Bloggers R Us

 Increasing traffic is actually easier than it seems–provided you know how. 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!

Posting on blogs is easy. Getting blog traffic is not. There are a lot of blogs out there and only so many blog readers to go around. If you are thinking about posting on blogs or if you are already posting on blogs but not getting the kind of blog traffic you want, there are a few things you can do to make your blogs more interesting than some of the other blogs you are competing with.
Research Prior to Posting on Blogs
Blogs that get a lot of blog traffic have one thing in common: they cover topics that people are interested in reading about. To make sure your topics will be of interest to the general public it is a good idea to research various topics before posting on blogs. You can perform general searches on the Internet to see what’s popular and what’s not. You can also read other blogs that are similar to yours. If they have high blog traffic and lots of comments, they are probably hitting on good topics.
Consider Your Tone before Posting on Blogs
Blogs are different than news stories. People read blogs because they want to hear opinions along with facts. And as crazy as it might sound, people want to hear YOUR thoughts. Don’t be afraid to state your case or add commentary when posting to blogs. Personal opinions, tone, and writing style all help to draw in regular blog traffic. So, consider these things carefully before posting on blogs. They will have a huge impact on your success.
You Can Get More Blog Traffic with Short Posts
Posting on blogs is slightly different than posting on other types of web pages. Blog readers like short posts–really short posts. Short blogs are fun and easy to read. Long blogs, on the other hand, look intimidating and time consuming. If you want people to actually read what you are posting on blogs or if you’d like to see repeat blog traffic, it is a good idea to present as much information as you can in a limited number of words. A good rule of thumb when posting on blogs is to keep each post under 250 words.
Think About Blog Traffic Posting On Blogs
Quality doesn’t always equal success when posting on blogs. There are lots of good blogs out there that don’t get a lot of blog traffic. The reason is because nobody knows they exist. You can avoid this pitfall by thinking about blog traffic before you begin posting on blogs. Things to consider specifically include keywords and keyword phrases. If you can use natural keyword placement in the blog’s title and throughout the body of the text, your posts stand a better chance of making it into search engine rankings and a better chance of drawing more blog traffic.
Always Think About Your Readers When Posting On Blogs
When posting on blogs nothing is more important than your blog traffic (a.k.a. your audience.) Some of the things readers like to see on blogs include: snappy headlines, bulleted or formatted lists, links, and information that is easy to scan.

The Most Important Aspects of Blog Marketing

Blog marketing is a combination of many things all put together to make one great blog that is successful and that has many readers. However, if you think that you have done everything possible, chances are that you have not. Or that you should do more. When you are working on marketing a blog, you never get to a stopping point. There is always something that you can do to continue to grow and make your blog well known. What are these things you ask? Keep reading to find out.

Blog marketing will keep you very busy. If you have more than one blog going that you want the highest and the best rankings for, you may have to hire some help. However make sure that you have good content. If you do not have good content, there is no reason for your readers to come back to your blog after their first visit. Keep writing good content as well. If it starts to go down hill, you may find that your reader status does as well and that could hurt you in the long run. Good content is key.

Something else that many blog owners do not realize when they are marketing their blog is that it needs to be updated. Post content in your blog regularly for the best results. Maybe once a day is good for you? Perhaps you are more comfortable with one post a week? Whichever it is, be consistent with it and know that it will pay off to continue posting as you should.

Just having a blog about anything, or random subjects is not always a great idea. You have to have a niche market in order to market your blog successfully. For example, lets say one day you made a blog post on the current news, and the next day it was on your current marital situation. You will not be able to keep a blog audience posting off the wall things time after time. Find your area of expertise and run with it. You can be an expert on that market in your blogging community. Readers will go to your blog daily to find out what it is that the expert is going to say next. It really does work this way.

Make sure that your blog design stands out. You don’t want your blog to look and feel like everyone else’s, so make it different. Having your own look is a huge plus in the blog marketing world. You will find that most blogs all look the same and you can have your own look by just using HTML and adjusting the code to suit your taste. You are going to see that this will truly make a difference with your blog as well as your readers. Try to get a theme that is going to match the market that you are promoting in your blog. Doing so will make it look even more professional.

Do you know SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. If you are not familiar with SEO, you need to get that way and fast. Using SEO will help you to market your blog to the fullest extent possible. Optimizing your blog posts as well as the HTML will get you results that you will love. Studying everything that you can find on SEO will help you immensely. You will find that there is so much more to bog marketing than just making a post on your blog everyday.

If you don’t all ready, be sure that your blog has the RSS feeds. Having these feeds will allow others to be able to link to you blog. Having many links a huge part of blog marketing that you want to take advantage of as well. When someone uses the RSS feeds from your blog, they are able to get the posts that you make, and will give you a link back from their blog, or website, whichever they posted it on.

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Thinking about starting a blog, are you? Before you learn how to create a blog, you had better get an idea of what a blog actually is and how it is fundamentally different from other online presences. That’s exactly what I’ll be reviewing in this article.A blog, short for weblog (web-log, not we-blog), is an online journal. Blogs are specialized forms of web sites, so they typically contain text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, or other media related to their topics. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning “to maintain or add content to a blog.”Blog entries, or “posts,” are usually displayed in reverse chronological order, and posts are assigned to categories to assist with organization. Posts refer to individual articles, or writings, in a blog.Blogs differ from traditional web sites in several crucial ways:

RSS feeds?RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of feed formats used to publish blog content. Feeds make it easy for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.Feeds can be aggregated in a feed reader, a web page or portal page, or a web browser. The feed reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds. In essence, it’s a way for your favorite content to be “pushed” to you, or in this case, a way for your subscribers to get your content pushed to them as it’s updated. In a nutshell, feeds make sure that your readers receive your content as it’s published.Blogs range from personal journals intended for close friends and family, to influential and significant media journals, to informal communication channels for companies. Blogs exist in about every shape, size, and topic imaginable.The power of blogs is that they allow millions of people to have a voice. Blogs are fluid and interactive, consisting of two-sided conversations rather than broadcasts. Blogs are fundamentally changing how we use the web, so get your blog started or you’ll be left behind!

Blogs(A.K.A. – Weblogs) are the BIGGEST thing going right now online because of there many uses for both the Web Surfer and the Internet Marketer.
But, you probably already know that so for the purpose of this article I’m not going to talk about ‘Blogs’ in general because I’m sure you’ve read enough about them by now and/or you already have a few kicking around the net.
What I’m going to share with you Right Now is something I discovered while surfing the net researching Tag and Ping tactics and Social Bookmarkleting because I run more then a few blogs online and wanted to find out how I could take advantage of this whole Tag and Ping and Social Bookmarkleting thing with as little effort as possible.
If your new to this whole Tag and Ping game then let me give you a quick summary of what a Tag is and what a Ping is so there’s no confusion as you continue through this article.
Tags – Tags are simply category names and are selected by you using keywords around whatever niche your blogging about and are included within each post you make, that is, if your blog is set up for Tags.
Ping – By Pinging your letting the weblog trackers(like Technorati for example) and the search engines now that your blog has been updated with fresh content and is ready for their spiders to come and crawl your blog for indexing into their databases.
This is where the – Tags – come into play for your blogs posts because as soon as the social bookmarkleting service spiders your blog, it will list your post under that given Tag you chose. So it’s very important you choose your Tags wisely.
Now that you know the basics of the Tag and Ping concept, lets now get into what I discovered so you too can incorporate it into your blogging mix, whether you use Wordpress, Blogware or Blogger as your blogging software.
But before I do, lets first talk about what Social Bookmarkleting is for a quick minute.
Social Bookmarkleting, just in case your not quite sure, is simply a collection of your favorite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews, photo’s or whatever it is that you find interesting on the web and is saved into your public profile through whatever Social Bookmarkleting service you choose.
Technorati, Digg, del.icio.us, furl are just a few Social Bookmarkleting services available on the web which is why I’m writing this article because I discovered a COOL plugin that you can use on Wordpress, Blogware and Blogger blogs that will connect you to over 50+ social bookmarkleting services through one click of your mouse giving your blog audience multiple options to share your blog post or blog with the world which in turn will increase your traffic and popularity of your blog.
Lets face it, adding 50+ social bookmarkleting buttons to your blog would be a VERY tedious endevour so why not take the short cut for a change and install this plugin and let your reader make his or her choice.
To take advantage of this plugin right now go to Socialize-It.com ==> http://www.socialize-it.com
This plugin is absolutely FREE and only takes minutes to install on your blog.
Make sure your choose your Tag wisely as well. I recommend you go to Technorati – http://www.technorati.com – and look at the TOP 100 tags since Technorati is the BIG Daddy in the blogosphere.
(TIP: The bigger and bolder the Tag the more popular the topic is.)
After you’ve done that, start Blogging.
The more posts you make, the more pages you’ll generate with the “Socialize-It” button helping spread the word about your blog and getting your blog added in whatever Social Bookmarkleting service database your blog reader is apart of.
I hope you found this article helpful and take action on what you have just learned.
Good luck!

One of the best and must used ways to make money online these days is by blogging. Hundreds of blogs are started everyday. One of the reasons is because it’s the easiest way to have your own website and start making money right away. You just monetize your blog put a few posts on it and start marketing it.Google already loves blogs because they always have new content, but marketing can help you push your blog up on the search engines .For more details visit to www.blog-and-ping.com .Pinging your blog whenever you do a new post, commenting on related blogs with a link back to your blog and social bookmaking your blog post are affective ways to market your blog.Okay, so what are the 10 easy ways to make money online from your blog?1. Ad Units: Monetize your blog with ad units from Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher, Bidvertiser, Revenue Pilot and other contextual ad sites. Contextual ads are ads that the ads sites show on your blog that are related to you’re your blogs topic. When these ads are clicked on you get paid for it.2. Sell Your Products: If you have a product blog about it and offer it for sell on your blog. You already have an audience that’s interested in what you’re doing take advantage of it.3. Sell Other Peoples Products: If you have an affiliate account at Amazon. com, Clickbank, Ebay or some other affiliate program, sell affiliate products on your blog. You can do related posts for any product you want to sell.4. Sell Ad Space: If you have a blog with a pretty good Page Rank you can sell ad space on it. You can have different prices for different areas on your blog.5. Write Paid Reviews: You can make money from your blog by writing paid reviews for paid to blog sites like PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews, Blogsvertise, Smorty and others. These sites offer advertisers who pay to have their product or service reviewed. I must add a word of warning here though. Google has started penalizing blogs for doing paid reviews and will drop your Page Rank if you are caught doing so. However you can still make money online doing this even after a PR drop.6. Sell An E-Book: Lots of people make some good money online writing and selling their own e-books. You can write an e-book relate to your blog’s subject and offer it for sell on your blog. Your e-book doesn’t have to be real fancy just give some information that people would be interested in and downloadable.7. Ask For Donations: You would be surprise of what you can just by asking. You can for donations to help your blog going. Just put a PayPal donation in your sidebar or after every post. It doesn’t hurt to ask.8. Point Your blog To Your Paying Article: If you write articles for a site that pays you a performance fee for your articles like Associated Content or Helium you can have your blog lead your audience to those articles and make more money.9. Sell Your Service: If you offer some kind of service like graphic design, website design, financial consultation, story writing or some other service offer it from your blog. For more information logon to www.profit-pulling-toolbars.com .You can even offer your blogging service to people who might need bloggers.10. Sell Your Café Press Items: Café Press a site where you create your own t-shirts, coffee mugs, calendars, posters and other stuff that you can sell. Way not offer this stuff on your blog. Us PayPal “Pay Now” buttons to take the orders. When someone orders an item they pay you, you pay Café Press a reduced price, they make the item and ship it to your customer and you never have t see the item.That’s it, that’s the 10 easy ways you can make money from your blog. I realize that not all these ways are for everybody, but I’m sure there is at least one or two of these ways that everyone can find to make money online from their blog.

Have you been bitten by the blogging bug like millions of others in this world? Then, you must undertake treatment straightway by publishing your first blog entry. In order to make the treatment more responsive, you need to have certain supplements such as quality and interesting content with an eye-catching title and a blogging space to post your content. Wannabe bloggers with limited or no computer knowledge face difficulty in creating their first blog on the Internet, though they have their content ready. For their convenience, some easy-to-understand tips are mentioned below.

· Resort to major search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN to look for free blogging websites or services. Initially, a free service can serve your purpose well. WordPress, Blogger and Blogspot are some of the popular free blog sites. However, there are hundreds of other websites that offer you free blog space.

· Register the name of your blog that is quite unique and attention-grabbing. But, be careful about using exaggerated words. Philosophically correct words can do the trick.

· Make use of the built-in blog templates offered by the website or create your own, if you’re not interested in free-for-alls.

· Invest a good amount of time in designing your blog template from the scratch. Stay away from potential disturbing factors like children, neighbors, pets etc. Microsoft FrontPage is an effective tool to aid in your design.

· After getting your template ready, the next important task is to upload it to your new blog’s URL address. Make sure that it is loaded properly with all your necessary features.

· Now make an auspicious beginning by clicking on the ‘Create Post’ link on your blog. The window will reload to come up with a number of text boxes to fill in.

· Put your fingers into operation on the keyboard to insert your first blog post information like post title, summary, body etc. If your content is yet to be written, you can look around to find great post ideas. You can go down the memory lane to write about a particular incident or event that is worth-mentioning.

· Once you make your first blog entry, waste no time to let your friends and family members know about your blog URL. This act is quite helpful as it brings your initial readers.

· While posting your first blog entry, you might have come across a text box called ‘Tags’ where you can put in a number of keywords related to your post. Visitors can get to know about your post if they use these keywords while searching for information over the Internet. This brings more traffic to your blog.

· If you own a website that deals in a specific product or service, you can promote it through your blog. Write relevant posts highlighting your product or service. Don’t forget to link keywords to your website in the post body. Put only an appropriate number of links in the body.

· Links can be easily put by selecting a particular word and then clicking on the ‘link’ button above the ‘body’ text box. A small dialog box will appear with the selected word. Simply put your website URL e.g. http://www.xyz.com/ in the appropriate box and you’re done.

These are the simple steps you can take to create your first blog and first blog entry. The successful posting of one entry can definitely allure you to add more posts to your blog. Blogs are now a powerful medium to express your views, ideas and opinions. They can also promote your business in a big way. So, HAPPY POSTING!!!

To enrich your knowledge on blogging as well as other intriguing topics such as CSS, Web Design, AJAX and Web Applications, you can visit the popular informative website – http://www.css-faq.com/ that contains plenty of articles, news and videos.

If you’re reading this blog, chances are, you’re a new Internet business owner, looking for marketing advice. Or perhaps you’re thinking about joining an MLM program or a cash gifting club and are looking for information on how to market your opportunity. Either way, blogging is one of the one of the best ways for YOU to get going in the online business community.

A blog (short for weblog) is an online journal containing regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Blogs could be about anything, from strictly personal life observations to pop culture gossip.

So why should an Internet entrepreneur, such as yourself, maintain a blog? It’s quite simple. Blogs are a GREAT way for you to increase traffic to your business web-site while creating a trust relationship with your readers. The ultimate goal of your blog should be to increase visibility of your online business web-site, NOT to sell products or services. If you try to “plug in” a sales pitch in the middle of your blog, at the very least, the readers will be put off and leave and at the worst they will flag your blog as spam or inappropriate content. On the other hand, if you provide quality content, a vast majority of your readers will repay you by checking out your opportunity.

The other major added bonus of posting blogs is that they create what’s called “back-links” to your web-site, which is something that search engine spiders look for when they determine the position of any given web-site in the search rankings. More blogs = higher position in the Google and Yahoo! search engines.

So, how do you write a quality blog? How can you attract prospects to your online business without overtly “selling” them something? No one likes to be sold to, but everyone likes to buy. The key is to write your blog in a way that doesn’t aggressively “sell”, but “helps” the potential customers make their choice in favor of your product/service/opportunity.

For example, let’s say your business is selling electronic cookbooks. You might think that it would be best to write a blog like this:

“Super-Duper-Crazy-Cookbooks.com is EVERYTHING an aspiring chef could only dream of!

For only $9.99 get HUNDREDS of recipies, including rare dishes from Taiwan and Morocco!

Surprise your guests by whipping up our famous chocolate-strawberry souflee!

Create incredibly tasty meals for the whole family in 20 minutes or less!”

You get the idea. There are a couple of major problems with this blog. It sounds a lot like an ad and doesn’t provide any educational content, thus it is likely to be flagged or ignored by a majority of readers. Also, it is an extremely weak piece as far as search engine placement because it doesn’t have any “keywords” in it. Keywords and key phrases are what a person types in when they’re searching for things on Google and Yahoo. In the example with cookbooks, they will look for “the best Indian food cookbook”, “electronic cookbook reviews”, “best Chinese recipies” and other such key phrases.

Think about what it is that you have to offer that is unique and interesting. Perhaps, using the cookbook example, it’s your exotic Ethiopian food recipies. Then, it would be a good idea to target that audience by providing a blog like this:

“Ethiopian Food – Is It The Right Choice For Your Family? Recipies, Cooking Tips etc.

Ethiopian cuisine consists of spicy vegetable and meat dishes, served atop injera, a large sourdough flatbread. Ethiopians eat with their right hands, using pieces of injera to pick up bites of entrées and side dishes. No utensils are used.

Ethiopian cuisine is gaining popularity with families in America: the children are allowed to eat with their hands while getting a highly nutritious meal, filled with lean protein and vitamins.

So, is Ethiopian food the right choice for your family? You decide! Here is an easy-to-prepare recipe of one the most popular Eithiopian dishes, provided by Super-Duper-Crazy-Cookbooks.com:

The recipe is here.”

A couple of notes about this blog: it provides something of value for free which is going to be appreciated by many people; it also contains many search engine key phrases such as “Ethiopian dish”, “Ethiopian Cusine” etc., which vastly increase the chances of this blog being found on the Internet.

Once your first entry is written, create an account with as many of the major blog sites as you can. It’s a very good idea to post your blog on at least 6-7 blog sites (you may wish to use a blog disseminator). If you haven’t yet joined an online business opportunity, make sure you ask your team leaders for help with blogs. For example, I provide a list of the best blog and article websites to my team along with detailed tips on how to post the blogs without any problems. Remember that the more blogs you write, the more people will go to your website. I would recommend writing a blog every other day for the first month after your start/join an opportunity.

I hope this was helpful to you! I wish you the best of luck in your blogging endeavors.

Brad Smith

blueoctopus@cox.net

As you know, blogging is one of the best ways to increase traffic flow to your new online business website (“Um, what’s blogging?” – if you don’t know much about writing blogs, please read this article first.) Once you write your first entry, you start wondering, what is the best place to post a blog? What are the top blog sites that could aid the marketing of your online business?

Here is a list of the best free blog web-sites that I use myself and recommend to my team members:

“Oh no!” – you say. – “So many sites to sign up for! I hate that!” No worries – I recommend you use the free version of the software called Roboform (http://www.roboform.com/) for all of your Internet sign-ups. Roboform fills out your forms automatically with a push of a button, which reduces your sign-up time to a few seconds per website.

Generally, it’s good not to make your blog sound too promotional, with no more then 2 links to any one web-site per entry, but Wordpress and Hubpages are especially strict when it comes to blog content. Make sure you don’t put anything that sounds like a “direct sell” onto those websites – otherwise your entries will get deleted and your account could get suspended.

If you like to write your entries in Word Document and then post them to the blog web-sites, make sure you preview your blogs before posting them. Blogs imported from Word tend to show up with a bunch of gibberish HTML codes, visible on top of the page. You would have to go to the blog edit window, and remove those manually. Once you post your entry on one of the websites I would recommend to copy and paste it from that site for when you start putting your blog on others. That way, you will be rid of the Word HTML codes forever.

Posting your blog manually to all of the above web-sites will take anywhere from an hour to 3 hours, depending on how fast you can work. My team and I have cut our posting time to 30-45 minutes, using a great free blog disseminator (a service which auto-posts blogs to various web-sites for you). I strongly recommend blog disseminators to anyone who values their time.

A quick note about the disseminators: they don’t auto-post blog tags – only the body of the blog – so make sure you put your tags underneath every entry. I advise my team against using simple one or two-word tags, the reason being, that they act as keywords for search engines and if they are too general, your posting will not get nearly as much traffic. For example, try googling the keywords “blogging”, “blog” or “online business”. There are millions of search engine results for each of them. What is the chance that YOUR blog will show up on the first page?

Instead, try using longer tags. Think of something an actual person would search for in Yahoo! or Google. For example, good keywords/tags for this particular blog are:

Where to post a blog, best websites to post a blog, top blog sites, top blog web-sites, the best place to post a blog, marketing a new online business, online business marketing, blogging for a new business, writing a blog for a new business, how to post a blog, new online business marketing tips, best free blog sites, best free blog websites

If you haven’t yet joined an online business opportunity, make sure you ask your team leaders for help with blogs, as they are extremely important to your development as a marketer. For example, I provide my team with links to various blog directories and with detailed tips on how to avoid common blogging mistakes. Remember that the more blogs you write, the more people will go to your website. I would recommend writing a blog every other day for the first month after your start/join an opportunity.

I hope this was helpful to you! I wish you best of luck in your blogging endeavors.

Brad Smith

blueoctopus@cox.net

Brad Smith is a marketing expert with a revolutionary cash gifting system that has helped thousands of people create wealth on the Internet. There is no product involved and one doesn’t have to be a computer wiz to be successful at it. On Brad’s web-site http://ToGiveAndToReceive.com, you can learn about how cash gifting can aid your financial situation without considerable money and time investments.

Someone asked on LinkedIn: “If I wanted to have a successful blog that potentially made money, what would I do?”First thing’s first, after figuring out what it is you’re going to write about and designing the blog and hosting it somewhere (I would suggest purchasing a keyword-rich domain name rather than hosting it free on Blogger or some other blog site), the most valuable thing you can do is add buttons and links to your blog to allow users to subscribe to it in as many different ways as possible. Some people use services like Bloglines, some people use an RSS app, some people use Firefox live bookmarks, but not all of these people are savvy enough to know how to subscribe to a blog without a specific sub-to-this-blog link for their preferred RSS reader. A great resource to help you make these different links is Feedburner.com. Feedburner also allows you to design email signatures with animated headlines from your blog, and many other different ways to publicize and monetize your blog. Plus, it lets you watch the traffic and subscription trends for your blog’s feed.Next, you want to research keywords to find a keyword that relates to your subject matter that people actually search for, so that if you find yourself in the top ten rankings on Google for said keyword, you will actually get traffic from it. An awesome tool to help you figure this out is Wordtracker GTrends which is here: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/Once you find your keyword or key phrase, you want to make sure your blog’s code is search engine friendly. You want to make sure your meta tags are within search engine guidelines, that your keyword density is appropriate for your subject matter, and that all of your titles have your keyword or key phrase in it. A good way to get a head start on this is to have your blog’s backend hosted by Blogger, while the blog itself is published on your own domain. I say this because Google owns blogger and as such, the new version of blogger features extremely Google-friendly code.After this, you need to get some links pointing to your site from good, Google recognized sites that relate to your subject matter. The best way to do this is to search on Google for your keywords or key phrase and ask the top ten ranking web sites to link to your blog. You may have to be creative about this, using what we like to call link bait. This can be anything that entices another web site owner to link to your site. Because your site will be new and most top ten ranking sites know a thing or two about search engine optimization, you probably won’t be able to just get a link exchange – no one wants to link to a brand new blog for two reasons, one is that new bloggers have a tendency to lose interest after a while and you find yourself linking to a blog that never gets updated, and two is because the site has no Google PageRank. If you offer your potential linkers something else, you may have more success. For example, I once ran a campaign for a client that swapped links for a discount on my client’s products. Whatever it is you swap for a link is up to you, be creative.You want to add your web site to blog directories and blog resources such as Technorati. If you haven’t spent literally a week straight doing this, you haven’t found nearly all of them. There are so many! Your best bet is to search Google for a list of blog directories.Ask your friends or colleagues to Digg each of your blog posts using digg.comAdd links to the bottom of every post that will allow readers to add to delicious, post to facebook, myspace, stumble upon, etc. Use as much 2.0 power as you possibly can. Get a Twitter account and tweet as much as you can, follow as many users as you can. Make sure every profile you’ve ever made for yourself or your business on any site, has a link to your blog. Make sure your blog address is everywhere, when you comment on others’ blogs, when you talk in forums, etc.You want to make sure you have an advertising policy available on your web site for potential advertisers to read, and as many different ways for them to contact you.When all of this is set up and ready, it’s time to send out a Press Release. Make sure it is enticing and boldly underlines how this blog is different and why people will want to read it. Submit your press release to as many press release distributors as possible. Again, just search on Google and you’ll find a ton. Some cost money, some are free.Now it’s time to post. Make sure your posts have personality. No one wants to read a dry technical blog. You want to make sure your own personality comes out in each and every post. Also, the more controversy, the better. A controversial post will entice readers to send the link to their friends and family in either horror or pride – both are equally as good! It will also encourage comments and repeat visits when something heated has been posted to the comments and the poster wants to come back to check the responses. It will also encourage repeat commenters and some will be compelled to subscribe to your blog. Make it controversial enough and you may even hit the mainstream news, such as Michelle Malkin did recently when she objected to the scarf Rachael Ray was wearing in a Dunkin’ Donuts ad.Submit all of your article length posts to article databases utilizing the author’s bio as a spot for a link back to your blog. Hopefully people will syndicate these on their own sites keeping the bio in tact and thus, creating more links to your blog.Some people use traffic exchanges such as BlogExplosion or Blog Soldiers and while it does actually increase your traffic, most of that traffic is useless. The only one I have ever found that actually results in real readers, is BlogExplosion.com. These sites are not entirely useless, however, as they do have directories that your blog is submitted to when you join. And there are no obligations after joining, so I would suggest doing so just to get into the directories as they are even more links to your blog.Make sure you blog regularly, but not too much. Many people subscribe to RSS feeds as a much faster way to get their daily reading in. Blogs with a lot of daily headlines, generally get skimmed and sometimes just deleted when there’s no time. But blogs that only have a post a week, can tend to be forgotten about. My suggestion is to keep it to once daily, and at the very least, 3 or 4 times per week. If you are going to be unable to post for a period of time, vacation or something, post and let your readers know so that they don’t think it’s just another blog gone stale.In the meantime, add Google Adsense to your blog, perhaps Amazon a-store and any high-quality affiliate programs that can relate to your blog’s subject matter.If you keep all of this up, you will have advertising revenue. The key though, is patience. Keep at it and don’t get discouraged. Publicizing any web site can take months upon months before you see results. But once you do, it’s highly worth it. You may even want to design and sell your own merchandise for further revenue.