Make money blogging

By Kim Komando

You've probably heard of people turning their blogs into moneymaking machines. Maybe you want to copy their success.

Well, you can make money with your blog. However, there are a few things you must know first.

Some bloggers claim to earn thousands of dollars a month. For most, blogging simply provides supplemental income. It's good to aim high, but have reasonable expectations.

Getting startedYou can make money from advertisements, affiliate programs and pay-per-post programs. Before you sign up for any of these, get your blog up and going.

Pick a topic about which you are passionate. Otherwise, you'll quickly run out of steam — and readers. You can sign up for a free blog with Blogger, WordPress or LiveJournal.com. Or, put the blog on your own site.

Revenue programs will want to see your work before you join. Some only need to read a couple posts. Others want to see a few months' work.

Most advertisers will reject certain types of sites. Hate speech, porn and promotion of illegal activities are no-nos.

Google's AdSense places targeted text ads in small boxes on Web pages. These ads are ubiquitous on the Internet.

Google provides you with code that you place on your blog. The ads displayed are based on the contents of the page. These ads work best on specialized pages.

The look of Google's ads is customizable. You control the color scheme and placement. You can also block ads from certain sites.

Your profit may be based on page views. The more people that see your page, the more you make. But most advertisers pay based on clicks. When someone clicks an ad, you earn a certain amount.

Google is tight-lipped about what it pays. Users are forbidden from discussing payments.
Google takes fraud seriously. Don't do anything to inflate your page views or ad clicks. Your account could be suspended. Or you could be sued.

Affiliate programsAffiliate programs are perfect for blogs. When you mention a product, you can link to it on a shopping site. If your visitors buy the product through your site, you earn commissions.
Affiliate payouts generally offer higher payouts than other programs. At the high end, you can earn 10% or more of sales.

Affiliate programs let you customize the ads. You can list popular products or use search boxes. You can also place links directly in your site content.

Commission Junction and LinkShare handle many websites' affiliate programs. With one account, you can run ads from many different advertisers. You'll do best with ads that are relevant to your topic.

Pay-per-post opportunities
Some advertisers offer pay-per-post opportunities. You may receive, say, $10 to review a product on your blog.

Generally, your blog must be several months old with a readership to qualify. Also, your site may need to be about a certain topic.

The post must stay up on your site for 30 days or so. The advertiser checks to make sure you fulfill the requirements before you're paid.

ReviewMe, PayPerPost and Blogitive.com are three sites that offer these opportunities. Some have disclosure requirements. But I'm still not fond of these programs. Your readers may desert you if they think you are shilling for products.

Kim Komando's nationally syndicated radio show is working with the military to provide U.S. soldiers in Iraq with necessities to make their tours of duty more comfortable. Find out more at www.komando.com/operationkomando.

Blogging for Profit Begins With a Long Term Plan

by Bo Gosta Sandkvist

Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goal is not far beyond the reach of someone with average intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging technology. However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog. Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons.

Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging. The other trap that many bloggers fall into has to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn a profit as a blogger, the key to success is to make a realistic plan and stick with it.

To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will need is a large readership. The higher your traffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you. However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in order to make a profit isnt easy. As more and more blogs appear each day, having a great idea or a wonderful writing style is no longer enough to get attention. You need to be able to market your blog effectively.

Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines like technorati, and once your readers know that you update frequently they will return to your site on a regular basis. However, it does not matter how often you update if nobody is reading your page, so dont skimp on the time that you spend drawing visitors to your site. To make your dreams of blogging for profit a reality, try decreasing your number of posts and using some of that time to draw new visitors by setting up link exchanges with other bloggers, making contacts in the blog community, and following other established modes of winning traffic.

Of course, even if you are a marketing genius or have a really great idea for a blog, success is not going to happen overnight. Building the kind of readership that blogging for profit requires takes time, and in all likelihood it will be at least several months before you are able to turn much of a profit. Try to stay committed to your blogging project during this initial rough period.

To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.

Importance of Blog Design

Zackery Lim

Blogs are becoming more and more popular. In many quarters it now seems that having a blog is more normal than not having a blog. Blogs are a place where you can rant and rave about things that have effects on your daily life, keep a diary, or talk about your favorite hobby. Now many Web businesses are starting blogs to keep in contact with customers and give customers the heads up on new products and services being considered.

The blog has become a marketing tool. Internet promotion is no longer simply a matter of having a website and advertising its existence on every popular website and in every popular newsletter. Now you can promote your business products and services with blogs.

People who spend a lot of time using the Web have likely read many blog posts whether they realize it or not. Most of the younger generation either has blogs or spends a great deal of time reading friends' blogs. The young adults of today spend a great deal of time reading blogs such as those put out by their favorite authors or blogs that have product reviews.

One of the most interesting recent developments is that people of all ages have started using blogs as a source for the latest news. Blogs provide up to the minute eye-witness accounts of major events within minutes of their occurrence. On the other hand, blogs don't have to be approved by any fact-checkers or editors before they are posted. So the reliability of blogs as a news source is questionable.

The main idea is that blog reading is becoming a more and more normal activity, undertaken by average people. For a Web marketer, the prospect of having a blog means more Web traffic if the blog has many readers.

There are a lot of things you can do to improve your blog's traffic. You can advertise it as a pay-per-click search listing in search engines. You can also swap links with other blogs and websites. But, it is even more important that you provide interesting content in your blog that will keep your blog's readership levels high.

The Importance of Blog Template Design
Most people know the information I've already given you. What most people don't realize is how much the blog template design plays a roll in the success of a blog. Even whether or not people find your content amusing can be heavily impacted by the surrounding environment your blog provides to your content. Most blog software and blog hosts offer a basic set of templates that you can use to make sure your blog is organized. If you don't do your own blog template design, you should at least customize one of these blog templates.

Blog Template Customization
Advertisements
It may not seem like advertisements are a feature that enhances a blog, but the truth is that pertinent advertisements serve a purpose to those who are interested in your topic. Google AdSense is one of the top advertisement services currently being integrated into blog templates. However, it is also an excellent source of revenue for your blog.

Audio Content
While not directly a piece of the template, seamlessly embedding audio into your blogs can make them much more interesting for site visitors. You can also include quick links to audio in your blog template navigation bar.

Banner Customization
You should create your own banner for your blog, not use the placeholder banners provided with the basic blot templates. Make it relevant to your blog topic and suitable for your business image.

Favicon for Personalization
Use a favicon to further brand your blog. This will give people a personalized feel for your site in their bookmarks and next to the blog address. It should be consistent with your blog and business image.

Page Features
Take the time to customize your blog template skins. Make sure the layouts and backgrounds are consistent with the rest of your Web business site. You don't want a generic blog design to hamper your branding.

Photos for Personalization
You ought to not just include photos in your blog entries, but also place them wherever they will supplement your company image in the template. Use borders around your photos to give them a framed look.

RSS Feeds
Make sure you enable the RSS feeds option on your blog template setup. Those with newsreaders or using Web RSS feed services will see the headlines and content of your blogs. They can click on headline links to read more from your blog site. This is one of the best ways to get exposure and a constant stream of dedicated readers to your blog.

How to Promote Your Blog?

Jeremy Long Chia Teik

You have got your blog up and running on the internet. The next obvious thing to take care of will be to devise promotional strategies that will make your blog visible to others. This requires a certain extent of planning on what kind of tools that you want to apply to the formation of promotional strategies for your blog. These strategies should be given a fair amount of consideration before applying them.

Strategies for blog promotion are many. Nonetheless, what's listed below are proven strategies that should work effectively for your blog.

(1) Search engines and blog directoriesWeb directories such as Yahoo and search engines such as Google surfaced to catalog all new sites that are being created. Directories prominently used are Technorati , Blogwise , Blo.gs just to name a few. Send your newly created blog to such directories and search engines for indexing. Your blog will be made visible promptly.

(2) Apt description of your blog to your targeted audienceWrite a short and apt description of your blog ; the description must fit the type of audience that you have targeted. Whatever benefits that readers can get from reading your blog must be clearly pointed out. One of the strategies for blog promotion requires you to let your readers know the real reason why they should read your blog in the first instance. What's in your blog for them? You can support this strategy by using "tagging" which essentially is a subject or category description that you are attaching to your blog and to each individual blog post. This will make your blog more easily searchable by others. Tagging can be done with your posts on directories such as Technorati, for instance you can add tags like "London" and "shopping" to a particular post so that your blog will show up when others search for these topics in blog search engines.

(3) Make use of the "ping"The "pinging" action will enable you to automatically alert readers that you have written a new post on your blog. This action is executed through the various blog directories and other services that do publish blog updates. Upon publishing your latest post, you will "ping" directories and search engines. The latter will search for the new content on your blog. The "pinging" action will show your blog up in a list of recently updated blogs. To save you the time of "pinging" major search engines and directories separately, you can perform this action in one huge ping , by making use of BlogExplosion , Pingoat or Ping-O-Matic . It is important to remember that you need to "ping" only once. Take note that this "ping" act is one of the more important strategies for blog promotion that should not be neglected.

(4) Two-way commentsIf you want to get more traffic, one way is to post your comments on the blogs of others. You should also allow others to post their comments on your blog too. Your perceptions on your blog can be read by others. Posting your comments is in effect equivalent to your contribution to a discussion with other bloggers. Anything topic that is insightful and interesting will surely draw more readers to your blog. It is a door to the building up of your reputation as an expert in your industry. The provision and availability of good helpful resources and relevant links to the topic in question will please the readers and should help to add value to the discussion.

(5) Performing exchanging of links with othersLinking up with other blogs and getting linked back to your own blog is a proven strategy that is intrinsically perfect integration with the blogging model. Readers will be able to access more sources of information on your blog. Your blog will be able to capture more traffic as other blogs link up with your blog. Importantly, the incoming links to your blog should be absolutely relevant to the content of your blog. This is another vital strategy for blog promotion, simply because if the incoming links originate from relevant high-traffic sites, your blog's search engine ranking will be positively affected. Links can be placed within individual posts.

(6) Put "trackback" to full useIn blogging, you can use "trackback" to the list of other blogs that have linked to particular posts on your blog. You can locate these in the comments section under each post. With this feature enabled through your blog software, each time someone makes a link to a post on blog, you will be informed via an automated message from the other blog, and in return, your blog software will automatically add a link to the other blog below the post that is being referred to. You can use Haloscan where you can find free trackback tools to manage.

(7) Good quality contentWhat's needed most on your blog is content. Content must be of quality in order to attract readers. If you want to write real good content, you must ensure two things:(a) Information that you give on your blog must be unique. Give expert content from various perspectives.
(b) Keep yourself informed and abreast of latest developments in your industry. Be the one to make the first spin of news.

(8) Create repeat trafficReaders come and go. The solution to this scenario will be for you to write new post on new topic every day. It appears to be hard work, but there isn't much choice if traffic is to be repeated. Remember that the content must be great. This is a vital strategy for blog promotion, especially for the purpose of generating repeat traffic. Writing up a series of posts will help in getting repeat traffic as readers will come back for more revelation from the future post. You can even try to request from your readers their email addresses, so that you can notify them of your new updates. This is essentially building up an opt-in list that opens the door to numerous email marketing opportunities.

(9) Social bookmarking, blog awards, web ringJoin social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us that permits users to share their favorite web sites with one another. Just "tag" to your blog posts and readers will be able to bookmark your site in their Del.icio.us account. Another great social bookmarking is Digg. Blog awards are given out online. You can participate for the fun and traffic that it will potentially drive to your blog. You can also join a web ring where you can find many groups of like-minded people who may fall into your category of target audience. This will enable you to build your relationship with them on same platform.

To make your blog effective, you will have to work hard on your content. Using the above listed strategies for blog promotion, you will be able to drive traffic to your blog, as well as succeed in your creation of repeat traffic. So, put these strategies to good use and blow away your competition.

Free Articles Directories | Top 10 Article Directories

M.S. Chavan

If you are an editor or publisher of printed magazine/newspaper, or a blogger and are looking for articles on various subject to use for your readers, you can get them from various free article directories available on the net. Free article directories provide you thousands of articles covering almost all the subjects on which one can write!

Here is a list of the categories of subjects which are covered by one of the best free article directory: (Each category has many subjects and each subject has hundreds of articles)

Advertising
Art and Entertainment
Automotive
Business
Careers
Computers
Education
Finance
Food and Beverage
Health
Hobbies
Home and Family
Home Improvement
Internet
Law
Marketing
News and Society
Relationships
Self Improvement
Shopping
Spirituality
Sports and Fitness
Technology
Travel
Writing

You don't have to pay for using articles from such directories. Just mention the names of the writers and directories while using such articles.

Here are the Top Ten Free Articles Directories:

Article Base
Amazines.com
Article Hub
Free Articles
Easy Articles
Article Circle
Free Articles Zone
Article Biz
Article City
Article Set

Why submit in a blog directory?

Darren Dunner

Welcome to Surreal internet blog directory. We are one of the exciting bloggers hangout and directory on the internet, Search our directory for latest news, entertainment, humor and political issues. We get many new blogs listed on our directory daily. Be sure to check all that you need.

Why submit in a blog directory?
An Internet blog directory is a perfect solution if you are looking to generate traffic to huge resources of people who love to read. This community of Blog Directories is incredible experience. Most sites are only after their own needs and want to wipe out the rest of the competition. Blog Directory owners are working together to build each other up, support each other and provide their vistors with additional resources to find more blog directories. Every time you list on a blog you will get a notice of some kind approving your listing and referring you to more blog directories.

Submitting your blog in an effective internet blog directory can§ Boost your website traffic § Increase the size of your email list § Build trust with prospects and clients § Can you earn you huge money online Surreal directory is a human edited Internet blog directory. Submit your blog to us and get exposed to thousands of daily visitors on our site. With your blog listing in surreal blog directory you can easily maximize your site traffic and improve the search engine ranking of your blog. Surreal Blog Directory in a short period of time has been able to achieve a page rank of 5. Submitting your blogs to a higher Pr site can do wonders to increase your website page rank. Moreover we offer a chance to list on our directory for no fees. The purpose of this blog directory is to help our many blog writers get more exposure for their original content. As Surreal Blog works daily to make the site a high traffic area these services will only bring more exposure each month.

All You Need to Know About Blog Hosts

Rocky John Tayaban

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.

Free Blogging Website

Tiffany Lee

For a newbie who wants to start to blog, you can use the service of the free blogging websites. The two website that i found are quite good is blogger and wordpress. These two give you a chance to host your blog without charging you any single cent.

So if you are interested to start a blog, why not start with one of these two free blogging website first . this will give you a chance to try out and explore what is blogging all about. It provides you all the tools that you needed to have your blog up and running. I really encourage you to try that out.

And for the next good reason, if you host your blog at blogger, you automatically one step ahead in getting listed in the search engine. For example, Google runs the free blog hosting site blogspot and this almost make you easily get listed in google’s blog search engine. This can definitely save you some time to promote your own blog hosted in other hosting company from scratch.But using a free blogging website has its own negative sides. If you are doing it for your own hobby and passion only without thinking of monetizes it, then it is okay to continue using a free blogging website. Otherwise it is recommended that you use a third party hosting company.

One of the reasons is that if you have done it for business or entrepreneurship, a free blogging website owns all your content and intellectual property that you hosted with them. It also can not have the feel of professionalism.

Anyhow, it is very cheap nowadays to host your website with third party hosting company, i will recommend you to move to a paid hosting company after you get a feel of what blogging is about and you have enough readership and you feel that you want to bring it to the next level. This will save you in money being wasted.

After all have being said, i encourage you to start using the free blogging website resources available online. You will learn through this free resources to help you move to the next level.

How to Earn Money From your Own Blog

By Andrew

For starters, what is a blog? In general terms, it is a sort of interactive, regularly updated online journal. A blog owner is called a blogger, the activity of keeping a blog is called blogging, and the blogging community and everything related to blogging is collectively known as the blogosphere.
How are blogs created? There are several options. The cost-free way is to start a blog at one of the countless free blog services, such as the Google service called blogger. Another option is to use one of the free blog scripts and install it at a paid or free hosting service. Such free blog scripts are also numerous, the most popular of them being wordpress. It is also possible to sign up for a paid hosting service with an already installed wordpress blog, but this service is somewhat costlier.

Now let's assume that we already have a blog. The next question is: Where do we get content? Choose the subject for your blog. It may be your professional occupation or hobby. In any case, you must have solid knowledge of the subject. For instance, if you are a proctologist, you may write about hemorrhoids, their treatment, prevention and suchlike as long as these are not scientific articles, but materials written in layman's language. To give you a more practical example, if your hobby is dogs, write about them and people will enjoy it. There is another way to get content. The web has many services offering free articles. All you have to do is select the most interesting ones and publish them. In this way you can quickly fill your blog with content.
Moving on to the question of promoting your blog, it is worth noting that blogs are better indexed by search engines than ordinary web sites due to the specifics of the algorithm used in blogs. For instance, a new article in a well-promoted blog may appear on the search engine results page already on the following day. Of course, this requires registration in special catalogs devoted to blogs, which is what you will do next. Another way is to publish articles with a link to your blog. There are also services meant for just this purpose.

But most importantly, a search engine needs external links to your blog from other web sites. These should be good links generating heavy traffic. What does it mean? It means that ideally the link should be on the web site's main page. What's more, this page should have a PR rating of at least 4 (PR or Google Page Rank reflects the significance of any particular web page). Five or six such links will do more than hundreds of other ordinary links. How can you get such links? There are also various options. For instance, you can find a resource thematically related to your blog and offer its owners to reciprocate links. Finally, you can buy such links. The higher the web site's PR rating, the more such links will cost you.

Now let's move on to the question of how you can earn money from your own blog. The scheme is quite simple: traffic is converted into money. Your income increases proportionately with the traffic volume. One way to earn from a blog is to place ads, which is done most often through google adwords. Another way is to participate in partnership programs associated with the subject of your blog. So if your blog is devoted to dogs, you should advertise flea control products and other dog-related merchandise. A third way is to sell your own merchandise or services. Of course, you can combine several ways of generating income in a single blog. Last but not least, remember that strength is in numbers, which is why it's a good idea to maintain several resources at the same time.

Making Money With Your Blog

By Bhavna Sharma

I’ve sure you’ve heard before that it’s a possibility to make money with your blog and you may be wondering how this is possible. And were they really meant for making money or just for journaling your personal thoughts? I’m not sure what they were intended for but they are great ways to make money.

I have a personal blog which is just my own private little place to go online and jot down my thoughts, but I also have my business blogs.

Back In The Beginning
Now to be honest with you in the beginning of my blogging experience I really wasn't sure what I should do with my blog. I knew I wanted to make money with it, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what I could do to not only be a value to others so they would come back to my blog, but that I would still enjoy writing it.

So it was really important to me that I find a topic in which I would be excited about, and have enough to offer so that I could blog every week or so. After starting a blog that was meant to just be an add on to my business at MommysPlace.net and struggling with the direction of that blog, I came across one of Alice Seba’s blogs. Which she used to write about her experience through a traffic product.

Every couple of weeks or so she would update her progress through this course. She would tell us all about her successes with this product and how great it was for her business. And it made me think of how I could do something similar.

Product/Service Focused Blog
This is when the light bulb moment went off in my head. This is when I realized what I should have been doing all along. I have been a member of a exclusive coaching program for mothers in business.

Since joining this program my business has seen great success. My income has increased more than five times what it was before I joined and my traffic has increased even more than that.
I enjoy and believe in this coaching program and it happens to have an affiliate program. I often got email from other work at home mothers who wanted to know my thoughts on this program.
Taking a cue from Alice’s blog I decided to start my own such blog. And named it http://mommastermindsjourney.blogspot.com/ - okay, not a catchy title, but I'm no good with picking names

I used this blog for the purpose of documenting my successes with my business. My projects, new content added to my website, keyword phrases I was ranking for…etc. Basically anything that had to do with my business that was directly or indirectly because of my joining Mom Masterminds I jotted down.

Not only was this the best move I could have made for my promoting this affiliate link it also served as a great way to really see for myself the successes my business was achieving and also to keep me on track.

This is one way you could make money with a blog. There are other ways you could make money with a blog if you don’t want to devote a blog to one service or product you’re promoting.
Side Kick Blog

For instance, my blog at http://www.mommyworkingvirtually.com/ is a side kick to MommysPlace.net and my forums. This is a blog in which I update my members on additions to the website, newsletter and forums. Updating any important telecommuting or business news and can promote my adsense and any other affiliate programs.

So this blog serves more than one purpose. My main goal with this blog is to get traffic to certain sections of my website. I have a large website and it’s not always easy for people to find my information. So this is a great way for me to keep certain new pages or sections of my website in the public eye and get traffic to those pages. It also serves as a way to make money with adsense and affiliate programs. And lastly it gives exposure to my forum and my newsletter.

There can be many ways and many topics in which you can make money and gain exposure to other businesses you may have or can help in creating you as an expert in a certain field.
Just take the time to really think about what you could be writing about and then how you can make money with that as well. You can take a look at others blogs to get an idea and see what other people are looking for.

Making Money With Your Blog - Resources:
Blogs to Riches- is an eBook that details ways you can make your blog profitable. And the really cool thing with this is if you list the publisher’s link on your blog for 45 days he will give you this eBook for free! If you don't want to wait that long you can also purchase it for a low price. Read more about Blogs to Riches - http://www.blogstoriches.com/

Increasing Adsense - is an eBook about how to increase your adsense revenue. This eBook isn't specifically geared towards blogs, but the information you will learn you can use with your blogs. (As well as websites and forums...anywhere you have adsense.) http://www.adsense-secrets.com/
* Don't know what adsense is? Go to www.google.com/adsense to learn more.

Ready To Blog?
Are you ready to take the leap into a blog? If so, it’s really very easy to set up a blog. The one resource I have used for all my blogs has been blogger.com. This is free, easy, and fun. There are many templates to chose from and you can customize yours if you would like.

I have used the general template for my mom masterminds blog and I have customized my http://www.mommysworkingvirtually.com/ blog with different colors and fonts then what it came with. I also have that hosted on my own domain, but you certainly don’t have to do that.

Submit Your Blog
After you create your blog you will want to submit it to blog directories to help get your blog out in front of the public. Some of the directories you can try are:

Feeds
Next, you need to add feeds to your blog. What is a feed? Good question. I don’t know the exact way to describe a feed nor do I have a lot of valuable information on this subject.

This is still very new to me, but I can tell you briefly what a feed does. You add a little graphic to your blog. It can be for someone's yahoo page, msn page and other ways.

When they click on that they can add your blog to their personal yahoo page. Then every time you add a new post they are alerted on their yahoo page that you have posted AND it even shows the topic of the post and how long ago it was posted.

This is one of the best resources I’ve found in keeping people coming back to your blog. They can subscribe to it so easily and they will be automatically updated whenever you have posted. It’s pretty easy to add an RSS feed to your blog. The resource I personally use is at http://www.feedburner.com/

Watch Out Blogging World - Here I Come!
Now, see how simple this really can be? You can make money with a blog, gain exposure for another business or websites, can create yourself as an expert on a certain topic, can create a blog for free, get it listed for free and start an RSS feed for free! Now get out there and start blogging.

How to Find Information and Ideas

Jason Develvis

When you are thinking about your blog entry, you may be faced with writer's block. This is common for most writers - even bloggers. Don't panic. The good news is that writer's block always passes. There are a number of great blogging resources that will help you come up with ideas or find information to write your blog entries.

In some cases, it is a good idea to make a list of future blog entries. You should keep a pad of paper and a pen handy at all times. Pay attention to the world around you. When you are surfing the net, be on the lookout for topics that you can blog about. When you are standing in line at the grocery store, again, be on the lookout for blog topics. Make sure you jot these ideas down, or they may be lost forever.

Determine how often you will blog. If you will blog once a week that is 52 blog entries that you will need to write. If you will blog daily, that comes to 365. Try to write that number of topics for future blog entries on your list. That way, when you are stumped, you can refer to your list to find something to write about.

Another common practice for getting ideas for blog entries is to visit other blogs that are related to yours in some way. You aren't there to copy information, but your blog entry can be based on one of theirs, as long as you provide a Trackback to the other person's blog entry. This is what makes the blogging community so great! All of the information works together and is connected - allowing us to pass information around at the speed of light! You can also visit websites that are related to your overall blog topic to get ideas.

Of course news websites, such as http://www.cnn.com , http://www.headlinenews.com , http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ , and other such sites are great resources for information and ideas for your blog entries as well. Many bloggers incorporate the daily events of the world into their blogs, and there is no better source than a news website for this information.

Other sites such as Yahoo at http://www.yahoo.com may also give you ideas for your blog entries. Even doing a search on the most popular keywords that have been searched for recently can give you ideas that you can write about.

Once you've chosen your topic for your entry, you may need to do some research to find specific facts. There are numerous resources for all kinds of information available for free online. Typically, you can go to any search engine and simply type in a keyword or keyword phrase and find what you are looking for. If you need specific statistics on a given topic, type in the topic followed by the word statistics, and you will find what you are looking for.

Just try to make sure that the information you are writing in your blog is accurate. If you are unsure, simply say that you are unsure. If you are using estimates, make sure that it is clear that it is just an estimate. If you are stating your opinion, make sure that people will understand that this is your opinion, as opposed to actual facts. Nobody wants to be flamed, and we all hate it when we are wrong and somebody points it out! Avoid this by checking your facts, and distinguishing between fact and opinion!

What Every New Blogger Needs To Know

Jeremy Gislason

Blogging advice tailored for newcomers can be hard to find. With new terms and tools appearing daily, it can be confusing for new bloggers to know where to start.

Blogging advice tailored for newcomers can be hard to find. With new terms and tools appearing daily, it can be confusing for new bloggers to know where to start. To learn the basics of blogging such as how to set up a blog and make money from it, keep reading; it's easier than you think.

First, pick which blog platform you would like to use. The top two contenders are blogger.com and wordpress.org. Here's some simple blogging advice if you're having trouble deciding. If you're entirely new to blogging, blogger.com is the way to go. If you're familiar with the basics of blogging or would just like to have more ''control'' over your blog, wordpress might be a better choice.

No matter which option you choose, the process is simple. All it takes is filling out your name, email address and naming your blog. Although each platform comes with its own web hosting, here’s some blogging advice every blogger should take. Purchase your own domain name. Not only will having your own domain be easier for your visitors to remember, it will add another level of professionalism to your blog.

After you've picked out which blogger platform to use and have started to set up your blog, the next step is choosing your template. Templates are pre-made designs for your blog. The best blogging advice when it comes to templates is to make sure that your template reflects the topic of your blog. It's more sensible to use a car template if your blog is about exotic cars, than it is to use a template about food. You may not realize it, but you're halfway done.

You've picked a blog platform, registered your blog name, and picked out your very own template. You may have also decided to register your own domain name. Now its time for some blogging advice that everyone wants to know - how to make money from your blog. There are 3 main ways to monetize your blog - through traffic, content and ads. Traffic for your blog can be obtained in many ways. While most people think you have to pay a huge amount of money to achieve traffic results, the following tips are not only free, but also simple.

The easiest way to earn money from your blog is by simply filling it with content. If you can remember this, it will become one of the best blogging advice you've ever received. The more relevant content that you add to your blog, the easier it will be for search engines to find it. This means more traffic, which equals more money. When you first begin to blog, try to post several times a week and eventually work up to blogging on a daily basis. Readers like to know that every time they visit your blog, they will read something new.

Don't worry if you don't like to write; content comes in different forms. No longer is writing the only way to fill up a blog. Videos, podcasts and even games are now considered content. Once you've filled your blog with content, the next step is to add your blog to social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking sites are websites that cater to sending readers to blogs based on their personal interests. The top social bookmarking sites include StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, Reddit, Propeller, Fark, and Del.icio.us. However, many bookmarking sites prohibit any marketing ploys; so to minimize risk, bookmark 4 to 5 non-self-serving links for every self-serving link you bookmark.

Post comments on other people’s bookmarks and be an active participant in the discussions. Bookmark sites that other people have bookmarked so you’ll be seen as part of the community. Another effective way to create income is by signing up for affiliate programs and promoting them on your blog. This is not only great blogging advice, but can be used for other ventures as well such as websites.

Every time a visitor purchases an affiliate product from your blog, you get paid a commission for it. The commissions can range any where from a few bucks to hundreds of dollars. The tip to remember when it comes to affiliate marketing is to pick programs and products that are related to your blog. It’s much easier to get your visitors to sign up for a recipe subscription if your blog is about cooking, than it is to get them to sign up for a stock market subscription.

One last tip for creating money for your blog is to place ads. This can be done in various ways. One of the most popular ways is through Google adsense. Each time a visitor clicks on one of the adsense ads, you get paid. It's also free to sign up for an account. As a bonus, if you signed up under the blogger.com platform, all it takes are a few clicks to get adsense onto your blog. If you chose wordpress, the setup is still easy.

You just simply install a plug-in to add Google adsense to your blog. A lot of people will tell you that this is the blogging advice they wished they would've received when they first started to blog. Not only do you now know how to setup a blog, you also learned how to profit from it. Now the only thing you have to do is go create your blog and start earning!
Jeremy Gislason support@memberspeed.com http://www.memberspeed.com