Bloggers R Us

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.

One of the questions I see frequently asked on online discussion forums is, “Can You Really Make Money from Blogging?” People want to know if there’s some way to profit from the time they spend maintaining their web logs or personal online journals.My answer is an emphatic “YES,” because I do it… everyday!Today I’ll share with you how I do it.Let me begin by saying that I don’t make thousands per month from MOST of my blogs. However, I do have many making hundreds. Since I don’t put in a lot of time maintaining them, and I enjoy blogging, I consider the money a bonus. I blog while sitting in my yard with my laptop (on a wireless connection)… watching the clouds roll by. Another bonus I get from blogging is that it helps my regular websites that are set up as my “money machines.”The search engines visit my blogs more often than they visit my regular sites, and they follow the links from my blogs pointing to other sites. Some of these links point to my sites, and some point to sites of partners. This does help the search engine rankings of these sites MASSIVELY.How Do I Monetize My Blogs?I monetize my blogs by creating blogs on topics people are searching for… and that they are spending money on. I know which niches are hot to an extent based upon what my research proves pay-per-click advertisers are willing to spend their advertising dollars on. I run Google AdSense ads on my blogs. You can visit www.bloggers-guide-to-profit.com  I simply insert these ads in my menu bar and other strategic places on the webpage. I also experiment with other paid advertising on my blogs.I sell affiliate products from my blogs. I simply find affiliate products at places like PayDotCom.com and Commission Junction. I incorporate these into my blogs. I do things like product reviews, how-to articles, etc. You can also locate suitable affiliate products by typing your target keywords + “affiliate program” at any major search engine. This should point out numerous websites with suitable affiliate programs to you.How Do I Setup/Host My Blogs?I have blog hosted on some of my own domains using Moveable Type. This is just one of many great pieces of blogging software. You have other choices… my programmer recommended this one to me.I also have blogs hosted for free on Blogger.com. I have them on Blogger.com because they are incredibly easy to set up and maintain. A secondary reason I have them on Blogger.com is that Google OWNS Blogger.com and they index webpages hosted on their servers OFTEN and FAST!The secret to getting Google and Yahoo! to visit your blogs often is a technique called “blogging and pinging.” It’s a method of notifying all of the major search engines, and blog directories, each time that you update your blog. The search engines come to take a look and they follow links from your blog to spider other blogs/sites. It’s very powerful. I won’t go into too many details on blogging and pinging here. If you want more information on that topic I invite you to drop by my free, Internet marketing discussion board and ask any and all questions! It’s at: http://WillieCrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgiExamples of Profitable Blogs?I know, you want to see examples of profitable blogs To show you how simple it can be I’ll show you just ONE. It s less than 2 months old The problem is that as soon as I show a site to anyone as an example, it’s instantly ripped off. So, I’m going to “sacrifice” one making me about $60 per day from affiliate product sales and about $20 per day in AdSense revenue. That site is at: http://cure-nail-fungus.blogspot.comThe above site currently ranks Number 6 on Yahoo for the term “cure nail fungus.” It’s a small niche but one that makes me $2400 per month… just from that one blog.If you searched on the same term at Google, this site is not very highly ranked. However, THIS page is Num ber4:http://www.chitterlings.com/no-more-nail-fungus.htmlThat happens to be one of my pages too I won’t tell you what ALL I’m up to on that page… that’s another article. The technique involves using your own domains to promote affiliate products rather than advertising someone else’s domain… so it improves your link popularity.I’m not going to show more of my blogs because that just invites competition. Instead, I’m going to answer another question you have to be wondering…”How do I find time to maintain all of these blogs, even if they are profitable?” Well, first of all, I don’t really need a lot like the “sacrificial lamb” that I showed you above to keep me satisfied.I do have a number of secret weapons though. One is called Auto logger. You can check it out at:http://WillieCrawford.com/auto-blogger.htmlWhat Auto logger does is allow me to queue up a number of posts for my various blogs in advance. It lets you queue up “articles” which can really be anything you want. Then you tell the software at what frequency to make a post.My Auto logger account allows me to automatically post to an UNLIMITED number of blogs.WARNING: A program like Auto logger can get you in trouble if you misuse it! If you use it to spam or abuse the search engines, it’s just going to get you banned. If you use it to abuse the blog hosts, they’re just going to delete your blogs. Here’s how I use Auto logger:I have sites where I discuss Internet marketing… as just one example. On these sites I share many of my articles and tidbits. I simply queue up these articles/tidbits to post at a given frequency. This frequency can be a set number of hours, days, weeks, or months. So theoretically, I can set up a blog, pre-schedule 50 posts, and not touch it in months, while it is automatically posted to for the next 50 intervals.Auto logger even lets you set it to start rotating through the posts again when they run out, if you want to. I personally wouldn’t do this since you’d just be posting duplicate content.Auto logger allows you to insert RSS feeds right into your blog posts. So in addition to posting articles you can also auto-update by adding new RSS feeds at a set interval. Since I HATE sending my traffic to other sites (without reciprocation), these RSS feeds generally pull from MY sites. That way, my traffic is only sent to my other sites. If you don’t even feel like queuing up a lot of posts, you can go to a site like Elance.com and hire someone else to do it for you… or just hired your kids to do it for you. It can be as easy as you want to make it.OK, I’ve just proven to you that you can make money off of blogs. In-fact, you can make more money than many people make off of their REGULAR websites. It just takes a little thinking outside the box!It also takes not being too greedy. You can log on www.blog-link-generator.com What I just showed you works for me because I’m not doing anything that’s likely to get me banned from the search engines, Google AdSense, Blogger.com, or any affiliate program. It’s only when you get carried away, and do things that harm the search engines that you “shoot yourself in the foot.”Set up blogs providing useful content. Make regular posts to these blogs but not in a manner that seems unnatural. By that, I mean don’t auto-post twenty times in an hour, or post every hour for a month! No human can possible post to a blog at these rates for long, so the search engines detect something is “wrong.” They don’t generally prohibit you from using tools to make your job easier… just don’t get carried away!There are actually, thousands of people earning a living doing things similar to what I just shared… but with little twists. I’m meeting up with many of them in New Orleans in September. You’re invited to join us. We’ll basically be sharing how we make a fortune off of niche websites and programs such as Google AdSense.

It is believed by most experts that blogging is a financial mistake for most small businesses. Blogs are best used for news-oriented sites, or sites that feature “the latest” or “the thought of the day.”However, blogging can also be a strong “add-on” to a successful, profitable website. For this reason, we will examine how to look at blogging vs having a website and how to know if you should start a blog.Several companies offer blogging software, and Blogger is probably the most widely used free blogging platform available. Blogger, owned by Google, allows you to set up a blog quickly using its design templates. Other widely used blogging software include WordPress and TypePad.Blogs must be updated frequently — several times a week, if not daily or even several times a day — in order to hold readers’ attention. Bloggers must scrupulously adhere to the golden rule of blogging: “Thou must update frequently.” It is a time-consuming process because people who read blogs expect a certain amount of fresh content on a regular basis — at a minimum, weekly — preferably several times a week. This is not true of a theme-based website.Blogging should definitely be used in combination with other marketing methods and not in isolation. They should NOT be used to build career momentum because they are not right for everyone — especially if you don’t have a strong viewpoint or valuable information to share. Blog posts, in contrast to conventional websites, do not have a specific order. The software lacks what businesses do need to actually make money (which is the ultimate goal). They interlink to each other with gusto, creating what they call “the blogosphere. Ultimately, they merely keep adding new posts, one after another, without editing out the old and without pulling related posts together into cohesive and fresh articles whereas, theme-based content sites develop and update the content into more complete, useful, cohesive articles called “web pages.” Bloggers rave about how blogs are “more dynamic” and “promote conversations,” but many prominent bloggers turn commenting off! This communication medium is heavily covered by both online and offline media because they “get” the concept. Bloggers, of course, form part of the online media and is actually for a very small percent of the population. It has become very popular in the last few years and even the most non-technical of netpreneur are now using a blog to promote their businesses. Blogs have come a long way in a very short time, but again, they’re not for everyone. A lot of people don’t want to read their own company blogs. It has to fit into the corporate culture. Blogs about your company and your products may sound interesting to you, but people rarely tune into a “commercial” blog unless there is additional information of real value. Blogging may not be suitable for all small businesses, say blogging experts in a New York Times report. However, they do provide a simple way for family and friends to stay connected from different parts of the world by sharing stories, photos, videos and more.

Blogging has become more and more popular these days, people are looking for ways how they can improve their blogs so that more people know about their blog and can hence visit their blog. I believe that you can find a lot of blogging tips, guides and even secrets in the search engine, blogging has become one of the most-seek topic because everyone blogs.

So what are the ultimate blogging secrets? In my opinion, those blogging tips such as submit your blog to Technorati, post constantly, get a FeedBurner account, submit your posts to social networking sites, ping your blog and many more are not secrets anymore. This is because by simply typing ‘blogging tips’ in the search engine, you will come out with tons of results of the same kind. Almost every bloggers out there knows about these tips and guides.

So what I’m going to tell you here about the ultimate blogging secrets are something much more ‘mental’, it is more to your mindset rather than something like all the blogging tips that you can find from the net itself. Therefore, for me, the ultimate blogging secrets are:

Secret #1 – Know why you blog

Know the reason that you blog. Everything happens for a reason, and if you create a blog today, there must be a reason for you. So, why did you blog? Is it because you are just following the trend? You see a lot of people are playing with blogs, and you decide to join them as well? Or is it that you want to earn money from your blog? Whatever reason it is, there must be a reason; you have to find this reason.

Once you know why you blog, then nothing can ever stop you. Just like if the reason you blog is because that you want to create an extra stream of income online, then do whatever it takes to achieve it. It is the purpose that keeps you going, motivates you, inspires you and keeps you moving forward. Today, if you don’t know why you blog, it is most likely you are going to give up the moment you find that nobody actually visits your blog.

That is why the reason is important. Know why you blog before you start creating your blog. This is just like having a clear goal, if you have a goal, you will know where you are heading. However, if you don’t have a clear goal, you will be lost somewhere. If you don’t even know where you wanted to go, how can you ever reach somewhere?

Secret #2 – Serve your readers

Many people did not know about this. Did you know that the reason people visit your blog is because of the information that you have? Therefore, the main purpose visitors arrive at your blog is because of your content, so you will have to write quality posts. You will have to serve your readers. This is the one question that you have to ask yourself, “Are you willing to do whatever it takes to educate your readers and without asking for anything in return?” If your answer is yes, then you should start creating your blog right now.

Just imagine that if someone arrives to your blog, but your blog contains nothing, your visitors will leave immediately, because your blog has got nothing that they are looking for. I like to use this word when I talk about serving your readers, Value. Yes, you have to create value for your readers, the more value you created for them, the more likely they will addict to your blog, and thus, follow your advice, and purchase whatever you recommend to them.

This is how it works; creating value for your readers, provide something that they are looking for. I know you’ve heard this, ‘content is king’. This is very true, your blog content is just like the heart of your blog, and the traffic is blood. Without the heart, your blog will die, and without the blood, you blog cannot live. So, often bring out valuable posts for your readers, write with original content and your readers will appreciate it.

Secret #3 – Treat their blog as a get-rich-quick scheme

I believe that almost 50 percent of people who start their blogs with the reason that they hope they can make some money out from their blog, fast. If you think it this way, then you are wrong, blogging is not something that can bring you money in a fast way. In fact, blogging is something just like real-estate, it will appreciate over time.

Meaning that you have to spend time and develop your blog. Your blog is not a money tree and it cannot earn you any money if you don’t develop it properly. Most people start their blog and wish that they can make some money out of it; this is because they have heard that many bloggers are making a lot of money from their blog, easily. They think that by simply setting up a blog, throw some posts in it, set up Google Adsense, and checks will come to them automatically.

If you think that blog is something that can make you rich in a quick way, you are wrong. Indeed that some people can earn a lot of money from their blog in just a short period of time, but did you really think that they are just lucky? You have to spend a lot of time to build your blog, you have to treat your blog as a serious business if you really want to make money from it.

There you go, the 3 blogging secrets that you never know about. Well, maybe you’ve already known about these, but in my opinion, these secrets are also important compare with other blogging tips such as submitting to Technorati, pinging, bookmark, etc. I hope that this article can help you achieve much more in your blog.

Read www.BloggingMix.com for more Blogging Tips to help you improve your blogging!Apart from the chat rooms, instant messengers and electronic mails created for communication and dialogue beyond turf are the emerging innovations that help man build opportunities for interaction. The need for a personalized and human face aspect of building online communities is slowly changing the technological landscape of the Internet.Blogs / “weblogs” or blogging are the newest gift of Internet technology to people all over the world. These are updated posts, crop up entries or personalized life snippets, of mundane or bizarre in nature. For most, a “blog” is a personal, unedited, and authentic journal meant to be shared in an online community. Blog site is a place where bloggers can publish anything; his thoughts, feelings, photos, special events, experiences, comments on issues and so on. It is more of an online diary with videos, links, documents, newsletters and opinions on just about any topics you are interested.Blogs are made to welcome the insights and opinions of all and therefore, should not be written to sound intimidating and too formal. This kind of blog is a sure way to put off the readers. In the basics of blogging, conversational tone would be more appropriate to reach the desired audience.Blogging is all about individuals reaching out to other individuals. Having a blog has its own set of advantages:- Freedom of Expression. If you want people to hear you out and give their own opinion, this is the best way to create a line of communication.- Networking is at its best. Having a blog is a good platform for exchanging genuine ideas from consumers to you as marketer of a certain product. Sound opinion and point of view is better than just showing the price quote.- Excellent advertising platform. Blogging is a new way to advertise products, a refreshing change from the traditional advertising outlets and it is cost-effective.- Gauging public opinion on products and services. The key is nice and catchy titles with new ideas presented in your content. This is an assurance of quick and repeated responses from your readers. Blogs is an excellent spot for the exchange of ideas between the seller and the consumer. Good for measuring public opinion regarding services and products, even political and business matters alike.- Useful tool for internal communication. This will help your company to build a knowledge-based community of employees. Also good for harnessing employee relations and identifying human resource issues in advance.- Other benefits like search engine optimization (SEO) will help your blogs to be seen often by as many people as you wish. This is very good exposure for your products and services.Many blog hosting services are available on the Internet. But the basic question is which one of the services will be the best to start off your business blog program- Business people are usually clueless to recent technological innovations which would help them maximize their marketing potentials. For these beginners, it is best to study first the services offered by blog hosts. An ineffective business blogging program may damage marketing opportunities instead of enriching them.A company may decide to do the following depending on its capacity and needs: 1) Host their own blog service, 2) Pay someone else to host the service, or 3) Setup a “blog aggregator page” and ask the employees to select their blog hosting services individually. There are paid and free services available for individuals.For business blogs, they are required to have the latest blogging features; if not, this will prevent them from maximizing their marketing, public relations and SEO potentials.Keep in mind that blogs should have the following basic essentials:COMMENTS. Welcoming comments provide opportunity for dialogue. In business blogs, they are a good customer feedback mechanism. This helps develop better customer relations based from loyalty and trust. Blogging is an innovative way to converse with your customers.TRACKBACK. This helps in maximizing company and product exposure. Through this service, consumers can get back to you for more posts and updates without the difficulty of locating you. If your blog is popular in a specific online community chances are links going back to your blog site are everywhere online, other blog sites or even websites.CATEGORIES AND TAGS. These both help in classifying blog searches for ease of navigation and on site search. Categories act as libraries because it classifies posts by subject matter such as business, distance learning, e-commerce, online auctions, etc. Tags, help in the classification, especially in the blog search engine Technorati. Possible customers and new clients locate blogs about certain topics of interest by just clicking the tags.RSS FEED. Really Simple Syndication is the feed from your blog that is sent out over the internet, and collected through the various newsreaders and aggregators.If your company is to establish a business blogging program, considerable options should be made available by the hosting companies shortlisted for the services. Free blog hosting services are popular but they are much appropriate for individual online journals. Paid blog hosting services offer unlimited packages best for your company’s needs. You may want to suggest checking out some blogs that use the host first, read and examine their layout and design. Another important thing to consider is a reliable technical support the host has.After, choosing the blog host, a team should be ready to plan the design and structure of the blog: The team should:- create a style that meets the needs of the audience;- establish an open, credible tone;- schedule weekly updating of blog – ideally, a few times a week;- include weblinks of other website and blogs;- blog post should be in the “first person;”- focus on the business blog objective; and,- maintain an honest, engaging conversational quality.Remember, whatever the look, style and content found on your blog is a reflection of you and your company.MORE BLOGGING TIPSRound I – 50 Directories Where You Can Submit Your Blog For Free With NO RECIPROCAL LINK REQUIRED!Round II – 50 Directories Where You Can Submit Your Blog For Free With NO RECIPROCAL LINK REQUIRED!

Google Blogger is one of the easiest and most complete blogging solutions currently available on the Internet. Anyone can sign up and start blogging in a manner of minutes with the easy to navigate interface and tools it provides. But, there are a lot of things you probably don’t know about Blogger, hidden within the more advanced features of the site. These clever add-ons make it easier and more fun to post to your blog each day and can give you a slight edge over your fellow bloggers in drawing new traffic. No Bandwidth or Storage Limits In a world where storage has become incredibly cheap and video super sites are the norm, it makes sense that Blogger would not instill any limits on your website for storage. In addition though, Blogger makes it so you can receive as much traffic as you are capable of generating. No matter how much content you post and how many visitors you draw, Blogger remains free for the life of your blog and that’s a great deal considering how many features are built in. Free Catch Support for Anti-Spam Spam is a major problem, especially for bloggers.If you talk to anyone who owns a private blog on their own server, or even those individuals with blogs on other services, you will learn that they constantly receive large quantities of spam. Blogger, by default, is built with spam detection and blocking device that can keep your blog from getting over run by unwanted spam comments. You can not only turn on the CAPTCHA software that requires a code to be entered whenever someone makes a comment; you can also require logins to Blogger to post comments or put commenting in a separate window so that spammers with automated software are tripped up. All of these options are available from Blogger’s settings pages. Blog by Email and SMS By far one of the coolest additions to blogging in recent years, Blogger allows you to post blog messages from a cell phone or email inbox. From the settings menu of Blogger, you can set a specialized email address that will post anything you email to it directly to your blog.This allows you to make blog posts from a smart phone or via a work or school computer on which Blogger might be locked. SMS features allow similar functionality, posting remotely to your blog. Post in HTML you can get very creative with your posts if you desire and post directly in HTML. Most people choose to use the built in text editor in Blogger, but what few people realize is that they can change almost any feature on the page by using the HTML editor. This allows you to use different colors, change font sizes, insert tables, or use a template for posts from a third party website. The possibilities are endless. Themes and Skins When you sign up for Blogger, you are asked to select the visual depiction of your blog using a specific template. However, you can change this template any time you want by installing a new one. Located across dozens of websites are templates that allow you to change the color, number of columns, location of posts, and any number of visual features on your blog. Do a quick search on Google for “Blogger Templates” and you will find hundreds waiting to be used. Google Tool Integration Google operates countless services for webmasters and that includes some of the most useful ones for bloggers. AdSense integrates directly into Blogger through a simple to select Blogger option in the Template menu. Simply click on “Add new page element” and choose AdSense and you can add your AdSense account to your page. Other great tools offered by Google include Analytics, which allows you to track the visitors to your website, including where they came from, what keywords they searched for, what pages they viewed, and dozens of other statistic. Webmaster Tools is another essential tool that Google operates that allows you to track how your blog appears in the search engines.