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.

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.

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!