Create Blogs to Make Money Online from Home

5 Blogger Books I Would Buy Today

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:51:00 +0000

Recently it seems as if there have been a number of bloggers getting deals to publish books. Last week Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett announced the release of their upcoming book. A few weeks ago Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim also published Radically Transparent following the success of his blog.

Blooger Books

Personally, I like the idea of bloggers that I recognize publishing books. I just ordered Darren and Chris’s book and I’m confident that it will be worth the price, because I’m already familiar with them and I respect and trust their insight and opinions.

As I was purchasing the book, it made me think about some other bloggers that I would like to write a book on a particular topic. Plenty of bloggers are selling informational products or giving away free ebooks, but there are a few specifics that I would like to see, and here they are:

Courtney Tuttle - Keyword Sniping for Profit

Over the past few months Court has been publishing a series of posts on what he calls “Keyword Sniping.” Court’s approach to making money online with this method involves finding a niche topic that will allow him the chance to get a #1 ranking with Google for a carefully chosen search phrase. Court gives advice for finding a search phrase that will produce enough traffic to earn a respectable amount of money from AdSense each day. Court’s strategy is not to make a killing from one site, but rather a smaller amount each from a large number of sites.

Before Court’s series I had no interest at all in making money with AdSense, but this is one of the best and most informative series of posts that I have read. Although there is already a good bit of content on his blog about the subject, and some more coming, I think it would be an ideal topic for a book because it would help readers to be able to put everything together into one place, plus it would allow Court to go into more detail than he can in a blog post.

Muhammad Saleem - Creating Buzz Through Social Media Marketing

Muhammad is one of the top users at a few of the major social media sites, including Digg. Recently he’s also been doing a lot of freelance writing and he seems to be posting about social media on all of the top blogs. I think the topic of social media marketing could easily fill an entire book, and who better to write it than Muhammad.

If Muhammad were to write this book he could cover the process of becoming a power user at different social media sites, and he could also go into detail about creating content that gets attention from social media users.

Cyan & Collis Ta’eed - Blogging as a Business

Cyan and Collis (Freelance Switch, PSDTuts, FlashDen) have already written a book on freelancing, How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer, and their blogs continue to grow and draw even more new readers. Their approach to running a blog is really a good bit different from the typical blogger. Cyan and Collis treat their blogs just like any traditional offline business, meaning they are willing to invest money and resources into growing a more profitable business. Due to the success of their projects, I think there is a lot that they could teach the rest of us about successfully building a profitable business through blogging.

Maki - The Ultimate Guide to Writing Web Content

Maki from Dosh Dosh really puts the rest of us to shame when it comes to writing compelling, effective blog content. Maki doesn’t attempt to publish everyday or to fill RSS readers with loads of content, but he is extremely skilled at writing unique content that you don’t see anywhere else. Everyone that reads Dosh Dosh recognizes Maki as a go-to source of information.

Actually, I think Maki could write a book on any number of topics and I’m sure it would be an outstanding book. The subject of content creation is what stands out to me because when I think of bloggers that produce top-notch content, Maki is the first name that comes to mind.

Daniel Scocco - Building a Profitable Network of Blogs

As most of you know, Daniel runs Daily Writing Tips and Daily Bits in addition to Daily Blog Tips, and he earns a full-time income from home. Building a successful blog like this one is hard enough, but Daniel has done a great job of branding and marketing his family of sites, and I think they have all benefited from the relationship.

If you subscribe to any or all of Daniel’s blogs, you know that he strives to consistently provide relevant and useful information to his readers, and I would like to see that go a step further towards showing more about how he has managed to build and maintain such a popular and profitable network.

What’s Your Opinion?

What bloggers would you like to see write a book, and why? Would you buy a book from any of the bloggers that I have mentioned above?

10 Essential Legal Points for Bloggers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:43:00 +0000

Every day, millions of bloggers post content online. Millions more people read and comment on blogs. With all that communication, some interesting legal issues are bound to arise. This article looks at 10 major legal points that bloggers must know and offers some suggestions about how to work with them.

1. Develop a “legal consciousness” about blogging. Like any publications, blogs frequently create legal questions. However, there is no need to fear those issues. Instead, being aware of the possibility of such concerns will help you identify them and manage them effectively. This article presents some of the most common legal issues that arise.

As you read it, consider how those issues apply to your blog. Also, it is good to develop the habit of looking for legal questions as you post new content on your blog. Using the major points in this article as a guide, you can ask yourself, “Are there any potential legal problems here?” whenever you update your blog. This simple practice will help you identify important legal questions and resolve them before they have a chance to cause problems.

2. Read carefully and understand the agreements related to your blog. Depending on how you host, manage, promote, and monetize your blog, the exact agreements you enter will vary somewhat, but here are some common agreements that will affect most bloggers:

Web and blog hosting agreements, including terms of service and acceptable use policies;
content-sharing agreements and licenses;
syndication agreements; and
affiliate, revenue-sharing, and advertising programs.

You should assume that these agreements are valid, enforceable contracts that you must follow. Of course, if you have questions about any agreements or policies or their validity, you should consult with a lawyer to learn about your rights and duties. However, it is reasonable to expect that in most cases you will have to abide by these agreements as you operate your blog, so it is worth your time to become familiar with them.

3. Adopt basic legal policies for your blog. Most blogs can benefit from a “terms of use” agreement. This policy explains how visitors to your blog may use your site and its content. It is the fundamental agreement between you and visitors to your site. The particulars of terms of use agreements vary from one blog to another, but some common provisions include disclaimers of warranties on any of the content, limitation of the blog publisher’s liability, restrictions about how the blog’s content can be used, netiquette policies governing comments posted on the blog, and so forth.

A privacy policy is also an important document for blogs today. Participants in blog conversations are concerned about identity theft and the security of their information. Establishing and following a privacy policy for your blog assures visitors that their personal information will be protected and encourages them to join the discussions at your blog. Here at Daily Blog Tips, Aditya Mahesh recently outlined the basic points that all good blog privacy policies have. Following those points will give you a great start on developing a privacy policy for your blog.

User-generated content (UGC) is becoming an increasingly important source of potential legal disputes. Content-sharing sites may be the most obvious example of participatory media and UGC, but blogs allow users to generate content in the form of comments. A useful policy for UGC will answer the following questions:

who owns the content that users post?
how can the blog’s publisher use the UGC?
how can other users use the content?
do visitors to the blog have the right to change or remove their content?
how will you handle UGC that infringes upon another person’s intellectual property rights or is illegal?
how will disputes over UGC be resolved?

Please note that the questions listed above are just starting points. A complete UGC policy will answer those questions and several others that apply to the particular kind of blog you publish.

4. Protect your copyright in your original work. Unfortunately, a lot of blog content is being copied and used all over the Web without the permission of the content’s creators. Preventing copyright infringement and plagiarism can be difficult and costly, but there are some simple things you can do to address the problem.

display a copyright notice conspicuously on each page of your blog;
register your copyright in your blog with the United States Copyright Office or the copyright registration authority in your country;
license your work to your blog’s visitors (Creative Commons offers a number of standard licenses that you can use, if you don’t want to create your own from scratch); and
learn more about the problem of online plagiarism by reading authoritative information, such as Daily Blog Tips’ “Blog Plagiarism Q & A” and Jonathan Bailey’s PlagiarismToday site.

5. Respect others’ content and do not infringe upon it. You can avoid many disputes in the blogosphere if you respect others’ copyrights and trademarks. Here are a few tips to help you avoid infringing on others’ intellectual property.

For copyrights:

assume all content, whether online or offline, is protected by copyright unless you are certain that it is in the public domain;
get written permission to use copyrighted content and store that writing in a safe place in case you need it later;
always acknowledge the source of content and, if the copyright owner requests a certain format for the attribution, use it;
follow best practices related to copyright law; and
be extremely careful about “fair use” of copyrighted works. The legal factors that determine whether a given use of copyrighted content is a “fair use” may look simple and obvious, but they can be very difficult to apply in practice. If you are unsure about whether your proposed use is a fair use, consult with a lawyer. Even if you are sure that you are making fair use of a copyrighted work, you will still be wise to do everything you reasonably can to obtain written permission to use that work, to avoid the possibility of disputes later.

For trademarks:

show the trademark symbol (”®” for registered trademarks, and “TM” for common law trademarks) immediately after the trademark;
follow the trademark owner’s guidelines for using the mark in blogs and commentary (for an example of such guidelines, see the LEGO® Fair Play policy); and
do not suggest that the trademark owner approves of your content, endorses your site, or is affiliated with you. Instead, display a statement prominently that says you are not affiliated with the trademark owner and that the owner has not approved or endorsed your blog or its content.

6. Before you post statements of fact, be sure those statements are true. Obviously, very few bloggers will intentionally publish false information. However, in the rush to cover topics quickly, ahead of other bloggers and ahead of the mainstream media, bloggers face increasing pressure to “get it first and get it right.” Unfortunately, though, sometimes speed comes at the cost of accuracy. Sacrificing accuracy can cause at least three big problems for the blogger.

First, someone may accuse the blogger of libel because he or she misstated the facts.

Second, you and your blog will lose credibility. In the short term, lost credibility may cost you readers and advertisers. In the longer term, lost credibility may affect your ability to successfully publish other blogs.

Third, if you are selling goods, services, or information through your blog, misrepresenting certain facts can subject you to liability for fraud and violation of applicable consumer protection laws.

7. Consider special problems that can arise in the workplace.

Several disputes have arisen between employers and employees over blogging. Some bloggers have even lost their jobs. There are a few basic rules to follow in the workplace to avoid problems.

If you are an employee, don’t blog on your employer’s time or using your employer’s computer systems or network, unless you have your employer’s explicit written permission. Such practices are likely against the employer’s rules and you probably don’t have any legal right to use the employer’s equipment for personal blogging.

An exception to this general rule occurs when you are writing content for an official company blog that your employer sponsors. In that case, you have the employer’s permission, but you should verify that your blog postings comply with the company’s policies for online content. If you are not sure about the applicability of your employer’s policy, ask your manager.

If you are an employer, make sure your employees understand your company’s policies about blogging. Your blogging policies should be in writing and you should ask employees to sign a statement that says they have read and understood the policy and agree to comply with it. As with any other policies, you should enforce your blogging policies consistently and fairly.

8. If you publish a collaborative or group blog, make sure all the contributors know their rights and responsibilities concerning the blog and its content. The more people you have contributing content to a blog, the greater the potential for disputes. To avoid conflict, it is useful to develop a written agreement with the other bloggers that addresses, at a minimum, the following points:

who owns the copyright to the individual blog posts?
who owns the copyright to the blog as a whole?
can individual bloggers republish their blog posts on other blogs or in other publications, whether online or offline?
under what circumstances may individual bloggers remove their blog posts from the group blog?
do bloggers retain any interest in the blog’s content, including in their individual contributions to it, after they leave the blog?
who is entitled to revenue that the blog generates?
who is responsible for paying the blog’s expenses?
how will disputes among bloggers be resolved?
how will the various affairs of the blog be concluded if the blog ceases publication?

9. Blog anonymously, if your identity, reputation, or personal safety are at risk. In some cases, the only reasonable way to communicate your message–and to make it likely that you will be able to continue blogging–is to blog anonymously. While some countries, such as the United States of America, guarantee a legal right to communicate anonymously, exercising that right on the Internet is not necessarily easy because a blogger may leave various clues about his or her identity at numerous points in the blogging process. While a complete discussion of the technical means to blog anonymously is beyond the scope of this article, here are two resources that will help you navigate those technical issues.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)
Reporters Without Borders, “How to blog anonymously,” in Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents.

10. Learn more about the basics of the laws that affect bloggers. There is much more to the law of blogging than a brief article can cover. Moreover, as blogging becomes more popular, blogging law is developing rapidly. Therefore, learning about the legal issues of blogging is an ongoing process.

Happily, there are several good resources available to help you stay up to date on legal matters. One source of information is bloggers’ conferences and conventions. Those meetings often hold sessions or workshops that present the latest legal developments that bloggers need to know. Additionally, there are several online publications that explain the law in much greater detail and provide a variety of examples to guide you through the legal maze. Here are a few samples of those texts.

Daily Blog Tips, “12 U.S. Laws Bloggers Should Know“
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Legal Guide for Bloggers
Colette Vogele, Mia Garlick, and the Berkman Center Clinical Program in Cyberlaw, Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution

Why Should you Join a Blog Network?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:45:00 +0000

1. Relationships - today I did an informal survey of 10 bloggers from a number of blog networks (not just my own) on the topic of what they like like about being in their network and the most common response was that they enjoyed being a part of something larger than themselves and that it was the relationships both with network owners and managers as well as other bloggers that made the network experience most worthwhile. Many blog networks have some sort of internal communication systems (forums, wikis, email lists or even blogs, chat and VOIP sessions) - all of which can take blogging out of a space that can be a little lonely into one that is much more relational.

2. Traffic - when I started my first blog 3 years ago I did so as a complete newcomer to the blogosphere and had absolutely no connections to other bloggers or sources of traffic. The result was that finding a readership was a long slow process that took a year before I even had more than a few hundred readers a day (except for an occasional fluke day when I had links from bigger blogs). In contrast to this many new network blogs gather a readership much quicker. Of course this varies a lot from network to network (ie Gawker’s blogs can debut in their first day with tens of thousands of visitors where as smaller networks might start with hundreds of visitors). This traffic comes as a result of incoming links from announcement posts, just from the prestige of being in the network and from other blogs in the network. Many networks also have ways of cross promoting blogs via highlighting top posts of the week or clustering related blogs together into channels that cross link within posts.

3. Expertise - very few bloggers have all the skills needed to run a successful blog and networks can offer a large range of skills and expertise to help grow a blog. Most blog networks will handle all of the behind the scenes aspects of getting a blog up and running including design, SEO optimization, paying for and setting up URLs and hosting, finding advertisers, choosing a blog platform (and administering upgrades and plugins), optimizing ads, promotion etc. This leaves the blogger to simply write. Similarly when you’re in a network with many other bloggers and you come across a problem with your blog it’s amazing how quickly it can be solved either by those managing the network or others in it.

4. Administration - similarly to having a lot of the technical aspects of setting up and running a blog handled - a blog network often handles a lot of the administrative tasks associated with blogging such as the management of advertisers (it can get out of control when you have to collect income from numerous sources), book keeping and even (I’ve heard in one case) the moderation of comment spam.

5. Revenue - this is perhaps one of the more obvious reasons that some bloggers choose to join networks (although fewer than you’d think have it as a primary reason as I found today). As I’ll mention in the next post in this series a downside is that in most networks you split the revenue your blog owns with the network (there are many methods of determining this) but on the upside due to the increased traffic, SEO prominence and expertise that a network brings the overall earnings can end up being higher than if you blogged independently (a generalization but true in most cases).

6. SEO - one of the big upsides of being in most blog networks is that on the day your blog launches you are guaranteed to be linked to from each other blog in the network. Networks do this in their own individual ways but it usually happens in a sidebar or footer. The benefits of this are twofold - firstly there is an element of cross promotion going on and some traffic will follow the links but secondly (and mainly) the benefits are that being linked to by other blogs on other domains is one of the best ways to climb the rankings in search engines - which of course leads to traffic.

7. Prestige - of course this one will vary considerably from network to network but if you can get a gig writing for one of the top networks you could use if to your advantage in the building of your own profile.

8. Learning - another answer that I got in my questioning of bloggers today was that some of them said that they joined the network to learn how to blog on a more professional level so that they could use the skills they learnt in their own ventures. One of the best ways of learning is to watch someone else do something and then to imitate - being in a network can expose you to all kinds of learning opportunities.

Blog Design for Beginners

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:43:00 +0000

Step 1: Identify the site’s goals (what are you trying to do? How will you achieve it)

We’re designing this site to increase Fred’s profit. We’re going to do this by designing a flexible framework for Fred to experiment with ad placement, by increasing the attention grabbing aspect in order to capture more first time visitors, and by increasing the site’s stickiness, giving users more chances to see an ad that they want to click on.

While we’re at it, we’re going to use a plugin we recently developed that will give Fred control over the colour of the various elements of his site. This way, he’ll be able to keep things looking fresh.

Step 2: Identify your audience (who are they, and where do they come from)

Fred’s audience is made up of two groups: hardcore watch nuts, who read Fred’s site for news and reviews of the latest timepieces, and people shopping for watches, who come to the site via searches for specific makes and models.

Step 3: Identify specific needs (what functions does the site need to have in order to meet its goals?)

Flexibility with a minimum of fuss is key here. We want Fred to be able to move ad blocks around without having to mess with the code. We also want Fred to be able to change up the look of his site to keep things fresh, again, without messing with the code.

We also want to increase the site’s stickiness. We’ll do this by including a “favorite posts” listing and related links in the post’s footer.

We’ll show a category listing, to allow readers to explore the site in a non-linear way, and a search bar, so readers can search for specific makes or models. We also want to include a blogroll, to share the love. Finally, we want to show recent comments, so Fred’s regular site visitors can keep up with the overall conversation.

Step 4: Draw wireframes (rough sketches to experiment with element placement and layout)

Now the fun starts. I use a fabulous program called OmniGraffle (mac only) to play around with site layout and element hierarchy (more on this in a moment). I like to stay out of my graphics editor, since the potential to get sucked into designing visual elements is so strong. You really want to avoid jumping into the visual part of the design at this stage, since you’ll just end up getting lost.

What we’re doing now is building the terrain that we’ll lay our visual elements over. Skipping this stage is is the single biggest mistake newbie designers make.

Here’s an example of Fred’s site in the first stages of development:

As you can see, there’s no “design” per se present. What we’re doing though is figuring out the optimal placement of the various blocks that make up our site. We’re establishing the hierarchy of the page elements; deciding what’s most important, where we want the users’ eye to move.

This is a very rich area of study. I’m going to try to boil it down to it’s most basic (this data comes from an article by Peter Faraday. In essence we perform 2 functions immediately upon landing on a web page: search, and scan. The search function is our eye looking for a salient entry point into the page. We are attracted by the following (in descending order)

motion
size
images
colour
text style (font choice, font weight)
position

Once we’ve determined where we can start reading, we determine what to read by scanning the page. We look at groups of objects, and the proximity of individual objects to decide what is most important to read first.

Knowing this, we can make decisions in the layout and styling of our pages in order to increase the odds of generating the intended response (ie, clicking on an ad).

The eagle eyed among you may have noticed that we have more ad blocks than Google currently allows. We won’t be using them all at the same time, but we’re building them in so Frank has the ability to move the ads around.

Step 5: Make a mood board (a collection of images, colours, type, etc that give you the feel you’re aiming for).

On larger jobs, we collect a bunch of imagery that feels like the project at hand. We look through magazines (fashion mags are a goldmine), books, and the web for colours, textures, layouts, etc. We cut up the magazines or print stuff out and literally make up a board that summarizes the mood we’re aiming to create for the site.

For a smaller job, we go through the same process, but create a virtual board instead. This is basically a big document in Photoshop that we can paste a bunch of stuff into. These images become our starting place for creating a colour palette, exploring texture and form, and generally acting as inspiration.

Creating one of these things doesn’t take long - go and try it, you’ll be surprised how much it helps.

Here’s an example from a recent project:

Step 6: Visual design

Having completed all of the above, the visual design is a much more manageable job than had we jumped straight in at the outset. Now we can concentrate on the site’s balance, energy, and style.

One huge mistake web design newbies make is not leaving enough space around the individual elements. This is called “white space”. Note that it doesn’t have to be white! Rather, the term refers simply to empty space.

10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:42:00 +0000

1. Consider your Audience

It almost goes without saying - but it’s worth putting yourself in your readers shoes and consider what they might be looking for as they surf by your blog. Are they shopping for specific products? Might they be looking for related products or accessories? What would trigger them to purchase? Start with your reader in mind rather than the product. If you take this approach you could end up doing your reader a favor as well as making a few dollars on the side.

2. Genuine Recommendations and personal endorsements always work best

There are literally hundreds of thousands of products and services for you to choose from to recommend to your blog’s readers but making money from them is not as simple as randomly adding links to them from your blog. Your blog’s readers come back to your blog day after day because something about you resonates with them - they have at least some level of trust and respect for you and perhaps the quickest way to destroy this is to recommend that they buy something that you don’t fully believe will benefit them.

The best results I’ve had from affiliate programs are where I give an open and honest appraisal of the product - including both it’s strengths and weaknesses. The most successful affiliate program I’m involved with here at ProBlogger is Joel Comm’s e-book which I reviewed here. If you read the review you’ll see that I not only tell readers who I believe the book is for but I also mention those it is NOT for. In a sense I critique it. On a surface level one might think that this wasn’t a wise move and that I should have given a glowing review - however the sales that I’ve had through the program have proven otherwise. People want to know what they are buying first and even if they know a product has limitations they will buy it if it meets their particular need.

3. Link to Quality Products

We all like to make sure we’re buying the best products money can buy - your readers are no different to this and are more likely to make a purchase if you’ve found them the best product for them. Choose products and companies with good reputations and quality sales pages. There is nothing worse than giving a glowing review of a product only to send your reader to a page that looks cheap and nasty.

4. Contextual Deep Links work Best

When I started using the Amazon Associate Program I naively thought that all I had to do was put an Amazon banner ad (that linked to Amazon’s front page) at the top of my blog. I thought that my readers would see it and surf over to Amazon and buy up big - thereby making me a rich man. Nothing could have been further from reality - I was deluding myself.

I always says to bloggers that I’m consulting with that they should learn something from contextual advertising when it comes to affiliate programs. The secret of contextual ads like Adsense is that a reader is reading a post on a particular topic on your blog and when they see an advertisement for that same product they are more likely to click it than if they saw an ad for something else. The same is true for affiliate programs. A banner to a general page on every page on your site won’t be anywhere near as effective as multiple links throughout your blog that advertiser products that are relevant for readers reading particular parts of your blog.

So if you’re writing a blog about MP3 players and have a review for a particular product - the most effectively affiliate program that you could link to from within the content of that page would be one that links directly to a page selling that specific model of MP3 player. This is how I use the Amazon program today. It is more work than contextual advertising because you’re not just putting one piece of code into a template but rather need to place individual links on many pages - but I find that it’s been worth the effort.

5. Consider positioning of links

One of the things I go on and on about with Adsense optimization is the positioning of ads. I tell bloggers to position their ads in the hotspots on pages (like the top of a left hand side bar - or inside content - or at the end of posts above comments etc). The same principles are true for affiliate advertising.

6. Traffic levels are Important

While it’s not the only factor - traffic levels are obviously key when it comes to making money from almost any online activity. The more people that see your well placed, relevant and well designed affiliate links the more likely it is that one of them will make a purchase. So don’t just work on your links - work on building a readership. Not only this, consider how you might direct traffic on your blog toward pages where they are more likely to see your affiliate links.

7. Diversify

without Clutter

Don’t put all your affiliate efforts into one basket. There are plenty of products out there to link to so there is no need to just work on one. At the same time you shouldn’t clutter your blog up with too many affiliate program links. If you do so you run the risk of diluting the effectiveness of your links and could disillusion your readership.

8. Be Transparent

Don’t try to fool your readers into clicking links that could make you money. While it may not always feasible to label all affiliate links I think some attempt should be made to let people know what type of link they are clicking on. I also think consistency is important with this so readers of your blog know what to expect. For example here at ProBlogger usually put a note beside or under affiliate links to simply let readers know that that is what they are. On my Digital Camera Blog I don’t do this because of the large number of such links make it clear by the text around the link that clicking on it will take them to some sort of shop or information where a purchase is possible (ie a link my say ‘buy the XXX product’ or ‘get the latest product on XXX’.

9. Combine with other Revenue Streams

Affiliate programs and advertising programs are not mutually exclusive things. I’ve come across a few people recently who have said they don’t want to do affiliate linking because it will take the focus off their Adsense ads. While there is potential for one to take the focus off the other - there is also real potential for both to work hand in hand as different readers will respond to different approaches. You should consider the impact that your affiliate links have on other revenue streams - but don’t let one stop the other.

10. Track results

Most affiliate programs have at least some type of tracking or statistics package which will allow you to watch which links are effective. Some of these packages are better than others but most will at least allow you to see what is selling and what isn’t. Watching your results can help you plan future affiliate efforts. Keep track of what positions for links work well, which products sell, what wording around links works well etc and use the information that you collect as you work plan future affiliate strategies.

Find a Sponsor for Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:39:00 +0000

Today your task is to go on a hunt for a sponsor for your blog.

You might not think that your blog is big enough to find sponsors (and you might be right) but even if you’re unsuccessful in finding one you will hopefully learn a thing or two about finding sponsors and might even start a relationship that could be fruitful at some point in the future.

Getting a sponsor for your blog (or selling an advertising spot directly without relying upon an ad network like AdSense) is a great thing for numerous reasons - not the least of which is that you cut out the middleman and don’t have to share the revenue with a company like Google!

It’s not always easy to land a sponsor - but it’s a skill that bloggers wanting to make money from their blogs should learn - even in the early days.

A few tips for finding a sponsor:

1. Before you go out and start asking companies to sponsor your blog read these two posts - Finding Advertisers for your blog and 10 ways to make your blog more attractive to Advertiser. A big part of finding an advertiser is to get your blog in order first and to be prepared for what they might ask you.

2. If you have a smaller blog and haven’t had a sponsor before don’t aim for the stars straight away. It might be worth starting out by approaching smaller retailers, websites or companies in your niche and see if they’d be interested in some sort of partnership rather than aiming for the very biggest ones right up front. I did this a couple of months after starting my first digital camera blog and emailed 10 online digital camera sites to see if they’d be interested in advertising. 3 of the 10 bought small ads on my site (I think it was for something around $15-$25 a month). It wasn’t a lot of cash (and I didn’t have a lot of traffic to send to them) but I learned so much and made a little money in the process.

3. Target Potential Advertiser Carefully - before you start approaching potential sponsors think carefully about your blog and the topic that you write about and about who might want to reach your readers. Brainstorm a list of companies and websites that might fit the bill.

4. Wondering who to approach? Why not check out who is advertising on other websites and blogs in your niche. Quite often they’ll also be open to running a similar campaign with you.

5. If a sponsor isn’t sure whether to go with you or not - give them a discounted or free trial. I’ve done this a number of times and found it beneficial on three levels:

It gives the sponsor a taste of what your blog can offer
It can help get your readers used to the idea of advertising on your blog
I’ve found that having one advertiser (even if it’s a free one) can actually attract other advertisers (or at least make selling sponsorships easier)
You’ll learn a lot by getting the ad up, finding out how it converts and at a discounted rate you’ll even earn a few dollars

6. Find an Angle and Sell it - don’t just email a potential sponsor asking if they want to advertise with you - sell yourself. If your blog has a loyal community of core readers then sell this, if you get a lot of search engine traffic for certain keywords that the advertiser would want to have, sell it to them on this, if you have an audience who is researching to make purchases - this is a key selling point and if you’ve never had an advertiser before on your blog - turn this into a selling point. You need to give a potential sponsor or advertiser a reason to align their brand with yours.

7. If you can’t attract anyone - run a campaign of your own. Pick a part of your blog that you want to drive traffic to (perhaps a post, or a category, or a subscribe page) and develop a button or banner ads to drive traffic to it. I’m doing this here at the moment in the 468 x 60 banner position here at ProBlogger at the moment (there’s a number of different campaigns running there including some internal ones). The beauty of this is that you can test your conversion rates on different positions.

8. If you do manage to sign up a sponsor give sponsors as much value as possible. Do everything you can to over deliver on the campaign. Announce the sponsorship on the blog with a post, mention it any other newsletters or lists that you have, position it high on the page, consider throwing in a bonus text link in another part of your blog etc. The more traffic you can deliver to your sponsor the more chance of getting them to renew.

Finding Advertisers for Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:38:00 +0000

1. Show them what they’re buying - one of the most powerful strategies I used in my early days of selling ads to people was to show them how I ranked in Google for their keywords. Compile a list of words that you rank for that you can pull out next time you’re talking to an advertiser. If when people search the web for information on products that they sell they end up on your site you have a key selling point.

2. Traffic is a Powerful Motivator - there’s no getting around it - to many advertisers traffic numbers are key. I hope that this trend is changing (what I saw at ad:Tech in Sydney recently confirms this as advertisers are looking to get more niche in their focus) but in the mean time it does count. Keep working to build traffic and be ready to share your numbers and back them up with graphs/tables etc.

3. Collect Demographics - every ad agency I ever spoke with about buying space on my blogs asked about the demographics of my audience. Do some surveys and collect this data as it’ll help sell your case.

4. Start with Small Advertisers - when I first started trying to sell advertising on my blogs I aimed too high. On my digital camera blog I went for Canon, Adobe etc. Of course I failed. So I decided to go to the opposite extreme and started approaching smaller digital camera stores and websites. The tactic worked - they bought up ad space at reasonable rates quite quickly. In time however traffic grew and the bigger campaigns started to appear - having advertisers already on board helped convince the big guys though.

5. Put together an Advertiser Pack - compile your stats, rates, advertising options (ie what you offer) reader demographics and any other relevant figures into a professional looking document that you can email to interested advertisers. Include your contact details and references from other advertisers if you can get them.

6. Sell the Niche Angle - the fact is that most of us will never compete with the broad publications that are out there - so don’t compete with them by trying to fool advertisers into thinking that you’re bigger than you are - sell the fact that you’re different and that you can reach a narrow and targeted group of people that makes the money an advertiser spends much more effective. ‘Spend $1 on a big site and you might reach a lot of people who are mildly interested in your topic - sell $1 on our site and you’ll reach people who are obsessed with your topic….’

7. Key Influencers - do other bloggers read your blog and pick up on what you write? If so - sell this too. You’ve got influential readers - not just passive ones!

10 Ways to make your Blog more Attractive to Advertisers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:32:00 +0000

1. Have an “Advertise with Us” Banner on your site

This is the single most important issue. It should click to an Advertising information page and have an easy way to contact you for more information and rates. Key points: Make it a graphical image or a tab. Keep it above the fold.

2. Keep the ads on your site specific to your site

Don’t have smiley ads and wallpaper ads if your site is site is about mobile phones.

3. Show them the banners

If you currently have no paid placements on your site, put up house ads or partner ads in the same spot you would run a paid spot. (A house ad refers to banners for other products or sites that you or your company own)

4. Throw up a free bonus ad.

By putting a free advertisement on your site, you may not only encourage similar ads or competitors to that product, but the company you added for free may decide to advertise with you. Ask for full disclosure of the performance of the campaign in return. (Total clicks, total purchases etc. ) Key points. Put the free bonus up with a direct URL without tracking tags or affiliate tags.

5. Show your site stats.

You need to show at least the basics for site statical information: Monthly unique visitors and total number of impressions are the 2 key ones. Other less important can be Google PR & Alexa rank.

6. User demographic information. Know your audience.

The bare minimum is Male/Female % and average age of your readers. Other potentially useful information includes geographic, HHI, single/married, number of kids. etc. How do you get this info? You can do site polls, survey’s, or get more detailed stats from ComScore or Quantcast.com

7. Have an ‘About Us’ section.

Clearly explain who you are and what your site is about. And also why you are an ‘authority’ on what you are writing about, and why anyone should care about what you have to say.

8. Don’t use Google AdSense on your site.

OK, this could be the most painful one for most people especially if you are generating a few hundred bucks a month from it already. But Google ad sense devalues your site and makes it look unprofessional. You have to ask yourself, “Do I want some real revenue from my site or Google’s table scraps.”

9. Keep your blog on topic.

If you are all over the map in regards to topics about which you talk about, advertisers won’t know if they are a good fit for your site.

10. Keep your blog professional.

If you are talking about your cat, (Matt Cutts), ranting about your drive to work, swearing or bashing every product you can think about, it will scare away advertisers.

Blog Action Day 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:31:00 +0000

Today the 2008 edition of Blog Action Day is launching. The goal is basically to get as many bloggers as possible writing about the same issue on the same day. Why? To raise the awareness about that issue and make people talk, think and act about it.

Personally I think that this is one of the best initiatives going on around the blogosphere. If it keep growing at the current pace soon it will be having a real impact on the life of many people.

If you remember, last year (topic was the environment) it was a great success with more than 20,000 blogs participating, and an estimated RSS readership of 14 million people. The global conversation that it fostered was so big that many mainstream media and newspapers covered the event as well. And that is good for all bloggers, because it shows the world the power and importance of this new media.

This year the issue we will talk about is poverty. Put a mark on your calendar: October 15 is the day.

When Is The Best Time To Start A New Blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:29:00 +0000

Recently, while browsing through MyBlogLog and other sites, I’ve seen a lot of people with multiple blogs, usually more than two. There is really no problem with having more than one blog, but I always ask myself that if someone has more than one blog, than it must mean their first blog is doing very well. Wrong!

And that’s where I see a problem, at least in my opinion. When checking the stats on those multiple blogs, I found that in most cases all of the blogs were doing poorly to relatively OK, but nothing more. So, instead of having one poorly performing blog, many people have several poorly performing blogs.

It is hard enough maintaining one blog, let alone 2, 3, 4 or more at once. My opinion is that until your first blog reaches a certain level or status, you should hold off on creating a second blog. If you put all your resources into writing great content, building traffic, and building a large reader base for one blog, it will be much easier to create a second or third blog, but the first one has to be there as kind of a mandatory stepping stone.

So how can you gauge the “level” or “status” of a blog and know when it’s the right time to start a new one? Well, I don’t think it’s possible to have any clear cut formula for figuring something like that out, but from my own experience there are a few general guidelines I personally measure myself up against before thinking about starting a new blog.

1. Traffic – Again, there is no particular number that can be thrown out and used for all blogs, but there are some ways to think about traffic. For example, is your site mostly getting traffic from social media sites or from organic search results? My personal view is that you should judge whether to branch out based on your organic search results as social media can be very inconsistent.

If you’re looking at traffic numbers, you should analyze your current traffic to that of the top blogs in your niche. For Online Tech Tips, I might compare myself against Digital Inspiration, HowToGeek.com, Ghacks.net, MakeUseOf.com, etc. All of these sites are very well established and well respected tech blogs.

My favorite place to see traffic levels and compare my site to others is Google Trends, which can give you very very close estimates of daily unique visitors for websites:

Personally, if I feel I am within 10% of the top blogs in my niche, I might decide to go ahead and start another site. Of course, there are blogs like LifeHacker.com that blow away everyone in the graph above, but you don’t have to compare yourself to the top 1 or 2 sites as they are exceptions that are extremely difficult to ever reach.

My point is that if I am not matching other sites in my current niche, why the heck am I going to start a new site? There are still many aspects that need to be improved.

2. Financial Aspects – Another factor that you can consider in making a decision about starting a new blog is to look at your financials. How much money are you making from your site? Do you know how much the other guys are making? Sometimes asking them is the best way to learn and to determine whether you are doing things correctly or not. Are your earnings increasing every month or decreasing?

A lot of people will say that they want to reach the $100 a day mark in AdSense and that is their goal. So reaching that number might be a sign to start a new site. For others, it could be $200 a day. Again, my view is that you should ask other bloggers in your niche what they earn on a monthly or yearly basis and compare that with your own numbers.

3. Community – Even if you don’t have a ton of organic traffic, you might have a large reader base that can serve as a good measure of when to start a new site. Some sites like TechCrunch or Engadget don’t even really need search engine traffic to do well because they have a huge number of RSS readers.

For tech blogs that I compare myself too, a reasonable number to shoot for would be 25,000 to 40,000. I’m nowhere near that right now, so should I really be starting another site? Maybe my content is not as appealing or engaging as other tech sites? If I reach those numbers, I would feel confident that my site has the quality of a tog blog in that niche.

4. Ranking – There are a lot of services out there these days that rank sites. Technorati, Alexa, Compete, QuantCast, and Wikio are just a few that come to mind. Again, it’s good to compare your rankings with those of others in your niche.

Getting your blog into the Top 1K or 5K in Technorati might signify that your site has now reached a status where it can be given a little less attention so that you can focus on a new site.

5. Limitations/Restrictions - One last factor that came into my mind was the fact that it might be a good idea to start a new blog if you have certain limitations with your current site. For example, if you feel limited by running your site on Blogger or Wordpress.com. You may also have a site with a ban, or other sort of problems related to the domain name and so on.

I would agree that there are some circumstances where it might be better to start a new blog, especially if you are writing about a topic that you are not really passionate about.

However, if you write about something you know well or that you really enjoy and you are not competing well with other sites in your niche, it would be well worth continuing to work on the current blog than trying to start up a new one and becoming even more frustrated and time-consumed. A strong first blog will carry along other blogs much better than a weak blog.

Use These 10 Tips to Write Your Most Popular Post Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:27:00 +0000

One popular post can bring your more traffic and links than a month’s worth of your usual content.

In this post, I want to set you a challenge with the potential to launch your blog into the stratosphere.

Make the next post you write your most popular post ever.

The following ten tips form my key advice for tackling this task. I used all of them when hitting the Digg front page for the first time. There’s no blueprint you can follow to write an incredibly popular post, but you won’t have a chance unless you try. I’m confident these tips will give you a good shot at success.

1. Time is more important than talent. Work on something for eight hours and you can bet it will be good. You don’t need to spend that long, however (though that’s how long it took me to craft the first post I wrote that hit the Digg front page). More time means you can refine, format and fill your post with plenty of value. Take the time to really craft your content. It will show in the finished product.

2. Use your best idea. A post will never become wildly popular unless it fulfills a need, and does so emphatically. What’s something your niche wants but hasn’t got yet? Can you assemble a whole lot of really awesome (targeted) resources in one place? The more your posts helps people, the better it will do.

3. Use formatting to your advantage. These days, social media is key when it comes to launching your posts into the stratosphere. Social media users are notoriously spoiled for choice, however. Use formatting to emphasize the best aspects of your post. Hone in on your funniest lines, your most profound bits of advice, your best resources. Make them stand out.

4. Brainstorm headlines. There are probably one or two bloggers who’ve completely mastered the art of writing headlines for social media (you’ll know who they are). The rest of us haven’t been blessed with such skills. When you see a great headline, chances are it’s option #12 of a dozen choices. Few of us can think of a great headline straight away. Spend ten minutes brainstorming and you’re bound to stumble across something that works. A weak headline will cripple your post’s chances of success. It’s essential that you put a lot of work into getting it right.

5. Invest plenty of value in your post. Ever bookmarked or voted for something without completely reading it? We’ve all done it. It’s because of the ‘Wow’ factor — the presence of enough promised value in one place gets the reader enthusiastic about the post straight away. Instead of 5 tips, why not share 50? Instead of 9 resources, why not 40 or more?

7. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If your post looks good, it will draw readers in. Take the time to add images, thumbnails and formatting to what you create. Make your post a visual feast. With so much web content presented in a bland way, your post is guaranteed to stand out.

8. Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Readers will skip your waffly introduction. You can say the same in less words, particularly when you’re writing for an impatient reader: someone who wants to get straight into your tips/resources/opinions. Use your introduction to highlight why the reader should stick with your post. There’s a reason my post introductions mainly consist of: “In this post, I’m going to do this, this and that.” It’s what people really want to know: what am I getting in exchange for my attention?

9. Send messages with links. The best way to get a blogger to investigate your blog is by linking to them. We’ve got a natural desire to know what’s being said about us. If your post becomes really popular, each link inside it should send enough traffic outwards to be worth investigating. Be generous with your outbound links when writing your most popular post. It gives other bloggers an incentive to link to you, because it’s ultimately more promotion for them.

10. Utilize your network. If you want people to Digg, Stumble or Reddit your post, there’s no reason why you need to sit back with fingers crossed and hope it happens. Ask them. Your loyal readers like you. You entertain them, or teach them, or help them. If voting is a simple matter of clicking a link they’ll be more than happy to do so. Ask for votes in your post and email readers and social media influencers. In most cases you will need to get the snowball rolling. After that, others will do most of the work for you.

Bonus tip:

11. Examine what worked before. Study your most popular posts so far. What’s common about them? Why did they work? What needs did they address? In creating your most popular post, it’s important to learn by example and build on what has worked for your blog in the past. Another good idea is to analyze the most popular posts on other blogs in your niche. Why did they work? What’s remarkable about them? You can transfer those qualities over into what you write.

101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:23:00 +0000

if you are not, start blogging today
write about something that you love
if you are serious about blogging buy your own domain
make sure your domain name is equal to your blog name
use a short and easy to remember name
use Wordpress
use Wordpress plugins
blog with consistency
write at least 5 posts a week
proofread
proofread one more time
interact with other bloggers
leave meaningful comments
leave funny comments
leave the first comment
backup your blog
get rid of the sidebar calendar
choose your niche wisely, not too big and not too small
participate in online forums
put a link on your signature
use blog carnivals
content is king
customize your blog template
use trackbacks
simplicity is the way to go
leverage social bookmarks
consider joining a blog network
write “Top 10″ lists
use tags
use pings
write “How to” articles
make your posts scannable
list your blog on directories
ask questions to your readers
use Feedburner
use sense of humor
be generous
encourage readers to subscribe
have some spare posts for emergencies
encourage readers to digg your posts
put an RSS subscription icon on every single page
use “series” of posts
return comments
return links
use readable fonts
gather .edu and .gov backlinks
break long posts in more parts
experiment with different revenue sources
write “pillar articles“
use Google Analytics
study those numbers
use email interviews
be yourself
avoid duplicate content
use an RSS reader
read as many blogs as possible
focus on timeless content
have an “About” page
have a picture of yourself on the “About” page
crate your own “Advertise Here” page
use meta tags wisely
learn the basics of SEO
use pictures whenever possible
create value for your readers
place ads wisely
be patient
consider getting a co-blogger
submit your articles to directories
share what has worked for you
share what has not worked for you
read Problogger.net
do not clutter your sidebar with icons
get rid of looooong blogrolls
experiment with Google Adsense
experiment with Text-Link-Ads
link to other blogs as often as possible
make it easy for visitors to contact you
use titles effectively
offer email subscriptions
always answer to questions
always answer to comments
use Technorati
enable subscription to comments
offer useful tools or resources
write with a personal touch
become an expert in your niche
do not rely on “linking posts”
always give your opinion
use simple colors
participate in blogging projects
get to know other bloggers personally
list your best articles
have a voice
organize your categories
talk directly to your readers
make your URL structure efficient
put functional links on your footer
mention your sources or references
do monthly roundups
consider adding podcasts
create a “101 list”

7 Powerful Ways To Make Money From Adsense Using Only Free Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:19:00 +0000

There is really no doubting that there are amazing incomes currently being made on Google Adsense and the really interesting thing is that even relatively small sites and blogs are finding new ways to make money from their Adsense sites every day.

Actually there are a lot of increasingly creative ways to make money and maximize on Adsense earnings that are being discovered and also being put to use every day. And what’s even more fascinating is the fact that most of these tools being used don’t cost anything. They are actually free. Here are 7 of the most effective currently being used.

a) Ways to make money from Adsense by Distributing articles through ezine and article announcement lists

Some of the most effective methods ways to make money from Adsense clicks involve the simple step of just increasing the volume of targeted traffic to a site. One of the ways of doing this is by distributing interesting content to ezine lists and article announcement lists. It is not too difficult to quickly build a list that reaches a million or so email boxes and can thus give a lot of visibility and drive tons of highly targetd traffic to your Adsense site or sites. Probably the most popular place for doing this is at Yahoo groups, but there are a few others that you can find easily by using your favorite search engine.

Success here depends on three main factors. Firstly you should be careful to join article announcement lists and ezine lists that are as relevant as possible to your subject matter and offering. Secondly your headline has to be a killer headline that will grab readers by the scruffs of their necks and force them to open your email message amongst the dozens or even hundreds of others they receive daily. It goes without saying that the content must meet the promise of your sensational headline. Anything less will cause annoyance and leave all those potential visitors to your Adsense site feeling cheated. And believe me, you don’t want to cause this sort of reaction because it is definitely not one of the ways o make money from Adsense or any other program for that matter. Thirdly, you will need the sort of resource box in all your articles that will leave most of your readers with no option but to visit your Adsense site.

Within a very short of consistently applying this technique, my daily Adsense earnings increased seven-fold.

b) Ways to make money from Adsense by Distributing free articles to high traffic article sites
Some people find the recent trends that have seen an increase in article sites surprising. I don’t. The net is primarily an information-seeking tool. Anything that will help improve the search and quality of information will greatly benefit the people making that effort.

Some of the older article directories receive very high traffic, mainly from web masters and site owners seeking quality free content for their sites. So apart from the immediate exposure these sites also guarantee plenty of future targeted traffic to your site, when folks find your articles useful enough to re-post at their sites.

The more new articles you release to these sites every week, the more targeted traffic your Adsense sites will receive. This is in fact one of the most effective ways of making money consistently from Adsense clicks. One of the reasons for this is that targeted traffic will tend to spend more time at your site or sites, and the more time they spend, the higher the chances that they will click one one of the Adsense ads posted there.

c) Ways to make money from Adsense by Using Articles And A Viral Marketing Website

Any online marketing technique that involves the use of referral marketing or viral marketing automatically has a huge chance of being a success. The net is ideal for viral marketing and in fact gives any viral marketer huge leverage. Viral marketing or referral marketing is one of the most effective ways to make money online. Just ask Bill Gates.

When Gates was trying to play catch up on the Internet after an earlier mistake of underestimating the future importance of the net, he launched his Hotmail free email service when rivals like Yahoo already had millions of users. He decided to use a simple referral marketing technique. Every Hotmail message that went out had a brief signature at the end requesting the recipient to sign up for their free Hotmail account. Within a few short months, Hotmail had millions of users. And there are many other amazing stories which viral marketing boasts of on the net.

There is one of the very simple ways to make money from Adsense by going viral. Sign up at a leading viral marketing site. You will automatically get your own viral site. You can then use some of your articles to point people to your viral site. The way these sites work is that anybody who signs up at your site will have to visit your Adsense site if you register it at the site. So within a very short time you will be driving thousands of visitors to your Adsense site.

Find more details on this at my blog whose address you'll find in the resource box below.

Admittedly this traffic is less targeted. Still the huge potential and possible numbers you are able to receive using this free tool more than makes up for this.

d) Ways to make money from Adsense With Your Email signature

People greatly underestimate the power and potential effectiveness of a simple email signature as one of the ways to make money online. Actually this is a viral marketing method because emails get forwarded all the time and are even copied to several other people sometimes.

Do not waste another minute. Go to all your email accounts right now and create a signature that points to your Adsense site or sites.

Writing effective email signatures is a skill that you will have to develop, but I have found that using famous quotes is more effective than a straight advertising message. Always remember that people hate to be advertised to online.

e) Ways to make money from Adsense By Asking Questions At Discussion groups

I recently had an interesting conversation with a young Internet and computer techie. He asked me whether there were quick ways to make money online by answering technical questions and helping people to solve their computer and web-related problems. My answer was that there were many discussion groups where participants would get these answers for free. I advised him that he had a better chance of making money by making use of this free advice available online rather than by trying to sell his own advice.

There are tons of online discussion groups where leading world experts will answer your questions and give you valuable insight for free. It is amazing why most people do not think of using these online forums to learn as much as they can about the most effective ways of making money from Adsense.

These forums can easily be found through you favorite search engine.

f) Ways to make money from Adsense By Bartering your online skills for valuable Adsense keywords

In the old days, before the invention of money, if somebody needed something, the first question they asked themselves was; “What is it that I already have that I can exchange for what I need? Barter trade seems to have been forgotten but it is a very powerful method of trading. More so online where people have plenty of skills but are slow to trust others enough to send them money for an item they need.

You can barter whatever it is you have, your skills, products or services, and exchange them for genuine valuable Adsense keywords. Valuable Adsense keywords are the most effective way for a small site with low traffic to earn big cash from Adsense. And you can do this barter trade on an ongoing basis so that you always have a constant supply of valuable Adsense keywords which you can use at your site or blog as one of the ways to make more money from Adsense.

g) Ways to make money from Adsense By Sending Teaser Emails

To Everybody In Your Inbox And Also To Your Opt-in Email List
Most of us receive tons of email in our inbox every day. You’ll be surprised at the huge number of people you know by simply going through your email inbox. No matter how good your spam filters are, you are also bound to be receiving more than your fare share of SPAM or unsolicited email. All this is “gold” lying in your email inbox and there are ways to make money using these emails. All you need to do to process the emails into pure gold is to send out “teaser emails about the most interesting aspects of content at your site. The whole objective of teaser emails is to get people to visit your site.

How to Make Money Blogging: 7 Strategies to Help you Get Started Immediately

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:17:00 +0000

You can make money from blogging. It can pay for your bills. It does work for everyone. There’s no secret and you’ll just really need to know how to get started and which blogging framework to follow.

It’s not a difficult process at all and this post will provide 7 distinct methods you can use to generate substantial income from blogging. These seven methods are strategies you can adopt right from the beginning, preferably before you set up your first blog.

You can think of them as guidelines which point out the different options you have, if you’re serious about using blogging as a method of making money online.

1. The “Flagship” or Big Blog Route

This is simultaneously the most profitable and most time-consuming blog venture. The flagship method directs all your focus on a few blogs in order to make them incredibly popular in their niche. Flagship blogs should have a large audience as well as high daily visitor traffic numbers.

These type of big blogs have a wide variety of monetization options with direct advertising sales being a big part of it. Know that not everyone can successfully create a big blog so attempt this route only if you absolutely believe that you have the networking skills, niche knowledge and marketing know-how that’s needed.

Benefits: Fame as well as more monetization options/potential for your blogs, alongside personal satisfaction. Another advantage is that big blogs usually market or promote themselves automatically once a certain level of fame has been achieved.
Disadvantages: Very time-consuming especially if you are not outsourcing the content creation or marketing duties. Expect a lot of work and experiment with creative promotional ideas if you decide to go this route.

2. The “Pay per Post” or Get Paid to Blog Route

This is rather simple. Set up multiple niche blogs on either your own domains or free blog hosts like Blogger. Maintain them over a period of time and focus on writing content and building up their Google PageRank, link profile and Alexa Rank.

Submit all of your blogs to multiple get paid to blog websites like Blogitive, Blogsvertise, Review Me, Sponsored Reviews, PayperPost, LoudLaunch and then start writing sponsored posts. I highly recommending using PayperPost as they simply have the largest amount of paid offers available.

Benefits: The greatest strength of this method is that you don’t even need a large audience to make money. 20 people could be visiting and reading your blogs everyday and you’ll still be able to make at least $15 a day from each blog. If skillfully done over multiple blogs, this method can allow you to easily make over $1.5 K a month.
Disadvantages: No passive income. You’ll need to spend time writing multiple sponsored blog posts, which can be boring and time consuming. Work will also be needed to maintain your multiple blogs, although that will be minimal after they have been optimized and running for some time.

3. The Automated Blogging or Splog Route

Automated blogging involves the setting up of blogs which automatically pull content from RSS feeds, search engines and news sources to serve as content on your website.

Some bloggers set this to pull partial excerpts of RSS feeds, which does go against some copyrights and one can choose to only include excerpts with a link back to the site in question. Monetization for automated sites is usually done through contextual ads like Google Adsense or affiliate programs.

Benefits: Very little work needed to maintain these blogs as they do not need you to actively generate or write content. You might need to do a little SEO and regular maintenance now and then. Try if you are adventurous.
Disadvantage: A weak potential for profit unless you understand the entire process perfectly and if you have quite a large number of blogs.I estimate that a fully automated blog will make you around $5 a month although the actual value depends on the niche and your skills. Assuming that this is so, you’ll need 1,000 blogs to make around $5000 a month. Splogs dwell in ethically gray areas as well.

4. The Text Link Selling Blog Route

The main bulk of your income through this method comes from selling text links to various webmasters and businesses who want to improve their site ranking in Google. While text link selling works for the flagship or other blog models as well, sites can be primarily built for text link sales as well.

The overwhelming emphasis here is on Google PageRank and niche relevancy so you’ll need to focus on these two factors. You can either convert a domain into a text link and sponsored post selling blog or you can purchase a domain with existing PageRank to sell text links for a quick buck. I suggest looking for link buyers directly through webmaster forums.

Benefits: Selling text links or contextual text links is rather easy and doesn’t involve much work. Potential for profit will correspond to your Google Page Rank and niche. A site with a high PageRank and a profitable niche (mortgages, credit cards) will be very attractive to link buyers. Like paid review blogs, traffic is not a factor in these blogs as well.
Disadvantages: Over Reliance on the Google PageRank algorithm means that your income may rise or fall depending on your actual Page Rank. There may also be a limit to the number of links you can sell which leads to an income ceiling.

5. The Made-for-Adsense or Made-for-Affiliate-Program Route

This involves setting up a blog around a specific topic with moderately high priced keywords (e.g. teeth whitening, car loans). You’ll only need to create around 25 keyword rich articles on the topic, optimize it for search, set up Adsense or affiliate programs and then leave them alone.

The main emphasis is on building links to the specific webpages, according to the long tail keywords you want to target. Search engine visitors will then find your blog and either click on the ads or convert on a product.

Benefits: Not a lot of time involved as you can usually contract an experienced writer to develop the keyword rich articles. Not much time is needed to update the blogs as well and new material can be added on a bi-weekly or even monthly basis.
Disadvantages: There might be a lot of competition in a profitable niche and search traffic might not lead to sufficient income, unless you go for volume and set up dozens of similar websites in other niches as well.

6. The Blog Network or Contract Blogging Route

This involves joining a blog network and getting paid to maintain and create content for blogs. You’ll get paid according to the amount of pageviews, possibly receive a token base fee in the hundreds or a share of the blog’s ad revenue.

Benefits. Relatively stable monthly income because of the base fee. Contract work usually leads to more freelance blogging or writing assignments because of your proven ability or association with a specific organization.
Disadvantages: Why bother? If you’re that good at creating and promoting a blog, set up your own website and keep all the profits. However, it is useful to note that a lot depends on the type of network or contract agreement you receive.

7. The Blog-as-Marketing or Branding Route

This method will only apply if you own an online business or provide a freelance service like web design, copy writing or marketing consultation. A blog can be used to help promote your personal or business brand and attract more customers.

This is an indirect method of making money. Ideally, this sort of a blog shouldn’t be plastered with ads or paid reviews because it can tarnish the image of the brand.

Benefits. A blog can help your brand or business to develop much more search visibility because it allows you to easily create more fresh content that caters to specific demographics as well.
Disadvantages. Your blog will only be as useful as the quality of the service or product you are pushing. The amount of money you earn doesn’t entirely depend on the quality of the blog but the value of your service/product as well. Income is therefore indirect and can be inconsistent.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are several strategies you can choose if you’re interesting in making money from blogs. To ensure maximum success, be sure to pick one that suits your personal schedule, skill level and interests.

Do you actually want to monetize your blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:13:00 +0000

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first. If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path. If you want to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however, you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful: How Selfish Are You? It’s about balancing your needs with the needs of others.

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations. Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.

You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that — it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month. If you’d like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s certainly not my only source. More on that later…

Can you make a decent income online?

Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. I’m making a healthy income from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.

Can most people do it?

No, they can’t. I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word. But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail. The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.” And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet. So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can. How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.

If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will. OK, actually I do.

This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though. You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry. What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves? It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it. Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence. But that just gets you in the door. You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent. And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are: web savvy.

If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some. But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice: Don’t quit your day job.

Web savvy

What do I mean by web savvy? You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies. What technologies are “key” will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization. But generally speaking I’d list these elements as significant:

blog publishing software
HTML/CSS
blog comments (and comment spam)
RSS/syndication
feed aggregators
pings
trackbacks
full vs. partial feeds
blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
search engines
search engine optimization (SEO)
page rank
social bookmarking
tagging
contextual advertising
affiliate programs
traffic statistics
email

Optional: podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.

I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness. If scanning such a list makes your head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet. Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your knowledge base.

If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL, digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list. Again, you don’t need to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies. Even if you hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. You need to be able to trust your strategic decisions, and you won’t be able to do that if you’re a General who doesn’t know what a gun is.

A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income generation. For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO well. But you can’t consider each technology in isolation. You need to understand the connections and trade-offs between them. Monetizing a blog is a balancing act. You may need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you, social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others. Seemingly minor decisions like what to title a web page are significant. In coming up with the title of this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration. I want a title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social bookmarking. And most importantly I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors. I do my best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs. Often that means abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones. It’s little skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month. Missing out on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic. And there are dozens of these types of skills that require web savvy to understand, respect, and apply.

This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%. Both groups may work just as hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts. It normally doesn’t take me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of experience goes into those 60 seconds. You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them routinely.

Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on Google or Wikipedia, and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it. To make money from blogging it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades. Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” That may be true, but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to use them. It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto mechanic. Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else. Even though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work. I don’t really care. I can still use them to generate results. In the time it would take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional knowledge to apply several of them.

Thriving on change

Your greatest risk isn’t that you’ll make mistakes that will cost you. Your greatest risk is that you’ll miss opportunities. You need an entrepreneurial mindset, not an employee mindset. Don’t be too concerned with the risk of loss — be more concerned with the risk of missed gains. It’s what you don’t know and what you don’t do that will hurt you the worst. Blogging is cheap. Your expenses and financial risk should be minimal. Your real concern should be missing opportunities that would have made you money very easily. You need to develop antennae that can listen out for new opportunities. I highly recommend subscribing to Darren Rowse’s Problogger blog — Darren is great at uncovering new income-generating opportunities for bloggers.

The blogosphere changes rapidly, and change creates opportunity. It takes some brains to decipher these opportunities and to take advantage of them before they disappear. If you hesitate to capitalize on something new and exciting, you may simply miss out. Many opportunities are temporary. And every day you don’t implement them, you’re losing money you could have earned. And you’re also missing opportunities to build traffic, grow your audience, and benefit more people.

I used to get annoyed by the rapid rate of change of web technologies. It’s even more rapid than what I saw when I worked in the computer gaming industry. And the rate of change is accelerating. Almost every week now I learn about some fascinating new web service or idea that could potentially lead to big changes down the road. Making sense of them is a full-time job in itself. But I learned to love this insane pace. If I’m confused then everyone else is probably confused too. And people who only do this part-time will be very confused. If they aren’t confused, then they aren’t keeping up. So if I can be just a little bit faster and understand these technologies just a little bit sooner, then I can capitalize on some serious opportunities before the barriers to entry become too high. Even though confusion is uncomfortable, it’s really a good thing for a web entrepreneur. This is what creates the space for a college student to earn $1,000,000 online in just a few months with a clever idea. Remember this isn’t a zero-sum game. Don’t let someone else’s success make you feel diminished or jealous. Let it inspire you instead.

What’s your overall income-generation strategy?

I don’t want to insult anyone, but most people are utterly clueless when it comes to generating income from their blogs. They slap things together haphazardly with no rhyme or reason and hope to generate lots of money. While I’m a strong advocate of the ready-fire-aim approach, that strategy does require that you eventually aim. Ready-fire-fire-fire-fire will just create a mess.

Take a moment to articulate a basic income-generating strategy for your site. If you aren’t good at strategy, then just come up with a general philosophy for how you’re going to generate income. You don’t need a full business plan, just a description of how you plan to get from $0 per month to whatever your income goal is. An initial target goal I used when I first started this site was $3000 per month. It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but I knew if I could reach $3000 per month, I could certainly push it higher, and $3000 is enough income that it’s going to make a meaningful difference in my finances. I reached that level 15 months after launching the site (in December 2005). And since then it’s continued to increase nicely. Blogging income is actually quite easy to maintain. It’s a lot more secure than a regular job. No one can fire me, and if one source of income dries up, I can always add new ones. We’ll address multiple streams of income soon…

Are you going to generate income from advertising, affiliate commissions, product sales, donations, or something else? Maybe you want a combination of these things. However you decide to generate income, put your basic strategy down in writing. I took 15 minutes to create a half-page summary of my monetization strategy. I only update it about once a year and review it once a month. This isn’t difficult, but it helps me stay focused on where I’m headed. It also allows me to say no to opportunities that are inconsistent with my plan.

Refer to your monetization strategy (or philosophy) when you need to make design decisions for your web site. Although you may have multiple streams of income, decide which type of income will be your primary source, and design your site around that. Do you need to funnel people towards an order form, or will you place ads all over the site? Different monetization strategies suggest different design approaches. Think about what specific action you want your visitors to eventually take that will generate income for you, and design your site accordingly.

When devising your income strategy, feel free to cheat. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Copy someone else’s strategy that you’re convinced would work for you too. Do NOT copy anyone’s content or site layout (that’s copyright infringement), but take note of how they’re making money. I decided to monetize this site with advertising and affiliate income after researching how various successful bloggers generated income. Later I added donations as well. This is an effective combo.

Traffic, traffic, traffic

Assuming you feel qualified to take on the challenge of generating income from blogging (and I haven’t scared you away yet), the three most important things you need to monetize your blog are traffic, traffic, and traffic.

Just to throw out some figures, last month (April 2006), this site received over 1.1 million visitors and over 2.4 million page views. That’s almost triple what it was just six months ago.

Why is traffic so important? Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent). You can screw almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming).

When I first launched this blog, I knew that traffic building was going to be my biggest challenge. All of my plans hinged on my ability to build traffic. If I couldn’t build traffic, it was going to be very difficult to succeed. So I didn’t even try to monetize my site for the first several months. I just focused on traffic building. Even after 19 months, traffic building is still the most important part of my monetization plan. For my current traffic levels, I know I’m undermonetizing my site, but that’s OK. Right now it’s more important to me to keep growing the site, and I’m optimizing the income generation as I go along.

Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you. And it also means you’re helping more and more people.

With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer. High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites. On average at least 20 bloggers add new links to my site every day, my articles can easily surge to the top of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and I’m getting more frequent requests for radio interviews. Earlier this year I was featured in USA Today and in Self Magazine, which collectively have millions of readers. Journalists are finding me by doing Google searches on topics I’ve written about. These opportunities were not available to me when I was first starting out. Popular sites have a serious advantage. The more traffic you have, the more you can attract.

If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.

How to build traffic

Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom?

I’ve already written a lengthy article on this topic, so I’ll refer you there: How to Build a High Traffic Web Site (or Blog). If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later. That article covers my general philosophy of traffic-building, which centers on creating content that provides genuine value to your visitors. No games or gimmicks.

There is one other important traffic-building tip I’ll provide here though.

Blog Carnivals. Take full advantage of blog carnivals when you’re just starting out (click the previous link and read the FAQ there to learn what carnivals are if you don’t already know). Periodically submit your best blog posts to the appropriate carnivals for your niche. Carnivals are easy ways to get links and traffic, and best of all, they’re free. Submitting only takes minutes if you use a multi-carnvival submission form. Do NOT spam the carnivals with irrelevant material — only submit to the carnivals that are a match for your content.

In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month. You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog. Free marketing is precisely the kind of opportunity you don’t want to miss. Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club — they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff. I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore. Just to increase my traffic by 1% in a month, I need 11,000 new visitors, and even the best carnivals don’t push that much traffic. But you can pick up dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submissions, so it’s a great place to start. Plus it’s very easy.

If your traffic isn’t growing month after month, does it mean you’re doing something wrong? Most likely you aren’t doing enough things right. Again, making mistakes is not the issue. Missing opportunities is.

Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?

Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:

Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic. The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.

Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE. It’s just not true. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site. Nothing. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links. Nothing. I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever. Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site. In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this. It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.

Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work. I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development. To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work. If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything. What could be more fair than that? The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it. For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site. I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far. The podcasts are all ad-free. I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead. More income = better service.

At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy. Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it: “You know, Steve. Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.” Of course I’m aware of it. I’m the one who put the ads there. There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads. They’re effective! People keep clicking on them. If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.

I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen). Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.

I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads. First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free. I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.

If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at the 2005 traffic growth chart. I first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then. For an independent source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa. You can select different Range options to go further back in time.

Multiple streams of income

You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket. Think multiple streams of income. On this site I actually have six different streams of income. Can you count them all? Here’s a list:

Google Adsense ads (pay per click and pay per impression advertising)
Donations (via PayPal or snail mail — yes, some people do mail a check)
Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month)
Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click)
Affiliate programs like Amazon and LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly books)
Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer)

Note: If you’re reading this article a while after its original publication date, then this list is likely to change. I frequently experiment with different streams.

Adsense is my biggest single source of income, but some of the others do pretty well too. Every stream generates more than $100/month.

My second biggest income stream is actually donations. My average donation is about $10, and I’ve received a number of $100 donations too. It only took me about an hour to set this up via PayPal. So even if your content is free like mine, give your visitors a means to voluntarily contribute if they wish. It’s win-win. I’m very grateful for the visitor support. It’s a nice form of feedback too, since I notice that certain articles produced a surge in donations — this tells me I’m hitting the mark and giving people genuine value.

These aren’t my only streams of income though. I’ve been earning income online since 1995. With my computer games business, I have direct sales, royalty income, some advertising income, affiliate income, and donations (from the free articles). And if you throw in my wife’s streams of income, it gets really ridiculous: advertising, direct book sales, book sales through distributors, web consulting, affiliate income, more Adsense income, and probably a few sources I forgot. Suffice it to say we receive a lot of paychecks. Some of them are small, but they add up. It’s also extremely low risk — if one source of income dries up, we just expand existing sources or create new ones. I encourage you to think of your blog as a potential outlet for multiple streams of income too.

Automated income

With the exception of #6, all of these income sources are fully automated. I don’t have to do anything to maintain them except deposit checks, and in most cases I don’t even have to do that because the money is automatically deposited to my bank account.

I love automated income. With this blog I currently have no sales, no employees, no products, no inventory, no credit card processing, no fraud, and no customers. And yet I’m still able to generate a reasonable (and growing) income.

Why get a regular job and trade your time for money when you can let technology do all that work for you? Imagine how it would feel to wake up each morning, go to your computer, and check how much money you made while you were sleeping. It’s a really nice situation to be in.

Blogging software and hardware

I use WordPress for this blog, and I highly recommend it. Wordpress has lots of features and a solid interface. And you can’t beat its price — free.

The rest of this site is custom-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. I’m a programmer, so I coded it all myself. I could have just as easily used an existing template, but I wanted a simple straightforward design for this site, and I wanted the look of the blog to match the rest of the site. Plus I use PHP and MySQL to do some creative things outside the blog, like the Million Dollar Experiment.

I don’t recommend using a hosted service like Blogger if you want to seriously monetize your blog. You don’t get enough control. If you don’t have your own URL, you’re tying yourself to a service you don’t own and building up someone else’s asset. You want to build page rank and links for your own URL, not someone else’s. Plus you want sufficient control over the layout and design of your site, so you can jump on any opportunities that require low-level changes. If you use a hosted blog, you’re at the mercy of the hosting service, and that puts the future of any income streams you create with them at risk. It’s a bit more work up front to self-host, but it’s less risky in the long run.

Web hosting is cheap, and there are plenty of good hosts to choose from. I recommend Pair.com for a starter hosting account. They aren’t the cheapest, but they’re very reliable and have decent support. I know many online businesses that host with them, and my wife refers most of her clients there.

As your traffic grows you may need to upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS). This web site is hosted by ServInt. I’ve hosted this site with them since day one, and they’ve been a truly awesome host. What I like most about them is that they have a smooth upgrade path as my traffic keeps growing. I’ve gone through several upgrades with them already, and all have been seamless. The nice thing about having your own server is that you can put as many sites on it as the server can handle. I have several sites running on my server, and it doesn’t cost me any additional hosting fees to add another site.

Comments or no comments

When I began this blog, I started out with comments enabled. As traffic grew, so did the level of commenting. Some days there were more than 100 comments. I noticed I was spending more and more time managing comments, and I began to question whether it was worth the effort. It became clear that with continued traffic growth, I was going to have to change my approach or die in comment hell. The personal development topics I write about can easily generate lots of questions and discussion. Just imagine how many follow-up questions an article like this could generate. With tens of thousands of readers, it would be insane. Also, nuking comment spam was chewing up more and more of my time as well.

But after looking through my stats, I soon realized that only a tiny fraction of visitors ever look at comments at all, and an even smaller fraction ever post a comment (well below 1% of total visitors). That made my decision a lot easier, and in October 2005, I turned blog comments off. In retrospect that was one of my best decisions. I wish I had done it sooner.

If you’d like to read the full details of how I came to this decision, I’ve written about it previously: Blog Comments and More on Blog Comments.

Do you need comments to build traffic? Obviously not. Just like when I put up ads, I saw no decline in traffic when I turned off comments. In fact, I think it actually helped me. Although I turned off comments, I kept trackbacks enabled, so I started getting more trackbacks. If people wanted to publicly comment on something I’d written, they had to do so on their own blogs and post a link. So turning off comments didn’t kill the discussion — it just took it off site. The volume of trackbacks is far more reasonable, and I can easily keep up with it. I even pop onto other people’s sites and post comments now and then, but I don’t feel obligated to participate because the discussion isn’t on my own site.

I realize people have very strong feelings about blog comments and community building. Many people hold the opinion that a blog without comments just isn’t a blog. Personally I think that’s utter nonsense — the data just doesn’t support it. The vast majority of blog readers neither read nor post comments. Only a very tiny and very vocal group even care about comments. Some bloggers say that having comments helps build traffic, but I saw no evidence of that. In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. Managing comments detracts from writing new posts, and it’s far better to get a trackback and a link from someone else’s blog vs. a comment on your own blog. As long-term readers of my blog know, when faced with ambiguity, my preference is to try both alternatives and compare real results with real results. After doing that my conclusion is this: No comment.

Now if you want to support comments for non-traffic-building reasons like socializing or making new contacts, I say go for it. Just don’t assume that comments are necessary or even helpful in building traffic unless you directly test this assumption yourself.

Build a complete web site, not just a blog

Don’t limit your web site to just a blog. Feel free to build it out. Although most of my traffic goes straight to this blog, there’s a whole site built around it. For example, the home page of this site presents an overview of all the sections of the site, including the blog, article section, audio content, etc. A lot of people still don’t know what a blog is, so if your whole site is your blog, those people may be a little confused.

Testing and optimization

In the beginning you won’t know which potential streams of income will work best for you. So try everything that’s reasonable for you. If you learn about a new potential income stream, test it for a month or two, and measure the results for yourself. Feel free to cut streams that just aren’t working for you, and put more effort into optimizing those streams that show real promise.

A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads. It took about 20 minutes. They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my earnings directly into my PayPal account. This month I’ll make around $600 from them, possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month. And it’s totally passive. If I never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income.

For many months I’ve been tweaking the Adsense ads on this site. I tried different colors, sizes, layouts, etc. I continue to experiment now and then, but I have a hard time beating the current layout. It works very well for me. Adsense doesn’t allow publishers to reveal specific CPM and CTR data, but mine are definitely above par. They started out in the gutter though. You can easily double or triple your Adsense revenue by converting a poor layout into a better one. This is the main reason why during my first year of income, my traffic grew at 20% per month, but my income grew at 50% per month. Frequent testing and optimization had a major positive impact. Many of my tests failed, and some even made my income go down, but I’m glad I did all that testing. If I didn’t then my Adsense income would only be a fraction of what it is now.

It’s cheap to experiment. Every new advertising or affiliate service I’ve tried so far has been free to sign up. Often I can add a new income stream in less than an hour and then wait a month to see how it does. If it flops then at least I learned something. If it does well, wonderful. As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be experimenting with new income streams. If you haven’t tried anything new in six months, you’re almost certainly missing some golden opportunities. Every blog is different, so you need to test things for yourself to see what works for you. Failure is impossible here — you either succeed, or you learn something.

Pick your niche, but make sure it isn’t too small

Pick a niche for your blog where you have some significant expertise, but make sure it’s a big enough niche that you can build significant traffic. My wife runs a popular vegan web site. She does pretty well within her niche, but it’s just not a very big niche. On the other hand, my topic of personal development has much broader appeal. Potentially anyone can be interested in improving themselves, and I have the flexibility to write about topics like productivity, self-discipline, relationships, spirituality, health, and more. It’s all relevant to personal development.

Pick a niche that you’re passionate about. I’ve written 400+ articles so far, and I still feel like I’m just getting started. I’m not feeling burnt out at all. I chose to build a personal development site because I’m very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about this subject. I couldn’t imagine a better topic for me to write about.

Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money. I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure. Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience. Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can give.

A broad enough topic creates more potential advertising partners. If I keep writing on the same subtopic over and over, I may exhaust the supply of advertisers and hit an income ceiling. But by writing on many different topics under the same umbrella, I widen the field of potential advertisers. And I expand the appeal of my site at the same time.

Make it clear to your visitors what your blog/site is about. Often I visit a blog with a clever title and tagline that reveals nothing about the site’s contents. In that case I generally assume it’s just a personal journal and move on. I love to be clever too, but I’ve found that clarity yields better results than cleverness.

Posting frequency and length

Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency. Some bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more. I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite. I usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000 words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now). That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more exhaustive, in-depth articles. I find that deeper articles are better at generating links and referrals and building traffic. It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value. I don’t believe in creating disposable content just to increase page views and ad impressions. If I’m not truly helping my visitors, I’m wasting their time.

Expenses

Blogging is dirt cheap.

I don’t spend money on advertising or promotion, so my marketing expenses are nil. Essentially my content is my marketing. If you like this article, you’ll probably find many more gems in the archives.

My only real expenses for this site are the hosting (I currently pay $149/month for the web server and bandwidth) and the domain name renewal ($9/year). Nearly all of the income this site generates is profit. This trickles down to my personal income, so of course it’s subject to income tax. But the actual business expenses are minimal.

The reason I pay so much for hosting is simply due to my traffic. If my traffic were much lower, I could run this site on a cheap shared hosting account. A database-driven blog can be a real resource hog at high traffic levels. The same goes for online forums. As traffic continues to increase, my hosting bill will go up too, but it will still be a tiny fraction of total income.

Perks

Depending on the nature of your blog, you may be able to enjoy some nice perks as your traffic grows. Almost every week I get free personal development books in the mail (for potential review on this site). Sometimes the author will send it directly; other times the publisher will ship me a batch of books. I also receive CDs, DVDs, and other personal development products. It’s hard to keep up sometimes (I have a queue of about two dozen books right now), but I am a voracious consumer of such products, so I do plow through them as fast as I can. When something strikes me as worthy of mention, I do indeed write up a review to share it with my visitors. I have very high standards though, so I review less than 10% of what I receive. I’ve read over 700 books in this field and listened to dozens of audio programs, so I’m pretty good at filtering out the fluff. As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a great deal of self-help fluff out there.

My criteria for reviewing a product on this site is that it has to be original, compelling, and profound. If it doesn’t meet these criteria, I don’t review it, even if there’s a generous affiliate program. I’m not going to risk abusing my relationship with my visitors just to make a quick buck. Making money is not my main motivation for running this site. My main motivation is to grow and to help others grow, so that always comes first.

Your blog can also gain you access to certain events. A high-traffic blog becomes a potential media outlet, so you can actually think of yourself as a member of the press, which indeed you are. In a few days, my wife and I will be attending a three-day seminar via a free press pass. The regular price for these tickets is $500 per person. I’ll be posting a full review of the seminar next week. I’ve been to this particular seminar in 2004, so I already have high expectations for it. Dr. Wayne Dyer will be the keynote speaker.

I’m also using the popularity of this blog to set up interviews with people I’ve always wanted to learn more about. This is beautifully win-win because it creates value for me, my audience, and the person being interviewed. Recently I posted an exclusive interview with multi-millionaire Marc Allen as well as a review of his latest book, and I’m lining up other interviews as well. It isn’t hard to convince someone to do an interview in exchange for so much free exposure.

Motivation

I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging. You have to be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that matters. My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings. That’s my passion. Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.

What’s your passion? What would you blog about if you were already set for life?

Blogging lifestyle

Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings. I work from home and set my own hours. I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is quite often). Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal growth and helping others do the same. There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.

Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet. But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.

Create a blog and start making money within 28 days

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:11:00 +0000

There are several lists with “ways to make money with a website” on the Internet, but none of them seem to be complete. That is why I decided to create this one. If you know a method that is not listed below, just let us know and we’ll update it.

Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.

For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.

The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!

Direct Methods

1. PPC Advertising Networks

Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.

The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).

The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.

List of popular CPC advertising networks:

2. CPM Advertising Networks

CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.

A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.

CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.

You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).

List of popular CPM advertising networks:

3. Direct Banner Advertising

Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.

The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.

Related links:

4. Text Link Ads

After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.

Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.

The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.

Text link marketplaces and networks:

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.

Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.

In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.

List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:

6. Monetization Widgets

The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.

Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.

List of companies that provide monetization widgets:

7. Sponsored Reviews

PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.

Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.

If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.

List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:

8. RSS Feed Ads

With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.

Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.

Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.

Related links:

9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events

If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.

This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.

Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”

Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.

10.Premium Content

Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.

SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.

11. Private Forums

While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).

Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.

These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.

List of popular forum software:

12. Job Boards

All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.

Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.

The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.

List of popular job board software:

13. Marketplaces

Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.

Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.

The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.

You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.

14. Paid Surveys and Polls

There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.

Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.

15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages

Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).

These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.

Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.

16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors

Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”

On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.

17. Donations

Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.

Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).

A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.

18. In-text Adverting

In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.

Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.

19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders

Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.

If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.

Ad networks that use pop-ups:

20. Audio Ads

Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.

The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.

21. Selling the Website

Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.

Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).

Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.

Related links:

Indirect Methods

22. Selling an Ebook

Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.

You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.

Related links:

23. Selling a Hardcover Book

Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.

While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.

List of self publishing and publishing services:

24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes

As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.

On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.

Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.

25. Offering Consulting and Related Services

Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.

Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.

26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter

Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.

Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.

Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.

List of software to manage email newsletters:

27. Mentoring programs

People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.

Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.

Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.

28. Creating a conference around the website

If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.

Search Engine Land, for instance, created a series of conferences that visit several cities on the United States and on other countries as well. The conferences are called Search Marketing Expo, and the tickets and passes cost thousands of dollars.

Blogging Guideline

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:09:00 +0000

Get your Web site to “show you the money” by using Google to draw more eyes–and wallets–to your content. In this friendly, four-color guide from veteran author and Web developer Eric Giguere, you’ll learn all about Google’s AdSense program and how you can use it to make your Web site or blog more profitable. Written in an easy-to-read, non-technical style, this book follows three average people–Claude, Stef, and Anita–as they learn to create money-making blogs and Web sites. Through their experiences, you’ll learn: basic Web terminology; the Google Adsense nuts and bolts; how to host, build, and publish targeted ads and Google search boxes to your Web site; filter out inappropriate ads; track page performance; drive traffic to your site; and more. A four-part companion Web site features a blog, includes reader resources, and details the techniques discussed in the book.

Online marketers agree that AdSense is one of the best tools you can use to draw dollars to your site. Let Giguere show you how to make the most of Google and have fun doing it!

About the Author
Eric Giguere is a Web developer and technical writer who has monetized his own Web site and is developing various Web properties. As the author of numerous books and articles–including Palm Database Programming–Eric excels at explaining complicated computing topics to the average person.

Download Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/37663906/12memwg200506_P.B_.rar

27 Lessons About Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:08:00 +0000

Help people solve a problem and differentiate yourself
Be prepared to invest 2-3 years before seeing any serious returns
Make it as easy as possible for people to subscribe to your RSS feed
Offer a full feed
A bad post is worse than no post
Be prepared to completely run out of ideas after the first 3-4 months
It’s not always what you know, who you know is important too
Write catchy headlines and list posts
Make the opening paragraph as compelling as possible
Courteously encourage friends, family, and casual acquaintances to vote up and link to your posts
Don’t write every post for the social sites
Listen carefully to every piece of feedback but don’t be a slave to it
Experiment. Take chances. Piss a few people off
Always look for a different angle
Don’t participate in every meme or trade links with everyone who asks
Write about your life in a way that’s relevant to your topic
Make people think
Don’t be anxious to plaster Google Ads all over the place
Design matters
Posting comments on other blogs is overrated
Respond to your commenters
Obsessively reading other blogs and checking traffic stats are not productive activities
Once you have a bit of success don’t flaunt it
Make use of blog carnivals
Display your best posts on every page
Read blogs about blogging
Do what works for you

10 Signs That Your Blog Is On The Right Track

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:56:00 +0000

1. Growing Subscriber Count

If your blog’s subscriber base is growing, even slowly, you are making some progress. Gaining trust and subscribers is not easy, so try not to get your expectations unrealistically high. If you have realistic goals for subscriber growth you will more likely be able to feel good about your progress and stay consistent with your blogging.

2. Increasing Numbers of Inbound Links

Links are important for any blog. They help with click-through traffic, search engine rankings, and recognition. For bloggers, incoming links are also representative of how well you are known in your industry and your number of links will grow as you start to become recognized as an authority.

3. Increasing Numbers of Valuable Comments

If your blog is receiving a decent amount of thought-provoking comments, that is a good sign that people are reading and paying attention to you. Comments are the lifeblood of blogs, and those that have a lot of valuable comments from readers become even more useful for readers.

4. Increasing Visitors, Pageviews, and/or Pagviews Per Visit

Many bloggers are stats junkies. While growth in traffic isn’t always representative of meeting or surpassing your blogging goals, it certainly isn’t a bad thing. Hopefully, over time your blog stats will increase as more and more readers visit and subscribe to your blog.

5. Consistent Posting

If you are posting consistently on your blog, you’re already one step ahead of the vast majority of bloggers. It sounds pretty easy, but consistent posting is a huge challenge for many. If you’re able to keep posting consistently, good things are likely to happen.

6. Improving Quality of Articles

Quality is always going to be a somewhat subjective issue, but I think most bloggers can look back through their archives and get a pretty accurate idea of how the quality has trended over time. I know that when I look back at my first few months of blog posts I’m kind of embarrassed at the low level of quality, and I don’t think I’m alone. Growth in quality is natural as you will become more knowledgeable about your topics and as you learn about blogging and writing in general. Take a look back at how your quality of writing has improved and I think you will be encouraged to keep going and see what happens.

7. An Ability to Clearly Define Your Niche

One of the most overlooked items when starting a new blog is being able to accurately define the audience that you will be targeting. As time goes by, you’ll learn what types of content your readers appreciate (and what they don’t respond to) and you’ll most likely get a better idea of where you fit into your niche. Knowing your place is very important for branding and creating a blog that is appealing to the readers that you are targeting. If you know precisely where you fit into your niche, you’re on the right track.

8. An Increasing Network of Bloggers

Networking is probably the most crucial aspect of blogging outside of content creation, and in some cases it can be even more important. If you are continually meeting new bloggers and strengthening the relationships that you have made, you will drastically be in a better position for the future. Building a network will help you to learn from others, gain valuable and loyal readers, increase inbound links, increase votes at social media sites, and much more.

9. A Knowledge of at Least 1 Specific Way to Get Targeted Readers to Your Blog

As you continue to blog, you will learn more about traffic generation and getting people to read and recognize what you have written. If you have even one specific method that consistently helps you to reach your target audience, you are better off than most bloggers. Maybe you have spent some time writing guest posts for other blogs in your niche, maybe you’ve had success with leaving intelligent and relevant comments at other blogs, or maybe you’ve developed a strong profile at a niche-specific social media website. Whatever the source is, if it is something that you can continue to use in the future, you are one step closer to blogging success.

10. Achievement of Goals

Many bloggers have long-term goals, such as making a living with a blog, or getting 10,000 subscribers. But what many bloggers lack are short-term goals that will help them to take the necessary steps towards those long-term goals. If you are setting monthly goals for blogging revenue, subscribers, traffic, etc. and you are achieving those goals, don’t give up because you are not getting to the long-term goals fast enough. Take pleasure in meeting your short-term goals and keep challenging yourself.

WEB DESIGN MISTAKES YOU SHOULD AVOID

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:20:00 +0000

There are several lists of web design mistakes around the Internet. Most of them, however, are the “Most common” or “Top 10” mistakes. Every time I crossed one of those lists I would think to myself: “Come on, there must be more than 10 mistakes…”. Then I decided to write down all the web design mistakes that would come into my head; within half an hour I had over thirty of them listed. Afterwards I did some research around the web and the list grew to 43 points.

The next step was to write a short description for each one, and the result is the collection of mistakes that you will find below. Some of the points are common sense, others are quite polemic. Most of them apply to any website though, whether we talk about a business entity or a blog. Enjoy!

The user must know what the site is about in seconds: attention is one the most valuable currencies on the Internet. If a visitor can not figure what your site is about in a couple of seconds, he will probably just go somewhere else. Your site must communicate why I should spend my time there, and FAST!

Make the content scannable: this is the Internet, not a book, so forget large blocks of text. Probably I will be visiting your site while I work on other stuff so make sure that I can scan through the entire content. Bullet points, headers, subheaders, lists. Anything that will help the reader filter what he is looking for.

Do not use fancy fonts that are unreadable: sure there are some fonts that will give a sophisticated look to your website. But are they readable? If your main objective is to deliver a message and get the visitors reading your stuff, then you should make the process comfortable for them.

Do not use tiny fonts: the previous point applies here, you want to make sure that readers are comfortable reading your content. My Firefox does have a zooming feature, but if I need to use on your website it will probably be the last time I visit it.

Do not open new browser windows: I used to do that on my first websites. The logic was simple, if I open new browser windows for external links the user will never leave my site. WRONG! Let the user control where he wants the links to open. There is a reason why browsers have a huge “Back” button. Do not worry about sending the visitor to another website, he will get back if he wants to (even porn sites are starting to get conscious regarding this point lately…).

Do not resize the user’s browser windows: the user should be in control of his browser. If you resize it you will risk to mess things up on his side, and what is worse you might lose your credibility in front of him.

Do not require a registration unless it is necessary: lets put this straight, when I browse around the Internet I want to get information, not the other way around. Do not force me to register up and leave my email address and other details unless it is absolutely necessary (i.e. unless what you offer is so good that I will bear with the registration).

Never subscribe the visitor for something without his consent: do not automatically subscribe a visitor to newsletters when he registers up on your site. Sending unsolicited emails around is not the best way to make friends.

Do not overuse Flash: apart from increasing the load time of your website, excessive usage of Flash might also annoy the visitors. Use it only if you must offer features that are not supported by static pages.

Do not play music: on the early years of the Internet web developers always tried to successfully integrate music into websites. Guess what, they failed miserably. Do not use music, period.

If you MUST play an audio file let the user start it: some situations might require an audio file. You might need to deliver a speech to the user or your guided tour might have an audio component. That is fine. Just make sure that the user is in control, let him push the “Play” button as opposed to jamming the music on his face right after he enters the website.

Do not clutter your website with badges: first of all, badges of networks and communities make a site look very unprofessional. Even if we are talking about awards and recognition badges you should place them on the “About Us” page.

Do not use a homepage that just launches the “real” website: the smaller the number of steps required for the user to access your content, the better.

Make sure to include contact details: there is nothing worse than a website that has no contact details. This is not bad only for the visitors, but also for yourself. You might lose important feedback along the way.

Do not break the “Back” button: this is a very basic principle of usability. Do not break the “Back” button under any circumstance. Opening new browser windows will break it, for instance, and some Javascript links might also break them.

Do not use blinking text: unless your visitors are coming straight from 1996, that is.

Avoid complex URL structures: a simple, keyword-based URL structure will not only improve your search engine rankings, but it will also make it easier for the reader to identify the content of your pages before visiting them.

Use CSS over HTML tables: HTML tables were used to create page layouts. With the advent of CSS, however, there is no reason to stick to them. CSS is faster, more reliable and it offers many more features.

Make sure users can search the whole website: there is a reason why search engines revolutionized the Internet. You probably guessed it, because they make it very easy to find the information we are looking for. Do not neglect this on your site.

Avoid “drop down” menus: the user should be able to see all the navigation options straight way. Using “drop down” menus might confuse things and hide the information the reader was actually looking for.

Use text navigation: text navigation is not only faster but it is also more reliable. Some users, for instance, browse the Internet with images turned off.

If you are linking to PDF files disclose it: ever clicked on a link only to see your browser freezing while Acrobat Reader launches to open that (unrequested) PDF file? That is pretty annoying so make sure to explicit links pointing to PDF files so that users can handle them properly.

Do not confuse the visitor with many versions: avoid confusing the visitor with too many versions of your website. What bandwidth do I prefer? 56Kbps? 128Kbps? Flash or HTML? Man, just give me the content!

Do not blend advertising inside the content: blending advertising like Adsense units inside your content might increase your click-through rate on the short term. Over the long run, however, this will reduce your readership base. An annoyed visitor is a lost visitor.

Use a simple navigation structure: sometimes less is more. This rule usually applies to people and choices. Make sure that your website has a single, clear navigation structure. The last thing you want is to confuse the reader regarding where he should go to find the information he is looking for.

Avoid “intros”: do not force the user to watch or read something before he can access to the real content. This is plain annoying, and he will stay only if what you have to offer is really unique.

Do not use FrontPage: this point extends to other cheap HTML editors. While they appear to make web design easier, the output will be a poorly crafted code, incompatible with different browsers and with several bugs.

Make sure your website is cross-browser compatible: not all browsers are created equal, and not all of them interpret CSS and other languages on the same way. Like it or not, you will need to make your website compatible with the most used browsers on the market, else you will lose readers over the long term.

Make sure to include anchor text on links: I confess I used to do that mistake until some time ago. It is easier to tell people to “click here”. But this is not efficient. Make sure to include a relevant anchor text on your links. It will ensure that the reader knows where he is going to if he clicks the link, and it will also create SEO benefits for the external site where the link is pointing.

Do not cloak links: apart from having a clear anchor text, the user must also be able to see where the link is pointing on the status bar of his browser. If you cloak your links (either because they are affiliate ones or due to other reasons) your site will lose credibility.

Make links visible: the visitor should be able to recognize what is clickable and what is not, easily. Make sure that your links have a contrasting color (the standard blue color is the optimal most of the times). Possibly also make them underlined.

Do not underline or color normal text: do not underline normal text unless absolutely necessary. Just as users need to recognize links easily, they should not get the idea that something is clickable when in reality it is not.

Make clicked links change color: this point is very important for the usability of your website. Clicked links that change color help the user to locate himself more easily around your site, making sure that he will not end up visiting the same pages unintentionally.

Do not use animated GIFs: unless you have advertising banners that require animation, avoid animated GIFs. They make a site look unprofessional and detract the attention from the content.

Make sure to use the ALT and TITLE attributes for images: apart from having SEO benefits the ALT and TITLE attributes for images will play an important role for blind users.

Do not use harsh colors: if the user is getting a headache after visiting your site for 10 consecutive minutes, you probably should pick a better color scheme. Design the color palette around your objectives (i.e. deliver a mood, let the user focus on the content, etc.).

Do not use pop ups: this point refers to pop ups of any kind. Even user requested pop ups are a bad idea given the increasing amount of pop blockers out there.

Avoid Javascript links: those links execute a small Javascript when the user clicks on them. Stay away from them since they often create problems for the user.

Include functional links on your footer: people are used to scrolling down to the footer of a website if they are not finding a specific information. At the very least you want to include a link to the Homepage and possibly a link to the “Contact Us” page.

Avoid long pages: guess what, if the user needs to scroll down forever in order to read your content he will probably just skip it altogether. If that is the case with your website make it shorter and improve the navigation structure.

No horizontal scrolling: while some vertical scrolling is tolerable, the same can not be said about horizontal scrolling. The most used screen resolution nowadays is 1024 x 768 pixels, so make sure that your website fits inside it.

No spelling or grammatical mistakes: this is not a web design mistake, but it is one of the most important factors affecting the overall quality of a website. Make sure that your links and texts do not contain spelling or grammatical mistakes.

If you use CAPTCHA make sure the letters are readable: several sites use CAPTCHA filters as a method of reducing spam on comments or on registration forms. There is just one problem with it, most of the times the user needs to call his whole family to decipher the letters.

6 WAYS TO SPEED UP YOUR SITE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:16:00 +0000

The load time of websites is one of the most important factors affecting its usability; most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds. Below you will find the summary of the “Speed Up Your Site” series. Those are simple yet effective ways to make sure that your website is running fast. You can click on each point to read the article with comments from the readers.

Optimize Images: always use the “Save for the web” feature included on image editing software. Images represent the heavier load on virtually any website so make sure you are optimizing them. Alternatively you can also turn to an online image optimizer.
Image Formats: apart from optimizing images it is important that you choose the right format. JPEG format is suitable for photographs or true-color images. The GIF format should be used with flat-color images like logos or buttons. PNG works very similar to GIF but it supports more colors.
Optimize Your CSS: most websites are designed with CSS nowadays. Make sure to aggregate and clean your CSS. CleanCSS is an online tool that will merge similar selectors, remove useless properties and remove the whitespace from your code.
Use a Slash on Your Links: when a user opens a link on the form “http://www.domain.com/about” the server will need to figure what kind of file or page is contained on that address. If you include a slash (/) at the end of the link the server will already know that this is a directory page, reducing the load time of the site.
Use the Height and Width Tags: many people forget to add the Height and Width tags on image codes. Those tags will make sure that the browser knows the size of the image before loading it. The result is that it will reserve a spot for the images while loading the rest of the page, speeding up the whole process.
Reduce the HTTP Requests: when opening a web page every object (images, scripts and the line) will require a round trip to the server. This latency can add several seconds to the load time of your site. Make sure to reduce the number of objects and to combine CSS files and scripts together.

11 FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN DESIGNING YOUR BLOG

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:33:00 +0000

Changing themes is very common for bloggers. In addition to the option of changing from one free theme to another, many bloggers develop their own theme, make some customizations to an existing theme, or pay someone else to design one for them. Even if you are paying someone else to do this for you, you should still be very involved in the process to insure that you get the best possible end result. Regardless of whether you are doing the work yourself of having someone else do it, here are 11 factors that you should consider to create the perfect theme for your blog.

Complexity of the Re-Design

Do you want to completely change the look of the blog, or would you like to keep some elements of the design so that the blog is still recognizable to visitors? There is no right or wrong decision here, it just depends on your situation and what you need to accomplish with the re-design. Some bloggers are happy with the current look and just interested in freshening things up a bit and making some improvements in certain areas. Other bloggers are willing to completely strip down the current look and go for something totally new. When Chris Garret had his blog re-designed several months ago, he kept the look very much intact and just came up with a more modern-looking theme. On the other hand, when Darren Rowse had ProBlogger redesigned, the result was a vastly different look. While there is no right or wrong method, you’ll need to decide this at the start of the design process to get things headed in the direction that you want.

Brand Establishment

Does your blog already have an established branded image? If so, you may want to keep enough elements of your current design to retain that image. You don’t necessarily have to be an A-list blogger to have an image that is established in the minds of your visitors. If your blog is growing and your audience has become familiar with the brand that you have established, you should at least consider how a change in design could affect this.

Colors

Some bloggers choose to keep the same color scheme when developing a new blog theme, and others opt for something totally different. This also goes back to a decision of staying consistent with the image that you have been building, or going for a complete overhaul of the design. If you’re not happy with your current color scheme, it’s probably a good idea to make some changes. To make this process a bit easy, you can take advantage of resources that are available like the palettes at COLOURlovers or the sample schemes at ColorSchemer.

Featuring of Best Content

Most bloggers like to promote their best work by making it easy for visitors to find. This helps the blogger by showcasing the most popular posts that will help to increase pageviews and subscribers, and it helps visitors by making it easy for them to find the most useful information on the blog. There are any number of different ways to feature your best work. Here at Daily Blog Tips Daniel has a list of popular articles in the right sidebar, and many other bloggers also use this approach. Others like Courtney Tuttle and Caroline Middlebrook effectively use the area above blog posts for this purpose. Which method you use is up to you, but this is something that you should think about before you start to work on the layout of your blog so that you have adequate space.

Monetization

Banner ads are obviously very common on blogs today, and paid text links are also pretty common. Before you develop the layout of your theme, be sure to consider where these ads will be located. In order for the theme to maintain an attractive appearance, the ads will need to fit nicely into the design. You’ll need to take into consideration the size and dimensions of the banner ads that you want to sell (125 x 125 is the most common right now) so that the design will work accordingly.

Readability

One of the most important factors of blog design is readability. The whole purpose of a blog is to provide content for visitors and subscribers to read, so naturally you will want to make this as easy as possible. Readability can be affected by elements like background color, text color, contrast, fonts and typography, spacing/whitespace, etc. The elements that you are adding to your blog should not detract from the visitors’ ability to read the content.

Subscription Options

In order to maximize the number of subscribers that you receive you will probably want to include links to your RSS feed and to your email subscription in a prominent place on the page. This is important to consider before the layout is developed. Where do you want these links and icons to be placed? Be sure there is an appropriate space allocated for them in the layout.

Ease of Navigation

Visitors will enter your blog from numerous different pages, and most of the time they will not come through your front page. They may find one of your posts through a search engine, through a link, or through social media.

Full Posts or Excerpts?

At some point you’ll need to decide if you want your front page to display full posts or excerpts (Daniel wrote an article on the advantages and disadvantages last year). While this doesn’t need to be the first decision you make, it can have a dramatic effect on the look and design of your front page. Many blogs that display excerpts use custom excerpts to really improve the look of the home page. See PSDTuts for an example of a blog that has a great-looking front page using excerpts.

Social Media Integration

Most bloggers really on social media to send a portion of their visitors, and many attempt to optimize their pages and posts for social media traffic by adding buttons, widgets, or links to specific social media sites. Again, this is something that you will need to consider when deciding on a page layout so that the social media elements look like they belong on the page and so they attract the attention of visitors. First, you’ll need to decide which social media sites you want to target, and then you’ll need to find the buttons or widgets that you want to use. Another option is to use a general widget like Share This .

Load Speed

Many of your visitors will have a short attention span, and if your pages load too slowly they may leave before ever seeing your blog. Adding too many widgets, plugins, large images, video, etc. to your blog can slow your pages to a crawl. You’ll need to find the optimal point where your blog includes everything necessary but not anything excessive that will slow down the page loads too far. Self SEO has a free page speed test that you can use.

HISTORY OF BLOGGING TIMELINE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:24:00 +0000

Usenet was the primary serial medium included in the original definition of the World Wide Web. It featured the Moderated Newsgroup which allowed all posting in a newsgroup to be under the control of an individual or small group. Most such newsgroups were simply moderated discussion forums, however, in 1983-84, one exception, named mod.ber, was created, named after and managed by an individual: Brian E. Redman. Regularly, Redman and a few associates posted summaries of interesting postings and threads taking place elsewhere on the net.

The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. A few called themselves "escribitionists". The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community. Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers, as is Jerry Pournelle. Dave Winer's Scripting News is also credited with being one of the oldest and longest running weblogs. Another early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site in 1994. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance, and such journals were also used as evidence in legal matters.

Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol. Some of the very earliest bloggers, like Steve Gibson of sCary's Quakeholio (now Shacknews) and Stephen Heaslip of Blue's News (still running since 1995 with online archives back to July 1996), evolved from the Quake scene and Carmack's .plan updates. Steve Gibson was hired to blog full-time by Ritual Entertainment on February 8, 1997, possibly making him the first hired blogger.

Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. One example of a news based "weblog" is the Drudge Report founded by the self-styled maverick reporter Matt Drudge, though apparently Drudge dislikes this classification. Another is the Institute for Public Accuracy which began posting news releases featuring several news-pegged one-paragraph quotes several times a week beginning in 1998. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal website that was frequently updated by Usenet legend Kibo.

Early weblogs were simply manually updated components of common websites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and maintenance of web articles posted in reverse chronological order made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical, population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or they can be run using blog software, such as WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger or LiveJournal, or on regular web hosting services.

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms.

After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage spread during 1999 and the years following, being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools:

Open Diary launched in October 1998, soon growing to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries.
Brad Fitzpatrick, a well known blogger started LiveJournal in March 1999.
Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in July 1999 as an easier alternative to maintaining a "news page" on a website, followed by Diaryland in September 1999, focusing more on a personal diary community.
Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra Labs) launched blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by Google in February 2003)

Blogging combined the personal web page with tools to make linking to other pages easier — specifically permalinks, blogrolls and TrackBacks. This, together with weblog search engines enabled bloggers to track the threads that connected them to others with similar interests.

Several broadly popular American blogs emerged in 2001: Andrew Sullivan's AndrewSullivan.com, Ron Gunzburger's Politics1.com, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit, Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs, and Jerome Armstrong's MyDD — all blogging primarily on politics (two earlier popular American political blogs were Bob Somerby's Daily Howler launched in 1998 and Mickey Kaus' Kausfiles launched in 1999).

By 2001, blogging was enough of a phenomenon that how-to manuals began to appear, primarily focusing on technique. The importance of the blogging community (and its relationship to larger society) increased rapidly. Established schools of journalism began researching blogging and noting the differences between journalism and blogging.

Also in 2002, many blogs focused on comments by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Senator Lott, at a party honoring U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, praised Senator Thurmond by suggesting that the United States would have been better off had Thurmond been elected president. Lott's critics saw these comments as a tacit approval of racial segregation, a policy advocated by Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign. This view was reinforced by documents and recorded interviews dug up by bloggers. (See Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.) Though Lott's comments were made at a public event attended by the media, no major media organizations reported on his controversial comments until after blogs broke the story. Blogging helped to create a political crisis that forced Lott to step down as majority leader.

The impact of this story gave greater credibility to blogs as a medium of news dissemination. Though often seen as partisan gossips, bloggers sometimes lead the way in bringing key information to public light, with mainstream media having to follow their lead. More often, however, news blogs tend to react to material already published by the mainstream media.

Since 2002, blogs have gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping, and spinning news stories. The Iraq war saw bloggers taking measured and passionate points of view that go beyond the traditional left-right divide of the political spectrum.

Blogging was established by politicians and political candidates to express opinions on war and other issues and cemented blogs' role as a news source. (See Howard Dean and Wesley Clark.) Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts blogged, making blogs a source of in-depth analysis. (See Daniel Drezner and J. Bradford DeLong.)

The second Iraq war was the first "blog war" in another way: Iraqi bloggers gained wide readership, and one, Salam Pax, published a book of his blog. Blogs were also created by soldiers serving in the Iraq war. Such "warblogs" gave readers new perspectives on the realities of war, as well as often offering different viewpoints from those of official news sources.

Blogging was used to draw attention to obscure news sources. For example, bloggers posted links to traffic cameras in Madrid as a huge anti-terrorism demonstration filled the streets in the wake of the March 11 attacks.

Bloggers began to provide nearly-instant commentary on televised events, creating a secondary meaning of the word "blogging": to simultaneously transcribe and editorialize speeches and events shown on television. (For example, "I am blogging Rice's testimony" means "I am posting my reactions to Condoleezza Rice's testimony into my blog as I watch her on television.") Real-time commentary is sometimes referred to as "liveblogging."

In 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Even politicians not actively campaigning, such as the UK's Labour Party's MP Tom Watson, began to blog to bond with constituents.

Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a program by Christopher Lydon and Matt Stoller called "The blogging of the President," which covered a transformation in politics that blogging seemed to presage. The Columbia Journalism Review began regular coverage of blogs and blogging. Anthologies of blog pieces reached print, and blogging personalities began appearing on radio and television. In the summer of 2004, both United States Democratic and Republican Parties' conventions credentialed bloggers, and blogs became a standard part of the publicity arsenal. Mainstream television programs, such as Chris Matthews' Hardball, formed their own blogs. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary declared "blog" as the word of the year in 2004.

In 2004, Global Voices Online, a site which "aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore" surfaced, bringing to light bloggers from around the world. Today, the site has a relationship with Reuters and is responsible for breaking many global news stories.

Blogs were among the driving forces behind the "Rathergate" scandal, to wit: (television journalist) Dan Rather presented documents (on the CBS show 60 Minutes) that conflicted with accepted accounts of President Bush's military service record. Bloggers declared the documents to be forgeries and presented evidence and arguments in support of that view, and CBS apologized for what it said were inadequate reporting techniques (see Little Green Footballs). Many bloggers view this scandal as the advent of blogs' acceptance by the mass media, both as a news source and opinion and as means of applying political pressure.

Some bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television: Duncan Black (known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios), Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Daily Kos), Alex Steffen (Worldchanging) and Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette). In counter-point, Hugh Hewitt exemplifies a mass media personality who has moved in the other direction, adding to his reach in "old media" by being an influential blogger.

Some blogs were an important news source during the December 2004 Tsunami such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, which used SMS text messaging to report from affected areas in Sri Lanka and Southern India. Similarly, during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the aftermath a few blogs which were located in New Orleans, including the Interdictor and Gulfsails were able to maintain power and an Internet connection and disseminate information that was not covered by the Main Stream Media.

In the United Kingdom, The Guardian newspaper launched a redesign in September 2005, which included a daily digest of blogs on page 2. Also in June 2006, BBC News launched a weblog for its editors, following other news companies.

In January 2005, Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers that business people "could not ignore": Peter Rojas, Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott, Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis.

In 2007, Tim O'Reilly proposed a Blogger's Code of Conduct.

THE FUTURE OF BLOGGING

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:10:00 +0000

Blogging offers an easy way to publish and allow the reader to interact with the author of the blog through comments. This was an improvement over the web sites that were primarily brochure wares.

Since blogging emerged as a publishing platform many new ways of interacting has gained traction.

Many new software platforms such as

Social bookmarking examples: digg, stumbleupon, reddit,
Social Media flickr, youtube
Social networking facebook, Myspace

and micro blogging such as twitter, life streaming through Frienfeed and semantic bookmarking through Twine have also become popular. This provides a wide array of choices to the users of the web. A very informative called conversation prism is introduced by Brain Solis to describe the new media landscape.

In this arrangement blogging becomes one of the tools along with so many other tools that promote the participation and sharing among web users. These tools are easier to use and allow informal conversation among the participants. They provide much more flexibility of expression and equality among participants. Also, blogs are becoming more like traditional media where the popularity of blogs follow the well known power law in which few blogs get majority of the readers attention. Very similar to 20/80 rule like the traditional news and media organizations. Web promised to bring more participation and equality of participation not morph into another reincarnation of traditional media. If that is the case why do we need another competing media. From economical point of view it is inefficient use of resources.

The fastest growing platform on the web right now is social networking with web sites such as Myspace, Facebook and many others. They allow much more informal interaction among participants and in many ways make it easier to create user profiles and let member use other features offered by these social networking web sites. The main problem is that they are mostly walled gardens and the user are mostly at the mercy of the owners of these platforms.

There are other options like Ning, Elegg and PeopleAggregator that allow users to create their own social networks. Interesting thing is that all these platforms are moving in the same direction when it comes to offering the features. The list of the features offered by these social networking software platforms could be long but it follows the same trend that is

User Profiles, management of user profiles
Communication tools such as IM, Chat and e-mail
Blogging capability through notes
Social Media capablities through images and videos
Forums and discussions
Application that can be added with ease within the user profile
Lifestreaming through live feeds etc.

It seems to me that all of the social networks are adding more and more features to look more and more alike.

What does it all have to do with blogging? The blogging software is also evolving. The blogger platform from Google already allows to add widgets and with Google's friend connect in beta a blog can be transformed into a small social network very similar to what Mybloglog is already offering. The recent release of Typepad Pro goes even further and offers pretty much all the essential capabilities that a social networking platform offers minus lifestreaming that people may be able add in the future through simple browser plugins currently in beta.

The Pro part of the software platform is essentially all the capabilities that one will find in a social networking platform.

Does this all mean that in the future the blogs will evolve and will become web sites that will essentially be a mini social networking web sites? It seems that way if this trend is any indication of the future.

The availability of inexpensive devices to capture and edit images and videos will make it easier to create user generated visual content. This has already created huge image banks at Flickr web site and according to the compete web analytics Youtube ranks #6 most visited site on the Internet with 62 million unique users per month. The rise of Youtube within few short years shows that video as a medium is more expressive and attracts more attention compared to text based write ups.

Does this mean that future blogs will be created using a hybrid of text,images,videos and interactivity as media? Again it seems that way if we follow the trend.

This however will create a serious generation gap between older people who practiced writing and prefer text and younger people who will prefer images, audio and video as a medium of expression.

BLOGS, BLOGGERS AND BLOGGING

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:28:00 +0000

Still now a days, number of people are asking the same question again and again “What is Blogging ?” Blogging has become a source of daily income for the bloggers. Blog is a web site, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events or other materials such as graphics and video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Moreover, there are some other definitions that can be found on the web; such as:

“A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.”

“Online journal. The term BLOG comes from web log.”

“A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.”

“A Blog style within Mambo is the listing of records in a summary form. Example: It could be by link only, or showing just the introductory text with a link to the complete text. Often the "News" page is written in Blog style.”

“Web LOG is a journal kept on the internet. This journal is often updated daily and contains all information that the person maintaining the BLOG (Blogger) wishes to share with the world.”

“A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.”

“An online Journal.”

“An online diary where people can post messages and others may view and respond to the posts.”

“A Blog style within Mambo is a listing of some or all content items in a certain section or category. Often the "News" page is written in Blog style. The term relates to the Mambo style and does not have the exact same meaning as Blog software, such as Wordpress.

“This is a web log or online diary hosted on specific sites such as www.blogger.com. It offers readers the opportunity to reply to opinions and link to their own blogs."

“The word blog is derived from the combination of the two words web and log. Blogs are virtual diaries created by individuals and stored on the internet. Blogs generally consist of text and images and can appear in a calendar-type format.”

“BLOG is short for Web log, and our Web pages that work as a journal that our normally updated daily. Blogging sites can provide excellent information on many topics, although content can be subjective.”

“A blog (short for "web log") is essentially an online journal or diary where one can post messages, photos, music and video on their own mini website. They have become very popular in recent years and are excellent for personal and up-to-date opinion and information.”

“Blog is short for weblog. A blog is generally a journal or newsletter which is updated frequently. Blogs are easily updated and may allow comments from readers.”

“Short for weblog. A blog is a webpage that serves as an online personal journal for a person and is usually updated daily.”

“Is an online diary used by an author to share information on a particular subject at regular intervals.”

“Is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order) posted by individuals or groups. Chatmine identifies relevant blogs in your market with proprietary metrics.”

“A blog is information that is instantly published to a Web site. Blog scripting allows someone to automatically post information to a Web site.”

“A blog (short for Weblog ) is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order.”

“This is a term coming from the combination of the terms web log – it is a web page that serves as publicly accessible journal for the author. It can be formal or informal, is usually updated daily and reflects the personality of the author. More Information.”

“Web log: a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies; "postings on a blog are.”

“A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. “

“A personal or corporate website in the form of an online journal, with new entries appearing in sequence as they are written, especially as dealing with reflections or opinion, and typically incorporating links to other articles; To contribute to a blog; To blag, to steal something; To acquire.”

So, A blog (short for weblog) is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order.Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or reflect the purpose of the Web site that hosts the blog. Topics sometimes include brief philosophical musings, commentary on Internet and other social issues, and links to other sites the author favors, especially those that support a point being made on a post. The author of a blog is often referred to as a blogger. Many blogs syndicate their content to subscribers using RSS, a popular content distribution tool. “

Why do you blog ? What motivates you to write every single day ? Ask this question to any of your blogger friends and they will share a variety of reasons - some do it for sharing opinions, for the love of writing, for money and then there are souls who blog just because everyone around them is blogging.

You should do Blogging to :

As mentioned earlier, blogging helps you to express freely, most of which normally not possible physically. The expression could be your own or your response to others point of view or current events. I think this is the most important trait of blogging.

Blogs can give you tremendous exposure. As you build content on the blog, like minded people join in. Lot of people find your blog through search engines, looking for things of similar interest as yours, thus giving you quite a bit of exposure. Blogs being inherently Search Engine friendly help quite a bit.

With exposure comes power. Especially, if your blog content is either controversial or popular. If you have build credibility over a period of time, people will be influenced by what you say and write. This gives you power and self gratification.

Yes, I have experienced it first hand. When you write a blog you will always be interested is what is happening around you and what are others writing. This process itself will give you information overload. And when you have information/ knowledge you are very confident !

When you start blogging you may or may not be too confident about your writing skills. However, if you blog consistently and frequently you are bound to improve your writing skills. I find myself asking this question a lot of times.

Whether you are a CEO, a manager or just a employee, blogging lets you connect with your superiors, colleagues, or sub-ordinates. In many cases your blog becomes your effective way of communication. This helps you in getting your point across at your own convenience.

Yes, this is the fact. The Industry leaders are always on watch out for what people are saying about them or about their companies. There have been many instances when these biggies have directly communicated with bloggers. I do not think any other medium is simple enough to put you in touch with them !

Blogging can make you decent money. Earning money takes a bit of time, but if you write regularly and monetize your blog sensibly, you can surely make decent sum.

One of the reason why blogs have been so popular is the amount of knowledge sharing that takes place. Also, this knowledge gets so refined over period of so many iterations that many people now only refer to blogs to get information- it is also because they can ask questions and interact with the person who has knowledge- unlike a static website that gives you a lot of information, but does not answer to your questions.

This is another important aspect of blogging. You can easily bring in lot of new business, because of the personalized communication you have through your blog. People trust individuals not businesses. Blog is also an excellent medium to get instant feedback on your products and services, thereby giving you continuous platform for improvement.

In conclusion we can say that Blogs is an abbreviation of 'weblogs' - web sites which contain dated entries in reverse chronological order (most recent first) about a particular topic. Functioning as an online newsletter, blogs can be written by one person or a group of contributors. Entries contain commentary and links to other Web sites, and images as well as a search facility may also be included. A blog with video clip entries instead of text is a "video Weblog" .

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz. He broke the word weblog into the phrase "we blog" in the sidebar of his weblog in April or May of 1999. "Blog" was accepted as a noun (weblog shortened) and as a verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog").

Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal "blogging" in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers. After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity: the site Xanga, launched in 1996, had only 100 diaries by 1997, and over 50 000 000 as of December 2005.

The definition of blogs is constantly evolving as blogs move into the mainstream, shedding their image as the bastion of the self-obsessed who just have to self-express. Thousands of new blogs are being created every day, for all sorts of purposes. Rather than existing to catalog someone's personal life, many blogs serve as discussion communities about particular issues.

Nor does a blog have to have one author. Some of the most interesting blogs have multiple regular contributors. And some large corporations are using blogs internally as communications channels.

Blog usage spread incredibly due to the "tool" which is known. RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication. Either way, RSS is a real important technology that information specialists and educators would be well advised to harness sooner rather than later. In simple terms, Weblogs (and an ever-growing number of other sites) generate a behind-the-scenes code in a language similar to HTML called XML. This code, usually referred to as a "feed" (as in "news feed"), makes it possible for readers to "subscribe" to the content that is created on a particular Weblog so they no longer have to visit the blog itself to get it. As is true with traditional syndication, the content comes to you instead of you going to it.

There is a real-time search engine - Technorati - that keeps track of what is going on in the blogsphere — the world of weblogs. Technorati displays what's important in the blogosphere — which bloggers are commanding attention, what ideas are rising in prominence, and the speed at which these conversations are taking place. Technorati makes it possible for you to find out what people on the Internet are saying about you, your company, your products, your competitors, your politics, or other areas of interest — all in real-time. All this activity is monitored and indexed within minutes of posting. Technorati provides a live view of the global conversation of the web.