This is a guest post from Gary Kohler from the free life insurance quote. Be part of this engaging community by following the guest blogging guidelines.

There are lots of ways to find writing ideas and inspiration from your daily life. Translating that into great blog posts is another story but lets look at the basics first.

Start by carrying around a notepad or have a file saved on your smart phone that you can use to save good ideas that you get during the day.

Finding inspiration in real life is the key so here is a list of places in the offline world where you can get ideas for your blog.

The newspaper

• They write short headlines that are supposed to catch your attention.
• They write 200-500 descriptions of current events and things that are interesting to lots of people.
• They need to continually entertain and inform, otherwise people will stop reading it.

Bingo! The newspaper is a great place to start and find ideas for things to write about and stories that will interest others.

Your friends

What are you and your friends always talking about? What movie are you excited about seeing? What hobby are you interested in that you know a lot about and that you like to share with others?

These are all real world examples of things that you enjoy. If you can get excited about them in conversation then that can likely translate to your blog.

Write about something that you’re passionate about and your readers will be passionate about your writing.

Television

People that watch a lot of television share a trait with people that spend a lot of time on the internet: a short attention span. Just like television commercials and clips for TV shows, you need to catch your reader’s attention right away.

You can also use TV to catch up on news and events that you can write about on your blog. You can also use video elements in your blog posts… so study up on what makes a good video and then give it a try!

Your job

This is likely an indirect inspiration but your job can be a great idea factory too. Many jobs leave people with some free time during the day. You should be jotting down ideas for blog posts and articles during this time.

If your employer is pretty relaxed you can probably write down ideas all day in your note pad. Perfect, you can get paid and work on your blog at the same time.

Nature

Sometimes being inspired and coming up with new ideas requires an empty mind and this is where nature can come in handy. Get out of that house and into the great outdoors.

A weekend away from your computer can be great for your health and for your creative juices too. You might even find that at the end of a weekend of camping, you want to start a blog about camping!

How to Find Blogging Inspiration from Real Life is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. 3 Great Ways to Get Rid of Writer’s Block
2. How To Deal With Blogging Failures
3. Blog Homepage: Excerpt vs. Full Size Post

Today I want to introduce you to Andew Rondeau of

The Interview

Gautam: Andrew, I would like to know about your blogging journey. What inspired you to start blogging? Which was your first blog?

Andrew: For the first 30 years of my career I worked for large corporate companies. The corporate world allowed you to work hard and get well rewarded – which I was. I ended up managing large IT departments.

But I’ve always thought about making it on my own. Over the years I was always looking for something that would make me more money!

I thought that if I worked as hard on my own business as I did in the corporate world – I could make it work.

Then, ‘out of the blue’, someone said to me, why don’t you write a book on Management and sell it on-line?

I started to investigate and quickly got excited. I knew I could write the book due to my experience and I naively believed the hype and thought I’ll make millions on-line by selling the book and retire!

This was 3 years ago.

I found a mentor, online, (I knew nothing about being on-line), and he helped me. He told me exactly what to do, and I invested my earnings from the corporate world into it.

I created a website and a free management guide to start building my own customer list, and then my management book. I did all this in the evenings while staying away from home in the hotels and while traveling in the corporate role.

I finished the sales page and launched, expecting hundreds to sell. I sold about five in the first week, but I was expecting 5,000!

I quickly sucked the mentor dry – he couldn’t help me anymore – I had all his knowledge now, so I found a more experienced mentor, and he helped me in the marketing and we created two more products to sell.

Then I got into blogging and created several blogs and more products.

So now I had a variety of products to sell and my knowledge of making money on-line was growing. I invested thousands of dollars in my education, and it was taking over – I really enjoyed the excitement.

Eighteen months ago, I decided to leave the corporate world and decided to take the plunge and work for myself, full-time.

Since then I have created my own course helping others to build their on-line business.

Gautam: As I can see from your experience, though, you had a great product to sell, you weren’t able to make that much money in the start. Many bloggers and online entrepreneurs think big, but they are not able to reach their expectations. What major mistake do they make?

Andrew: Major mistakes they make include believing all the hype about ‘how easy it is to make money on-line”.

It isn’t easy. It takes hard work, passion and knowledge.

They create products that they THINK will sell rather than do some thorough research and what people want.

They try and do it all themselves. You can’t. Find someone to help you who are better than you and more knowledgeable than you.

Gautam: Andrew, you recently came up with the “The Income Blogging Guide“. Before I ask about the blogging course, I would like to know whether you are generating a good income from blogging?

Andrew: I suppose that depends upon your views of ‘good’!

I generate enough income to live comfortably but it is not just about the money…it’s about the freedom. I love the fact that if it is sunny outside I can choose to go and enjoy the sun – play Tennis or whatever. I work when I want to. Sometimes that might be late at night or 5 am in the morning. That freedom is worth a lot more than a huge amount of income…for me anyway.

Gautam: The best thing I like about your guide is the sales page of your guide. It is simple and crisp with all the information that is required. Could you tell me, who all would benefit from your income blogging guide? What can they expect from blogging guide?

Your Income Blogging Guide is a blogging course, but how do you think it is better than other blogging courses already available in the market?

Andrew: In my experience many of the other course include these types of problems:

They take certain things for granted…like your ability to create a blog or generate traffic. You need to have to be technical savvy in order to follow their “steps”. If you’ve never built a web site before, or have very limited experience, this can be one of the most daunting parts of starting a blog.

Many of the courses say, do this, do that – which is all well and good but our course tells you the ‘how to’ as well.

You may be told to “set up the pages for you to sell your products”. What you are not told is the “how to”. We show you’re the ‘How to’ via videos and screen shots.

Very often you buy the product and then you’re on your own with the information. If you don’t understand a part of it, you can usually submit questions, but there’s not a “go to” resource for figuring out part of the process.

Many e-course designers or marketers are more than happy to help…to a degree…but don’t have mechanisms built in for very involved technical help.

At times, you may even be referred to alternative courses designed to help you tp complete these steps. Who wants to spend even more money when the course was supposed to be step by step?

BEFORE, we created the course, we asked our visitors and customer lists what they wanted from such a course.

51% wanted the course to be easy to follow and use. We provide everything you need to build your own on-line business built around blogging. It’s not just about blogging…it’s about getting traffic, building your own customer lists, creating your own products, copywriting and outsourcing.

You don’t have to buy any other course.

Plus, 26% of the people who completed the survey wanted support mechanisms in place. As my business partner, Joel is the technical blogging mentor to some of the most famous bloggers in the world, we decided to go over-board with the support.

So we have a weekly live teleconference, a private members forum AND members can write to us directly (in case they want to keep things private).

77% of our members have stated that the course far exceeded their expectations and our refund rate is very, very low.

Why? It’s all about customer service. If the member gets really stuck, we go in and make the changes for them or have a one on one skype chat with them.

We want our members to succeed on-line and therefore we help as much as we can.

Gautam: Thanks Andrew for taking your precious time out to participate in this Interview and I think Bloggers would find your Income Blogging Guide Really Useful.

Andrew: Gautam

It was a pleasure. Thanks.

If you are interested in the Income Blogging Guide by Andrew, Take a look at it.

Learn how to increase the profitability of your Website with Andrew Rondeau is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. How To Use Email Marketing To Draw More People To Your Website
2. 5 Tips to Increase Productivity while Blogging
3. 5 Tips for Creating a Perfect Business Website

One of the most effective uses of engaging Internet content is in an email campaign. Since emails are short in length, they are typically cheap to have produced by a content company. In addition, their length allows the do-it-yourself content marketer the ability to launch a full scale email campaign in as little as a week. However, emails are notoriously associated with spam – it can be difficult to sell products or services unless your emails are absolutely solid. Provided here are 3 tips for writing converting email campaigns.

Planning Your Content for an Email Campaign

When you begin planning your content for an email campaign, consider your target audience first. Ask yourself what their common needs, goals and ideals might be. Once you have decided what your target audiences are, you can begin planning how you will get your emails to those people. For example, if you find that your key demographic is mostly elderly people, remember that many might not have access to a traditional email address due to generational concerns. Are you certain that email should be the best method to reach them?

As a general rule, your content email campaign should consist of at least 10 different emails that target different types of people at different points in your campaign. For example, you might have an email for people that have not yet utilized your services and an email for those that have not yet ordered but have expressed interest. Use the later emails in your campaign to up sell or secure further or long term orders.

Engaging Your Reader With Your Words

It is very important, especially with emails, to avoid sales pitches as much as possible. Emails have a very unfortunate reputation for being spam. If the title of your email is something like “Buy [product name] now!” you will fail. Think about which emails people will likely read. For example, use a title like “7 Myths About ______” or “Why You’re Wrong About _______.” People tend to love controversy. If you can create some, you will be much more likely to secure readers.

Using the Slippery Slope Approach

The slippery slope approach is a technique used to create urgency in product orders. When you think about the phrase – being on a slippery slope – you likely think of being in big trouble. You should design your content to address a problem that your audience has that your product or service can solve. Any number of problems can be identified that you can use to craft your emails. By creating urgency in your content, you can increase the chances that your readers will view you as, if not the only solution to their problem, the best solution to their problem.

If you are having trouble with your email campaigns, then you might want to consider hiring content writers to help you write more powerful emails. This is often a good choice, as most companies charge per word, and the content needed for email campaigns is typically short. In other words, outsourcing is usually very cost effective.

3 Tips for Writing Converting Email Campaigns is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. How To Use Email Marketing To Draw More People To Your Website
2. Writing For Your Audience – Is It Right?
3. Smashing Tricks to Writing Eye Catching Titles

Then came the social media marketers who wanted to maximize their traffic with minimum efforts. This resulted in apps that could automate twitter status updates and also gain many followers in a few minutes time. You could update using twitterfeed and you could also schedule updates. (Using Scheduling tweets or not is a debatable concept).

New apps can automate a host of things but they still can’t automate some things which makes twitter such a nice and warm place to be a part of. Here are some I think are the most awesome things that you can’t automate on twitter:

Amazing Conversation

Twitter is all about conversation and if you don’t follow a regime to talk to your followers on twitter, you will not be known. Replying to your followers can result in some of the most amazing conversations. I have had many debates with my twitter followers on various different subjects.
Even if our opinions were different, we were still able to broaden our horizon by presenting our thoughts in front of each other.

If you are not replying, then you are not tweeting! If you feel that you don’t have enough time to engage, there are always techniques that will be able to cut down on your time to engage.

Learning

When I first started tweeting, I had little knowledge on many subjects like social media marketing, internet marketing, etc. I thought twitter was totally useless and it was a total time waste. But, when I started using it like a pro tweeter, I was able to grasp many topics in a small period of time. This knowledge helped me in improving my blogging and writing skills and it also gave me many ideas which I could blog about. Now, if you are automating, then you are not reading the tweets and hence, you are losing on an amazing learning opportunity.

Reputation

Reputation is not built in minutes. It takes months of hard work to build a high reputation twitter account where people love what you tweet. So, automation cannot build reputation as you are not spending enough time to build good relationships with people.

Also, a myth among many twitter users is that a high twitter following equals a higher reputation. This is not at all true. A person who got 20000 followers may have zero reputation because he got all the followers using automated methods. Whereas a person with 1000 followers can have a very high reputation if he had worked hard for it.

Influence

Becoming a twitter champ is not a piece of cake. You have to do a lot more than just following people. You have to make really good relationships with twitter users who have a high influence. Once you become a part of their influence circle, your influence will increase on its own.

A high influence can be achieved with the lower follower count if you are able to develop great relationships with other highly influential twitter champions.

Friends

This is the part that I cherish the most. On twitter, I have made really good friends who I am able to interact with freely and also I am able to share my thoughts with. Friends are needed for moral and emotional support. When you have hit rock bottom, these friends will be there for you. I wouldn’t have made any twitter friends if I hadn’t interacted with them in the first place.

So, if you are planning to automate twitter, then you are missing out on making some really amazing friends.

Business Opportunity

Twitter has many opportunities for the growth of your business. But, customers will believe in your product if you are genuine on twitter and you treat your followers in the right way.

Building a business starts with building trust and that too cannot be automated!

Can you think of any other things that cannot be automated on twitter?

What you can’t Automate on Twitter is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. 8 Twitter Mistakes that can Destroy your Twitter Reputation
2. Why I won’t follow everyone on Twitter
3. Twitter Etiquette | Do you have any?

This is a guest article by Hadley of

Are you knee-deep in the blogging world and want to talk to some like-minded individuals? Check out some of these fantastic conferences around the world. Not only will you learn a plethora of new information to improve your blog, but you’ll get the chance to talk to individuals with the same passion as you.

BlogHer Conference: BlogHer runs a blogging conference August 6-7 in New York City. It focuses on helping female bloggers gain a presence on the Internet, as well as how to turn blogging into a paid career. It also has a focus on political and social blogging.

BlogWorld and New Media Expo: Running October 15-16 in Las Vegas, this conference focuses on general blogging and Internet businesses.

Blog Indiana: Blog Indiana runs from August 20^th to the 21^st, and focuses primarily on how to gain viewers and use a blog to promote non-blogging interests, as well as on general social media.

Netroots Nation: Running July 22-25 in Las Vegas, this blogging conference promotes using the Internet, including blogging, in order to foster liberal and progressive causes. This year, Senator Al Franken will be speaking.

Blissdom: Blissdom already had its 2010 conference in February, but it is usually a yearly event so be sure to check back in later. Like BlogHer, this blogging conference is primarily for female bloggers. Blissdom also specializes on supportive, positive help for female bloggers looking to follow their “bliss,” or passion. It also has a Canadian conference.

Wine Bloggers’ Conference: This organization actually runs two conferences: one, in Virginia, on July 22-24 in 2011, and one in 2010 in Vienna, Austria, October 22-24. The conference seeks “to discuss the convergence between the culture of wine and the web.” If you blog about wine, this is definitely a must for you.

South by South West: South by South West, which also goes by the acronym SXSW, is a general new-media conference that will be meeting next during the week of March 11-20 2011 in Austin, Texas. However, it does have some blogging-relating content, like “The Broke Diaries: Using Blogs and Twitter to Live Cheaply”. This conference would be fantastic for any current bloggers looking to expand outside of the blogging world.

Northern Voice: This conference is held in spring in Vancouver, British Columbia, and specializes in personal blogging and social media, rather than blogging for profit. Its 2010 convention has already happened, but it will be back in 2011.

Type-A Mom Conference: This conference, held September 24-26 in Asheville, North Carolina, has a focus on “mom bloggers”. It also emphasizes using blogging and social media to make money. People willing to volunteer may get free or reduced-price entrance into the conference.

Latin American Bloggers’ Convention: Held November 12-14 in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, this conference focuses on, as its name implies, bloggers from Latin America. It also has general information for beginning bloggers and is a great first step for anybody looking to break into the blogging world.

The Best Blogging Conferences in the World is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. The Dirty Business Model of World Cup Spammers

I get a lot of questions asking how I am able to get so many awesome sponsors to my contest and so, this article will focus on how you can get great sponsors for your contest.

Prepare a Sales Pitch

Once you have you have come up with a good idea for a contest, you need to prepare a sales pitch. A sales pitch in layman terms, is a small piece of text that lists out the benefits to the sponsors. After all, sponsors are willing to advertise at your contest, if they are able to get something in return.

Preparing a sales pitch is similar to making a good CV (curriculum vitae). You have to focus on the good points. You can list out the benefits like exposure, seo benefits. You can also say that you will market it really hard through social media or advertising. There are plenty of points that you can add and you have to think of some good ones in order to attract those awesome sponsors.

Note : Embellishing your points is not bad, but don’t try to fake anything. Sponsors are not dumb people, they will easily figure it out.

Go Advertiser Hunting

As you have your sales pitch ready, it’s time to do some advertiser hunting and it’s the most fun part. Broadly you can classify advertisers into 3 categories:

1. Product Owners – These advertisers have a product that they have created and they want more exposure on blogs to make more sales.
2. Website Owners – These website owners want to advertise in order to improve the traffic that their website gets. They would be interested in websites of same or similar niches.
3. SEO Hunters -  These are people who are more interested in the seo value they get from the contest in the form of backlinks.

Depending on your contest, you can target a specific category of advertisers or the whole group. You can use the following methods to target advertisers:

Contact Via Website

You can do a little bit search on the websites that would interested in advertising in your niche. The best method is to interact with these advertisers would be via email. You can get access to their email contact via the contact page present on their websites.

Forums

Forums usually have contest sections where webmasters can advertise their contests and also look for advertisers. If advertisers see you thread, they might contact and show interest.

Social media Websites

People who are following you on social media are aware of your social media power and they might be interested in sponsoring your contest. If you ask for sponsorship in social media sites, there are chances that you might get some advertisers.

Take a Glance at Other Contests

A sneaky trick is to approach those people who have already sponsored other contests. Take a look at the sponsors of the contest that have been organized recently and try to contact them. The chance of conversion is good, because most of these advertisers are always on the lookout for good sites to sponsor. You just have to direct them to your website .

Keep the Window Open for Advertisers

Even if your contest has started, don’t close the windows for advertisers. Some advertisers might not be aware of the contest before being launched. But, after the contest, they may show interest in sponsoring it. If you close the doors, you will lose out on some good sponsors.

In totality, the contest can get huge sponsors, only if you have worked hard on getting advertisers for it. It is the only mantra to a rocking contest.

Share Your Experiences

Have you organized a blogging contest? What was your experience with it?

How to get Awesome Sponsors for your Contest is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. How to Make your Contest a Success!
2. The Guest Blogging Contest So Far and Blog Godown Newsletter
3. 7 Smashing Techniques to Pull Guest Authors to your Blog

Before I explain the contest details, please take a look at our sponsor

If you are looking for the best destinations to travel or if you need to read reviews of places you want to visit, you can do so by subscribing to Book It Now Travel Website. BookItNow is an online travel resource site where you can book your holiday with ease. Also, you can get great deals on major tourist spots which can save you some money while you travel and enjoy.

The Team behind BookItNow is organizing a World Wild Travel Blog Party 2010 where you can participate and win an additional 200$ cash prize. The contest will end on 1st September 2010, so hurry and participate there too!

How To Enter

As I said, this contest is pretty simple. You just have to do two things

1. You have to subscribe to this blog by email. To make this simpler, I have added a signup form below:

Note: Make sure that you confirm your subscription via email

1. You have to tweet the following

Subscribe and Tweet to Win 100$ in Cash #Blogging #Contest

http://bit.ly/dCeFw7

After you have subscribed and tweeted, please comment with your twitter status to confirm your participation

That’s it.

How Will The Winners Be Decided.

A person will be selected randomly using random.org from the contest participants who will be awarded the cash prize via paypal.

Prize

The Prize is a whopping 100$. 100$ just for subscribing and tweeting. So, why not try your luck and you might take home a grand prize.

Contest Deadline

The contest is a month long and so, the contest will end on 20th August 2010.

Subscribe and Tweet to Win 100$ in Cash Blogging Contest is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. How to get Awesome Sponsors for your Contest
2. The Comment Marathon Commenting Contest
3. Guest Blogging Contest

First of all, what do you think a perfect business website is? Well, to me, if your business website takes your financial worries away, then it’s a perfect business website. This way you don’t have to work for anyone, you don’t have to worry about attending office everyday and you don’t have to worry about being punctual either. A perfect business website helps you earn bread and butter and gives you complete peace of mind.

Having said that, now we need to discuss that which vital elements ought to be incorporated in your business website to make it perfect.

It Must Be Appealing As Well As Relevant:

This is a misconception that you just create a website and it will start making you money. It’s a completely false notion. You have got to make your website attractive if you seriously want to win the trust of your market. Secondly, ensure that your website design is relevant to your business model.

It’s the quality of your web design that tells your market that your products will be of high quality as well. If your design is of low quality, you won’t be able to win the trust of your market. So, ensure that you make it attractive as well as relevant.

You Must Provide User-Friendly Navigation:

How much time would you spend on a site where you will see hundreds of confusing links all over the page? Well, you won’t spend more than a few seconds. The same thing will happen to you if you don’t create user-friendly navigation. Your website visitors or potential buyers won’t spend any time on your website and will most likely leave in less than 10 seconds.

Ensure that Your Copy is Benefit-Oriented:

What converts your visitors into customers is your copy. Your copy must highlight  all the benefits clearly and concisely. It should tell your market why you should be trusted. It should entice your market to prefer you. So, you will need to take some time to write a compelling copy or hire a professional copywriter to do the job for you.

Choose a Readable Font Size and Style:

A lot of websites don’t care about their font-size. They make it really small. Small font-size is not easily readable. If you visit a website and find it difficult to read, then you will leave immediately. Your visitors will do the same thing if you don’t select a readable font size and style. Also, try avoiding grey font. Black is the best in terms of readability.

Strategically Organize the Content and Graphics:

Don’t make your website look like an unorganized place by having text and graphics everywhere. Organize everything in a nice and professional manner. Ensure that your website doesn’t look messy at all. Once you create the site, look at it and determine if it gives you a refreshing feeling or not. If it doesn’t, then you need to analyze your site and end the flaws.

So, these are some powerful tips that will empower you to create a perfect business website…for your business!

If you have any tips, please do share.

5 Tips for Creating a Perfect Business Website is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. The 21 Worst Things To Have On Your Blog or Website
2. Creating Top Quality Blog Reader Relationships
3. How To Build A Community Of Readers Who Want To Do Business With You

Working Offline can be Really Productive

In this guest article, Michael Collins explains a method which you can employ to blog which can make your blogging highly productive. If you want get in front of readers, take a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

When you first start a blog, you might be able to stay committed, and designate a specific amount of time each day to work on your blog. In the beginning, at least, blogs require a large amount of time before they gain a steady flow of traffic. Because of this, many people get burnt out before their blog really takes off. Most people manage their blogs online. Although that might sound like the only way to manage a blog, the internet has millions of potential distractions. How many times have you been writing a post, only to be distracted by a social networking site, or a flash ad? All these distractions add up, and prevent you from working as efficiently as you can.

You might think it will be nearly impossible to run a blog offline. A blog is hosted online, and most blogging platforms have the dashboard set up in a way that allows you to do everything in one place. However, almost all of these things can be done offline, as well. For example, writing posts takes a lot of time, and with distractions, it can take hours to get a decent post done. However, if you just set your mind to it, and use a word processing application to write your post, it will be done much faster. If you’ve never tried to write a post offline before, try it. You’ll be able to see exactly how productive you can be, and how quickly you can pump out a quality article.

If you use SEO for your blog, you can also do most of the major planning offline. That way, when you go online, you’ll have a plan ready, and you can accomplish it as quickly as possible. If you plan on messaging web masters, you can type all the emails out before you go online. You can plan out a link building strategy, and execute it once you get online.

Working offline can greatly increase your productivity. If you’ve never tried it, give it a shot. For starters, write posts offline, and plan everything out before you get online. This way, once you start using the internet, you know exactly what to do. You can copy and paste the posts in, and you can send all the emails. This way, you will become much more efficient, and be able to accomplish much more in every work day.

How Working Offline Can Help Your Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Blog Homepage: Excerpt vs. Full Size Post
2. Points to Consider Before Starting to Publish on a Blog
3. How to Find Blogging Inspiration from Real Life

Are you not making any money from your blog?

“Making money online is an art” and I would totally agree with this statement. People who think that effort equals money are totally wrong. If effort is not applied in the right direction, then, it is of no use, as it will not bring in any money. But, if effort is used in the right amounts in the right places, it can really bear fruit and make you some money. So, the right mantra is “directed effort equals money”.

Many bloggers have a goal of a six figure income from their blogs. They try really hard to make a buck, but they fail miserably because they are using a bad monetization strategy. This is because they don’t know about directed effort.

Here, I would like to discuss on the 5 reasons why bloggers are not making money from their blogs.

Focus on Quantity

Bloggers who are money centric (i.e people whose main focus is on money), don’t care about their content. what they really care about is the quantity of their articles. Because more articles will get more traffic and which will increase the chance of making more money. But the problem is that if you don’t concentrate on quality, then you will not able to earn money from it. Quality content builds a reputation which will further help in building a community. Once you build a community, then you can think of making money from it.

Too Many Ads

Too many Ads on your website is a complete no-no for any blog. Too many ads decrease the appeal of a website and they also deteriorate the design. The result is: Readers are unhappy and they have an impression of the blogger as a really greedy person who doesn’t care about his readers. And, instead of making more money, the blog doesn’t make any money!

You would not like this to happen to your blog, right?

So, you should try to have an optimum number of ad spots targeted in a fashion that they really blend well with the design and they don’t become eye sores. Once you have that established, you will be all set to make money from your ads.

No Traffic

You’re wishing that somebody would click on your ad and you will make money. But, that will not happen if you don’t have traffic. Sometimes, bloggers think only of content and forget about marketing it. This is a big mistake on their part. Marketing is really important to get traffic. The number of clicks is dependent on the amount traffic. So, if you get more traffic, then your chances of making money are higher.

Sponsored Reviews

Sponsored Reviews are a great way to make money, but at what cost? Sponsored reviews that are completely off-topic and have no use for your readers can be really harmful for your community. You would be making money on your first oppurtunity, but you will be losing out on your reputation.

It would be far better if you write sponsored reviews on topics related to your niche and add your honest opinion to it. By that technique, you would be writing a sponsored post without hurting your reader’s sentiments.

No Email Newsletter

I was not aware of the power of email newsletters and so do many bloggers. Most internet money makers like Shoemoney and Darren Rowse believe that email newsletter services like Aweber are a must have, if you want to make money from affiliate networks. Chances of conversions increase if you have an email list. Not having an email list will limit the money making potential of your blog.

These are some of the most common mistakes made by bloggers. But, there are ought to be many others.

If you have something to add to this list then please comment.

5 Reasons Why You are Not Making any Money is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Bloggers: Are You Making This BIG Mistake?
2. What To Invest If You’ve Got No Money To Invest
3. Managing Money through Budget Tracker

Think of Blog Writing as a Continous Process

Good Blog Writing is one of the essential attributes of a great blogger. You can take any A-list bloggers for that matter and you will see that there style of writing might be unique but the quality of writing is up to the mark.

It doesn’t mean that an average or poor writer cannot be good blogger. This is a fact, some good bloggers were not good writers, but they improved in their blogging journey. Blogging is a process which evolves us as human beings. If you are an experienced blogger, you might have noticed that blogging teaches you many lessons. These can be life lessons as well. Blog Writing is one among the many lessons you learn from blogging.

I know I am not a very good writer, but the scenario 3 years back was grimmer than it is now. I had to waste a day to write a 100-200 word article and that was the best output I was able to get out of myself. Also, my writing was not good and at that point of time I didn’t care about any grammatical and typographical mistakes. But, now the situation has completely changed and I am able to write long blog posts in a matter of few hours and which are almost free from errors.

Now, you can see that I have evolved as a writer from blogging and I am still evolving. This can happen to you too!

Similarly, blog writing is a process and each and every person is capable of becoming a good writer if he or she takes the right direction. If bloggers follow the right techniques, they will become better writers in a short period of time.

Improve Your Vocabulary

Most bloggers have a very limited set of words that they employ in their writing. This is because they have poor vocabulary. A great way to increase your vocabulary is to perform a simple technique while reading. Whenever you find a word that you haven’t seen before, note it down on a piece of paper. Once you have a list of some of these words in the end of the day, you can refer to the dictionary and find the meanings of each word. I personally use Oxford Dictionary for English vocabulary, but you can also use refer to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary which is equally good. Also, you can note down the words and their respective meanings in a workbook which you can refer each day and then memorize each word. This daily habit will help you build your vocabulary.

Correcting your grammar

Learning grammar is really important for conveying your message. Grammar helps to create a flow of writing. An error in the placement of a full stop or any punctuation can entirely change the meaning of the sentence. I don’t mean that you have to become a master of grammar, but you should try to learn the basics. If you are able to manage that, you will be assured that you are able to convey your message properly. You can refer any good online resources for improving your grammar.

Read Other Blogs, News and Magazines

Learn how to write by analyzing how other renowned writers write. The first place to find great pieces of writings are newspapers and magazines. These articles are free from any errors (They are edited before they are published) and they can teach you how to structure your thoughts and convert it into a presentable piece that is understood by your readers.

Also, you should refer to other blogs and analyze their writing. Compare it with yours and see what you are doing wrong and you have to make sure that you take a corrective action.

Experiment with your Writing

I know it might sound a little odd, but experimentation is really important to find the writing that works for your readers. Each blogger has a unique style because each of them has a different audience. You have a different reader base too, so you should try to vary your writing and monitor their responses. The ones that work best for you, should be your permanent style of writing.

Following each and every step of this writing process is equally important, if you really want to become a good writer.

What do you think about your writing? Self-Inspect and tell me about your positives and negatives.

The Process of Becoming a Good Blog Writer is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Top Tips for Finding a Great Content Writer
2. 3 Great Ways to Get Rid of Writer’s Block
3. Blog Homepage: Excerpt vs. Full Size Post

Is your blog social media ready?

Are you taking social media marketing seriously? If your answer is yes, then you need to make a move to make it social media ready and get your blog in the limelight. Social media has a lot of traffic potential for your blog. The quality of traffic depends on the type of social media, but it is definitely lower than search engines. By quality, I mean the visitor/subscriber is low compared to guest blogging. But there is way to increase the conversion rate by optimizing your blog. Social media users are always bombarded with more information than they can actually handle. Therefore, to avoid wasting a lot of time, the users don’t read the entire article but scan through it. If they don’t like the article, they move on and if they like it, they usually share it with others. If your blog articles have a bad first impression, then chances are, that there will be a poor conversion of visitors to subscribers It doesn’t mean that social media marketing is a waste of time. It only means that you have to try to increase the conversion rate by optimizing your blogs and make it social media ready.

Readable Design

Before you kick off and write an article or perform any other type of optimization on your blog, make sure that your design is readable (Although, an impressive design will always be a better option). If you are not a designer, you can always buy a premium theme from a good theme club like WooThemes. A readable design does not strain the reader’s eyes and hence, it facilities fast and strain free reading by having an appropriate line size, font size and type and also a readable theme. It makes it simpler for the readers to judge the article in the little time they have. Some More Tips on Creating a Readable Design:

1. Don’t Ruin Your Smashing Web Design with Poor Navigation
2. 5 Conversion Rate Optimization Tips for Bloggers

Sparky Title & Hypnotic Beginnings

In any social media website, the first thing that shows is the title of the article and after that is the beginning of the article. Hence, the title along with the beginning paragraph is of utmost importance, as it decides whether your article is worth taking a look or not. It is the part of the article, which has to grab maximum attention. A catchy title can bring more attention than the old boring way of writing articles. You need to play with your titles and add adjectives that are catchy and are able to grab more eyeballs. Also, you need to write a hypnotic beginning which is able to glue the readers to your blog. You can try quotes or questions in the beginning so that you are able to generate more interest in the reader. More Tips:

1. Smashing Tricks to Writing Eye Catching Titles
2. Hypnotic Beginnings

Structured Content

As these social media enthusiasts are always in a hurry, they prefer blog articles that are structured i.e. the content is formatted in such a manner that a reader can get a brief idea of the article by scanning through it. The article should be formatted into various paragraphs and also have different heading sizes to have a hierarchical structure. More Tips:

1. How to Write Structured Articles

Add a Vote Button

Many of your blog readers are a bit on the lazy side. They don’t want to strain themselves by taking an initiative and sharing your articles. If you don’t add a social media website vote button, chances are, that number of social media shares is very low and hence, it will not be able to drive as much social media traffic as it should. You will see your results change dramatically, if you add a vote button (A vote button saves a lot of time, when you are sharing an article on social media website). A vote button can start a chain of social media shares. People see the number of social media shares on the social media button. If they think that the number of social media shares is high, they might be motivated to share the article, themeselves which converts into a chain reaction. A simple retweet button can increase the number of retweets by ten times.

Be Controversial

Adding an element of controversy to your articles is always a great technique get massive social media traffic . Controversy can be straight out, burning a person or company’s image which can lead to many positive and negative comments. If you can handle this type of controversy, then it is best, you do it more often. But if you want lesser bad effects of controversy (negative comments) and more good effects (Traffic), try subtle controversy. Add your opinion but don’t criticize somebody and participate in healthy debates rather intensive name calling. I, personally prefer subtle controversy than straight out controversy. Which type of controversy you would like to use is your personal choice.

Branding

Branding your website is essential to have a higher conversion rate. When you present your website as a brand, people start identifying your websites with it. Hence, when your website articles are shared again and again and they see your brand, the reputation of the website increases. The improved reputation leads to more sharing and this becomes a exponentially increasing trend. Take an example of twitip or mashable, they have become renowned on social media due to massive sharing on social media and also because these websites are properly branded. If you follow these 6 steps, you would be able to create a social media ready blog which will attain a higher conversion rate from social media traffic.

How to Create a Social Media Ready Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. The Best Blogging and Social Media Articles Around the Community – Weekend Love
2. Blog Engage – A Social Media Site for your Blog Promotion
3. How to get any Job you want using Social Media

Hypnotic Beginnings - A method to attract your readers like magnets

Living in a metro city has its advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage is that you get plenty of choices on each and every product.  You, as a customer have an upper hand i.e. you have the power to choose. As there is intense competition in the market, each competitor is trying their best to grab the consumer’s attention. You see billboards everywhere around you. Some are good, some are bad and some are really out of the world.

You don’t give attention to each and every advertisement. There are some ads that really stand out and make an impact on you. This impact converts you into a  potential customer.

Magnetic Headlines along with Hypnotic beginnings, if combined together, work the same way and they act as an advertisement for your articles. Visitors are busy people and they might be following many blogs. They are not interested in reading each and every article (they don’t have that much time). They are actually flicking through all the articles. What they read is the first paragraph. If they like the idea, they will read further. If not, then they will move to another blog.

Whether you are able to make it or break it – It all depends on how well you are able to send the message across. If you are able to make an impact from the Title and the Beginning Paragraph, then you have a chance of converting many visitors into loyal readers.

Hypnotic Beginnings are an opening to your articles. Bloggers can use it as a tool to generate interest in the reader.

Have you seen an opening ceremony in a global level competition like Olympics? Isn’t it grand. A big celebrity line-up and many fantastic performances. You should keep that in mind when you are constructing an introduction to an article. Don’t think of good, think of Grand.

Questions

Questions are really intriguing and they can manage to generate lots of traffic. Questions are trying to cater to the inquisitive side of a human’s brain. If the reader is able to relate to the issue, then he will surely read the rest of the article. Questions are basically intended to enquire whether the reader has experienced the same thing. Whether it is a burning issue or a major problem. Questions can help establish the connect between the reader and the content.

If I had to start this article with a question, it would have been something like this:

Have you skipped an article just because the beginning was not convincing?

Quote

Starting with a quote or saying is a good way to give weight to what you are trying to say. If a famous person has said anything relevant about the same issue – that you are trying to write, then it can help you prove that your article is about an important issue.

Alternatively, quotes are there to inspire readers so that they are set in the right direction when they are reading the rest of the article and they actually follow what is actually been said on those articles.

Summary

Yes, summaries are usually at the end of the article. Here, i am trying to say that articles can start with brief points and ideas which will be described in the later stages. It is basically used to familiarise readers with the concept, so that they are able to understand the rest of the article and they don’t end up confused.

Also, readers can make a decision on whether they want to read it or not, based on the summary provided in the beginning paragraph.

These three techniques can be used by the blogger according to his choice. But, bloggers should ensure that whatever technique they use,  they should make it a point of using it appropriately and make an impression which is Grand

Hypnotic Beginnings is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. How to Create a Social Media Ready Blog
2. How to Write Structured Articles
3. Blog Homepage: Excerpt vs. Full Size Post

Is a Design Competition worth the risk?

This is a guest article by Ben Johnson of Logoinn. You can participate by taking a look at our guest blogging guidelines

A lot of small businesses have now turned to crowdsourcing and logo design competition websites to create their business identity at an extremely low-cost.

There might be a few reasons behind it.

1) They can’t afford more than a few dollars.

2) They want dozens of designers to create dozens of designs for them, so they can easily choose one.

3) They don’t know the importance of a logo design.

When small businesses go to logo design competition sites to create their business identity, it becomes obvious that they don’t know how powerful this little piece of design is and how it can make their business look professional and attractive. However, if designed incorrectly, the same design will ruin your business image completely and you may not be able to undo the damage it will cause.

Simply put…Your logo design gives your business a face. If it looks professional, then your business will look professional, otherwise it will destroy your business image completely.

So, here are a few questions you should ask yourself before you start crowdsourcing:

How will You Determine that the Design is Original and Unique?

When you start a competition, dozens, if not hundreds, of designers will participate in it. How will you know that the designs are original? How will you determine that none of the designers actually gave you plagiarized work? There is no way you can judge that. Thus, you may end up promoting your business with a plagiarized logo. You won’t be able to create a unique identity for your unique business.

How will You Determine that the Designer has Not Created a Fake Profile?

If you like a few designs and feel interested in learning more about the designers who created them, then how will you know that their profiles are authentic? I mean, how will you judge that they didn’t copy other people’s designs in their profile? There is no way to judge that either.

Here is an Example of Cadbury:

Cadbury doesn’t need any introduction. It’s a successful company and they have the budget to hire the most creative designers. However, they still started a competition and offered a hefty amount to the winner (it was not a logo, but a design for wrapper). Designers from around the world submitted their designs and finally there was one winner. However, later it was found that the design was plagiarized. So, Cadbury gave the prize to the runner-up.

If a well-known company can face such a thing, then imagine how horrible it will be for a small business that will promote their products with a plagiarized design. Imagine the redesigning cost they will have to bear and then again get their new logo imprinted on new accessories like mugs, pens, business cards, etc. They will also have to discard the promotional items with the plagiarized logo imprinted on them. Just imagine the cost, burden and humiliation.

Plus, all small businesses may not have enough funds available to start all over again.

Is it worth taking the risk? You can very well answer this question now.

Can You Create Your Brand Identity by Starting a Logo Design Competition? is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Don’t Ruin Your Smashing Web Design with Poor Navigation
2. The Importance of Cohesive Branding
3. Points to Consider Before Starting to Publish on a Blog

Are you falling prey to world cup scam websites

The World Cup, like many other live sporting events, has become a major target for spammers. A quick search to find a place to watch the World Cup final online and you will quickly run into site’s full of pop-ups, fake video feeds, dodgy survey’s that ‘unlock’ live feeds, and subscription services to pirated content that is already available for free online.
You do not need to be a victim of these dirty underground spam websites to watch the World Cup online. Here’s a list of safe World Cup live streams and the epic Netherlands vs. Spain final.

Its looking to be a very exciting game, and the female fans in the World cup are looking pretty hot too.

To those in the know about online marketing you will probably be familiar with how these ‘watch online scams’ work.

CPA Survey Scams

A popular scam is where the scammer puts up a blog containing the live feed for the World Cup (or any sporting event, movie or TV show). The video might not even work, and often it doesn’t, but before you can watch the video you’ll see a pop-up asking you to fill in a survey to unlock the content.

These surveys are run by dodgy unethical marketing companies that will ask for your email address and contact details to spam you with, and the survey itself will often just be asking you to complete certain offers (like signing up for a DirecTV subscription) in order to win a prize, and the conditions to win that prize are often extremely difficult, meaning its rare for anyone to actually win the prize.

There’s nothing really wrong with such surveys, you give your contact details and sign up for some cheaper offers to win something of more value, but in the majority of cases it is not made clear how difficult it really is to win, and how much spam you will get in your inbox as a result, and the survey itself is designed to trick and confuse people.

Then there’s the fact that after filling in these surveys, which can take over an hour, the live feed you wanted to watch may not even work in the first place. The owner of the site will be making about $1 (paid by the CPA network) off everyone who submits their email address to complete the survey.

It may surprise you but I suspect there are millions of dollars made every month by the spammers getting $1 for these CPA scams, the CPA networks themselves, and the marketing companies behind the surveys. People are throwing up these spam ‘watch online’ blogs in mass, and throwing up more spam to promote them. The traffic is huge and the major Search Engines aren’t too hot at filtering out the spammers from those generally offering ways to watch something online.

Paid Internet TV Services

There are official and legitimate paid internet TV services out there which will give you access to sports games, movies and TV shows. However, the majority of these ‘Watch Satellite TV on Your PC’ are just providing access to pirated content that is otherwise available for free.

In some cases they may have made the pirated videos easier to access, but usually no better, and sometimes worse, than the free pirate TV sites like ATDHE. To make matters worse these paid internet TV services will have lies in the sales copy such as stating all channels are HD when they are not, hidden recurring fees, and fake endorsements. There’s nothing new about these, I first came across them in 2004.

Fake Videos

In order to build additional traffic to their websites these scammers are routinely posting fake videos onto YouTube and other video sharing sites. In the case of the World Cup they may post highlights of a match or the full game.

However, when you watch the video you may be lucky just to see a few still pictures and a notice to go to their website to watch the full video.

Don’t Be Tempted

You may be tempted by the large amount of money that these scammers might be making. However, be warned it is a bad business model to be part of for several reasons:

• The easy money was made years ago before lots of people realized they could make money this way. When you are reading about it on a blog it is too late, it is now very competitive. Just look at the amount of ‘watch online’ spam in Google search results.
• Legitimate services and quality free pirate TV websites are squeezing out the scammers.
• The spammers are liable to be sued by the rights holders of the video for a serious amount of money and could face prison sentences in severe cases.
• People are becoming more wise to the scammers.
• They overly rely on Google, who are constantly working to remove spam and scams from its search results.

You can put effort into making a legitimate business that helps people, make more money doing it, and not have to worry about breaking the law or making people’s lives harder.

The Dirty Business Model of World Cup Spammers is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. The Best Blogging Conferences in the World

The problem with the Writer’s block is that the more you try to write or find ideas, the more frustrated you get and slowly and steadily you get engulfed into a vicious circle. Then the situation becomes pretty bad.

As bloggers do the work of writing posts, therefore, writer’s block is a commonly faced problem among them. This can affect your blog posting frequency and if it becomes a frequently occurring problem, then it can be really disastrous for a blog’s growth.

So, we have to curtail the frequency of this problem, in order to sustain our blog’s growth.

1. Structured Blogging

You might have heard the saying “Prevention is better than Cure”. Structured blogging approach is more of a prevention mechanism. So, we are trying to prevent any situation that might ultimately lead to a condition of writer’s block.

Structured blogging approach starts with a setup of a blog posting workflow. A workflow that divides the blogging task into small parts. This makes the task of blogging a little bit easier as you are concentrating on each small job – one at a time. Hence, you are decreasing the chances of getting stuck up. You can refer to my blog posting workflow and develop one for yourself.

2. Take Inspiration

Sometimes, the problem is about creativity. You are just out of ideas and you need real inspiration to make you work and write an article.

Reading Blogs

You can get inspiration from other people’s work. A piece of writing can really inspire you to write better. So, you can read some of the blogs that you like, and maybe you might get some ideas in your head which might propel you to write.

Newspaper

Similar to blogs, newspapers contain articles that are really well written and they are a full of ideas. You may never know that a blog might get it’s inspiration from news articles.

Videos

I have found videos to be really inspiring, because they are filled with new and unique concepts. They are always full of ideas that you might like to add to your blog. A funny video can inspire you to do a parody post.

There are infinite number of places to find inspiration. You just have to find one for yourself and use it when you are really stuck while writing an article.

3. Unnerve yourself

Sometimes inspiration does not work for you and your are really stressed out.  Then, you really need some time to unnerve yourself and take a break to bring back your mind into a stable state.

Outdoor Activity

This technique works everywhere. I used outdoor activity to de-stress myself when I got stuck with a maths problem. It used to take me hours and I still wasn’t able to solve it and once I came back after the activity I was able to solve the problem in a few minutes. It is a recommended stress buster and is a must do in these type of situations.

You can take a walk in the nearby park, or play games like badminton and tennis or even try swimming (Good activity for the summer season).

Lighten Up

Lighten your mood by watching your favourite television shows or listening to your favourite music. The point is to really de-stress yourself.

Comedy Shows

I would highly recommend comedy shows. “Laughter is the best medicine” and is indeed a really great stress buster. Relax and Enjoy and remember to Laugh Out Loud.

Give it a Break

You are totally messed up and you are in no mood to write. This is the time when you should give writing a break and maybe proceed with it on a later stage.

This would be the right time use your previously planned posts so that you will be still be able to keep the same blog posting frequency

3 Great Ways to Get Rid of Writer’s Block is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Preparing Posts – Advanced Planning
2. 2 Ways How To Find Blog Post Ideas
3. Mind Mapping Exercise for High Speed Blogging

What would you do with 10000$

Some of the bloggers out there are only for money and some are still finding out how to blog. They also want to buy certain blogging products but they aren’t able to do so because of the huge money crunch. But, what if you had hit jackpot and got 10000$ in a instant of time. Wouldn’t that be a great feeling.

Having 10000$ and the freedom of using it the way you want. That is situation that I want you to consider.  I know you could a lot of things with that huge sum of money, but I would like to know, how would you use the money to improve your blog in any sense. The possibilities are endless and that is why I would like you to comment and tell me, how you are going to spend this huge amount of money.

I would start off with myself. If I get 10000$ hard cash, I would buy a great pc (more of a dream machine – the most expensive of all pcs and laptops) – so that blogging becomes more fun. I would like to buy an Xbox so that I am able to avert the writer’s block.

I would try to remove all the activities that consume a lot of my time. I will outsource the blog promotion work to others. Also, I would like my blog to grow at a faster rate, so, I would spend a major chunk in advertising my blog at big sites.

I would like to hire a designer, so that I don’t have to do every little modification to my blog and waste a lot of time correcting my blog design. I would also hire a blog manager so I am only responsible for managing these people and writing content, rest is all outsourced.

If I still have some money left with me, then I might use it for personal reasons but that would be my least priority because I love my blog.

Now it’s your chance to spill the beans, what would you do if you had 10000$ in your bank account and you had to spend it on your blog?

What Would You Do If You Had 10000$ in your Account is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Blog Homepage: Excerpt vs. Full Size Post
2. How to prevent your twitter account from being hacked

Whether you’ve been blogging for a month or for 5 years, all bloggers want to continue growing. You want to attract more readers, get more comments, have more linkbait successes, and just make your blog bigger. It sounds easy enough, but almost all bloggers plateau at some point and struggle to achieve more growth.

What can you do to keep your blog growing? The key to growth is identifying those things that stunt your growth. Here are 5 mistakes that may be keeping your blog down.

1. You publish irregularly. I’m not saying that you have to publish new content every day. What I’m saying is that you need to pick a posting frequency and stick with it. Your readers need to know when to expect content from you, whether that’s 3 times a day or once a week. Haphazard posting just doesn’t work. It makes it impossible for your blog to gain any momentum, and it makes it difficult for readers to stick with you on a long-term basis.
2. You make it difficult to share your content. Your readers can be your most valuable tool for promoting your blog. If you make it easy for them to share your content through their favorite social media websites, they can tell all their friends and followers about your blog with just the click of a mouse. You need to have social media buttons on your blog that include instant sharing capabilities with Facebook, Twitter, Digg, ReddIt, and other popular sites. This can be very helpful in making your posts go viral.
3. You post “me too” content. There are hundreds of millions of blogs online. And no matter what niche you’re blogging in, you can bet you have some competition. Why should someone read your blog? What do you offer that can’t be found on the other blogs in your niche? These are the questions you need to ask yourself with every post you write. Don’t just rehash what everyone else is saying. “Me too” blogs have very limited growth potential. Be different. Be yourself.
4. You don’t write like you talk. Speaking of being yourself, your personality needs to shine through in your writing. Readers want to feel like they’re connecting with someone when they read your blog…like they know you. The best way to forge a connection with them is to write like you talk. Your blog posts will feel more conversational, and your blog will have a voice that’s completely different from all others in your niche.
5. Your blog isn’t optimized for the search engines. Every post you write should be optimized for maximum search engine visibility. This means using keyword-rich titles, tagging and categorizing your posts appropriately, and using keyword-rich anchor text to link to other content throughout your posts. This can help drive search engine traffic to your blog, allowing you to grow over time.

What are some other mistakes bloggers make that keep them from reaching their full potential? Share your best blogging tips by leaving a comment.

5 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Growing is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. 5 reasons why bloggers quit blogging
2. 5 Reasons Why You are Not Making any Money
3. Creating Top Quality Blog Reader Relationships

This is a guest article by Ashish Sharma. You join the group of guest bloggers by following our

According to Ashish, the world of SEO is highly competitive and therefore, instead of targeting the world wide web (which is far more difficult to achieve), business should target local search engines which can get you targeted customers for your business.

The most apparent trend in SEO today is “going local”. Since Google and Yahoo initiated local search engine listings such as Google places and Yahoo local and afterward added local search results to universal visitors, this automatically made every business realize that they have to strive to be on local listings.

When I was a beginner, I used to follow the basic SEO techniques for SEO beginners, which did not benefit my website as I intended it to. But later I found that the local search engine optimization is the best way to attain small business profits and reach the target market. These local listings enable the user to search for local businesses in their area, and later the abundance of net-books and smart-phones popularize this development even further.

After benefiting from the local SEO techniques, I am compiling a list of top 10 useful SEO and online marketing tips that may help your business to attract local customers.

1. Participate in the niche communities / local community:
   The quickest way to popularize your business in a particular area is to join the niche and local community of that area. Suppose your business is focused for the US customers, the best way would be to join the US communities, this way your products and services will directly reach the users of the targeted niche.
2. Build a local network and share updates:
   Building a local network makes your products reach directly to your customers. Suppose you provide products and services for a particular industry, say, Paper Products, you can directly choose the specified category and reach those that belong to the same industry or are interested in buying paper products.
3. Focus keywords with location specific:
   Using location specific keywords is probably the most critical factor for location specified businesses. Suppose you want to sell your paper products to the users from Washington DC, the best way would be to use Washington in your targeted keywords. This not just makes your business reach specifically to the target area but also boosts your search engine performance and sales. You can find more such tips to boost up local traffic to your blog or website in various online reputed social media guides.
4. Make sure to think like the visitor/customer:
   Customers often neglect the technical aspects while searching for a term or business on the net and that is why it is mandatory to use the keywords that your customers are likely to put in the search box to find your business or products.
5. Numerous locations require several landing pages:
   Local search engine sites do not prefer a business to have more than one local listing, although if you want to list your business in two locations, then just make sure to link back both the local listings to the same page or homepage. Often, business owners get trapped in general keywords and overlook to focus on less popular keywords that may have a high possibility of making sales.
6. Put complete physical address on every page of your site:
   Your geographic location can be re-enforced only when you put your complete physical address on every page of your website; this also helps in turning a visitor into a customer.
7. Add your local phone number:
   Aim behind following the SEO guide and listing your business locally is not just to make your business popular but also to get customers that can turn your business into profits. Make sure to add local phone number to every page of your website so that the visitor can avail your services.
8. Ask for feedback:
   Customer feedback is very important for the success of your business. Make a point to ask for a feedback through your contact forms, e-mails or invoices. Ask the customer to rate you or give a feedback on the local listings such as yahoo, Bing or Google. These feedbacks add to the credibility of the business.
9. Always welcome bad reviews:
   Whether you have a small business or large enterprise, bad reviews are a part of any business industry, take bad reviews as a chance to improve your business. You can always tell your customers about the improvement you have made for this review, that ways you convince the customers that their feedback matters.
10. Manage information across the internet:
    Even after viewing the detailed information about your products and services on your website, local listing services explore the internet wide and far to find reviews, pictures or any additional information about your company. Submitting the additional information to the services like infoUSA and Localize may help.

Top 10 tips for Local SEO & online marketing is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. 9 Quick and Easy WordPress SEO Tips
2. Great SEO tips for Everybody
3. Essential SEO Tips for Beginners

Riches do not respond to wishes. They respond only to definite plans, backed by definite desires, through constant persistence

Napoleon Hill

So, if you want to be a be a six figure blogger or whatever maybe your blogging goals, it cannot happen without prior planning. Planning is really helpful when you are dealing with adversities. At that time you might see your careful planning bearing fruit and helping you out in times of immediate need.

Facing Writer’s Block

Bloggers don’t give importance to planning as they think of blogging as a spontaneous activity and they try to write according to their mood. But what if you get trapped in the writer’s block and you are not able to write at all. This will seriously impact your blog posting frequency and will keep your readers at bay. You cannot predict a writer’s block type of situation, but you can control the situation by planning some basic backup articles (which you might have written earlier) which can be used in times of utmost need (like this one).

Time Management

There will be times in your blogging career where you might have a full day for blogging and there will be times when you have a few minutes.

If you don’t plan wisely and manage time properly, you are going to lose on articles for your blog.

If you have a full day for blogging, why not write 2-3 articles for that day? You might as well use the spare time to some good use rather than just checking out your analytics or the amount you earned (I know that’s important, but content should be your first priority).

You can treat the extra articles as backup articles. I call them backup articles because they prove to be useful when you are usually facing a time crunch.

Guest Blogging – More Free Time

Guest blogging is great!. You get some free content in exchange for the exposure the blogger gets. When you receive a guest article, you have to write for one less day or week. This means more spare time. Why not motivate yourself and start writing.

Listen, more content never goes waste. If you’re articles start piling up, then you can use them as guest articles for other blogs. Or you can start a new side blog of the same niche and publish these articles on the new blog.

Taking Breaks from Blogging

We bloggers are real people, like you and me. We love to spend time and have fun with our friends and family. We love to go on vacations. But, what if we have to go for long vacations? What would happen to our blogs? Will it be totally abandoned?

If we had some articles ready beforehand, we could have scheduled it and still had fun. No one would notice the difference that you have gone for the vacation and you will still be retaining the readers of your blog.

Notes

Planning articles does not mean that you have to write full articles. Writing notes on a piece of paper is also a part of the planning process.

Whenever you have a Eureka! moment, you can write your ideas on a piece of paper. The next time you can do the mind mapping and add some basic points to it. Basically, you can follow a logical sequence of writing so that you have a mix of fully prepared and semi-prepared articles. This logical sequence can be your blog posting workflow or any other technique you follow.

The semi-prepared articles can reduce the time to write an article by almost 90%. This means that if you have very little time, you can still think of completing an article.

Discussion

According to me, planning ahead is a wise choice. But what do you think about it?

Preparing Posts – Advanced Planning is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Mind Mapping Exercise for High Speed Blogging
2. 3 Great Ways to Get Rid of Writer’s Block
3. Backing Up your Blogger Posts and Comments

Newspaper's First Page Has Article Excerpts

In this article Karan Singhal of Trafficke wants to solve the battle between excerpts and full sized posts on the blog homepage. You can express your unique blogging view or blogging tip by following our guest blogging guidelines.

A widely debated issue in the blogging community is the question of leaving your blog homepage with full-sized posts or excerpts. Should new visitors see a preview of your posts, or should they be able to read each of them easily by simply scrolling down?

The best choice might seem, at first, to keep full-sized posts enabled, but if you look closer you’ll find this is a big mistake for your blog.

Implementing excerpts is definitely, and I mean without a doubt, the best choice for your blog, no matter what niche you’re in. Here’s why:

Too Much To Handle

Have you ever thought of the possibility that full-sized posts on your homepage might just be too much for a new visitor to handle?

A visitor who is overwhelmed at the first sight of your blog is very likely to close out and never come back. You don’t want your visitors doing this. The only way to keep it simple for your visitors is to use post excerpts that give the reader an option to read more.

Difficulty For Visitors

Even if you’ve managed to pull in a few dedicated readers that have become used to your (stupid) overwhelming homepage, all is not well. At least for your visitors. Have you ever thought of how hard it is to keep on scrolling through posts that you really don’t want to read? (don’t laugh at me, I’m serious) By putting full-sized posts on your homepage, you are creating huge difficulty and potentially setting yourself for a higher bounce rate.

This too, can turn your blog into a waste of time for your readers.

Benefits of using post excerpts:

Bite-sized nuggets of information – By providing excerpts instead of posts on your homepage, you are providing quality information that they can easily swallow, and if they aren’t interested, scroll down a little for more. If they are interested, they can just as easily read more by simply clicking on a link for the full post. By doing this, you are making your homepage manageable for your traffic, especially for new visitors.

Pull in more visitors to your content – If you use post excerpts, you’re making your content much more inviting. I always feel much more attracted to a small readable paragraph instead of a huge 500-word full sized post. And most likely, so do your readers. After all, which would you like better: getting a small taste and being invited for more, or getting the entire meal at once? I think the choice is clear, for you and your readers.

A better opportunity for you – Excerpts are what your visitors will read. Post excerpts give you an added opportunity to pull in the traffic your posts were made to get. This means a better performance for all of your posts. But you can also add to this opportunity by really spending a good amount of time writing you excerpt so that it brings even more traffic to your posts.

There are many reasons why you might want to use post excerpts on your homepage instead of simply leaving the WordPress default of full sized posts. This post has just listed a few. To summarize, just know that using post excerpts decreases your bounce rate and reduces clutter and difficulty for your website traffic, especially new visitors. They also help your posts perform better and attract much more traffic.

Thanks for reading! Please retweet, I spent a lot of time writing this article for you!

Blog Homepage: Excerpt vs. Full Size Post is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. 2 Ways How To Find Blog Post Ideas
2. The 21 Worst Things To Have On Your Blog or Website
3. Why Rejection Isn’t A Bad Thing In Blogging

Now some people have become comment freaks (they comment like addicts)  due to this and Andy Bailey has to take the blame for it .

Before I explain more about commentluv, let’s take a stroll through the memory lane.

In September 2008 a new generation of CommentLuv became available utilizing AJAX and platform independant technologies which brought about support for Blogger, Typepad, GoDaddy Blogs, Drupal and Expression Engine.

A support site was released at the same time to provide statistics for CommentLuv members and an easy way for a new user to register and verify their blog (enabling them to have the last 10 posts from their blog returned to them when they comment)

The site got busier and busier and during the month of April 2009, it received more than 9,000,000 hits!! (8 mil the month before and 6 mil before that)

Concept of CommentLuv

The reason why commentluv has become so popular is because of it’s unique concept. Andy Bailey came up with this ingenious idea and Kudos to him for that!. Commenters are usually composed of two types of people – bloggers and non-bloggers. Readers usually comment if they have a query or they want to discuss something. Commentluv’s concept is to encourage these bloggers to come forward and comment on a regular basis.

Each blogger gets the option to post a link to a recent article of his blog to his comment as shown below. The latest version of commentluv allows the ability to choose from the latest 10 articles (as shown in the figure below).

After you choose a particular article, it’s get added to your comment below your comment text.

Advantages for Commenters

1. They can get more traffic to their blog: If somebody finds the title of a particular article interesting or appealing, then he might visit your blog. So, if you are commenting on multiple websites, then your comments might bring you some serious traffic.

2. Extra Link Love: If a blog is dofollow, then you might get two link backs for just one comment. That is a good return of investment (Here, investment is your precious time that you spend on a particular comment). This might help you in your link building strategies.

Advantages for Bloggers

Bloggers are addicted to comments. It’s a daily dosage that they require to survive or else they might quit blogging. Commentluv encourages more comments. So, if a blogger installs commentluv plugin on his blog, he will definitely get more comments in return for the display of links in comments.

Also, if you are an active part of comluv community, then you might get some bonus traffic from the comluv website.

The comluv has a daily leaderboard which lists the following:

1. Top 5 CommentLuv sites by comments received in the past 24 hours
2. Top 5 CommentLuv members by comments made in the past 24 hours
3. 5 Latest sites with CommentLuv Installed (updated every hour).

So, if you are an active member of commentluv and if you comment often, then there is a high chance that you will get rewarded for your effort and you might see some bonus traffic from comluv website.

Most of bloggers whom I know have already installed comluv. I have been using it for more than an year and I love it. If you haven’t added the plugin, then you should do so immediately.

If you haven’t installed it yet, then you are missing on something good.

If you are commentluv user, then share your experiences here. Tell me how you have benefited from it.

Happy Commenting!!

CommentLuv- The Revolution of Commenting is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. The Comment Marathon Commenting Contest
2. The Art of Commenting
3. Kickass Alternative Commenting Systems for Blogger

First off, let’s talk a little bit about affiliate marketing. When you’re working in this field, you need to make sure that you have a certain niche you belong to – something you’re extremely excited about and something that your enthusiasm will shine through with. Affiliate marketing is not easy and if you don’t genuinely like what you’re working with, it will show after some time.

Success in Affiliate marketing is also not certain – things that are tried and true for others may not work for you and vice versa. Often times you’re relying on your gut instinct to decide whether or not something is worth pursuing or working with.

You also may not generate money at first… or at all. Then it’s time to find a new niche and new techniques. Perhaps your content and keywords aren’t driving traffic to your sources… who knows?

So now, you’re looking for affiliate marketing software. It’s HARD to find simplified information – and when you find information that is broken down, it may not even be something that you can understand- and you probably have nobody that you can ask except people who are deep down into affiliate marketing. Even then, they probably can’t break it down very simple either or may be bias towards something they tried and found to be awesome… for them. I was looking around for a great resource and this infographic is as simple and education as it can get. It goes over things like:

• terms
• optional payout methods
• reviews what each software contains and offers

It has a really nice table set up with check boxes to showcase what is and is not included for each solution. This is a really big and information infographic, so enjoy!

Affiliate Marketing Software Info (Infographic) is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. How to Choose the Best Product for Affiliate Marketing
2. 2010′s Leading Internet Marketing Software
3. How To Use Email Marketing To Draw More People To Your Website

New resources are created and new things are invented on the internet and people/smart businesses utilize them to make millions of dollars online. There was a time when everyone was talking about making millions using mini sites. Now, social networking is something that is helping people generate more sales than they had ever imagined before. If you want to give your business a powerful push and increase your sales significantly, you need to start networking now.

How Many Days will it Take You to Succeed and See Results?

Remember, there is no shortcut to success. You have to remain consistent in your efforts. Businesses that have succeeded online didn’t become successful overnight. If you rush and start adding friends and sending messages haphazardly, you will soon destroy your image. It is important that your reputation remains intact on social media to enjoy business growth and success.

Let’s now discuss some important factors that will help you get the best out of online social networking:

Communicate with Your Network – Tell Them You Really Exist:

Let’s say you were having a good time with some of your friends. However, one friend is quiet. When you asked him what happened, he began to talk about the greatness of his business. Well, you were least interested in his business as you were there to relax and have fun. However, your friend just kept talking about promotions and advertisement.

Sounds irritating, right?

Well, this is how your online network will feel if you will continue to post links to your products and discount offers. So, avoid spamming, always! The purpose of online social networking is to meet people, get to know them, understand their needs and offer help whenever possible. So, you need to talk to people and let them you know you exist and you are not a link posting machine.

Listen to Them – They will Listen to You in Return:

If you want to be heard, you should start listening to what people are saying. When anyone communicates or posts a picture, you should reply or write a nice comment. After all, this is what social networking is all about, right? If you will listen to them, they will listen to you as well and take interest in whatever you will write.

Observe Your Network:

You need to observe the behavior of your network in terms of what sort of content they post. You need to also post similar stuff to get them interested in your content.

Never Hesitate to Offer Assistance:

A lot of people tend to ask questions, instead of searching for solutions in search engines. When someone asks a question and you know the answer, this is a great opportunity to interact with them.

Start Promoting Your Products Strategically:

Once you become familiar with your network and after people get to know you, you may slowly and strategically talk about your products. If you have managed to win their trust, they will check out your products and recommend them too.

Be Cool…

You have got to stay calm and cool when you start online social networking. It might take some time before you see some results, but you will be more than satisfied with the results if you manage to build a network of friends that trusts you.

Image Credit: Webtreats

Online Social Networking – How to Get the Best Out of It is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Building the foundation to your social media marketing strategy
2. Top 10 tips for Local SEO & online marketing
3. The Great Social Media Debate : Twitter Monetization. Is it Ethical?

There is an awful lot written about how to optimize your site in all the right ways; making sure you build back links and keywords and all that sort of stuff. But do you make a habit of checking for those little errors that might be undoing all the good work you have been putting in?

Broken links are the enemy of good SEO

Google is all about helping it’s users to find websites that are helpful and enjoyable to use, and users don’t tend to like it when they click on a link and they get the dreaded 404 error – ie, “page not found!” the link is broken.

As such, if Google is cruising around your site and it follows a broken link, your site is going to get marked down for that. Google doesn’t want to direct it’s users to sites that don’t work properly after all.

And images, they matter too

Images, and in fact, any media you can embed into your site, can all “break”. If google finds an image tag but the image itself isn’t where it should be, that’s not good either. I’m sure we’ve all been on sites and found the little icon you get when an image is broken…

How to prevent broken internal links

Sometimes these things will happen, pages move, typos happen and the bigger your site gets the more they will happen. But if you take some precautions, you can minimize the risk of broken links happening and save your precious SEO brownie points.

KISS
keep your sites link structure simple. This is perhaps only a little thing, but having a simple link structure will help to minimize mistakes and mis-types which can lead to broken links.

301 redirect
If you do move a page you will obviously change all the links, but just in case you forget, using a 301 re-direct in your HTACCESS file will ensure that any old links will be sent to the right place. This also preserves any page rank that page may have.

How to prevent broken external links

From time to time you will probably want to link to a site outside of yours, this is good, you should do. Unfortunately, you have no control over the other site you are linking to. If a site you link to goes down for any reason you might end up with broken links.

Be picky about who you link to
Do you ever link to sites that are related to a subject you are writing about without really checking that site out? When you are linking to a site you should be thinking carefully about how well maintained that site is. The question ultimately comes down to: is this a site that is still going to be here in 6 months, or a year? If you link to short term sites, which dis-appear a few months later, you end up with broken links and lost visitors.

Link to main pages
For similar reasons to the previous point, it is always helpful if you can link to main pages, the home page is most ideal, but category pages or other key pages work well too. Item pages and post pages get moved or deleted, home pages don’t.

Store your own images
Don’t use images hosted on another site, you never know when it might be taken down. If you are going to use an image, store it on your own site, that way you know that it will stay there.

Be vigilant

Obviously, some of these suggestions aren’t always practical. You might be referencing a particular post for instance. Or maybe you review a brand new product with an uncertain future, you can’t really avoid linking to brand new websites all the time.

So the final tip is to be vigilant, constantly check through your website. There are plenty of link checking sites available, I like to make sure to check my site about once a month. If you follow all of the tips above, most of the time you will not find anything. But broken links will occasionally creep in, so make sure you spot them before Google does.

Are you letting errors hurt your SEO? is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Taking your SEO to the next level | Link Building
2. Additional SEO Tips to Gain More Organic Traffic
3. The 21 Worst Things To Have On Your Blog or Website