This month I submitted my post to the Blogengage Blogging Contest #2. The article is about how to adapt to changes facing in blogging career. This set me thinking that the way there is need to meet changes in blogging career, blogging too can bring changes in the thinking of a blogger on his / her blogging journey.

A blogger has to change for changes in blogging 

Vs 

Changes in blogging can bring changes in you

The way our mindset changes as we grow into adult, a blogger’s mindset can also change along his blogging journey and some of the changes may chalk out some new capabilities.  Do you see the following positive changes in you?

1. Blogging changes interests

When I first surfed internet and saw that money can be made online, I found paid to click programs as the simplest way to make money. Daily you just have to click a chunk of ads in your inbox. That is all. In fact my first article on this blog was “Make Easy Money with Trekpay“. I started this blog to promote paid to click programs but as I published the article I realized that something is not ok. What is this? Just a monotonous clicking of some hundreds of ads daily. This is not the right way to make money? This is not what I started blogging for? Then I diverted my interest to make money online other ventures like affiliate programs and blogging mainly.

2. Blogging improves writing

Blogging not only has given me a new hobby ( or a job if it turns out to be successful ) but also has brought enhancement in my writing ability. Reading top blogs like Problogger, Shoemoney, EntrepreneursJourney, DigitalInspiration and QuickOnlineTips makes every blogger write and write well to get more and more readers to eventually earn a sure future income just sitting in the comfort of home. Bloggers constantly ask these questions to self like what to write, how to write, and how frequently write. One year down the line, I am more comfortable with these questions. With publishing each article we understand social media, seo, fellow bloggers and gain insights and experience leading to sharpening blogging skills. So the moral is write, write often and write well.

3. Blogging teaches confidence

Blogging has taught me self-discipline. Today, blogging is like a race for better writing. Survival is the fittest according to natural theory. Similarly, one who writes better is the fittest and wins the race. The fear before pressing the publish button about how the article will be taken by its readers is generally seen among new bloggers and I too felt that way. But now I consider every article as my knowledge, views and experiences that I think are useful and share with others.  With time, I have overcome my self-doubts with confidence and urge to move forward.

4. Blogging teaches patience

A blog’s success depends upon it’s content and traffic.  Just setting up a blog and writing a few killer articles does not get readers. Effective marketing to social media and search engines is necessary for people to know about you and your site. Getting less or no comments, decrease in organic traffic, decrease in referral traffic, decrease in social followers, and guest post rejection can be a setback for a blogger. Getting complacent with positive developments and frustrated with downtrends will do no good. These are the testing times that a blogger has to accept and face bad patches with patience.  I got worried when my blog alexa rank went back up to 350,000 in a few days but soon realized that it is not a worry but a reminder to me that I have to be regular and cannot leave my blog dormant.

5. Blogging meets new people

It is amazing how small this whole world is. Blogging brings people close together from all parts of the world. Since blogging is mainly about writing a blogger has no problem understanding the language or accent of fellow bloggers. I realized this while listening to some video tutorial which I could’nt understand because of different accent. But while blogging, bloggers share their views through blog  comments and chatting and need not listen to other blogger’s voice.   The three dofollow social sites I mainly visit to read great articles are blogengage, blokube and bloginteract and I am glad all have chatting features. Blogging helps in meeting new bloggers and share views.

I think blogging can bring positive as well as negative changes in a blogger but what makes a blogger shine is convert the negative changes into positive too.

Each of us reading and writing today have been influenced in one way or the other in the blogging world. How has blogging changed you?

1. How to start blogging
2. Make your new blog ready to get links

It has been nearly four months since I started hosting on Hostgator, my previous host being Godaddy and so far I have not faced any problems. The best feature I like at hostgator is it’s chatting service. I am satisfied with the responses I get to my queries. If you opt for wordpress hosting then hostgator has the fantastico feature which automatically installs wordpress software.

Hostgator Features I like

1. Hostgator is good at customer service which is it’s biggest asset

2. Hostgator offer plans Shared, Reseller, VPS, and Dedicated for both beginners and professionals

3. Hostgator has a great list of video tutorials to let a user know everything from setting up to earning commissions as a hostgator affiliate.

4. Hostgator technicians are available 24/7/365 to help via chat/email/phone.

5. Hostgator ensures maximum reliability by constant monitoring of its network of datacenters by its system administrators.

6. Hostgator allows easy upgrading from shared to business or reseller hosting anytime.

7. Hostgator offers unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, Plesk control panel, Microsoft SQL Server and ASP & ASP.net support or window plans.

8. Hostgator Affiliate Program is the best to earn good income. For one confirmed signup/month you can get $50/signup and can get a maximum of  $125/signup if you are able to get 21 or more confirmed signups per month.

Get the full benefit of above Hostgator features.

Use our coupon SFIHOMEBIZ25P to get 25% discount on any Hostgator hosting

1. How to track your Hostgator Sales?

Four main reasons bloggers visit Kikolani.com are:

Share Social Media and Blogging Tips

Within a span of one year since I started this blog, there has been a huge inflow of new blogs of various niches into the blogosphere. There has been a tremendous increase in the number of blogs in popular niches like blogging, SEO, affiliate marketing, social media, and technology and the number goes on increasing. A new blogger need to know how to engage social media for his / her blog and every article at Kikolani.com is a guide to learn something new.

Navigate through the site for articles to give you knowledge on how to gain facebook and twitter followers, backlinks, blog promote techniques and traffic from social media.

What makes Kristi’s articles unique and working are that the mentioned tools and tips are tested and reviewed by her. Her posts mention stepwise details with appropriate images wherever required like RSS subscriptions in Google Reader post. Reading her post I installed the Google Reader plugin that shows post rank for each post. I find her blog cool with tons of loads of tips. Following are the posts I liked most.

Social Media

1. Why I turned Off Twitterfeed

2. How to Increase your Retweets Twitter Followers Klout

3. Linkedin for bloggers branding authority and traffic

Blogging

1. How I get things done

2. Getting the most out of all in one seo pack wordpress plugin

3. A guide to your first week of blogging and beyond

4. 11 incredibly simple tips to spice up your blog

Blog Marketing

1. Get Blog Post promotion the ultimate guide today

2. Number 1 secret high converting sales page

3. 4 important things to do after your product launch

You can also read the collection of 25 blogging and social media posts on Kikolani to have the sufficient information about a task like promoting blog on social media, get traffic from twitter and facebook and many more such tasks.

Blog Post Promotion: The Ultimate Guide

How many articles have you written so far?  Are your articles pulling sufficient traffic? Are you able to get new niche readers? If not then this  book, Blog Post Promotion – The Ultimate Guide by Kristi Hines is for you. Even if answers for these questions are positive, a blogger should use this book. The book can still boost your blog social status to pinnacle. Even if you can write good content if you cannot take words out to proper audience your writing will be left unrewarded. Some of the established and professional bloggers who use this book are Ana of Trafficgenerationcafe, Mark Thompson of stayonsearch, and Steve Chou of mywifequitjob who have been blogging successfully for some time also refer this book to promote and re-promote their online business.

The Ultimate Blog Post Promotion Guide 1. If you are a blogger looking to increase traffic to your blog post 2. If you are looking to become a regular guest blogger on a major site 3. If you want to earn regular income from product reviews   Then This Book is for you

Write a Guest  Post on Kikolani Dot Com

Kikolani.com has page rank 5 and an alexa rank 16487. Every article has 40-80 comments approximately. Comments are fellow bloggers views and suggestions and I have often found that similar to articles, comments also give valuable insight about a topic. from prestigious bloggers. So a guest post will increase backlinks and traffic substantially. Moreover, you and your site or blog will get recognized in the blogging world.

If interested in guest post opportunities, go to Kikolan.com Guest Post Opportunites Page.

Here are some of the guest posts on Kikolani.com

Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup – Read other best articles

Kristi Hines features some best posts of the week in blogging, making money online, SEO, and social media in her weekly Friday Mashup Series. These series are like good resources of blog information available directly at your doorstep. If you are busy with your blogging for the day and no time to read or share your views, then Kikolani – Fetching Friday Mashup Series is a good source of latest blogging information.

I first read Friday resource series on Kikolani.com and saw its benefits.  It is like honoring bloggers whose posts are included in Resource Mashup Series. Similarly, I started Sunday Shines #1 last month.

1. Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Cat Yoga

2. Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Yellowstone

3. Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Royal Wedding

Dear reader, finally, I recommend to check for yourself what Kikolani has to offer. It is one of the great content blogs I regularly read in my Google Reader.

1. Make your new blog ready to get links
2. How to start blogging

This is the first time I have participated in the Blogengage Blogging Contest.

My Contest Entry: Are you prepared for the five changes

you may face in your blogging career

I request my blog readers to support me, please by

• retweet
• like on facebook
• stumble
• voting on BlogEngage
• link in linkedln
• comment on my guest article

I thank you very much and appreciate your move to support me in the contest.

Why you should take part in Blogengage Blogging Contests?

Blogengage is a popular dofollow social site that gives backlinks to your blog and promotes your blog with its 2000+ members family. Blogengage also offers RSS Syndication Service that will automatically syndicate your blog and your blog gets noticed by some of the best and professional bloggers of the Blogengage family. Blogengage contests enable bloggers to showcase their articles to some of the best in the blogging world.

How to enter and win the Blogengage Contest

Get to know the rules to participate in the contest. I am mentioning below the excerpts of the original Blogengage Guest Blogging Contest Guidelines.

1. Your guest post should be minimum 450 words and maximum 1000 words.

2. You can place as many links in the body of the article but should be restricted to your project or related to your bio website. Affiliate links are a strict no. Be careful.

3. Your bio must have a picture of yourself as gravatar.

4. Your post should be relevant to the overall theme of Blogengage. You can write about topics like Making Money Online, Blogging Tips, Traffic, Design, Social Networking, SEO, Marketing, Technology and other industry or niche specific topics that you feel the blog engage members would be interested in reading.

5. You must write about the Best of the Guest Blogger Year End 2011 Contest ASAP in your blog then only your artcile submitted to the contest will be accepted.

Most important is you must be a member of the blog engage community.

The more you write articles throughout the year more you can increase your chances of winning. All awards and prizes will be delivered 15 days after the contest is closed. So provide a valid paypal account to accept any money prizes.

Sponsors of the Blogengage Blogging Contest

Ana Hoffman from Internet Marketing Tools
Kimberly Castleberry from WordPress and Facebook Marketing
Justin Germino from justingermino.com
Amogh from The Funky Chunk
Don Power from sproutsocial.com
Kavita from SFIhomebizz.com
Latief from Simple Blogging Tips
Jane Sheeba from Blogging Tips
Sheila Atwood from newbielifeline
Matt Conlon from Matt Conlon.com
Aswani from aksindiblog.com
Kharim from Free Blogging Tips
A. Tatum from maddencorner
Tuan from Technology News
Omer Greenwald from webtechwis
Aybi from social media for business
janwong from janwong.my
Robert Bravery from integralwebsolutions
RowenaBolo from AsianMarketer
Ileane from BasicBlogTips.com
David Leonhardt from SEO consultant
tonyknuckles from 113tidbits
Cosmin Stefan from themilliontwister
Joyce Oladipo from joyceoladipo
Jon from Essex Portal
Jon from jonalford
Mavis Nong from attractionmarketingonline
Dahlia Valentine from That Internet Marketing Thing
Jan Rossi from getyoustartedemarketing
Janet from The Natural Networker
Dennis Edell from Direct Sales Marketing
Vijayraj Reddy from Make Money Online
Alex from Jocuri from jocurile
Tony Hastings from thetop10blog
Neeraj Rawat from Experts Galaxy
Kristi from Blog Marketing
Mani Viswanathan from DailyBlogging
Alex from make money with amazon
Estava Morioka from estavamorioka
Shiva from Webmaster Tips
Robert Dempsey from Internet Marketing Strategies
kbharath from Techntricksonline
Steve from Lifestyle Design
ndreas from Online Advertising
Saket Jajodia from SJbn.Co
Bican Valeriu from smarketools
Wong Chendong aka The Bad Blogger
Nishadha from Make Money Blogging
Dave Grimes II from thesisready
Devesh from Blogging Tips
Matthew from Home Based Internet Businesses
Paul Salmon from Technically Easy
kirapermunian from geekster online
John Paul from Blog Resources
John from Hypertransitory.com
Michael Aulia from CravingTech.com
Daniel Snyder from fireproof safes for data
Deepak from Lead Generation
Nicholas Wind IMer from cashflowduplication
Sarah Lam from writingconsultation
Catarina Alexon from catarinasworld
MtnJimFisher from outsourcing
Peppy from The PeppyWrites Chronicles
Felix Albutra from Blogging Access
Gloson from social media and blogging tips
sajeev kumar menon from sajeevkmenon
Argie Monroy from Live Life More
Andrew Williams from The Billionaire’s Butler
Memoirs of a Single Dad from Memoirs of a Single Dad
Gera from SweetsFoodsBlog
Togrul from Income Streams
Jennifer from emptypockets01
ptaylor98 from ptaylor98.jottit
Doc Sheldon from docsheldon.com
Goran from Black Hat Source
Ninure from Ninure da Hippie’s Blog
Christine from christine.biz
Sarah from templatefaerie
Alison Moore Smith from Affordable Web Design for Small Business
Dave Lucas from dave-lucas.blogspot.com
Sean Supplee from Seansupplee.com
DazzlinDonna from making a living online
Pablo Lara H from pablolarah.cl
Tia Peterson from bizchickblogs.com
Dr. Rus Jeffrey from General Sarge
Sietse from allyouneedislists.com
Blazing Minds from Blazing Minds
Typhoon from make Money Online
Kiesha from WeBlogBetter
Bryan Hollis from News for Bloggers
Harleena Singh from Freelance Writer Blog
Tristan from Blogging tips
Andi from misadventureswithandi.com
Dr. Hansjörg Leichsenring from der-bank-blog.de
Big Cajun Man from canajunfinances.com
Imran from shariffdotorg
Melinda from findingthehumor.com
Martha Giffen from marthagiffen.com
Dani Nir-McGrath from danimcgrath.com
Pit from pureinfotech.com
TS Redmond Mize from Element Content
Raj Agrawal from Upcoming Technology
Ryan Hanley from Albany Insurance
Kev From kevsproreviews.blogspot.com
Dana from Cell Phone Reviews
Michele Welch from new biz blogger
Josh Thompson from Boom Serve
Ryan Biddulph from Home Based Success
Fletcher T. from emailfletcher.blogspot.com
Jimi Jones from Jimi Jones
Dwight from FinanciallyEliteBlog.com

You can increase your points by writing reviews on above sponsor sites. So do not lose this chance as there is still time left for this contest. Grab this opportunity of writing a guest article on Blogengage.

But do not forget to support my contestant article

Are you prepared for the five changes you may face in your blogging career

1. How to start blogging

There are some thousands of existing wordpress plugins and everyday a new plugin comes out.  Blogging is wonderful, thrilling,  exciting, a chance to make new friends, give and take information for new as well as fulltime and professional bloggers. WordPress hosting with it’s numerous plugins and hacks makes blogging more easier as wordpress is the most popular blogging platform.

Yesterday,  when while going through my last month’s blog activities and site updates analysis, I checked that I had added six plugins and deleted one reading about plugin reviews and recommendations on some blogs.  Read about the six plugins I installed last month.

W3 Total Cache: From the beginning I have thought of using as less plugins as possible, but how easy plugins do the job lured me into adding more. Last month, after shifting my blog from arthemia to swift theme I noticed that my blog page speed was very slow. Then I decided it time to install a cache plugin and W3 Total Cache was the choice. After initial errors and solutions, finally the plugin worked and it has improved the blog page speed ten times. My blog’s current overall google page speed is 87. Although there are other cache plugins, this is considered the best. Visit Plugin Site

Contact Form 7: Contact Form 7 is considered a must plugin for blogs so as to facilitate your blog readers to contact you finally I added the simple but flexible contact form plugin by increasing my plugins tally. Visit Plugin Site

Twitter@anywhere Plus: Twitter is one of the most popular social bookmarking sites where bloggers are active with daily updates. So there is every need to use an all in one plugin to make the best use of twitter and tweets to promote your blog. Twitter@anywhere plugin is the best wholesome plugin that allows to add features Auto-linkification of @usernames, Hovercards, Follow button, Tweet box, Custom tweet box, and Retweet button. I use bit.ly as url shortner but would have prefered su.pr. You do require @Anywhere API key to use this plugin. Visit Plugin Site

ViperProof: I saw this plugin first on @seommotips blog and liked it. This plugin depicts the complete social picture of a blog. Bloggers can use this to to enable their readers to see that their site is worth reading. The plugin widget displays  google page rank, alexa rank, number of blog comments, number of twitter followers, number of facebook fans, number of posts written and number of monthly visitors. Visit Plugin Site

Thank Me Later: Today, customer is said to be the king and in blogging world, a visitor to a blog is the customer and he/she should be thanked for honoring the blog with their valuable suggestions. I found this plugin good enough to thank reader. The plugin is good indeed to attract “one-time” readers who will post one comment, and then forget about your blog and engage them in conversation. But remember one thing that do not send message for every comment for risk of spamming your reader’s inbox.  Visit Plugin Site

ReplyMe: This plugin is the latest addition to the list of plugins that most bloggers use as it is considered better than subscribe to comments plugin.  The plugin will report only when your comment gets a reply and not for all comments. If you want to customize the plugin then read Justin Germino’s article. Just remember one thing that  your blog commenting system should support ( nested ) threaded comments.

I have deleted subscribe to comments plugin, but have seen that some bloggers are using both the plugins. Are both necessary. What do you think?

I would appreciate comments to the post both to and fro and any other valuable suggestions.

1. Make your new blog ready to get links
2. Do not kill Your WordPress Blog SEO
3. How to start blogging
4. Make Money with Infolinks In-Text Ads
5. How to Use Custom Fields for Meta Description/Keyword Tags
6. Why to unban your site on comluv

Are you a Hostgator affiliate?

Then you should know how to track your Hostgator affiliate urls to track where your sales are coming from.

Tracking of affiliate urls is important to know who is buying your product and from where your buyer is coming. This will enable a affiliate marketer to effectively promote the product otherwise precious time and money can go wasted as tracking affiliates is considered necessary for effective affiliate marketing.

Hostgator is one of the popular hosting sites, considered one of the best for wordpress hosting and hence is a great blogging tool.  Almost every blogger hosting his / her blog with Hostgator  tries to cash in as an Hostgator affiliate promoting affiliate urls on blogs, in blog posts, forums, ezine sites. My blog is hosted on hostgator too and I am glad about it.

How to Track Hostgator Affiliate Program

If your are not a hostgator affiliate yet join now. Login to your hostgator affiliate account and at the top menu look for “Manage Campaigns” link.

Go to “Manage Affiliate Campaigns” page add a campaign for each banner or text advertising you have opted to promote your hostgator affiliate url.

Create tracking campaigns for all your hostgator ad campaigns. “Manage Affiliate Campaigns” will list all your campaigns as shown below.

Hostgator provides the use of campaigns to track hits on separate pages and sections of your sites. Although campaigns are optional, initially I did not realize the importance of its use but seperate campaigns for various sections of the site as shown in my blog below will guide you which positional banner is converting more for you.

Now coming to the real part is adding the the tracking campaign to your affiliate url campaigns to know what is the click-through ratio and from where are the conversions taking place.

In the above code,

replace xxxx with your hostgator affiliate username

and yyyy with your campaign ID.

Hiding affiliate urls is another parameter for successful affiliate sales. You can hide affiliate urls using .php extension either manually or using any plugin.

Many hostgator affiliates may already know about the hostgator campaigns tracking sales but if anybody is not using this free service should use it and I hope this article will be helpful.

1. Hide your affiliate links using php

Bloggers are constantly on look out for new social sites to build every possible assets for their blog in the form of blog RSS subscriptions, blog traffic, blog readership,  and new avenues to make money. Dofollow social sites can offer these benefits to bloggers and I feel Blogengage tops the list. So I would like to mention eight reasons why every blogger should opt for Blog Engage RSS Subscription Services.

I know I am a bit late in writing  a review on Blogengage RSS Syndication service that is  offered through Affiliate Lights membership, but Brian, founder of Blog Engage has come out with a new feature “chatroom” for blogengage members and I thought it is the best time to write a post.

Why Every Blogger should opt for Blog Engage RSS Subscription Service

Since the launch of blogengage, it has become a favorite with many bloggers because of its features like ease of use, blog articles getting promoted through voting, comments and members sharing on their other social profiles. Also, Brian himself a great blogger and entrepreneur keeps himself up to date with his blogengage family and day to day activities at the site. I think this has helped him in evolving blogengage into a real and useful dofollow social site that can earn quality readership for your blog and sure future income. Brian started Affiliate Lights website in Jan 2011 to promote the Blog Engage RSS Subscription Services.

First let me tell you about the benefits of getting blogengage membership to syndicate your blog RSS feeds automatically.

Benefits of Blogengage Affiliate Program and Blogengage RSS Syndication Service

Automatic Submission of your posts: As soon as you join the Affiliate Lights Program and get Blogengage membership, the Blog Engage RSS Syndication Service will automatically syndicate your blogging content to the Blog Engage Community.

Increase Backlinks and SEO to your blog: Backlinks have always been considered important for blog. Infact Alexa, Yahoo or Google rankings are judged by the backlinks popularity. Once you take Affiliate Lights membership your content will be submitted to  Blog Serp, Top Blogged, RSS Leak, Blogger Ink and Blogger Tag in addition to Blogengage. Blog Engage is a dofollow social bookmarking site. Hence trackbacks and dofollow links to your site will increase your blog SEO by increasing SERP on search enginges.This will increase your Alexa Rank and Google Page Rank.

Promote your Blog: Blogengage has more than 2000 members. Getting noticed by so many bloggers and getting votes by members will rank your articles in the forum  and make your articles popular in the blogosphere. Also your submitted articles to Blog Engage may get promoted by fellow members to various other social sites. by tweets , likes and stumbles. Moreover, Blog Engage automatically tweets to twitter and likes to facebook all the RSS submissions. This can get you more votes and spread the word about you and your blog articles in the blogging world.

Google Adsense Revenue Sharing: Blog Engage offers Google Adsense Revenue Sharing for all members, whatever membership you buy. Google adsense is considered the best way to make money online so here is another site to make money from Google Adsense. Cost incurred will be recovered in no time.

Affiliate Lights Referral Program: Once a blogger becomes a member of Affiliate Lights Program, he/she is automatically enrolled into the referral program. An affiliate can make recurring commissions with Affiliate Lights. Check for yourself how an affiliate can make extra money with Affiliate Lights.

Blog Engage Contests: Brian offers blogging contests at regular intervals. In 2011, there will be four contests in all. One contest is over. 2nd contest for $500 is open now. But did you know that Blog Engage is giving away a total of $3000 this year. So bloggers are welcome to join the blogengage family and reap benefits for your blog in every possible way.

Membership Fees are nominal compared to the benefits you gain: Blog Engage offers FIVE membership packages which are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Business memberships. Bronze membership is the least with $1.99 per month while business membership is the premium membership with $19.99 per month and has the most benefits. There is also option to buy any membership monthly or yearly. Benefits do increase with price like all Business, Platinum and Gold Membership Customers are included as a “Sponsor” in all the Guest Blogging Contests. Learn more about the membership details at Blog Engage.

Chatting Facility at Blog Engage: Twitter is considered  a quick way of conversing with fellow twitterers but chatting enables fast  mutual and group discussions at a site. Chatting feature has just been introduced at Blog Engage and I have yet to participate.

As Brian mentions a quote somewhere in his site which I liked

 

So don’t be shy get involved with the Blog Engage community and its members. I’m sure you will be very surprised on how we can help you become a better blogger!

Brian, Blog Engage

To say in one sentence, Blogengage is a dofollow social site for bloggers who dofollow blogengage to be social for their site.

Kavita

I seem to be getting at poetry reading Justin Germino’s poems

If you have not tasted the benefits of Blognegage RSS Syndication Services yet than click below.

Join Blog Engage RSS Services

Join Blog Engage RSS Services

1. Make your new blog ready to get links
2. Technorati is important for every blog
3. How to start blogging

 

We must become the change we want to see

Mahatma Gandhi

Read and enjoy the following posts of Sunday Shines #1

StumbleUpon and Six Design Pitfalls to Stay Away From - Daniel Sharkov

Stumbleupon is a great social site to get traffic to blog and stumbling is addictive but what if some minor things regarding design may take your time and test your patience. Daniel has well written about the minute design aspects of stumbleupon.

What to Do When You Are Not in the Mood - Kristi Hines

We may be not in mood to do something or pen down an article sometimes. Bloggers often go dry of topics. May be when you are short of ideas in your regular category, create and write in new categories. I like the idea of Kristi to diversify interests.

Why use Buffer? - Suresh Khanal

Bufferapp is the latest twitter tool in the tweeting world. It is popular for its ease of use. Buffer – The name itself tells – “Tweet from anywhere”. Initilally for its 10 tweets and 1 twitter account limit I was a bit hesitant and was content using socialoomph but this post and subsequent article regarding bufferapp on his other blog bivori.com convinced me. Now I actively use bufferapp too.

StumbleUpon Tops my Traffic Charts - Ileane Smith

Although Ileane posted this article in Feb, 2011, I was so impressed by the content that I decided to add it as one of the jewels to my Sunday Shines #1 and this is one of her best article with 166 comments so far. Read the article and get stumbleupon traffic secrets to your blog.

Founders of triberr sound off on the services early success - Daniel Snyder

Triberr is another application which is the talk of the blogosphere.  I liked this writeup by Daniel about Triberr to every point. Triberr offers a lot and know about its benefits from the post.

Follow these great bloggers on twitter

1. Daniel Sharkov – http://twitter.com/DanielSharkov

2. Kristi Hines –  http://twitter.com/kikolani

3. Suresh Khanal - http://twitter.com/seommotips

4. Ileane Smith - http://twitter.com/basicblogtips

5. Daniel Snyder - http://twitter.com/danielsnyder1

So, do you like tweeting on twitter? If tweeting is your daily hobby then this hobby can get you some decent money in the long run with sponsored tweets. Although there are many sites to make money from twitter like revtwt and twittad I prefer sponsored tweets more. It is an ad network that pays to send tweets for advertisers. Sponsored Tweets is a good marketplace for tweeters to make money and advertisers to get good value for their ads. Tweeters can earn money by spreading the conversation as pay per tweet similar to pay per post.

What is Sponsored Tweets?

Sponsored Tweets started by Izea is an opportunity for twitter users to make money from their sponsored conversations on twitter. Advertisers will compensate you for a sponsored tweet with cash either on a cost per tweet or a cost per click basis.

Just keep in mind a few tips to get recognized by advertisers and earn regular income from sponsored tweets.

1. Followers: The advertisers first look for the  number of followers. So to get more and more opportunities from sponsored tweets advertisers, try to get more followers on a regular basis.

2. Tweets: The advertisers next look for your type and number of tweets as ads are tweeted as tweets. So after joining  sponsored tweets, go to settings and mention the topics you tweet about in the keywords. This is very important as keywords will decide the ads for you by the advertisers.

3. Price: Do’nt get discouraged to join this affiliate program if you do not have tons and tons of followers. There are affiliates with nearly 50,000 followers and $500 price set per tweet make much less than affiliates with 500 followers and the price adjusted just  $1-2 per tweet. Generally in the twitter world it is considered best to set your price per tweet one-third or one-fourth of the suggested price from sponsored tweets.

As shown in the image above, current suggested price for my twitter account is $1.46 and my cpc average for completed opps is $1.00 averaging 2 clicks per tweet but I have set my current pay per tweet price as $0.35. I can increase the price as the suggested price increases.

4. Do not lose opportunities: On the settings page you have the option to be intimated about the opportunities by advertisers through direct message or email. Please choose this carefully whichever option you will be using frequently, because many people select direct message and forget about the setting, consequently missing out lot of golden money making opportunities from sponsored tweets.

5. Easy to make money: Most people on the net consider Sponsored Tweets as the easiest way to make money while others consider it as the money making machine for the celebrities who charge $1000 and above per tweet. But nobody becomes celebrity overnight. I think every penny earned today is its worth which may get more tomorrow. Your price today may double tomorrow and ten times within a month. Just be active with your twitter, be regular in your tweets, and do not spam.

6. Refferals: Anybody can join sponsored tweets but make sure your twitter account is 60 days old, has 50 followers and 100 updates in order to be recognized by advertisers but even then you can join referrals below you. Like any affiliate program, try to get affiliates.

7. Advertising at Sponsored Tweets: Sponsored Tweets is also considered to be a good site for twitter advertising. There is no doubt that whether a blogger wants to be just a publisher or an advertiser at sponsored tweets too, money can be made as twitter is one of the busiest social bookmarking site and bloggers update their twitter social status regularly.  So a blogger looking for advertising on twitter can get niche audience for his/her ads resulting in conversions. So, Sponsored Tweets is a good option and safe bet for earning and spending to again earn. The ideal way is to start as a publisher with Sponsored Tweets and pump the money made with the system back for advertising.  you are active with your twitter the way you are active on your blog.

So, follow me on  Twitter and join  Sponsored Tweets

1. Make Easy Money with Trekpay
2. Make Money with Infolinks In-Text Ads
3. Make Money with Commission Junction
4. Make Money with Amazon Affiliate Program

There may be lots of guides, ebooks, softwares and tips to make money online and make money from blogging but the bottom line is it all depends on your blog niche content and traffic as traffic comes from content and comes for content.

In fact, content and traffic are the two main factors that judge the quality of the blog as well as blogger. So a beginner blogger should keep the money from blogs as the secondary thing and first concentrate on developing the blog with appropriate web desgining, plugins, navigation, content and SEO into a complete product so as to suit the eyes of visitors and advertisers.

Niche Content and Good Content of a Blog:

Advertisers, publishers, and fellow bloggers do look for well written post pages filled with keywords on sites that get sufficient organic traffic.  So, keywords should be incorporated in title tags, meta tags, text, as well as images either through use of  SEO plugins or use of  own code using custom functions for keywords. Writing about SEO and keywords, I remember reading a Seth Godin article “How to make money with SEO” where he mentions the importance of keyword for search engine optimization and converting what that is non-converted.

Customer is said to be king and in the blogging world the advertiser is the king looking for another king, CONTENT. So write appealing content, write what your readers want, update your blog regularly and give prompt response to your reader’s comments. Give your blog a personality and a neat look to make the readers come back to your blog.

Traffic of a blog

After adding sufficient content to the blog, getting visitors to read content is the next important task. The best way is that as soon as one starts a blog, and adds 10-15 articles, he /she should go for free advertising like submitting to search engines, commenting on fellow blogs, linking, and signing and posting at forums to drive consistent free traffic.

Last month Hesham of Famousbloggers.net conducted traffic generation from blogging contest and the contest participants have given some awesome tips to drive free traffic to the blog. If you have not read them, please read them now.

1. How to generate traffic without spending a dime. What I liked in this article is the mention of blog optimization for SEO and an ebook of best posts can help in building free traffic.

2. Getting more traffic is like hitting the Bulls Eye. Jacob has written ways of getting short term as well as long term traffic.

3. Use Facebook to drive traffic to your site. James has mentioned how to use Facebook groups and Facebook Fan page to get free traffic.

4. How to Drive consistent but Free Traffic to your Blog Brian of Blogengage has elaborated well about the use of forums and social media marketing to get regular traffic.

In fact social bookmarking sites like facebook, twitter, stumbleupon, blogengage, blokube are great sites to get fast niche traffic as blogs of unique content get noticed fast here. You just have to be regular in posting, commenting and responding.

So without going for paid advertising or google adwords, how much can a blogger get niche traffic with free advertising. Is it possible? It is a good guess. Patience and perseverance is essential for blogging and hard work never goes unrewarded.

I am growing and gaining knowledge with every article I write. I welcome fellow bloggers to give their views on whether they think one can make money blogging without spending a dime.

1. How to start blogging
2. Make Money with Infolinks In-Text Ads
3. Make your new blog ready to get links
4. Make Money with Amazon Affiliate Program
5. Make Money with Commission Junction