What? You Have to Be a Psychologist to Blog?

By Maggie Lancy

Did you know that there are over 70 million blogs on the internet. Most people start a blog for two reasons, they want to voice their opinion and they want to use the blog to make money. There is no doubt that blogging is an exceptional way for you to create your presence on the internet and become a force to be reckoned with, if you go about it correctly.

Believe it or not, there is a correct way to blog, see there is a psychology to it, so to speak. You have to be able to roll with what the internet world is going to throw at you, in other words, be prepared for the ups and downs. Your success is dependent upon your longevity. I want to make sure you succeed, so to help you I am going to give you priceless advice that will help your blog and create the presence you are after.

First and foremost, you have to be patient. Understand that the ranking systems such as Google and Alexa are not going to rank your blog on day one, and they aren't going to index you each and everyday from the get go. That is unless you have the bank roll to back up the blog so that you can advertise like crazy. Guess what? , most of us do not have the cash to do that! So you are in the same boat as 90% of the other bloggers out there.

The second tip is to let go of the need to be perfect. Perfectionism is the number one killer of blogs. You are going to look back at your first posts a year from now and roll your eyes! You may think now that they are very insightful and witty, great! publish them. Once you reread them a year from now, you can edit if you want. Understand that the key to fliiping the switch on the computer so that your blog makes money has less to do with being perfect and more to do with being seen! Few people out there can identify with being perfect.

Next you are going to want to embrace your failures. This is important, the only way to learn from your mistakes and imporve is to make mistakes. You are going to mess up, we all do!, the difference is that you have to seize that opportunity as a tool and use it to imporve what you are doing.

The fifth tip that I am going to offer you is to get a thick skin, and the sooner you do that the better. Face the fact right now that you are not going to make every person out there happy with what you have to say. Not everyone going to agree with you, and not everyone is going to be nice about it. Also understand that the more successful you get the more you are going to have people try and knock you down. Think of yourself as Mt Everest, no matter what anyone does to Mt Everest it does not fall. When people are trying to knock you down they are doing so because you are there. It isn't really personal against you it is more envy on their part.

Finally stay focused. Don't forget why you started your blog. While your goals may change, your opinion may change, why you went into blogging will not. It was to create online presence, brand your name, make money, help and educate people. Follow these simple steps and you and your blog will be successful!

Hello, I am Maggie Lancy. I have twenty years of networking and marketing experience! I am a coach, trainer, and mentor. I invite you to visit me at http://www.maggielancy.com/blog

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I Am Blogging About the Hobbies That Make Me More Money Online

By James Mann

It's amazing how hard we will work to make money online, well if we don't know an easier way that is. Personally I worked my butt off 7 days a week and even then I wasn't making a full time living on the internet but once I realized I could make money online blogging about things I love, my hobbies, my entire online focus changed. It was like I was in heaven.

I tried blogging previously but it didn't seem to work for me but later I realized it wasn't the blogging that wasn't working it was the topics I had been choosing. I even forgot about blogging for a couple of years and continued doing the same thing I had been doing since early 2001.

I eventually decided to start a blog to share what I have learned over the years about fishing, fly fishing specifically. That is when the lights started to come on and they got brighter and brighter as the months of sharing when by.

I didn't do any advertising on this blog as it was jut an outlet for me to share my love of fly fishing.

I Was Finally Making Money Online

After about 3 months of sharing I noticed my traffic was up over 100 unique visitors a day and I was getting all kinds of keywords showing up in my cPanel stats. That's when I added a little bit of advertising.

I started out slow as I didn't want to turn off my new readers but over the following months I added more advertising. I added 3 adblocks that were 125x125 banners. I got them from Commission Junction and they were links to fishing supplies.

Next I added inline ads from Kontera. I will admit that Kontera doesn't make me a lot of money on one blog but when you add up all my blogs it's nothing to sneeze at. It also has to do with the growth of my blogs. Most of them are still less than a year old.

Well my fishing blog was working so well that I decided to start another blog but this time I went for gardening as my wife and I had just bought a new home with a second lot so we could start gardening. I figured I may as well share what I was learning and in that way others could help us learn by sharing through comments.

A few months after my first gardening blog started it was earning money for us as well.

Now I have 3 gardening blogs and 4 fishing blogs.

We are baby boomers ready for retirement and we love to travel. Well I decided to start a travel site where we would share our travel experiences. I didn't expect it to do much until we retired and started traveling more but it just took off and now it's the blog I make the most from.

The funny part about our travel blog is that I haven't shared any of our experiences yet. I have only put up private label rights articles that I purchased online. People just started requesting ad space on our travel blog and it just keeps getting better. I now have 4 travel blogs making money for us.

So in my humble opinion blogging is a most awesome way to make a living on the internet these days. The posts can be short so there is never a problem adding content and they seem to get indexed really fast as the search engines love blogs.

James Mann is a retired computer instructor who actually quit his day job to take up residence online with the goal to make money online and live the good life. James now makes his living blogging about the things he loves and has been talking about for free his entire life, his hobbies. http://www.ebooks-with-reseller-rights.com/category/blogging-for-profit/

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Should I Pay For My Blog?

By Ed Grierson

When starting your blog it is important to first determine what the purpose of the blog is. If your blog is for nothing more than personal joy, or perhaps a place to share thoughts with a select number of individuals, then a free blog is perfectly acceptable. On the other hand, if your blog has aims at making money or perhaps feeding information to a larger number of people perhaps it's time to consider investing a little money to maximize your blog's effective reach.

If your blog fits into the second category, and you want to increase both its reach and its ability to better serve your users then you can't afford not to make the small investments necessary. Doing so costs very little and only takes two small steps:

Step 1: The first inexpensive, but extremely valuable purchase would be a personal domain name. Nothing separates your blog from the thousands of others like it's own home on the internet. No longer will it be perceived as simply a common blog, but now it's an official home for the information you are sharing. This relationship change occurs on both a conscious and subconscious level to your users. Instead of being bobsblog.blogx.com you can have something personal like makemillionstoday.com - all for just a few dollars a year.

There are a number of options for purchasing your own domain name and they start as cheap as a couple of dollars and peak out around $20 dollars. While the cheapest option may sometimes seem the best that isn't always the case. There are also options with many hosting companies to purchase a domain name, or even get one for free when you purchase a hosting plan. Be sure to research a bit about the registrar you are going to use and make sure you will actually own the domain name. Some registrars will trick you into "buying" a domain name but then maintain the rights to it and will be able to prevent you from taking that domain name with you if you wish to leave their service.

Step 2: The next big question is do you need a hosting plan? Having a paid host offers a lot of benefits to your blog. While the free host or blog site definitely is economical it often has a limited amount of features and your ability to expand your blog into a more fully developed site will definitely be limited. Whereas if you choose to go with a paid hosting plan, which can come as cheap as a few dollars a month, you open up an entirely new book of options.

Many good web hosts offer both one click blog installations as well as email lists, web forums, shopping carts, and dozens of other useful features which can make your blog a better and more productive experience for your users. Have you ever wanted to sell customized t-shirts or coffee mugs on your blog? With the proper hosting plan this could be a simple process! Having a hosting plan will also allow you to install many of the widgets, or plugins, that are available to most of the major blogging systems.

Conclusion

When we get down to the nitty-gritty the real question is can you afford not to upgrade your blog? If you're serious about your blog it is becoming paramount to invest in it by getting a personalized domain and increasing your ability to offer your users what they want and need. Doing so will increase your reach and give you a the potential to turn your blog into the career you've always wanted.

Ed Grier is an author for http://www.bestofthewebhosts.com - a web hosting news site with news, reviews, and tools for the webmaster.

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How to Increase Blog Traffic

By Ed Grierson

These days everyone has a blog but most of them float unread out on the internet cloud. So the big question I keep hearing is how do I get more traffic to my blog? The answer is simple, and if you are willing to put in a little time you can do it for free as well.

Blogs are more or less just like any other website out there. Sure they are designed to make it easy for bloggers to post news, images, and video without much computer savvy but in reality they are just user friendly mini-websites. So now that you have one you want to get more traffic to it so here's a few of the free and basic first steps to increasing your blogs traffic.

#1 Blog About Something People Care About

Seriously - if nobody cares about your blog because it's just random talk about what you ate that morning you aren't going to pick up a lot of traffic. However, regardless of how weird your interests may be someone out there also cares about them. So this one is an easy - just blog about something that someone else can relate to.

#2 Submit Your Blog to Directories

This one is also easy but takes a bit of time. There are a lot of free services out there where you can submit your blog to. They are basically like giant phonebooks for blogs and once you add your blog to their service more people will be able to find your blog. You'll be able to categorize your blog and many of them let you use your own "tags" which are basically key words. Just jump on your favorite search engine and type in something like "free blog submission" and you'll find lots of sites which can help you out.

#3 Have a Blogroll

Blogs often have a list of links somewhere that lists the other blogs or websites that are related or that the blogger enjoys visiting. If you want to help increase traffic find some sites that will trade you a link on their blog for one on yours. Don't get too carried away with this though as you can actually lose traffic if you abuse this. This is where you start to get into the internet's deeper and more inner workings so for brevity we'll just leave it with this: you don't want more than about 100 links on your front page or you might actually decrease your chance for big traffic.

#4 Submit Your Blog to Feedreaders

Most blog services have the ability to create a "feed". You might hear people talking about RSS, syndication, or feedreaders. Basically what this means is each blog creates a list of what posts have been added to it much like headlines for a newspaper. You can find sites out there like the Blog Directories which you can submit your blog feed or RSS to. If you do this they'll pick up your headlines and people can then dig through them for interesting blogs. The best part about these feed systems is that most continue to check your blog for updates so once you've submitted it you can just reap the benefits!

#5 Blog Often and When Appropriate

One mistake some people make with blogging is blogging when they have nothing useful to say just to get another "post" on their blog. If you are doing this then you are going to have a hard time making fans who are interested in saving your page in their favorites or bookmarks. However, you want to often update your blog. If you don't post regularly then you'll bore your fans. Blog often, but make sure you're blogging something of interest.

#6 Make Sure Your Blog Has a Theme

If you're blog is all over the place you'll have a hard time putting together a fan base. You may get a few hits here and there by random people but you want to build a community. To do that you'll probably want to pick a few categories you're going to post about and stick with them. If you are the type who likes to make random posts sometimes you could just make a category called Random Thoughts or something along those lines but again be careful.

#7 Pingbacks and Trackbacks

If you want people to visit your blog then visit other blogs that are related to yours and get involved. You'll find that people often leave comments with links back to their own blog or another related blog in the comments. These are part of the pingback/trackback system which can be a lot of fun and also get you a lot of additional traffic. Avoid spamming though as you'll just irritate potential friends and you'll likely have your comments removed and lose your comment ability.

#8 Appearance Matters

Every blog service offers templates which can make your blog look unique or have a style you feel fits. Often you can also customize your blog with custom graphics and tinker with the layout. While this can really help your blog be careful that you aren't making it irritating to potential readers. Not many people want to come to a blog that hurts their eyes to look at or which has loud music they don't like.

There you go, 8 simple tips on how to increase your blog traffic. The last thing to remember is that building up your blog traffic is going to take time. Depending on the potential number of people interested in your topics and your other blogging related skills it could take weeks and even more likely months to really get things going. If you blog it, they will come!

Ed Grier is an author for http://www.bestofthewebhosts.com - a web hosting news site with news, reviews, and tools for the webmaster.

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How to Write a Better About Page For Your Business Blog

By Denise Wakeman

The "About" Page, also known as your bio page, is one of the most visited pages on a blog. Readers want to know the author of a blog: their story and why they are blogging. Yet most business bloggers are missing this opportunity to connect with readers. Many blog authors write about their education and job history in a dry manner.

Your 'About' page should be written appropriately for your blog - not copied from a professional bio or CV where you talk about yourself in the third person.

Remember a blog is a conversation, more like writing an email to your favorite client. The more you can connect with readers by using the "I" and "you" pronouns, the more it will feel and read like a conversation.

More importantly, rather than delivering your past experiences and education, your about page is an opportunity to connect with readers on an emotionally profound level.

• What's your story?
• Why did you decide to start a blog?
• Why are you passionate about your niche?
• What were the pivotal moments in your life and work that led you to where you are now?

People want authentic stories. They want to know who the person is talking to them through the blog. Why should they care what you have to say? What makes you the expert? Why should they believe anything you say?

Tell readers about the challenges you've faced and how you've overcome them. Be real with readers. When you are transparent, you become someone readers can relate to; readers will begin to connect and see more than words written on a web page.

Your business blog is more than a brochure or a marketing tool. It's an opportunity to establish intimacy with readers who are searching for inspiration and solutions to their problems. People do business with people, not companies. It's up to you to breath life into your blog and the "About" page is the place to start.

For more leading edge business blogging tips get a free report on Better Business Blogging at http://www.betterbizblogging.com To learn about using more social media tools like blogs, go to http://www.buildabetterblog.com Business blogging expert Denise Wakeman is co-founder of The Blog Squad.

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How to Have a Poorly Branded Blog... And How to Fix It

By Denise Wakeman

In a tour around the blogosphere looking for excellent business blogs, it's not uncommon to observe a variety of conditions that reflect poorly on the state of business blogging.

• Many business blogs are languishing


• Some haven't been posted on in weeks or months


• Some are all over the map with their content

And it gets worse! One of the most common mistakes being committed is little attention to branding for the business.

What does that mean?

When visitors land on your blog, in a blink of the eye, they should know:

• Who the blog is for


• What the blog is about


• Why they should stick around and read your content


• Why they should subscribe


• Who you are and why they should believe what you have to say

Without following best practices that address these points, a blog is confusing and ineffective. It will not reflect well on you professionally; it will not work to build your list of prospects and most likely will not convert readers to clients.

These common mistakes are on blogs written by intelligent professionals who are very good at what they do, in their fields. They just haven't understood and mastered business blogging yet. Perhaps you might be experiencing a few of these problems on your own blog as well. If that's the case, you aren't alone. These are actually quite common challenges.

Your blog must pass the "blink" test: It must be immediately recognizable and memorable.

Branding goes beyond finding a clever name, though that is critical as well. Along with a clearly defined core message, there are a few elements must be in place for you to create a well-branded blog that attracts massive visibility:

A descriptive name - if you're starting your blog, are you branding YOU, your business, your book? Know the purpose of your blog so you can name it appropriately.

Tagline - who is the blog for? What are the benefits for your readers? Who you are, your name and your expertise

A customized banner - ties in with your brand, your website, logo, brand colors; it extends the look and feel that represents you and your values

Your photo and bio page - These two items should be a good representation of you as a professional.

Once you have established the name and brand for your blog, then it's easier to stay focused and build visibility with a consistent image of your business throughout the blogosphere.

For more leading edge business blogging tips get a free report on Better Business Blogging at http://www.betterbizblogging.com . To learn about using more social media tools like blogs, go to http://www.buildabetterblog.com . Business blogging expert Denise Wakeman is co-founder of The Blog Squad.

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How to Make Money From Your Blog - 10 Easy Ways to Make Profits Online

By Damodar Kakule

To know how to make money from your blog, it is important to understand first, what is blogging? Blogging can be defined as a frequent, chronological publication of thoughts published in the form of articles. It can be used as a free marketing method of promotion by providing important information about your products and services to the people all over the world.

As the blog movement has increased in popularity, blogging has become one of the latest craze to hit the internet. The best way to grow your internet home based business without much of your investment is to learn how to make money from your blog and provide quality content on regular basis to the people searching for knowledge based information on the internet.

If you succeed in building high-traffic, you can influence thousands of people. So your main focus should be on mastering the blogging tactics that will help you to maintain constant flow of traffic to your website, as it is the primary necessity of online income generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales and obviously more affiliate sales.

10 things that you should know to make money from your blog:

1. Give easily rememberable name to your blog to make it easy for the visitors to spread the word.

2. Create mind catching titles with fresh ideas presented in the content of your articles.

3. Update your blog by writing minimum two articles per week and insert a site link in the article resource box to give exposure to your products and services.

4. Make it a point to write the content that will give enjoyable experience to the readers.

5. The people are visiting the blogs with intention to find the information that they haven't seen before. So make it a point to write content that will meet the reader's expectation.

6. Do some research to find out the SEO friendly keywords that are being searched by people, so that your blog is seen by large number of people, while using those keyword phrases.

7. Communicate concepts and express ideas in a way people will find them more interesting.

8. Conduct a survey once a month for your readers that will help you to know their advertising preferences and convert them into buyers in the course of time.

9. Encourage people to comment on your blog posts and remember to respond to their comments. By this way, you can keep the conversation going by bringing the visitors back to your site and maintain the flow of traffic to your site.

10. Engage your readers by adding the content which will make them feel special, recognized and appreciated.

Blogging can be highly used as a marketing medium by being in touch with your visitors. But make it a point to retain only the required quality content on your website by eliminating the unnecessary words to cut the boring parts, as the readers are more likely to commit to something that they will like to read and finish.

After learning all the aspects of how to make money from your blog, if blogging is done properly by inserting the right keywords in your article content to get higher search engine rankings and continuous flow of traffic, it can turn out to be a great source of making money online by increasing your sales on daily basis.

My Name Is Damodar D. Kakule. Welcome To My Site To Get Valuable Gifts For You And See The Top Home Based Businesses... Earn Full-time Income From Home and Retire Early By Having A Money Making Website Setup ' FREE - FOR YOU ' Within 24 Hrs.

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Can Any Online Business Have a Blog?

By Alex Cleanthous

Online businesses are very creative at finding new ways to connect with their customers. They should be too, because it's a highly competitive market and the money and the orders go to the businesses that make the best impression overall.

Connecting with their customers is an important way of building a relationship that will hopefully last into the long term and generate a lot of profits in the process. Many companies use blogging to help them build that relationship, although some people question whether it is a suitable medium for all businesses to use.

So what is the answer? Are there certain business sectors that wouldn't benefit from having a blog to enhance their internet marketing efforts?

In truth it's hard to think of a business sector that falls into this category; the question is more a case of what type of blog they are going to have than whether they should have one or not. The benefits of a business blog are too many and numerous to ignore.

So it's clearly the style and tone here that matters. A fun innovative company that sells toys and gadgets for all ages wouldn't choose to set up a blog that was serious and official in nature, because it wouldn't suit them. Instead they would create plans to build a blog that represented their business to the best of their ability. This would help to reinforce the purpose of the website and mark them out as a company that was fun and innovative in every way.

In contrast there are many more companies that are more serious in their outlook. These will often use a blog which reinforces that stance and shows their customers how they approach their business.

Of course the content of any blog is also very important. Depending on the approach a business uses, you will notice the types of blog entry will vary greatly. The fun gadget company may invite a lot of participation from their customers to get them involved; they may also ask for ideas for future products or perhaps even ask customers for their stories and reactions to products they have already bought. Some businesses have used this to great effect.

A business blog that has a more serious tone may be approached very differently though. It will often have a more stand offish viewpoint that simply tells the customers and clients what is going on, rather than inviting them to take an active part in the blog.

Not every online business has a blog, but more and more of them are recognizing the benefits of creating one and using it for online marketing among other things. Business blogging may be very different from personal blogs - and indeed you can hold up two business blogs next to each other and not see too many similarities between them - but they all have the same intention in the end, and that is to get the attention that their customers will notice and that will drive their business forward.

Web Profits specializes in search engine optimization, online marketing & web design, helping businesses generate profits from the Internet. For a free report on 'The Secrets of Online Marketing for Offline Businesses' visit SEO.

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The Advantages of Using Free Blog Sites

By Vanessa A. Doctor

Blogs are considered to be the latest trend in online communication; millions of online individuals make use of free blog sites to propagate their online presence -- either for personal use or for business functions. Using one for your online purpose offers advantages than having a professional make you one from scratch.

Cost-Effective Site Creation

You don't need to worry about site creation costs and maintenance fees when using free blog sites. This Internet service offers fully-functional site development tools to create professional-looking websites complete with features and applications. You don't have to hire a professional Web developer to do the job for you since free blog sites can help you make one up with just a few clicks of a mouse button.

No Need For HTML Programming

One problem faced by online individual in coming up with a site from scratch is HTML programming. HTML or Hypertext Markup Language is used by Web programmers to create websites complete with all the features and provisos that make it look professional and clean.

Free blog sites offer a user-friendly interface that will allow an individual to create their website just by toggling some of its features. You can easily make use of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) text boxes to input your site content without needing to place in HTML formatting tags. You can evev insert pictures and links with just a click of a button.

Easy Update

Information is very important in putting up a website. To improve or maintain your online popularity, it is necessary to dose your page with updated information relevant to your topic that will attract the interest of your visitors. Free blog sites contains features where you can just type or paste the text you want post on your site and publish it quick and easy. You can also make use of third-party applications to submit your posts directly to your blog without opening a Web browser.

Build Up Your Online Network

Since most Web surfers today are busy checking out blogs instead of looking for information they need on different sites on the Internet, you can easily build-up your online network with every visitor that drops by your page.

Since each of your posts can be given a comment by anyone who views your blog, you can easily interact with them to increase your online popularity. You can also enable guestbook or chatroom functions of free blog sites to make your page as interactive as possible for better communication with your patrons.

http://bloguni.com -- Free Blog Sites

Vanessa A. Doctor from Jump2Top - SEO Company

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Affiliate Marketing - Making Use of Blogs to Market Your Business

By Vanessa A. Doctor

Affiliate marketing is the latest boom in online business. Coming up with a website to sell products and services of existing companies is a great way to earn a sizable income or profit on the Web. But sticking to your own site alone to market your business does not necessarily lead to a productive online venture; in fact, you need to look for other means to help market your money-making enterprise -- and this is where blogging comes in.

What Are Blogs?

Blogs, or Web logs, is one of the online services an entrepreneur can use to market their affiliate marketing business on the Internet. Millions of online individuals today have set up their own blog sites -- either for personal or business use. They use it to share ideas, personal experiences, or even tips and tricks in random topics.

Due to the popularity of blogs, an affiliate marketer can tap to millions of potential clients and customers by putting up their own blog sites to market their products and services, as well as directly interacting with their visitors that will help improve their chances of landing a sale.

Advantage Of Using Blogs For Affiliate Marketing

Using blogs to market your online business has its advantages -- and here are some of them.

1. Zero Cost

Blog sites are free! That's right; you can easily set one up in a hurry without needing to pay for its services. This is a cheaper alternative to purchasing another domain to help market your venture or to pay for additional pages to be added to your main website.

2. No Need For Web Programming

Affiliate marketers need not waste their time with HTML programming or hard coding just to create a site. Blogs are created with just a few clicks to disable and enable features, as well as the existence of text boxes to populate the content with meaningful posts. All you need to do is to click the right button to publish all of it online. Very easy!

3. Interact With Your Visitors

One advantage of using blogs for your affiliate marketing business is the direct interaction with your potential customers and visitors. Keep in mind that individuals who read your posts can give comments -- either good or bad; you can reply to these comments to further improve your relationship with them or give a professional reply to a negative post that is advantageous for your online reputation.

http://bloguni.com/ -- Free Blogs - Affiliate Marketing

Vanessa A. Doctor from Jump2Top - SEO Company

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