For Teens - Make Money Online With Blogs

By Zhenya S

Here is a moneymaking idea for teens -- make money online by blogging. If you're not sure what blogging is, it's like keeping a diary -- only it's an online diary. Entries written in traditional diaries vary in their subjects from day to day -- depending on the events of each day. But it is usually best if your blog centers on a particular subject -- perhaps your favorite hobby. For example, if you enjoy video or computer games then you might start a blog about them. You could write about your favorite games and any hints or tips you have learned that might help others when playing their games.

Every time you make a post to your blog you could recommend a particular game, or maybe even a tutorial on playing a game. These are called affiliate programs, and you would include a special link that contains your affiliate ID. Whenever a visitor to your blog clicks on that link, and buys the product, you would get paid a commission.

There are countless affiliate products that you could recommend -- they can be physical products, or instantly downloadable digital products. Commissions paid on digital products are much higher than those paid on physical products. If you want to sell digital products such as e-books and downloadable software, then Clickbank is the best place to start because they specialize in digital products. It will cost you nothing to join them and you can then choose whichever products you want to promote from their marketplace. Because their products are digital, commissions are usually at least 50% or more of the price of the product.

To start a blog, you may want to use Wordpress. You will need to buy a domain name for it -- for this you will need to pay a small yearly fee. You will also need Web hosting to host your blog -- if you search online you should be able to find plenty of Web hosting companies that charge you around $3-$4 per month.

Squidoo

If you want to avoid these costs, you can. Simply sign up with Squidoo.com and put your blog there. You won't need to pay for a domain name and there are no Web hosting fees. Squidoo provides you with as much Web space as you want -- each page is called a lens, but it is in effect the same thing as a blog. What's more, you can have as many lenses (blogs) as you want -- and each on a different subject. You could have a lens on your favorite games, movies, and sports -- whatever you want. And on each one of them you could be promoting affiliate products and making money online. It's best to have your affiliate products closely related to the subject of your lens or blog.

Once you are used to working with blogs, you could expand and build your own website. Simply search the Net for tutorials to help you do this. This would be just the beginning. From here you could move on to bigger and better ways of making money online.

To learn more on how to make online money, visit http://affil-rev.make-money-on-line.biz for more information. This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety. The author's name, bio and website link must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

Earn Or Make Online Money by Posting on Forums and Blogs

By Zhenya S

There are many ways to earn or make online money. A lot of blog and forum owners who haven't got the time to make regular posts, are willing to pay someone else to do it for them.

Forums

There are forums on the Internet that are desperately in need of posts. Moreover, recent posts are needed because very often, people are reluctant to start new discussions or contribute to old posts, or if there are too few of them. So forum owners look for people to make comments, respond to other posts, and start new threads, to encourage healthy forum discussions. As the forum develops and more people visit and add their own posts, paid posts are no longer needed.

Forums generate income in several ways. You will often see Google AdSense ads displayed on them -- these AdSense ads may attract the visitor's attention. If the visitor clicks on one of them, the forum owner makes money. However if there is little or no traffic, or no participation in the forum, then nobody will click the AdSense ads and no money is made.

There are forums on a huge variety of topics so it shouldn't be difficult for you to find one that covers a subject on which you are knowledgeable. This would help you post comments that are helpful. Short comments that don't add value to the discussion such as "me too" or " thanks for your help" will not be accepted. You will need to search online for the best paying ones because some of them pay very little.

Blogs

There are many blog owners also wanting to pay people to add comments on their blogs. A blog with no comments may not kick-start active discussions -- visitors are often reluctant to start commenting, and this is where paid comments are used. As in the case of forums, paid comments are expected to be relevant, add value to the discussion, and not be too short. You may or may not be allowed to place your own website link in the posts -- it will depend on the individual blog owner.

Your own blog

If you already own a blog yourself, and it receives a reasonable amount of traffic, there are companies that will pay you to add a post to your own blog about their product. They will expect that the blog should say something positive about their product and that it be a minimum of around 250 words.

Affiliate sales

If you own a blog or even a website, you should consider adding reviews to them about affiliate products that you are promoting. This will probably pay you the best because affiliate commissions can be 50% or more of the product price. This is where you can combine your blog or website with affiliate marketing and earn or make online money in a much greater measure. If you would like to build a website, there are plenty of helpful tutorials online to get you started.

To learn more on how to earn or make online money, visit http://affil-rev.make-money-on-line.biz for more information. This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety. The author's name, bio and website link must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

Should You Build a Corporate Blog?

By Tressa Anderson

By building a blog, you are giving your corporation a voice to express opinions and thoughts related to your branding. Without a blog, you would have to do this on a website, which would not be as effective. Blogs are personable, need to be updated more often, and convey any kind of image you are looking for.

By blogging you are giving a voice and personality to your business, which will build you credibility and make consumers like you, increase loyalty and build brand awareness. Also by building a blog you can create a link back to your website and get more traffic to your products. By having a blog you can announce new products, include testimonials, review products, announce contests, have an ezine, and so much more.

Before you build a blog you should plan what you want your blog to say, and what the brand is that you are trying to convey with your customers. Remember to keep it consistent to what your company image is. So keep in mind who your target audience is and what they are interested in reading about.

Make sure you do your market research, look at similar corporate blogs to see what works and what doesn't. A great way to get material for your blog posts, is from other blogs. (How do you think I got this post idea?)

Define key people who are responsible for updating and maintaining the blog. It is important to keep the image and personality consistent. If one day you are friendly and the next day you are cold, and impersonable, you will confuse your readers and you might lose them. Keep a few people, and verse them on how you want the tone and image of the blog to be. If you want it to be light and breezy, keep it that way. If you want it to be more real and with hard facts, don't suddenly be flaky. Your readers loyalty depends on getting what they need out of your blog.

Make sure your blog is updated as least once a week. Unlike a website, a blog needs to be updated regularly for people to enjoy. Look at other corporate blogs to see how often they update. Make it a goal to write two posts, minimum per week. Make sure your posts are solid and informative, but also reflect your brand image.

Remember to proof your work, as this is represents your company. Also, keep the comments open so that readers can comment on your posts. I think feedback is important and can help you immensely. What might not seem obvious to you, could be obvious to one of your readers.

Comments is a great way to engage the reader and make them feel like their opinions and views are valued.

Either way I think a blog is a great way to go, it can help drive traffic to your site, convey a personal side to the corporation, and keep everyone in the now. There are many free software and programs for you to try a blog out if you are unsure. Myself I like blogger.

Either way, good luck.

Tressa

Feel free to publish this article as long as you keep the resource box intact. Tressa Anderson is an online marketer, promoter, and freelance writer. Download her free branding yourself online report at http://www.traffic101.org Check out Tressa's blog at http://traffic-101.blogspot.com

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

Can You Make Money From a Blog?

By Tressa Anderson

Is it possible to make money with a blog?

Let me just start with, unless you have horseshoes up your butt, you are not going to make money off your blog right away. I'm not saying it's not possible, you might find a niche with no competition and high traffic...but the odds are against you.

Most people who start a blog, give up quickly. They either never initally launch it or worse, because it doesn't make money they give up.

Most successful blogs have been around for two years or more. And when you speak to these bloggers it's taken them that time to get traffic and a huge readership. They did not start over night as a success.

In fact when you talk to people like Darren Rowse at Problogger, he will tell you that he started his blog as a hobby. He also says that you shouldn't build a blog to make money initially, but as a hobby. If you are expecting to make money, you are going to be disappointed.

I'm not saying you can't make money on a blog. But the odds are against you. It's a constant battle of promoting your blog, and getting traffic to it. That and having highly valuable content. If your blog is just filled with google adsense, and ads, but no real content, you may get the traffic, but they won't come back.

To make money from a blog, you need to build foundation articles; reasons that people want to come to your blog. You add a value that they need, you give your readers hope. You provide them with something they are looking for.

Some bloggers say having pillar articles aren't important, but I differ. I think it's important to build a blog with a few strong articles. Hopefully these articles will create some link backs with other sites. Bigger bloggers might see your article and want to put it on their site. By doing this, they will give you a lot more traffic, and a market of readers you might not have gotten.

Another great way to get more traffic is to network. Join forums, groups, comment on other blogs with similar subjects. The more you publish your url on sites, the more linkbacks you create, the more you are increasing your page rank.

I think submitting your link on popular blogs via comments is a great way to go. Even if they have no follows. (No follow means your link is not a trusted source and google won't trust that link back, which doesn't help your page rank. Some blogs do have follow, which means when you link to them, your link is treated as a trusted source and helps your page rank.) Why I think commenting on no follow blogs is a good thing, because if 3,000 people are reading that blog article, that's 3,000 people reading your comment. And lo and behold, you are getting traffic you might not have originally gotten.

Some people actually try to be one of the first comments by a popular blog author, that way everyone who reads that article and wants to comment on it, is going to see that first comment. And the important thing is, to actually read the post you are commenting on, and offer something on value. If your comment is generic and dull, you might not get the traffic you would if your comment added value, or was interesting. The odds that people are going to click on your link are increased when you appear intelligent and informed.

Writing an article and submitting them in free article databases is another great way to get yourself out there. Write 3 or 4, 300-500 word articles and submit them to as many free sites as you can. Just be careful to make your article informative and not a sales letter. If it's nothing but promotion, your article might be rejected. Also keep in mind when submitting articles, it takes them a bit of time to be published.

Well that's a few ways to get you started on making money. Remember to never give up, and at least once a day concentrate on promoting your blog. Submit links to everything you can, and always blog. The more blog posts you have, the more important google is going to think you are. How do you think some of the popular blogs got that way? They offer pages and pages of content. For you to build a readership, you need to do the same.

Feel free to publish this article as long as you keep the resource box intact. Tressa Anderson is an online marketer, promoter, and freelance writer. Download her free branding yourself online report at http://www.traffic101.org Check out Tressa's blog at http://traffic-101.blogspot.com

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

How to Make Money Blogging With the Right Keywords

By Thomas Lee Dean

If you're looking to make some extra cash, blogging is for you. It's probably one of the easiest ways to make money online. It's also one of the cheapest ways to make money online. You can get started today for free! There are plenty of free blogging websites out there, blogger.com being the most popular.

When you first start out, you need to choose a topic to write about. Just choose one. It's got to be something that you're passionate about because you'll be writing content on the topic every day. When you've set up your blog, you're going to need to write content based on what people are searching for. Let's say you've chose the weight loss topic. You need to find keywords that people are searching for in the search engines.

If you head on over to the Google keyword tool, you can type your topic in and it'll give you some keywords that people are searching for. The key to attracting buyers to your blog is by choosing the right keywords. If I was blogging about weight loss I'd target people who are looking for a solution to their problem. So pick a few buyer keywords. For example; "Weight Loss Products", "The Best Way to Lose Weight". See what I'm getting at? The people searching for these phrases are looking for solutions!

So when you're writing the content for your blog, you need to tailor each post to these keywords. Include these keywords in the title, and once or twice through the post making sure the content flows and makes sense.

There is a lot more to do than that, but it's enough to get you started. Blogging is certainly a method that can generate a lot of cash. I've included a resource below that helped me create my part time income by blogging. I hope it helps you out.

Click here to go to Blog Cash and start earning money from FREE blogger blogs today!

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

Biggest Mistakes Newbies Make When Blogging

By Thomas Lee Dean

Blogging is probably one of the easiest ways to make money online. It's also very cheap to get started, you can get started without spending any money. But you have to realise that if you're not going to spend money, you need to spend a lot of time building up your blogging empire.

The aim for any newbie is to create a profitable blog. You can only create a profitable blog with unique content. I see far too many newbies using articles from established article directories, or just copying the articles without leaving credit to the author. This is the fastest way to fail! If you don't create your own content, you're going to fail.

Another area that newbies go wrong in whilst blogging is writing styles. Now this all depends on what your blog is about. If you're blogging about gardening tips, don't go posting about what you had for lunch - your readers don't care! When you're blogging don't make your posts personal. Give the readers what they want. And more often than not, they're are looking for informative content!

These days newbies aren't building relationships in the blogging industry. It's important you build relationships amongst your competitors and readers. You need to find blogs that are on the same topic as yours. You can find blogs on all sorts of different topics by using Google's blog search. Leave comments on these blogs, but don't spam! Link to different blogs through your blog roll. And make sure you're encouraging your readers to comment on your posts.

I think the biggest mistake that a newbie blogger makes is not posting every day. You have to make time to post at least once a day. The search engines love fresh content, and they'll reward you for posting every day. Posting every day means more money for you, more informative content for your readers.

I've included a link below to a resource that helped me get started in the blogging world. I hope you find it useful.

Click here to go to Blog Cash and start earning money from FREE blogger blogs today!

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

4 Tips to Increase Targeted Traffic to Your Blog

By Terry Philpott

Looking to increase targeted traffic to your blog while maintaining your current subscriber base? Wondering what to write as your readers drift away or how to attract new visitors? Here are 4 simple tips that should improve your blogs performance.

1. Go visiting

Visit other blogs within your niche. See what they're doing or writing about. How does their layout differ from yours and note the subjects that are being discussed to identify any growing trends you may have missed. Note what topics are the most popular and why. With a little research this could give you plenty of ideas for future blog posts.

Also take note what these sites advertise and promote. Are there color schemes or templates that seem to be working if different from yours?

Be sure to take part in any discussions and leave comments IF you have something useful to say or contribute. Remember to include your own link in your signature file so that participants can visit your site if they so choose. You don't object to additional online traffic do you?

2. Tweak your Blog

Making minor adjustments for ad placements, opt in box positioning, or perhaps posting ideas can add up to major results.

Some quick ideas:

• Perhaps now is the time to try a new template for your site. Most blogging platforms offer numerous selections along these lines. In your 'field' observations did you notice any outstanding color schemes or templates that caught your eye?
• Is your blog set up for the visitors to interact and leave comments? If so do you really know what they want?
• Does your content speak TO your readers or AT THEM? Insure your blog posts clearly convey your message without having the reader trying to figure out what you're saying.
• Don't fear outbound links! If referencing information from other sources make available the links to these sources. Your readers will trust you more and this will empower you even further as an authority on the subject with them as their 'GO TO PERSON.'

3. Reader friendly format

• At the beginning of every post allow the reader to know what point it is your going to make.


• Use intriguing headlines to capture their interest.


• Keep your sentences and paragraphs as short as possible.


• Utilizing 'bullets' and 'numbers' when reviewing specifics makes for an easier read. Use them when you can.

4. Keep Your Content on Point!

Here's a rule to govern your blogging existence with, ALWAYS be sure not to allow your content to wander from the subject, purpose, or objective of your blog for more than a 'short' period of time if at all. Both readers and search engines do not like this!

I hope these simple tips on how to increase targeted traffic to your blog while maintaining your current subscriber base will make your blogging experience all the more enjoyable!

T.J Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina. For more information on succeeding in blog marketing and to receive a free guide that demonstrates how to find both profitable markets and products visit: http://blogbrawn.com

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

What's Remotely Hosted Blogging Software

By Sean Raymond

Blogging is very common currently. There are various blog software you can leverage to write blogs, and one of them is remotely hosted blogging software.

The most famous remotely hosted blogging software should be Blogger.com, or MySpace.com. They provide you with a blog platform including blog software, and the hosting. In order to start blogging, you will only need to open an account with them, and everything will be setup automatically in minutes. And usually, you can get all those as free.

Although this type of blogging system will give you a very easy and low-cost startup, there are some cons. of it as well, such as:

The system is less configurable

Most of them are very limited in terms of features and it's very hard to design a professional bog template with the functional they provide. You will see that almost all the blogs hosted by them looks close.

URL to Your Blog is Generic

The URL to your blog is either a sub-domain of the site or an inner link of them. You will not have your very own Blog URL. When it comes to a time that you plan to host the blog by yourselves as the growth of it, then there are 2 big issues you have to face:

It's hard to migrate the content of the existing blog to the new blog platform since the technology used is not open.

All your SEO marketing (or blog promotion) effort will be wasted. Search engine only recognizes the URL, and all your marketing effort are on your old URL, which cannot to go with your new blog. In the other word, you have to rebuild your blog brand online. This will be the biggest lost when you shift from remotely hosted blogging to self hosted blogging. Rebuilding a successful blog really takes time.

Less control

This means a lot. You cannot fix the bug of the system if there any. There is no guarantee on the reliability of the system since it's free (you are somewhat at the mercy of their platform in terms of whether their blog is working or not). If they plan to close their blogging service, then your blog will be gone.

Remotely hosted blogging software really simply the process to start a blog, but considering the cons of it, personally, I would only recommend it to some personal blog or family blog. For business blog, it would be good to host the blog by yourself.

Want to setup a blog, find the best Blog Hosting from Affordable Web Hosting directories with blog hosting review and guide.

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

Are You Able to Get the Whole Blogging Concept?

By Roderick Low

Blogging has evolved from being an online diary to a wide range of activities that one can do in a blog nowadays, which includes a way for people to advertise their business. It has been a useful and widely used online advertising tool for many people worldwide. The following are reasons why they are so popular as an advertising media.

1. Blogging is free. The only costs related is electricity bills, time and effort. All you need is to start a blog at websites such as Blogger and Wordpress. There is no need to have your own domain and this reduces a lot of headache on website maintenance, website security and legal issues. As an advertising tool, it is not considered mainstream but mainly as a supplement for mainstream advertising like search engines. Regardless, it can be very effective as an advertising tool.

2. Blogging is simple to do. All you need to know is how to type and you can blog. Design skill is a plus, since making your blog look nice is a bonus but it is not a required prerequisite. There is no need to learn complex programming codes to blog and this reduces the entry level to very low, which allows a lot of people to participate.

3. Blogging allows you to build up your personal credibility. Viewers can see your level of competency and knowledge on the product or industry or service that you are trying to promote through your blog. Also, from the words you use, they are able to guess what sort of person are you. Can you be trusted? Are you the expert you profess to be? People like to do business with trustworthy people so this is where blogging shines. By adding a personal touch to your business, you are showing people that they are not dealing with machines.

There are many more other reasons that contribute to the rise of blog advertising. One should seriously starting a blog if they want to advertise their products in a cost effective manner.

Roderick Low is the founder of Expedite Drop, an online media network company that specialize on blog advertising. Featuring over 5 different blogs and growing, Expedite Drop enable you to promote your website, products or services to highly targeted audiences.

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

A Bloggers Ultimate Question - Quality Or Quantity?

By Richael Neet

Many upcoming bloggers, to adhere to the idea of regular content and updates, often venture to the dark side, such as, copy/paste contents from articles sources, and plagiarism. The blogs appear to be full of content, but the posts are merely useless. Other bloggers follow the rule of "Quality over Quantity". They may update their blogs once in a while, but manage to produce content which is relevant to the readers and contain information that may be very rare to find elsewhere.

People may argue that quantity matters over anything. Visitors want fresh content at a regular basis, and if your blog has not been updated in over a month, you are flagged as a "lazy blogger".

So does Quantity really matter over Quality?

Yes it matters, but only in cases where you can dish out interesting posts with the regularity that users want. Maybe having multi-part to a topic so that part two of it comes after a few days, part three after another few days and so on... would be a good technique. If you are a reader of a blog, you would not want to go to the same blog and read new topics everyday or even every 2-3 days. You may venture there after a week and look out for updates. Going everyday to a blog with updates of no relevance to you would seem like a boring task.

However, it is also a good idea to analyze your visitor trends. If you have majority of visitors returning every day, it is better to refresh your blog every day. If you see them coming after a certain time span, you can follow suite with your blog updates too.

Richael Neet is a member of SiteTalk Zone, a webmasters forum offering a range of SEO tips, webmaster resources and website monetizing advise. Considered one of the fastest growing webmasters forum on the internet today, SiteTalk Zone is a must visit for anybody interested in monetizing their website or simply gaining more web mastering knowledge. SiteTalk Zone can be visited by following this web address: http://sitetalkzone.com

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

5 Reasons Why Blogs Are the Best Way to Make Money Online

By Natalie Lahti

There are many ways to make money online, but one of the very best ways to get started is by using a blog. The internet loves blogs and people like reading blogs because they're often written by a single person sharing their experience or information about a topic. You can start a blog and blog about your own experience, a hobby or passion, or even about someone else's products. The best part is, you can make money with your blog.

Here are 5 reasons why a blog is the best way to make money online:

1) No Cost. When you're starting out with any business, there are costs. However, the cost to set up a blog is zero. Minimal startup cost for your business is important because there will be other costs you'll incur. Blogger or Wordpress offer blogs that are free to set up and maintain.

2) No Skills. Even if you're new to the internet with no website design skills, blog sites have all the tools and templates you need to get started. You can set up a beautiful site that's designed to your liking very quickly and easily.

3) Minimal Maintenance. Once your blog is set up you can update and maintain it from anywhere. You don't have to worry about the technical aspects of maintaining your website because it's done via the Blogger or Wordpress templates. You can access your blog from anywhere in the world via the internet or even send a text message to post to your blog.

4) Many Customers. With a blog your audience and customers aren't limited to your zip code or state. Your blog can be seen by millions around the world, so earning an income with your blog is limitless.

5) Reaching Your Audience/Customers. Blogs tend to get higher rankings on the internet because blogs are seen as providing new and fresh content. The newer and fresher content the higher likelihood of getting new customers, and with new customers comes more income.

Blogs are a great way for newbies online or even someone with very little cash to get a start making money online. Choose blogging for its no cost, no skill, and its limitless potential for earning an income online.

I hope you find this article helpful! To find more information about making money online by blogging, visit http://www.BlogCashMachines.com You may also use content from this site as long as all links are maintained. To Your Success Online!

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

Beware of the Curse of Free Blog Hosts

By Mary Hicks

As blogging becomes more popular than people expected, more and more individuals and businesses are setting up blogs for many reasons. A vast majority of these new blogs are hosted on free blog hosting sites. This can bring more expected problems than it is worth.

For a beginner, free blog hosting can be a brilliant starting point. Without having to spend anything a blog can be setup to try blogging. The problem is that free hosts bring unexpected problems.

The first problem that a many free hosts in the past have faced is that the host is out to make money. If the free blog hosting is not making them money, they will just stop it and leave you out in the cold. This has happened before and it will happen again.

The second problem is uptime. Many of the free blog hosts also run paid services. When they have a problem, they will work on getting the paid service back running before they care about the free hosting. This means that your blog will have more down time and may lose visitors.

Once your blog starts to grow, you might look into making a bit of money with advertisements. If you are lucky enough to be on a host that allows you to place advertisements on your site, you still may run into problems. Free blog hosts always want something and in most cases they want to use the best advertising space at the top of your blog. How is your advertisement going to be seen when people are seeing your hosts advertisement first.

If your blog does become large enough that it prompts your to move hosts, you may find that this too will be a minefield of problems. Moving hosts means changing the URL that your blog is found at. If your free host does not allow this to be redirected, you may have to start your blog all over again, losing your regular visitors.

By all means, use free blog hosts to try out blogging, but if you are serious do not expect that you can get away without paying for a more professional blog host.

Written by Mary Nicole Hicks. Read her latest article "Bad blog posts" at http://www.pickbrains.com/articles/bad-blog-posts You can reprint this article as long as you link to http://www.pickbrains.com/

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

How to Properly Attribute a Creative Commons Licensed Photo

By Kevin Watson

In my last article, I described the power of Creative Commons (CC) licensing and how to use it to your advantage to find high quality pictures to make your blog or website more compelling. In order to take advantage of the vast collection of freely distributable CC content you can find on sites like Flickr, however, you need to attribute that content back to the author, and describe the license that the author has granted for that piece of content. According to CreativeCommons.org, that license will fall into one of four categories, or a combination :

"Attribution: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give credit the way you request.

Noncommercial: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work - and derivative works based upon it - but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike: You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Note: A license cannot feature both the Share Alike and No Derivative Works options. The Share Alike requirement applies only to derivative works."

So now you understand perfectly what to do when you use a CC licensed photo in your blog, right? No? Well, allow me to give you an example. Let's say you go to Flickr and search their Creative Commons section. You find that adorable picture of a cat dangling from a screen door that would be perfect for Fluffy's blog. Now what? You have to properly attribute the photo.

How do you do that? Well, according to Creative Commons, if you are using the work without making any changes to it, then you must "keep intact any copyright notices," credit the author, and provide the URL back to CreativeCommons.org pointing to the license selected. If you are altering the picture (making "derivative use"), then you need to identify that your photo is a derivative work, ie. 'Photo based on [original work] by [author]."

The best place to do all of this for a photo is in a caption just beneath that cutesy picture of the kitty. If the author specified how you should credit her, be sure to use her language. Otherwise, the caption should begin with something like "Photo by [author]." If you got your picture from Flickr, link back from the name of the photo's author to their Flickr profile page. And don't forget to link back to the Creative Commons page for the license you're using, ie. "Photo by [author] (License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs)."

If this seems like a fair amount of work to create the proper attribution, that's because it is, but hey, you're getting free creative for your website. And in my next post, I'll give you some tips for automating the process of creating these captions in Drupal. In the meantime, good hunting!

Kevin Watson, GeekTout.com GeekTout is a blog dedicated to all of the things that you geek out on. Delivering your daily dose of news, tips, humor, music and gear with sardonic wit and a definitive point of view. Everyone's a geek. What kind are you? Please visit my blog at http://www.geektout.com for more.

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

How to Make a Blog That Sells

By Jeremy A Gislason

Understanding how to make a blog that sells is essential. It is the defining difference between a blog that profits and succeeds, from another blog that fails to earn over reasonable periods of time.

One of the first things you need to acknowledge is that creating a blog that produces steady profits is not an easy task. Some top marketers will have you believe that you can be free and clear out of your job in no time. It is far from being correct.

You can make a blog and become successful on the build-up; however, chances are you are going to slam into some delays and challenges along the way. So with that understanding in mind, let me give you some additional useful points for a clearer path to blogging and creating your very first blog.

First things first! If you want to make money by blogging, you've to know how to make a blog that sells. That is, if you intend to live from the income that blogging produces.

It all starts by building your plan of action. This is nothing more than a simple business plan for immediate execution, without diverting into other distractions.

Sure, understanding how to make a blog may be your priority; however, how useful will your blog project be if you don't know where you are heading with your schedules? Not knowing where you are heading is like trying to shoot a barrel without aiming; you just won't hit your targets easily.

Start by building your plan of action. A plan of action should help you understand what you need to do in order to achieve your daily objectives, and provide a road of answer for the next steps once each daily priority is finished. A dashboard has always proven to be useful in my businesses. Do the same when it comes to the creation of your new blog.

Second, since by this step you should already have created your plan of action - start by researching the markets available for profitable business.

Third, look for a hosting account that has many of the benefits you need in order to create your very first blog. A hosting account with many of the rich features and benefits should help cut your time in the creation of the blog. With many hosting companies, there are push-button options that make the task a lot easier; while with others, you still have to upload everything via FTP.

As a fourth step, take your time to design your blog and writing style once you've the most important starting details in-check.

In conclusion, starting your very first blog is exciting if you can write easily and effectively. Most importantly, knowing how to make a blog that provides consistent income will mean the difference between a blog that stays hidden in the last of the search engine SERPs, and a blog that is very popular and in demand. Enjoy your blogging as it's very exciting, especially when you are just starting out!

Want a powerful and simple-to-use RSS feed management software to increase the 'stickiness' factor of your sites? Now you can add automated fresh (and targeted niche) content from blog feeds, news feeds, affiliate feeds, article feeds, and forum feeds! Check it out at http://www.memberspeed.com/RSS_Feed_Manager/Software.html

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

How to Earn Extra Money on the Internet With Blogging?

By Jeffrey Przybylski

Blogs have become extremely popular over the years and allow marketers to get their thoughts out quickly and easily using very affordable blogging software and plugins that are widely available. If done correctly, you can get the attention of all the major search engines and have your pages indexed extremely fast. After you've added a good amount of quality articles, you can then start implementing ways of monetizing your blog for some extra money. Once your readers grow to a point where the blog is self-sustaining, you can really explode onto the Internet with a site that truly helps people and, in turn, earns you an amazing return in advertising dollars.

Which Blogging Software do I use?

I recommend using Wordpress Blogs. You can sign up for a free account at http://www.wordpress.com or use the method I prefer, which is installing the Wordpress script itself on your own web server hosting plan. The software is easy to use and comes with an installation program that guides you through the process. The other very cool feature of Wordpress Blogs is the fact that you can use add-on plugins that extend the capabilities of your site. Go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ to search for them.

What Should I Write About?

That's the fun part - you can write about anything! Choose a hobby or something you're an expert on or have a passion for. My biggest tip for your success is just that; make sure you write about something you actually enjoy and NEVER create a blog for the sole reason of making money online. If you start a site just to earn extra money, you'll most likely fail because you'll be more concerned with income generation than writing good quality content that actually helps someone or provides entertainment. Pick a topic you love and could imagine writing about everyday.

How Often Should I Write Posts?

This depends on how motivated you are to succeed, but the most important thing is to be consistent. Consistency will make or break your blog success. This is so important because search engines like Google and Yahoo love continually updated web pages and especially blogs. If you can write a great article every single day, then do it and never look back. As I've said, even if you do every other day or every few days, make sure you're consistent and never stop...keep going and going and pump out that content.

How do I Advertise my Blog?

There are literally tons of ways to get your blog out there and known by the public, so here's a list of some of the more effective ways:

• Talk to other bloggers that write about the same topics as you and form a link exchange or relationship with them. Become friends first, then and only then ask for a link or the chance at being a guest author on their blog.



• Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools and techniques to get a much higher ranking in the search engines.



• Leave comments on other similar blogs with your name and web site link to receive lots of incoming links, which will help grow your audience.



• Submit articles to Article Directories like this one to get the word out with a link back to your Blog.



• Write quality content that engages your audience and give them a reason to subscribe to you and keep coming back for more.

Once you've been around for several months and have compiled a nice list of quality articles with a fair amount of traffic coming in, you can start to think about implementing various ways of monetizing your blog. The most common are adding banners or small ads in the sidebar area of your site that advertisers pay for per click or on a monthly basis. Additionally, you can have in-line text ads that will underline certain key phrases that, when clicked on, will open a small ad for a sponsors site. After awhile, you can even write review on your Blog for affiliate programs or products and get paid a good amount of money every time.

Really, the possibilities are endless when you want to Earn Extra Money on the Internet with Blogging. You just need to be disciplined and consistent with your articles, never stop getting the word out about them, and add lots of value for your readers. If you can do these things over and over again, you'll ensure a great Blog that will make you a wealth of money and success!

If you'd like to learn more about the keys to Success and Wealth, please visit my Let's Earn Extra Money on the Internet blog for Internet Marketing news, training, articles, and more...

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

How I Started to Make Money Online

By Garrett Laidler

There are several Easy buttons online to make money online, but the easy button I'd like to start off with is how I started to make money online, and that's blogging. Now the biggest question for blogging is simply asked, "What's in it for me?" Most people may be surprised to learn how much you could make by monetizing your blog!

A blog is really just used as a personal diary or testimonial used to express your opinions and build a large reader base. The idea of a blog, in the marketing sense, is being successful in pulling in a lot of users and/or "traffic" to either sell to, or get to come back frequently. There are a lot of people that don't use blogs to make money, but don't realize that it could be used doing exactly what they are doing now to make some extra loot. I mean why not?! Yeah, you might be blogging to keep family up date or just bloggin' about a hobby, or whatever, so why not not make some dough doing it! I mean come on you have people who have quitting their jobs because of the daily earnings they made off of a monetized blog! A couple large examples of this are PerezHilton.com, DailyKos.com, and Problogger.net. Most of the people in here are writers of some sort, and blog several times a day, but believe it or not you don't have to write a lot, or even catchy to pull viewers in.

Now to make the bigger bucks with a blog, the first step is to get a lot of visitors to that blog that understand your blogs assets for them, and make them wanting to come back for more. When someone starts building a blog, they most likely write a lot of content, and they do it often. The goal of any online business, is to do this well and receive a ton of visitors from the search engines. Most search engines, such as Google, love blogs with lots of informative information; they want to provide the searcher with the best possible answer to their question and/or what they are looking for. A blog that has many posts will attract a huge amount of traffic to it. Most blogs, if written correctly, can generate great traffic and lots of frequent readers. As your blog begins to receive a lot of traffic, Google, looks at this as an answer to whatever the blog is answering.

Here's a great example, of this. Let's say someone goes to Google and searches for "Spanish Lessons", and someone writes a blog on "learning Spanish" or free Spanish lessons. Google then sees that that blog is getting a tremendous amount of people visiting that site, Google thinks then that this must be the best possible place to look for "Spanish lessons", and moves that link up higher in the rankings. Now you have to realize Google doesn't care about the site itself. All Google cares about is getting paid! That's a totally different topic at hand, which will come later in another Easy button discussion of how to use Google to your advantage.

In any case blogs are always fresh content, they are up to date, and used on a daily basis and have to be updated daily to keep up with the rat race that's called internet marketing. This isn't such a bad thing though. Since blogs are constantly updated they are always fresher than sites that just sit there and just try to sell products. Another great thing about blogging, is it allows to be yourself and add your own flavor to something your selling, or just something you want people to know.

Blogging isn't hard! It's probably one of the easiest ways and exactly how I started to make money online. Just do it, just sit down and write about whatever your little hearts content to writing. Trust me my momma blogs, and about 6 months ago she didn't even know how to open her email. Just doing a few simple steps that are so easy to do you can have several hundred hits a day, and bring in that big money, but that's another easy button for another time! Stay tuned for more in depth articles on blogging and how to massive traffic to your sight. Until next time!

Garrett Laidler is an online marketer that has created several streams of income for him and his family. He wants to create an awareness for new and old internet marketers, to show them tactics that actually work to pull in several streams of income, just like he is doing. His passion and determination in life is to help other people achieve financial freedom as well, and help them get a fast start in th online marketing world. He wants to make sure that they can avoid the same mistakes he did and achieve their dreams and aspirations as fast as ethically possible. Get a FREE Million Dollar Easy Buttons Cd!

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This

Overnight Blog Success

By Caitlin Eliz Gibson

This is an article dedicated to those who have been unsuccessfully trying to make it big in the vast world of blogging. Myself, like many many others thought it would be simple to go to a free blog site, make up some stupid name ( lets say vodkancheetos), put in a few pithy posts, add AdSense, and BAM! overnight success. I even began telling people what things I would buy them when my blog took off and I became a mega hit. But after hours of writing, and few good ideas, becoming an internet superstar is more than plausible. You just need the right (write) stuff.

First things first. When you think about becoming a blog superstar, your most important accessory is your blog. Now before you go thinking you'll become perez hilton overnight, think what makes perez hilton so damn "readable"? First, hes in your face - so you kinda feel like you've gotta listen to the guy. Hes interesting - blue hair, a foooobbbuulous attitude and celebrity friends just command attention. Also, connections - he really knows how to get his blog out there.

Now, this does NOT necessarily mean you have to dye your hair and exchange digits with LC and Audrina, just come up with something interesting, preferably something you know a LOT about. Once youve come up with something readable, write! Then get your stuff out there. Use sites like blogexplosion and pingoat and send your site out into the web and watch it blossom.

Who knows, you could become the next Perez.

Caitlin Eliz Gibson

Digg It! Del.icio.us Stumble This