Political blogs get most of the press these days and for good reason. Many political bloggers have managed to uncover government fraud, mismanagement and other scandals. They have also been known to rabidly attack people who may or may not deserve it. These blogs have a very public face and there is some potential for profit in political blogging, but it can be a real challenge.

There are so many political blogs out there already that it can be difficult to get your voice heard. If you have the ability to dig up secrets about the lives/lies of political figures, then you have a chance at generating traffic. Otherwise, you are entering a very crowded battle with very little weaponry. If you do succeed you have the possibility of generating a lot of hits and hits translate into profit.

Unfortunately, a secondary problem with the profitability of political blogs is the lack of revenue generating products associated with politics. Beyond some books and bumper stickers, there is very little to buy.

Here are some political blogs to look at:
Wonkette
Talkleft
Freerepublic

The personal blog or web diary is a staple of the blogging community. These blogs contain the thoughts, opinions and experiences of the blog author. The person writing the blog wants to share their life with the world and perhaps get a little recognition from their readers. They may also have motives such as finding romance or publishing their stories and poetry. This is by far the most popular (from the standpoint of number of people running their own blog) form of blogging today.

The concept of blogging grew from these personal diaries. While these blogs are at the heart of what was originally considered blogging, they are rarely the type of blog that will make a profit. That isn1t usually a problem because most of the people who create these types of blogs aren1t in it for the money. If you want to make a profit blogging about your life, you1d better have a very interesting life.

A good place to get a look at a lot of personal blogs is at myspace.com.

There are thousands of services worldwide that will be happy to host your web site. Before youchoose a provider, check to see if they are compatible with your blogging software. Wordpress, for example, currently requires PHP version 4.1 or greater and MySQL version 3.23.23 or greater. They also recommend Apache servers but do not require them. Movable Type requires Perl version 5.004_05 and recommends 5.6.1 or above. It also requires one of several database programs. Whatever blogging software you need, but sure your web provider can handle it. Some other considerations are:

Storage Space
Does the service provider give you enough space to comfortably host your blog? If you plan, for the most part, to stick to text entries then this will rarely be a problem for you. Almost any package will provide you with enough space for a large number of text entries. If, however, you intend to constantly be assign photos and other graphics to your site, the amount of space provided will eventually become an issue.

Bandwidth / Traffic
Bandwidth controls how much information your site will be able to download to users every month. This is another issue that probably won’t affect you unless you intend to use a lot of graphics on your site. Text downloads simply aren’t too demanding.Statistical Tracking
Most providers offer some sort of statistical tracking for your site. At minimum, their tracking should give you the following information:

Unique visitors
Number of visits
Pages
Hits
Bandwidth
Hit totals for individual pages
Incoming Links
Search Engine hits and search terms

There are plenty of other statistics, and the more you can get, the better your analysis of how your site is doing and how it can be improved will be.

Included Blogging Software

Many providers now include “one-click” installation packages for your blogging software. They make it simple to get a blog up and running using a package such as WordPress. If they do provide this, make sure they use the most up-to-date version. Some service providers never bother to update their software (iPowerWeb comes to mind).
Recommended Providers

Some quality, affordable providers that have a good reputation and simple blogging software installation include Blue Host, Midphase, DreamHost, and Laughing Squid.

I’m not going to tell you that blogging will make you rich. As I’ve already said, blogging is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Your goals need to be realistic and you must be willing to put effort into your site. I understand that people want to see dollar signs when somebody discusses making a living, so I will share mine.

In the past year, my blogs have earned about $17,000 from various advertising sources. Before you get turned off by that number, however, understand that this has been a part-time income for me. For most of the past year I have both worked a full time job and been a full-time graduate student. I generally spend about two-to three hours a day on my blogs. I estimate that I dedicated 700 hours to my blogs in the past year. That means my hourly income was about $25.

This is my second full year of blogging (although some of my sites are older than that). While I would love to have made more money, I believe my profits were very realistic considering the hours spent. Now that the sites are up and running, I am moving towards full-time blogging and I hope that next year’s income will continue to reflect that hourly rate.

My advertising revenue comes from several sources. These include direct payments from individuals as well as affiliate advertising though Amazon, Google, Commission Junction and Yahoo. There are several other services and I will discuss affiliates at length in a future post. Some people may also look to sell items or services directly through their sites.

Because of confidentiality agreements with the various advertisers, I cannot give you exact numbers about how much money one service pays versus another. I can give you this general number for my site however. I have found that between all of the advertisers I average about $9 per every thousand page view on my sites. My blogs are about a variety of subjects, so they probably earn about an average amount. Some topics (such as medicine and finance) will earn more than others, but this is a good yard stick. By this measurement, you can see that the more visitors you can appeal to, the more money you can make. A site with 30,000 visitors a day will probably make a substantial amount of money while one with 300 visitors a day won’t even buy your lunch.

One of the facts that needs to be clear from the beginning is that you won’t be making money the first day. Your blog will require time to build an audience and for a long time you will need to write with the knowledge that not too many people will be reading your original posts. You will still need to write them as if you are writing for a large audience though, because quality and continuity is what will bring people back and get them to recommend the site to their friends.

People choose to blog for all sorts of reasons. Many of those reasons have nothing to do with money. Often, people just wish to share a piece of themselves with the world. For most people, blogging is much more enjoyable when money is not part of the equation. People who blog for the love of it should be careful when considering making a business out of blogging.

If you blog because you care about something or because you enjoy expressing yourself, you should realize that turning what you enjoy into a business will change the thing you love. It isn’t that you cannot still be happy blogging. Finding a way to make money doing something they love is one of the best things that can happen to a person. You need to know, however, that once the thing you love becomes a business you have to treat it like a business. That will take some of the fun out of it.

Before you decide to blog for profit, you need to evaluate what you wish to accomplish and why. The decision to treat blogging as a for-profit-business is one that you need to consider carefully. You are not going to start making loads of money the first week or the first month. It may take a year or longer to build up your audience to the point of profitability. During that time you need to be posting information daily, or even several times a day depending on the material you are covering. To do this requires a commitment, and that commitment shouldn’t be made lightly. Blogging for profit is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Blogging is a grounds-up publishing business that requires more dedication than capital.

The point of making a career out of blogging should be to find something you can happily do, without supervision, for years to come. You need to either love the concept of blogging or to love the topic you are blogging about. Preferably you should love both. At points, especially in the first year, you will question whether or not to continue. There are plenty of bumps along the road. Your advertising revenue and/or your readership can suddenly drop off. Your site can get taken down by hackers or bugs. Your readers can send you nasty letters for over the smallest of mistakes. Things can and will go wrong as you build your blogging business. Moving past these problems requires a degree of dedication and hardheadedness that many people lack.

I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture for people who want to turn blogging into a business. I love what I am doing. I love having the ability to write about the things I love without anyone telling me what I can and cannot say. I love that I can make a living doing it. For me, that is worth the struggles I have been through. What I want people to understand is that blogging for profit is like starting any other business. It requires hard work, dedication and intelligent planning. I can’t provide the first two items, but I hope I can help with the third.

The term blog is short for web log. The original meaning of the term was any diary or journal kept online. The goal of blogging was to create a site in which one person or group wrote about their lives and invited other people to comment on what they wrote. The concept began to grow, however, and now encompasses a far wider variety of subjects and providers. There are now corporate blogs, professional blogs, job blogs, political blogs and many other types of blogs. Just about any topic can be turned into a blog, so the concept of it as a diary is a little outdated.
For our purposes, a blog is more about the technology and the presentation than the subject discussed. Blogs use server-side software to present their information. In other words, the person writing the blog typically does little more than type and format the article.

The programming and presentation are automated using software that originates on the web site, not on the person�s computer. Blog scripting allows a publisher to automatically post information. This greatly increases the speed in which a site can be developed and updated.
One of the most important features/limitations of blogs is that blogs are chronological.

The most recent entry appears at the top of the page and subsequent entries appear below the first entry or on separate pages. The relevance and positioning of an article is determined by time. The timeliness of the information presented is vital. People are most likely to read the most recent blog entry and less likely to read older entries. This is what differentiates a blog from a standard web site. On a standard web site, the designer decides what information goes where and determines the relative importance of the articles/links that appear.

By John Barbour

In case you haven't heard, the net is buzzing with talk of blogging and RSS. Once the province strictly of people who got a kick out of publishing online diaries, and later of political and social commentarists, blogs and RSS are being adopted by the internet marketing community.
This is the hot new trend for 2005. The word "blog" was actually selected as the word of the year for 2004, and 2005 promises to be the year of the blog.

So what is all the fuss about? Well, especially with the increasing restrictions on email marketing, including ISP blocking of mail amounting to estimates of 40% of all email never getting delivered, marketers began to look for new avenues to get their message out. Enter blogs and RSS.
Delivered straight to a user's desktop, the content of an RSS feed is unfiltered by anyone. Users can subscribe and unsubscribe anonymously, with the click of a mouse, and have no fear that their personal information will be shared. RSS is "pull" technology, meaning that the user asks for it, in contrast to email, which is often unasked for, and thus is often "push" technology.
Blogs, which are usually publicized by way of an RSS feed, among other venues, are the current darlings for the search engine spiders. Search engines love blogs, because they are full of content, are frequently changing, are devoid of "flash", graphics, and other distractions, and are full of outgoing links.

If you know anything about search engine optimization, you know that those are the characteristics that should you strive for when optimizing a conventional page for the search engines. The pages in a blog are that way by their very nature, and thus attract the search engine spiders.

Why do marketers love blogs? Numerous reasons.
They are simple to create and maintain. They afford the opportunity to publish links to other sites, and to the interior pages of other sites. Their popularity with human visitors makes them natural targets for traffic. Their constantly changing content attracts the search engine spiders, which then follow the links that they find, and index the pages of other websites.

Many savvy internet marketing experts have suggested that the best way to capture an audience of potential customers is to provide them free information, either through a "content site" that does little direct selling, or through publication of an informative email newsletter that gives free information and at most employs a "soft sell" when endorsing products.

A blog is the perfect blend of the two. It has often been suggested that the best way to start an online business is with a free newsletter, which allows you to develop your "list". While a blog doesn't develop your "list" in quite the same way, it does afford you the opportunity to develop a loyal following among your readers, which accomplishes much the same purpose as having a "list".

Whether you announce or endorse a product through an email list or a blog, you are announcing it to people who want to hear what you have to say. Your blog readers are probably more eager, in many cases, than are readers of your mass emails.

I could go on and on about the merits of blogs. If you are promoting any product or service online, you owe it to yourself to check out what can be done with blogs and RSS.
John Barbour, Ph.D. is the author of a new blogging guide which teaches people how to promote any product or service online using blogs and RSS.

John also maintains several internet marketing educational websites, and manages a new directory for blogs related to internet marketing. Visit the emarketing blog directory and find an interesting blog, or submit your own for inclusion.

By R.G. Srinivasan

Blogs as an online promotional strategy if done right could save you huge dollars in reaching out to people. This is also a medium where you need have absolutely no dependence whatsoever on any professional help and you can do everything yourself. That is money saved right from the beginning.

So what is a blog and how does it work? Blog is simply a web log or a diary which you maintain online posting various comments every day or even several times a day. In all aspects it is like a web page. With small differences. No more the fancy html pages, page links, graphics etc.
While you can have all these, the purpose is not show design excellence but to provide juicy information, news, and happenings from your specific industry. Each posting is like a web page technically atleast as the the Search Engines looks at it as a separate page. We will see more on search engines later. The posts also carry links to other similar pages where you can direct people who visit your blog. Your visitors too can post comments and you have the option of editing it or even deleting it.

How does one use a blog as an online promotional tool?
You are a specialist in the area of your business. You also have people working for you with specialized domain knowledge of that particular area. You make hundreds of observations during the course of a week, you come across useful news and articles, websites, all which if collected in one place could act as the source of information for your customers, your public and even the trade and competition.

All you need to do is write a couple of lines in a conversational tone as if you are speaking to someone close about what you feel and think about anything you come across and provide the links for more details.

There you got a web page rich in key words! Key words to put it simply are a lot of specific words about your trade which is how the search engines find you and list you.
Blogs offer features like linking, pinging, RSS feeds etc. which are very simple features about which you can learn as you build your blog. However the idea is not to get technical. Remember we are here to talk about promotional strategies that could save you money and explode your sales.

Blogs are a comparatively recent phenomenon. There are an estimated 5 million blogs growing by the thousands every hour. Don’t despair. 5 million is nothing compared to billions of web pages and website available on the www. You are still far ahead of your competition. And in your area of business or profession you may be the first. That means you just occupy the top slot in search engines.

So get in right away and post all the rants, ravings and all that you ever wanted to say but couldn’t.

How does a blog help you earn revenues or improve your sales?
Now let us say you have set up your blog. Ask yourself as a person of the trade or as a customer what all you would like to know everyday. Whatever is your answer is what you post every day. You also come across news or websites which you think might be useful to your customers. Simply make a mention of it with a link to the news or website. The idea is to make people come to your blogs every day seeking information. So you become famous as a specialist in that area. All your visitor are in a way interacting with you everyday and begin to accept your words and your recommendations if they see the benefits. But be sure to be very honest and transparent. It is like your personal or social relationships where any dishonesty would make people shy away from you.

You can always put in a few posts about your work, your employee who got a promotion or birth of a daughter or anything which also makes it a little warm and personal. You can post about your launches, your predictions, products which are running out, and even promote products not moving well but you feel can benefit the customer.

What you blog can reach millions globally within hours. As an illustration take the example of the recent Tsunami which hit parts of Asia. I am from the southern part of India which is one of the worst affected areas. While the conventional media was struggling to reach their reporters all over within the hour bloggers flashed the news including the details of the people lost and found, mobilized resources for the affected and the world wide web was abuzz with all the bloggers picking up and linking and connecting everything and everyone. This is an illustration of a social cause for which blog was put to good use.

Similarly there have been many instances when business news have been picked up by the industry and consumers through the RSS feeds.

The possibilities of using a blog is endless. The key to building a successful blog is listed below.
Remember to be focused on a topic that relates to your area of work.
Your entries must be in a conversational tone speaking directly to them as if you are sitting across with a friend in a restaurant or playing golf to add personalization to your marketing effort.

Post entries or comments which would benefit people.
Post as often or frequently and keep the blog updated.
Encourage visitor participation. Ask for comments and feedbacks.
Create a huge web of outside resources and other similar blogs to help you achieve both outgoing as well as incoming links to enhance search engine popularity. This also shows your customers that you are widely knowledgeable and clued in on your field of expertise.

While it may be a good idea to post a few photographs to break the monotony keep the blog simple and straight without too many graphics and photos.

Content is the key to making your blog successful and encourage repeat visits. In the beginning you may not have many visitors but as the content improves there would be a lot of traffic as well as inbound links.

This is truly a gorilla marketing tool that can make a huge difference to your total marketing efforts.

R.G. Srinivasan is a Certified Trainer, Writer and author of eBooks with more than two decades of managerial experience. He is featured as an expert author by leading content syndication sites. You can view his home-business resources blog at http://www.home-businessresources.blogspot.com for online marketing tips, resources, opportunities and online promotional strategies.

By Inka-Maria Kunz

A blog usually is a web page that contains brief, discrete hunks of information called posts. These posts are arranged in reverse-chronological order (the most recent come first) and each is uniquely identified by an anchor tag which is marked with a permanent link that can be referred to by others who wish to link to it.

A blog is a means of communication and there are many different types of messages carried by blogs. Some are nothing but pointers to other web sites, while others run long essays, some are personal diaries, others feature technology, and some are edited by one person, others by teams. There are hundreds of thousands of blogs on the Internet, and new blogs are created every day. Can anybody and more importantly can you blog? Yes, there are bloggers of all types, equipped with all levels of technical skills. Bloggers approach their sites with as much variety and passion as the general Net public approaches the Web itself.

The most commonly used blogging tool is Blogger. It requires the least amount of commitment in time or resources, allowing you to go from wanting a blog to having one in about five minutes and at no cost. The Blogger software is the property of Pyra Labs (www.pyra.com). Blogger is often credited as the reason for the explosion of blogging that’s occurred in the last couple of years. It is a web-based tool, requiring no installation of software on your personal computer or on your server if you happen to have a web site. You access the tool through the Blogger web site (http://blogger.com) and the blog pages are posted to your web site or to Pyra’s BlogSpot (http://blogspot.com) community blog server.

For more detailed information on this see O’Reilly’s Essential Blogging.
Re-read anything before you publish. Electronic text can expose unintended meaning easily and it will also make what you say a lot more focused. If nothing else, it should help you catch spelling mistakes! Blogging is a way to share your opinions and thoughts to the rest of the world. If you post interesting things, share links with other bloggers and post comments on other blogs. Linking is the way of the Web that is the key of successful blogging.

In order to keep your blogs really fresh, invite a group of your friends / colleagues and give them blogging access. That way you will have several reporters blogging information and you won’t end up killing yourself, trying to keep your blog populated with good information. If you use Blogger, upgrade to Blogger Pro. You can have your team post to the blog from email, create and syndicate your blog as an RSS feed, and a whole lot more! Adding the ability to post comments on your blog extends interactivity and usefulness to the blog itself.

Blogs are about community and information, and commenting is a real way to gauge your viewer’s blogging efforts. Blogging is one of the quickest ways to update your site. Syndicating others’ blogs into your own site is another. There is a wealth of information out there – just tap into it!

This article was written by Inka-Maria Kunz, CEO of a flourishing multilingual translations agency with offices in Germany and New Zealand.

This article may be printed or used in its entirety with full author contacts and details. For more information, translations or purchases of a new website/e-business, contact the author thru the official website http://www.linguatransl.co.nz or the blog http://www.linguatransl.blogspot.com

By Paul Short

Below are the top 9 reasons why companies should blog.

1. They the perfect public relations tool. Their personal nature gives you and your organization a unique voice online - a voice heard by the people who matter - your customers and clients, other bloggers and the media.

2. Blogs act as instant-feedback mechanisms. They allow readers to respond to your posts via the comments section or link to them on their own blogs using Trackback. These features provide near real-time feedback on ideas, opinions and issues that affect them, or highlight and address new or existing problems.

3. Blogs help to position you and your company as experts and leaders in your industry.
4. Their simplicity and addictive nature allow you to share more of your knowledge more often. Blogs are about sharing what you know, think and believe on an ongoing basis.

5. Search engines index your blog posts more often because of more frequently updated content. Your ongoing blog and knowledge sharing shows up in the search results, making it easier for your customers and prospects to find you.

6. You can have many conversations with many people at once - something nearly impossible in the brick and mortar world.

7. They’re automatic buzz-machines. Go ahead and try it. Blog about something new - a new product or service launch, an improvement to an existing product, or a newly appointed manager. See how fast the news spreads throughout the blogosphere.

8. They’re self promotional due to their RSS feeds being aggregated across the net almost
instantly, exposing your knowledge to a growing number of potential company evangilists.

9. Companies who blog are considered early adopters, thought leaders and “in". Blogging is cool and companies who blog are cool.

But the most important thing to remember when blogging is that you’re not a speaker talking to an audience, you are sharing and interacting. You are one more voice to be heard and how powerful that voice is depends on how much interacting you do. It’s the opposite of Advertising.

Paul Short is a veteran internet marketer, professional blogging consultant and owns the popular blog directory http://www.getblogs.com

For more information on blogging and marketing with blogs, check out Paul's site at http://www.bloglogic.net

By Paul Short

I’ve spent months answering questions from marketers about blogs and blogging and how they fit into the marketing mix. Still, 99% don’t understand the power of blogging.

What most marketers don’t seem to grasp is the “people element". People have wants and needs and a desire to fill them. People want to belong to something bigger - a group, an organization. They want to be recognized and respected by their peers, noticed by leaders in their group and looked up to by their followers. Social. Community. Acceptance. Fellowship. Trust.
Key Marketing Concept: Fill people’s wants and needs. Help them feel a sense of belonging, a sense of trust and they will spend their money.

In other words, build a rapport with people. People. Not Traffic, not Visitors, not Prospects… People.

Don’t just post articles on your blogs, post “messages". Forget salesletters on your blog, post “reviews". If you want to include an affiliate link in a post, say so.

How do YOU feel about the product or service you’re blogging about? Are you passionate or confident, based on personal experience, that a product is all or more than it’s cracked up to be? What’s your real opinion on the product? Have any ideas or tips on how that product can be of even more use to your followers?

Blog about it, honestly, passionately. And for heaven sakes enable your blogs commenting feature so you can discuss your views with your community. That’s where the real power of blogs is - the personal interaction.

Paul Short is a veteran internet marketer, professional blogging consultant and owns the popular blog directory http://www.getblogs.com For more information on blogging and marketing with blogs, check out Paul's site at http://www.bloglogic.net

By John Barbour

People start blogs for all kinds of reasons. Ego. Political comment or agenda. Staying in touch with family and friends. Marketing. Why did you start your blog?

If you want your blog to get read, and your readers to be loyal followers, you had better structure it to their liking. Here are some tips for better blogging and basic blogging advice for anyone who wants to promote a product or service using blogs and RSS.

Write in a conversational tone. Forget what you learned in school, and just write the way you'd speak. Think of yourself as talking to a friend, or writing a letter to a friend when you compose the entries to your blog.

Check your spelling and grammar. In spite of what I just said above, use your spell checker, and a grammar checker if you have it. You'll have zero credabilatee if you can't even spell it!
Pick an interesting topic, and stick with it. People don't want to know what you ate for breakfast, or who broke your heart lately. They read your blog looking for information, and they won't stick around long unless they perceive you as a credible expert on whatever topic you are writing about.

Stay informed. Especially if your blog is of a business nature, do enough research to be informed of the latest trends and information. If you expect to maintain your credibility, you had better know what you're talking about. Be prepared to write about the latest developments and hot new trends. Don't just "rehash" old stuff that has been around forever, and blogged to death.

Be yourself. If you're naturally funny, or opinionated, many of your readers will love you for it. They want information, but they also want to be entertained. If you can combine the two, you have a ready-made formula for success.

Keep it short. Blog readers aren't looking to read a novel on your blog. Keep your entries short and to the point. A couple of hundred words is more than enough. If you have more to say, split it into a series of entries, or write it up as an article and post it somewhere, and then link to it from a shorter entry in your blog. By the way, that's a great way to use natural links to get both links and traffic to a website.

Update frequently, but don't burn yourself out. Many of the blogs I've visited seem to contain a few entries, and then go stagnant for months. Others will have a flurry of entries, and then nothing. In both cases, they're going to die. You need to update with some regularity, to keep your readers coming back. It seems to me that a couple of times per week ought to do it, but I'm not aware of any studies that would back that up. Blog every day, or every hour, and you'll burn out quickly.

Don't post nonsense. If you have nothing new to say, keep your fingers off that keyboard! Better to have some really gritty commentary on an irregular basis, than to fill your blog up with fluff and drive away your fans.

Don't turn your blog into a blatant sales pitch. If you're using your blog as a marketing vehicle, be subtle about it. People hate the feeling they are being subjected to a sales pitch. You can weave references to your product, or affiliate links, into solid, informative content, which is what people will read your blog looking for. Give them what they want!

Happy Blogging!
John Barbour, Ph.D. is the author of a new blogging guide which teaches people how to promote any product or service online using blogs and RSS.

John also maintains several internet marketing educational websites, and manages a new directory for blogs related to intern marketing. Visit theemarketing blog directory and find an interesting blog, or submit your own for inclusion.

By Tinu Abayomi-Paul

Most webmasters and online business owners know that a blog can bring you additional revenue from advertising, and more traffic from search engines. Then there’s the additional benefit of having a great way to spark productive dialogue between you and your prospects. But did you know that your blog itself may be worth thousand of dollars to you in its present form? The day I learned that my blog held such hidden treasure was one of those happy accidents that can make life such a fun adventure.

All I wanted to do was find out why some of my newsletter subscribers had not crossed over to my blog audience. In an informal poll, I found that many of the fans of my newsletter were overwhelmed with the amount of free information on my site, and felt that they’d never catch up to reading it all. This led to several discoveries about how I could find a way to make the information more accessible to them without disrupting the enjoyment of my feed subscribers. If your blog has export capabilities, you can use any of these techniques to generate revenue from your blog and make both your newsletter and blog subscribers deliriously happy.

Method One: Monitor Your Popular Blog Topics as Ideas for Future Products
As you begin to monitor which topics have the most responses, you’ll be able to see a pattern that tells you what your audience likes the most about your site.

These themes often give you clues about what your next product could be. For example, as I continue to cover free Google tools, tips and news in my blog on Tuesdays, I’ve noticed that this is the day that I tend to have the most subscribers reading every entry. With that information I was able to create a free Christmas gift for my audience that they’ll be able to use as a reference guide. Your next best selling software idea, book or tool could come as a result of watching topic popularity, if you learn how to track audience response.

Method Two: The Subscription Model
When you’re blogging daily, sometimes several times a day, and much of the information on your blog continues to be useful months after you publish it, your audience is probably aware of this. Search engines may be doing a fine job of helping your fans find the information they’re looking for at your site, but you’ll also find that a cross-section of them would rather digest a periodic collection of your posts for use at a later time. Should you find this to be the case, instead of purging your archives, you can create a “Best of” compilation on a weekly or monthly basis, and charge for electronic distribution.

Or you could charge advertisers to be featured in these periodicals the same way you would a newsletter, and offer them to your audience at a discounted rate, as a premium version of your present ezine.

Method Three: Turn Your Archives into an Ebook
With a blog that focuses on a narrow, popular theme, you could be sitting on a gold mine and not even be aware of it. Whether your blog contains tips for newbies in your field, expert advice for veterans, or success strategies that build on each other, you could be in the position to supply a demand for needed information. There are a couple of tricks you’d have to learn to convert your archived blog posts into an ebook, but you’d be surprised about how easy this process can be.

Method Four: Make Your Entire Blog Into a Printed Book
I know what you’re thinking. “Why would anyone pay for my blog as a book when it’s free at my site?”Under certain circumstances, you’d be surprised to find how many people would rather have a portable collection of your blog posts when the quality is consistent. The online version of your blog is the ultimate free trial. Many sites have been using this logic long before the web log came along to allow users to preview their services.

For example, the sheer volume of the free traffic generation tips on my site was repeatedly described during my informal poll as “overwhelming”. It’s one thing to try and read 2000 web pages in front of your computer, but it’s not as daunting to peruse a 400 page book in the comfort of your home. Converting your blog into a yearly volume may be a viable solution if consuming the amount of data in your archives is a daunting task. And there are ways to accomplish this that have no start-up costs. If you’re still not convinced that it’s not worth the set-up to convert your blog into a periodical, ebook or printed edition, consider this.

On Monday morning I issued a press release regarding the transformation of my blog to a book, as a test to measure interest. It’s almost 4 a.m. Pacific time as I write this, and so far it has been read over 23,000 times, resulting in a distinct increase in general traffic, not to mention the best initial sales debut of any product at my site since this past summer. Just imagine what that kind of interest could do for your site - and how much money you may be leaving on the table right now. Making your blog available in other formats is worth a look.

You can learn low-cost ways to turn your blog into an ebook or preview Tinu’s 400 page Free Traffic Tips printed edition and ebook atFreeTrafficTip.com .

By Vickie Scanlon

If you are fairly new to the Internet, you have probably heard the word “Blog” flying around. But what is a blog? How does it work? And how can I use it on my website? These are all good questions, which I hope to answer for you.

What is a Blog?
A blog, in simplest terms, is a daily journal of your thoughts that is maintained by a blogger (which would be you) on the web. When posting to a blog you will notice that it is arranged in chronological order – with the most recent additions on top.

You can choose to allow your readers to add their own comments/feedback to any issues you may have addressed on your blog. Or, you can add audio to your blog. Pretty neat, isn’t it. What a great way to have contact with your customers.

Can it be used on my website?
Can it be used on my website? Definitely. It can be a great tool for you and your contacts. However, I personally feel that it would be a greater benefit to the established website that has a following. In other words, start with a newsletter first, to build your mailing list, than go for the blog.

If you have a following, than go for it. Don’t want to pay for it? That’s okay, you can go to www.blogger.com, they have a great tutorial and the blog is free.

What can it do for my website?
I see many inventive uses for a website that is based on content. Such as:
1. Strong communication tool – a form of contact with your customer.
2. Allow you to get to know your customers and their wants, as well as, allowing your customers to know you.
3. Can provide daily, quality content – which will pull the search engines and thus, increase your traffic.
4. Use it to advertise your links. Taking a conservative approach, and blend it in to the topic.
5. Use it to answer inquiries that people may have.
6. Use it to inform.

As you can see, the list can be endless. But I do see only one slight drawback for those who do not want to keep a constant vigil over their website – and that is maintaining the blog. The blog should be maintained on a regular basis. Why? People get bored, and on the Internet, it’s very easy to click their boredom away. Thus, keep yourself enlightened and it should keep them enlightened.

If you find this small drawback inconsequential – then go blogging.
To your success.
Vickie J. Scanlon
====================
Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. She left the corporate world as an Reports Programmer, to begin her journey as an Internet marketer. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles, ebooks, and how to info.

By Linda J Bruton

By now, most bloggers have heard the announcement that the Big 3 search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN - have united in support of a new tag that will supposedly combat comment spam. The new tag is a nofollow attribute that can be added to links. When added to links in comment tags, the search engines will ignore them.

An excellent discussion of this new tag and how it works can be found at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728

Google announced the new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/

And Microsoft added their support to the new tag in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx

At first blush, anything that can help cut down the comment spam that most bloggers are daily subjected to would seem to be a good thing. It can be pretty upsetting to access your blog in the morning and find 50 junk comments with links to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your blog has any PageRank, you can expect to find more of this garbage polluting your site every day. Fighting the spread of comment spam has become a necessity.

But after first cheering the proactiveness of the search engines, many bloggers have stepped back and taken a closer look and they don't like what they see. You can read a sampling of their thoughts at Search Engine Watch Forum: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3797

Brian Turner's incisive article "New Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but Fails Blogs" discusses some of the potential abuses of the new nofollow
tag: http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2005/01/new_nofollow_ta.html

And Jim Pryke's article "Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search Rankings Plummet" makes it very clear that not only will this NOT stop comment spam. But it will actually hurt bloggers as a community: http://netinstitute.com/archives/2005/01/20/bloggers-cheer-google-as-their-search-rankings-plummet

For an hilarious take on the new tag and how it will get abused, be sure to take a look at Link Condom: http://www.linkcondom.com

I have to agree with these bloggers that the nofollow tag won't even put a dent in the problem of comment spam. You have to realize that the comment spammers who cause the most problems are the ones who use automated bots to spread their spam onto every blog they find. The fact that they find a blog using the nofollow tag won't stop the bot from posting. If you have a popular blog, you'll still wake up every morning to find 50 casino/pharmacy/adult ads on your blog. You'll still have to spend the time deleting those posts to clean up your blog.

You see, the problem to bloggers isn't that those comment links pass PR. It's the fact that those spam posts make your blog look like garbage. Whether the links pass PR or not isn't the big issue for bloggers. It's the time it takes to get rid of unwanted comments and the detraction to their sites. The nofollow tag won't do a thing about that problem. You'll still have the problems, even if you use the tag.

Think about this: how effective have email filters been in stopping email spam? As most of us know, they've hardly done any good at all. Email spam becomes a bigger problem every day. Spammers really don't care if some of their emails are blocked. They just send more of it to compensate. The same will be true of the automated comment spam bots.

The fact of the matter is, there are already much better tools in most blogging software to fight comment spam AND save the time and effort of the blogger at the same time. There are already a number of plugins for WordPress, Moveable Type, and other blogs. There will undoubtedly be more in the future. These tools are already more effective at fighting comment spam than this nofollow tag will ever be.

What is unfortunate is that the people the nofollow tag will really hurt is bloggers themselves. Traditionally, bloggers have read and commented in each other's blogs. And these comments have added value. When I write an article for my blog, I love it when other bloggers take the time to add their insights on the topic I'm discussing. These comments add content to my site and continue the discussion. This is one of the reasons blogs are so easy to grow into topic-specific information-rich sites that are popular with readers. Unlike static sites, they offer two-way communication between reader and blogger. They become communities.

When someone adds this kind of value to my blog, I am more than happy to give them a link to their blog that passes PR. That will help them build the readership of their own blog, grow the community even larger, and add to the richness of the discussion. These are exactly the kinds of links that any webmaster should want on their site!

Adding a nofollow tag to comments can only quash this discussion. It can only discourage commenters with the most to contribute from taking the time to add to the discussion. After all, if the time I spend on another blog doesn't contribute to the growth of the blogging community as a whole or aid in the visibility of my own blog, am I going to spend as much time and effort doing it?

Anything that decreases the open flow of discussion currently enjoyed in the blogging community is a bad deal for bloggers.

The question that should be asked is this: why is comment spam so profitable? After all, if it weren't profitable, so many people wouldn't be going to such ridiculous lengths to do it.
The answer to this is obviously Google's link-heavy PageRank algorithm that forces webmasters to get every link they can to get their site's indexed and ranked. Most webmasters know that in order to get ranked in Google, they had better have a ton of links to their site.

That's the problem with PageRank as an algorithm. It encourages artificial linking between sites that no longer has any relevance whatsoever to the goal of providing good resources to visitors. Do we really believe that most reciprocal link directories provide a resource to our visitors? Not likely! If websites are real estate, reciprocal link directories are the slums, the seedy bars and tattoo parlors on the edges of polite society.

Whole businesses have sprung up as a reaction to PageRank. I'm talking about the link auction and link selling sites. Under the PageRank system, sites aren't being ranked by who provides the best content, but by who has the deepest pockets to buy the most links. Or, in the case of comment spammers, whoever wants to spread their bots all over the internet spamming blogs. This system has over time totally skewed the natural linking between sites that once dominated the internet - the very thing that Google's PageRank system is supposed to reward.

Ironically, blogs are one of the few places left on the web where linking is actually about providing good content to visitors and rewarding value provided on other sites. Bloggers as a group are the most likely to link to sites because of the content value to their visitors. Their links are very likely to be very topic specific. You don't find that on other sites. These are the kinds of links that I would assume Google would want to encourage through their PageRank system, not those junky reciprocal link directories or purchased links.

It would seem to me that the only effective way to cut down on comment spam and all the artificial linking techniques Google purportedly wants to thwart is not by making life harder for bloggers - the very people who link in the most relevant fashion. But at taking a second look at their own PageRank system and whether it is really serving the usefulness of their own search engine and the whole web in 2005.

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else)http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

By Titus Hoskins

Tags - Revolutionary or Just Folly? Just another trend or something else? Trends happen overnight! Some catch on fast and explode very quickly into our every day use. Most of these trends you can ignore as silly folly or at the most fine amusement. Anyone remember pet rocks, Farrah Fawcett hairdos, or last year's killer fashions? Others, you have to pay more attention to: cell phones, digital cameras, mini-sites, optin lists, or email. Right now, there's another trend you should keep your eye on: 'tags'. What are tags? And why should you care about them?
Tags are a way of sorting and linking all that information in blogs and RSS Feeds. It groups together all the information on one particular subject.

It's a democratic 'search engine' for blogs.

Think of a 'tag' as a 'keyword' to be used in blogging and RSS Feeds (Feed tags are still in the works).

Tags have hit the radar lately because Technorati, which indexes 4.5 million blogs, started sorting blog posts by using tags.

They have created a folksonomy, drawing tags from different sources, mainly Flickr.com which sorts or groups pictures and from del.icio.us -- where you create a tag when you bookmark a page.

Or if your blogging software has categories -- this will be recognized by Technorati as a tag.
If you want to create a 'tag' it's very simple; just place this code in your blog:
<*a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Computers" rel="tag">Computers<*/a> (remove asterisks in actual code) and you will have created a tag for computers.

A tag makes it easier and faster to find information on your favorite subject. It gives you a cross section of real views and opinions floating in the ether.

There are some inherent problems in this system; will the posts grow so quickly and so large -- it's like 'finding a needle in a haystack' or will you have to dig thru a lot of muck to find the scattered diamonds. Or maybe a ranking system will be put in place but this goes against the 'democratic code' of blogging.

Regardless, the traffic and marketing potential of 'tags' could be very beneficial to those who use it to their advantage.

A marketer with a product to introduce or promote could aggressively target tags as part of their advertising budget. As blogging increases in popularity -- it's something to watch!
As a website owner -- tags could be a great source of targeted traffic. And the keyword here is 'targeted'.

It's the kind of visitor you want coming to your site or blog. It can only lead to a better quality visitor. Similar to a visitor coming from the major search engines. One that is really searching for your information.

The next big question, how will marketers exploit these tags to make a few bucks? Everyone knows that's coming!

Will we have a 'tag search engine' that can rival the quality of a Google or Yahoo? Or do we need one?

As with any new trend -- you never know how it will play out.
Some interesting questions have yet to be answered:

Tags are basically keywords for blogs -- but as everyone knows the quality of links to these tags are not all equal. Will someone step in and rank these or will they remain democratic?
Just how will tags work for building content or links to your site? How will the search engines use these tags? How will marketers and advertisers exploit the potential of all this content and the content's viewers?

Will we have tag-spamming? (Just what we need another form of spamming!) Someone flooding these tags with thousands of links to get traffic or sell a product.

Not to hype it too much but there's a real 'we're entering unknown territory' feeling with blogging and RSS lately. Heady days for those keeping a close watch on the events unfolding. There are countless applications probably already in the works for tags!
It could be the start of something big or it could just fizzle.

In any case -- keep your eyes peeled to that cursor! There's probably a tag on the end of it!
This trend may just offer more than fine amusement.
----
To Create a blog within minutes - visit this link: RSS Report and Create Blog Guide.Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of bizwaremagic.com. This article may be freely distributed if this resourcebox stays attached. Visit http://www.bizwaremagic.comfor more simple solutions to your online marketing tasks.----

By Tinu Abayomi-Paul 

Did you know that there are free ways that you can get links back to your blog overnight? That after a few days they can number in the hundreds? No matter what you market on the internet at some point you'll face the issue of increasing the number of visitors to your site. What most people don't know is that there are literally hundreds of ways to get free traffic. Here we'll focus on three overlooked ways to get additional traffic to your site using a blog. The third most overlooked way to bring traffic to your site with a blog is to read and comment on other blogs. Now, maybe you've done this before but stopped, because you're becoming concerned about being considered a link-spammer. 

In that case, leave a link to your site after your comments, instead of in the comment form that hot links it. In the near future, blogmasters will be able to use special code to prevent spam in their comments section, so this will become less of a concern. Besides, getting clicks from people who read comments, or visits from search engine spiders through your comments, isn't necessarily your direct objective, though it’s definitely a plus. What you want to do via commenting is to enter the blog community that corresponds to your target market. Get to know who the players are and make agreements with them to cycle traffic between you. Or lurk to find out where your target market typically hangs out when they're online – you’d be surprised at how many inexpensive and targeted advertising sources you can find through this method. (If you're looking to get linked, there's another way that we'll go over next.) 

This tip alone has earned me a few dozen links from prominent blogs in the past four days alone. These links are worth ten times a reciprocal link because they send targeted traffic from established sources, and come from experts with records of proven results. You can be sure these kinds of people will check you out before they linked to you, since they may be judged by the quality of the information they share. The second method to more blog traffic is the most confusing for newer people, and this is probably the reason its benefits remain overlooked. In the simplest of terms, Trackback is kind of a remote commenting system that incorporates linking. It allows the reader to follow a topic around the web to see other bloggers remark on the same subject. It enables the publisher to remotely cite references to the issue on which they've written. Once you've made yourself familiar with the blogging community you have entered, you can often pick up the pulse of conversations within your site's theme. Then, when you see issues that you want to expound on, you can send the other site a notification to let them know you cited them on your blog. That link will appear on their site, and often draws visitors to you. Bloggers who use Trackback often enjoy greater control over this function in their blogs than they do over linking, as they have the option to reject your reference - so there is a lesser incidence of fraudulent linking. That also gives your link a greater chance of being displayed. So why don't more people use Trackback? One reason is that what is arguably the most popular free blog system, Blogger, doesn’t have Trackback. 

However, Haloscan.com can remedy this with their free service – it’s a cut and paste away. Many new bloggers don't get what it is and how it differs from commenting. And of course, the dynamics of it are a little more complex than I've stated. But learn to use Trackback properly, and you won't need to beg for links to your site ever again. It's harder to estimate an exact number of visitors that come as a result of trackback links. But if you posted five days out of seven, and was able to get a trackback link to your site three times a week, by the end of the year you'd have almost 150 topical links back to your site, which are more valued by search engines than a typical link trade with an unrelated site. The most overlooked source of traffic for a blog is through article submission. To start with, turn your longer posts into articles and submitting them to ezines or directories. Look especially for directories that ask for the direct link to the article on your own site, and input the permanent link to the post on your blog. Make sure that your Auto-Discovery tag is in place and it can mean hundreds more prospects, links and subscribers. It's a shame this is the one of the least used traffic methods for most sites, let alone for blogs. In four days, this method generated just over 1000 visitors. 157 newsletter leads, 98 new feed subscribers, and 206 links to my site. You may not get these same results right away, but using these simple strategies can still get you more exposure than you have now. These aren't normally the highest quality links, as they rarely make sure of anchor text. 

However, bloggers are citing me using Trackback, sometimes in lieu of linking to the site where they originally found the article. To see this in action, do a search on "Can A Ping Really Help Your Blog Get Top Search Engine Rankings", the title of an article I submitted earlier this week. That article was published within a week of this one- the results speak for themselves. Many of these sites aren't the ones where my articles are normally published. There are, of course, plenty of other ways you can leverage the content in your blog or RSS feed to increase the traffic to your site. The methods outlined here may be a bit outside the norm, but, as you’ll soon find, that’s part of the reason they are so effective.

Copyright © 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

Still not blogging yet? Don't quite get RSS? Take the free course on RSS and blogging at http://www.freetraffictip.com

By Linda J Bruton 

Building niche sites is all the rage these days.

The basic strategy is very simple. Find a niche market that isn't oversaturated. Develop a list of related keywords people are searching on. Then write an article optimized for each one of your keywords. Once you have your articles, upload them to your site. Monitize your site with affiliate links and Adsense.

For this kind of niche site to be effective and make money, it is imperative that you get free traffic, and a lot of it. And that's exactly where a blog can be your best friend.

At its very simplest, a blog is just a structure. It's the bones of a web site. A blog is a simple way to publish and display your content online. Most of us think of blogs as a chronicle of news events, or commentary on news and items of interest. Or personal diaries.

Few people stop to think that you can build any kind of website with a blog. In reality, a blog can be used very effectively to build a niche site. The fact of the matter is, a blog is the easiest way to publish your niche site content. But the biggest reason to use a blog is that it can drive traffic to your site a lot faster than a statically-built site. A niche site built with a blog is a very powerful strategy.

First, choose your niche and research your keywords. Write your first article based on one of those keywords, just as you would when building a regular site. Then set up your blog and publish that article. Your niche site is now live.

To make your site structure the most effective, be sure to choose a blog that allows the use of Categories, such as Word Press or Moveable Type. Use your 10 most important keywords as the name of your Categories. Then file all your secondary keyword articles under those Categories.

Why is this so important? If you keep building your site with keyword-rich articles, eventually you could have hundreds of pages. Each of those pages will have a link to your 10 Categories. And each of those links will use the anchor text of your most important keywords. As a result of all those internal keyword-rich links, your site will end up ranking very well in the search engines for your Category names.

Now it's time to set up your traffic strategy. This is where a blog can really shine. There are many special RSS/blog directories that are hungry for feeds. By submitting your new blog to these directories, you can start getting traffic almost immediately. Quite often these feeds will result in a lot more traffic than all the major search engines combined. This is why it makes so much sense to build your niche site as a blog. You can have twice the traffic, and get it much faster than with a static site.

Here is a list of some of the top RSS/blog directories you should submit your site to:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Once you've submitted your site to the directories, you can get it indexed by Yahoo almost immediately by adding your RSS feed to your MyYahoo page. If you don't have a MyYahoo page, just go to http://www.yahoo.com. Now click on the MyYahoo link at the top and set up your free account. Once you have your account set up, click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.

When you go back to your MyYahoo page, your blog plus your first post should be shown. If you go look at your web stats for your site, you'll find that the Yahoo spider has already made a visit! Your new site should be indexed in Yahoo in just a couple of days. This is a strategy that some marketers were selling for $50 just a few months ago. And it works like a charm.

Every time you add a post, you can alert the RSS/blog directories by "pinging" them. There is a wonderful site at http://www.pingomatic.com that makes this very easy. You just have to type in your blog URL and Pingomatic will send your ping to Yahoo and about 15 other large directories. That will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!

During the first month, I would suggest that you write and add a new article every day. Blogs that are frequently updated get the most traffic. And you'll find that the major search engines will spider your site every day. At the end of a month, you'll have a 30-article niche site that is already getting a lot of traffic. If you've monetized your site with Adsense and related affiliate programs, you should also be making money already.

Once you've started building your niche sites with a blog, you'll never go back to doing it the old way again!

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

By Walter Pfarr

Blogging is hot and getting hotter, with more and more web logs (blogs) cropping up online by the day!

Since being documented nearly a full decade ago, blogs and associated software have emerged, giving rise to this lucrative and dynamic market.

Blogs are highly interactive. Publishers get to review results almost as soon as the post is made and do not have the usual moderation that appears in forums, ezines nor newsletters where they can be terminated without warning. In addition, there is usually more editorial freedom associated with blogs and the topic or content often overlooked.

They are easy to start and maintain, so even the novice will find blogging quick and easy to do. Blogs are extremely search engine friendly since content is constantly being updated.

And, blogs are fun! The entertainment (self or site visitor) cannot be dismissed and with discussions so often heating up, visitors tend to return time and time again to the same site to view the newer posts on any given topic.

Blogs also are capable of syndication: a great means of ensuring that your writing and opinions are exposed to as much of the general public as possible.

With blogging, there are NO lists to keep nor spam filters to stress over, which is a paramount reason many writers and publishers have turned to this fascinating form of promotion. As such, they are economical with no list server costs.

To be successful, however, treat "your" blog as an ezine, forum or newsletter. Your content must be informative and compelling and updated constantly. The site should be visually appealing and user friendly.

Some blogging services charge others to read or to write, so there is definitely some income potential associated with this proven communication method.

Walt Pfarr possesses over 30 years of media experience, including general news reporting, column writing; grant writing and administration; special events coordination and facilitation; development, fundraising, and is now penning his own ecourse, ebook and soon will publish PfarrOut ezine (or blog). He may be reached at walterpfarr@lycos.com Pfarr and his wife, Jo, live in Oklahoma.

By Joseph Simcic

Today, I'm going to be talking about how to make cash online with great blog content and how to do it fast. Most of the time people dread when they have to sit down and write a post.
It doesn't have to be that way.

I'm going to show you how to create content so quick and so easy it's going to be unbelievable. You'll be able to do it in no time flat.

The three things that I'm going to be covering is outlining, a double-duty method which is going to give you great content fast, and of course a down and dirty method if you don't have time, you can get this done quickly anywhere you want; walking, in the car, anywhere.
So let's get started.

Outlining
You've got to start somewhere. You want to start generating ideas and brainstorming. I use Mind Jet Mind Manager which allows me to do a Mine Map of my brainstorming sessions.
You can also get Free Mind which is a free mind mapping software. You just search for it on Google. It allows you to get all the information out onto your computer, or if you want to use a piece of paper, that's fine, either way.

But you should shoot for at least five sections at a minimum for your article. You want an introduction that introduces the topic and overall concept. You want to have the three subtopics inside the article that you are going to cover, and then you also want to have a conclusion, basically recapping what you just told everybody.

Double-Duty Method
Allows you to maximize your content creation. You can create a video, an audio, and a written post all at the same time.
This is where you create the most content. Use screen capture software to record a Power Point presentation or record yourself on video.
Save the video, rip the audio out, and then send the audio off to be transcribed. What that allows you to do is post all three almost forms almost anywhere you want. You can use systems, like Traffic Geyser, to post video and audio several different places on the web quickly.
You can also use Tube Mogul, which is similar to Traffic Geyser, but I don't believe it has as many features. They offer both a free and paid for version but even the paid version I think lacks features and functionality Traffic Geyser gives.
So, take the audio, send it off to get transcribed, and then you can post it to a blog or use it as an article, after you edit it of course. This method helps you create a whole bunch of content quickly and post it in many different ways.

Down And Dirty Method
What if you don't have time to do video?
What you could do is pick up a digital recorder from Target or Wal-Mart or pretty much anywhere. Then go for a walk or a drive or pretty much anything and record whatever you want to cover.

Heck, some cell phones even have recording capabilities so that you can take notes. You can do the same thing.

Hook it up to the computer, pull down the file, get it transcribed, sent it off... there's many different places you have transcription services, just look it up on Google.
After you have it transcribed, edit the text and clean it up quickly. Then it's all yours to post to your blog or use as an article.

It's quick, it's easy, and all it takes is you and your digital recorder.
So, the big thing's here is outline and plan your content. Record a video, screen capture, or digital recording of you talking and have it transcribed. Then post as much or as little as you want on the internet.

And that's what I've found to be the easiest methods to create great blog content and articles to help you make cash online quickly and easily.
Now go out and start creating some great content.

When you need to make cash online there are a number of ways to do it. You've got options especially today on the internet. After you visit the site above you'll start to see how you can begin to make money online faster and easier than ever.

By Bryan Karl Yuson

It is stated in Google's guidelines that a clear and proper navigation and linking is one way for a blog to do good in search engine results and rankings. The sidebar is an area to practically place anything from links to humongous banners and any other thing that can be placed on that section. However, some blog owners just stuff their sidebars with any widget they encounter, not taking into consideration the ease by which their users could freely move on their blog and the usefulness/uselessness of such widgets. I am not suggesting the stripping down of your sidebars but I am openly suggesting a deeper look of the real reasons of why such widgets are there. And does your sidebar really deserve the presence of such widgets?

Here is a ranking of the Top 5 essential widgets a blog's sidebar must have. Reactions and suggestions are all welcome on the comments area. If your suggestions give very strong points, this entry will be updated to include yours.

Recent Posts - This is self-explanatory. For Blogger blogs, a Recent Posts widget is very important. If you want to advertise every post you make and want the new ones noticed fast, then their titles must appear right away on the sidebar through this widget. However, due to the "newspaper style" capacity of Wordpress blogs, a Recent Posts widget is not that needed there. A newspaper style could allow up to 10+ previews of posts still with the scrollbar long enough. In Blogger blogs, 10+ posts in the homepage could make the scrollbar so tiny your readers would easily bounce away from your blog.

Subscription Link or Form - Make your readers loyal with this widget. If your posts are interesting and useful enough (or has a high quality for short), then readers would want to be updated on the latest from your blogs. A subscription via RSS, a reader or e-mail is a convenient way for a reader to receive updates from you. Seeing a Subscription Link or Form could possibly entice readers to give it a try, or maybe seriously subscribe to your posts.

Popular Posts - A great way to endorse the best posts that you made, those that made it to the top in the search engine results and those that made the most number of comments. Well obviously this is not just to take pride of your blog but to serve your new readers the best of the best so they would enjoy your blog and subscribe after. Many blogs forget this part.

Labels or Tags - Even the most-specific-niched blog posts could be broken up into several tags. This is how this widget is of use, clearly categorizing each tags into clear and proper groupings so users would find it easy to reach posts that they are finding with a specific topic (or label). This is to make sure that readers finding about Paris would not end up reading about Japan.

Pages or Links to Internal Pages - Usually, this is where links to the Contact Me, About and Blogroll reside. These are just links but they point to very important pages on a blog. The Contact Me is very important as it promotes an interaction between blogger and reader. About is one of the most important internal pages that a blogger must not forget. Sometimes a reader would directly search for that page even before taking a look at your posts. A Blogroll page is optional.

Those 5 don't sound very special. Yes, but they are 100% essential. A blog is not a blog without those. Some blogs manage to get a huge amount of traffic even with one or more of those lacking because they offered another efficient way of linking out to their other post, and that is through a Sitemap or an Archives page. But with or without a Sitemap on its own page in the domain, those five still prove to be necessary to maintain a blog's health. Other widgets are optional and relative and it is up to the owner whether to place them or not.

Bryan Karl Yuson is author of two blogs. One is Bryan Karl dot Com Earning, Blogging, Tips and More and the other is Bryan Karl Everything Online. He is a student at the Philippines' national university taking up Computer Science.

By Ted Demopoulos

1) Keep your blog posts relatively short. A few hundred words maximum in general. Most blog readers expect and want concise posts. Sure, you may have the occasional real long post, but in general they should be fairly short.

2) Longer writings can be broken up into multiple parts and form a blog series. Readers tend to like those. If they read the first part they will come back and read the second part and the third part and so forth.

Also something to keep in mind is on the Internet people don't read, they scan. Short blog posts are far easier to scan and get the meaning of and get value from than long blog posts.

3) Writing great post titles is important. Post titles are essentially headlines and hopefully they entice people to read further. For example, "How To" headlines and list such as "Five Ways To whatever" often work really well. Copyblogger.com's Brian Clark has some particularly good advice on writing post titles, i.e. headlines. You can learn a lot by reading what Copyblogger has written as well as by studying his.

4) You should spell-check and proofread your posts before publishing. Taking a few seconds will catch most errors. You still might very occasionally have some grammatical errors or other errors and that's ok.

5) Always site your sources and link to them. For example, if you are blogging on something you found out about due to someone else's post, give them credit.

Reasons to do this include honesty and that it makes your blog more valuable to your readers. If you found that blog valuable and got ideas, maybe your readers will as well. Also the sources you link to will frequently discover your blog and they may become readers or they may link to you in return at some point.

6) Always think before you hit publish. Almost the whole world will be able to see what you have written. As I often mentioned, "Hey, the Internet is a very public place."
If you are angry, if you are upset, use the same rules that you should use with email. Wait at least overnight.

7) Don't try to make your writing perfect, writing is never perfect.
An occasional typo or other error may be get through and it's not a problem, although certainly you don't want too many errors because that looks unprofessional. Also remember you are writing a blog post; it's not a research paper. You are putting ideas out there. You are extending the conversation. Realize your posts aren't going to be perfect. Writing never ever is.

That said, sometimes I will save blog posts that don't seem quite right and work on them later. Although many posts may be written and published in just a few minutes, some may require more time for contemplation. Some posts may require you sleep on them, wait until the next morning, before you can do them justice. Sometimes I won't be sure whether to hit publish. It just doesn't seem quite right, but I am not sure why. I can tell you sometimes I publish these post anyway and they have been some of my more popular posts.

And for over 100 more tips on successful blogging, I invite you to grab your free copy of my ebook Secrets of Successful Blogging at http://www.secretsofsuccessfulblogging.com/
By Ted Demopoulos, author of "Blogging for Business" and "What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting"

By Edward Croft

In the United States, online financial information and investing media has exploded in recent years. Where once there were just online replicas of offline newspaper/TV commentary and anonymous spam-ridden bulletin boards, there is now a proliferation of stimulating and diverse financial content written by both professional and amateur investors. These include professional blog sites (like Bill Cara, Big Picture, and The Kirk Report), aggregator sites like SeekingAlpha (who handpick articles from the world's top market blogs and investment newsletters), expert investment communities like Covestor and Social Picks, crowd-sourcing sites like piqqem, to name just a few...

In contrast, despite London's status as a financial hub, the online financial information and commentary scene in the United Kingdom still seems like a barren wasteland. There has been little apparent new development in recent years. Financial commentary is dominated by offline publishers like Bloomberg, Reuters and the Financial Times. To date, blogging has yet to become a big part of the UK investor scene. Most private investor discussion seems to be taking place on bulletin boards that would not have been out of place in the late 1990s and which don't appear to have progressed much in terms of functionality in at least the last five years. Strangely, the web's social networking phenomenon has barely touched the UK's online financial sector.

This is surprising given that the data suggests that demand for alternative content in general is there - according to Hitwise, the market share of blogs is now greater in the UK than in the US: 1.09% vs. 0.73% of all traffic respectively as of May 2008. Over the last 3 years, UK Internet traffic to the Blogs and Personal Websites category increased by 208%, compared to 70% for News and Media generally. The recent success of political blog sites like Guido Fawkes suggests that there is interest amongst the British public in alternative media. The issue seems more to be around the supply of alternative finance content - there just do not seem to be many finance bloggers out there. This is paradoxical given the strength of UK financial services. The City of London has some of the smartest investors and analysts globally. However, their views remain directed through institutional channels (e.g. equity research) and their voices are apparently not being heard more broadly by the public on the Web.

To an extent, this reflects an apparent general reticence by the British to blog. In the States, the last five years have seen an explosion in alternative media, with vast numbers of independent commercial blogs, the most famous such examples being The Huffington Post, Engadget and Gawker Media. In contrast, the UK has been slower to adopt blogging with the same fervour - in the Guardian's recent list of the top 50 global blogs, the UK performance was surprisingly weak given the bias towards English language content. The main UK appearances were Holy Moly (a celebrity blog - no. 27), the Offside (a football blog - no. 35) and the F word (a feminist blog - no. 41). A number of explanations have been offered for this dismal show. In a recent article, Shiny Media's co-founder, Ashley Norris attributed the lack of UK blogs to a number of factors, namely:

1. The limited number of UK online eyeballs (and related difficulties in monetising non-UK ad inventory);
2. A lack of imagination in the UK ad industry (who prefer to work with established media brands or mega portals);
3. A lack of UK media entrepreneurs;
4. A lack of VC support (European VCs apparently don't tend to be too interested in media unless it is supported by a technological innovation); and
5. Too much competition from established media (including the chilling influence of the omnipotent BBC).

In the UK financial information space, the most notable exception to this dearth of innovation has been the Financial Times' Alphaville which launched as a live financial blog for market professionals in 2006. This has been a huge success but it is interesting that it took a traditional media outlet to really popularise blogging. Whether that says something about the British respect for authority is debatable but indeed, the other finance blogs with significant readership are all based around traditional media (The Economist's blog, Interactive Investor's blog, Robert Peston). There are of course some exceptions to this - Cash and Burn springs to mind or specialist media focused finance blogs like Media Money.

Even the FT's Alphaville has remained a phenomenon largely contained within the confines of traditional media, given that professional FT journalists have been driving the content. Interestingly, in October, the FT launched a new forums feature on Alphaville called "The Long Room" - named after a bar in Throgmorton Street that was once a notorious hub of financial chatter.

The Long Room is designed to allow finance professionals to set up their own discussions. This part of the site is however something of a "closed shop" for the City of London, because the Long Room registration process requires users to demonstrate their finance credentials and then be invited into the Room in order to view and/or contribute to the discussions.

It is hard to ascertain whether creating a kind of Morton's members club for the UK online financial community was intended to: a) wall off the content to prevent it cannibalising the main site, or b) introduce a quality filter to prevent the conversation deterioriating to the level of the UK private investor bulletin boards. While one can sympathise with the second objective, it does seem a shame given that the US experience is increasingly showing that, if the right filters are applied, then investors outside of the traditional financial community can be as, or even more, insightful than professional investors or market commentators.

Nevertheless, that gripe about exclusivity needs to be caveated with a recognition that, in terms of functionality, the Long Room is cutting edge in the UK scene and the Financial Times are to be applauded for innovating. It remains to be seen to what extent the Long Room represents the tip of the iceberg for UK financial blogging. Will the site lead to spin-offs as individual commentators develop their own online identities and followers?

Edward Croft is Managing Director of Stockopedia http://www.stockopedia.co.uk, a social research network for Individual Investors in the UK stock market. More than just a community site, Stockopedia acts a platform aggregating opinion, prices and news while customising content according to the interests of each user. In addition to its forums, wikis and virtual fund game, Stockopedia will be launching blogging functionality for its users in the coming weeks. To view or contribute to quality user-generated investment research, take the tour at http://www.stockopedia.co.uk/tour.

By Jill Hyland

Once you have installed your blog and begun posting in it, you may be frustrated to find no one is visiting your blog to read your posts. Having an interactive, lively blog requires a little work, but it's not hard. I have five ways listed below to help get blog traffic to your site.

1. Post to your blog at least 2 to 3 times a week. Keeping fresh, original, quality content is a must. In each post, target a specific keyword that pertains to your blog subject area.

2. Visit other blogs in your niche and make comments to their posts, leaving a link back to your blog in your signature block. By becoming interactive with other blogs within your niche community, you will have more visitors already interested in your information.

3. Install the Google Sitemap Generator plugin. By submitting your sitemap you are informing Google, Live, and Yahoo of the pages within your site that you would like them to index. The bots quickly follow these pages and your blog is usually indexed quickly. Every new post or page you create, the sitemap is automatically updated along with Google, MSN and Yahoo being notified.

4. A quick way to get backlinks is through social bookmarking. It's free to add your website as a bookmark within social bookmarking sites, and by doing so you are acquiring a backlink from the bookmarking website.

5. Add an RSS feed to your blog so readers can be automatically notified when you post a new topic. This keeps them from having to check in on a regular basis, and allows them to visit only when your post interests them. They will also be reminded of your blog so they have a better chance to return to your site.

Blog traffic to your site is right around the corner. Just implement these 5 ways and you will start seeing results soon.
Jill Hyland

Create A High Traffic, High Back Linked Niche Blog Empire - Then Put It On Auto-Pilot! http://www.BlogPostLinks.com

With the growing interest in blogging as a means of online promotion and branding, a lot of marketers are starting blogs to promote their opinions, products, books and services. But a blog is like a website. "Write and they will come" isn't exactly a magic formula to bring in traffic by the boatload.

If you need to promote your website in order to build traffic to it, you need to promote your blog as well.

Here are some ways you can become a well-read and influential blogger.

1. Write Posts That People Will Want To Read
This should be common sense, but many marketers tend to forget that their readers are real people and that you need to use the principles of online copywriting to make your headlines and copy interesting to your readers.

If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will reward you by returning to your blog regularly.

Make your posts conversational, pithy and topical. Keep them short and stick to one topic per post.

Write often and regularly so that both readers and search engines visit your blog more often.

2. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines
I cover this topic in detail in my article on "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs" http://www.blog-maniac.com/blog-seo.htm
But here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.
* Make sure your blog URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for
* Use your primary keywords in the title of your post
* Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
* Use your keywords in the anchor text of links in the body of your posts

3. Submit Your Blog and RSS Feed To Directories
If you publish a blog you should submit your blog and RSS feed to big directories like Yahoo and Dmoz, as well as the numerous blog directories and search engines.
Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog, compiled by Luigi Canali De Rossi, who writes under the pseudonym Robin Good.
Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
Another list of sites to submit your Blog. http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm

4. Ping The Blog Services
There are a number of services designed specifically for tracking and connecting blogs. By sending a small ping to each service you let them know you've updated your blog so they can come check you out.

Bookmark the Ping-O-Matic ping results page so you can visit it and quickly ping a number of services with a single click. http://pingomatic.com

5. Build Links To Your Blog
I recommend the methods here as the best ways to get links pointing to your blog
* Link to your blog from each page on your main website
* Trackback to other blogs in your posts
* Post legitimate comments on other blogs with related topics
* Offer to exchange links with other similarly themed blogs and websites

6. Edit Your Blog Posts Into Articles
One of the best methods for promoting your website is to write articles and submit them to article directories.

The suggestion for extending this to edit your blog posts into articles and submit them to directories came from the coach at "Explode Blog Traffic" who also has other noteworthy suggestions at his blog here. http://bloghit.blogspot.com/2004/11/how-to-explode-blog-traffic.html

You'll find an extensive list of article directories here http://www.articlewritingtips.com/submit-articles.htm

7. Create Buzz About Your Blog
Creating a buzz about your blog posts and topic in the local and online media will give your marketing a viral component.
* Create a controversy around your blog or it's topic.
* Distribute bumper stickers or other merchandise with your blog's URL and tagline.
* Write a press release about something newsworthy and tie it in with your blog topic.

8. Capture Subscribers By Email
It may seem strange for a blogger to send out updates by email, but email is still the #1 choice of most people who want to receive news and information.
Using a free service like Bloglet to manage your subscriptions is easy and it allows your subscribers to manage all their subscriptions from one interface. http://www.bloglet.com

However, if you want more control over your list and don't mind mailing out the updates yourself, you can use an autoresponder system to capture and follow-up with subscribers.
RSS responder is a new script that allows you to keep in touch and follow-up with your subscribers without the hassle of email. Find it and more RSS tools here http://www.rssnewssite.com

These tips should give you a good start to building your blog traffic.
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Copyright © Priya Shah
Priya Shah is a partner in the online publishing firm, Connect10 and writes an internet marketing blog. Click here for free business blogging tips.
This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.