Blog For Fun And Profit

You have read about it on the internet and seen that people everywhere are happily creating their own blogs. But you have never done it. Can you do it?

Of course you can!

Blogging in a way is very personal and talks to your readers in a conversational tone. The overall style is informal and you get to have feedback off strangers on topics close to your heart.

Essentially that is what it means…you become a voice and let people know about anything and everything. As time carried on, people started realizing that with having lots of subscribers and tons of visitors, they could monetize their blog.

First the most used blog platforms are WordPress and Blogger. Next you will do all the normal steps where you choose your name for the blog, see what market you will target. It is very important to narrow your focus than being too broad with too many subjects. Once you have your blog set up you need to get some traffic to it. A tool I use is called Blog Linker. Go visit the site here and see how it can provide traffic to your site.Blog Linker is a free tool that will manage your traffic by using auto reciprocal linking. Once you are registered, a special code is supplied to you to add it to your blog. Well that sorts the traffic for you. Next you want to sign up with Google Adsense. Now this will only work if your blog is hosted on your own domain and hosting account. I don’t think Adsense allows people to use their services on free blogs anymore.

Read all the rules associated with Adsense and you will be well on your way to making money. Another way to monetize your blog is to sign up for sites like Pay Per Post and Sponsored Reviews. I will tell you up front that if your blog is brand new then they won’t accept it. So make sure to blog for at least several months before joining up with these companies. At least 50% of your writing should be unique on the blog. If you have met their requirements and at least attained a few subscribers and a good page rank, then you can start making money by reviewing people’s services and websites on your blog. You will get paid to do that and some people make up to $600.00 or more per month doing that.

In the end it is all about fun. Do not stress too much about what the people want to hear, but try to be original and just write what comes to mind. If you are writing for a specific target market, then make your blog interesting and fun by using pictures and photos where you can.

Well that is all for now. Enjoy your day!

10 Mistakes In Blogging

There are usually some mistakes I see that most bloggers make and it surprises me that they do not take the time to see if people actually like it. There is also a reason why the most successful blogs follow a specific format.

So here are 10 mistakes bloggers make when it comes to their blog:

• Avoid dark backgrounds. This is something I see often. You search for your chosen topic and found a site or someone asks you to have a look at their blog and it has a black or dark blue background with white text on it or even worse, yellow or some other color text that just doesn’t fit. Some people associate a dark background with a gaming site or a hacker’s site and thus illegal. Some others prefer not to read white on dark background because it hurts their eyes. I am one of those people that agree with the latter. Pure black bacground with white text is too harsh on the eyes.  Stick to light background colors or simple white. It’s the same when you look at a book… do you ever read books with a dark background? You don’t!
• Make sure to evenly space your blog posts with paragraphs.
• Sign up to some affiliate programs and get them on your blog. If you want to make money this is the way to go. Some people are trying real hard to make money but they aren’t promoting anything.
• Try and use a .com to represent your blog and .co.uk is also acceptable if you are situated in the UK.
• By blogging often you are more likely to be picked up by google. People that do not blog regularly will find their PR drop and it won’t get picked up as often by Google.
• Install tracking software like Google Analytics on your blog to see what people are up. Most people never don’t and so lose on the fact that they do not know what people like the most on their blog.
• Try to interact with your readers. A lot of people just write articles. They don’t try to speak to you as a person and personally that isn’t what a blog is all about. The more personal you can be the more someone can relate to you as the person voicing their thoughts.
• A lot of people forget to allow search engines to index their blog and on the admin side there is a function you can change for that. So make sure you allow search engines onto your blog.
• Lastly, most people do not drive traffic to their blog. This is very important as without traffic all your hard work will go unnoticed. Writing alone won’t bring you traffic, so spend some time and get traffic to your site.

So see what mistakes you have made and change them today!

Tips To A Great Blog

We all know that a successful blog incorporates some great elements like good content that consists of helpful advice and great images to compliment the unique articles.

But few people consider the blog’s design.  Blog isn’t just a place where you write your daily thoughts or offer advice. Essentially it is your piece of virtual marketing estate on the internet. You can successfully create your own brand and great blog design if you take the time to dedicate yourself to it.

If you have some money to burn, then why not hire a professional freelance blog designer to create a custom theme for you?

Well let’s start with the ‘Do-It-Yourself- route.

Your blog needs to be set-up and contain several categories. Usually I would search for a free blog theme. But in the end you want to be unique and stand out from the crowd.

So grab a pencil and piece of paper and write answers to the following questions:

• What is my blog about?
• What image do I want my blog to convey?
• Is my blog’s name easy to pronounce?
• What will my blog have that other’s don’t?
• Will it incorporate social sites like Twitter or Facebook into my blog?
• What other blogs have I seen that look fantastic?
• Do I want a logo for my blog or a a complete banner?

Once you have the answers to these, then look at each answer and you will have the basic elements that will create a successful blog.

If you can establish what your blog is all about, you can search for similar blogs and get inspiration from them to create your own fantastic design and brand. By having a blog on ‘Sexy Lingerie’ – the name would have to indicate something to do with the content, and the color/design of the blog should be designed with the reader in mind. Let’s say you cater for an all female audience. You could use pink for a lingerie blog, but too much and it looks cheap. If you combined it with soft shades of pastel colors you will find it will look better in the long run and appeal to the female readers more. You could also distinguish your blog by offering selective tips for your readers that deal with style, popular garments and ‘How to Look Sexy For your Husband’ article that will attract more readers and appeal to your target audience.

Go back that free blog theme I mentioned earlier and customize it to match your content. You can easily do that by changing the Stylesheet, header and footer in the administrative backend. If you decided on a logo then you do not need a big space at the top of the theme. If you have a long name, then search for a free theme where you can add a banner and keep the color of your blog in mind when designing the banner.

Your brand essentially is quite important and by designing your social bookmarking sites to match your blog, you will have a sure winner on your hands. Make sure to get some business cards designed that match your blog and in the end you are well on your way to establishing yourself as an expert in the blogging world.

Get a Free Blog

Over the past few years, blogs have become incredibly popular. Just about everyone who uses the internet also has a blog. You want to get in on the action, but you’re not sure how to get your own blog.
Luckily for you, sites like Blogger.com have made it easy to set-up and make posts on a blog. In this newsletter, we will go over everything from signing up for a blog on Blogger.com to choosing a template (look) to finally making a first post.

What is Blogger.com?

Simply put, Blogger.com is a site that hosts blogs for free. This makes it even easier for you to have a blog because there is no need to set up a web site and host the blog yourself. All you have to do on Blogger.com, once you’ve signed up, is login to your blog, write a blog post and click submit. It‘s that simple.

What will my web address be on Blogger.com?

Your web address will be http://yourname.blogspot.com. One thing that people dislike about Blogger and other free blog sites is that they don’t have as great of a freedom in choosing a name. You are limited to choosing only what is available. So if you’re looking for http://yankeesfan.blogspot.com, you probably won’t be able to find that.

Signing up for a blog on Blogger

The first thing you’ll do is go to blogger.com. Next, you’ll scroll down the page and click on the button labeled “Create Your Blog Now”.
You will then be taken to a page where you will enter an email address(used to log into your blog), a password, and a word verification. You’ll also have to check “I Accept Terms of Service”. Click continue.
Next, you will be taken to a page where you will choose the blog title, blog address, and another word verification(which is done to prevent auto-signups). When you type in your blog address, you can click a link that says “check availability”. This will tell you whether or not the desired name is available. If the first name you wish to have is not available, keep typing in different variations of the name until you find one that is available.
After you have put in all the information, click “Continue”.

Choosing a Template

After you click “Continue”, you’ll be asked to choose a template. The template can be changed at any time after you sign-up for the blog, so you don’t have to choose an “official” template now.
If you scroll down, you’ll see a variety of different templates.
Click on the one that you like best and then click “Continue”.

Your First Blog Post

After you’ve chosen a template, you’ll see that your blog has been created and that there is a button to “Start Posting”. Click that button.
You’ll be taken to a page that is similar to the posting page at a message board. There is a “Title” field, where you can put in the title of this particular blog posting. Then there is a bigger field, which is the body of your post. Type all you want in this “Body” field, as there is no limit.
Note that there are options above the field to bold, italicize, underline or spell check the text. There is also the option of changing the size and color of the text, plus the ability to add bullet points, numbered lists and even pictures. For now, you’ll just do a simple “Welcome” post.
In the “Title” field, type “Welcome!” In the “Body” field, type your message. You could start with a simple introduction, talking about yourself and the purpose of the blog. When you’re done typing the message, click the “Publish” button. It is worth noting that you can choose to save the post as a draft, if you want to go back and later finish the post.
After you’ve clicked “Publish”, you’ll see that your blog has been published successfully. Click the “View Blog” link to view the results of your work. You’ll now see your post.
Logging into Blogger after the first post

You’ll go to Blogger.com and click on the “Old Blogger” link at the top right of the page. Type in the email address and password that you signed up with. You’ll be taken to the “Dashboard” of your blog. If you want to enter a new post on your blog, click “New Post”. Then follow the instructions mentioned in the previous section. Or if you want to edit the template, add/edit elements to your page, you’ll click “Settings” and then “Template”.
That’s all there is to it. Blogs, whether they are hosted at blogger.com or another free blog site, are incredibly useful and fun.

Post Regularly Because…

Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest. The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog’s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.
You might be asking yourself, what is frequent posting? How many blog entries should I make on a given week? How do I make frequent consistently good posts? What are the reasons for me to post frequently? In this newsletter, we will go over all of the above.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won’t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it’s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea. A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week.
The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in subpar posts which people won’t care about. It is important to find a balance—frequent, quality posts that won’t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

It’s all about following a consistent pattern of writing. Maybe you’re not a natural writer and this is difficult. That’s why we’ll give you an outline to help you.

1. Pick a topic that is interesting to you and to your readers.
Maybe if your blog is a personal blog, you could write about the latest happenings in Hollywood.
2. Carefully think about what you’ll write about the topic. It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you’ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it.
3. Before writing your content, pick out some keywords that are relevant to your blog. If you naturally use keywords throughout your post, you will please search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won’t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way.
4. Begin writing your post. Don’t limit yourself to a particular amount of words. Just do what’s natural. And if any blog post is hard for you, just take a timeout and relax. You should be able to finish the post a bit later on, after you’ve had some time to think things through, you should be able to finish the post with no problems.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for individuals or businesses. They are used to get an opinion out on something and to engage readers. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Gaining and maintaining visitors isn’t the only reason to post often in your blog. Catching the eye of a search engine—and achieving a high ranking—is another valid reason for posting frequently. Most likely, each posting in your blog features some keywords or keyword phrases scattered throughout it. Logic says that the more natural keywords you have on a blog, the better. Thus, the more posts you make on your blog, the more keywords you have on there. And the more keywords you have, the more likely a search engine bot is to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine.

Increase traffic on your blog

Is your blog collecting dust and not getting enough traffic? It’s a common problem for bloggers. Their blogs are good, but no one is coming to visit. They want to know how to increase traffic. Increasing traffic is actually easier than it seems—provided you know how. In this newsletter, we will go over 7 specific methods of increasing traffic. These are guaranteed methods to draw more visitors to your blog.

Tip #1: Sign up for pinging services

It seems pretty obvious, but most bloggers, even those who are more experienced, don’t sign up for pinging services. If you’re new to blogging and don’t know what pinging means, pinging basically means that when your blog is updated, a “ping” is sent out by the service to let pinging sites know that your blog has been updated. People who are visiting sites with pinging services will then see your blog flash across the side of the screen as “newly updated”. Pinging services include Yahoo’s blo.gs, weblogs.com, Google Blog search, and ZingFast.

Tip #2: Sign up for Technorati

If you go to technorati.com, you’ll see an option on the left side of the screen to “Claim Your Blog”. Doing so allows you to get updated link counts, add your photo or branding to Technorati, and see your Technorati link. Having your blog claimed on Technorati helps to increase traffic because the millions of people who go to that site will have a chance to see your blog on there.

Tip #3: Sign up for FeedBurner, a RSS service

What FeedBurner basically does for your blog is it helps you to promote your blog’s content, build your audience and measure your audience. In other words, it helps you increase your blog’s traffic.

Tip #4: Bookmark your blogs at places like del.icio.us

You can set up an account and profile at del.icio.us. Then, using that, you can add links to your blog along with excerpts from your blog. Anytime someone visits your profile on del.icio.us, they will see a link to your blog and excerpts. There are other social bookmarking sites that you can use in much the same way. The bottom line is, using these social bookmarking sites can help you increase traffic.

Tip #5: Post comments at other blogs

No, this doesn’t mean you should go and spam other blogs with comments that are only there to promote a site. It means that you should visit similar blogs to your own, post legitimate comments and then sign your name(along with a link to your blog). This way, people know you aren’t there just to promote your site—you’re there to post a good piece of feedback and also say where you’re from.

Tip #6: Ask owners of other blogs to post a link to yours

Find other blogs that are similar to yours. If they seem to be decently popular(that is, they have a good amount of comments for each post), you can try to contact the owner of the blog to add a link to your blog if they have a links section. To make them really want to do this, you can offer to link back to their blog on your blog. People do this reciprocal blog linking all the time and it does help to increase traffic.

Tip #7: Use keywords in your blog

Like regular web pages, having a good keyword density on a blog is a terrific way of getting search engine spiders to notice your page. (FYI: Search engine spiders are programs from search engines that browse sites and report back their findings to the search engine database, which then lists that site. The more keywords on your site, the more likely it is for a search engine spider to pay a visit)

If your average blog posting is around 200 words, try to use 2-6 keywords per blog post. 2-6 keywords in a blog posting of 200 words is a keyword density of between 1 and 3 percent, a respectable number. Remember that you don’t want to use too many keywords, as that will make your blog look bad. Also be sure that the keywords used are relevant to your blog. Before even making a blog posting, decide what the post will be about and then select a keyword or two to use in your post. Then do it. It’s a surefire way of getting more traffic to your site!

Signing up with a service like Technorati is a quick, painless way of increasing traffic to your blog. So sign up today!