When you first sign up for a blog on a site like Blogger, there is a wide variety of options made available that allow you to reach out to your readers. From customizable templates to imbedded videos, audio and advertising, the new blogger seemingly has the world at his or her fingertips. That warm and fuzzy feeling eventually starts to wear off though as new ideas pop up that may not be immediately covered by Blogger’’s built-in features.
Luckily, Blogger and essentially any other blogging platform allows its writers to add any number of open source add-ons to their blogs for enhanced features and interaction with readers.
AdSense
The single greatest thing you can do for your blog is turn it into a profitable outlet for your daily writing. Google’’s very own AdSense add-on is one of the easiest and most effective ways to do this. The best part is that it is incredibly easy to add AdSense to your blog through the interface provided by Google in Blogger.
All you need to do is sign up for an AdSense account using the same login ID you currently use for Blogger. Go to the template page of Blogger where you will find a visual layout of your site. Click on any of the “Add a Page Element” links on the page and you will be asked how big you would like your ads to be, how many to place, and what background colors they will have. It is quick and easy and integrates directly into your account.
Templates
The templates page is a great place to find and make a great deal of changes to your blog, the best and most visible impressive add-on being a new template. The code for your template can be located here, within the Template tag of your blog settings. To change your template, all you need to do is find a new one that you like and copy the code.
While Blogger comes with a couple dozens templates already installed, there are thousands more options available almost anywhere you look on the Internet. So, despite what Blogger may want your site to look like, you can make almost any changes you want, assuming you can find someone who has built a template to match your desired look.
Subscribe to Comments - by email
This simple add-on can be found within Blogger’’s own Buzz page, the company blog that announces new changes and updates to their website and services. To find it, look for it just below your list of blogs on your dashboard.
This new add-on makes it easy for you to stay in the conversation loop after you comment on a post. Blogger now gives you the opportunity to receive an email every time someone comments on the same post. This way, if you ask a question of the post author, you will get instant notification of their response without having to check back on their blog. To use this feature you will need to have a Google account which will insure that someone else can”t provide your email causing your to receive email that you didn”t request.
Amazon Widgets
Another great way to make a few dollars from your writing, Amazon widgets allow you install links to products on Amazon that your readers may be interested in buying. Sign up for a free Associates account with Amazon and you can then install these widgets with your own Associate ID number and get commission for any sales made through your site. It is a great way to make relevant ads on your site linked to posts you have written.
Bookmarking Buttons (Digg, Delicious, Facebook, etc)
These are almost required in today’’s age of social bookmarking and networking. By default, the only way a reader can interact with you on your blog is through the commenting feature. However, you can install simple button links on your site to services like Digg and Delicious where they can bookmark your posts and share them with millions of other social bookmarkers. To add these buttons to your page, visit the websites for Digg or Delicious and search for buttons and links after signing up for a new account. They install easily within the code of your template (which these sites will guide you through doing).
There are countless additions you can make to your Blogger blog through widgets and third party applications. When someone has an idea, someone else has probably already created an application to serve that idea. The best way to find new widgets is to search Google for “Blogger Widgets” or “Blogger addons” and search through the listings provided. You can do wonders with your blog with the right resources.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Top 20 Tips for Beginner Bloggers
1. Choose a topic that you know, like, and are passionate about. This way you will never get bored and will keep your audience always interested and asking for more.
2. Pick a topic where there is not a lot of competition. If your topic is too common, try addressing it from a particular angle or focus on a specific niche. For example, there are many sites that talk about cars, but few that specialize in only one brand, and even fewer that focus on only one model. The key to be successful is to find a specific enough topic with a large enough audience.
3. Open a Blogger account. It is free and easy to use. That way, you won’t have to invest in costlier platforms like MovableType or TypePad before you have the chance of finding out if blogging is for you.
4. Use a minimalist template, preferably one with a white background. This format is easier to read and pleasant to the eye when you combine it with color pictures.
5. Use pictures to dress up your blog entries and give your blog a more professional appearance. You can find excellent pictures at a very low cost in istockphoto.com, or even free in Flickr (don’t forget to ask the owner of the picture for permission before you use it).
6. In one of your blog’s side columns, list six or seven links to authoritative sites related to your topic. When the search engine robots visit your blog, they will find these links and your blog will benefit by association.
7. Write in simple language, short paragraphs and using bullet points. These are essential guidelines for writing on the web, and will make your posts easier to read and understand.
8. Always link out to the sources you use to document your posts. This is not only good etiquette but also a way to promote your blog and get links: when the people you link to find out that they’ve been linked to, they will most likely link to your post from their site or blog.
9. Check your posts for spelling and grammatical errors. This will make your blog look more professional and will increase the probability of other people linking to it.
10. Use labels to categorize your posts and keep your blog neatly organized. Blogger recently modified its software to allow the use of labels.
11. Participate actively in forums and discussion groups related to your topic. Find what are the most common questions and provide the answers in your blog. Then, direct forum readers to your blog. Try to also direct forum readers to other resources, or answer without necessarily linking to your blog, sometimes. If not, you may be perceived as self serving and only interested in promoting your blog.
12. Use HitTail to research topics to write about. HitTail gives you a list of the search terms used by those who came to your blog through a search engine. This search term list will give you ideas for future blog posts.
13. Allow your blog readers to email your posts to other people. Also, give them the option to bookmark your posts using del.icio.us, furl, or any other social bookmarking service. You can go to AddThis to download a smart button that makes it easy to bookmark your posts. You can find instructions on how to add the button to Blogger here. The easier you make it to share your blog posts, the more relevant traffic your blog will get.
14. Use Technorati tags at the end of your blog posts. Technorati tags are a way of classifying your blog posts by topic and have them added to Technorati’s index (Technorati is the most important search engine for blogs). Use this automatic Technorati tag generator to avoid having to create the HTML code manually.
15. Syndicate your blog allowing your visitors to subscribe to your feeds through their favorite aggregator. This way, they will be automatically notified every time you update your blog. You can use this tool to generate attractive syndication buttons, which you can then place in a side column of your blog.
16. Post frequently. It is the only way to keep your audience interested and coming back. Two or three times a week is ideal. Once a week is the borderline minimum that I recommend to keep your audience engaged and maintain adequate visibility in the search engines.
17. Keep a large number of posts in the main page of your blog. Search engine robots usually won’t crawl and index all your blog pages, however they will visit your main page frequently. The more content you keep in your main page, the bigger the chance of it popping up in the search engine results pages.
18. Use Google Adsense to monetize your blog. Blogger lets you add Google Adsense easily and seamlessly in several locations within a page. The best locations are within the content, and on top of the page simulating a navigation bar.
19. Don’t use Google Adsense excessively, at least at the beginning. Your initial focus should be not to monetize your blog, but to build your audience and establishing your blog's reputation as an authority within your topical community. A blog that is deep on content and lean on ads is more likely to attract the kind of links needed to become relevant to users and search engines.
20. Once your blog is established and generates abundant, relevant traffic, you can monetize more aggressively, not only with Adsense but also with affiliate links and, why not, maybe even by selling your own products.
You can see a real example of all these tips at work in this blog ;)
2. Pick a topic where there is not a lot of competition. If your topic is too common, try addressing it from a particular angle or focus on a specific niche. For example, there are many sites that talk about cars, but few that specialize in only one brand, and even fewer that focus on only one model. The key to be successful is to find a specific enough topic with a large enough audience.
3. Open a Blogger account. It is free and easy to use. That way, you won’t have to invest in costlier platforms like MovableType or TypePad before you have the chance of finding out if blogging is for you.
4. Use a minimalist template, preferably one with a white background. This format is easier to read and pleasant to the eye when you combine it with color pictures.
5. Use pictures to dress up your blog entries and give your blog a more professional appearance. You can find excellent pictures at a very low cost in istockphoto.com, or even free in Flickr (don’t forget to ask the owner of the picture for permission before you use it).
6. In one of your blog’s side columns, list six or seven links to authoritative sites related to your topic. When the search engine robots visit your blog, they will find these links and your blog will benefit by association.
7. Write in simple language, short paragraphs and using bullet points. These are essential guidelines for writing on the web, and will make your posts easier to read and understand.
8. Always link out to the sources you use to document your posts. This is not only good etiquette but also a way to promote your blog and get links: when the people you link to find out that they’ve been linked to, they will most likely link to your post from their site or blog.
9. Check your posts for spelling and grammatical errors. This will make your blog look more professional and will increase the probability of other people linking to it.
10. Use labels to categorize your posts and keep your blog neatly organized. Blogger recently modified its software to allow the use of labels.
11. Participate actively in forums and discussion groups related to your topic. Find what are the most common questions and provide the answers in your blog. Then, direct forum readers to your blog. Try to also direct forum readers to other resources, or answer without necessarily linking to your blog, sometimes. If not, you may be perceived as self serving and only interested in promoting your blog.
12. Use HitTail to research topics to write about. HitTail gives you a list of the search terms used by those who came to your blog through a search engine. This search term list will give you ideas for future blog posts.
13. Allow your blog readers to email your posts to other people. Also, give them the option to bookmark your posts using del.icio.us, furl, or any other social bookmarking service. You can go to AddThis to download a smart button that makes it easy to bookmark your posts. You can find instructions on how to add the button to Blogger here. The easier you make it to share your blog posts, the more relevant traffic your blog will get.
14. Use Technorati tags at the end of your blog posts. Technorati tags are a way of classifying your blog posts by topic and have them added to Technorati’s index (Technorati is the most important search engine for blogs). Use this automatic Technorati tag generator to avoid having to create the HTML code manually.
15. Syndicate your blog allowing your visitors to subscribe to your feeds through their favorite aggregator. This way, they will be automatically notified every time you update your blog. You can use this tool to generate attractive syndication buttons, which you can then place in a side column of your blog.
16. Post frequently. It is the only way to keep your audience interested and coming back. Two or three times a week is ideal. Once a week is the borderline minimum that I recommend to keep your audience engaged and maintain adequate visibility in the search engines.
17. Keep a large number of posts in the main page of your blog. Search engine robots usually won’t crawl and index all your blog pages, however they will visit your main page frequently. The more content you keep in your main page, the bigger the chance of it popping up in the search engine results pages.
18. Use Google Adsense to monetize your blog. Blogger lets you add Google Adsense easily and seamlessly in several locations within a page. The best locations are within the content, and on top of the page simulating a navigation bar.
19. Don’t use Google Adsense excessively, at least at the beginning. Your initial focus should be not to monetize your blog, but to build your audience and establishing your blog's reputation as an authority within your topical community. A blog that is deep on content and lean on ads is more likely to attract the kind of links needed to become relevant to users and search engines.
20. Once your blog is established and generates abundant, relevant traffic, you can monetize more aggressively, not only with Adsense but also with affiliate links and, why not, maybe even by selling your own products.
You can see a real example of all these tips at work in this blog ;)
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Everything You Wanted To Know About Blog Hosts
Blogs are made to welcome the insights and opinions of all and therefore, should not be written to sound intimidating and too formal. This kind of blog is a sure way to put off the readers. In the basics of blogging, conversational tone would be more appropriate to reach the desired audience.
Blogging is all about individuals reaching out to other individuals. Having a blog has its own set of advantages:
-Freedom of Expression. If you want people to hear you out and give their own opinion, this is the best way to create a line of communication;
-Networking is at its best. Having a blog is a good platform for exchanging genuine ideas from consumers to you as marketer of a certain product. Sound opinion and point of view is better than just showing the price quote;
-Excellent advertising platform. Blogging is a new way to advertise products, a refreshing change from the traditional advertising outlets and it is cost-effective.
-Gauging public opinion on products and services. The key is nice and catchy titles with new ideas presented in your content. This is an assurance of quick and repeated responses from your readers. Blogs is an excellent spot for the exchange of ideas between the seller and the consumer. Good for measuring public opinion regarding services and products, even political and business matters alike.
-Useful tool for internal communication. This will help your company to build a knowledge-based community of employees. Also good for harnessing employee relations and identifying human resource issues in advance.
-Other benefits like search engine optimization (SEO) will help your blogs to be seen often by as many people as you wish. This is very good exposure for your products and services.
Many blog hosting services are available on the Internet. But the basic question is which one of the services will be the best to start off your business blog program? Business people are usually clueless to recent technological innovations which would help them maximize their marketing potentials. For these beginners, it is best to study first the services offered by blog hosts. An ineffective business blogging program may damage marketing opportunities instead of enriching them.
A company may decide to do the following depending on its capacity and needs: 1) Host their own blog service, 2) Pay someone else to host the service, or 3) Setup a blog aggregator page and ask the employees to select their blog hosting services individually. There are paid and free services available for individuals.
For business blogs, they are required to have the latest blogging features; if not, this will prevent them from maximizing their marketing, public relations and SEO potentials.
Keep in mind that blogs should have the following basic essentials:
COMMENTS. Welcoming comments provide opportunity for dialogue. In business blogs, they are a good customer feedback mechanism. This helps develop better customer relations based from loyalty and trust. Blogging is an innovative way to converse with your customers.
TRACKBACK. This helps in maximizing company and product exposure. Through this service, consumers can get back to you for more posts and updates without the difficulty of locating you. If your blog is popular in a specific online community chances are links going back to your blog site are everywhere online, other blog sites or even websites.
CATEGORIES AND TAGS. These both help in classifying blog searches for ease of navigation and on site search. Categories act as libraries because it classifies posts by subject matter such as business, distance learning, e-commerce, online auctions, etc. Tags, help in the classification, especially in the blog search engine Technorati. Possible customers and new clients locate blogs about certain topics of interest by just clicking the tags.
RSS FEED. Really Simple Syndication is the feed from your blog that is sent out over the internet, and collected through the various newsreaders and aggregators.
If your company is to establish a business blogging program, considerable options should be made available by the hosting companies shortlisted for the services. Free blog hosting services are popular but they are much appropriate for individual online journals. Paid blog hosting services offer unlimited packages best for the needs of your company. You may want to suggest checking out some blogs that use the host first, read and examine their layout and design. Another important thing to consider is a reliable technical support the host has.
After, choosing the blog host, a team should be ready to plan the design and structure of the blog: The team should:
-create a style that meets the needs of the audience;
-establish an open, credible tone;
-schedule weekly updating of blog - ideally, a few times a week.
-include weblinks of other website and blogs.
-blog post should be in the first person.
-focus on the business blog objective; and,
maintain an honest, engaging conversational quality.
Remember, whatever the look, style and content found on your blog is a reflection of you and your company.
Can You Earn a Living at Home as a Blogger?
Blogging is hot. You can find ebooks about it, read about it in major magazines or even hear about it on television. But is it for just anyone or just the lucky few?
Much depends on your goals. How soon do you need to be earning? How much do you want to earn? How much effort are you willing to put into blogging?
Just about anyone who can write reasonably well can earn some money as a blogger. I don’t mean you need to write well enough to become a published author. Blogging is often done in a very personal, conversational style, which is something most people can manage. Just write as though you’re talking to a friend.
There are now websites that hire bloggers at varying rates. Some pay depending on the number of posts while others have profit sharing plans.
You can also start your own blog. Blogging on your own means you have to learn how to market your website and earn money from it, so it’s not all that easy. But it can be done and at low or even no cost.
There are websites such as http://www.blogger.com that allow you to create free blogs. The problem with the free model is the sheer lack of control. Your blog can be deleted with very little warning. Also, some free blog sites don’t allow you to advertise on your site, which takes away most of your ability to earn money from your blog. You will want to check the terms of service before starting if you want to earn.
Another problem with free sites is that you can lose your blog simply because someone labels it spam. If you don’t respond in time your blog can be deleted, even if you wrote every word yourself. This is more likely in highly competitive areas where people are eager to get rid of competition when possible.
Hosting your own blog is actually pretty easy. You can buy a domain name for under $10 per year and hosting can be quite affordable, often under $10 per month. Many hosts have one click install of the Wordpress blog software, which is popular, fairly easy to use and has many themes and plugins available to make your blog look and work the way you want it to.
Monetization is a big trick. Recently a new way to earn from your blog has come about in the form of sites which pay you to post about particular sites or products on your blog. There has been quite a bit of controversy about this, as some feel it takes away from your blog to do so, but my own opinion is that so long as you give your honest opinion and keep things relevant and useful there is little or no harm to getting paid for a post.
AdSense is another alternative. You need to have traffic and hope people click on your ads without actually telling them to do so, but once you have that going it can be quite profitable. Without enough traffic you may be lucky to earn a couple bucks each month, however.
Affiliate programs are another way to earn from your blog. If you find relevant products you can recommend to your readers and get paid when (if!) people buy them, you can earn pretty well from them. Once again, of course, you’ll need some pretty good traffic for this to work for you.
Traffic is not that easy to come by, but it can be done. A good route to that for a blogger is to make comments on other blogs. It will bring attention to your blog, especially if your comments are relevant and interesting.
A big question people ask about blogging is whether to start one or several. My advice would be to start with one and spend a few months getting a feel for it. Then you can decide for yourself - are you up to running multiple blogs? It’s a very personal decision and you need to decide which way is most likely to be successful for you.
Whatever you do, make sure you blog about something you enjoy talking about and know well. You want to build a solid reputation. That will give you your best chance to earn good money and have fun with what you are doing.
Much depends on your goals. How soon do you need to be earning? How much do you want to earn? How much effort are you willing to put into blogging?
Just about anyone who can write reasonably well can earn some money as a blogger. I don’t mean you need to write well enough to become a published author. Blogging is often done in a very personal, conversational style, which is something most people can manage. Just write as though you’re talking to a friend.
There are now websites that hire bloggers at varying rates. Some pay depending on the number of posts while others have profit sharing plans.
You can also start your own blog. Blogging on your own means you have to learn how to market your website and earn money from it, so it’s not all that easy. But it can be done and at low or even no cost.
There are websites such as http://www.blogger.com that allow you to create free blogs. The problem with the free model is the sheer lack of control. Your blog can be deleted with very little warning. Also, some free blog sites don’t allow you to advertise on your site, which takes away most of your ability to earn money from your blog. You will want to check the terms of service before starting if you want to earn.
Another problem with free sites is that you can lose your blog simply because someone labels it spam. If you don’t respond in time your blog can be deleted, even if you wrote every word yourself. This is more likely in highly competitive areas where people are eager to get rid of competition when possible.
Hosting your own blog is actually pretty easy. You can buy a domain name for under $10 per year and hosting can be quite affordable, often under $10 per month. Many hosts have one click install of the Wordpress blog software, which is popular, fairly easy to use and has many themes and plugins available to make your blog look and work the way you want it to.
Monetization is a big trick. Recently a new way to earn from your blog has come about in the form of sites which pay you to post about particular sites or products on your blog. There has been quite a bit of controversy about this, as some feel it takes away from your blog to do so, but my own opinion is that so long as you give your honest opinion and keep things relevant and useful there is little or no harm to getting paid for a post.
AdSense is another alternative. You need to have traffic and hope people click on your ads without actually telling them to do so, but once you have that going it can be quite profitable. Without enough traffic you may be lucky to earn a couple bucks each month, however.
Affiliate programs are another way to earn from your blog. If you find relevant products you can recommend to your readers and get paid when (if!) people buy them, you can earn pretty well from them. Once again, of course, you’ll need some pretty good traffic for this to work for you.
Traffic is not that easy to come by, but it can be done. A good route to that for a blogger is to make comments on other blogs. It will bring attention to your blog, especially if your comments are relevant and interesting.
A big question people ask about blogging is whether to start one or several. My advice would be to start with one and spend a few months getting a feel for it. Then you can decide for yourself - are you up to running multiple blogs? It’s a very personal decision and you need to decide which way is most likely to be successful for you.
Whatever you do, make sure you blog about something you enjoy talking about and know well. You want to build a solid reputation. That will give you your best chance to earn good money and have fun with what you are doing.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Six Easy Steps to Making Money with Your Blog
I'm going to give you 6 quick pointers on how to optimize your blog to drive traffic and hopefully earn some extra Adsense and affiliate income. One huge benefit of using blogging as a means to create your site vs. trying to build your own is the ability to monetize your content immediately and not have to worry about page layout, graphics, hosting, domain names, and content management. This is a massive time saver when using the free bloggers such as Blogger or Wordpress hosting. The downside is that you cannot fully control the fine tuning of your site for specific optimizations. Nevertheless, you must let go of this desire and focus on your content - which is a very good thing.
So, let's start with the key topics you need to consider when optimizing a blog:
1. The Blogging Service
1. The Blogging Service
2. Layout
3. Links
4. Keywords
5. Traffic
6. Site Tricks
1. The Blogging Service - this is a very important choice because some of the free blogging services do not allow you to place context ad such as AdSense on the free blogging service (they allow it if you host your own blog). Because of this I strongly recommend using Blogger as your free service since it is easy to use and is ad friendly.
2. Layout - since you are using a free service you must get over the desire to control your site. Let go! Most free blogging sites allow you to tweak the layout somewhat. There are some tricks you can use to easily keep your site a blog but at the same time add sections as if you were on your own site. For example, keep one blog entry for all of your favorite external links and descriptions. This is where you can continue your link sharing with other sites and continually add new ones. Now, add a specific link to this article on the sidebar so that there is a direct reference when the article gets archived. That way any readers will always find the links article and not have to search or stumble upon it. (Note, you can use this same technique for additional pages that refer to specific topics so that you have a directory of topics on your sidebars).
3. Links - besides the links I noted in #2 you should always use plenty of linking from within every article you publish. The internet values links and the more you use from your blog entries the better. Other sites pay attention to who's linking to them and when they see a referral in their logs your appreciation level increases. Also, add your favorite affiliate and topic links to your sidebars.
4. Keywords - I cannot stress the importance of this but I'm not going to go into detail on keyword identification other than to say that each blog entry should focus on a SEO keyword phrase or name - especially the title. Be sure to use your titles carefully and use the same keywords in your entry. This will mark the blog entry to the keyword topic (remember, each blog entry is a separate web page that can be indexed). Also, be sure to include the keyword near the end of the blog entry as well.
5. Traffic - don't forget to promote your blog to drive traffic! Use all the means possible to do this - forums, articles, reprint rights, etc. Be sure to post well written comments on other highly ranked blog sites. However, don't make the mistake and write only a quick comment. Always write your responses in a way that is interesting and direct to the point. There's enough free material out there to do this!
6. Site Tricks - another simple technique is to place hard coded links to your favorite blog entries and articles in the bottom of the Blog template. That way it will show up on every page. Eventually you can make this your site map which is very important to the search engines. The last thing you want is your blog links to be archived!!
And, of course, don't forget to add your AdSense sections.
Just by completing these 6 simple tasks you can get your blog monetized in no time at all!
Just by completing these 6 simple tasks you can get your blog monetized in no time at all!
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