All Entries in the "Blogging" Category

Blogging for Long Term Success

Everyone needs to have a long term goal. In other words, you must not start a blog, write a bunch of posts for a couple of weeks only to slow down and forget that you have a blog in the first place!

Blogging for long term success

Yes, a lot of bloggers ‘die a natural death’ once they lose interest or if they are not making money!

If you want to blog for the long term, you must remember these points:

Stickability

You will have a lot of first time visitors who stumble upon your blog as a result of search engine searches or when it is linked to another post through another blogger. Some might even stumble upon your blog through blog networks and social networking sites like MyBlogLog or Blog Catalog.

However, if you plan to blog for the long term, you must make sure you give those first time visitors an experience that they will remember.

There are a few things that will make them ‘stick’ to your blog. Most important of all, content is king!

You must put yourself in the shoes of a blogger!

Is your blog a blog that visitors will come back and hunger for more? Are you very clear what your target market wants?

Remind People to Come Back to Your Blog

You must remind people to come back. After all, there are so many blogs out there!

(Statistics say that there is one blog born every 2 seconds… so you have a rough idea how tough the competition is)
Write your blog posts in such a way that will entice them to come back. You can break your ‘stories’ into parts and save the best content for the next post. Tell your readers to stay tuned for the next post.

You can do the same for your RSS subscribers. Give them an incentive to visit your blog directly.

Building Networks with Other Bloggers

No blogger is an island!

If you want to survive in the blogging industry, you must always keep in contact (by posting regularly, not inconsistently) with your subscribers and readers.

But you must always remember that even though you are having interactions with your readers, there are other bloggers that exists in the world today!
By building networks and relationships with them, you can leverage on their influence and drive THEIR visitors to your website or develop communities within the circle.

The blogger community is huge. Never try and see each other as competitors if your blog topics are similar. Learn to make friends and post about each other’s blogs and you can be sure to expand your blogs way beyond your circle of influence!

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Nicholas Ho | Mar 08, 2009 | Comments 60

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How To Drive Free Traffic To Your Blog

How to drive free traffic to your blog By now I think you should know that every online business needs traffic in order to survive.

We’re going to look at 4 of the most effective & efficient ways to set up the system to getting consistent traffic through one of the best publishing platforms online – blogs.

1. RSS Feeds

Apart from the fact that RSS feeds are free and that they never require any personal details of subscribers, they can for the most part be compared to subscription style newsletters. Unfortunately, even though most blogging software such as Wordpress comes with a RSS feed already built in, most people simply allow it to lie dormant on their blogs.

In order to drive traffic to your site by using RSS feeds, you need to submit you your actual RSS feed URL to the maximum number of RSS directories. Providing you do this, all new content you post on your blog will be syndicated to your RSS feed and as a result, the RSS directories will display that content which essentially means that this is the easiest way to obtain exposure to all your new content.

2. Commenting on Blogs

If you’re looking for targeted traffic and some solid one way backlinks to boost your search engine listings, then try commenting on other people’s blogs leaving a link back to your website.

Providing you post relevant and useful content/comments on other people’s blogs, the blog owner will “approve” your comments and you link will then become live. This can bring direct traffic and of course help with your rankings in the search engines.

3. Blogging Visitors

Allowing guest bloggers to post comments on your site adds a substantial amount of credibility to your own blog but that’s not the only reason for encouraging it.

By allowing these visitors to post their comments on your site, you’re more or less establishing a partnership with them which in many cases could see you then appearing as a guest writer on their blog. Of course when this happens, you stand to benefit from all the additional exposure and the backlinks which you will no doubt have included.

4. Trackback links

Trackbacks are another great way to get more direct traffic to your site while at the same time providing additional backlinks.

So what exactly are trackbacks?

A trackback is a way for a blogger to let others know they are writing about one of your posts. For the most part, this happens when you’ve written an exceptionally good post and bloggers has been so impressed, that they’ve gone ahead and written about your post themselves.

In the vast majority of cases, this will happen when someone reads your post and decides they have additional information which they’d like to add.

The four methods of increasing traffic mentioned in this article are only the tip of the iceberg.

The truth is, irrespective of what you may have been told, it is possible to get an astronomical amount of visitors to your site in nearly no time at all providing you have the right tools for the job. For more information please check out a full review on Blogging To The Bank.

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admin | Mar 03, 2009 | Comments 68

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Attracting Subscribers By Listing In Blog Directories

Letting the wordl know where and how to find your blog is smart marketing. In addition to being listed in the databases of search engines, blogs are rated by popularity in blog banks. Such banks are also a great place to view what else is out there in the blogsphere.

The top places to submit your blogs and to search other blogs are:

Technorati

Technorati was founded to help bloggers succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing the global online conversation. Founded as the first blog search engine, Technorati has expanded to a full service media company providing services to the blogs and social media sites and connecting them with advertisers who want to join the conversation, and whose online properties introduce blog content to millions of consumers.

Google Blog Search

Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you’re looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.

Your results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you’ll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Swedish, Malay, Polish, Thai, Indonesian, Tagalog, Turkish, Vietnamese and other languages as well.

Blogarama

Blogarama is one of the largest free blog directories online. Give your blog the attention it deserves and let people find and rate it in the blog.

Blog Pulse

BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs. Blogs, a term that is short for weblogs, represent the fastest-growing medium of personal publishing and the newest method of individual expression and opinion on the Internet. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs.

These blog directories categorize blogs by topic. For example, if you want a blog that deals with health, you can surf just that category. Submit your blog to these free directories to make sure you show up when a potential clients begins to search for information on your topic.

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admin | Mar 02, 2009 | Comments 79

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23 Do’s & Don’ts With Your MLM Blog

How to Say It with Your Blog

1. Name your blog so it reflects what you will be talking about as it relates directly to your business.

2. Keep your blog on focus with themes.

3. Find a provider that offers all the technical elements you need to create an effective blog.

4. Keep the same look and feel as your other marketing products – both online and offline.

5. Keep the tone casual. Be authentic, natural, honest and informal, but main professionalism.

6. Enhance your blog with other media such as photos, audios and videos.

7. Say what you think about industry information; personalize your posts with your own views. Take a stand.

8. Offer valuable information with news, trends, tips, insights or amalyses.

9. Be brief. Blog post are small, but frequent, snipptes of information.

10. Commit to consistency. Plan on blogging at two to three times a week.

11. Be a connector. Link to source information for background information on a topic.

12. Expand your community with blogrolls.

13. Inspire interactivity with reader comments and by posting on other blogs.

14. Distribute your blog using RSS feeds for maximum exposure.

How NOT to Say It with your Blog

15. Don’t bombard your readers with listings and blatant advertising

16. Don’t write in a stilted, awkward manner.

17. Don’t recite industry information without adding in your own thoughts.

18. Don’t write an essay.

19. Don’t be wishy washy. Take a stand on the topic.

20. Don’t post without proofreading your text

21. Don’t let a week go by without posting

22. Don’t use vague subject headings such as “Hello world” or “Vacation”.

23. Don’t rely on just text! Insert images, video, and audio. Spice uo your blog.

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admin | Mar 01, 2009 | Comments 84

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Starting Your First Network Marketing Blog

There are many blogging platforms you can use, some of which are free or partially free, and some require a small amount of investment. Here are the most popular blogging tools for you to take a look:

1. Blogger

Blogger is owned by Google and it is free. You can get your own account at http://www.Blogger.com and set it up quite easily. Most teenagers or people around would already have a blog with Blogger.

2. Movable Type

Moveable Type is a business blogging platform by SixApart meant for large corporation with multiple users. You can know more about Movable Type at http://www.SixApart.com/moveabletype.

3. LiveJournal

LiveJournal is a personal blogging platform also by SixApart. You can get a LiveJournal account for free at http://www.SixApart.com/livejournal.

4. TypePad

TypePad is an entry level business blogging solution, available from SixApart for $4.95 a month. You should go check it out at http://www.SixApart.com/typepad.

5. Wordpress.org

Wordpress.org is the best blogging platform on the internet as it is an open-sourced script. However, to install a wordpress blog, it may take some technical knowledge. I will go through alot about wordpress in this blog. So be sure to take note and read on.

6. Wordpress.com

Wordpress.com is the free version of Wordpress.org. It is hosted on their server which is something like Blogger.

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Nicholas Ho | Feb 28, 2009 | Comments 53

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Introduction to Blogging for MLM Success

Introduction to blogging for MLM success About 4 years ago, I decided to bring my network marketing business online. I was no newbie to internet marketing then, but when it comes to blogging, RSS, and podcasting, it was a totally new set of technology that I’ve got to learn.

If you are new to online marketing or trying to take your network marketing business online, I am sure that you will be caught this vicious cycle. So for a start to take your network marketing business online, there are some basic blogging terms and jargons you have to know.

Blogging Terms & Jargon

1. Blogoshere

All blogs, or the blogging community. Think of it as “the blogging world”

2. Comment Spam

Comment Spam are like email spam. Robot “spam bots” flood a blog with advertising in the form of bogus comments. A serious problem that requires bloggers and blog platforms to have tools to exclude some users or ban some addresses in comments.

3. Moblog

Contraction of “mobile blog”. A blog that can be updated remotely from anywhere, such as by phone or a personal digital assistant.

4. Content Syndication

How a site’s author or administrator makes all or part of its content available for posting on another website.

5. Photoblog

A blog mostly containing photos, posted constantly and chronologically.

6. Podcasting

Contraction of “iPod” and “broadcasting”. Posting audio and video material on a blog and its RSS feed, fro digital players.

7. RSS

RSS means Real Simple Syndication. It is a way of handling the latest posted on a website, especially suited for blogs becuase it alerts users whenever their favorite blogs are updated. It can also “syndicate” content by allowing other websites (simply and automatically) to reproduce all or part of a site’s content. Spreading fast, especially on media websites.

8. RSS Aggregator

It is a software or online service allowing a blogger to read an RSS feed, especially the latest posts on his favorite blogs. Also called a reader or a feed reader. One of such example is Google Reader.

9. RSS Feed

The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It can be read by an RSS aggregator or reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated.

10. Wiki

A wiki is a website that can be easily and quickly updated by any visitor. The word has also come to mean the tools used to create a wiki e.g. wikipedia. Blogs and wikis have some similiarities but are quite different too.

11. Videoblog

Very obviously, it is a blog that comprises mainly of videos. This is especially popular these days with the increase of video sharing sites emerging on the internet.

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Nicholas Ho | Feb 28, 2009 | Comments 138

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Effectives Ways To Increase Targeted Traffic To Your Website

In day to day life, more and more people are choosing to become an affiliate by joining affiliate program because most of the affiliate programs are easy and also free to join. Although this signing up a affiliate program is simple task but i can assure you promoting the affiliate program is another subject.

We all know that, getting web traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business company. Apart from ensuring that you have a great product to sell the affiliate program products, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating web traffic.

If you already have a site and you want think that you’re not getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider this is an essential factor if you are contending in these very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done.

For generating web traffic, you should always be a day ahead of everyone, you should not think of present and future as a starting point for making your website traffic laden.

For generating more web traffic for your website, here are some effectives ways to increase your web traffic.

1. Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are popular and assures great web traffic increased. Although with this one is an effective way to increase your web traffic but it would cost you some money. While some people don’t like to spend money for increasing web traffic. It is absolutely necessary in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the one of the most effective way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped large profits for so many companies. Lots of website also feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap benefits from it. I assure you if you use it correctly every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2. Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

By exchanging links with other sites, both of you will get the benefit from the efforts you took to increase your websites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the web traffic one site generates another. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more web traffic at the same time. The more links traded with more sites the more web traffic you could be expected.

3. Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if there’s ever it’s just a low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite time consuming. By using this viral Marketing method you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this viral Marketing method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4. Research on Keyword suggestion tool and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content.

Search engines always look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. By doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is highly required for ranking high in search engine results especially in google, yahoo, msn etc. This is very essential factor that you must take note. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5. Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to Article directory since most of them are free article directory you can advertise your websites for free. You can write a articles that would contain the same subject that your website deals in. If you sell some product, write press release and articles about that products. Don’t forget to Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6. Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and at the same time show your expertise and credibility. When you have found a good foundation for your website, people will trust you and your website and will pass on to many people since they trust you and your web Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7. Offer newsletters, free gift, built an opt e-mail list

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

I hope, you find this article to be useful.

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admin | Feb 15, 2009 | Comments 50

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You Can Blog About Anything

Because you can blog about anything the precise explanation of blogging and what it is, is something that can entirely depend upon who you are talking too. Each day as new web technologies are created, so are new blogs and each one with its own purpose.

Today blogs are used for hundreds of reasons so it is can be hard to explain to a computer illiterate person just what one is. In the world of blogs the writer is known as a blogger. For a lot of years blogs were simply used as a web log, mostly with text based entries a website owner would use to keep a track of a websites progress. They can be used in a similar fashion to the captain’s log on a ship set sail for adventure.

However as the internet grew and more and more people started using the internet the range of bloggers diversified. Some bloggers started using the blog to write about every day events like a diary while others wrote stories or poems as a form of expression. New blogs started appearing using the latest scripts and a whole new use for the simple web log was born. Webmasters started adding blog plug-ins and a whole range of features and technology to see just how far blogging could be pushed. First came photo blogs where users could post their pictures for friends and family to see, and then came video blogs. Video blogs seem to be the latest craze for those who are not camera shy and most video blogs are very amusing or educational, you can find hundreds of them online.

The interconnectivity between mobile devices and the internet is also leading to a change in blogging as bloggers can blog at anytime. At some of the blogging websites you can even upload video from your phone to your blog for your friends to see.

Many large companies also use blogs as part of their business, blogs can be used to let customers know the latest company news and information or to promote the latest product.

Thanks to the wide range of scripts and free blogging sites such as blogger.com and wordpress.com anyone can get a blog and they are very easy to use, some people also use blogs as a means of generating income. Blogging really is a phenomenon and with the constant changing shape of the future it is hard to say just what the next use for a blog will be.

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admin | Feb 05, 2009 | Comments 56

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Making Money Through Your MLM Blogs

Let’s talk about the bottom line. Here are a few sites that you can use to monetize your blogging ventures:

Sell Advertising Space

Selling Advertising is one of the best ways to monetize your blog. You can do it the following ways:

1. Google Adsense

One of the most common ways to make money online. Do your keyword research, write your content, slap a few ads and watch as your money roll in.

2. Selling Private Advertising

You may be approached by private advertisers looking for your endorsements

Sell Links

Selling links is also another way to make money because it directs traffic as well as increases the page rank of the person you are linking to.
You can sign up at text-link-ads and let people bid for your links. Alternatively, you can also sell links when private advertisers look for you. Remember, you need to generate enough traffic to your site before people can notice you.

Writing Reviews

Writing blog post or blurbs is a very good way of selling your services as a publisher.
You write a thorough review about your advertiser’s product and you engage people’s interest through your writing style. You can also direct traffic to their websites if they have any.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the way to go if you can’t find any advertisers but you’ve identified the best affiliate programs for your relevant niche.

Regardless if you are writing an Internet marketing blog, network marketing blog or any other niche, you will be able to monetize affiliate programs by directing traffic to high-converting merchants and let them do all the relationship building and converting for you.

You can look for affiliate programs at Clickbank as well.

Clickbank

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Nicholas Ho | Feb 03, 2009 | Comments 18

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How To Get More Blog Comments?

Got an email from a great blogger, Yaro Starak, and the email is about why is it some blogs have a ton of comments while other blogs never receive any? So here are some of his tips for you…

How to convince people to leave comments?

Let me set something straight right now.

If your blog has no traffic you will not receive any comments.

It makes sense of course, but some people don’t see the connection between these two elements.

If no one is reading your blog then no one will leave comments either. Simply posting great articles to your blog is not enough – you have to *market* your blog to bring people to it.

We will talk A LOT about marketing throughout my newsletter, so stay tuned for that.

For now, understand if you don’t receive any comments to your blog it’s probably not that your content is bad or people don’t like you, it’s because you simply don’t have enough traffic.

If on the other hand you do have some traffic, yet no one replies to your posts, there are ways to stimulate comments.

Try these tips to begin with -

- Write articles that reference or focus on other bloggers. You will get their attention that way and there’s a good chance they will come to your blog and leave a comment as a result.

- Ask your readers a question at the end of your article.

- Write about topics that stimulate conversation, such as current events (think politics, news, entertainment).

- Be controversial with your writing. Have a strong opinion and others with strong opinions will reply to argue or agree with you.

- Be patient. Sometimes you just have to wait until the first person leaves a comment which opens the floodgates.

Keep the conversation going

A while ago I stopped actively responding to comments on my blog unless I was asked a direct question. I really had no excuse for not doing it, I was just lazy and working on other writing projects. Consequently the average number of comments on my blog entries dropped A LOT.

I noticed the regular commentators stopped commenting as frequently and most conversations on my blog ended very quickly.

This is really tragic for a blog and I’ll tell you why – it reduces your “Social Proof”.

What is Social Proof?

Social Proof is when humans take action or make a decision based on seeing other humans doing it first. It’s sort of like an implied recommendation – if other people do it, it must be good.

It’s like when you see a bunch of people all looking up at something in the sky at the same time. You can’t help but turn your head skywards and see what all the fuss is about.

When first time visitors to your blog see other people making lots of comments they are more likely to decide there is something valuable at your blog and bookmark or subscribe to it and may even make a comment.

This is good for blog traffic. This is social proof in action.

I was very conscious of always taking part in comment conversations at my blog and consequently my readership was growing in leaps and bounds. I stopped and I noticed I hit a wall and my blog didn’t grow quite as well as it was.

I know a blogger who has a rule – she responds to every single comment made to her blog.

Consequently she has developed a fantastic community around her blog and her traffic has skyrocketed in a short period of time.

Remember, comments on your blog are very important, take the time to respond to them.

What do you think of these tips?

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Nicholas Ho | Feb 02, 2009 | Comments 32

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