generating traffic that only requires a bit of time, a bit of dedication and doesn’t have to cost anything unless you need a professional design, want to pay a writer to post professional content, or you need special functionality. This sensational home business marketing tool is nothing more than a blog (Web log).

Blogging is opening up doors and generating interest for home-based businesses far more than most other free or nearly free tools. Beyond driving traffic toward a business website by helping gain search engine attention, blog marketing has a number of other benefits for entrepreneurs, as well.

Benefits of Blogging for Home Business

Blogging provides several benefits for home businesses or online businesses on restricted budgets because:

Blogging can provide a great forum for a small or home business owner to discuss their products, services or industry in a straightforward, easy-to-understand manner.
Blogging offers small business owners a very accessible promotional tool for upcoming events or other noteworthy goings-on.
Blogging provides a platform for a home business owner to become viewed as an expert on the topics at hand. Who better for people to turn to for advice on selecting a perfect MP3 player, for example, than a small, home-based business owner that deals with these machines day in and day out? Business owners are experts on their products or services and there is nothing wrong with them playing this fact to their advantage. If the knowledge is there, leveraging it is simply smart.
Blogging opens the door for small business owners to directly engage clients, customers or readers. The simple beauty of blogs is that most of these tools are interactive. This means readers or clients can leave comments or even ask questions directly (unless the administrator turns off the ability of visitors to post comments), which the writer or writers of the blog can then answer. This is a fantastic way to develop rapport and most especially credibility. If a commenting area is not attached to a particular blog set up, it is relatively simple to add in to ensure maximum interaction.

Blogging provides a means for a home business operator to connect with its customers and prospects. Getting acquainted with your clients and prospects is beneficial because it allows them to view you as accessible and can build credibility and because it allows you to hear first-hand what your customers and prospects really want.
Blogging can offer an outlet for a little bit of fun. The typical set up for a blog – even those used by some of the world's most noted newspaper journalists – is very friendly and conversational. This means small business owners are free to have a little bit of fun with these tools along the way. This type of endeavor is often considered one of the most enjoyable for home business operators. Since it can actually pay off with more business, it's a smart step, too.

Getting started with blog marketing does not necessarily require a big investment of time or money. Even the most simplistic of free programs can work wonders to help drive interest and traffic toward a website.
The key in really making a blog work for a home-based business is to work at it earnestly and add to it on a consistent basis. Regularly updated blogs with lots of activity tend to attract far more search engine than those that aren't updated - a level of attention that's achieved faster than websites, which is a very good thing for a home-based business. And, if you are willing to commit your own time and you’re even a half-decent writer, bogging doesn’t have to cost anything. As a means of promoting your home business, it doesn't get much better than that.

How to Blog my Business or make money with my blog

2009-10-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

Learning how to blog is a great way to either promote a home business or earn money as a business of its own. Blogs can be used to get the attention of search engines and drive traffic and interest toward your business Website or they can act entirely as the online presence for your business on their own.

A blog is relatively easy and inexpensive to start and maintain, with time probably being the most required resource. If blogging is handled correctly, the payoff for time, effort and whatever expense is deemed necessary, should be a fair amount of targeted traffic and should generate a good return on your blogging investment.

How to Blog as Your Website

If you don’t already have a home business website, you can use a blog to create your online business presence. Of course, you probably already realize that you don’t need a blog if you have a website. Likewise, you don't need a website to have a blog. Here are just a few of the many advantages of learning how to blog and then using a blog as your online business presence in place of a website:

You can use a free blog hosting platform so your blogging efforts costs you nothing but some time and a little effort.
Blog hosting platforms can be an easy way to manage your blog content without needing to know anything about HTML, uploading files, etc.
Search engines love blogs, so in general, it’s likely your blogging will get noticed in search engines well before content on a new website would get noticed. Learning how to blog can definitely give you a leg up when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO)

Learning how to blog allows you to interact with your customers and prospective customers in ways you can't interact through a website (unless you spend additional money to have this type of feature built into your website).
Some blog hosting providers, such as Google’s Blogger, even offer mobile blogging capability so you can post your content directly from your cell phone, SmartPhone or PDA. They also offer plenty of help that makes it easier while you learn how to blog.
Blog platforms offer built-in editing capability that makes it easy to format your content without knowing HTML. However, if you know HTML, you can use that to your advantage while blogging.
Blog templates make it easy to learn how to blog and allow you to set up your blog layout in a matter of minutes. If you are so inclined, you can further customize your blog's layout to reflect your home business branding and color schemes.
Blogs are part of social media that can take advantage of viral marketing techniques, which can dramatically increase traffic to your blog in a short amount of time.

Blogs are really content management systems – they manage posting, displaying and organizing your blog content that makes it easy to stay organized around selected keyword phrases, which you can use for labeling your blog posts. When a visitor clicks a label, all posts that use that label are made available for your visitors to find what they are looking for quickly.
Some blogging platforms allow you to host ads within your layout, providing the opportunity to make money off of your blog from programs like Google AdSense without paying any domain name or hosting fees. You can also post affiliate marketing ads to help monetize your blog.
Blogs allow visitors to register for blog feeds that will allow them to receive your new content in a feed reader – a utility that allows visitors to read your blog posts outside of a Web browser. The blog user community and the number of blog feed subscribers is continuing to grow rapidly.

How to Blog to Complement Your Website

If you already have a website, learning how to blog can be an effective way for you to complement your site, helping to drive traffic and providing a means for customers and prospects to connect with you and your home business.

You can run the blog separately on the blog host’s servers with an address such as myblog.blogspot.com, you can host your blog on a separate domain that you’ve registered, such as myhomebusinessblog.com, or you can incorporate your blog into your existing website, with an address such as blog.myhomebusiness.com or www.myhomebusiness.com/blog.

The two most popular blog hosting providers are Google’s Blooger (www.blogger.com and WordPress (www.wordpress.org). Both allow you to configure your blog just about any way you want. Blogger now allows you to create an alias for your URL so you can have the URL blog.myhomebusiness.com, for example, still use Blogger and all of your posts will go to that address. You need to perform some tasks on your Web server though to get this to work properly. All of the "link juice" from incoming links will still go to Blogger, however.

Another option, once you've learned how to blog, is to install blogging software, like WordPress directly on your Website's server. Today, even very low cost web hosting companies provide a wizard you can use to install all of the necessary files to host a WordPress blog with a few button clicks. The benefit would be that any incoming links to your blog will be giving some link authority to your website because the links now point to your site's domain and not a third-party server.

If you use a blog in conjunction with your home business website, you’ll want to be sure to create keyword rich links between your blog and your website and vice versa. Both help give search engines a clue as to what the targeted page is about.

No matter how you set it up or which blogging service you use, learning how to blog and take advantage of everything that blogging has to offer can be a very effective, easy-to-use and inexpensive part of your home business marketing mix that can result in increased revenues for you. Additionally, learning how to blog can provide a means to start a home business because a blog can server as a home business all on its own.

30 More Excellent Blog Designs - Monetize your Blog

2009-10-06T18:41:00.001-07:00

Simplicity and Whitespace

Andreas Pihlström

Theocacao

Elitist Snob

Fiveruns — so simple yet so beautiful.

Blabolnik

TNTPixel

Rob Goodlatte

Gerrit van Aaken

Jared Christensen

PSDtuts

Verbalized — sometimes less is more. Close attention to small details is impressive.

Sam Brown – a truly modest design.

Weblogs Which Don’t Look Like Weblogs

Dan Rubin

The Adventures of Cindy Li

George Huff

grantmx designs – this one melts clever portfolio and blog

Blogsolid

Carsonified

Jrvelasco — quite noisy, but the noise fits to the subject of the weblog.

Simon Reynolds

Jonathan Durán

Nice And Original Blog Designs

Tobias Baeck

Chris Murphy — don’t forget to check the design of the archive section and the footer.

Anthony Casey

split da diz — interesting design: unusual approach for site structure.

Adrian Pintilie — the top section of the site is pretty colorful.

Cult Foo

She Unlimited

Tickerville

Amy Hoy

moddular — the design might look a little bit noisy, but it definitely has its personal style.

Victoria van Roosmalen — OK, this cat looks cool.

45 Excellent Blog Designs - Monetize your Blogs

2009-10-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

Weblogs powered by Django

Ryan Berg (Django)

Derek Featherstone (Django)

Jeff Croft (Django)

Andy Hume (Django)

Weblogs powered by ExpressionEngine

Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain (Expression Engine)
Whitespace in use. The categories and popular entries are listed at the top of the page, not in the sidebar as they usually are.

Veerle Pieters
An almost “classic”, well-known design, but still incredibly beautiful. Veerle makes use of a dark layout with quite colourful scheme. The result is impressive – and the position of site elements extremely well thought-out.

Emanuel Blagonic (~~Expression Engine~~ Wordpress)

Weblogs powered by MovableType

Kevin Kornell (Movable Type)
A typical weblog doesn’t look like an illustrated magazine. Kevin Kornell’s blog does. This one makes use of an “oldie”-style.

Cameron Moll

Dave Shea (Movable Type)

Dan Cederholm (Movable Type)

Weblogs powered by Textpattern

Praegnanz.de (Textpattern)
A minimalistic approach with clean web-typography.

Hicksdesign (Textpattern)

Geniant (Textpattern)

Blogs powered by Wordpress

Circle Six (Wordpress)

Pedro Lamin (Wordpress)
Fresh and clean design, lacking almost everything – there is even no navigation in blog categories.

Design Disease (Wordpress)

Surfgarden (Wordpress)

Dan Rubin (Wordpress)

NorthxEast (Wordpress)

Larissa Meek (Wordpress)

Matt (Wordpress)
A Business-Design. Look at the information sections on the left side of the layout.

Agenturblog (Wordpress)

Ben Gillbanks (Wordpress)

Rik Catlow (Wordpress)

FreelanceSwitch (Wordpress)

John Boardley (Wordpress)

Shaun Inman (~~Wordpress~~ custom PHP-Framework. Thanks, Shaun)

Mstefan.com (Wordpress)

Screenz (Wordpress)

Screencasting (Wordpress)

Blog.Critical (Wordpress)

Wan Zafran (Wordpress)

Viki (Wordpress)
Extensive use of visual elements prevails; it might be a nice idea, but the content should prevail.

Nick La (Wordpress)
Playful design with dozens of swirls, curves and artistic elements.

Laura Alter (Wordpress)

Markus Zeeh (Wordpress)
Playful flower-images and ornaments seem to be trends.

Sidney Collins (Wordpress)

Roman Leinwather (Wordpress)

Bottled Sky (Wordpress)
Probably not the most gorgeous layout ever made, but well-structured. The use of colors communicates the idea of the site.

Johanna Hallin (Wordpress)

Cabana (Wordpress)
Sometimes it is an interesting approach to use a “thin” layout, although it should rather be an exception.

Reflections (Wordpress)

Further Weblogs

Abduzeedo (Drupal)
Stylish, readable and clean. The site doesn’t look like blog at all – at least at the first glance.

Jonathan Snook (CakePHP)

50 Beautiful Blog Designs

2009-10-06T18:23:00.000-07:00

50 Beautiful Blog Designs

There are things one can do a number of times without worrying about becoming boring. For instance, collecting and showcasing excellent blog designs. In this post we do it already the fifth time. Why? Web design lives in blogs; new developments appear there, that’s where the music plays. And that’s where you need to look for in order to keep up with current trends and developments.

In the showcase below we present 50 beautiful blog designs that literally stand out — either through their layout or through their design or through their attention to little details. Below you’ll find a variety of designs: clean designs, grunge, retro, graphics-heavy designs etc. Most designs presented below risk unusual approaches in the choice of design and content presentation. That’s what makes them different. Hopefully you will find some creative ideas which you can develop further in your further projects.

We strongly encourage designers to break out the common layout conventions, experiment with new approaches and risk crazy ideas. Show what you are capable of!

Acko.net

Standards for Life by Natalie Jost

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyeard Book

Matthew Buchanan
Clean structure and good use of icons and typography. The icons at the left side of the posts stand for the category the article belongs to.

Goodbytes.be

45royale Inc.

Macalicious

Clean Designs

Nonesuch Records

Objectified

The Relevant Elephant

LittleEngine
LittleEngine provides an interesting integration of the blog into its overall design. Clean and very elegant solution which employs only few colors, but uses them effectively. The navigation is provided by the calendar in the sidebar.

Fiveruns

forgetfoo

Grunge, Handwriting and Collage

Retro, Vintage, Experimental

The Bond Makeover

Korbinian Folk

Lynnterpretation

A Reality Check about Blogging for Money

2009-10-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

Last week’s article in the Wall Street Journal revealed that someones blog earnings are in excess of $250,000 per year (a very ballpark figure).

The problem with these type of articles is that they report in a few words just one element of a story - in this case earnings.

The impact of the missing ‘back story’ is that much of the reality of blogging for money goes unseen by those looking at blogging as a potential income stream - leading some to naively enter into blogging with false expectations.

Of course when these expectations are not met things can get ugly with disappointment and anger being a common reaction. What disappoints me as a blogger writing on this topic is that I regularly see other bloggers feeding their readers with hype and false hopes about how easy it is to make big money from blogging. This only adds to the distance between their reader’s expectations and the reality of blogging for money.

The Reality of Blogging for Money

So what is the reality of building up one’s blogging to a point where they can make a full time living blogging?

Here are five facts that I’d like to share about my own story to give a more realistic picture to those considering getting into blogging as a way to make a living.

1. It takes a concerted long term effort

I’m often asked things like - ‘I need to make $xxxx in the next few months - how would you do it with a new blog?’

The average age of blogs in the Technorati Top 100 was over 3 years when I last surveyed it - while the occasional blogger has a fast rise to frame they are the exception. Building a successful blog takes a long time (it takes time to build readership, to work out how to monetize it etc) so take a long term approach and pace yourself.

2. It takes luck

I stumbled on making money from blogs quite accidentally
I started my first money making blog on the spur of the moment and picked a topic (without knowing what I was doing - but for the time it was right)
I met the right people at the right time
Bigger bloggers discovered me at opportune times

The lucky list could go on - but I was very lucky. Of course some people ‘make their own luck’ and to some extent I agree with this - there are ways to increase your chances of being lucky - but some of it is outside your hands. Sometimes the luck comes and sometimes it doesn’t.

3. It takes a lot of work

There’s been a lot of talk lately about how blogging less can mean more from your blog. While I agree with this - that doesn’t mean you can just come up with a few posts on a whim every few days and expect the traffic (and money) to come rolling in. Over the last 3 years I’ve consistently worked 40-60+ hour weeks on my blogging. At one point I was posting 20-30 posts per day (mainly news related posts back then). Most bloggers that make a full time living from blogging work corresponding hours on it.

4. Many don’t make much money blogging

I’ve often used the analogy of Professional sports people to highlight that in any ‘game’ there are many who play it - less who make a little money from the game, even less who are able to earn a living from it (just) and just a small group who make big money from it. The same is true for bloggers. While it is possible to make amazing money from blogging the sad reality is that most don’t make more than pocket money. Even some blogs who ‘deserve’ to make money blogging don’t.

5. It’s hard

One thing that I’ve found to be common with when I had small/new blogs and now having blogs that are doing reasonably well is that in both instances it can be really hard to keep them going. The pressure to keep coming up with fresh ideas, to respond to critique of others, to deal with jealousy when others do well and more can be difficult to deal with. On some levels it gets easier to deal with as your blog grows - but on other levels the demands that you face from a larger readership can at times be overwhelming. Most bloggers that I know (big and small) have at one point or another been close to giving up - I know I have.

Feeling Depressed?

I don’t want to put a downer on those of you wanting to take your blogs to a level where you could make good money from blogging - the fact is that it is possible and and increasing number of people are making a part time or full time living from the medium - but I do think it’s important to have a realistic picture before getting into blogging for money.

While some bloggers do talk about blogging as a way to make quick money I’ve not had that experience myself. Perhaps others do get rich quick from blogging - but I’ve not met any successful bloggers who’ve told me that yet.

Make Money Blogging - Monetize, Get Cash Each Month for Free

2009-10-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Do you want to make money blogging? If you do - you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging - there are tens of thousands of bloggers making money from blogging.

In this page I want to share some information for beginners on making money from their blogs.
I will start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging.

What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though - keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others - the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.

I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest. I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense

I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.

2. Chitika

Chitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They work best on product related blogs although their recent announcement of their Premium ad unit is exciting as they now offer ads with a non product focus that I’m hearing great conversions on (I have one reader who is getting $28 CPM on this ad unit).Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good.

3. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

Private ad sales directly to advertisers have continued to grow over the last few months and as a result they’re now my third highest income stream. I expect them to overtake both Chitika and AdSense in the coming months.

4. Amazon Associates

Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it - however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me. This quarter it grew even more than previously as a result of continued growth of DPS where I recommend books, software and cameras.

5. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs

I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs - most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own.

The great thing about many of these programs is that they are of such high quality that they sell themselves and I am being emailed from readers who sign up to them thanking me for the recommendation!

6. Shopzilla

As I wrote recently - Shopzilla has really impressed me with how it’s performed over the last few weeks. It’s actually doing well enough to debut in this list at #6. The ads are similar to Chitika but the click values have been higher for me to this point. They don’t offer quite as many options as Chitika does in terms of types of ads but for a new ad network there’s definitely promising signs. I’m looking forward to seeing how they continue to develop!

7. WidgetBucks

Another newcomer to this list is WidgetBucks - another ad network that ProBlogger readers will be familiar with.
WidgetBucks is similar to Chitika and Shopzilla in many respects and works well on product related sites. It does best on sites with US traffic (the reason I’ve not used it as much as I get a lot of international traffic) so if you have a product related site with a US audience it’d be a no brainer to try out WidgetBucks. I’m hoping they’ll continue to expand their offerings in terms of ad types and visitor location.
Disclaimer - WidgetBucks are an advertiser on ProBlogger

8. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs

I also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here - and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include ShoppingAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me - not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).
I think that that covers most of it although it’s worth mentioning that last time I did this list I also included TextLinkAds which used to be every bloggers favorite way to make money blogging by selling text links. I’ve stopped using them due to Google cracking down on them but it’s worth noting that many bloggers still use them successfully - I advise to proceed with caution.

19 (More) Strategies for Finding Readers for our blog

2009-10-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

1. It takes time - It may not be what you want to hear, but it unless you’re a genius, extremely lucky or have an amazing new idea, it takes time to build a readership. So settle in for the long haul and muscle up some patience.

2. Content Content Content - I’ve said this over and over again so will keep it brief but unless you have ‘good’ content you’re unlike to build a readership. What is good content - start by thinking about it in terms of usefulness and uniqueness and I think you’ll be on the right track. Other words that come to mind when it comes to good content might be ‘fresh’, ‘variety’, ‘up to date’ and ‘well written’.

3. Link to others - Perhaps one of the central features of blogging is that they are linked. The intricate web of links and relationships was one of the first things that attracted me to blogging and it’s part of the reason it’s got real viral properties that allow ideas to spread so quickly. Participate in the linking to other blogs and you’ll find that many benefits come. For a start you’ll be participating in the conversation, you’ll be getting the attention of others and your readers will appreciate that you’re interested in helping them find the best content out there.

Of course you don’t want to be linking randomly to everyone and anyone - be selective and link to quality content that is relevant to your niche topic. As you engage in linking you’ll find that others will link back (assuming you have something worthwhile to say yourself) and you’ll find the traffic begins to flow - both from their sites and as a result of your increased search engine ranking.

4. Get Links from other Bloggers - I can hear the comments already - ‘Easier said than done Darren!’ This is true - but if you’re smart, genuine, helpful and polite there are ways of increasing the chances of getting links from others.

5. Participate in other people’s conversations - I suspect that a number of my first regular blog readers first came to my blog because I left a comment on theirs. It was not a strategy I thought about - I just found myself quite addicted to reading others blogs and giving feedback. When you leave a comment leave your own blog address. Often people like to know who is reading their blog and will come visiting you. Don’t comment just for the sake of it. If someone leaves me a ‘hi’ comment or is obviously spamming my blog I won’t visit them and delete the comment. Make genuine comments on posts that connect with you. You might make a good friend in the process and in the long run will find the flow on effect of this is more interest in you and your own blog.

6. Interact with Readers - When a reader reaches out to you with a comment, email or link from their blog - interact with them. For starters it’s good manners and secondly it’s a good way to increase the chances that they’ll come back again. I get a lot of people telling me that they don’t have enough readers to their blog - while I can related to this frustration I generally encourage them to see what they’ve got as a good starting place. Interact with those who do come to your blog and make it the best experience you can for them and you’ll find that they spread the word for you.

7. Update frequently - With the advent of news aggregators people can be notified of your new post in real time. I noticed that when I publish a new post that my stats nearly always go up slightly just afterwards as those readers with aggregators log in to have a quick look at my latest musings. This works a lot better on some blogs than others (some topics seem to attract more RSS subscribers than others do). Another side benefit of frequent posting is that search engines like it and many believe that the more you post the more often SE’s will send their spiders out to index your blog. Similarly - the more you post the more you’ll get indexed by blog engines like technorati (and numerous others). Of course I’m not encouraging massive amounts of meaningless content - keep it of a high quality.

8. Add a signature to your outgoing email - This is an oldie but a goodie. Many bloggers do this. Simply add the domain name to your outgoing email. Most email programs will allow you to do this automatically via a signature option. However be careful with automatic signatures if you don’t want your blog to be read by everyone that you email.

9. Promote your RSS Feed - Most blog platforms come with a RSS feeds built in but there are ways of increasing your subscriber list. The most obvious of these is to put it in the sight of your readers by putting your RSS button in a more prominent position. There are a variety of different buttons available that you can make available to readers to help them to subscribe to your blog via their news aggregators with one click that might also be worth investigating. Also, if your topic is not one which many readers seem to use RSS in, you might need to do some education on the topic of RSS feeds. Write a post on how to follow your blog via RSS and you might find more do.

10. List your site on Portals, Blog Indexes, Directories and Search Engines - There are MANY places that you can list your blog to help it get more attention. In fact there are too many and you could probably spend all your time submitting your blog to them all. I’d recommend that you don’t become obsessed by this and work on other factors in this list first and then in your spare time add your blog to some of these types of things as you go. Making sure you get listed on some of the bigger sites like Technorati should probably be a priority - but don’t make this the first thing you do. In terms of getting into search engines - you can submit yourself (most have ways of doing this) but most people believe that the best and quickest way to get indexed these days is to get a link from another site that is already indexed.

11. Search Engine Optimization - While some bloggers don’t think much of SEO I think it is well worth knowing some basic SEO principles and keeping them in the back of your mind as you blog. After all SE’s are the place that most people go to when they are searching for information on a topic. Don’t become obsessed by SEO, but don’t ignore it either.

12. Participate in others Blogger’s Projects - From time to time other bloggers will invite your participation in a blog project of theirs. Put your hand up, volunteer some time and contribute in some way. Don’t just do it to get a link on their site, but take the opportunity to build a relationship with them and their readers. Not only will you make a friend, but over time you build some credibility as a blogger who is not just thinking about themselves. On the flip side start your own blogging project. Some of the more popular things to get involved with these days are Blog Carnivals.

13. Participate in other web forums - Blogging is not the only vibrant online activity at the moment. I visit a number of other discussion forums and e-zines that explore similar ideas/hobbies/interests to me and my blogs. I’ve found an increasing amount of traffic to my blog is coming as a result of my contributions to these forums as many of them allow you to add your link as a signature to your posts. Don’t spam these forums - but be a genuine contributer that adds useful comments and you’ll find people are drawn to your other projects.

14. Explore other formats of communication - Another of the more effective things that I’ve done over the past year in my blogging is worth hard on email newsletters for a few of my blogs. I don’t do it with all of them (mainly due to the time it takes) but here at ProBlogger I’ve grown a list of over 1600 email subscribers who I send weekly information to. These newsletters both are about keeping people in touch with what happened on the blog each week as well as giving extra tips and information to build a sense of community and ownership of the site. Other bloggers use forums similarly.

15. Offline Techniques - Blog Promotion need not only happen online. Consider how you might promote it offline and you could just bring in some new readers also. Such techniques can include putting your URL on business cards, letterhead, using press releases and other assorted methods.

16. Make it viral - One of the things about infectious diseases that makes them so deadly is that they are very easy to pass on from one person to another. There are a number of things you might want to consider doing to help with this. For instance a lot of bloggers these days are adding links on their posts that allow readers to bookmark the post in social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and digg. Other bloggers have features that allow bloggers to ‘email a friend’ about a particular post. Others (like ProBlogger) allow readers to subscribe to comment threads via email. All of these types of plugins allow your readers to do the work for you in either spreading the word about your site or making it more sticky. Speaking of social bookmarking - there are also ways of writing content that tend to be picked up more in this scene that you might like to explore if that’s a source of traffic that you’re interested in.

17. Advertise - I’ve written a lot over the past year about running advertising on blogs as a form of income - but on the flip side of many advertising platforms that you can run as a publisher are the opportunities to actually advertise your blog in the attempt to find new readers. In the last few months I’ve dabbled a little in this side of things, mainly using AdWords (the advertiser side of AdSense) but also advertising on a few sites using BlogAds. I’ve actually been learning about AdWords using Perry Marshall’s e-book (aff) on the topic and am finding it quite helpful if you’re looking to a good introduction to using it (he has a free 5 day taster too). Of course you’ll need to weigh up the cost of advertising vs the benefits that you think it’ll bring - but I know of quite a few bloggers who run an AdWords campaign in the first month of a new blog to give it a kick start and swear by the method.

18. Link baiting - This is one of the terms that has become quite common among bloggers over the last year. In essence ‘link bait’ is some sort of comment that will attract links to it and in many ways is no different than paragraph 2 above - write good content and people will link up. Of course there are many tactics that many bloggers use to link bait

19. Take all advice with a grain of salt - Be yourself and have fun! - The web is full of advice like the above - what I’m saying isn’t rocket science. There are no rules of blogging and it seems everyone’s experience of growing a blog (or not growing one) is different.

I’m sure there are a lot of blogs out there that ignore all or most of the above advice that have a bunch of regular readers and healthy hits. So relax, be yourself and have fun with it. Experiment with new tools, styles of design and writing.

My suspicion is that bloggers who obviously enjoy the blogging process and who are themselves are the type of bloggers that people are drawn to. Bloggers that are uptight and who complain constantly about how their blog isn’t achieving what they want it to achieve probably do quite the opposite and turn people away. Traffic is a good thing for a blog but it’s not the ultimate measure of a good blog in my books. Write it for yourself and have some fun and a lot of the rest will end up looking after itself.

9 Things to Do To Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your mom

2009-10-06T11:34:00.000-07:00

Today I want to take the ’seeding’ idea a step further and give a few examples of ways that you can do it - and in the process hopefully grow your readership beyond your immediate family (not that there’s anything wrong with Mom reading your blog).

I should say that while this post contains 9 ways to promote a blog post - that I rarely use all of them at once. Keep in mind that the idea of ’seeding’ is not about forcing things but rather it is about getting things going and then letting something organic happen. You might need to put a little more effort into things somewhere along the way to keep momentum going (like ‘watering the garden’ helps a seed to grow) but the idea isn’t for force things.

So without further ado - let me share a few of the techniques that I use to ’seed’ content:

1. Tweet it

I find that one of the most effective ways to get a link to a new blog post ‘out there’ is simply to tweet it. Tweeting a link is quick and easy to do - and if you do it well it can be quite effective at both driving direct traffic to a blog post but also in starting other little viral events on other sites.
The effectiveness of this does depend a little on the size of your follower group - but other factors you can have a little more control over include:

timing your tweets to be during peak times when lots of people are on Twitter.
doing a followup tweet to your original one (I only do this on important posts and usually try to change the wording so as not to annoy people too much)
the wording of your tweet (give people a reason to click it)
making your tweet ‘ReTweetable’ by not making it too long (I keep these seeding tweets to under 120 characters to leave room for people to retweet them).

I find that when something does well on Twitter (and not every post will) that it can often trigger a secondary event on a site like Delicious. This in turn can trigger blogs to link to my posts or other social bookmarking sites to pick up links.

2. Facebook Status Updates (and other social media)

This is of course similar to Tweeting a link. I’ve not had as much success with Facebook as a promotional tool for my blogs but know of a few bloggers in different niches who find it to be more effective. Whether it sends loads of traffic or not it can be helpful in an overall strategy.

Similarly I sometimes also use other social media sites like LinkedIn’s status update if I feel that the content I’m promoting is better suited to other audiences. Again - it depends partly upon the size of your network on these sites but even a small but relevant network on these sites can trigger other bloggers to link up or secondary organic submissions on other social sites by those in your network. You never know what impact sharing a link in these sites can have until you do it.

3. Pitch it to another Blogger

Is the post you’re promoting relevant to the audience of another blog?
This is a question I’m always asking myself as I’m writing blog posts. As I write I jot down the names of other bloggers that have an audience that might find what I’m writing helpful. This means that when it comes time to promote the blog post I have a ready made list of people to shoot out an email to to let them know about my post.
I don’t send these emails out often, nor do I send them out to the same group of bloggers repeatedly - but if I genuinely think my post is of high quality and that the blogger will find it relevant I will.
Check out these suggestions on how to pitch other bloggers for some more tips on how to do this effectively.

4. Pitch it to another Twitter User

This is similar to pitching another blogger but can have a great impact as well. In fact I recently had a link from a blogger who both posted on his blog and tweeted the link and the Tweet converted much better for me in terms of traffic.
The key once again is to make sure that the link is relevant to the Tweeter and the type of thing that you’ve seen them sharing on twitter with others.

5. Share a Link in a ‘Signature’

Many bloggers have links to the front page of their blogs in both email signatures and forum signatures - but what about directing people to an individual post? There are a variety of tools out there that highlight latest posts (feedburner has one) and they make a lot of sense to me because you’re sending people to standalone articles that you’ve written rather than a sometimes confusing front page of a blog.

6. Bookmark it

This is one that I don’t tend to do myself these days but I know many bloggers who do so I’ll include it. It entails submitting your post to a site like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious etc.

I don’t tend to do this any more as I find many of these sites have algorithms that penalize a site if it’s submitted by the same person over and over. What I do instead is occasionally shoot a link to another user of these sites in the hope that they’ll submit it for me. Having said this - I also find that as your traffic grows the submissions become more and more organic from regular readers so there’s less need for me personally to be involved in these types of ’seedings’ in social bookmarkting sites.

7. Guest Posts

Another method that I’ve seen a number of bloggers using with real effect lately is to link to your important blog post in a guest post on someone else’s blog.

Most people who guest post on another blog tend to link back to the front page of their blog in the byline. This is a good general link to get but if you have an important post that you’ve written that relates to the guest post you’re writing you should find a way to incorporate a link to that post - either as the byline link or if the blogger allows it - within the blog post itself.

8. Give readers an easy way to share it

Hopefully with some of the above techniques you’ve got a few readers over to your blog - now you want them to share it with others.
There are many ways to make your blog post ’sharable’. I tend to use a combination of templated techniques as well as a few custom ones that I add to posts once on posts that I think will do well on social media sites.

Templated techniques - there are many ways to build social media buttons into your blog. There are heaps of tools and plugins that will do this for you. The key in my experience is not to have too many buttons/options but to choose just a few that relate well to your audience.
Custom techniques - if I notice that one of my posts is starting to do well on Twitter or Digg or some other social media site I generally will either add an extra button to a post or add a text link pointing people to where they can tweet or digg the post. I find that these more obvious little additions to a post can often tip it over the edge to a viral traffic event.

9. Newsletters

This is a way that I often ‘tip’ posts that are doing OK over the edge into a viral traffic event. It usually works like this:
A - I write a post that I think MIGHT do well as a viral post
B - I time the publishing of that post for a Thursday morning - an update goes out via RSS to my subscribers
C - I use some of the above techniques to get the post seeded (Twitter, Facebook etc)
D - I wait until the post is submitted to Digg and then add a Digg button to the post (or some other social bookmarking site)
E - I then send out a newsletter to my list including a prominent link to the post
What I find is that without the last step (sending a newsletter) the post can do quite well - but when I send the newsletter I quite often see a ‘tipping point’ with the post and it’ll go viral on multiple social media sites at once on the back of the extra traffic that I’ve been able to send to the traffic via the newsletter.

2 Final Words of Advice

Let me finish with two words that I think are key to much of the above - persistence and relationships.

1. Persistence - There’s a real need for persistence in seeding content. Much of what I’ve described above are things that I’ve been doing for years and they’ve only become more effective the longer that I’ve done them.

My experience of finding readers is that it is all about momentum. In the early days to find just a handful of readers can be a real challenge - the above methods may not bring thousands of people through the door - however the 10 than they do bring in on your first day could lead to 100 next month which could lead to the thousands in the coming year.

You may get lucky and your seed may grow into something big in the early days of your blog - but even small results can grow slowly into big things over time. Each reader that you bring into your loyal readership is important because they have a network of their own that they could help spread word of your blog to.

2. Relationships - The other key to much of the above is to be as relational as possible. Much of the above relies upon people sharing your posts with others once you alert them to the existence of your posts. So put aside regular time to grow your network, to build a presence on sites like Twitter, to build trust and influence on other sites outside of your blog - this networking can pay off in a big way over the long term. Just do keep these other social networking sites in perspective - they’re not the main game themselves but should be used to build up your home base.

61+ Free Business Wordpress themes Monetize your Blog

2009-10-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

61+ Free Business Wordpress themes Monetize your Blog

A suitable theme not only makes your website more attractive but also close to the readers. Specially for some business website, the theme plays an important role. Since I haven’t the talent to design the excellent themes, I collected some good business ones and supply for these people who need them. It almost took me one week spare time to finish it, but I think it deserved, because it would save more time for WP user. I have put these themes in one page although it seems too long but it is very convenience and fast for you to find your satisfied ones. Enjoy!

Theme Name: All Business
Theme Author: D.Cache
Theme Properties: 1 column
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Theme Name: Ally Spiral 1.0
Theme Author: Ally Web Directory
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Against it all 1.1
Theme Author: Business Broker
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Bling Bling 1.0
Theme Author: Throttlenews
Theme Properties: 1 column
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Theme Name: Blue Business 1.0
Theme Author: Make Quick
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Blue Zinfandel Squared 1.0
Theme Author: Brian Gardner
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Breaking News 1.0
Theme Author: ShinRa
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Business
Theme Author: N/A
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Business 1.0
Theme Author: TrafficBandits.com
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Business Blue 2.0
Theme Author: Ganar dinero
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Business Casual 1.0
Theme Author: Chris Poteet
Theme Properties: 2 column
Download | Download from Author’s blog

Theme Name: Business Event 1.0
Theme Author: D.Cache
Theme Properties: 1 column
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Theme Name: Business Magazine
Theme Author: N/A
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Business Success
Theme Author: Dimitri Krauss
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Business Training
Theme Author: CMC Training
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Business Trend
Theme Author: N/A
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Casual Business 1.0
Theme Author: Aequitas
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Color Biz
Theme Author: andrej
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Confidence With A Smile
Theme Author: feel designs
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Corporate 1.0
Theme Author: Kitkat
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Corporatefk Business 1.0b
Theme Author: Julian Klewes and Fredrik Fahlstad
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Corporateid 1.0
Theme Author: Kitkat
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Credit Cards 1.0
Theme Author: cardguide
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Deserted 3C
Theme Author: N/A
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: DP Businesslife
Theme Author: Dolphin Promotions
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Author: Celso Cardozo
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Theme Author: WordpressThemed
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Emporium Business
Theme Author: Emporium Directory
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Finance 2.0
Theme Author: N / A
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Finance
Theme Author: Pixelnet
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Financial Green 1.0
Theme Author: bloggingzone.info
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Global Business 1.0
Theme Author: bloggingzone.info
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Grey Style 2.0
Theme Author: feeldesigns
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Hand Shake
Theme Author: Gomvents
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: In Business
Theme Author: Business Broker
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Indian Red 1.0
Theme Author: MyBlogIt (David Span)
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Just Business 1.0
Theme Author: Rui Figueiredo
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Landis
Theme Author: tgpo
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Make Mone At Home
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Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Office Theme 1.0
Theme Author: Greg Ponchak
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Real Estate
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Theme Name: Realstate
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Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Red Business 1.1
Theme Author: Genkisan
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Author: Genkisan
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Redie 3C Right
Theme Author: Steve Arun
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: RockinBizRed3Col 1.3
Theme Author: Nathan Rice
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: RockinBizRed 1.1
Theme Author: Nathan Rice
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: RockinBizRed 2.0
Theme Author: Nathan Rice
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: RockinBlue 2.0
Theme Author: Cory Miller
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: SL-realestatetheme
Theme Author:semlaguna
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Smiling White People 1.0
Theme Author: Deeogee
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Talian 1.0
Theme Author: Steve Arun
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Vivoxia 1.0
Theme Author: Vivoxia
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Wake In Luxury 2.0
Theme Author: Themestudio
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Theme Name: Wall Street 1.0
Theme Author: Deeogee
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: Young Business 1.0
Theme Author: Adivor
Theme Properties: 2 column
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Theme Name: 130106 1.0
Theme Author: Isnaini
Theme Properties: 3 column
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Make Money Blogging

10 Signs That Your Blog Is On The Right Track

Why Bloggers Should Have a Privacy Policy, and 9 Points to Include in Yours

10 Essential Legal Points for Bloggers

7 Things to Avoid While Leaving A Blog Comment

Six Rules of Blogging (That Also Apply to Twitter)

37 Ways to Make Blogging Easier

5 Quick Ways to Improve Your Blog

5. Tweak Your Theme

4. Run a Site Speed Test

3. Tweak/Add Static Pages

2. Add a Feature

1. Brainstorm

Bottom Line

WordPress Setup - www.myblogusa.com

Themes & Design

Check & Validate

Plugins

SEO & Analytics

How to Blow Out a Blog - Make some money

Step 1: Optimize your Blog

How to Find the Best Keywords

Where to Place the Keywords

Use Specific Keyword Phrases

Step 2: Make Money with your Blog

Popular Widgets | Add a Link

More Ad Programs for Your Blog

Text Ads vs. Banner Ads

Step 3: Driving Traffic to Your Blog

Community Web Blogs and Bookmarking Sites

More Places to Link and Plug Your Blog

Step 4: Keeping and Growing Your Blog Traffic

Update and Bookmark

Video Blogging | Add a Link

Google AdSense | Add a Link

Pings, Trackbacks, and More

Step 5: Add Widgets to Your Blog

RSS Feeds | Add a Link

Technorati | Add a Link

Money Making Widgets | Add a Link

Step 6: Incorporate Multimedia Into Your Blog

Helpful Widgets | Add a Link

Google Video Units | Add a Link

Podcasting | Add a Link

Step 7: Analyze Your Blog Traffic and Performance

Popular Analytical Traffic Tools

More Traffic Tools

The Complete Guide to Video Blogging

Video Blogging is Still in its Infancy

Web Video Puts People on Equal Footing

What Makes a Good Video Blog

Creating a Video Blog

Distributing a Video Blog

Facebook Widget: Embed your Facebook Content Anywhere

25 Great Blogger Widgets - Use them to make more money

Communications Widgets

Social Widgets

Utility Widgets

Miscellaneous Widgets

All you need to know to start your own Blog or make it better. Earn Money doing your blogs.

Introduction: What is a Blog?

Step 1: Define Your Niche

Defining Your Audience

Choosing Your Subject

Free Blog Hosts | Add a Link

Step 2: Name Your Blog

Checking Your Name's Availability

Step 3: Choose a Blog Host

Hosted Blogging Platforms (The Easy Route)

Server-Side or Stand Alone Blogging Platforms (The Professional's Route)

Online Diary Services and Tumblelogs

Step 4: Create Your Blog

The Components of a Blog

Which Service is Right for You?

Important Blogger Links

Signing Up and Choosing Your Template

Your First Post

Exploring Your Settings and Template Tabs

Your Profile Page

Deleting Your Blog