» Blogging - Internet Marketing, SEO, and Make Money Online

Jun 20

A Blogger’s Look at Digg.com

Blogging is one of the best ways to share information as well as advertise yourself on today’s Internet, but are you doing everything you can to make sure that you put yourself out there? As many bloggers are finding out, putting out a blog that has good information simply is not enough; advertising is an important part of any endeavor on the web. Luckily, you will find that the Internet is a great place to see viral marketing in action. Digg.com, a site that many bloggers have begun using, is one example of this.

At first glance, Digg.com seems to be a lot of information stored in one place, but with a second look will actually show you how organized it is. The search function is particularly useful, and the range of topics, images, and information that it covers is rather exhaustive. From learning about mountain bikes to hearing the latest news out of Washington, this is one of the best sites that you can frequent, especially when you are looking for a diverse field of information.

At its most basic, Digg.com is a sharing site. People will post things that they find interesting online, and no matter how obscure or how important it is, you will be able to find it here. Digg.com is one of many social bookmarking sites that have appeared, and there is a good reason for that. Despite its invaluable presence and despite its admitted scope and staying power, many people are becoming impatient with the results that come from a simple Google search. People are looking for relevance when they look for information, and nearly the only way to get that is by looking through material that has already been gone through for relevance by other people.

On Digg.com, you start contributing as soon as you sign up, and something that might surprise you is the level of community on this site. This is one great way for people to get to know one another, and it is a great way for you to get information about your blog out there. Many blogs end up being linked by other people, and you will find that this improves your link building status; your links will not only be out there, they will also be contributing to your Google search engine rankings.

As any marketer will tell you, part of the key to success to marketing online is to give people content, and with Digg.com, you can do exactly that. Take some time and look at the content you have simply bookmarked for your purposes. Similarly, many bloggers have a list of links on their sidebar, you can get started just by putting that up. Reach out and make sure that the members of your Internet community know that you exist!

Tags: internet home business, work from home, internet marketing, online marketing, affiliate program, home business opportunity, work at home, internet opportunities, home business, home based business

Blogging

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Jun 20

How to get more traffic to your blog

Blogging, Web Traffic Tips No Comments »

It just seems like everybody and their grandmother has a blog these days. But what is the difference between, say, a Perez Hilton and all the other thousands of blogs that fall into obscurity everyday? Well, let me show you a couple of simple ways that you can increase blog traffic without spending a red cent most of the times. So let’s get started, shall we?

First of all, it’s very important that your blog is meaningful and not some kind of repository of rehashed articles. One of the best ways to attract visitors to your blog is if there’s already heavy activity on the blog. This will have many implications: first of all, every time someone posts a comment on your blog, it is updated, and search engines usually favor sites with fresh content that is updated often. Second, it will encourage others to participate as well and come back frequently to see how others reacted to their comments or just to see how the conversation is evolving.

A good way to build interest to your blog is by posting on similar, yet more popular blogs related to yours, with a link to your blog of course. If you disagree with the blog’s editor, don’t be scared to start a flaming war, this might encourage the blog’s editor to respond and other onlookers to visit your blog to read more of what you have to say. If you completely agree with the blog’s editor and notice that there are occasional guest posters on the blog, try to contact the blogmaster to see if you can write a guest post for them.

Social networking sites such as Digg.com are also a great way to increase blog traffic. Digg works by users giving a thumbs up – a ‘dig’ – or a thumbs down to whatever they read online and on the Digg site itself. It’s pretty much a way to rate different pages on the web so that the best stories get the most attention. If you want your site to rate high on Digg, there are a few things you have to know.

First of all, you have to write a meaningful and eye catching headlines since it’s the first thing you see before reading a post. Second of all, when you submit your post to Digg, make sure the description is meaningful and that you can get a sense of the post before reading it; nobody likes bad surprises and people are most likely to give your post a thumbs down if the description had nothing to do with the post. Make sure your first paragraph is good and that the rest of the article is meaningful as well, or else you’ll run the risk of irritating your readers, get bad reviews for your posts, and get your site banned from social bookmarking sites; because social bookmarking sites tend to ban people who post junk all the time.

There are plenty of ways that you can attract more traffic to your blog and that was just a few of them. But keep in mind that even the best promoted blog will fail if it doesn’t have good content.

To Your Success
Cody Moya

Tags: home based business, online marketing, affiliate, work from home, online business, internet home business, internet opportunities, small business, home business, business opportunity

Blogging

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May 10

Put Your Blogging On A Schedule

Blogging No Comments »

Does the thought of scheduling your blogging seem so… uncreative? Posting to your blog shouldn’t happen only when you feel “moved” to create an award-winning post. Blogging needs to be done regularly to provide good content for your readers and to maximize your profits.

Set yourself up with a schedule to post on your blogs. Take a realistic look at your business and figure out how blogging can fit in. The object is not to be constantly blogging, forsaking all else, but to bring blogging forward a bit from your low priority pile of things to do. Take a look at your business model and where blogging fits in. If your blogs are currently your only platform for making money, then blogging should be high priority.

Your blogging schedule is up to you and can certainly be changed when your circumstances change. Perhaps you’re going to temporarily blog daily on your Internet Marketing blog because you’re promoting an affiliate product or you’re just about to launch your new ebook. On a regular week you might consider blogging everyday, but alternating between all your blogs.

The important things is to think about your blogging ahead of time and create your schedule for the week. Also keep in mind the time of day that is available to you for blogging, especially if you’re a part-time internet marketer. Will mornings from 7:00 am to 7:30 pm work? And how about lunchtime from 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm?

While you’re thinking ahead about your blogging, get a rough plan down on paper about what your blog subjects will be for each of the posts you’re going to post in the week ahead. If you can’t think of something right away, it will be a seed planted in your mind and you’ll come up with a great idea before it’s time to write it.

Try to find ways to streamline your posting. If your blogs are in a related field, you can sometimes modify your blog post to fit all your blogs. If your blogs are in very different fields you may still want to do the same sort of post to save time. For example, if you want to post a YouTube video, you can look for different videos for your different blogs all at once.

Scheduling your blogging may not be a creative endeavor, but it can make your blogging more successful nonetheless. A blogging schedule can help you become a consistent blogger who doesn’t lose readers for lack of posts and can also help you maximize your profits.

To Your Success
Cody Moya

Tags: business opportunity, online marketing, online business, make money online, business opportunity leads, home business opportunity, online business opportunities, internet marketing, affiliate program, Entrepreneur

Blogging

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Apr 16

Must have Wordpress plug-ins for maximum blog benefits

Blogging No Comments »

Almost everyone who uses the internet knows Wordpress as the best blogging platform. It is estimated that almost 65% of bloggers use Wordpress for blogging. With such a large community, you will find thousands of plug-ins to use with your blog. Though Plug-ins provide added functionality for your blog, not all plug-ins are helpful.

Here is a list of “Must have” Wordpress plug-ins that will help you get the maximum benefits from your blog.

Spam Karma

Google Page rank has started a new race among website owners to spam blogs for a back link. If you have a high page rank for your blog you will end spending most of your time deleting the spam comments. Spam Karma is an anti spam plug-in to help you stop all automated blog spam without any effort. This helps you concentrate on your blog rather than on the spam comments. You can download Spam Karma from the site http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/

“All in one SEO” Pack

All of us have heard about search engine optimization for getting organic traffic from the search engines. You must also be aware of the fact that getting your site optimized for a search engine is a tedious task. All in one SEO pack is an useful plug-in meant to help you minimize your efforts in search engine optimization. This plug-in allows you to post unique META tags, META description, keywords and page titles optimized for the search engines. It also allows you to post common META tags and descriptions if you are too lazy to update each page.

Wordpress Database Backup

Do you spend a lot of time optimizing your blog, trying to get traffic and advertising your blog? What if you wake up one day and find your blog lost due to some server failure. Are you prepared for such disasters? If the answer is no, you must get Wordpress database backup plug-in. This plug-in helps you in on demand backup of your Wordpress database thus ensuring that you are prepared for any disasters on your blog. You can download this plug-in at http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Have you always wanted to have the latest version of Wordpress installed on your blog but always wondered if you could do it painlessly. The Wordpress automatic upgrade plug-in allows is developed to allow easy & effortless upgrade of your Wordpress installation to the latest version. This plug-in automatically backups your database, downloads the latest Wordpress version, installs the files and reactivates your previously active plug-ins. This plug-in can be downloaded from http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin.html

Permalink Migration Plugin

Permalink is the permanent link to the blog post after it moves to the blog archives. Such links are indexed by the search engines and any changes to these links normally result in a “Page not found” error and hence loss of traffic. The Permalink migration plug-in automates the entire migration process. This plug-in is a must have if you are not satisfied with your blog’s Permalink structure and would like to change it. This plug-in can be downloaded from http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/permalinks-migration-plugin/

Google Sitemaps plug-in

Sitemap is considered as an excellent navigation aid for your site visitor. XML sitemap are also known to provide search engines the necessary information for quick indexing of your blog. The Google sitemap plug-in automatically creates a XML sitemap for your blog and pings search engines informing them about the changes on your blog. This plug-in can be downloaded from http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-generator-v2-final

Visitors coming to your blog post through search engines usually leave the blog immediately after reading the post. The related posts plug-in helps you retain the visitor by providing him related posts and thus ensuring that the visitor has enough relevant content to stay on your blog. This plug-in can be downloaded from http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries

EasyTube

Have you always wanted to have a video site but lacked the programming knowledge for it. The Easytube plug-in makes it easy for you to incorporate Youtube videos on your blog without a single line of any code. You can download this plug-in from http://www.ejump.co.uk/wordpress/easytube-plugin-for-wordpress/

GotBanners

This plug-in provides an easy and convenient way of monetizing from your blog. It displays all banners on your blog in a random manner thus avoiding banner blindness for your regular visitors.

To Your Success
Cody Moya

Tags: home based business, internet business, business opportunity leads, business opportunity, internet home business, home business opportunity, work from home, work at home, small business, internet marketing

Blogging

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Feb 27

More Reasons Why You Need A Blog

Blogging No Comments »

Blogging used to be just a method for stating your opinion, but now blogs are used to opine, to review, and to sell. In fact, many Internet marketers base their entire business around blogging.

Here’s why.

Blogging is really just basic communication. All it takes is a computer and an internet connection and you can set up a free blog on one of the many blogging services.

Its flexibility is also one of its outstanding features. There are numerous platforms to blog from, from Wordpress to Joomla to Drupal, and dozens more in between. And even if you don’t want to host your blog, you can set one up at one of the many free blog services like Blogger or Wordpress.com. And even if you use the free services, you can always take your blog to your own server at a later date.

Many people also feel that blogs create an intimate atmosphere for learning and research. A blog can create a simple credibility that can help sell your products because it helps create an “Everyman” aura, that is, a stripped down, hype-free way to talk about products.

If your opinions get read and respected, you might find that your credibility will begin to increase around a particular subject. People will begin to look to you to offer your opinions on forthcoming issues. And once you are established and considered an expert in a niche, your ability to sell from your blog will increase dramatically.

Once you are established, don’t be afraid to ask people to sign up to your list. This will be a list where you can reach your readers at a moment’s notice. A great way to utilize this list is to send a message to it when you have made a new post to your blog, and encourage your readers to not only read your new article but comment on it.

By using your list in this manner, your subscribers won’t feel that you are using your list merely to sell to them. Of course, you can sell to them from your blog, and if your readers begin to comment on your posts, you are helping to enhance your blog’s stickiness.

Blogging is a terrific tool for any Internet marketing business. Done in the correct manner (meaning that if you intend to build your credibility, you should blog in the most personal manner possible), you’ll be blogging your way to success in no time.

To Your Success
Cody Moya

Tags: online business, make money online, work at home, affiliate program, internet opportunities, internet home business, affiliate, home business opportunity, work from home, home business

Blogging

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Feb 11

Blog Your Way to Success

Blogging No Comments »

Since the Internet began to gain popularity, enterprising Internet
users have found ways to make money online. As of today there are
so many ways to make money online that it’s probably impossible to
count them all. One of the best and easiest ways to make money
online is by writing one or more blogs.

A blog is short for Web Log. It is what it sounds like it should
be. A blog is a written record that is kept on the Web.

Blog writers post a new blog every day or so and they write about
things that relate to a particular topic. Some blogs are about a
person’s own life while other blogs are on a specific topic like
politics, sports, dieting, or entertainment. There are literally
hundreds – and probably thousands – of blog topics on the Internet
right now.

Not only are blogs fun to write and entertaining to read
(sometimes), they can also make you a lot of money. That’s right!
Blogging is yet another way Internet Marketers can (and do) make
lots of money.

To make money writing a blog the first thing you need to do is pick
a niche – you need to settle on a topic for your blog. To do this
just think about the things you love to do or something that is
very important in your life – good or bad. For example, if you
really like to read then you might want to start up a blog about
bestsellers. If you’re into health and fitness, you might want to
start up a blog that will help people lose weight.

The topic you pick is up to you. But before you decide on anything
for certain, make sure you go to one of the many tools on the
Internet and checkout how many searches are done on that topic
every month. The last thing you want to do is choose a topic no
one’s interested in. (Though you should know that almost any topic
you want to write about probably has a healthy following.)

After you settle on a topic, then you need to decide on a blog
host. Your choices are WordPress or Blogger. Many people prefer
WordPress because there are more things blog operators can do with
it. However, some people believe Blogger is easier to use. And one
good thing about Blogger is that it is run by Google so you can
automatically place Google ads on your blog. This could make you
instant money.

Once you settle on a blog topic and the host for you blog, all
that’s left is to choose a name for your blog. If possible, you
want to choose a name that has your topic in the title. For
example, if you’re writing about dieting then you want to choose a
title that’s something like: loseweighttoday.

Now that your blog is all set-up all you have to do is make sure
you provide valuable information and make sure you blog at least a
few times a week. This will keep people coming back and will build
a steady following.

A blog is great because it can help establish you as an expert in a
particular field. It’s also great because search engines love blogs
and rank them high in their search results. So once your blog is
established, all that’s left to do is to gain readers and then
start making money off the readers. You can make money from Google
AdSense (though it won’t be as much as it one was) and you can also
market your products and services to your readers.

Writing a blog can be a lot of fun depending on whether you like to
write or not. However, regardless of whether you like to write or
not, you still can get a lot of benefits from blogging. Writing a
blog can establish you as an expert in a niche and it will
ultimately lead to your success.

If you’re looking for a system that will make your blogging process
simple and help you get great search engine rankings and free
traffic from your blog posts, then click here to check out the Atomic Blogging system.

To Your Success
Cody Moya

Tags: adsense, home based business, internet opportunities, home business, work from home, Entrepreneur, online marketing, internet marketing, business opportunity, affiliate program

Blogging

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Dec 25

How Much Money Can I Earn With My Blog

Blogging No Comments »

If you’re looking at Google’s AdSense program to make money with your blog you’re surely asking yourself how much you could make from such a program. You probably think you can’t make as much as you can from traditional advertising schemes.

Google, of course, keeps a great deal of secrecy regarding how much AdWords advertisers pay per each click directed to their site and the same applies for how much AdSense banner holders make from their websites and blogs

While there’s nothing official, rumors circulate around the Internet concerning the amount of cash a blogger can earn by using AdSense. And many people (illegally) disclose how much they have been making with AdSense. There are stories of people raising over one thousand dollars per month using AdSense, some as much as $1000 a day just through blogging.

There are also stories of people exceeding $100,000.00 per month but it’s a bit hard to believe such stories. The truth to the matter is that if you have a small blog and you just want it to support itself with a little extra income, and you don’t wish to reach your pocket for its maintenance costs you can easily do this with AdSense.

AdSense is also very good for people who host a lot of pages or very large community blogs. Even if the said pages or blogs don’t generate a lot of traffic individually, every click counts and you can earn up with a lot of money by doing this. And that just goes to prove that sometimes quantity matters nearly as much as quality.

There’s no telling how much money you’re going to make by using Google’s AdSense program on your blog but you can sort of tell for yourself, before actually starting, by taking a few things into consideration.

First, is the amount of visits your blog may now get every day. While there’s no way to estimate precisely on this, you can generally make a safe assumption that if you have a lot of clicks per day you’ll be making good money.

Also, this depends on what exactly your blog is about. If your site is about anything popular (music, sex, whatever) you’re bound to get a lot of banner clicks. These have a coefficient associated with them, called the CTR (click through ratio).

Basically, what it translates to is that if a large proportion of your site’s visitors click the ads you’ll be making more money. And the best way to do this is to have some popular content in your site, ensuring the links direct users towards popular items as well.

Then of course, there’s the position and number of ads on your blog. While you don’t want to overdo it, having many ads will undoubtedly generate more income for you as a webmaster. Do not however believe, that if you just add a lot of ads in an important portion of your site, visitors could always just skip them (and be assured that many do just that).

There’s something between an art and a science to positioning your ads. People generally look in certain places and never look in others, and knowing this a website author and/or webmaster can do a great deal of things to increase his earnings with AdSense.

All in all, the amount of money you make with AdSense depends on many factors. But if you have a site with interesting contents and/or many pages, and if you see a constantly large amount of traffic every day, you can bet you’ll be making a lot of money with AdSense.

Even if you aren’t in the above categories, AdSense is still worth using on your blog because there’s very little hassle in setting it up, and many times it can help financially support the site, whilst being a nice bonus to get through the mail at the end of the month.

To Your Success
Cody Moya

Tags: online business opportunities, affiliate program, home business, business opportunity leads, online business, internet home business, Entrepreneur, work at home, internet marketing, internet opportunities

Blogging

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Dec 25

Blogging News Stories as They Happen Can Pay

Blogging No Comments »

Blogging news stories as they unfold is one of the most
exciting and controversial applications of technology
that bloggers have discovered. One thing that makes the
blogosphere so active is the fact that it is possible to
update a blog instantaneously, so the news on blogs
tends to be more current than the news in the paper, or
on television. Unlike news delivered by these other
media, news that appears on blogs does not have to
travel through a series of editors and administrators
before it reaches the public eye. This has some
advantages, and some distinct disadvantages.

One of the most notable cases of news hitting a blog
before appearing in other media took place in July 2005
when terrorism struck London. As passengers were
evacuated from a subway car near an explosion, one
man took several photographs of the scene with his
cellular phone, and within an hour these images were
posted online. First-person accounts of the catastrophe
began appearing on blogs soon after these photos
appeared, and people all over the world learned about
the events in London by reading the words and seeing
the photos posted by bloggers.

The fact that these stories and images were being spread
directly by individuals operating without the added
filter of a reporter helped to make the crisis feel very
immediate to people across the globe. When it comes to
blogging, news often appears in a very personal context.
This has the potential to be the beginning of an exciting
new era of reporting, one that takes “New Journalism”
to it’s logical next step by putting the power to shape
how the news is written and read directly into the hands
of the public.

Many bloggers and cultural commentators who are
champions of the weblog movement feel that this
growing trend of individuals who getting their news
from blogs is a good thing, because it makes the flow of
information more democratic. By decentralizing the
control of news, blogs allow more voices to enter the
field of debate about important current events.
However, many people are adamantly opposed to the
use of blogs as news outlets, and there are plenty of
good arguments on this side of the debate. Unlike
newspapers or television stations, few blogs have fact-
checkers, and there is little attention paid to journalistic
accountability on many blogs. This can lead to the rapid
spread of misinformation, and more than one falsehood
has taken the blogosphere by storm. The questions
about whether blogging news as it happens is ethical or
not are very complicated, but no matter where you stand
on the topic of current events blogs you are almost sure
to agree that this movement has the potential to
revolutionize how modern people get their news.

To Your Success
Cody Moya

Tags: make money online, affiliate program, internet opportunities, home business, small business, work from home, internet marketing, online marketing, business opportunity leads, business opportunity

Blogging

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Dec 25

Blogging for Profit Begins Here

Blogging No Comments »

Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goal is not far beyond the reach of someone with average intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging technology. However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog. Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons.
Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging. The other trap that many bloggers fall into has to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn a profit as a blogger, the key to success is to make a realistic plan and stick with it.

To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will need is a large readership. The higher your traffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you. However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in order to make a profit isn’t easy. As more and more blogs appear each day, having a great idea or a wonderful writing style is no longer enough to get attention.
You need to be able to market your blog effectively. Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines like technorati, and once your readers know that you update frequently they will return to your site on a regular basis. However, it does not matter how often you update if nobody is reading your page, so don’t skimp on the time that you spend drawing visitors to your site.

To make your dreams of blogging for profit a reality, try decreasing your number of posts and using some of that time to draw new visitors by setting up link exchanges with other bloggers, making contacts in the blog community, and following other established modes of winning traffic. Of course, even if you are a marketing genius or have a really great idea for a blog, success is not going to happen overnight.

Building the kind of readership that blogging for profit requires takes time, and in all likelihood it will be at least several months before you are able to turn much of a profit. Try to stay committed to your blogging project during this initial rough period. To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.

To Your Success
Cody Moya

Tags: small business, Entrepreneur, work at home, affiliate, online marketing, home business opportunity, business opportunity, online business, make money, affiliate program

Blogging

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Dec 13

The Easy How-To Make Money Blogging Guide

Blogging, Make Money Online No Comments »

There are two major types of business models that entrepreneurs use to make money blogging. The first and most common way to turn a blog into a profit making machine is to sell advertising to different companies and brands who want to reach that blog’s readers.
The second kind of money making blog is one that helps a single brand improve its image by creating positive associations between the blog and the product in the mind of consumers. Both kinds of blogs can make a lot of money, especially if the creator has a keen mind for marketing.

If you are blogging with the goal of selling advertising, there are two basic ways that you can go about recruiting sponsors who want to put ads on your site; you can let someone else do all of the legwork, or you can do the work yourself and keep all of the revenue. Within the first group, many people make money blogging by selling space through Google’s AdSense program.
The advantages of this program are numerous, as it requires very little effort on the part of the blogger or webmaster to begin raking in profits. However, most people discover that they make less money through this method than they had hoped that their blog would earn. Selling advertising directly to companies who want to put banner ads or sponsored links on your blog can take quite a bit of time, but it is often fairly lucrative.

If you have a lot of contacts in industries that are related to the topic of your blog, you may want to try to go this route. People who have a strong background in sales and are experienced at pitching proposals can make quite a bit of money by renting blog space to interested companies.
The most serious problem with this model is that you often have to build quite a sizable readership before you can attract advertisers, which can mean that you have to do several months of work before you start to make money blogging. As blogging becomes a more and more lucrative business, a lot of established companies are considering how they