Blogging as an income generating source

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs.

If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first.

If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path.

If you want to succeed, you must be congruent.

Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed.

If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it.

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations.

Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach.

Either be full-assed or no-assed.

Now it is practically up to people on what they choose...

Viva - la - blog !!




Some easy references.........

http://marketing-affiliater.blogspot.com/2007/07/article-submission-directories.html

http://www.marketingaffiliater.com/article-directories/

http://affiliatescrawl.blogspot.com/2006/06/pings-and-blogs.html

http://affiliatescrawl.blogspot.com/2006/06/article-directroy-pro-and-adsense.html

http://www.freelancemom.com/submitarticles.htm

http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directory-lists.html

http://blog.sponsoredreviews.com/?p=47

Free Internet Marketing

It's only that nlogging has becomes one of the addicting as well as advertising fads.

Teenagers have resorted to blogging as an outlet for their emotions, where they can blurt out whatever bugs them or whatever makes them feel elated.

Savvy marketers have discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that won't cost you a cent.

Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to boost the visibility of your products and services. Here are a few ways to boost your internet advertising with the help of a blog:

1. Make your clients or customers abreast on your website's alterations. Your new products and affiliate websites could also be announced through your blog.

2. Keep track of your business objectives and plans through open writing.

3. Air your opinions, advice or reviews on specific services or products that are related to your business as publishing is a very easy process with blogging.

4. Include links that will fetch back links and subsequently improve your ranking on search engines. This could be better executed through putting well-written articles in your website. Affiliate links could also be included in your blog to earn more extra income.

5. Collect response through the ability of blogs to fetch comments from your blog readers. You can learn and improve your products and services through with the feedback from your readers.

6. Connect easily with other bloggers. When other bloggers notice that you have something good in your blog, they will put you in their favorite lists that will automatically link you to their blogs.

So, how do you set up a blog?

Either you load a blogging-software or let a blogging hosting service do it for you.

Host services such as LiveJournal and Blogger.com are the most popular in this field. Those hosts will provide you with easy instructions on how to put up your blog.

The Bloggers Checklist

1. Make a commitment to blog everyday. Few minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders.
2. Set up a subscriptions form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, and associates.
3. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine
4. Be part of the blogging community. Go to other blog sites you admire. Contribute to their blogs and add real value. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don’t write things like “nice blog” or “great post.” Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog. Give away what you know.
5. Blog at least 10 posts a week for the first 15 days and 5 post per week the next 15 days
6. Write anything you want as long as it is unique content. And also add in some news clips [with courtesy to the origninal clip-link] and some articles by leading article writers [again do mention it is not your article and that it was borrowed from a source – and with a link to that source]
7. From the second month, make it a point to have at least 15 post per month and the third at least 10 post per month. As your post volume reduces, so does your links to other articles and news clips. Of course, you can always have the odd links now and then.
8. Once your reputation grows, people will seek out your blog. This is not an overnight process, but by building an audience you are positioning yourself well
9. Swap links - Make a list of relevant sites you would love to link to your blog. Write them a short friendly note and offer to let them use a few of your posts as content on their site in exchange for a link back to your site. Also, link to their sites from within one of your posts. Be sure to offer to exchange links in the links section of your blog.
10. If you are willing to pay for a link to your site, check out Text-Link-Ads - http://www.text-link-ads.com/
11. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish. http://www.pingomatic.com/
12. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com/
13. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
14. Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting
15. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file
16. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website
17. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.
18. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as auto responder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.
19. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers
20. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to.
21. To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, visit - http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm
22. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts
23. Use Track back links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack ? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that an link to your blog is now included on their site.
24. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box.

Finally, put blogging on your schedule as a daily task.

Why should I blog ?

Because just about EVERYONE is!

Another way to say that it is......that 6% of the entire U.S. adult population (internet users and non-users alike) have created blogs. That’s one out of every 20 people or that translates into more than 11 million American adults who say they have created blogs.

Moreover 16% of all U.S. adults (or one in six people) are blog readers.

Well, OK, if that isn't good enough for you, here are two more reasons.

Blogs let you REACH and RELATE.

Reach... Who?

Your audience. Customers, subscribers, prospects, readers. Anyone whom you could earlier reach by email. Have you looked at your email delivery stats lately? Notice how fewer messages are getting through to your list. Blame it on the deluge of spam email. Or the use of increasingly aggressive filters, by ISPs and end users.

Fact is, e-mail is getting less effective as a communication tool simply because it often fails to reach the intended recipient.

Enter the blog - where a message is on the Web for anyone to see. There's still the issue of getting the word out when you update the blog - but I'll come to that later.

The next good reason... Relate.

How?

By revealing your true personality, by letting your individuality shine through. It's easier to establish rapport with audiences through a blog post that's an unpolished form of your thought processes - than through a corporate bulletin or edited newsletter.

So Reach and Relate - through your Blog.

Why are blogs hot ?

First you need to understand that blogs are an industry that is growing rapidly. It increases every day. There are millions of blogs being tracked by Technorati right now. Therefore, to be a success you need to know what techniques work and which ones do not. Using the right techniques will help you to see positive results with your blog in no time at all.

Web logs do not represent something brand new in human communication. They are only different types of diaries that closely resemble web logs.

It's Personal -- it's done by a person, not an organization. The individual's personality shines through the blog posts. Not a sanitized, corporatized, acceptable form of collective thinking and feeling -- but the unique, rough edged, even sometimes bizarre individualism of the blog owner.

It's on the Web -- So it can be updated frequently, is not expensive to maintain, and can be accessed through a web browser by anyone you choose to permit.

It's Published -- There are templates into which each post is 'streamed' by an automated process. The result is an electronic publication. One that can be distributed to many others, even syndicated, through technology called RSS feeds.

In short, it is a part of a vast online Community -- Each blog links to several others, connecting people together through common interests. And as any eMarketer knows, building interactive online communities around an area of interest is the secret of online success.

Now, perhaps that’s the reason why they are hot!

Blogging is HOT

If you have spent any time on the internet, you have heard the word “blog”. But just what is this concept of blogging and how can it make you rich? This is where everybody is at a loss

Of course, making money is what it’s all about so you will have to learn how to use your blog for this purpose

The phenomenon of creating and managing web logs has caught the imagination of the online community.

Weblogs – or ‘blogs’ – and their related tools, tricks, tips and paraphernalia are springing up all around you.

As a savvy web marketer aspiring to be ‘ahead of the curve’, what do YOU need to know about blogs and blogging?

A lot.

And the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Enjoy it!

How should I make money from blogging?

Most people start off with the two questions

a) Where do I start if I want to create a new blog?

b) How should I make money from blogging?

Or What returns do I get from all this work I put in?

Two other questions which most people don’t ask(but should) are:

c) WHY are you blogging? and
d) What do you stand for?


Its a Catch 22 situation !

Effective SEO Techniques for Writing Blog Posts

Your primary aim for maintaining a blog is to make money, and for the long term success of your blog you need to focus on getting as many high ranking posts in the search engines as possible.

To start out your blog will not have enough backlinks or page rank to help drive your posts into top ranking positions. The trick is to target keyword phrases which have little competition in the search engines. One major drawback is these keywords is they are unlikely to attract much traffic, and so you have to concentrate on writing posts which target many different keyword phrases.

The single most important search engine optimization tip to employ when you are writing a blog post is to select a primary keyword phrase and then include as many related words and phrases as possible.

Keyword density is not something you should concentrate on. Rather than stuffing your post with your primary keyword phrase, use words which have the same meaning (known as synonyms) and add related phrases (or secondary keyword phrases). The days of creating one blog post for each keyword phrase are long gone.

You can use the WordTracker free trial to find keywords which you have researched (i.e. they are searched for regularly, but have little competition). Once you have identitfied suitable keywords, use the Google Keyword tool to find related phrases which Google associates with your main keywords. Enter your main keyword into the "Keyword Variations" text box. Make sure the "Use synonyms" check box is checked and click "Get More Keywords".

The Google Keywords tool will then return a list of keywords it thinks are related to your main keyword. Save these in either a text format or as a .csv file which you can open using a spreadsheet (e.g. MS Excel). Go through each keyword phrase and delete those that have no relevence to the blog post you intend to write.

When you write your post include as many of these related keywords as you can, but make sure your post has a logical flow to it and your included phrases makes sense. You should write for your readers first - make your post content informative and easy to read.

Include your primary keyword phrase in your post title, but make sure the post content closely matches your chosen title. You should also include your primary keyword phrase once or twice in the post content, and include the related phrases you have identified, for example if your primary keyword phrase is "increase website traffic" and the Google Keywords tool returned these related phrases:

-improve website ranking
-top website traffic
-get website traffic
-targeted website traffic
-guaranteed website traffic
-your website traffic

Here is how you could use them in your post title:

Dramatically Increase Website Traffic and Improve Website Ranking with These Top Website Traffic Tips

In your post you would refer to all the keyword phrases once or twice and back them up with even more similar or related phrases, for example: website traffic -> website hits -> unique hits -> site traffic. Don't keep repeating the same phrase over and over in your post content.

If you have written other posts which targeted some of the related secondary phrases, link to them using the secondary keyword phrase as the link text. Linking to similarly themed posts benefits your readers because they can find more information, but it also gives your posts a slight SEO boost from the internal "in context" linking.

One very important point to remember is 30% to 40% of all search engine queries are one time long tail search phrases which the search engines do not have any matching webpages to display. The actual results displayed will be the webpages which the search engines decide are the closest match. When writing your posts take this into account and create as many permutations as you can of the keyword phrases you are targeting. For example (this is a real example from one of my niche websites):

- facts about whether a plant grows faster inside or outside
- information on a plants growth rate inside and outside
- growing plants inside vs. outside
- do plants grow faster indoors or outdoors

Pay attention to your post slug as WordPress uses this to create a file name for your post. Make sure the primary keyword phrase is near the beginning of the slug. By default, WordPress uses the post title as the post slug, but it cleans it up by removing apostrophes, quote marks, and other characters.

For example, using the title in the "increase website traffic" example, WordPress would automatically name the post slug: dramatically-increase-website-traffic-and-improve-website-ranking-with-these -top-website-traffic-tips

To write a new post slug, simply rewrite it with dashes between each word, for example: incease-website-traffic-improve-ranking-top-promotion-tips

N.B. - Make sure you change your post slug BEFORE you publish the post, and don't include non essential words like a, the, but, my, with etc. Changing your post slug after you have published it can cause problems with the posts permalinks and result in a 404 File Not Found error...

Blogging - is it worth the effort ?

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs.

If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first.

If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path.

If you want to succeed in blogging, you must be congruent.

Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed.

If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it.

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations.

Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach.

Either be full-assed or no-assed.

Now it is practically up to people on what they choose...

Viva - la - blog !!



Some easy references.........

The bloggers checklist

http://marketing-affiliater.blogspot.com/2007/07/article-submission-directories.html

http://www.marketingaffiliater.com/article-directories/

http://affiliatescrawl.blogspot.com/2006/06/pings-and-blogs.html

http://affiliatescrawl.blogspot.com/2006/06/article-directroy-pro-and-adsense.html

http://www.freelancemom.com/submitarticles.htm

http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directory-lists.html

http://blog.sponsoredreviews.com/?p=47