Every day the internet is expanding with new websites, people and products. Unemployment rates are getting high and more and more people are quitting their regular jobs to start something online. Now internet is a great resource to learn these things from your home, but the problem is there are so many information overloads. You will end up subscribing for a $400 dollar private class or buying tons of $97 worth ebooks from gurus.

If you take my suggestion, you go by some simple effective and proven methods that will ensure better results and I recommend you starting with small. If you can invest at least $100 for your first website, I will show you how and when to do these things.

You are not limited to hundred dollars, but if you invest this small amount, you will have fewer liabilities, less risk and it would be a great start.

Some of you friends who are on the other side, I mean if you are tight on budget, you will be happy to know that this method may take even less than $100 to start and run.

What we will need?

To get started online we will need 3 things to set your website,

1. A domain name
2. Web hosting account
3. Website design

A domain name: A domain name is the address for your website such as blogkori.com –people will only have to remember the name, that’s it! They will browse your website from home, work, from mobile; tell their friends and even more. A domain name costs on average $10/ year (excepting some extension other than .com/.net/.org) anyone will recommend you to buy a domain from GoDaddy.com but if you want to save some more money on a domain, you go to NameCheap.com.

From namecheap, you can have a .com domain for $9.69 comparing to godaddy where a dot com is worth $10 & more. Here is another tip, you go and check out this site http://www.retailmenot.com/view/namecheap.com you can sure find a regular coupon code that will save you $1 on that domain.

Web hosting account: Web hosting account is your virtual hard drive where you will put your website, files and all other information. A great web hosting I recommend is, HostGator. They have unlimited space (yeah because hard disks are getting cheap) and can host more than one websites. You can get the unlimited plan for $9.95/month –that’s less than $10 a month!

Here some people may suggest other cheap web hosting service or name some FREE web hosting providers; BUT! I STRONGLY RECOMMEND!!! That you should never use a web host people haven’t heard of or a service that offers free hosting. You go with the best and you will be happy with the results. The premium hosting will support and secure your work and make it available 24 hours for your visitors.

Website design: A design is what makes your website look apart from other sites. It’s a key to make them like your site. See my website’s design; I have designed it myself because I know these things. I’m a professional web designer, if I had to pay myself for this, I would pay $500 for this. But just because we are on this budget plan, we should not spend any extra dollar on its design.

What you should do is to run your website on the most popular CMS wordpress and then install a freemium theme on it. Freemium (free+premium) themes are stunning and professional web site templates for free. This will help us save more money to do other things.

Budget check

We started with a domain name for $10, a web hosting for $10/month and free web design template. So we spent (10+10+free) = $20 so far. Just because it’s a budget plan, you will have to do the most of the work.

The main thing!

Yes this is the part you have been waiting for (or skipping the text!) the main thing AKA the Money Making Part. This is the part all of the web people are fascinated about, how to make the money JUST TEACH ME HOW!

Hold your breath! In my experience a combination of different methods will work better for you. I would suggest you to take these options (most of them or all of them) for getting the most of your investment,

1. Pay Per Click Ads
2. Affiliate banners/ links
3. Consultancy/ Freelance services

Pay Per Click Ads: This is a great and almost autopilot method of generating revenue from your site. You convert your visitors into cash. When they will leave your site, they can leave by clicking on one of your ads. Sign up for Google adsense, and put some ad boxes on your site. The next stop is InfoLinks, they use your content keywords and turn them into ad links. It works like adsense.

Affiliate banners/ links: More and more web services are going affiliate and offering a way for their users to earn commissions for referring to them. You can start by being an affiliate of your hosting account. In this case you can be an affiliate of HostGator. You needed web hosting, the same way others will need this too. Other places to find suitable affiliate products, ClickBank (for digital products, ebook, software etc) or Amazon (for all different consumer products) Putting your affiliate banner on your site or writing review about them will influence your visitors to buy.

Consultancy/ Freelance services: You should also develop a page on your website offering a consultancy or freelancing service. You can offer things like being a virtual assistant, copy writer, logo designer etc. This will convert some visitors into interested clients and they will contact you for help.

Links recap

We mention these links on the earlier paragraphs,

• Adsense
• InfoLinks
• HostGator
• ClickBank
• Amazon

Building the content +++

This is the most important part of building a successful website. Without having content, they won’t come and your investment will have no returns. Contents can be,

1. Blog article content
2. Page content
3. Downloadable content
4. Email content
5. Interactive (audio/video) content
6. Resources

Blog article content: This is when you write an article as a blog post. If you have written a number of articles and waiting to publish online, make sure you publish them as “posts” in wordpress and allow comments. This will make the search engines follow your blog and people will interact.

Page content: Static pages on wordpress, they don’t usually get updated a lot. Such as you have a page where you have added your biography, you won’t be updating that page quite often when it is done. Most of the time, they get a good position along with your home page.

Downloadable content: Such as an ebook you wrote; you upload it on server and make it available for download for offline use.

Email content: This is called email marketing; you can offer information in a form of email newsletters. People who sign up for your mailing list, only they will get the content. Aweber is a leading name in email marketing but it costs $20/ month for its service. We are on a budget plan so you can use MailChimp that offer free email delivery service.

Interactive (audio/video) content: Why limit your creativity in texts? You can record your voice for a podcast or upload videos on youtube for a video blog. The main content that I produce is video for my other site, ThesisThemeDesign.

Resources: Always do share great information, article and links to other websites or authors.

How to bring them to my site? +++

All your efforts will depend on what kind visitors you get and how many of them you get. In any way you need more traffic for your success but since we are now using 3 methods of monetizing (Pay Per Click Ads, Affiliate banners/ links & Consultancy/ Freelance services) you will still make money, loyal visitor without having to worry about the traffic.

When you create the content part (in the last section I mentioned) you will have a 50% rate of success, because content is the king. Now in this marketing part, you will have to do the rest. PS: I won’t share any paid methods because I haven’t paid for traffic ever and since it’s a budget plan, we take everything that will save money.

1. SKIP the “submitting your site on search engines”
2. Article marketing
3. Interactive marketing
4. Social media promotion
5. Building your base
6. Extra traffic tips

SKIP the “submitting your site on search engines”: When you will use any of the new media web application to build your website, such as wordpress, you don’t have to submit your link to search engines. Search engines will find your site and index you in.

Article marketing: You have to write articles for your blog, the same way you write a few articles for article directories such as EzineArticles. When posting your article, add a link back to your website and you will get some traffic + backlink to your websites.

Interactive marketing: Remember I told you about videos and podcasts? The great thing is you can share the same video on video sharing sites like youtube, vimeo, revver and many more. This will help your video go viral and attract more eye balls on your websites.

Social media promotion: Use your facebook account to promote new post, videos and updates to have a boost. There are other social sites such as twitter, myspace that will help you promote your site.

Building your base: When you are building a website, take advantage of other free platforms. Such as your twitter account, facebook group, people on your mybloglog community etc. A small number of people on different sites could be converted into a big number of visitors.

Extra traffic tips: Add your website link on your email signature; you can attract a number of people to your site with this method. Post your website link on forum and as your forum signature. Do comment on other related blogs and add your website link. Do offline promotions like adding the URL on your business cards.

The main action plan

So far we have spent $20 for a domain name and one month worth of web hosting. We will keep the rest of $80 to support the site for up to 8 more months. That means with a budget of $100, we can run a website for 9 months. That’s a long time and will be easy to return your investment.

We have set google adsense and infolinks on your web site to earn money from CPC (cost per click) ads. And then we have set affiliate products/ banners on the site for commissions. Also we did a services page to offer freelance services from you.

By the time you build your content and approach on getting traffic, you will figure out which method among 3 will work best for you. Side by side you will also earn some money from other sources. This is a surefire way to get back your investments within this time.

The flipping method of getting your investment back

Before you run out of your investment, keep the last $20 for flipping the site. A web site flipping means selling the site to another person. Flippa is a website that allows buying and selling websites. When you feel it will be wise to sell your website to get the money back, flip your website.

If you run your website for more than 6 months + it is good on traffic and content, you can easily sell this site on flippa for 100, 200, 300 or even more if it’s the right site for the right person. Keep the last $20 because there is a fee for listing the site on the auction.

Tips:

• Choose a low BIN (buy it now) price, such as $150, $200 so buyers can buy it instantly and you get your ROI
• Set a small time for the auction (7-15 days) so it will be an urgent deal and people will buy it urgently
• Add google analytics and earnings reports on the listingg to make the site valuable

Promote your site with free ads

If you got web hosting from HostGator, you will receive $50 free credit of google adwords and $25 free credit of facebook ads. This means you get $75 in free ads. You can promote your site by using your free credit. Do make sure that your site is ready with content to keep that traffic.

Content building tips

• Write new and informative articles, kind of articles that people will search for
• Write more often, daily if possible
• Make bigger articles into smaller posts

Have your say

Share your thoughts on starting a web journey with $100 or less. What is your experience? What are the results?

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A couple of minutes ago Payoneer sent me a message that infoLinks have sent me a payment of $53.13. I’m happy to hear that and I clicked on the link to load the money on my new payoneer choice card. You can earn money with infolinks too with your content filled blog, just add the code and go to sleep, they will pay you when you have reached $50. Thanks.

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PayPal is a big part in any freelancer or blogger’s life, so it is for me. In my online career, PayPal had a big impact. If you are just getting started on your online money making journey, you will at some point need a PayPal account or at least feel the lack of not having one.

If you are living on Bangladesh or Pakistan, where PayPal is not supported yet, that means you have more hassle than any other in the world that are in paypal supported countries. Some facts about PayPal,

• PayPal is the biggest gateway for online payment processing
• 3 out of 4 users in Ebay accepts PayPal payments
• More than 80% of online services pay through PayPal
• More and more companies are adding PayPal as their payment option
• PayPal is accepted worldwide and widely trusted

So far I have received so many questions regarding PayPal in the last few years; ran into troubles; had road blocks; paypal unverified and so many other things experienced.

Now here I have came across a list of PayPal related questions and answers developed specially for Bangladeshi, Pakistani & for other countries that are not supported by PayPal.

Q1: Is PayPal available in Bangladesh or Pakistan?

No, PayPal is not officially available in Bangladesh or Pakistan. But you can still use a paypal account from your country.

Q2: When I try to create a paypal account, I don’t see my country, which country I should select?

In majority, most people will select USA as their country; it will also lead you to this path: Cannot send money or withdraw unless you verify your account. There are many different rules for different countries in paypal, such as in France paypal, you can send money to another account before verifying.

Q3: What is PayPal verification?

It is a verification process that is required to have full or basic function of PayPal. In majority, they will need a linked bank account or a credit card to make your paypal account in verified status.

Q4: How do I use my paypal account, how anyone can send me money?

When you will sign up for paypal, you will use your email address as your paypal email. You have to use this email whenever you will need someone to send money or signing up for any online services.

Q5: Can I send money from AlertPay to PayPal or vice versa?

No you cannot. But you can do this by connecting another person who has a paypal account/ alertpay account. Send the money to their account and they will send you the money.

Q6: Why PayPal is not supported in Bangladesh or Pakistan?

This is a question asked over and over again. This is because online money transfer is not available yet. When there will be gateway for online transfers, credit card purchases will be available and all other services such as PayPal will be available in Bangladesh & Pakistan.

Q7: How can I have a paypal account?

A simple solution can be: if you have a relative/ friend living on a paypal supported country, you can ask their help to setup a paypal account on your behalf. In the beginning I did the same thing; my uncle who lives in France opened a paypal account and I took his help to get funds from services I signed up for. Every month I would withdraw the money to his bank account and then he would send me the money in Bangladesh.

Q8: How do I withdraw the money from PayPal to Bangladesh?

There are few options available,

Remit2Cell: A trusted solution, where you can load your paypal money to your mobile phone. GrameenPhone, Warid, CityCell, Robi (Aktel), Banglalink, Teletalk are supported. Good for loading small amount of paypal funds.

PayPalBD: A trusted solution for withdrawing large amount of paypal funds in Bangladeshi taka.

Progli.net/paypal: A private PayPal fund buying and selling service for Bangladeshi & Pakistani users.

Q9: If I use PayPal from Bangladesh or Pakistan, will they ban my account?

It’s a lifelong myth; I have used the paypal account of France and they didn’t ban the account. Because it’s a universal service and people could be using it from around the world. The people who got banned maybe for some other reason, not because they accessed from Bangladesh or Pakistan.

Q10: What are some alternatives to paypal?

There are many alternatives to paypal such as egold, alertpay, moneybookers, payoneer and others and all of them work differently.

Q11: Can I verify my paypal account with the Payoneer prepaid MasterCard?

Yes you can, if your country is supported by paypal such as Philippines.

Q12: Can I use a virtual US bank or a virtual debit card to verify my paypal account?

There are services who offer virtual US bank accounts such a Payoneer prepaid mastercard and it is possible to verify paypal account. There are many services to have virtual debit card service and them also claim to be able to verify paypal accounts.

The bottom line

There are endless struggle when your country such as Bangladesh or Pakistan is not a paypal supported country. This whole thing is making it hard to have a career online. Questions will come up and tips and tricks will be played until our country gets e-commerce facility. Please do feel free to post your questions or better answers to the above questions related to paypal. ~Thanks!

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This is the first time I’m getting paid for HostGator affiliate program; I’m happy, actually I’m happy every time I get paid online. This is my first commission from HG which is $50.

Web hosting is something that a webmaster needs the most and even great when you get paid for recommending other people to buy the hosting. By the way, BlogKori is hosted on hostgator, try it! they are the BEST!

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Hi friends, BlogKori is now 2 years old & thanks for being with me. I’m offering link exchanges with related websites/ blogs; specially the sites that related with make money online or internet marketing. Full details here: Link Exchange. If you have already linked my blog, then please do let me know, I will link you back. Thanks

Also read

• 12 PayPal Related Questions answered for Bangladesh & Pakistani bloggers
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If you are serious on earning money online from your business, then you must invest money in it. This is a no brainer, if you want to make money, you have to invest money. You have to invest money on these things,

1. Website domain & Hosting
2. Website design and content creation
3. Legal formalities
4. Marketing & Advertising

There could be even more steps and costs associated with your business but one thing is sure, you need money to start and manage your biz online! Hey I said it’s easy but didn’t say it doesn’t costs!

But what if you are starting with zero?

Are you looking for investors to put money on your idea? Well that won’t work, at least on this stage where you don’t have any money. This is why you should “self finance” your business. I’m showing you how,

Build up a saving

You need money for your business, so build up some savings for that. Estimate a budget on how much you want to spend to start your business. For an example, you want to start your business under $1,000. At the same time, you divide your budget into multiple steps like you need some money to setup a website; you have to run advertisements etc.

Work on a side business/ job

You need money for the biz, so let’s start working on another part time job or business. This way you can build your savings easily. You want to have a business online does not means you cannot work on something else.

Start working as a freelancer

This is one great tip, you work online to make money as a freelancer and then you invest the money back into your own business. There are businesses online that will need your expertise in their business. Another great thing of freelancing is, you can learn new things and technologies that those businesses are using to improve their business. You can also work as a freelancer even if you are running a business.

Make proper use of free services

Almost everything online is free. Use social media, where you can connect with your clients. MailChimp is a free service for email newsletters. You can use webly and freewebs to have free websites with hosting. With the help of free social media tools, you can promote your service for free and effectively.

Take donations

You can take donations or small amounts of money from your friends to cover up your costs. I know you cannot start a business from donation money; but in business, every cent counts.

Use rebates, coupons and free vouchers

There are rebates on domains, web hosting and many online services. You can use coupon/ promo codes to get some small discounts on the services. Most web hosting services offer promotional advertisement coupons for adwords or facebook ads. With this, you can have free ads + get to try how it works.

Offer a service

You can offer a service online like consulting, coaching to make money. Your ultimate goal is to build funds for your business. If you offer a service that is related to your business, it will help you get new customers too.

Don’t turn down opportunities

I know you are self financing your business project but if you find any potential investors, don’t turn them down. You may get opportunities in many ways, such as one of your friend would like to introduce you with a potential business client, will you turn that down? You may get a review written about your site from another blog, that’s great too! You see, everything that you can get from your surroundings –is great!

Building a business is difficult and even more when you are short in money. It’s better to do it with your own money than putting someone else’s money in the table. And when you will have the business up and running, you will find potential investors willing to give the money in your hands.

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Hi young entrepreneurs, you always wanted to start your own business online, or at least wanted to earn some money online. With this guide you will learn the ways to start your very own service based business online and start making money offering your services. Now I will recommend you to start your business online -why?

Building A Business Online Costs Less

Yes of course it costs less comparing to an actual business; your website can be your office, just like it is for me. All you need is a domain name and a web hosting service. Additionally you might need some help to design your website or write content for the site. After that you are ready to start your very own online business.

Building An Online Business is Easy

To start online you don’t have to take an office space for rent, buy furniture nor hiring employees. If you are doing everything online, then you will need some good knowledge over websites and the internet. In today’s web you don’t have to learn code for building websites. If you are able to publish pages and connect with your customers, you can run your very own business online.

Step by Step: How to start & run your own business online

Brainstorm a Business Plan: It starts with a plan. Determine what you are going to offer, such as piano lessons, yoga classes or you are going to sell a product. Set how you will offer that service and how you will going to make profit.

Setup your Website: Buy your domain, get web hosting and setup your website. You have to build your site and fill it up with content. You can also get help to design your site by outsourcing some other designer or a writer to help you in the process.

Promote your Business Site in Social Media: Use facebook, twitter and all other social media sites to promote your site and service. You can also write a blog which will help you further market your services.

Advertise: Just because it’s a business and it will make you money, it means you should also spend some money on advertisements such as PPC, paid reviews, banner ads and text links. If you are offering a service to your local area, you can use traditional methods of ads as newspaper, posters or classifieds.

Set real goals and achieve them: Set smaller targets such as earning $XXXX per month or serving X number of clients each month. It will help you overcome and set bigger goals for upcoming months.

Take notes of what worked and what didn’t and you will soon be improving your services. You will learn how to handle clients and work + build a good reputation online.

Source: http://www.tedgoff.com/

Start your Business in Smaller Scale

It is the best tip, start with less. After you get to know the market, you can expand it. If you fail, you will lose less money. For most startups, they have less money to invest so starting with small becomes the only option available -the risk will be less!

Start the Business as a Long Term Investment

When you start something, you won’t see immediate results. It may take months to see interested clients or potential customers coming through, so let’s be patient. In the while you connect with other people in your field to get some work. You can talk with your friends online, connect with a community or create your work portfolio. You can also do some charity work where you are not taking any money for your services but it will result to get some new connections and reputation.

Take Help from Marketplaces

Getting started on your own is a tough job so you can get work from other well established sites. If you are a designer, you can get work from odesk or elance to get work. If you are selling a product, then you can find some sites that will help you get customers for exchange of the profit share.

A Special note from Tamal to New Entrepreneurs

I’m offering a new service where I will help new entrepreneurs and small business owners to get started online -with branded websites, blogs, social media branding, mobile website design and other offline promotional designs. All these things will be offered as a package from Build Brand Online.

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Have you heard of SQUIDOO? Probably yes because whenever we seek for any information about a specific product, we get to a squidoo site. Now what is squidoo? Squidoo located at Squidoo.com is a service that allows you to create one page sites (lens). Now why would you like to have a free page where there are many sites who offer a complete free website? There are mainly 2 reasons,

The Popularity of SQUIDOO

Squidoo is very popular website with a growing user base, you can rank your lens and get visitors from the squidoo site itself. Other benefit is search engines such as google, yahoo and bing like squidoo. So it is easier to get traffic with a squidoo lens comparing to any other free website.

Earn Money with SQUIDOO

Yes you can earn money from your Squidoo! Put adsense ads or link to your affiliate program; infolinks and other promotional sponsors are added automatically in the lens, so what you have to do is to take the share from the site. Amazon affiliate products are also there and you can just put your affiliate id and you can start making money with every sale.

How to Start a Squidoo lens and in which topic?

This is very easy, go to Squidoo.com and sign up for the service then click to create a new lens. This is not actually your site, it’s a hub for information and you can create so many of these. When you create a new lens, you put the name, description and modules (text, images, RSS, links etc) this way it become web 2.0 (new web) friendly.

In order to make money from your lens, you have to make it worthy and have lots of lenses. You can pick a topic for the lens and have a goal to promote your service. Such as you are promoting your web hosting service such as Hostgator. Create a lens about the good and bad things of hostgator or a user review lens. In the lens you put the affiliate link, so when people will get the hosting, you make money.

So in a nut shell in order to make a good money from Squidoo, you have to create a niche (topic) lens. Additionally there will be related ads, infolinks ad, adsense ads and amazon related products (which you can set in the options)

The great benefit of Squidoo is, it is FREE to join that means you don’t have to invest any money to earn money and you also don’t have to worry about designing the site.

How to Promote/ Publicize your Squidoo lens?

You have created a brilliant page, have ads on it but you won’t get any results until you promote it. This is the hardest part of any website success; unlike any other site, promotion is the same but here are some pointers which will help you get up with the promotion,

• Forums: You can put your squidoo link on forums with related topic; add the link on your signature; start a discussion describing your lens.
• Blog comments: Comment on relevant blogs with your link.
• Facebook/Twitter: Put the link on groups, pages and twitter account.
• Squidoo groups: There are squidoo groups in squidoo website and you can promote your lens there as well.
• Comment on other related lenses: There are related lenses in the sidebar, go to these lenses and comment, do leave the lens link you are promoting.
• Email your friends about the lens and ask them to pay a visit
• Create a youtube video and describe what problems your lens will solve and share the link
• Create other small lenses and link to your main lens

Further reading

http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-make-money-with-squidoo

HomeWork for this Week

1. Sign up for Squidoo
2. Create a lens on your preferred topic
3. Fill it up with original writings
4. Find a product to promote (suggested:  hostgator webhosting ~ $50 per sale)
5. Promote your lens to at least five sites (facebook, twitter, blog etc)
6. Put your lens link on this post as comment
7. Join a Squidoo group

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I received it 1st of July, I waited 33 days for it to arrive.

The new design looks cool

New and old cards side by side

Now I have 2 of them :)

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Today James wrote a guest post for BlogKori; James is a tech analyst and staff blogger at an online supplier of franking machine ink cartridges to UK-based businesses. Follow his latest posts on their blog.

There are blogs about nearly every subject imaginable, but a good portion of these never go beyond being seen by just a few. Your blog needs to have more authority, but it needs more readers. Here are ten free ways to promote your blog and receive more traffic.

1. Take a Look at Social Media Outlets

Myspace, Facebook and Twitter all have people who might want to read what you’re writing about. Look around the other social media sites to see if there is something you can use. The more people who have a chance to see your work, the more quality readers you will receive.

2. Create Linkbait

Linkbait is best defined as articles or controversial pieces that people want to read and share. List articles and heavily charged pieces are great to use for linkbait. If your format is easily digestible, it could qualify for being link bait.

3. Link Exchange

This sort of reciprocal activity is common among bloggers. Find blogs within your niche and ask the authors if you can exchange links. This broadens readers’ horizons by giving them something new.

4. Email Readers About Cool Stuff

This technique can be used after you know what some of your readers’ hot buttons are. If you know that someone loves it when you post about the money making aspect in your niche, send that person an email to tell them that a good article like that is coming up.

5. Join or Create Communities About Your Topic

Using your favorite blog service, create something about the niche that you love. If there is already a community dealing with that niche, join it and comment regularly. This will allow more readers to see you and you can gain expert status.

6. Mention Other Blogs

You read some great blogs which offer ideas and strategies related to your niche. Don’t be afraid to link to other blogs or put them in your blog roll. You will be thanked with more readership.

7. Write a Newsletter

Blog posts are generally limited to one topic. An ezine or newsletter can cover plenty of subjects or further elaborate upon some of the items discussed. Newsletters and ezines provide more valuable information that people want to read.

8. Write an Ebook and Give Away a Free chapter

By giving away a chapter in your e-book you are seen as more personable and generous. Your readers will send that chapter to others and you will generate more interest about your blogs.

9. Comment on Other Blogs in Your Niche

Every blogger says something different about the niche subject. Each blogger presents different ideas and new thoughts. Commenting on other blogs allows your blog to gain publicity and allows you to be seen as an expert.

10. Put Your Blog’s Address on Your Business Card

Interactions happen in the real world and business cards are still exchanged. Your blog is something that you’re proud of, so why not let your associates take a look at it?

Generating publicity is easy, but the results take time to realize. Be persistent and you will gain more readership.

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