So you want to build an empire. Unlike historical empires that relied on unique military tactics, advanced technology, and slave labor, your empire will rely on a single person: you. Youll design it, youll build it, and youll people it with readers who return to it day after day, becoming in a small sense virtual citizens of your Blog Empire and eventually your happy customers. Youll use the same tactics as others, but youll use them more efficiently. Youll use the same infrastructure as others, but youll use it more effectively. Youll compete with other empires for your readers time, and youll do so successfully. A Blog Empire is an empire of customer service and you will not only be its ruler, you will be the servant of all who enter it. Sound like fun? It can be, if you design your empire with one person in mind: you.

It seems a dichotomy to say that a Blog Empire should be built around the provider rather than the customer, but theres a simple reason for it: it will be you who updates it day after day. You will be the editor, the designer, and the main focus of the site. Your expertise, your hobby, or your insight will provide the service that the citizens of your Blog Empire want. You cant sell from an empty cart and youve got to be in it for the long haul. That means youve got to provide content that features what you know and what you love. You will be the key, and every part of your Blog Empire will be designed with that in mind.

However, before you can lay the foundations, we need to review a few options. Lets take a look at a few successful blogs and generate some ideas. Then well come back for a good look at the one who can make it all work: you.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blog Empire

As a blogger, you want everyone to have access to your content. One of the more popular ways to step out of the blogosphere is to provide your readers an opportunity to get your headlines without even having to visit your blog. This is important for one reason: you may not post something that interests them, and after a few days, they may forget you exist. It cant be helped: everything you write is going to interest someone, but few will be interested in everything you write. An RSS feed gives these casual or occasional readers a chance to see your headlines and visit only when they are interested in a particular subject.

If youve visited many blogs, youve probably seen a small banner like this: If you click on the banner (and if you have a My Yahoo! page of your own) youll find that the bloggers headlines will appear on your My Yahoo! page, allowing you to quickly scan their news without having to go to the blog. Youve discovered a blog that provides an RSS feed. Its written by a blogger who wants to keep his blog in front of readers.

If you want to really dig into the technology behind RSS/XML, a good place to start is XML.com, but the important information is not how RSS and XML work, but rather the work they do. An RSS feed allows you to syndicate your content, like a syndicated columnist provides content to many newspapers, allowing other bloggers to provide real-time links to your information. The ability to syndicate your content, moving it out of your blog and onto the blogs of others, is one of the most important features of whatever blog software you use.

There are many sites which will publish your RSS feeds. Here are a few easy ones to get you started:
Blog Digger
Feedster
News is Free
Syndic8

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blog Feeds

A number of programs, known as link exchanges, will allow your link to be listed on the blogs of others, so long as you carry on your blog a small ad that lists the blogs of others who are members of the same program. A link exchange works the same way as a blog ring, tying all the featured blogs into a big circle, with the exception that the blogs you link to may not be similarly grouped as they are for most blog rings. When you sign up for the link exchange, youll receive credits every time your page displays the links of others, and your credits are used up as your blog is displayed on the blogs of other members of the link exchange.

While link exchanges are a convenient way for you to have your blog prominently displayed on the blogs of others, there are several possible side effects that you need to examine before signing up for any link swap program.

The first caveat is that, because link swaps are generally not grouped by subject or content, you may find that your blogs is linking to content that you may find objectionable, like adult content, opposing political blogs, or competitors in your industry. Since its important to keep tight control on where you send your customers, its a good idea to watch the blog swap closely to ensure that you are displaying the content you want and that youre not going to alienate your customers and readers by displaying offensive content.

The second issue you may have to deal with is the speed at which some applications operate, especially if they download a java application to your page. Many load more slowly than the average page, forcing your customers to wait or jerking the page they are reading back to the top once the application is fully loaded. If the link exchange application is causing your loading speed to suffer, its probably going to cause you more trouble than its worth. Remember, your readers want to jump right in and read what you have to say. Jerking the page around as soon as they dig in to your content is not going to make many friends.

A final issue is one of cosmetics. Because some link exchange applets are one-size-fits-all, the layout size or colors may clash with your blog. Be sure that you can modify the application to make it unobtrusive before you put something on your page that will prove a distraction to your readers. You want them to notice the links, but like everything else on your page, they should add to it rather than detracting from it.

Here are a few popular link exchange programs:
Gotlinks
Gotop
LinksPal
Link2Blogs

Be sure to look farther than this list, however, as there are certain to be link exchanges that cater specifically to your content or your geographic location. If you cant find one, you can always establish your own link exchange at Link Market.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blog Link Exchanges

On a news blog, for example, your readers expect that your commentary will provide interesting and relevant news, probably with a link to an original story or a source site. They will also expect you to provide expertise that they do not possess, information they have not found elsewhere, and an up-tothe-minute take on relevant trends and rumors. They want to read the entry and come away feeling they now know more than they did, that they learned something interesting, and that they leave with a reason to return.

A blog that reviews restaurants will meet those same expectations in a different manner. Timeliness is less a factor restaurants dont change as quickly as the daily news but relevance and thoroughness become more important. Your readers are not going to return for your reviews of Portlands collection of Subway restaurants, nor for your fifth review of Kells Irish Pub, even if you think it the best place in the world to eat. They demand an expanding collection of useful content, and they want each entry to tell them everything they need to know to make an enjoyable dining decision. They want you to be clear, honest, and thorough.

Perhaps your blog is a reference blog, collecting and publishing links by subject. While readers may not have expectations for your commentary, they will expect the links to be accurate and present a thorough overview of the subject from all angles or at least from the angle your readers have come to expect from prior commentary. Consistency and thoroughness are again the watchwords.

Whatever the theme of your blog, your readers will expect every entry to be timely, relevant, and accurate.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blog Links And Commentary

With the popularity of blogs exploding, a large number of blog-specific servers and companies have arisen to meet the demand for fast and easy blog creation. Many of them provide software that allows the blogger to quickly and easily set up a blog, sometimes in mere minutes. They allow certain modification (colors, columns, etc.) and provide tools that can have your blog looking sharp, even if youve never typed an entry in your life.

But they have drawbacks as well, especially for blogs that want to more than just an online diary. They may not provide statistics. They may not allow you to host your own ads. They may even drop your entries once those entries roll off the front page. The solution, in many cases, is to pay a subscription fee which will free up features you need to make your blog profitable, unique, and professional.

Heres a list of some of the more popular blog-specific sites:

Blog-City: One of the easier blog-specific sites to use, Blog-City offers a wide number of pre-made layouts that do not require HTML knowledge to use. Functionality is limited, however, and some features are only available to those who pay an annual subscription fee.

Blog Drive: Blogdrive offers free blogging with objects such as tagboards, RSS feeds, and ready-made header graphics.

Blogspot: Blogspot features free blogging and image hosting, and provides a very user-friendly interface. Those who understand HTML will be able to create nearly any layout they desire.

TBlog: offers free basic service which must be upgraded to add features like comment management and image support.

Xanga: is dedicated toward the online diary end of the blogosphere. It offers free but limited image hosting and WYSIWYG editing, but downloadable archives are only available by purchasing a premium subscription.

Each host and there are many others - has many unique attributes and prices, and before you decide to use one of them, its wise to become familiar with what each offers. By the time youve finished this book, youre going to know precisely what features you need to build your Blog Empire. So review each host carefully; if it turns out they dont offer what you need, its often difficult to take your traffic with you when you move.

If you choose a free host, one of the first issues youll deal with is the blogs URL. If you choose Blogspot, for example, your URL will look something like elborak.blogspot.com with elborak being your blogs name. That name must be unique across the host, and with millions of blogs out there, thats not an easy task. And if your blog is named, Spackle News, its going to be harder for readers to find your blog at spacklenews.blogspot.com than if the name is SpackleNews.com. Fortunately, there are a few solutions to that problem.

The first solution is to use a forwarding service, like My Domain. You buy a fitting domain name for a few dollars a year, and My Domain will forward your traffic from SpackleNews.com (or whatever your blog name is) to your blog. You can even decide to view your blog within a frame, so the URL appears as SpackleNews.com, while the browser is pulling data from another server. Frames do have the problem, however, of holding any document you link to within that same frame unless you do some fancy coding. That makes it harder for the user to escape or find specific data on your blog, a situation which neither of you will appreciate.

A second solution is to choose a host that will allow you to directly assign a URL to your blog even as it remains on their server. Be sure to check the features of any blog host you examine to see if they offer the ability to assign your own URL.

A final solution is to simply rent normal web space and install a software package that will manage your blog. Depending upon the features you want, it may cost you a few dollars, but the features you get will usually exceed those of free or dedicated blog services by a long shot.

Here are a few of the popular packages and what they can provide:

Greymatter: Open-source and full-featured, Greymatter is a good choice for those who have some familiarity with CGI files and layouts. Free.

MacJournal: MacJournal is the leading journaling software for MacIntosh users who blog. It includes a full suite of Mac-specific features and offers the ability to manage multiple journals. Free.

Pico: While not as full-featured as some other packages, Pico is small and fast. Written entirely in Perl, it weighs in at a svelte 14k of disk space. Its easy to install and its free.

Rocketpost: Published by Anconia Software, RocketPost is a full-featured package designed for business users and serious bloggers. It comes with a 30-day free trial and a $37 total cost.

All of these packages are available in either demo or full version at CNETs Download.com.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blog Platforms Free Vs Subscription

The concept behind the blog ring is a simple one: similar blogs join in a ring, each placing a link on their page to the next blog in the ring. Visitors interested in the subject those blogs feature, be it model trains or Green politics, are encouraged to click on the link that leads to the next blog. Its usually a bad idea to send your visitors away, but in this case youre receiving a price for the service: other blogs in the same ring are sending their traffic to you.

The number and type of blog rings is limited only by the types of blogs online, which is to say that unless your blog is absolutely unique in the blogosphere, there is probably a ring or three that will meet your needs. But be careful joining a ring simply because it exists remember, youre sending some of your traffic away, and its not often wise to send traffic to your competitors. Thats why its important, before you join a ring, to surf it around once or twice. Youll not only get to see the competition, you may learn a way to one-up it, making your blog stand out in a sea of similar information.

There are specialized blog rings for Australian blogs, romance writers, even those who blog about knitting. With a little searching, you can find a blog ring that fits your content perfectly.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blog Rings

There are a million sites out there that promise to submit your site to hundreds, even thousands of search engines. Before you choose one - giving them your money or email address - think for a moment about how many search engines you use. You probably have a favorite or two, as do most people. And in many cases, they are the same ones. That means that so long as your site is listed in the major engines (Yahoo! and Google and MSN, to name a few) theres really no need to pay for someone to submit it to a search engine no one uses or to give them your email address (which will coincidentally be deluged by spam from that day forward). Its worthwhile to manually submit your site ONCE to the bigger engines, but once you have a few blogs linking to you, search spider programs find you anyway by following from another site.

A second way to avoid paying for others to submit your site to search engines is to pick a blog host or software that features a blog ping, an automatic submission engine that tells blog search sites that you have updated. Many of them allow you to choose which sites youd like to submit your blog to (choose them all, of course) though there may be a restriction on the number of times you may ping the engines per day (e.g. Blogspot has a once-per-12-hours limit) because over-pinging, like multiple submissions to search engines, can result in your blog being blacklisted. Its far better to err on the side of caution and let the search engines do their own work.

News engines are a different story. If you do a search of Google News for any specific subject, youll find a number of blogs listed right along with the major media outlets. Some of these independent outfits, like the Blogger News Network may even beat the major news outlets to a story. If what you write is original and newsworthy, submitting your site as a news source will ensure that someone looks over your content for inclusion along with CBS and the New York Times as a source of news. In this case you have little control other than to ensure you entries are newsworthy over whether blog is included as a news source. However, a successful listing is worth its weight in gold and is definitely worth pursuing.

Some of the more popular news search engines are:
All the Web News
Alta Vista
Google
Yahoo!

A sites FAQ will often tell you how to suggest a news site. Suggesting your own site can result in hordes of traffic reading your blog for the latest.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blog Search Engines And News Engines

Most people are willing to pay for information they find valuable. They buy newspapers, magazines, and books, so why wouldnt they pay for your information? The first reason is that you are giving it away for free. While some readers will voluntarily make a donation to keep you warmed and fed, the vast majority will not.

But if the information you provide is valuable, especially if it is of a financial nature, you may consider holding some back, offering special insider or in-depth coverage for those who wish to learn more.

One way to do so is to set up a special, secure website to archive your individual special reports. When readers send you a subscription payment, you email them a password that will expire after a certain period of time. A good example of this is George Ures Urban Survival, a blog dedicated to unusual and unorthodox economic trends. Ure publishes a special weekly report, known as Peoplenomics, which lays out a weekly examination of one or more issues discussed in Urban Survival during the week. Back issues are cataloged on the site, so any subscriber has the right to go back into prior years, even when such reports are outside the bounds of their subscription period. When readers passwords expire, they are simply removed from the master database. Setting up and maintaining a separate list of passwords will not take a lot of time until you have dozens of subscribers. By that time, your revenue will certainly cover one of the many commercial database management tools on the market.

The second way is to provide the reports through an autoresponder or via email. With email, you simply create a list of email addresses and send your reports to them as they are written. While this is easier at first than establishing a completely separate site, eventually your readers are going to request back issues or are going to lose emails, necessitating you spend a lot of time re-sending information This manual process, if established, ought to be quickly transferred over to a dedicated site. Its a good beginning, however, if youre just testing the market to see how your readers respond to the offer.

There are two caveats to consider, however, before offering special reports and information. The first is that the commitment you are making must be kept, even if you have only one subscriber (and you will, at some point, only have one). You must decide if the extra time and effort to make a special weekly report is worthwhile. That subscriber is entrusting you with his money and expects that you will keep your end of the bargain by fulfilling your promises. Theres no easier way to alienate your most faithful readers than by not giving them what they pay for.

Other than the time you spend providing the information, the most important consideration is whether the content is really valuable enough to demand a subscription. If you have proven and useful insight thats worth paying for, giving your readers access to it can be a paying proposition. If you give the same information away on your blog two weeks later, or if your insider information is readily available elsewhere, your reader will rightly conclude that you have tricked them.

Remember, the long-term success of your Blog Empire relies on your integrity. Keeping your promises, especially when they are directly tied to a financial contribution on the part of your readers, can make or break your reputation and your bank account.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blog Subscriptions And Special Insider Reports

How would you like to have hundreds, even thousands, of visitors to your site, each of whom is guaranteed to spend 20 or 30 seconds looking over your content? Would you like them to review your blog? Rate your blog? How about if they voted for your blog in a head-to-head competition with the blogs of others? If it sounds great, thats because it is.

Blog traffic exchanges are sites that guarantee visitors will visit your blog and spend a pre-determined amount of time there. But theres a price: for each visitor that views your blog, you have to view the blog of another in the same manner.

Heres how it works. When you register your blog on a traffic exchange, you create an account specific to your blog. You earn credits to your account by visiting the sites of others, which are displayed inside a frame with a timer that measures how long you must remain at that site. After an amount of time determined by the site, you enter a code into the frame (this ensures that individuals are actually at their computers) and move to the next site. For each site you visit, you receive credit which is spent by your blog being viewed by others. The more blogs you visit, the more visitors you will receive in return.

Most traffic exchanges do not give 1-for-1 credits, meaning youll have to visit more than 10 blogs to receive 10 visitors. In fact, the ratio is usually only a half-credit per visit, meaning youll visit 20 sites to receive those visitors, but free, bonus, or mystery credits may be awarded randomly to keep your ratio a little better than one visitor for two visits. The excess credits are generally sold by the traffic exchanges to advertisers who pay for visitors and save themselves the time of waiting at the various sites.

Youll get traffic in proportion to how much time you spend surfing (and dont tell anyone, but you can often have separate browsers open to separate traffic exchanges for simultaneous surfing), but its important to realize what kind of traffic youre receiving. To learn the thoughts of your visitors, take a look inside your own head: youre visiting, not to read the blogs, but to get visitors in return…and so it everyone else. Does that mean the traffic is worthless? Not at all. When you look at hundreds of blogs, youll find a lot of them with features worth emulating and content worth a link or two. Youll also receive visitors who are looking for the kind of content you present. Like-minded and even opposite-minded readers will leave comments, link to you, and may eventually become regular readers. However, its important to understand that the vast majority are only visiting to get visitors in return and are probably filing their nails while they wait for the allotted time to expire. Then they move on to the next blog.

If you lack the time to sit at your PC manually generating traffic, many traffic exchanges will sell you their surplus visitors for as little as a penny apiece. Five bucks will earn you 500 visitors, a fair price since those visitors are in no way targeted to your content; they are bloggers who are trying to earn your visit in return. You can also purchase banners on many traffic exchanges, which will give you fewer visitors (they are sold by impressions, not clicks) but they will be more interested visitors.

Many traffic exchanges, like the blog directories and blog rings discussed below, will require you to place a small banner on your site, which may limit the number of traffic exchanges you join unless you have room on your page for 15 or 20 tiny banners all in a pile.

One final note: before you join a traffic exchange, try to get a feel for how established it is, i.e. how many blogs it features. A brand new traffic exchange may only have a few dozen blogs. That means not only will you to look at the same 20 blogs over and over, youll have the same 20 bloggers visiting you. Unique traffic is valuable traffic, so stick with those traffic exchanges that can deliver hundreds of unique hits to your blog.

Here are a few of the more popular traffic exchanges:
Blog-a-Zoo
BlogXchange
Blog Clicker
Blog Explosion
Blog Soldiers

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blog Traffic Exchanges

Although blogging can be used for a variety of other purposes such as generating income, promoting a cause and providing information there are many bloggers who enjoy blogging simply because it is fun. These bloggers enjoy blogging for reasons such as staying in touch with friends, expressing themselves or keeping a record of important events. This article will explain how blogs can be used for these purposes.

Blogging to Stay in Touch with Friends

Staying in touch with friends and family members is just one of the many reasons a person may wish to start a blog. This is especially useful for those who move far away from their friends and family members. Staying in touch by phone, regular visits and even email is not always easy. This is because it can be difficult to keep up long distance interactions with several different people at once. However, by maintaining a blog, a person can greatly simplify the process of staying in touch with friends and family members because they do not have to repeat information in individual phone calls or emails or make time to visit several different people.

When maintaining a blog, the individual can choose to post a variety of information and photos. Through this information and photos the blog owner can keep others informed about current events in his life. Friends and family members can view the blog at their convenience to catch up on important events in the blog owners life and in most cases can post comments to the blog owner. They can also read comments from others. This is beneficial if those viewing the blog know each other because they can not only stay in touch with the blog owner but also have a chance to communicate with other friends and family members through the comments section of the blog.

Blogging as a Form of Expression

Some bloggers begin blogging as a form of expression. They may right poetry, songs, short stories or even use the blog to vent about personal events or politics. These bloggers may wish to keep their blog private or can make the blog available to the public. Keeping the blog private is sort of like keeping a diary or a journal. It gives the blogger a multi-media form of expressing himself without the risk of others discovering his true feelings, innermost dreams or frustrations. Other bloggers opt to make these blogs public. This may be for a number of different reasons. Sharing these feelings with others allows the blogger to reach others who may have the same interest as the blogger.

Bloggers who use their blog as a form of personal expression may want to be cautious and consider the decision to make a blog public. This is important because the blog owner may initially not see problems with allowing others to view his personal thoughts. However, over time he may realize his blog could either be offensive to others or could result in problems if friends or family members view the blog.

Blogging to Keep a Record of Events

Another common reason for blogging is to keep a record of important events. Examples of some types of events which a blogger may wish to document include a pregnancy, weddings, vacations, sporting events or completion of school events. Using blogs to keep a record of these events gives the blogger an opportunity to record daily events in one simple location where they can easily look back on the blog or share the postings with others who might be interested in the events. In these cases the blog can serve as a form of scrapbook documenting the events as they occur. The blog owner can post as often as he desires and may choose to include elements such as photos, music, audio files and video files into the blog. The blog can also be designed to suit the events being documented. For example a journal depicting a vacation may have backgrounds, fonts and colors representing the vacation location while a pregnancy blog may feature elements which represent pregnancy, babies and being parents.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blogging For Fun

Blogging is becoming an increasingly popular way for entrepreneurs to earn a living online while doing something they really enjoy. In many cases bloggers can profit with very little effort. There may be quite a bit of work involved in the beginning with designing a method of gaining revenue and promoting the website but once this is established simply maintaining the blog with regular postings may be enough to keep the revenue rolling in. Two of the most popular methods for generating a profit from blogging include advertising methods. This includes advertising with AdSense and securing independent advertisers. This article will discuss these two methods of advertising on a blog.

Using AdSense to Generate Revenue

Using AdSense is one of the most popular ways for bloggers to generate revenue from their blog. This method is so popular because it is also very simple. AdSense is a program offered by Google where bloggers agree to have advertisements on their website and are compensated when users click on these advertisements. Bloggers simply have to create a blog and submit the website address of the blog as well as some other information to apply for participation in AdSense. Once a blog is approved the owner is given code they can simply copy and paste to have advertisements displayed on their blog. Google then serves appropriate advertisements each time the blog is accessed. Whenever possible, the advertisements served on the blog are closely related to the content of the blog because Google crawls the website ahead of time to determine which advertisements are relevant to the content. Blog owners do have some ability to place restrictions on the types of advertisements which may appear on the blog. For example the blog owner can specify adult advertisements are not to appear on the blog and Google will filter these out.

How Advertisements on a Blog Generate Revenue

Many bloggers use advertisements on their blogs to generate a profit. This method of advertising is more difficult than using AdSense but it can be significantly more financially beneficial to the blogger. This method of advertising is similar to the type of targeted advertising often seen in magazines. For example magazines for parents often feature advertisements which will appeal to parents such as advertisements for toys, childrens clothing or foods popular with children. Likewise a magazine for runners may feature advertisements for shoes, athletic clothing, races or training equipment. In these cases the advertisers pay for advertising space in the magazine in the hopes that the magazines audience will be enticed to purchase products or services after seeing these advertisements.

Blog owners can use this type of advertising but it can be hard to find willing advertisers. However, there are some factors which may make an advertiser more willing to have an advertisement appear on a blog. One of the most important factors for advertisers is the amount of traffic the blog receives. This is important because advertisers who are paying for ad space are more likely to invest in a blog with high traffic than one with very little traffic.

Another important factor for advertisers is the focus of the blog. Advertisers are more likely to purchase advertising space from a blog with a specific focus of interest to the advertisers target audience. Like the examples listed previously of magazines for parents and runners, advertisers want to advertise on a blog which is already reaching the same target audience.

Bloggers who utilize advertising on their website may be compensated in a number of different ways. Some advertisers may pay a set fee for the advertisement to run on the website for either a set amount of time or for a set number of page views. This means the advertiser may purchase space for a set number of days, weeks or months or may purchase space for a set number of times the advertisement is served to website visitors.

Alternately the advertiser may choose to compensate the blogger according to the number of times specific actions occur. This may include users clicking through the advertisement or users making a purchase after clicking through the advertisement. The type of compensation offered will have to be worked out between the blogger and advertiser beforehand to determine a fair method of payment.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blogging For Profit

More Traffic Sources

Getting links from other websites is not the only way to attract visitors to visit your blog. This time, we are going to explore alternative methods to attract high quality traffic with both free and paid methods.

The first thing you can do to generate traffic is to recycle all the content you have written on your blog. What I really mean is to turn your blog posts into little “manuals” or articles that help people solve their problems or offer valuable information and submit them to article directories. These article directories are like aggregators that collect articles of similar themes together in one place, so they receive thousands and thousands of qualified visitors every day.

When you submit your articles to these directories, you are exposing your name to the thousands of pairs of eyes visiting them for free! On most article directories, you are also permitted to include a “resource box” where you can include your contact details, a simple biography and so on. This is where you can truly leverage the traffic of the said article directories.

Some good article directories to get you started are www.eZineArticles.com, www.ultimatearticledirectory.com and www.submityourarticle.com.

Another excellent way to gain traffic is to join internet forums that is based on your niche. To find these kind of forums, just go to any search engine and enter ” +forum”, without the quotes. You would want the most focused forum with a substantial number of active members, and preferably always bustling with activity. Just check the dates of the threads posted on the forum.

When you join active forums that focus on your field of discussion and post very useful and valuable posts, your peers will start noticing you and paying attention to what you have to say. In most forums, you are also allowed to append a link to your site in the signature line, which is under every post you make on the forums. People will click and visit your blog if they find your posts helpful and informative. This way, your credibility is built even before they land on your blog, so traffic from the forums would be easier to turn into profits if your blog is selling your own products or recommending others’ as an affilliate since they are already convinced you’re an “expert” in the field.

The strategy we’ll discuss is word of mouth. Let’s say you already have a daily visitor count of 100. What if you compiled a small report or gift and posted it on your blog, saying that if a certain visitor can refer three of his/her friends to visit your blog the gift will be his/hers for free? If your small report or gift is lucrative enough, it will generate a small buzz among your blog readers and they will surely refer their friends to this blog that they frequent!

You can also utilize the “blog and ping” technique that everyone’s talking about. Basically, when you update your blog, you can let blog portals such as www.technorati.com know by pinging them. You can ping a lot of portals at once by using the free www.pingomatic.com.

Besides the techniques described here, there are also paid methods like buying links from high-ranking pages or buying banner advertisement space. A thing to keep in mind when buying paid traffic is to always weigh your profits generated from the paid ads. If your profits do no offset the expense, you will end up losing money, so choose wisely.

Monetizing Your Blog

You have been working hard to produce good-quality, original content on your blog and you have attracted a decent amount of traffic by doing so. However, money is not going to appear out of thin air just because you have traffic. You have to turn your traffic into money.

There are several ways to generate profits from the visitors of your blog, and Google’s Adsense programme allows you to do so with ultimate ease. First, visit their website at http://adsense.google.com/. You’ll find out more about their advertising programme there, but here are some extra bits I’d like to tell you.

First, Google’s Adsense programme is a really useful way to monetize your blog because when users finish reading your newest post, chances are they want to leave your blog because they have nothing else to do on your blog. If your Adsense advertisement block is visible on your blog, they might see advertisements relevant to them and click on them to exit your blog. Ka-ching! You’ve just cashed in on your first virtual cents!

But yes, your profits will only be cents if you don’t “do it right”. This involves placing your Google ads in the right places and ensuring they blend in to your site so that they appear more like links rather than advertisements to your visitors. Consult the page https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html to see the “heat map” of your blog. The “hotter” a certain area, the greater the chances of someone looking at your blog.

Once you get a Google Adsense account, you can change the colour of your advertisement text and links. You will want them to match the colours on your blog. If your blog’s text is black and the links are red, do the same for the ad blocks too! It’s that simple.

Another way to earn profits from your blog is to recommend products to your readers. When your visitors buy from the merchants you recommend, you get to keep a little commission too. This is known as affiliate marketing and it is very easy to start because you don’t have to create your own products or services.

Anyway, let’s refer back to our technological gadgets blog example. Let’s say you discover this Gadget X on a merchant’s website, and they offer an affilliate programme. What you would do is to create a post in your blog and do a mini-review on this Gadget X. Rip it apart and point out its benefits and bad points, if any, and include a link (which is given by the merchant) for the visitor to purchase the Gadget X online.

If your visitor clicks and purchases the gadget, the merchant will track from the link that the purchase is referred by you, so they will send you your share of the profits. Imagine if 1 out of every 100 visitors you get purchases this product, and you earn $27.00 commission from each purchase! If you get 10,000 visitors in a month that would be a $2,700.00 paycheque for you just for writing about ONE product.

Now, affiliate programmes are very nice ways to generate profit, but how do you find affiliate programmes that are related to your blog’s theme? Easy, just go to Google and search for +”affiliate programmes”. Another slightly better way is to go to http://www.associateprograms.com/search to look for affiliate programmes in your niche. The two ways mentioned above are basic ways to generate profits from your blog. We’ll be discussing other great, profitable ways, so keep your eyes peeled!

More Monetizing Options

We’ve discussed about using Google Adsense programme and other merchants’ affiliate programmes to generate profits from your blog. However, we have a lot of other options ot monetize your blog, so we’re going to look into that today.

The first option we’ll be looking at is Chitika (www.chitika.com). Chitika is a very innovative contextual advertising programme because it can serve very detailed advertisements. For example, on your technological gadget blog, Chitika will show advertisements for tech gadgets such as iPods. The way they show it is in different tabs: one for “Best deals”, another for “details”, another for “reviews” and so on. This way, it is more of an informational section for your visitor rather than an advertisement, and naturally the click-through will be higher. You can apply here: https://chitika.com/application.php?type=mm

You can also be an affiliate for Amazon.com. Amazon offers a wide range of products but its predominant domain is in books. Whatever your niche is about, you can probably find a book about it on Amazon.com. Join their Associate programme here: https://associates.amazon.com/gp/flex/associates/apply-login.html/

Once you join them, you can refer visitors to them and earn up to 10% commission. It’s not a lot but if you can manage to refer big volumes of visitors, Amazon is for you. This programme really shines when it comes to the ways you can refer visitors: you can use their predefined templates to pull up recent items that match a certain criteria you set, you can target your ad to show a specific item on sale or you can just simply weave your referral links into your blog posts.

Last but definitely not least, you can sell advertising space on your blog if your blog is truly popular. Just take a look at blogs like http://xiaxue.blogspot.com. That blog receives over 10,000 pageviews every day and naturally merchants will want to strike a deal with the blog’s owner to post their advertisements there. If you manage to pull in huge amounts of traffic like that blog, you can definitely get people to buy ad space on your blog for prices from $150/month upwards, depending on your blog popularity. To gauge how much pageviews and visitors you get everyday, just use the free tool available at www.statcounter.com. They have a very detailed setup guide there so I won’t go into it.

If your blog has not acquired large amount of visitors yet, you can still sell ad space on your blog on a per click or per impression basis. Just visit sites like www.adbrite.com. For a complete list of these sites, visit http://performancing.com/node/60.

Hopefully, that will help you maximize earnings and profits from your blog!

Interactions Between Blogs

As your blog’s content increases, people in your niche will definitely mention you for intelligent or interesting discussions. This is, in a sense, an initiation of an interaction. When people speak of you, you should thank them for the mention and build up the interaction! When you use a traffic tracking script such as the free www.statcounter.com, you can see where traffic comes from. If a large number of visitors come from a certain blog, you can be sure they have mentioned you in their latest post or linked to you from their sidebar or links page.

What you should do is pay them a visit, leave constructive comments on their posts and build up a conversation! As you continue doing this, you will start to gather a lot of friends in your niche. This is helpful later on when you decide to do collaborations such as interviews. In fact, when you’re out of ideas for writing on your blog, you can interview other blog owners in your niche! Human beings are curious creatures, so naturally they would like to know more about a person whose writings they read so often.

If you’re using Wordpress, Textpattern, MovableType or any other advanced blog engines, you can also post trackback links on your posts. This means you can post an article about what other people have posted! Your particular post will then appear as a link on that post you have written about. This is definitely a great way to get traffic if you post brilliant insights about a post on a very famous blog.

Since the famous blog already has a pre-existing pool of readers, this is like a shortcut to hog their visitors! The only thing you would want to observe is to keep your posts sensible and insightful, or you’ll be viewed as a spammer.

On the other hand, if you’re using Blogger, you would not be able to use trackback links. However, you can post insightful comments on other people’s blogs and subtly include a link back to your blog. You can make it seem like you’re pointing to your blog as an extra reference to the subject of discussion. Of course, this technique is not only limited to Blogger users and users of other blog engines can employ this strategy as an additional traffic source.

Finally..

Is blogging for you or even for everyone? I guess it all depends on how we define blogging. For instance, if we include social network blogging, blogging is indeed for you and for everyone, as a good percentage of Internet users operate some form of social networking blog. Currently, over 60 million people in the United States alone do that with Myspace.

So is blogging for you or everyone? If we consider commercial endeavours, it certainly is not for everyone. Only about 7% of Internet users operate blogs for commercial purposes.

The question of “is blogging for you or everyone?” also applies to entrepreneurs. Blogging can be an excellent tool for an entrepreneur - especially those who are sole proprietors looking for a good and inexpensive venue for promotion, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should necessarily do it. In some instances, a private forum will be a better means of recorded, Internet-based communication between a group of people. In other instances, a website will require less maintenance and will be a better stand-alone traffic puller, especially if the would-be blogger does not have the time to constantly update and promote a blog.

However, there definitely are a number of good reasons to blog. One of the best reasons is that it’s really easy. Building a good website can take hundreds of hours. This is not so with a blog. With a blog, you can simply open up an account with Blogger and begin posting. No coding or HTML-editing is required. You don’t even need to learn how to use WYSIWYG program - or how to upload your uploads to your website.

So is blogging for you or everyone? It isn’t for everyone, especially if we’re considering commercial blogging; some people don’t own businesses, have nothing to promote, and have no interest in starting. But there’s a good chance blogging is for you if you want to a low cost means of promoting your business. It’s cheap, comparatively easy and quick to start.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Part Three Of A Blogging Masterclass

Setting Up Your Blog

Blogging is a lucrative source of profit and blogs are easy to set up and maintain. Imagine a life where you are paid to write on stuff that interests you, whenever you want, wherever you are. The mere flexibility of blogging makes it easy for you to just kick back, relax and go on a vacation whenever you feel like it.

In this article, we are going to look into the profitability of a blog and set up a blog of our own at no cost! Interested? Read on!

First, we need to obtain a blog. There are several options - host a blog on your own domain or get a free blog. For starters, let’s talk about the free blogs. You can obtain a free blog at www.blogger.com or the newer (and better!) www.wordpress.com. If you are a techie, you must have heard of Wordpress, a free blog engine that is robust and infinitely expandable.

Blogger.com is actually owned by Google, so it will be detected on Google’s radar faster and you will be indexed faster. Wordpress.com, however, is a relatively new option so I have no comparison on the speed of getting indexed by search engines. However, Wordpress is better in the sense that it has more advanced features such as Trackbacks and Categories. You can also manage your sidebar links more efficiently (more about this later).

Get a free blog at either Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. Then, familiarize yourself by posting your first post on your blog and tinkering around with the options and templates.

Here are a few common “blog-related” words to help you out:

1) Permalink - Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL (uniform resource locator) that leads to an individual post that you make in your blog.

2) Trackback - When you post about someone else’s blog post elsewhere, your post will show up in their “trackback” section. This feature, however, is not available with a Blogger.com account.

3) Pinging - Blogging seems to be paired with pinging almost every time either one is mentioned nowadays. Pinging is actually the action where a certain aggregator is notified whenever your blog is updated, so that the aggregator may show the newest post of your blog on their website. This is a useful way to gaining traffic, which we shall discuss later.

Blog content

Now we’re going to discuss the type of content that is suitable for your blog in order to make it profitable. First off, I want you to understand that there is no fixed scope that your blog should have, which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in.

However, the difference between a profitable blog and a non-profitable blog is the way the blog is written. Just imagine, would you prefer to read your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favourite author?

You may prefer to read the novel because it appeals more to your interest, or because it is not as mind-numbing as the lecture notes by your professor. However, the most important point is people like to read “light” stuff most of the time. You see, when people log on to your blog, they are not only looking for information - they are also looking for information they can obtain easily, and better still in a relaxed manner.

So, to attract more visitors as well as to keep your current visitors coming back for more, it is very important to add a human touch to your blog posts. This can be done by simply imagining you’re talking about a certain topic with your personal friend. An extra bonus for your readers would be a great sense of humour, so try to add funny comments in your articles where they are suitable.

Another important key point is to avoid addressing your reader as a plural unit. What I really mean is you should not write as if you’re preparing a speech. Instead, you should write as if you’re having a conversation to a single person because this will make your visitor think of you more as a personal friend rather than a person of higher authority.

Besides that, it is also very useful to establish your own personality through your words. Human beings are very curious creatures, so naturally your visitors would want to know as much about you as the information you’re offering them.

Having a distinctive personality in your blog would make a world’s difference between your blog about gadgets and all the other blogs about gadgets out there. This is a lot like creating your own brand name, where people immediately remember your blog’s name when they need to find out information about gadgets, just like how people immediately think of McDonald’s for fastfood or Nike for sportswear.

So, the lesson for now is to simply write as an equal friend to your visitors, write to them as if you’re talking to a single person and establish your own personality on your blog.

Blog Content Brainstorming

Face the fact - your blog needs to be regularly updated to maintain its readership! Hence, you must always find fresh topics to write about, and we’re going to discuss how to do just that in this article.

We have discussed how to write attractively, so now we are going to discuss what we are going to write on. The very first option that I think a blogger should write on is a topic that he or she feels passionate and interested in. You’ve chosen to make blogging your career because you want to escape a mundane job - forcing yourself to write about something that you’re not interested in is as torturous as as your mundane job!

The other reason I ask you to write about something you’re passionate about is because your feelings and emotion shows through your writings! If you feel indifferent to a certain subject but still write about it just for the sake of it, your readers will notice it. Remember the advice about writing with a personality? Forcing yourself to write will not establish a welcoming style at all.

Once you have chosen your main theme, start posting to your blog about it and make it a habit to post at least once every day, even if it’s only a comment on the newspaper article you read today. Think of yourself as a gigantic train. It takes a lot of effort to get you moving. First, you might just budge an inch, and later trudge slowly on until you finally reach your full speed. Then, it’ll take a lot of effort to stop you instead!

However, no matter how well you know your topic, your brain is bound to get exhausted over some time, so here are methods to brainstorm for content for your blog.

1) The very best way to brainstorm is to see what other bloggers have to say about stuff happening in your field of discussion. And the very best way to find related blogs is to use http://blogsearch.google.com/ or www.technorati.com. There are other decent search tools too, you just have to look around. From other blogs, you can gather more knowledge on your subject and you can also comment on what others have to say on your own blog!

2) Once you’ve established contacts with other bloggers in your field, you’ll have quite an unexhaustible “conversation” ongoing, so you’ll not need to actively search for content to write about. However, if you’re still stuck, search for news articles related to your niche in the local newspaper or online through sites like http://news.google.com and http://news.yahoo.com.

3) You can also have conversations with people with the same interest as you in the particular niche you choose, so you will eventually build up a bank of questions and answers and interesting discussions to write about in your blog. To do this, join forums related to your niche, but don’t join every forum there is out there. Stick with one or two with the biggest number of members or the one which is most focused on your niche. This will also come in handy much later in gaining traffic and generating profits.

Remember to keep up your momentum of posting at least once per day (or more if you have a lot of content to write about) so that the major search engines will know that your blog has fresh content everyday. This will attract the search engines to spider your page on a more frequent basis, hence gaining you extra traffic.

Don’t worry about generating traffic and search engines, because we’re going to talk about that in more detail later. For now, remember to keep a consistent effort everyday and build up momentum like that of a locomotive!

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Part One Of A Blogging Masterclass

It’s catch 22 - you have to be listed high in the search engine results to get more web traffic and to get listed high in the results, you have to attract lots of web traffic. Regrettably, rich content is no longer the only valuable resource sought by web visitors.

Well, there are ways to make sure that your site figures in searches. These are called Search Engine Optimisation techniques, and there are a lot to choose from - from the completely above board ways to the slightly suspect ways.

You can make sure that your content is rich in key words, after finding the appropriate key words using tools you can find for doing that; you can exchange links; you can submit articles to directories; these are just a few ways of SEO. One easy and rather enjoyable way of doing is through blogs.

A weblog, better known as a blog, are created for both personal and business purposes. Your blog gives you the freedom to talk about anything you want and it’s quite an enjoyable task that’s worth all the effort. Blog attract loads of traffic and you can have your blog either within ot external to your website.

The content you post on your blog is your choice and you can include as many links as you prefer in each of your posts. If the blog is internally available in your site, you can post links to increase your site’s search engine ranking. Comparatively, if it’s located externally, posting links is a valuable way to get one way links to your website.

Link exchanging is an acceptable way to boost your site’s position in the search engines, but one-way links are even better. Blogging builds up web traffic via two methods - one is through increasing your website visitors by enticing them to follow a link to it and the other is by getting in more visits, it increases your search engine ranking.

The content is another key. If your blog is within your site, this is an excellent way of making sure that you have keyword rich content. Of course, since blogs are much more informal and reads more like a chat than articles, incorporating key words can be a daunting task, but once you manage it, your ranking will definitely improve.

Another great thing about blogs is that people can tell you exactly what you are doing right, or wrong. If you listen, you will pick up ways of making your site better and more useful. You can also interact with potential customers and build contacts, an essential part of any business.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Boost Your Website’s Ranking With SEO Blogging

How can RSS benefit your blogging activites? RSS can benefit your blogging activites in two different ways: it can help you generate traffic and it can help you retain traffic. RSS can benefit your traffic-generation efforts by adding fresh, optimized content to your blog automatically; and it can benefit your traffic retention rate by providing better, updated content for your blog visitors.

Also, how can rss benefit your blogging activites in other ways? If you own a blog, you will have to constantly update it with fresh content, so you can ping more often and so you can get higher rankings for your targeted keyphrases. Aggregating and using RSS feeds can benefit your blogging activities significantly by allowing you to add fresh, targeted content to your blog without actually updating it yourself. Whenever a search engine visitors your blog, it will record your RSS feed updates as fresh and possibly unique, targeted content.

How can rss benefit your blogging activities in other ways? If you own a blog, you can further enhance the amount of unique visitors you get by using RSS to syndicate your updates. In addition to netting you several backlinks on blogs and websites (which will increase your offpage search engine optimization score), it will also net you some unique visitors through direct links from other blogs and sites.

How can rss benefit your blogging activities by recycling traffic? If your site aggregates a number of important authority sites via RSS feed, you will become an authority site aggregator at the very least, which is useful for people looking to find authority sites on your given topic.

In summary, how can rss benefit your blogging activities? RSS can benefit your blog by generating traffic - by improving your actual search engine rankings and by increasing the amount of direct click-thrus you receive - and by helping you retain traffic - by positioning your site as an authority aggregator and by providing better, original content for blog visitors.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

How Can RSS Benefit Your Blogging Activities?

Blogging is becoming increasingly popular and social networks are also becoming more and more popular as well. Social networks include popular websites such as MySpace.com where users can create personal websites and interact with other users. These websites may include a wide range of components including text, images, audio, video and blogs. Here system users can voice their opinions, provided updates on their life, offer insight into current events or accomplish a number of other goals. However, bloggers who utilize a social network to maintain their blog should consider a few different factors. This article will discuss some of these factors including whether to make the blogs available to the public or keep the private, considering the audience of the blog and dealing with harassment through the blog.

Making Blogs Private or Public

Most social networks enable users to make their website either private or public. Private websites are only available to the user and other users he specifically approves to view his website while public websites are available to all users of the system. These same capabilities also apply to the blogs which are maintained on a social network. For this reason bloggers must determine whether or not they wish to make their blog posts available to the entire social network or to only a fraction of this network.

This decision will be largely based on a matter of personal preference. Social networks can be quite extensive and some bloggers may be apprehensive about their blog being available to such a large audience while other bloggers may have no apprehensions about the size of the potential audience. Bloggers should carefully consider this option before staring a blog but always have the option to change these settings after the blog has been established if they change their mind about the choice they originally made.

Considering the Blog Audience

Bloggers who utilize a social network to maintain a blog should also carefully consider the potential audience for the blog. Most social networks include a broad cross section of the general public. Therefore bloggers should be aware of this audience when posting a blog and should consider how the blog entries will be interpreted by blog audience members. While it will never be possible to avoid offending all potential audience members some bloggers may wish to consider at least attempting to ensure the blog entries they post are appropriate for all members of the social network. If this is not possible the blogger may consider making the blog private.

Dealing with Harassment through the Blog

Another aspect bloggers who use a social network to publish their blog should be aware of includes the potential for harassment from other members through the blog. This can be in the form of offensive comments posted in response to blog entries. Depending on the degree of the harassment the blogger may choose to ignore these comments or take stronger actions. Bloggers should review the policies of the social network and solicit their assistance in dealing with harassment from other users. In most cases dealing with the problem may be as simple as blocking the user from making comments on the blog but in some cases it may be necessary to contact the social network administrators in an attempt to get the user banned from the system. In this situation the administrators will review the situation and make a judgment regarding whether or not the user has violated the terms of service.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blogging On A Social Network

I kept diary when I was a kid and wrote all my private thoughts on this precious book.

Even then, there was much I would not write there for fear that someone would find it. Today, there are many that share those same personal thoughts with the entire world through a blog.

The blog is online and anyone can read it. But before you begin blogging, read the below advise.

You can make mistakes when you post in your blog, and that is why blogging advice is so important.

Do not think that no one is reading your blog, so be careful of what you write.

The problem is that you may be putting personal information out there that can be used against you, or you may be telling things about others that they do not wish to be public knowledge.

Think twice before you blog. You may not want to share your wild nights with everyone if you are a public figure.

Do you know that people use the internet to search info on those that they are hiring. You blog may be the key to that ideal job.

Check what your kids are blogging. The either blog responsibly or you got to monitor them.

This is because children often talk about things that can lead a predator right to your front door, and they don’t know that this is what they have done.

Keep your personal life out of the blog.

Be sure to know what your kid talk about. This may be the most important advice for you.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blogging Advice For New Bloggers

With blogging becoming increasingly popular, there is also an increasing need for software to simplify the process of blogging. However, there are many different software packages available which can make selecting a package seem overwhelming. Selecting a software package does not have to be difficult though. Bloggers can find websites which provide comparison charts for different software packages to simply the decision making process. These charts can save the blogger a great deal of time and effort because they compile a wealth of information into one convenient location. The blogger may still need some additional information before using these comparison charts to make a decision. The article will provide insight into some of this additional information which may be useful such as how to understand the comparison charts, methods for comparing the software packages and tips on selecting a blogging software package.

Blogging Software Criteria

Those interested in starting or maintaining a blog should fully understand the blogging software criteria before attempting to compare software packages. Some of the criteria it is important to understand include the minimum server requirements, data storage and the post editor. Understanding these criteria is critical to the process of comparing and selecting blogging software packages.

The minimum server requirements refers to the minimum requirements for the server on which the software is to be installed. In most cases the power and speed of the server is not relevant but instead it depends on the power and speed of the software necessary for the proper operation of the blog software. There may be additional costs associated with this software as well as additional license requirements.

Data storage is also an important part of evaluating blogging software packages. This may include options such as a flat file, a data file or a database. A flat file refers to storage options in which the full page is pulled each time the blog is requested by a browser. A data file refers to situations in which the data for the blog is inserted into a template when the blog is requested by a browser. A database refers to storage options in which the necessary information is pulled from a flat file and inserted into a template when the blog is requested by a browser.

The post editor is another criterion a blogger may want to investigate carefully before selecting blogging software. The post editor refers to the type of editor which will be used to fill in the posts listed on the blog. These data entry methods may include options such as HTML or JAVA.

Comparing Blogging Software Packages

Bloggers who are seeking a blogging software package should carefully compare the different software packages available. This is important because obviously some software packages are superior to others. It is also important because some software packages may be better suited for the needs of a particular blog than other packages. When comparing blogging software packages it is important for the blogger to first carefully consider the needs of the blog. This is important because it will help the blogger to realize which criterion is most relevant to his particular blog.

Selecting Blogging Software Packages

After carefully evaluating blogging software packages, it is time for the blogger to make a decision and select one of the available packages. Ideally the blogger will have already compared important data such as storage space, server requirements and post editors. However, the blogger must also consider other factors such as cost and versatility. Many blogging software packages are available free of charge while there are some which are available for purchase. The blogger will have to decide whether or not it is worthwhile to purchase a software package or whether free software packages will meet his blogging needs.

After considering software criteria and cost, the blogger should consider viewing sample blogs created using a particular software package. This is a good idea because these samples can provide a good indication of the capabilities of the software. This is because in general the higher the quality of the samples, the greater the capabilities of the software.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blogging Software

A weblog (or simply blog) is a website that ‘publishes’ or features articles (which are called ‘blog posts’, ‘posts’, or ‘entries’), written by an individual or a group that make use of any or a combination of the following:

Straight texts Photographs or images (photoblog) Video (videoblog) Audio files (audioblog) Hyperlinks

Usually presented and arranged in reverse chronological order, blogs are essentially used for the following purposes:

Online journal or a web diary Content managament system Online publishing platform

A typical blog has the following components:

Post date -the date and time of the blog entry

Category - the category that the blog belongs to

Title - the title of the blog

Main body - the main content of the blog

RSS and trackback - links the blog back from other sites

Comments - commentaries that are added by readers

Permalinks - the URL of the full article

Other optional items - calendar, archives, blogrolls, and add-ons or plug-ins

A blog can also have a footer, usually found at the bottom of the blog, that shows the post date, the author, the category, and the ’stats’ (the nubmer of comments or trackbacks).

There are numerous types of blogs. Some of them are the following:

1. Political blog - on news, politics, activism, and other issue based blogs (such as campaigning).

2. Personal blog - also known as online diary that may include an individual’s day-to-day experience, complaints, poems, and illicit thoughts, and communications between friends.

3. Topical blog - with focus either on a particular niche (function or position) that is usually technical in nature or a local information.

4. Health blog - on specific health issues. Medical blog is a major category of health blog that features medical news from health care professionals and/or actual patient cases.

5. Literary blog - also known as litblog.

6. Travel blog - with focus on a traveler’s stories on a particular journey.

7. Research blog - on academic issues such as research notes.

8. Legal blog - on law (technical areas) and legal affairs; also known as ‘blawgs’.

9. Media blog - focus on falsehoods or inconsistencies in mass media; usually exclusive for a newspaper or a television network.

10. Religious blog - on religious topics

11. Educational blog - on educational applications, usually written by students and teachers.

12. Collaborative or collective blog - a specific topic written by a group of people.

13. Directory blog - contains a collection of numerous web sites.

14. Business blog - used by entrepreneurs and corporate employees to promote their businesses or talk about their work.

15. Personification blog - focus on non-human being or objects (such as dogs).

16. Spam blogs - used for promoting affiliated websites; also known as ’splogs’.

Blogging is typically done on a regular (almost daily) basis. The term “blogging” refers to the act of authoring, maintaining, or adding an article to an existing blog, while the term “blogger” refers to a person or a group who keeps a blog.

Today, more than 3 million blogs can be found in the Internet. This figure is continuously growing, as the availability of various blog software, tools, and other applications make it easier for just about anyone to update or maintain the blog (even those with little or no technical background). Because of this trend, bloggers can now be categorized into 4 main types:

Personal bloggers - people who focus on a diary or on any topic that an individual feels strongly about.

Business bloggers - people who focus on promoting products and services.

Organizational bloggers - people who focus on internal or external communication in an organization or a community.

Professional bloggers - people who are hired or paid to do blogging.

Problogging (professional blogging) refers to blogging for a profit. Probloggers (professional bloggers) are people who make money from blogging (as an individual blog publisher or a hired blogger).

Below are just some of the many money-making opportunities for probloggers:

Advertising programs RSS advertising Sponsorship Affiliate Programs Digital assets Blog network writing gigs Business blog writing gigs Non blogging writing gigs Donations Flipping blogs Merchandising Consulting and speaking

The following are a few things that you need to consider if you want to be successful in problogging:

1. Be patient. Problogging requires a lot of time and effort, not to mention a long-term vision.

2. Know your audience. Targeting a specific audience or group is a key to building a readership.

3. Be an ‘expert’. Focus on a specific niche topic and strive to be the “go-to” blogger on that topic.

4. Diversify. Experiment with various add and affiliate programs that enable you to make money online (aside from blogging).

5. Do not bore your readers. Focus on the layout. White spaces, line spacings, and bigger fonts make a blog welcoming to read.

Certainly, it is possible to earn money from blogs. One just needs to take risks, the passion, and the right attitude in order to be a successful problogger.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Problogging: Making Money From Blogs

When anti-American organizations and demonstrators march through our city streets spewing hatred and venom, many Americans simply shrug their shoulders, assuming without question that the streets belong to the malcontents.

I disagree vehemently. As a professional soldier I do not believe in the concept of conceding any portion of the battlefield to the enemy, especially since the rationale for the lack of direct response often is “We’ve always done it that way” or “they’re a bunch of kooks.”

As we saw a generation ago, street theater can be turned into political muscle, especially when most of the country’s voters remain uninformed on the facts, and we have a weak-kneed Congress.

The late President Nixon in the 60’s and 70’s questioned the commitment of the “Silent Conservative Majority” in our country as the very loud and vocal minority used our media to create an impression in America that they are the powerful and hold the moral high position.

We saw the results of this misguided policy in the communists’ murderous rampages in Southeast Asia after pro-communist groups prevailed upon the US Congress, mainly through street theater and accompanying media fraud. Congress abandoned our allies in that region and turned victory into defeat. “Kerry Lied, Millions Died” should have been the American rallying cry, instead of anti-American bombast and misrepresentations.

We will not repeat the previous generations pathetic history of home front surrender while our soldiers were winning all their battles in Vietnam. Our current warriors defending our freedom will be supported, there will be no repeat or stain of dishonor.

Now Kerry’s Veterans Against the War has modified itself into a new group called Iraq Veterans Against the War or IVAW. Using Kerry as a mentor, IVAW has scheduled a new “Winter Soldier Investigation” on March 14, 2008 in Silver Springs, Maryland. They are trying, as Kerry did in 1971 that our current US troops are also war criminals.

But this time there will be another voice on the home front. My organization, Eagles Up, www.eaglesup.us along with numerous other pro-troop groups, is working to put “boots on the ground” to expose the IVAW’s lies to America and the entire world. Our purpose is to counter and challenge IVAW Winter Soldier II (WSII) Testimony on March 14 by demanding “truth.” March the 14th and 15th will be a huge victory for America. Learn more at www.eaglesup.us

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Lock Arms with American Defenders

You can blog for money. Anyone with basic writing skills can be blogging for dollars within hours. What you first must know how to set up a blog and then learn how to get traffic. Most people fail at generating traffic.

Traffic can be generated through using the various social networks that allow you to post comments and links back to your blog or articles. This is a common practice. Many people fail to advertise their own blog and often give up after a few weeks. There are hundreds of methods and techniques, secrets and tips for generating traffic to a blog.

Finding a place to set up a free blog is not difficult just do a search. For under one hundred dollars you could have your own web site and blog with a domain for a year and if you are serious about blogging for money this is the best route. If you are wanting to be a success you need to write at least 3 to 7 posts a week and it depends on the subject the more popular the more posts. You could have a blog on bad girls, cheerleaders, food, money, investing or even a sports blog.

The trick is how to make money with a blog. There are several advertising networks that you can join for free. You could spend countless hours and precious time trying to find ways to make money online. Writing great content and creating blogs is one of the easiest method to make money blogging for dollars.

Many people think the internet is a gold mine and in some ways it is you just have to be resourceful and work with the right information and tools. Blogging for money is rewarding because it requires no or very little start up capital. Get paid to blog by utilize web 2.0 technologies.

You can get paid to blog using basic internet skill but having the right information helps. You can set up a free blog in minutes and be blogging for money within hours by using the correct techniques.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Get Paid To Blog - Blogging For Money

I just want to welcome you to my DirectMatches info article and make myself available to answer any questions you may have about the community and how to fully utilize the advertising and networking potential at your fingertips. There are now a whole LOT more people for us to network with and we can help people earn a living as well! Average people are earning rising incomes here. What else you get with your DirectMatches membership.

With this business it’s easy because it’s so fun to promote, and you get to meet so many great people along the way. If you have a secondary business as well as one you are promoting, you will get additional exposure, and gather more traffic to your site.

There’s lots of things you can do. Just take your time and click on all the links. You can use the Classifieds section, the Forum, do a Blog, add Video, do a Presentation, list events in your area, and put in your latest News. You can make new contacts by clicking on My Business Matches and then Add To Contacts, or start a network group by clicking on Networks and then notify your contacts about your new group. Click on Search to find people that interest you, and add them to Contacts. Check your profile for new contact requests every few days. You can do all this from your profile section.

I strongly recommend Upgrading to Manager or Executive to make the most money from Direct Matches! Bring all your friends as well. We love a good crowd!Start inviting everyone you know in for free advertising & training. Compensation Plan and Information About Upgrades. When you upgrade to Executive, and choose to promote DirectMatches, you will make money off of all upgrades, Executives, Managers, and Customers. Make the most money at Executive level!

You can make up to $12000.00 per week. If you upgrade to Manager, you will make money off only Manager and Customer upgrades, and can make up to $6000.00 per week. This is outstanding! As soon as you get an upgrade, you get a Personal Sponsorship Bonus of 50% of what that upgrade is. This is a incredible business opportunity for you.

Most people don’t realize how much money they can make promoting DirectMatches, or what each upgrade can actually do for them. Later when you have sponsored many upgrades, you can cycle many times a day, and this is where it gets really exciting! And I’m not just talking about your upgrades, this includes your members upgrades, as well as spillover from your sponsor, your total downline. We have a binary infinity payplan that can pay very well.

This means that you don’t have to have many upgrades yourself to make alot of money. You will have members building your residual income for you. This is why it is important to help out your members, and to train them properly. You must build relationships with your members, and give them support. It’s a win-win situation. This is a incredible home based business opportunity for you!

With this business it’s easy because it’s so fun to promote, and you get to meet so many great people along the way. If you have a secondary business as well that you are promoting, you will get additional exposure, and more traffic to your site. Go to my Official Direct Matches Blogsite for free information. You can even sign up to be on my Skys The Limit Winning Team. Click the link before to visit my Site and sign up today for FREE.

Here is the best news of all. I have been using a incredible program to boost my DirectMatches business along with my home business. It is FREE too. Check out the spider web marketing program on my site at the link below. It’s FREE. Take advantage of this opportunity while it lasts.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

What is the Free DirectMatches SpiderWeb Marketing Business Blog

While many bloggers maintain a blog for personal or social reasons or to generate an income, there are other bloggers who utilize their blogs to promote a cause. These blogs may be aimed at targeting a specific political or social cause depending on the interests of the blogger as well as bloggers opinion that the blog can produce the political or social changes they are seeking. Blogs which are committed to promoting a particular cause may face more adversity than blogs with a lighter theme but they can also be very effective. However, blog owners who opt to maintain this type of blog should be aware of the ramifications of this type of blog. For example blog owners may receive negative comments from readers of the blog who disagree with the cause. This article will offer a few tips for choosing a cause for a blog and for promoting the blog to interested visitors.

Choosing a Cause for a Blog

Choosing a cause for a blog can vary in difficulty from extremely easy to incredibly difficult. The difficulty in making this decision will depend largely on the personal beliefs of the blog owner. A blog owner who is already committed to a particular cause will likely find this decision to be rather simple while blog owners who either have no strong social or political convictions or who have a wide variety of causes they wish to promote can find making this decision to be rather difficult. There are, however, a few factors the blog owner should carefully consider before selecting a cause to promote in a blog.

First and foremost a blog owner should select an issue for which they are either already quite knowledgeable or for which they are willing to do a great deal of research. This is important because the blog owner should post blog entries on a regular basis. These blog entries should be accurate and informative to the reader. Therefore, the blog owner should be well versed in the subject matter or at least interested in learning more about the subject matter.

Blog owners should also carefully consider the potential for influencing blog visitors regarding the topic of the blog. Although it will not be possible to convince all visitors to the blog to believe in the cause promoted by the blog, the blog owner should select a subject with which he is confident visitors to the blog will be influenced to agree with the viewpoints he presents in the blog.

Promoting the Blog to Interested Visitors

Once a blog owner decides on a subject for the blog, it is time to figure out how to promote the blog to the target audience. This can be accomplished in a number of different ways. For the sake of brevity, this article will discuss promoting a blog through search engine optimization and promoting a blog through participation in relevant forums.

Search engine optimization is a very effective way for promoting a blog. This practice involves making efforts to increase the search engine rankings to ensure interested Internet users are directed to the blog. This can be done in a number of different ways including careful use of appropriate keywords, appropriate use of tags such as title tags and image tags and generating back links to the blog. All of these efforts can help to improve search engine rankings which should also improve blog traffic.

Blog owners can also promote their blog by participating in relevant forums and message boards. The blog owner may simply participate in these forums and offer relevant input while including a link to the blog in his signature. Other forum users are likely to click on the link if the blog owner is well respected within the forum. The blog owner may even be able to incorporate a link to his blog in the message body of forum posts if it appropriate and acceptable according toe the message board guidelines.

Post from: Blogging For Cash

Blogging To Promote A Cause

In fact, every news program ought to have a responsibility rating–say between zero to ten. If the manner in which the news is being presented is totally responsible to society it receives a rating of ten. If it unnecessarily ads stress to society and it totally irresponsible, the program should be ranked a zero.Managing stress of society.Can the news media ever be responsible to society?Reporting the news is the function of the news media. And that can be done responsibly or it can be done irresponsibly to society.

Usually I write about managing stress using biofeedback, hypnosis, nutrition… for the individual to aid in one managing physical reactions to stress or getting rid of unwanted habits such as smoking, overeating… Just as stress affects an individual, stress also affects society and sometimes with lynch mob results.Fact is we’re at war with terrorism–nothing new there. The news can take on the role of being informative or it can take on the role of Tokyo Rose during World War II.

Now if you were a terrorist, what would you like to hear? Firstly we know that terrorists want to kill all infidels–they deem everyone other than those who have their beliefs (including those of their own race and religion) as infidels. Their goal is to disrupt our lives physically and mentally: Physically by killing us and mentally by reeking havoc with fear.

But it doesn’t stop there. The more mental terror evoked, the more successful they are–they win on two fronts.What does a terrorist want? The terrorist wants to raise the stress level and fear of infidels. He also wants creative ideas such as garbage can bombs at airports, civic centers, shopping malls–ideas he might not have thought of on his own.It’s ironic, thousands of humans can be slaughtered by genocide in Somalia or some other part of the world and we hear little of it, yet, a car bomb in England can be thwarted and we hear it on all the news media regurgitated for days followed up by the garbage can bomb idea. Let’s spread more fear for the terrorist to gloat.The bigger their slaughter the more successful they are.

They’ve