Now, I build content-sites, and in my free time, I still build more and more. To my definition, a content-site is more or less like what James Martell does. I would research for keywords, define my topics, list the content that I want to have in my site, and then start writing (or get somebody else to write for me).

Done with that, then it’s about building the site, putting web pages together and getting a domain name and web hosting.

After that, you go around looking for link partners.

I suppose most people understand what a blog is. But just in case for some newbie readers, I’ll try to explain what it is. A blog is a site that contains articles after articles written one after the other. The content is not being written all in one go upfront. But it is rather being updated along the way.

For one thing — it’s easier to get incoming links. Let me tell you how.

Reason #1: Blog Ping

First of all, there’s this thing called - PING. With a blog ping, when ever you write a new article in your blog, you can set addresses to a few ping sites to tell them that you just updated your blog. When you do that, you’ll get a link back to your site. Ping sites are like Technorati.com and BlogRolling.com. News sites like MSN News, Yahoo News and MoreOver, also have ping addresses.

Now, maybe you won’t be listed very long on that page, because many other blogs are also pinging to those sites. But more or less, it’ll help. I’ve gone through my web statistics and traffic do come from the sites that I pinged.

Reason #2: Trackback

Secondly, there’s also TRACKBACK. Now, I was with a friend explaining how trackbacks work last week. Now I’ll tell you. With blogs, for every article that you write, there will be a unique URL for it. And for each article, there’s also a unique trackback URL. Whenever you are at another person’s blog, look for trackback URL, and you may want to copy it.

Now here’s how you use a trackback URL. Let say you are at somebody else’s blog. And he just wrote about something about cat grooming. And somehow, you feel that you have something to say about what he wrote — and you know, what you want to say will be very long which may not be suitable for a comment. So you write your own message at your blog, and lower down the interface, you enter the other guy’s trackback URL, and then you hit the Submit button.

Reason #3: Blog Comments

Now, my third point on why blog is better than content-site — Blog Comments. This is where you able to go around at other blog sites and write some comments on articles. And you even leave a link back to your site. But here’s the thing, just make sure that your comments are genuine, because now days, there are too many people spamming blog comments just to get a link back.

Reason #4: Bloggers’ Linking Habit

OK, here’s some more. This is more a blogging culture thing — bloggers like to link to each other. If your blog is interesting, it’s easy to get other bloggers to link back to you. Whether you ask for it on your website, or sometimes they just simply give you a link back. I’ve got this many times, and most of the times, they link back write to a specific message. And sometimes, they just list blog sites that they like on their website.

Reason #5: Faster SE Indexing

This is getting quite long already. But I am not done. When it comes to getting traffic, you may not realize this, but it’s easier to get indexed in the search engines with a blog. I don’t know why — perhaps it’s because incoming links are more natural and you don’t really go around asking for them. And when the incoming links are more natural, I think search engine will prefer it a lot more.

Reason #6: Repeat Visitors

Now, after you get traffic from search engines, ping sites, and other blogs, later you’ll start to realize that 80-90% of your visitors are repeat visitors. It’s common with a blog. So the point is with this one — it’s easier to retain visitors with a blog.

Blogging Seems Much More Fun …

In my experience, starting from scratch, in six month, a content-site may or may not reach to mark of 1000 visitors per day. And it takes serious hours writing content and building incoming links. I have multiple sites consistently doing 100-200 visitors per day, after six month. But with a blog, it’s not unusual if a blog reaches 3000 visitors per day, provided you give good content.

But I suppose, it all boils down to which you are comfortable with.

Realizing this, I may be planning differently in the future — but I am not certain on that yet. From the looks of it, blogging seems much more fun. You write about what you like, and you network with other bloggers. And the writing part becomes much, much easier with scripts like WordPress and Movable Type. Not much designing, no uploading files, less link building, etc …

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People looking for an alternative source of information will find that blogs can sometimes offer a more in depth view or a refreshing take on current events. One of the major benefits of information from blogs, specially from personal, cultural and political bogs, is that it gives readers insight on the locals’ viewpoint. For example, although news sites can offer accurate information and report facts and statistics about important events such as the 9/11 attack or the latest Tsunami tragedy that hit Asia, personal blogs of people who were actually there or knew someone involved in the tragedies offer a deeper and more compelling insight on the events. Reading political blogs would also give you a chance to know what ordinary citizens of a country really think.

The downside with information from blogs is accuracy. Since most blogs are subjective, information garnered from the blogs can be lopsided and even exaggerated. Most blogs do write about facts but give commentaries as well. When reading opinions and commentaries be discriminating and do not believe everything written without thinking or checking out the facts by reading other blogs and sources.

One problem with extracting useful information from blogs is knowing where to start. With more than 10 million blogs online it is impossible to search for specific information without the help of a good blog search engine. A good blog search engine, however, will weed out most of the noise and point you to the blogs that contain the information you need.

To help you search for information found in blogs, here’s a short list of the best blog searching tools on the net right now.

•    Google blog search – google blog search is the fastest blog search engine at the moment and returns incredibly relevant search results.
•    Technorati.com – Technorati.com is the most established blog search engine. It gives back the most number of results and has the most features among blog engines. However, it can be slow and returns quite a number of irrelevant links.
•    Yahoo! Blog Search – Yahoo’s blog search is a new feature added to its news search. The search result page is divided into two columns with the left column containing news results and the right column containing blog results. Yahoo! blog search is best for people who need current information but are not very particular that it be from blogs.
•    Feedster is one of the oldest blog engines. One of its useful features is that it caches blog pages. Feedster would be useful for people looking for blog posts that have been deleted or edited.
•    BlogPulse is a search engine most useful due to its extra tools that allow users to do things other blog engines don’t like create graphs and plot log buzz for search terms. It also has a Conversation Tracker that’s gathers related blog posts converts them to threaded conversations. This cool feature allows readers to follow topics they are interested in more easily.
•    And to apply for a Blog Review and possibly win an award, go to Bloggy Award!

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You’ve heard the advice – don’t overcharge for shipping.  That is very good advice, indeed, as nothing turns off potential buyers like sellers who gouge you on the shipping costs.  It’s also a practice that can rack up bad feedback.

However, I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate here and suggest that you don’t go overboard and give so much of a break on shipping that you’re chipping away at your profits.  It’s good to remember the “hidden costs” of shipping:  bubble wrap to secure your breakables, tape, shipping envelopes, boxes, etc.  Then there’s the gas you put in your car to take all those trips to the post office.

You might think I’m being cheap, but, if you added up all your eBay expenses for the year (as some did for their recent taxes) you might be shocked to see how all the packing materials and gas for your car added up and took a little chunk out of your eBay profits.  And, believe me, they do add up.

Some people are even more surprised to find they underestimated the weight of their packages, causing their profits to shrink even further.

How can you be fair to both you and your buyers?

1.  Buy a scale.  It may sound simple, but purchasing a scale can save you a bundle in shipping.  If you’re just eyeballing the weight of the package, you can often times guess too low, and be in for quite a shock when you go to the post office and see the package is going to cost twice what you thought to ship.

2.  Know the dimensions of your packaging before listing the item.  Some packages cost more to ship because of their dimensions.  Knowing the weight alone isn’t enough.

3.  Offer the buyer a variety of shipping methods.  Some prefer speedy delivery with Express mailing, while some prefer to save money with parcel post even though the wait is longer. It’s always a good idea when using parcel post or other slower ground shipping to alert the buyer by email that it can take anywhere from 8 to 10 days.

4.  Save yourself money whenever possible by using boxes that have been used.  Most stores are more than happy to let you rummage through their old boxes and take some home with you.  But, do remember to choose boxes that are presentable, secure and strong enough for your items.  And, if you have breakables, don’t skimp on the bubble wrap.

5.  Give yourself a small handling fee that will cover your expenses.  Some sellers add on an additional $1 or $2 to the shipping fees for their handling fees (depending on the cost of the item and how much packaging you have to use).  I really advocate doing this because your expenses will add up if you do a lot of selling on eBay.  Be sure to be upfront with your buyers that you have a small handling fee so they can’t complain about it later.

Being fair to both yourself and your buyer will keep you both happy, and keep more of your profit in your pocket.

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According to a study done by Krishna Bharat and Andrei Brodner there are several reasons why data are replicated or why mirror sites are created – Load Balancing, High Availability, Multi-lingual replication, Franchises or Local versions, Database Sharing, Virtual Hosting, and Maintaining Pseudo Identities.

In load balancing, replication of data is done to decrease the servers’ loads. Instead of just having one server to handle all the traffic from web surfers interested in the data or content, the site is mirrored or the data replicated so that the traffic is split between two or more servers.

Virtual hosting also sometimes result in mirroring. This happens to services with different websites and host names but use the same IP address and server. What happens is the path to one site is the valid one while the path to the other site simply gives an identical webpage as a result.

Google’s Webmaster Guideline about Duplicate Content

Search engines are blatantly against replicated data so much so that Google even has a warning against them in their Webmaster Guidelines. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines were a list of Do’s and Don’ts that ought to be followed by websites to help the search engine in finding, indexing, and ranking websites. Following the Do’s will of course increase the chance that Google will list a specific website and ran it favorably as well. However, doing any of the Don’ts will of course detract from a website’s rank.

Valid Mirrored Sites

However, for valid mirror sites like those mentioned above (multi-lingual, franchise, etc.) there should be no worry since search engines have provisions for such things and take into account the motive behind them. You can help your mirror site by making sure that you follow all the other guidelines to get noticed and ranked by Google. Following the guidelines will surely help not only your ranking with Google but with other search engines as well.

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Start with the news! Open up your favorite news page or open a newspaper and see what catches your attention. What are the politicians up to today? Any pending legislation that worries you or flat out scares you? Or perhaps someone is running for office or proposing a law that you may want to publicly support. Some celebrity is sure to be in trouble again; have anything to say about that? Maybe you have an idea about who should be dating or marrying who. Who died? A nice memorial post for a nice person may be in order. What happened “On This Date” in past years? Some past events are worth researching and writing about. Are you into sports? Many bloggers or blog readers are sports fans and they might be interested in your take on the playoffs or the players. Don’t forget to check the editorial page and the letters to the editor — do you agree with the opinions? Tell the world why or why not.

Read some blogs! Start surfing your favorite blogs. What are they talking about? You might have a different perspective on the latest hot topic that might just be interesting to your fellow bloggers or a perspective that might make them mad (BTW, never worry about making bloggers mad — most of them love having something to gripe about). If you can’t find anything that inspires you in your favorite blog, surf through some of those blogs that always make you mad; the ones that seem to promote everything that goes against your lifestyle. Anger is always a good blog motivator but don’t get so angry you get irrational. Comment on some blog posts and then expand your comments into a post on your blog. Also try logging onto Blog Explosion, Blog Clicker or one of the many other blog traffic generator programs — there are lots of ideas out there that are worth writing about from either a pro or con perspective.

What have you been doing? Your work place, your co-workers, you bosses, your home and your family members are all fair game for your blog — keep it short and amusing and you’ll have a great post. Once you introduce a particularly interesting person to your readers you may want to do some sequels. When was your last travel vacation — write a travelog about where you’ve been or do some research on some places you’d love to go to and write about them.

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Topic selection is at the very root of blogging success.  The idea is to choose a topic area in which you can be competitive.  Optimally, you can find a blogging niche that is underserved yet has a high level of interest.  This will allow you to attract a great deal of visitors more easily which, of course, translates into higher profit levels.

There are a few factors to consider when choosing the subject area for a “money blog.”  First, one may want to attempt to find a subject area in which they have a personal interest, especially if they plan on writing their own content.  This is because successful blogs require regular updates and it can become difficult to regularly produce quality information if one has no real interest in a topic.  If someone opts to hire a writer to produce their blog posts, however, this is a far less important factor.

Second, one should strive to find a topic area in which interest is at least relatively high.  You may be able to rule the search engines on the topic of “17th century wooden paperweights,” but there are so few, if any, people with an interest in the subject.  Thus, that number one ranking in Google will not produce the kind of traffic stream you will need to turn a healthy profit.  It may be more difficult to enter a more competitive marketplace, but the potential rewards are far greater, too.  The key to this element of topic selection, however, is not just writing a blog on a hot topic.  It is finding a field from which a healthy number of visitors can be culled.

Third, one will want to find a market that is underserved.  Basically, you are looking for a strong disparity in the number of interested parties and the amount of readily available information.  If you can find a topic in which many people are interested but that is not well-covered online, you will be sitting upon a potential blogging gold mine.  It is perfectly acceptable to build a wonderful blog and to expend the effort to compete in a more crowded area, but this does require much more work.  Finding an underserved niche and filling a hole in the marketplace is a much easier way to produce blogging revenue.

Choosing a topic for your moneymaking blog can be a challenging process.  This first step, however, is probably one of the most important.  The choice of a topic not only establishes the nature of the blog, it also (in large measure) determines its potential for success.

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Here is my latest tool for you: Easy Surf Traffic Exchange.

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Herein you are in the total control of your website as you get access to your very own Cpanel with every Cpanel hosting account. Thus, it truly makes a lot of sense in managing your own website without any hassle. The core idea of this cpanel hosting is that it allows you to manage your domain through a web interface. There is also a feature whereby the transfer of the control and responsibility of managing your web site is made to you and you get to become the sole controller. It is the most advantageous web hosting serviceas you get to manage all aspects of e-mail, backup, files, CGI scripts and FTP. Not only this, cpanel hosting also allow you to take the entire backup of your website, managing cron jobs, protecting web directories, configuring http redirects and custom error pages also configure spam filters, accompanied with the viewing of disk space and allowing you to set up a shopping cart. What more, they all are available on a touch button system. It’s an enhanced servicewhich makes you control your website on your terms teemed with an array of features.

Cpanel also has an add on named as Fantastico through which you can install lot of ready to use free scripts at few clicks of your mouse.

This web-based control panel is comprehensively designed in a three-tier structure which makes web hosting quick and pretty simple. Using cpanel hosting; you will no longer need to go through hundreds of Linux-based commands just to be the admin of your server. It is loaded with every tool you need and now you can stay focused and pay more to your business instead of the server administration.

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