Blog Help

BLOG HOST: Yahoo! 360°

2006-06-11T19:19:00.000-05:00

Blog Host: Yahoo! 360°
Blog Host URL: http://360.yahoo.com/
Popularity (Alexa Rank): 1 (as a subdomain of yahoo.com)

MY OVERALL IMPRESSION...
My impression of Yahoo 360° is that it is more of a social tool meant for sharing photos, links, etc., than a serious blogging platform. It appears to be very limited as far as traditional blogging features go, but it is well integrated into Yahoo's existing social network. It is very easy to use, but, at the same time, very simple, which might appeal to folks who are not all that comfortable working with HTML or CSS and willing to sacrifice functionality for ease of use. If you're already set up with a Yahoo passport and are looking to network with friends, check out Yahoo 360°. If you want to create a blog, keep looking.

WHAT OTHERS THINK...
"Yahoo! 360 - A Quick Rev'w" from Blogging Blog (1 Apr 05)
"This is not a real blogging tool, though it would work fine for a journal or diary to share with friends."
"...the privacy features are great."
"The simplicity of the blogging feature should make it accessible to non-techies."
"The Yahoo Photos feature seems, well ... ordinary."
"Yahoo Photos offers printing service, which Flickr does not..."

You can read the full post at Blogging Blog: Yahoo! 360 - A Quick Rev'w

"First look at Yahoo! 360" from Charlene Li (24 Mar 05)
"...the Yahoo! team has done an excellent job thinking through key details of how to not only integrate blogs and social networking, but also how to pull in elements from the Yahoo! network."

"Central to the whole service is the concept that you want to communicate and connect with the people that you already know, rather than try to meet new people. To this end, your home page on the service shows the most recent content published by people within your network."

"This fundamental concept of linking people through their updated “stuff” is what makes Yahoo! 360 unique - and inherently will drive usage of the service higher than traditional social networks. In essence, the content is being pushed to you by the service."

"The profile page contains the usual features from social networking sites friends, profile, lists of things you like to do, where you work/went to school, and groups that you belong to on Yahoo! Groups. But it also excerpts content you’ve created that you want to share with your network."

"Its similar to what MSN Spaces has, where users can add content from MSN Photos and MSN Music..."

"Also similar to MSN Spaces... is the ability to set privacy controls for different pieces of content."

"The blogging tool itself is pretty basic. It allows the insertion of photos, comments, and trackbacks. You can control who can post comments, again through your pre-set groups. Only photos are supported, but Yahoo plans to offer the attachment of other file types soon after beta launch."
You can read the full post at First look at Yahoo! 360

"Yahoo! 360 Rev'wed" from Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion (29 Mar 05)
"While, I like what I see so far and I think 360 is very compelling as a personal blogging tool, it has some serious shortcomings that most veterans will not like."

"...easily use it to share photos, moblog, connect with friends and family and find new friends."
"...a perfect tool for consumer expression."

"...relatively easy to use."

"...some of the navigation is confusing."
"As compelling as Yahoo! 360 is for newbies, it has virtually zero application as a professional/business blogging tool. It's far too simple. You can't easily turn features on or off and it lacks trackbacks and customization."

You can read the full post at Yahoo! 360 Rev'wed

"Yahoo! 360 Rev'w" from Michael Schuermann of Blogcritics.org (29 Mar 05)
"The interface is very well designed. It works smoothly in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, and is very clean."
"The blogging tool is the centerpiece of the experience, and overall it's pretty nice. The blog entry form is WYSIWYG, which will be a benefit to blogging newbies or others without HTML knowledge. However, there's no spell checker..."
"I couldn't find any way to customize the "blog" page."

"...you can also create modules on your page that share your Reviews from Yahoo Local, Photo Albums from Yahoo! Photos, Music from Yahoo! Launchcast, and Lists (which are a feature only within Yahoo! 360. You can also advertise presence information from Yahoo! Messenger, post a picture of yourself, share what Yahoo Groups you belong to, and advertise your friends (within Yahoo!360) and their respective Yahoo!360 pages."
"RSS is not currently present, but Yahoo does have a blurb advertising this feature as "coming soon", not only for the blog but also for the photos and other content."
"All in all, I'd say that Yahoo!360 is a nice tool for whom it's targeted for, that being non-technical users and newbies to blogs, etc... The integration of Yahoo's various services is actually very well done, and the layout of the page you create is very nice."

You can read the full post at Yahoo! 360 Rev'w

"Yahoo 360 rev'wed" from Duncan Riley at The Blog Herald (6 Apr 05)
"I didn’t think there was a worse blogging tool than MSN Spaces until I discovered Yahoo! 360."
"...Yahoo! provides blogging for those little kiddies that find MSN Spaces to difficult to understand."
"Virtually no customisable features (whereas at least to you add a few boxes in MSN) , no trackback that I can see, and all you get to add aside from posts is a little blog roll. That being said the brevity of choice is not reflected in a simplicity of navigation, which is absurdly complex for what it does, and needs a lot of work."
"...it's in beta and has some pretty non-blog related bells and whistles..."

"Yahoo! 360 honestly? don’t waste your time
You can read the full post at Yahoo 360 rev'wed

Related "Blog Host" links on Blog Help...
Blog Help List of Blog Hosts
Index of Blog Host Reviews
Things to Consider When Choosing a Blog Host...

UPDATE -- Delays & Technical Issues

2006-06-09T14:24:00.000-05:00

Hello!

This post is to let everyone know that we've not forgotten about the reviews of blog hosts that we promised... We've been having some "technical issues," as Blogger calls them, and it's really slowed things down. Also, we've been doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes, and even rearranged the layout of the template, getting rid of clutter and adding some things that will hopefully make the site a little more navigateable in the future.

Technical problems...
This past week, Blogger had some "technical issues" that held things up for awhile, and we had a few technical issues of our own that really slowed down our connection, or prevented it altogether at times. Hopefully all that is sorted out now. As you can see, we rearranged the layout of the blog. I really like the sidebar on the left. It just feels "comfortable." The problem is, it's bumping all of the post content to the bottom of the page in Internet Explorer (at least in version 5.5). That's the big issue that we're facing at the moment. We use Firefox now, and were not aware of the problem until we did some cross-browser checks sometime yesterday. At that point, we had already republished the blog. At any rate, we're working on the problem, and should have it fixed later today. For any users who might be seeing this problem first-hand in IE, I would invite you to consider switching to Firefox. We made the switch a couple of months ago and haven't looked back. You can get Firefox for free as part of the Google Pack download -- there's a button on the sidebar for that. If you haven't seen the Google Pack, check it out -- it's free, and there's some really cool stuff in it.

Newsletter...
I'd like to say a special "thank you" to all the folks who've signed up for the Blog Help newsletter. It's not ready yet, but it's coming. For everyone that's not signed up yet, you have my word that you won't be spammed by me, and I won't offer your address to anyone else. Also, I won't fill your inbox with daily e-mails or advertisements, and you can easily remove your name from the list at any time, should you decide to opt-out.

In the works...
Also, we've been working on a pinging application that we hope to have online a little later. A lot of the code is new to me, but it's coming along. We have a fairly extensive list of places to ping, but they all have to be verified and coded into the program yet, and it all has to be tested. That's all that I'll say about it for now... that project's still in the works and it may be awhile before it's fully realized. If you have a need for a free multiple-server pinging service right now, we use Pingoat, FeedShark, Feedburner's Pingshot, & Feedshot (the free service, not the pay one). Some of these ping the same sites, so you might want to set it up so they don't overlap & bookmark the pages to make things quicker.

Well, that's it for now. Thanks for being patient while we straighen out all the technical issues. :-)

Thanks Again,
James

Index to Blog Hosts

2006-06-06T20:36:00.000-05:00

Over the past week or so, we've been scouring the Internet for reviews of each of the blog hosts that are included in the "Blog Help List of Blog Hosts." Rather than research each of them individually, I decided to locate reviews from folks who have actual experience with each of these blog hosts. Each entry will include the blog host's name, main URL of the blog host, and its Alexa page rank. From there, we'llinclude excerpts from reviews of the blog hosts, and a link to a page where you can read the article in full. If you have experience with one of these hosts and would like to add a comment, you're more than welcome to do so.

This page will serve as an index with links to the review pages for the individual blog hosts. If you have comments concerning a particular blog host, please post them on the individual page designated for that host. If you have a blog host to add that is not yet on the list, you can add that in the comments at Blog Help List of Blog Hosts and we'll see to it that it's included.

Please be patient while we get these pages up. There's quite a few of them, and we'll be continually updating the info that we have so far.

Index to BLOG HOSTS:
Blog Host: Yahoo! 360°

Blog Help List of Blog Hosts

2006-05-27T18:21:00.001-05:00

We've spent the past few days compiling a list of blog hosts, which we're in the process of reviewing. Overall, there's close to 200 blog hosts on the list, but we're only posting the URLs that we were able to verify & find an Alexa rank for. For each of the blog hosts listed, there's a name, URL, and Alexa rank.

We are in the process now of reviewing each of these blog hosts, and will be posting individual reviews for some of them in the coming days. Also, we've not checked each of these sites individually yet, so if there's any that don't belong on the list, we'll remove them when we get there. If you know of any blog hosts that are not on the Blog Help List of Blog Hosts, feel free to leave a comment (including a URL), and we'll be glad to include them on the list.

Our original intent was to include only blog hosts that offer free services, but until we finish our reviews, there may be some on this list that offer only premium accounts. Also, there may be some that are not actually blog hosts. We'll weed those out, too, when we get to them. There's a couple of blog hosts on the list which are not in English. Eventually, the list will only contain English language sites.

The blog hosts here are ordered by their Alexa rank (as of 27 May 06). Keep in mind that those URLs which exist as a subdomain will be ranked by Alexa using their primary URL, which makes them rank higher than they normally would.

Blog Help List of Blog Hosts

Yahoo! 360° -- http://360.yahoo.com/ -- Alexa 1
MSN Spaces (Microsoft) -- http://spaces.msn.com/ -- Alexa 3
MySpace.com -- http://www.myspace.com/ -- Alexa 5
Blogger.com -- http://www.blogger.com/ -- Alexa 18
Xanga -- http://www.xanga.com/ -- Alexa 36
LiveJournal -- http://www.livejournal.com/ -- Alexa 63
GeekLog -- http://geeklog.sourceforge.net/ -- Alexa 100
TypePad -- http://www.typepad.com/ -- Alexa 142
Fotolog -- Fotolog.net Free foto-blogs, comments, mail a friend. -- Alexa 169
Jeeran Blogs -- http://www.jeeran.com/blogs/ -- Alexa 579 (arabic)
Salon.com Blogs -- www.salon.com/blogs -- Alexa 650
WordPress -- http://wordpress.org/ -- Alexa 806
WordPress -- http://www.wordpress.com/ -- Alexa 834
Multiply -- http://multiply.com/ -- Alexa 934
Opera -- http://my.opera.com/ -- Alexa 1,170
BlogSpirit -- http://www.blogspirit.com/ -- Alexa 2,691
Blogsome -- http://www.blogsome.com/ -- Alexa 3,936
Blog Drive -- http://www.blogdrive.com/ -- Alexa 4,306
Open Diary -- http://www.opendiary.com/ -- Alexa 4,479
VNUnet -- http://www.vnunet.com/blogs/ -- Alexa 5,321
Moblog by textAmerica -- http://www.textamerica.com/ -- Alexa 5,333
GreatestJournal -- http://www.greatestjournal.com/ -- Alexa 5,565
DiaryLand -- http://www.diaryland.com/ -- Alexa 5,567
Blog-City -- http://www.blog-city.com/ -- Alexa 5,736
blog.hr -- http://www.blog.hr/ -- Alexa 5,900 (not English)
zoomshare -- http://www.zoomshare.com/ -- Alexa 8,315
Blog.com -- http://www.blog.com/ -- Alexa 8,041
blog.de -- http://www.blog.de/ -- Alexa 9,751
Blogster.com -- http://www.blogster.com/ -- Alexa 12,074
Eponym -- http://www.eponym.com/ -- Alexa 12,277
NewsIsFree -- http://www.newsisfree.com/ -- Alexa 13,381
20six -- http://www.20six.co.uk/ -- Alexa 13,784
Blogsource.com -- http://www.blogsource.com/ -- Alexa 14,340
tBLOG -- http://www.tblog.com/ -- Alexa 15,292
Antville -- http://www.antville.org/ -- Alexa 16,655
weblogs.us -- http://weblogs.us/ -- Alexa 20,832
Tabulas -- http://www.tabulas.com/ -- Alexa 23,556
BlogHarbor -- http://www.blogharbor.com/ -- Alexa 23,707
blogger.de -- http://www.blogger.de/ -- Alexa 23,735
Blurty -- http://www.blurty.com/ -- Alexa 27,444
WeBlog Romania -- http://www.weblog.ro/ -- Alexa 28,635
iBlogs -- http://www.iblogs.com/ -- Alexa 33,964
MindSay -- http://www.mindsay.com/ -- Alexa 34,135
easyjournal -- http://www.easyjournal.com/ -- Alexa 38,470
blog.co.uk -- http://www.blog.co.uk/ -- Alexa 39,211
motime -- http://www.motime.com/ -- Alexa 40,544
Bloggoing.com -- http://bloggoing.com/ -- Alexa 43,454
GeneBase -- http://www.genebase.com/blog.php -- Alexa 44,878
DeadJournal.com -- http://www.deadjournal.com/ -- Alexa 46,040
EFx2Blogs -- http://www.efx2.com/ -- Alexa 46,535
BlogEasy -- http://blogeasy.com/ -- Alexa 47,185
BlogHi -- http://bloghi.com/ -- Alexa 47,530
eBloggy -- http://www.ebloggy.com/ -- Alexa 48,251
LifeLogger -- http://www.lifelogger.com/ -- Alexa 51,576
ModBlog -- modblog.com 4,559 -- Alexa 52,061
21Publish -- www.21publish.com -- Alexa 55,124
DearDiary.Net -- http://www.deardiary.net/ -- Alexa 56,577
InkNoise -- http://www.inknoise.com/ -- Alexa 60,920
Weblogger -- http://www.weblogger.com/ -- Alexa 62,112
The X Dot Com -- http://www.thex.com/ -- Alexa 62,216
BlogSharing.com -- http://www.blogsharing.com/ -- Alexa 64,880
theSpoke -- www.thespoke.net -- Alexa 71,305
pMachine Hosting -- http://www.pmachinehosting.com/ -- Alexa 75,609
Blogging Systems -- http://www.bloggingsystems.com/ -- Alexa 82,509
Realty Blogging -- http://www.realtyblogging.com -- Alexa 83,772
Upsaid -- http://www.upsaid.com/ -- Alexa 84,011
My Personal Diary -- http://www.my-diary.org/ -- Alexa 87,861
SplashBlog -- www.splashblog.com -- Alexa 93,511
MyDearDiary -- http://www.mydeardiary.com/ -- Alexa 96,322
Phlog -- http://www.phlog.net/ -- Alexa 104,253
Blogfuse -- http://www.blogfuse.com/ -- Alexa 106,799
LexBlog -- http://www.lexblog.com/ -- Alexa 115,012
we::blog (danchan.com) -- http://www.danchan.com/weblog/ -- Alexa 120,313
FreeOpenDiary -- freeopendiary.com 340,034 -- Alexa 123,162
Blogtastic Blog Hosting -- www.blogtastic.com -- Alexa 124,047
ImgBlogs.com -- http://www.imgblogs.com/ -- Alexa 130,061
blog.ca -- http://blog.ca/ -- Alexa 132,661
DK3.com portal system -- http://www4.dk3.com/dk3portalsystem.html -- Alexa 134,802
Blogthing -- http://www.blogthing.com/ -- Alexa 135,795
diary-x.com -- http://www.diary-x.com/ -- Alexa 140,644
memebot.com -- http://www.memebot.com/ -- Alexa 145,431
Blogmosis -- http://www.blogmosis.com/ -- Alexa 156,529
MySmartChannels -- http://www.myst-technology.com/ -- Alexa 163,617
TheBlog -- http://www.theblog.cc/ -- Alexa 172,994
Blog Studio -- http://www.blogstudio.com/ -- Alexa 173,083
Aeonity -- http://www.aeonity.com/ -- Alexa 175.921
eNewsBlog -- http://enewsblog.com/ -- Alexa 178,430
TheBlogs.net -- http://theblogs.net/ -- Alexa 179,788
BlogoMonster -- http://www.blogomonster.com/ -- Alexa 186,014
blogs.se -- http://www.blogs.se/ -- Alexa 201,800
Sparkpod -- http://www.sparkpod.com/ -- Alexa 202,283
blogs.ie -- http://www.blogs.ie/ -- Alexa 203,636
blog.com.es -- http://www.blog.com.es/ -- Alexa 203,873
BloggerCrab -- http://bloggercrab.com/ -- Alexa 222,657
NewBlog -- http://newblog.com/ -- Alexa 229,707
Diarist.Net -- http://www.diarist.net/ -- Alexa 230,685
Shade of Grey -- http://www.plugsocket.com/shade_of_grey.html -- Alexa 238,029
Crablog.com -- http://www.crablog.com/ -- Alexa 241,840
SeoBlog -- http://www.seo-blog.org/ -- Alexa 248,891
RapidBlogs.com -- http://www.rapidblogs.com/ -- Alexa 259,140
Bloghorn -- http://bloghorn.com/ -- Alexa 268,875
blogs.fi -- http://www.blogs.fi/ -- Alexa 271,209
MyBlogSky.com -- http://www.myblogsky.com/ -- Alexa 280,174
Digital Expressions -- http://www.digitalexpressions.nu/ -- Alexa 287,638
Bloxster -- http://www.bloxster.net/ -- Alexa 289,511
Dragid.com -- http://www.dragid.com/ -- Alexa 289,822
picsFolio.com -- http://picsfolio.com/ -- Alexa 294,319
My Journal -- http://www.my-journal.com/ -- Alexa 304,757
iUplog -- http://www.iuplog.com/index.asp -- Alexa 305,851
Globbo -- http://globbo.org/ -- Alexa 310,602
GlobeNotes.com -- www.globenotes.com -- Alexa 335,887
BlogText -- http://www.blogtext.org/ -- Alexa 348,785
negimaki -- http://negimaki.com/ -- Alexa 375,564
LearnerBlogs -- http://learnerblogs.org/ -- Alexa 382,698
selectaBlog.com -- http://www.selectablog.com/ -- Alexa 386,219
Teen Open Diary -- http://www.teenopendiary.com/ -- Alexa 407,227
BlogThat.net -- http://www.blogthat.net/ -- Alexa 417,235
TheBlogHoster.com -- http://www.thebloghoster.com/ -- Alexa 421,951
Blockstar -- http://blockstar.com/ -- Alexa 440,276
Weblog One -- http://www.weblogone.com/ -- Alexa 464,020
JournalHub.com -- http://journalhub.com/ -- Alexa 467,287
MyWebLog.com -- http://www.myweblog.com/ -- Alexa 476,694
Near-Time -- http://www.near-time.com/ -- Alexa 477,737
The Big Blog Company -- http://bigblogcompany.net/ -- Alexa 494,463
eBlogger.com -- www.eblogger.com -- Alexa 522,319
reger.com -- www.reger.com -- Alexa 533,809
Blogurple -- http://www.blogurple.com/ -- Alexa 539,700
Blogomania -- http://blogomania.com/ -- Alexa 546,850
Blue Kaffee -- http://www.bluekaffee.com/ -- Alexa 551,742
LiveLogCity -- http://www.livelogcity.com/ -- Alexa 606,379
WordPress -- http://www.wpblogs.com/ -- Alexa 660,752
Xanco -- http://www.xanco.com/ -- Alexa 679,013
The Talking Forest -- http://www.talkingforest.com/ -- Alexa 740,255
blogs.no -- http://www.blogs.no/ -- Alexa 752,404
QuickBlog -- http://quickblog.org/ -- Alexa 753,959
HRblogs -- http://hrblogs.org/ -- Alexa 757,781
UniBlogs -- http://uniblogs.org/ -- Alexa 780,498
Iloha -- http://blogs.iloha.net/ -- Alexa 802,338
BusinessBlogging.com -- http://www.businessbloging.com/ -- Alexa 884,716
BlogDog -- blogdog.com 502,572 -- Alexa 897,048
Bloggator -- http://www.bloggator.com/ -- Alexa 937,743
BlogCult -- http://blogcult.com/main/ -- Alexa 946,209
Xigna Blogs -- http://xignablogs.com/ -- Alexa 946,429
Aetheri.com -- http://aetheri.com/ -- Alexa 959,930
Apcala -- http://apcala.com/ -- Alexa 1,010,348
CrimsonBlog -- http://www.webcrimson.com/ -- Alexa 1,019,407
MyITBlog -- http://www.myitblog.com/ -- Alexa 1,041,947
WeBlog.co.nz -- http://www.weblog.co.nz/ -- Alexa 1,095,398
Beblogger -- http://beblogger.com/ -- Alexa 1,130,454
Facto -- http://www.facto.org/ -- Alexa 1,150,443
b-logging.com -- http://www.lights.com/weblogs/ b-logging.com -- Alexa 1,185,075
blogs.ro -- http://www.blogs.ro/ -- Alexa 1,547,067
BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com -- http://www.beggarscanbechoosers.com/ -- Alexa 1,731,554
TongueWag -- http://www.tonguewag.com/ -- Alexa 1,738,373
weblogs.hu -- http://www.weblogs.hu/ -- Alexa 1,767,068
Ipadder -- www.ipadder.com -- Alexa 1,783,634
EBloggerz.com -- http://www.ebloggerz.com/ -- Alexa 1,794,743
Weedweb -- http://www.weedweb.net/ -- Alexa 1,817,510
BlogBeee.com -- http://www.blogbeee.com/ -- Alexa 2,134,806
SchoolBlogs -- www.schoolblogs.com -- Alexa 2,197,739
rememory -- http://www.rememory.com/ -- Alexa 2,470,085
weblogs.pl -- http://www.weblogs.pl/ -- Alexa 2,499,591
TheDiary -- http://thediary.org/ -- Alexa 2,673,747
uniBlogger -- http://www.uniblogger.com/ -- Alexa 2,688,359
Weblogs -- http://www.weblogs.cz/ -- Alexa 2,713,044
myjamby -- http://www.myjamby.com/ -- Alexa 3,720,438
Webloguniverse.com -- http://www.webloguniverse.com/ -- Alexa 4,102,374
Emo Blog -- http://www.emoblog.com/ -- Alexa 4,508,931
EvilSuperGenius -- http://www.evilsupergenius.net/ -- Alexa 4,752,977
My Happy Blog -- www.myhappyblog.com -- Alexa 5,566,626
blogs.dk -- http://www.blogs.dk/ -- Alexa 6,349,056
John Doe Journal Neighborhood -- http://johndoe.org/ -- Alexa 6,479,617

As always, thank you for taking the time to stop by Blog Help. Over the next few days, we'll try to get up some reviews of a few of these blog hosts.

:-)

Blog Hosting Services & Providers

2006-05-19T23:24:00.000-05:00

After you've got a gameplan together for your blog, then you'll need a place on the Internet to publish your blog, so that people can access it. A "host" or "provider" fulfills this need by storing your material on the web and providing a place where people may come to read it. Many hosting options are available, both for free and paid services. If you have a little web design experience or feel that you're up to the challenge, you may also even set up your own website to host your blog.

Before signing up with a provider, there's a few drawbacks to free blog hosts that you might want to consider...

Some directories will not list URLs from free providers.

Solution -- use other directories to promote your blog

If your free blog account includes an e-mail account, it might be blocked or classified as "junk mail" by your recipients' e-mail providers.

Solution -- warn visitors of this and ask them to include you in their "white list"
Solution -- use a different e-mail account

Your URL will be longer for visitors to remember and type in.

Solution -- always provide a link when referring visitors
Solution -- keep the main page URL as simple as possible
Solution -- use a "gateway" site with a memorable domain name to redirect visitors to your blog

You are limited by your blog host's capabilities & stuff that they support
You are bound by your blog provider's rules, regulations, and Terms of Service (TOS) agreement.
You have no control over the advertising that they might put on your site.
You may not have access to all of your website's files.

On the other hand, there are a few things in favor of using a free blog hosting service that you should take into consideration...

It's free.
Established free blog hosts will often have a large user base (and "community"), and lots of user-based support.
Many will have "blog surfing" systems in place, which might direct to you free (but untargeted) traffic and promotion.
Each blog hosting service offers its own features and services, some of which may be unique to that provider.
Most will offer free, knowledgeable tech support.
If the blog hosting service is well-established, your site might be included in the search engines a little faster.
Some providers will offer free server-side blog editting programs or downloadable software to make creating your blog easier.

Each blog hosting service or blog provider is different, with different features, giving you many options to choose from. Get an idea of the features that you're looking for in a host and shop around before you sign up with one.

In the next post, we'll look at some of the more popular blog hosting services and some of the features and drawbacks of each.

BLOG ARCHITECTURE: The Structure of Your Blog

2006-05-17T17:12:00.000-05:00

This post should have appeared just after the one entitled, "What Exactly Is a Blog?" This article is an introduction to blog design and structure that the experienced blogger is already familiar with. If you are that experienced user, and are already familiar with blog design and structure, then please bear with me for the sake of the tutorial...

A blog is essentially a website that is updated regularly. While you are free to set your blog up however you choose, a certain format has become more or less standard, and is used by most bloggers. Individual tastes in design vary, as do perceptions of what readers will find practical or aesthetic. Most blogs, however, have these elements of design in common...

Types of Pages in a Blog

Main or Current page -- This is usually the "homepage" of a blog. It will contain either the most current posts (those that have not yet been archived) in the body or links to their individual pages in the sidebar. It will also contain links to the archive pages, usually in the sidebar.
Archive page -- The archive pages group together all of the individual posts published during a certain time period. You'll find these in the body of the page. This grouping will usually occur daily, weekly, or monthly. When a given time period is finished, a page for all of the posts that occured during that time will be created as an archive page for that date (or dates).
Post or Item page -- This will be the page for each individual post.

Parts of a Blog Page

The header of a blog page will usually include the blog's title & logo.
The body of the blog page will contain the post or posts (one on the item page, sometimes multiple posts on the main page -- all that have been posted during the current time period, and multiple posts on the archive pages -- if more than one post was made during the archive time frame). On the individual item page, the post will usually be followed by a section for comments. Tags, categories, and bookmarklets that link to popular bookmarking services may also be included after the post.
The sidebar will contain an archive menu, linkroll (links to other blogs), "about" info or description, "recent" or "popular" post menu, newsfeed subscription information, and any other navigation aides or info that the publisher wants to include.
The footer usually includes a sitemap or category list, but is also available for any other info.

Parts of a Post

Title -- which will usually link to the individual item post page
Date -- the date on which the post was published in the blog
Article -- the main text of the article, which may include photos or images

TRAFFIC UPDATE -- 16 May

2006-05-16T23:01:00.000-05:00

URL SUBMISSIONS
Over the past couple of days, I've been submitting Blog Help to search engines, directories, and social tagging & bookmarking services. It's taking a little longer than what I had anticipated, but I've found a couple of places to mass-submit, so that speeds things up a little. When I get a good list of places to submit together, I'll post it here. There's quite a few on my list, but I'm only submitting to the ones that are quick, easy, & simple for now. As of earlier today, Blog Help had 5 pages indexed on All the Web, 4 on AltaVista, 2 on Excite, 24 on Google, 1 on MSN, 5 on Yahoo, and none on Open Directory or Lycos. For what it's worth, I haven't submitted to any of those. :-) BTW, all of these stats came from the RankQuest toolbar. I would highly recommend it, if only to satisfy your curiosity. It's got all kinds of SEO tools, and it's free. I use it on a Firefox browser, which I would also recommend. You can get that (also free) in the Google Pack, which you can read about here.

COUNTER HITS
We're up to 84 unique visitors with 285 page views, according to mywebstats.org, and 10 of those were from today, according to statcounter.com. I'm becoming increasingly fond of StatCounter.com. They offer more types of reports than any free stat/tracking service that I've tried, allow you to use an invisible counter, and don't require any advertising on your site. I'll be listing a bunch of different tracking services with summaries of their features later, but for now, if you're looking for this type of thing, I'd whole-heartedly recommend StatCounter.com.

NEWSLETTER
I signed up with Zookoda the other day, and added a newsletter subscription form at the top of the sidebar. I haven't got around to setting all that up yet, but it's in the works. In the meantime, if you would like to subscribe to a Blog Help newsletter, you can do that by submitting your e-mail address in the form. You've got my word that I won't bombard you with spam or sell your address to anybody who will. The only other people who'll see your address are the folks at Zookoda, and they assure me that they don't like spam, either. What will be in the newsletter, you ask? Well, right now, I'm not exactly sure. :-) It'll probably be RSS feeds from Blog Help, at least the title & first part of each new post, so you can decide whether or not you want to come here & read the whole thing. I may also include lists of links to resources that I've found helpful or articles about blogging. I'll post in more detail when I get it all set up. I can tell you that I won't be sending a newsletter more often than once a week, and there will be an easy unsubscribe process, should you decide that you don't want it anymore.

NEW POSTS
I noticed that I jumped the gun with my last post and forgot to write the post that I had promised on blog structure/architecture. I'll try to do that a little later tonight. Also, I'm going to try to get up something on blog hosting services after that.

MISCELLANEOUS
For what it's worth, Blog Help came up this past week for a Google Blog Search search for "blogger splog." Google Blog Search (Google "BS" for short) is still in Beta, and not to be confused with the main Google search engine. I checked it out, and found that my post with the blog spam article by Trina Schiller that I used a couple of weeks ago is ranked #2 in that search engine for "blogger splog." Well, it's not "cool blog" or "awesome blog" or anything like that, but I'll take what I can get. Thanks, Trina! ;-)

Trina, by the way, has one of those cool, awesome blogs. You can check it out by clicking here.

Planning Your Blog: First Things First

2006-05-14T01:34:00.000-05:00

In this post, we'll be looking at a few basic building blocks that will lay the foundation for your blog...

Consider Your Motivation

Why do you want to create a blog?
Before you really get started, stop and ask yourself why you want to blog. What are your motivations? What do you expect to gain from it? Take some time and really mull this over. By defining your purpose before you begin, you'll be more likely to stay motivated, keep your focus, and stick with it later on.

Look over this list and see if any of these reasons describe your motivation...

Self-expression
Connection with family & friends
Sharing of information or expertise in a certain area
Possibility of influencing of others with your opinions
Promotion of a product, service, or event
Monetary profit
Writing or composition practice

Of course, there's lots of other reasons why people keep blogs. Whatever your reasons for are, consider them, and know why you're starting a blog before you even begin. Consider writing a mission statement as to what you want to accomplish with your blog. This will help to keep you motivated and greatly increase the longevity of your blog. Clarify your motivation, if only to yourself.

Define Your Niche or Topic

What are you going to blog about?
There's no rule that says you have to have a niche topic or that you can't change it later, but having a specific niche for your blog will help to define its purpose and keep it focused. It will determine your readership, and give your regular visitors something to expect. It will guarantee the interest of those within that market and insure more targeted return traffic. It will often give you stuff to write about when you draw a blank, and provoke discussions from interested readers. While a well-defined topic is not an absolute necessity for a good blog, it should not go overlooked.

Chances are, you've already decided what you want to write about. If you are blogging to provide information or promote something, then you already have your topic. If you want to create a personal blog, however, then choosing a topic might be a little tougher. Rather than writing about life in general, consider focusing on particular areas of your everyday existence.

Decide what the primary topic of your blog will be.
Brainstorm your topic. Make a list of any words or terms that are related to your topic. Write down anything that you can think of.
Choose two or three narrow sub-topics or niches that will be the focus of your blog.
Begin a list of keywords relative to your general topic.

Identify Your Intended Audience

Who will be reading your blog?
You wouldn't be planning a blog if you didn't want to communicate with others. So, who are those others? Your answer will greatly depend on your topic and reasons for blogging. You may be writing to anyone who's willing to read what you write, or you may have a highly targeted reader in mind, with a very specific purpose. Regardless of who you're writing for, it's important have them in mind while you're planning your blog.

Your potential audience will not only influence the way you write and features that you include when designing your blog, but also how and where you promote it. If you don't already have a target audience in mind, here's some things to consider that might help you narrow them down...

Ask yourself who would find this information useful.
Consider the industry or market that your topic appeals to, and make a list of potential readers or customers.
Look at other websites in this industry, and see who they are marketing to.
Brainstorm for other groups outside of this specific industry that you might have overlooked.

Know Your Selling Points

Why would someone want to buy your product or read your blog?
Whether you're promoting your blog or just trying to hold your visitors' interest long enough for them to finish reading your latest post, knowing your key selling points is vital to keeping a successful blog. Your sellling points are what makes your blog or product appeal to your customer. This is what will bring them back, possibly convert a sale, and likely the reason that they're on your site in the first place.

Even if you don't have a product for sale, what is it that will sell your blog? Consider the the appeal that your blog might have for your potential audience. What is it that sets it apart from all of the other blogs on the Internet? Identify the things about it that would make the visitor want to stop and read what you've written. Put yourself in the shoes of your visitor and ask, "What's in it for me?"

Make a list of the obvious reasons why anyone would want to read your blog or buy your product.
Brainstorm for other less obvious reasons.
Look at the selling points that others in the industry are using.
Make a list of selling points that would appeal to each of your target audiences.
Consider the strength of each selling point, and pick out the strongest ones to focus on.

In the next post, we'll look at other things to consider before you begin writing...

What Exactly Is a Blog?

2006-05-12T14:54:00.000-05:00

Any decent how-to guide will always start by defining its subject, and that's what we'll do here. Anyone with a little experience will probably not benefit much from this post, but for the sake of anyone new to the game, this should give you a basic idea of what we mean when we say "blog."

What is a blog?
A blog is a website that is set up to receive new content frequently. Think of it as an online journal. In fact, the word "blog" is a shortened version of "weblog" or "web log." Entries are usually organized by date, and may be made up of text, images & photos, or audio clips, and sometimes even video clips. Most blogs will include a place for comments that allow readers to give their input or feedback about each entry.

Why would I want to blog?
Blogs are much easier to update than static websites, and can be kept for any number of reasons, from personal expression to keeping in touch with distant family & friends, from writing practice & self-publishing to marketing and PR. In your blog, you can write about pretty much anything you want to, and as much or as little as you'd like. Keeping a blog is one of the easiest ways to communicate or convey messages, whether you're trying to get something across to a specific audience or have something to say to the world in general.

Who can start a blog?
It is extremely easy for anyone to start a blog, and you need almost no technical expertise to begin. Your only real requirements are a computer with an Internet connection and something to write about. If you have something to say, and a way to connect to the Internet, then you can blog.

Where can I keep my blog?
There are blog-hosting sites that provide everything that you'll need and can have you up and running in a matter of minutes. Other sites require special software that helps you to create a blog. For the do-it-yourselfer with a little more Internet experience, you can even blog from an existing website or get your own domain for your blog. Where you choose to blog will be deterined by the features that you desire, your technical know-how, the subject or topic of your blog, and probably a number of other considerations.

We'll be going a little more in depth in each of these areas as we progress. In the next post in this series, we'll look at the structure and layout of blogs. For a more in-depth discussion of exactly what a blog is, and a little bit of the history of blogs, see Wikipedia's entry for weblog.

TRAFFIC UPDATE -- 11 May

2006-05-11T18:41:00.000-05:00

Well, since I finally have a little time to write, I'm about to begin really promoting Blog Help. I'm going to pull out all the stops & see how much traffic that I can generate over the next month, and you're welcome to tag along for the ride. I'll keep you informed via these "TRAFFIC UPDATE" posts, and try to get one up at least daily.

I had not intended to make any attempts at promoting this site until I felt like everything was ready. Well, I guess that time's come, and I know that if I don't do it sooner or later, it won't get done at all. :-)

In case some of you are curious as to where everything's at so far, I'll try to catch you up...

I officially opened Blog Help on 25 April with an Introduction post & followed it with 25 reprinted articles to kick everything off. The Blogger powers-that-be flagged me as a possible splog & shut me down for a couple of days until my new blog could be reviewed by a living, breathing human, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend mass-posting to start things off. Over the next couple of days, I think Blog Help had a grand total of around 8 visitors, one or two of which may have been me... ;-)

During the first two weeks, I scrapped the template in favor of a new one, and I'm still making changes (or changing stuff back). I'll tell you all about it, and direct you to the folks who dreamed up or inspired some of these tweaks & hacks when I get around to that (I'll have to dig back through my records for links and all the particulars).

About a week ago, I set up a del.icio.us category system using Technorati tags (WAY too many, actually -- I'll go back & clean that up a little later). I wanted to set up categories for all the topics that I might delve into, and got a little carried away. :-) Anyway, when I posted all those pages (26 in total) to del.icio.us and applied the Technorati tags, opening accounts on both of those sites, it brought about 20 new visitors.

A few days ago, Google released the new Google Pack with all kinds of goodies. I thought that might be a good opportunity to write an article for submission to the free-content sites, so I got a little ahead of myself & went for it. Over the two days that followed, 10 new visitors trickled in, but those were apparantly blog surfers who came from within blogspot, most probably via the Navigation bar. It's been 5 or 6 days now, and on creativeideas.com the article itself has had 20 views with 2 syndication requests, and 5 downloads at goarticles.com. I plan to submit it to a few more sites, so I can get a good comparison, but I haven't had time. I'll let you know what comes of it when I do. If you're curious about the article, I posted it here on 5 May 2006 -- just check the archives. If you'd like to use it on your site, you can pick up a ready-to-post version at GoArticles. As with anything that you find here, you're welcome to use it on your site or in your newsletter. All I ask is that you credit me as the author and provide a link back to Blog Help -- http://blog-help-1.blogspot.com/

Should you choose to steal my original content, I'll hack into your site and post links to the Richard Simmons Fan Club all over your homepage, and maybe do something with a Teletubbies background. No, seriously, if you want to use my content, or reference it, provide a link. I should have a trackbacking thingee set up in the next day or two, so you'll get a link back.

What else is new? I installed some bookmarklet icons in the post footers, started an account with Feedburner, put newsreader chicklets in the sidebar, opened an account with Zookoda, and added a newsletter subscription form in the sidebar. I've got a couple of ideas that I think will be a lot of fun here. I won't say what they are yet, but I should have them up sometime next week. Whew! Stay tuned...

Back to the headcount... As of this a few minutes ago, we've had a total 48 unique visitors, and 209 page views over the past 6 days, according to MyWebStats.org. I have 3 counters on Blog Help at the moment, but I think that I like that one the best. Later on, I'll be reviewing all the ones that I've tried.

Tonight, I plan to submit this site to Search66 and !tzalist Computers Directory. There's a ton of places on my list, but those seem to be as good a place as any to start.

Well, that's where everything stands now. I'll let you know when something changes...

:-)

WELCOME to Blog Help!

2006-05-10T15:54:00.000-05:00

Hello! Welcome to Blog Help...

Well, I think that I'm officially ready to begin writing now. Blog Help has been up for a couple of weeks, while I've been playing with settings, tweaking the template, even changing it altogether once, and learning whatever I needed to know to do those things. I posted an introduction and followed it with a couple of dozen reprinted articles to give you something to read and me something to play with while all of this was going on (you can find those in the archives for 25 & 26 April 2006). Now, I'm going to attempt to start blogging and explaining how to blog.

You see, I'm a perfectionist (although I seldom do everything right, LOL). That means that I study stuff inside & out before I begin, and stress over details once I get going. At the same time, I'm somewhat creative, and venture into areas where there's no lines to tell me exactly where I should be coloring. The creation of this blog has been a reflection of both of those natures. While I've tried to surmise the general consensus as to what everyone figures is the best way to do blog things and why, I've found that I've often went back and rebelled against that, in favor of a "just-feels-right" zen-like subjective approach to this thing. As you can probably tell, it is nowhere near finished -- there's a ton of features, goodies, and blog-thingees that I plan to implement. In fact, I'm not exactly sure what "finished" would look like, should it ever come to that point. I've kept a list so far of things that I want to include, but that list has been ever-changing, and no doubt will continue to be. Rather than striving for a finished product, I'll try to approach Blog Help as a living, developing creature, and, at least to some measure, allow it assume a life of its own.

At any rate, I've been wanting to start blogging for some time now, and Blog Help is the result. As I mentioned, I'm a perfectionist, and, as such, I did a ton of research before I began. I've compiled a lot of material on "How to Blog," and I think that there might be more newbies & would-be bloggers like me out there who would benefit from this material. It has been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun, and is nowhere near complete -- it amazes me, the rate at which the Internet evolves... I plan to present the best of what I've learned here, and continue to add to it as I learn more. If you are an experienced blogger, I hope that you may also find something of value here, and you're more than welcome to jump in with your advice or expertise, should you feel the urge. If you've new to blogs and have been sitting back wanting to start a blog, but not sure where to begin, hopefully this is what you've been looking for.

Now that I've begun, I'll try to post at least once a day. Also, at least for the first month or so, I'll try to keep up a daily "UPDATE" on any changes that I've made and how the blog is progressing overall. Any experimentation that I undertake will be accounted for there, so that you may learn alongside me or offer your observations, should you be so inclined.

Thank you for stopping by and taking the time to read this post, and feel free to come visit anytime!

:-)

JM Bradley

PS -- Last night, I ran across a few articles written by another James Bradley who's also into Internet marketing, and, judging from the attention that his articles were getting, he's fairly well-known. Because I'm NOT him, and he was here first, I'm going to try to start using my middle initial or simply go by or JMB. That should help to avoid confusion, unless, of course, his middle intial happens to be "M." In that case, I guess we'll just have to blame our parents & try to forget about it... ;-)

The Google Pack: FREE Software That You're Gonna Love

2006-05-05T21:09:00.000-05:00

If you've not downloaded the newest free software bundle from Google yet, then you've gotta read this...

This package includes the latest powerful tools with countless features that will benefit you in a number of ways. There's text, photo, music, and video applications, programs that address security issues, and things to assist you in exploring the web. There's handy desktop applications and other useful, timesaving goodies. A couple of these programs have potential limited only by your imagination. This is a great collection for anyone, whether you're building websites, doing research, or just surfing the web, and, best of all, it's completely free!

Here's what's included...

GOOGLE SOFTWARE

Google Earth is a "3D Earth browser" that lets you view actual photos of the earth from space to street level. Create maps, find driving directions, or look at your own house. A bird's-eye view of the world...
Picasa is a photo organizer that allows you to find all of the photos stored on your computer, and organize, edit, and share them with others.
Google Pack Screensaver allows you to convert photos from your personal collection into screensavers that may be set up as collages or full screen pictures.
Google Desktop is a desktop companion with a TON of features. It features a sidebar that gives you instant access to a number of useful applications -- a real timesaver!
Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer also come with a ton of features. With it, you can run a search from any webpage, autofill forms, or list the Google page rank of any webpage.

ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE

Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar is a quick and secure web browser. It allows you to browse using tabs rather than separate windows and has many useful plug-ins, add-ons, and extensions available. If you don't have Firefox yet, I would highly recommend it!
Norton Antivirus 2005 Special Edition is an AV program that protects your PC from viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. The Google Pack includes a 6-month subscription and updates.
Ad-Aware SE Personal is an antispyware utility that safely detects and removes spyware to protect your privacy.
Adobe Reader 7 allows you to view, print, and search PDF files. This version claims to launch up to 50% faster than Reader 6.0

OPTIONAL SOFTWARE

Google Talk is a voice & IM application that allows you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free. Get a free account using your mobile phone.
RealPlayer is a media player that plays popular media formats, organizes music and videos, and transfers music to iPods and other portable media players.
Google Video Player is a tool that plays videos that may be purchased and downloaded from the Google Video website.
GalleryPlayer HD Images are high-quality images, artwork, and photos that are perfect for screensavers or desktops.

Google Pack requires Windows XP and either Firefox 1.0+ or Internet Explorer 6.0+, although some of the individual programs will work on older versions. The download process is easy and user-friendly. It allows you to pick only the software that you want, and if you already have any of the programs installed, it will check the version and will only be updated if the Google Pack includes a newer version. You'll also get updates about new software with Google Updater.

You'll wonder how you ever got by without it. :-)

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Misc, Spam 01

2006-04-26T18:19:00.000-05:00

Blogging, Spamming, and Blog Spam
By Trina Schiller

Email marketing once proved to be immensely effective, but the greedy and idiotic polluted the well by spamming the planet with everything from weight-loss products to sexual enhancement drugs and beyond. Because of the stench, filters and laws have been created to attempt to fix the problem, but still the Internet is polluted with more and more junk each day. So obviously, filters and legislation are not the solution, for consumers, publishers, or marketers.

Everyone has been left scratching their heads and asking... What do I do to avoid this crap and make the Internet mine again? How do I build my business and promote it without having to deal with email? After all, what's the point in spending money on email advertising campaigns when there is no guarantee that the emails will even reach their destination?

Enter... RSS.
RSS is the perfect communication tool. It's applications far outreach those of email for marketing, publishing and personal communications. RSS is the answer to our communication woes.

Using RSS to create blogs for communicating with customers, affiliates, partners and family is far and away more effective and reliable than email ever was. As a marketing tool, it really packs a punch that email never could. The reason being is that blogs are targets for search engine spiders. They are themselves, a web presence, whereas email never was and never will be.

Just like a web page, search engine spiders hit blog pages and rank them. The difference between the static web page and the RSS feed is that web pages seldom update their content, RSS feeds, by design, are created to be dynamic and provide regularly updated content, in theory, depending on the blog owner of course. This prompts the search engine spiders to revisit and rerank them more often.

For writers, publishers and and anyone else with something to say, RSS has been a godsend. It has provided the answer to the question of what to do now. Blogging has replaced email for those who have become frustrated with dealing with the problems of email publishing and marketing. Publishers can now get their message out to their subscribers without the headaches associated with sending email, or posting static pages to the web. Even publishing an ezine to the Internet as a web page required the sending of email to make readers aware of the newest issue.

As with anything, there is a right way and a wrong way to do things, and blog publishing is no exception. Now that RSS has become the rage for marketing purposes, several people have taken it upon themselves, in the name of the almighty dollar, to pollute this well too. The newest rash of 'RSS tools' have created some issues of ethics and and credibility. With perhaps the honest intention of being search engine optimization tools, or an automated system for fetching content, this batch of stuff has too much potential for misuse. The result of misuse of these types of programs can be devastating. Already some of these programs have been banned from places like Google and Blogharbour because of this potential.

Programs such as these in the hands of the inexperienced, will cause future problems for bloggers down the road. More and more pages generated using these programs will be banned, and getting banned, right out of the gate, for a newbie, would be a sad thing indeed.

The right way to use blogging to increase your search engine presence is to publish good content. Period. Provide useful information to those who are looking for it. Become someone's trusted information provider, and you have a customer for life. Publish keyword rich articles that give the searcher what they are looking for... solutions for problems.

Publish your information regularly. Weekly is good, daily is better. Sending pings and things too often will get you blacklisted too.

And here is where networking comes in... Find content for your blog from article banks, where authors submit their work for reprint. List yourself in databases as one who accepts article submissions. Get to know other authors and publishers and share content with them. Syndicate your blogs in exchange with other bloggers. Watch your world explode with new opportunities.

Automation in business is a good thing, but it has its place. Nothing beats human communication when dealing with people and creating partnerships. Do you want to talk to an autoresponder? No, and I doubt anyone else does either.

Some of the new programs designed for the automation of article collection have legal issues to consider. The biggest being copyright infringement. Not every author wants their work reprinted, or they require control over where their work is displayed. (Which is as it should be.) Without manually seeking your content, you could very well find yourself being served papers for publishing someone else's work without permission.

Plagiarism is another issue. If you don't follow certain rules for reprinting contributory work, you stand to be hounded for plagiarism. Yet another sticky issue.

Some of the new programs mock safelists, or resemble FFA sites. Before long, those types of blog pages will become banned as well. Search engines will figure out a way to block non-informational blog pages, those that carry nothing but links or classifieds. (Is your head sore from hitting that brick wall yet?)

Still, there are other programs designed to post spam to blogs using the comments feature. This is referred to as comment spam. The only solution thus far, to battle comment spam, is to disallow your readers the option of leaving comments. This is a bad thing, because allowing your readers to interact with you is supposed to be one of the benefits of using this form of communication.

The makers of these programs may have had good intentions to start with, but have ultimately created Frankenstein's Monster. Many are stating that their programs are not spam, because they do not involve email. That is a cop out if I ever heard one. Spam is the transmission of unwanted stuff, whether it is sent to your inbox, or your blog, or even the search engines themselves. Search engines want relevant content, not pages of of keywords, or links. So feeding them page after page of nonsense is spam.

Everyone hates spam, except the spammers, so why be a part of something loathed by so many and embraced by a few? Bad business if you ask me.

The only real way to combat these issues is to simply not use the programs themselves. Do your due diligence and create a reputation as a trusted information provider, not a blog bomber, and your business will prosper. Using these programs will ultimately diminish your reputation and your livelihood.

Your customers are looking for information, a solution to a problem. Give that to them, not just endless pages of links. You will achieve your rightful spot in the ranks, and you stand a far better chance for longevity. There are good RSS tools available, you just need to look beneath the sales copy to find them. And if you are new to RSS and blogging, do some research. Find someone who knows, really knows what RSS is and how to use it, and ask some questions. Don't go out and spend buckets of money on something you're not sure how to use, because you could be doing yourself more harm than good.

A few good books to read some solid information on RSS and blogs...

RSS, Blogs and Syndication
RSS Advertising Secrets
Taming The eBeastie

The Trii-Zine Ezine
http://www.ezines1.com

Trina L.C. Schiller - http://www.trinaschiller.ws

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Trina_Schiller

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Misc, Etiquette 01

2006-04-26T18:13:00.000-05:00

Blogging Etiquette
By Sarah Todd

Have you ever thought about the reasons that blogging has become so popular? Enter the word blog into any search engine, and the results are overwhelming. The phenomenon known as blogging has become one of the fastest growing features of the internet. It’s an advocate for free speech, a chance to imprint our thoughts and - ultimately - our individual selves on that vast unknown entity called cyberspace. By blogging we become part of the internet. It may be a miniscule part, but our blogs establish and affirm our presence in cyberspace.

My blog was born on 24 March 2005. I had no idea how the seed I planted would grow, nor the direction it would follow. Today I read through my first entries, and I see it hasn’t changed radically in the first ten months of its life. I think it’s become a bit more refined… but that’s my humble opinion! The inspiration for that first entry was the cell phone ring tone advert on VH1, featuring the character called Crazy Frog. Two days later I wrote about Easter in Greece. I followed that with a piece about reviewing on WDC. The fourth entry was about the news channels on TV, and the final one spoke about Zimbabwe.

Looking at the beginning of my blog I see it’s like a diary. The first entries covered Michael Jackson’s trial, Terri Schiavo, Prince Rainier of Monaco and Zimbabwe’s elections. I sit here, amazed that all these things happened almost one year ago - where has the time gone? And if it wasn’t for my blog I wouldn’t have a record of the events and the way they made me feel at that particular time. I suggest you all go back at look at the first few entries in your blog. You’ll probably see your writing has, over time, become more confident and more streamlined. Mine certainly has.

Blogs are representative of their writers. They reflect our thoughts, our minds and our attitudes at a specific moment in time. They are also a permanent record of the events at that particular time. There only limit to a blog is your own mind - how far are willing to let your mind go and how much of yourself you are prepared to divulge? You can write about any subject that interests you and take your writing in any direction. Bottom line - how much of yourself are you willing to share with the World Wide Web?

Which brings me to the most important feature of blogging - the readers.

They are the reason for the rapid growth of the blogging phenomenon. Without readers blogs would not exist - they’d be diaries or personal journals kept under lock and key. The comments and contributions to our entries feed the blog, inspiring our own entries and helping it grow. I find the feedback I receive encourages me to keep writing. The same applies to the blogs I read and to which I contribute. I can’t tell you how many blogs have inspired one of my own entries. Over time a blogger develops a fairly close relationship with regular readers, and the way these relationships are conducted are important if you want your blog to grow.

I recently read an entry in an offsite blog where a blogger’s entry claimed he didn’t care about the kind of responses his blog attracted. His reason: “the people contributing aren’t my kind of people.” My answer - and I did actually post this - was: “So why are you blogging? Keep a private journal if you don’t want or need interaction from other web users.” I stopped reading his blog after that, and when I checked yesterday I saw he’s still writing, but he’s removed the offensive entry!

Those who take the time to read a leave a comment in a blog are people, whether we agree with their opinions or not. I know - the difference is that we’re interacting in cyberspace with a screen replacing the face of an actual physical presence. But that doesn’t mean we have to lose our manners! Someone who’s read through an entry that’s made enough of an impression upon him or her to want to write a comment deserves some respect, even if his or her opinion is contrary to our own. Think about how you would answer that person if he or she was physically in front of you before committing fingers to the keyboard and pressing submit. Words typed and sent in anger are even more damaging than the spoken word, because a record remains in black and white for as long as the blogger chooses.

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot for a moment, and consider our response to an entry we find offensive. Perhaps it goes against our moral, political or religious beliefs. It may also be written in a way we personally find insulting. Instinctively the first reaction is to fire off an angry, critical response - but that’s not necessarily the right action to take. Many a time I’ve found myself wanting to respond immediately to an entry containing an opinion contrary to mine, but I’ve managed to restrain myself. Words spoken in the heat of the moment can be very damaging, and in this case attack is not necessarily the best form of defence. The chances of saying something you may regret later are very high indeed, so I suggest you think about what you want to say before responding. Ask yourself if the words you want to write are something you’d say to a person standing in front of you in a room full of bystanders. Remember the blogger isn’t the only person who will see your comment - everyone reading the blog will know what you’ve said. And once it’s there you cannot take it back. Only the blogger can remove your comment.

Conversely there should some respect afforded to the blogger. It takes courage to share one’s beliefs and deepest thoughts. My husband often says: “consider the source”. It’s a good guideline to use when reading blogs. We’re all “victims” of our own personal circumstance, products of different cultures, ethics and traditions. We bring our different personalities and beliefs to the world of blogging, which is one of the reasons blogging is so exciting. My own blog is a link to people from all over the world, and the fact that I would never be able to interact with such a diverse group in my daily life makes blogging a truly exciting experience… well, for or me anyway! When I write a potentially inflammatory blog it takes me a while, because I try to convey my own opinion in a frank and honest manner, without offending those whose beliefs may be contradictory to my own. It’s not easy, and requires a lot of tact and diplomacy - not to mention forethought! That’s probably why I don’t do it very often…

I think my journalistic training has helped me restrain myself when I want to reply to what I consider an inflammatory blog. I was taught not to write about something until all the facts are to hand. I’m not saying don’t respond; I’m simply saying think before you say anything. And if you really don’t know what to say then don’t say anything. Why not leave a comment to that effect? Or perhaps write an entry about how that particular topic makes you feel. I’ve always lived by the adage: “It’s better to stay silent and appear a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt”.

I find it’s a rule that works well when blogging.

The writer is an author at http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Creative Writing. She was born in Zimbabwe and lived there for 38 years. She moved to Greece three years ago. She worked in the PR world and news media for ten years, five of which were spent running her own PR firm. Her online blog can be viewed at: http://www2.writing.com/main/books/item_id/952766

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sarah_Todd

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Misc, Blog Software 01

2006-04-26T18:09:00.000-05:00

Comparing Free Blogging Software
By Don Beavers

With the increased interest in Blogging (web Logging), many web hosting providers now provide an assortment of free usage, open source blogging software packages. Among the most popular of these blogging tools are B2evolution, WordPress and Nucleus. Each of these programs offer similar basic features, so the question arises as to which one is easiest to use and would be appropriate for the requirements of your particular website.

The answer lies in the true purpose of your blog website. If your primary goal is to share your opinions and ideas with the general public, you would want to utilize a different blogging tool than a user who was creating product blogs as a commercial sales effort. A blog for search engine promotion would have entirely different requirements. All of these uses are viable reasons to create a blog, however each requires different features to be successful.

WordPress Blogging Software

Available for free download at: http://www.wordpress.org

It is hard to beat WordPress for general personal blogging. WordPress is an open source, state-of-the-art personal publishing platform with a focus on presentation and usability. Everything related to creating and updating your blog is available through an intuitive graphical interface. With WordPress there is no need to compile your work. You simply write your column. You then select the features you want and your blog is instantly created and published to your website.

If you are on vacation, you can schedule your uploads for some date in the future or even email your column to the server! The system allows multiple users with multiple blogs divided into categories and sub-categories. This allows multiple family members or friends to create their own blogs along with yours.

Easy customization and the availability of many "plug-ins" that provide more functionality (add new features as you learn) makes this software a very good choice for most individuals.

B2evolution

Available for free download at: http://b2evolution.net/

B2evolution is another advanced web log tool that features an integrated XHTML validator. It supports recursive subcategories, cross posting and has a really cool integrated "skinning" system.

The "skinning" system allows you to create multiple blogs in separate categories with different appearances for each blog. You simply "change the skin" for the blog to create a totally new look and feel.

The "skinning" feature, combined with the built in multi-user administration management tool, makes the system robust enough for more commercial endeavors, such as product promotion blogs. If you have much to publish with multiple themes, this is the software you are looking for.

Nucleus Blogging Software

Available for free download at: http://nucleuscms.org/

Though Nucleus is an extremely robust blogging tool in its own right, it also contains some powerful features that can provide benefits in promotion of your blog.

Nucleus offers the ability to optimize its URLS, creating simple page addresses that do not have and "&" or "=" characters. This makes the pages search engine (and user) friendly. Another great feature is the ability to show the contents of multiple weblogs on one page. This could allow a website owner to manipulate the optimum text / keyword balance on pages for better search engine rankings.

Nucleus also provides RSS and Atom feeds that can be extremely helpful when promoting a website. If part of your blog's function is to work as a search engine marketing and promotion tool, Nucleus is an exceptional software package.

Each of these blogging software packages offer the basic tools that you would need to create a successful blog and all three are PHP - MySQL open source (free to use) packages. You should try to select the software that helps you achieve the long term goal that you have in mind for your website based on the unique extra features offered by each.

Don Beavers lives in Bryan/College Station, Texas and is an enterprise level PHP-MySQL programmer at both the Shopping Elf Shopping Guide and the Datavor Web Directory.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Don_Beavers

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- SEO, Blog 01

2006-04-26T18:01:00.000-05:00

Why Blogs Have Become the Search Engine Optimization Equalizer
By Hunter Waterhouse

ALEXA WEIGHS IN...

For those who are unaware of Alexa, it offers an interesting tool
to webmasters. The service is designed to value websites based on
the number of people who visit those sites and the activities of
those people while they are on a site.

Keep in mind that their results are skewed to the activities of
those who use the Alexa toolbar. If your website is Business-to-
Business oriented, then the results may be useful to your needs.
If your site is Business-to-Customer oriented, then the Alexa
results are far from accurate in documenting the importance of
your website.

The reason why the Alexa results are skewed to the Business-to-
Business market is because most people using the Alexa toolbar
are involved in Business-to-Business activities, either as an
user or provider of B2B services.

On May 24, 2005, Alexa's ranking of the Top Ten English Language
websites were as follows:

* http://www.yahoo.com
* http://www.msn.com
* http://www.google.com
* http://www.passport.net
* http://www.ebay.com
* http://www.microsoft.com
* http://www.amazon.com
* http://www.fastclick.com
* http://www.google.co.uk
* http://www.aol.com

( This info came from: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 )

WHAT EIGHT OF THE TOP TEN WEBSITES ALL HAVE IN COMMON

Sure, five of these top ten sites are search oriented sites, but
that is not the answer.

Passport.net is owned by Microsoft and must be accessed when
someone is logging into the msn.com network. Fastclick.com is a
site that helps advertisers buy advertising across a huge network
of sites. These two sites do not fit the profile.

The one thing that eight of our top ten sites have in common is
that they are content driven destinations and they add new,
original, and exclusive content on a daily basis.

BLOGS ARE THE GREAT EQUALIZER

Blogs are the great equalizer because they simplify the task of
adding content to a website on a daily or weekly basis. They make
it simple for the average joe to add content to their site on a
daily basis with just a few clicks of the mouse.

What is more, the spider search engine companies recognize this
and make it a point to spider the blog networks on a regular
basis, sometimes a daily basis.

It may take a spider search engine up to three months to spider
your site if you go directly to their submission page to add your
domain to their database. On the other hand, with a blog, you can
put a story about your domain on a blog with a link to your
domain, and your website can generally get crawled within a week
or so of putting your link on the blog.

BLOGS REQUIRE A COMMITMENT ON YOUR PART

Daily additions to your blog should be your goal. If you do not
have time to do daily additions, you should at worst do a weekly
addition to your blog.

Just like in the real world of websites, if you don't update your
blog on a regular basis, the spiders will save their time and
resources by not spidering your blog on a daily basis. If however
you do update on a daily or near daily basis, then the spiders
will visit your blog with the same fervor you bring to your blog.

Additionally, it sometimes seems like the search engine spiders
are giving some addition weight to the results culled from the
blogs. The point in this additional weighting is that blogs are
filled with personal comments and recommendations rather than
sales pitches.

BLOGS ARE EASY TO SET UP, EVEN FOR THE RANK AMATEUR

There are in fact several blog programs available that you can
either load into your own domain or that you can use from a
third-party, remotely-hosted server.

To see a list of the blogging programs that are available, check
out this link:

http://keywordtext.com/redir/blog-list

My personal favorite is http://www.blogger.com which happens to
be owned by Google. Blogger allows you the ability to use the
software from their servers or to integrate the blog software
into your own site with very little effort on your part.

I was able to integrate their software into our own site and to
customize the display of the blogger to fit our domain's format,
and I was able to pull that task off in just about 30 minutes ---
with most of that time dedicated to the custom display of our
blog.

Add to the simplicity of setting up the blog, the fact that since
blogger.com is owned by Google.com, they will always be very keen
to spider our blog on a regular basis.

>From launch of our website, to the spidering of our site by
Google took just about ten days. Within three days of the launch
of our site, Google had spidered the main page of our site.
Within ten days, Google had already spidered the whole of our
website.

Compared to other websites we have launched, this was the fastest
turn-around time from new release to traffic from the search
engines. We believe the difference in this case study had to do
more with the addition of the blog on the day of our launch than
anything else we may have done to promote our domain.

EQUALIZE YOUR SITE WITH THE SITES OF THE BIG BOYS

The big sites on the internet got to be that way because they
consistently add new, original, and exclusive content to their
websites.

While you and I may never have as much content on our sites as
the big boys do, we can benefit from the lessons they teach to
us.

Now that you have also learned this important lesson, it is time
to put this knowledge into action. Make it part of your daily or
weekly schedule to add fresh, interesting content to your
website. Your banker will thank you.

Hunter Waterhouse is one of the editors at: KeywordText.com.
"Keyword Text" managed to bring together several writers and
editors to provide a few low-cost writing services for those who
are working hard to become more profitable. They offer Content
Creation Services which include: Exclusive WebPage Content and
Reprint Articles. Keyword Text also offers very attractive
Volume discounts. Compare us to our competition, you will be
surprised. http://keywordtext.com/dir.pl/ktc/index.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hunter_Waterhouse

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- SEO, Blogger 01

2006-04-26T17:59:00.000-05:00

Making Money With Blogs
By Shouvik Mazumder

Blogs are introduced into the internet for a few years now. But most people are not sure what is a blog exactly.

A blog is like an online diary of a person. Blogs can be used to put opinion, thought, sales messages, promotions, product announcement,tips. Anything you can think of can be written in a blog. Even pictures, audio and video.

Google owns the most popular blog company http://www.blogger.com
Also google owns a search features, specially for receiving searches from blogs at http://blogsearch.google.com
A properly structured blog can do wonders for your marketing effort. Since people are able to reply to your blog messages, thus you can create discussion online with your target market.
Thus you can soft sell your products more easily due to the trust factor blog creates.

A mistake made by some marketers is that they do not make their blog properly. A poorly written blog deliver the wrong message.

Search Engine Optimisation For Blogs

A major advantage of using blogs is that search engine loves blogs more to index than a website. This is because there are many blogs which are updated regularly.

Here are some tips for search engine optimisation for blogs:

Simple Content

Most marketers believe that you can optimize your blog for search engines be keeping the content simple. You can choose one quality content topic for your blog and make it your base.

Put Up More

The more content you put in your blog, the more search engine friendly it is.

Submit Your Blog To Search Engines

If you submit your blog to search engines, although it can take a while, but if they list your site, you will see a large increase in traffic.

Use Keywords For Search Engines

Identify the most popular keyword, and adjust them with your blog template.

This is how it can be done for blogger.com:-

Log in to your blogger account. Go to the template and identify the <$BlogMetaData$> tab.

Above this add the following:

for meta tag for keywords use "A,B,C,D".
For meta tag for description , use "X,Y,Z".
Replace A,B,C,D with your choice of keywords.
Replace X,Y,Z with your description.
Also make the <$blogpagetitle$> tag relevant to the title of your topic.

Then save the template changes.

Daily Updates

For best optimisation, you should update it daily at the least.
The more often you update it, the more search engines will list your blog.
Blogger from Google can create inbuilt RSS feeds for your posts for upgraded version of blogger).

How to get your blog noticed quickly?

After creation of your blog, submit it to

1) http://www.pingoat.com
2) http://www.blogexplosion.com
3) http://rssfeeddirectory.com/blog_lists.html
4) http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Get the RSS feeds of your blog and submit it to RSS feed submission directories.
Post remarks to other blogs those match the theme of your blog and add the blog Url in your signature.

Use addme.com to post your blog to top 14 search engines.

There are over 3 million blogs online. However only a tiny percentage is used to increase sales traffic.

Shouvik Mazumder is an active internet marketer for some time and has been busy keeping testing different marketing procedures.
SFI Affiliate Program

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shouvik_Mazumder

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Traffic, Exchanges 01

2006-04-26T17:43:00.000-05:00

How to Use Blog Exchanges
By Allan Burns

Traffic exchanges and blog traffic exchanges are a way to expose your blog or site to traffic by visiting other blogs and sites. I have looked at many such exchanges and selected what I though to be the best of these to see what sort of traffic I could bring to my site.

I signed up with four blog exchanges and one traffic exchange. There are quite a few traffic exchanges out there but I found many of them to be, well to put it mildly a waste of time. These exchanges were mostly auto surf exchanges where amusingly enough the visitors were not encouraged to actually look at the sites they visited.

The idea behind the exchanges I chose to test where that you visited other sites and blogs in the network and in exchange the webmasters of other sites visited you. The idea is simple and should be an easy way to bring traffic in. The list of these sites can be found at http://www.blogtonomy.com/blog-and-traffic-exchanges.php

I have been using these sites for several weeks and I think I now have enough data to come to some reasonable conclusions about using exchanges in order to generate traffic to your site.

Does it generate traffic?

You can get traffic pretty much straight away as some of the sites give you some credits for joining, but most of the traffic needs to be generated by you visiting other sites in the network. How much traffic you get will depend on how long you spend visiting other sites, on average I found that you could get about 40 visits in return for about an hours surfing.

The catch

This is probably the easiest and quickest way to get traffic to your site or blog. After looking at the traffic being sent from these sites I noticed that not many of the visitors went beyond the first page. This is not really surprising as, like you, most of the visitors are webmasters trying to generate traffic to there own sites.

I would conclude that as a starting point for getting traffic and for testing new pages on your site then this can be a useful tool. The audience will be mostly untargeted and so probably not interested in what you have to offer and therefore probably the hardest type of visitor entice into making a longer visit or returning for a later visit.

If your site or blog is more targeted towards traffic generation and promotion then you may get a better response from the visitors. I would recommend setting up a landing page especially for the visitors from these sites so you can offer them something they are likely to be interested in. It would be worth investing some of your time in experimenting with this sort of traffic to see if it works for you. You can always dismiss it later if you find it is not working for you.

Allan is the webmaster at http://www.blogtonomy.com/ where I will show you how I am promoting my site.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Allan_Burns

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Traffic, RSS Feeds 03

2006-04-26T17:36:00.000-05:00

5 Reasons Why Your Site Needs to Publish a News Feed
By Tinu Abayomi-Paul

It seems like everyone is talking about RSS Feeds. They’ve been around for years but the buzz is up about them as the technology continues to go mainstream. Some people are reportedly abandoning their browsers and viewing the web through their readers - but they hardly represent the general public yet.

So does your site need one?

This question is somewhat like asking if your site needs a newsletter. Sure, the sky won’t fall tomorrow if you don’t get one today, but once you realize the benefits of having a news feed for your site, and try it for yourself, you may become an addict like the rest of us.

Reason #1: More free traffic to your site

I’m not exaggerating when I say that a frequently updated feed can bring you massive amounts of traffic in a short time period. This won’t be true forever.

Here’s a snapshot in PDF format, of just the feed-originating traffic to a new page of my site for the first 24 hours it opened.

http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/2-rss-marketing/screenshot.pdf

Not exactly a stampede, but here’s the good part.

On the fourth day, the feed traffic doubled, and all other traffic continued to rise at the same rate.

That's my fifth active feed of the twenty I have spread out over four sites, and I get similar results each time. In thirty days, that would be at least 5,000 new targeted visitors - again, this is not counting my present traffic, or those who try my feed and stay subscribed, nor does it factor in what happens when the traffic doubles again..

I can’t promise you the exact same results, no one can. But you should know that my feed is targeted towards a crowed market - if you know how to set up your feed properly and correctly apply your keyword research, you could have better results..

Those visitors, from the first hour of traffic to today, resulted just from submitting my feed to the list of directories I compiled from many sources and studied. Some bring great free traffic to new feeds, some are better for once your feed has matured.

You can often get better placement in feed directories and in Yahoo’s RSS Directory than you could from your results in a regular search engine, and often, inclusion is instant.

Reason #2: It’s a hands-off way to update your audience

What if you could run your newsletter without the hassles of maintaining your list, removing bounced addresses, finding new subscribers, formatting the content you find, altering your content to keep from being blacklisted, and after all that, wondering if all the various blockers mistakenly kept your message from getting through?

If that sounds like heaven, you can be one of the angels as soon as an hour from now.

When you supplement your current newsletter with more frequent updates via feed, you will be able to push out updates to subscribers to your news channel or feed more frequently and more efficiently.

With all the new free tools available, even if you’re all thumbs when it comes to making a web page, if you can fill out a form, you can create a feed.

Reason #3: Get visitors to click through to your site whenever you update

If you haven’t used a feed reader before, you might be confused about the connection between the feed and your site and why it can result in an increase in traffic. I’ll attempt to explain this to you in words, but I suggest downloading a news aggregator (also known as a feed reader), and looking at the results of your favorite site’s feed through a reader after you read this for the full effect..

You can use my main feed here if you don’t have one to view:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreeTrafficTips

If you don’t want to have another application up while you’re surfing, you can try Pluck , a free application you can use for more than just feeds that integrates with Internet Explorer - get it at http://freetrafficdirectory.com/pluck - it will take you right to the downloads page.

You can also do this from My Yahoo!, by changing your page to include their RSS Headlines console, still in Beta testing at http://my.yahoo.com.

To summarize, a visitor sees the headlines they want to read, view the summary, and click through to your site to read the rest of the news, either in a new window, or without having to leave the application they are in.

And when you update again, the reader will notify them that you have new headlines, and/or populate the list of items you have available. This can keep your audience coming back.

If you had trouble following that, come to this page for a one minute tutorial: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/members/postt95.html

Reason #4: Recycle old content.

If you have a list of your older articles, some older product reviews, site suggestions, or archived newsletters, you can use those to build content to populate your feed with information. As long as this news is still relevant, you can recycle this content to attract new visitors

Reason #5: Its so easy it’s crazy not to do it.

Before the last few months, there weren’t as many free tools online that made the process of starting and publicizing a feed so effective and user-friendly.

The bottom line is, now that you can get all those benefits from filling out a form, saving the file, uploading to your server, promoting it once, and updating it from time to time, it’s insane not to do so.

You already have to update your site from time to time. You might as well get all the benefits of having a news feed too.

About The Author

Tinu currently wanted by Secret Hoarders of America for spilling free traffic tips: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/blog

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tinu_Abayomi-Paul

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Traffic, RSS Feeds 02

2006-04-26T17:31:00.000-05:00

How To Drive Traffic With A Blog
By Jack Humphrey

Blogs are different than regular static sites. Although a blog is really just a fancy word for a content management system, therefore it is just a regular site with enhanced and easy editing, a blog has a sense of urgency and "newness." People read blogs because there is a general feeling that the information posted is more current compared to static sites.

This is true when the blogger is very regular with new material and gives people a reason to tune in frequently.

Promoting a blog, I have found, is far easier than promoting a regular website for many reasons.

Because you can create "news" on your blog at the drop of a hat, you can create buzz. Buzz is infectious, produces links from "buzzed" website owners looking to present their visitors with a buzz, and gets you attention that is harder to acquire for regular sites.

You can promote a blog through RSS and get subscribers who would rather use a "podcatcher" (a newer phrase that simply means they subscribe to your RSS feed rather than your email list with a tool like FireAnt http://fireant.com).

People like being anonymous in this over-emailed world of ours. Getting subscribers to a blog via your RSS feed means you are offering a way for the justifiably paranoid to access your material without committing their personal information in the exchange.

So you have another way to promote here as well. Rather than sending people to your opt-in page only, you can grab RSS subscribers on every page of your blog, no matter which page they come through.

Now you can trade links, or trackbacks, with other bloggers in your niche which is a much more highly respected and valuable form of reciprocal linking that Google actually loves.

Having a blog means you can "podcast." Podcasting is making audio and video files available in your posts that can be picked up in your RSS feed by people using places like iTunes.com to find multi-media content.

This is a MASSIVE new open market of people really getting into iPods, especially the new video iPods, and seeing what their new gadgets can really do.

By creating an informative how-to video and podcasting it from your blog, you can get listed in iTunes and other podcast directories that are practically empty on many niche topics right now!

These are things you can do with a blog that you cannot do very easily or at all with a static site.

Don't forget that there are other directories only bloggers can promote in. Directories like Syndic8.com and Daypop.org are only open to bloggers with RSS feeds.

While everyone else is working down in the trenches on their one-dimensional static html site, bloggers can enjoy promoting their sites in far less competitive areas with extreme amounts of traffic flowing through them.

In short, a good blog with the right plug-ins will give you marketing power I wish I had when I was starting out. My blog would be 7 years old this year and would have an archive section a mile long with content syndicated all over the web established over those 7 years!

This time next year you are definitely going to wish you had started your blog today! Especially when you consider the vast potential of audio and video podcasting and syndicating your content easily through your feed to places that only accept bloggers. Static sites need not apply!

Jack Humphrey blogs at http://www.jackhumphrey.com. His long running newsletter, now blog, The Friday Traffic Report, has been responsible for untold millions of visitors for his readers. Grab a free chapter of his book "Power Linking" just for stopping by!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jack_Humphrey

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Traffic, RSS Feeds 01

2006-04-26T17:20:00.000-05:00

7 Ways to Increase Your Blog Traffic with FeedBurner
By Tinu Abayomi-Paul

FeedBurner is a free service that allows you to track your feed traffic and all kinds of other fun stuff. It won't create a feed for you from scratch as often believed - rather it wraps itself snugly around a feed you bring in and adds its services therein. It has a few premium options for the serious feed publisher, too.

People ask me all the time if I suggest that they use FeedBurner’s plethora of free feed enhancement tools. I have always answered a resounding “Yes!” - But lately FeedBurner has moved itself to a whole new level.

Did I mention most of these tools are free, and can help increase the traffic you get to your blog, by using your feed? Don’t believe me - go to http://www.feedburner.com and see for yourself. Tell ‘em Tinu sent you.

They have no idea who I am but it’ll be fun, I promise.

So enough with the warm-up already, and let’s start talking about some of these incredible features.

Increasing Your Blog Traffic with FeedBurner

Blog Traffic Increaser # 1- Give others permission - or shake the no-no finger with the Creative Commons option, found under the Publicize tab in your FeedBurner dashboard.

It will pop in the logo if you like, and explain what permissions others have to use your feed. Being clear about what permissions others have to use your feed with encourage them to display your headlines on their site - or let them know that they must link to you to cite your views.

Blog Traffic Increaser # 2- Turn your feed into a newsletter with Feedblitz or Squeet under Publicize/Email Subscriptions.

This turns your feed into a newsletter. It even gives you a subscribe form for your site. Now you now have a(nother) ezine option to go with your blog without any extra work.

Blog Traffic Increaser # 3- Use the Browser-Friendly version, combined with FeedFlare to explain what an RSS Feed is.

Four on the Optimize tab, the Browser-Friendly version turns your RSS feed into a web page, so that when new people click on your feed, without knowing what it is, they’ll know how to use it. All you do is link to the FeedBurner version of your feed, instead of your default feed address. FeedBurner will even help you with this, as we’ll see in Tip #12.

But before we talk about that, here’s an extra tip: under the FeedFlare option on the Optimize tab, you’ll find the Personal Flare section. If you click one of the links given, you will see one called “Get Email Updates”. Once you have the Email Subscription option enabled, you can enable that link in your feed to provide the option to subscribe to your updates via email.

Blog Traffic Increaser # 4- Make your feed compatible with all feed subscription services with SmartFeed.

Maybe you have an Atom feed in a world that uses RSS more often. Perhaps the tool you’re using utilizes an older version of RSS, and you’re just getting around to turning on your feed, but don’t want to switch. If you look on the Optimize tab in FeedBurner, you’ll find a tool that will convert your feed on the fly to any version the end user’s tool is asking for.

Blog Traffic Increaser # 5- Import pictures and links with Photo Splicer and Link Splicer

Under Optimize, look for these two options to help you jazz up your feed with your suggestions from Furl, del.icio.us, Digg, Yahoo’s MyWeb 2.0 or Bloglines. The Photosplicer will also let you drop images into your feed using Flickr, BuzzNet or Webshots.

The more of a resource your feed is, the more your subscribers will want to use it. I find that reminding my feed users that they’ll get even more treats than when they visit the blog gets more of them to subscribe - which also brings them back to my blog more often.

Blog Traffic Increaser # 6 - Get your audience to help send you even more traffic with FeedFlare.

Within the Optimize section, you’ll find one of the top three innovations from FeedBurner, as far as I’m concerned. If you’ve ever been to a blog that has options that make it easy to add a post to your del.icio.us, Digg or Technorati page, then you were probably green with envy, as I was, if you didn’t have the time or the technical expertise to add those fabulous hacks to your site.

Well I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to be find the days in your schedule to reverse engineer all those little tweaks, nor do you need to become a techie if you have no idea what all that HTML code does in your blog’s template.

Using FeedFlare, you can now do all of these things yourself for your feed without touching a line of code.

The exciting thing about this is that you can get your visitors to help you spread the word about your blog.

Blog Traffic Increaser # 7 - Notify all RSS and Blog tracking services automatically with PingShot.

Another one of the Optimize tools will free up your time by pinging all the top blog notification sites when you update, by following your feed. If you feel that all the pings slow your blog posting time down, or your blog won’t allow you to customize what services get pinged, this is a lifesaver.

There are about two doxen dozen more ways to increase your traffic with FeedBurner, not to mention all the little tricks you can use to maximize the traffic FeedBurner can generate, analyze or optimize for you. You’ve got to hustle on over to FeedBurner to use these (mostly) free feed tools before you can enjoy their benefits, and there’s no time like the present.

Want 14 More Ways to Get More Blog Traffic with FeedBurner? Download the PDF file at http://www.rescueyourblog.com - and get the other 14 Blog Traffic Increasers for Free.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tinu_Abayomi-Paul

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Traffic, Viral 01

2006-04-26T17:13:00.000-05:00

Viral Marketing With Blogs
By Brian Clark

Blogging is gaining huge traction with entrepreneurs and small businesses. These folks have realized that the "blogosphere" presents a unique opportunity to reach a global audience with little to no cost.

The key to selling with a blog is to give great value to your readers in the form of free information. Blogs build your authority as an expert in your industry and create a relationship with readers that creates a perfect buying environment. But with all the noise out there, you need to be strategic about ways to gain an audience in the first place.

The great thing about blogs is the links that you can get from other bloggers, which bring you traffic. Plus, these links help you rank better in search engines like Google. To get links from other bloggers, you need to say or create something that is worthy of attention.

In other words, you’re looking for publicity, just like you might offline with the mainstream media. But online, a little bit of attention from bloggers often leads to even more attention from even more bloggers, which creates the possibility that something you write could spread virally all over the Internet.

Here are five strategies for creating content that gets attention:

1. Hold a Contest. Come up with a competition relevant to your industry or business niche. Promote it to other relevant bloggers and get them involved. Or, you could create a form of sweepstakes, but make sure to consult an attorney in this case, as sweepstakes are highly regulated.

2. Create a Tutorial or Free Ebook. The Internet is built on information. Create a useful guide based on your expertise and people will take notice. You’ll gain publicity, new prospects and hopefully sales from just one effort.

3. Give an Award or Hold an Event. Create an award for the best blogger or website in your niche, or try creating an industry awareness event that you orchestrate. The most valuable traffic you can get is from related, but perhaps non-competitive businesses in your own industry, and any industry loves to buzz about who’s the best or what’s going on.

4. Give to Charity. Combine a fundraising or paid online event with a pledge to donate all proceeds to charity. You’ll be doing a good deed and be perceived as a good citizen, and you might also get loads of free publicity as well.

5. Be Controversial. A good controversy almost always gains attention. Do or say something that goes against the grain of your industry or niche. Be careful not to go too far, but it’s much worse to simply play it safe and have no audience at all.

These are just a few ways to gain attention online with your blog. The key is to think about what has value to your desired audience (as opposed to just you), and then find a creative way to present it.

To find out more about how to use these 5 strategies, plus learn about several more, download the FREE Viral Copy Report from Copyblogger. In this 30-page viral marketing report, you’ll discover 11 strategies in 4 categories that grab attention and result in links and traffic to your blog.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brian_Clark

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Traffic, Pinging 01

2006-04-26T17:05:00.000-05:00

Pinging Your Blog - The 5 “Ws” and the “H?”
By Elizabeth Amaro

Pinging Your Blog - The 5 “Ws” and the “H?”

What does it mean to Blog and Ping? Sounds like a grammar school game, doesn't it. Well, after some research, I can now say that I have a fairly good understanding about not only what Pinging means, but also the When, Where, Why and How of Pinging your blog. Oh, and don’t forget the Who!

So, here is what I came up with:

1. What is Pinging?

In 2004, Priyah Shah, a partner in the search engine marketing firm, SEO & More, wrote an article about blogging that gave me some insight. She wrote, "There are a number of services designed specifically for tracking and connecting blogs. By sending a small ping to each service you let them know you've updated your blog so they can come check you out.”

I think that is one of the simplest explanations I have found, so now I share it with you.

2. That obviously answers the questions, “Who should Ping” and “Why should you Ping?”

Do you want to make money? Do you want to increase traffic to your site so that your advertisements can be seen? Do you want your Google Adsense advertisements to be clicked? In short, do want your bottom line to grow?

If you are like me, then you want all of these things. Therefore, you should Ping your Blog!

3. When should you Ping?

To answer that question, first did you know that it was possible to “spam ping?” Well, it is. Spam pinging is pinging your blog(s) many times a day for weeks and weeks just to get traffic to your site. On top of that, it is pinging without updating your blog(s).

Do not do this! It will not help your blog get traffic in the long run and in fact, can hurt your blog stats since many sites you ping to can decide to delete you from their list. It can also hurt others who are trying to get traffic to their sites this way since the ping sites are flooded by spam pingers.

Those thoughts are important since they give the final answer to the question about when is a good time to ping. It is understood by the blog community at large that pinging should be done no more than 2-3 times a day, if that. Most importantly, you should only ping your blog when you have added a fresh post or made significant changes to an old post or your blog site as a whole.

4. Where should you Ping your blog and How?

In order to intelligently write this article, I had to experience what pinging was for myself. Is it difficult? How is it done? You will be happy to know that it is so easy! I found a site that allows you to ping your blog many times over just by filling in your URL, clicking a button and then 1-2-3 your blog is pinged instantly! How do you like that - a single click? It sounds impressive right?

Now if I were you, I would want to know where to find this site. I won’t keep you guessing. It is http://pingomatic.com. Of course, there are many other sites that you can ping your blog to and I’ll list them in another post, but this is one of the best ping sites out there and it is also recommended by the best.

So what are you waiting for? You are now educated on the 5 “Ws” and the “H,” so GO FOR IT!

This is your friendly neighborhood blogger signing out.

Blogging
Blogging to the Bank

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elizabeth_Amaro

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Traffic, General 02

2006-04-26T16:49:00.000-05:00

15 Top Blog Marketing Tips
By Chris Taylor

1. Place all your feeds on the following website and the directories listed on this page - http://www.rss-feeds-directory.com/blog_lists.html

2. For fast inclusion into yahoo, get yourself a "my yahoo" page - http://my.yahoo.com/ and place your rss feed on that page.

3. Have a link which allows other people to put your rss feed on their own "my yahoo" page. See "my yahoo" for details.

4. For fast inclusion to msn, also open a "my msn" account and add your rss feed to that page.

5. Place your blog on all the major search engines - http://www.thewebtrafficco.com/search_engine.html

6. Join this site and add your blog (free) - http://www.BlogExplosion.com

7. Ping your blog after every post at - http://pingomatic.com/

8. Place a "blogroll" on your blog using - www.blogrolling.com

9. Make a blog post at least every day or less. Why? - http://www.feedforall.com/why-use-rss.htm If you don't think you can write enough content on a daily basis, there are many free articles out there you can use.

10. Invite other editors/writers or webmasters to write on your blog as co-editors. Make sure you allow them to include their "resource box" at the bottom of each post and set up an "about our editors" page.

11. Place a link and description to your blog on all your websites, out going emails and any autoresponder courses you have set up.

12. Announce your blog at forums you currently use/participate in.

13. Place informative responses in the "comments" box of other highly trafficked blogs in your field of business.

14. Once you have 10 to 15 posts on your blog, announce it with a press release.

15. Download this free rss marketing ebook by top Rss expert, ‘Rok Hrastnik’ - http://www.rss-feeds-directory.com/rss_the_business_case.zip

Chris Taylor - CEO Catdynamics, author, marketing & SEO
Specialist

Search Engine Optimization Training - Sky Rocket Your Search Engine Rankings
In "Less Than 30 Days". Visit http://www.search-engine-optimization-training-resource.com/adb/ today.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chris_Taylor

REPRINTED ARTICLE -- Traffic, General 01

2006-04-26T16:46:00.000-05:00

Blog Strategies: Building Your Fan Base
By Indigo Black

Very few people go through life hoping no one will notice them. This is especially true if you have been bitten by the blogging bug and spent the last few month, weeks or even days churning out post after post of clever repartee. But in order to build the fan base you secretly crave, you have to let blog surfers know where you’re at and why you are worthy of their undying devotion.

1. First, be sure your blog is search engine friendly. It will help the search engines pick up and categorize your site easier. Edit your blog template to include a meta tag with search terms related to the content of your blog.

2. Then hang out your ‘open for business sign’ by getting your blog listed in directories and on topsites. Choose your directories wisely as most require a link back and you do not want clutter up your blog with fifty pages of directory links. Ideally, you want to get listed in directories with a high page rank but don’t completely discount newer directories. You will, usually, get included into newer directories much faster because they are trying to build their database as quickly as possible.

3. Submit your RSS link to syndication directories. Many aggregators look here for content to offer their subscribers.

4. Write and submit articles to article repositories. Content is king and article directories have exploded on the scene as a great way to get it quickly. It doesn’t matter if you are the CEO of a megastore or a regular ole Joan, they’ll take what you have to offer. Be sure to edit for grammar and spelling and include an anchored link to your blog in the author bio section.

5. Weigh in on controversial topics related to the content of your blog. Let’s face it, we are a nation that loves drama and people will search for and visit places that offer information or opinions on the latest scandals.

6. Be sure to provide a link to your blog on your website and vice versa. Also most forums allow you to add a signature to your posts. Write something witty and include a link to your blog.

7. Join a blog community such as Blog Explosion or Blog Clicker. You earn credits by visiting blogs listed in the community directory which translates into return visits to your site. You can also use earned credits to purchase ad space in the form of a banner rotation or being featured on the opening page of the site.

8. Be active in the blogosphere. Most bloggers will allow you to link to add a link to your site so visit other blogs and leave comments. DO NOT SPAM! The quickest way to lose fans is to spam them. You are much more likely to receive visits if you offer thoughtful comments relevant to the post.

9. Take part in a banner exchange. It is the same type of situation with the blog communities. You advertise banners on your site in exchange for the partner site advertising yours.

10. Join a webring or two or three. Webrings are a great way of hooking up with likeminded bloggers and to gain traffic via the host’s marketing efforts.

11. Exchange blogroll links with bloggers whose internet homes you like to visit.

12. Slap your slogan and blog address on a t-shirt or coffee mug and either sell or give away as apart of a contest. Cafepress is a wonderful resource for creating and selling personalized items.

13. Write a Meme and tag others with it and/or submit it to Meme directories.

14. Give out awards. Be sincere about this and make sure it is related to the content of your blog. (i.e. if you are a blog template designer, give out awards to blogs whose designs you like.) Make sure the award links back to your site.

15. Tell people about it. Recruit visitors offline by talking to internet savvy friends and family about your blog. A guerilla marketing tactic is to print a bunch of business cards with your blog address and leave them in public places. Cheesy, yes but hey people are curious.

Despite what you see on reality television, there is no such thing as instant fame. It takes patience, persistence and perseverance to snag and keep worshippers. These tips will help put you on the road to deification. The rest, my friend, is up to you.

Happy blogging.

Indigo Black is a freelance writer with an innumerable number of interests that include: writing, blogging, erotica, mythology, philosophy and web design. Currently, she operates resource sites for bloggers and erotic writers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Indigo_Black