PCADSL BLOG

Your blog is your means of expressing yourself to the world. It is a very powerful way of branding yourself and a very effective means of building a relationship with your readers. In order to take advantage of the power of blogging, you should make sure you follow some simple rules that will keep you on the right side of blogging and make both your visitor’s and your experinece much more enjoyable.

Be Timely With Your Postings

If you publish a blog called “The Wednesday Afternoon Report”, and you start out posting to it every Wednesday afternoon, then your audience will begin to expect a new posting every Wednesday afternoon. You can think of your blog like a newsletter. Consistancy is key. This consistance is what will increase the number of visitors that come back to your blog. Returning visitors gives you the opportunity to build a relationship with your readers.

Give Credit to Where Credit is Due

Sometimes the perfect and most timely posting is commenting on a news item, another blog posting, an article, or a web site. This is appropriate to do, but you should give credit and a link to the source document. You can link to the source document from within your post, or link to it as a footnote at the end of your post. If the source document is another blog, you can refer to it through what is known as a trackback link.

Be a Good Networker

Your blog is a good place to spotlight other bloggers. Most blogging software out there allows you to do this through a feature referred to as a blogroll. It is basically a list of links to other bloggers who you like, or other bloggers that are blogging about the same subject as you. This will add value to your visitors experience and give them additional resources to explore.

Structure Your Blog Site Well

Structure your blog so that it is easy to read, and find past postings. Don’t put so many graphics that it detracts from what you are trying to say. Highlight relevant postings that you may have made in the past that relate to your current posting. A good way to highlight your past postings is to link to them directly from the blog post, or if they are more general, and relate to many postings, you can list the links to your latest postings to the side, next to your main blog entry.

Another good technique to use with your blog is to separate your postings into categories when it makes sense. That way, visitors can access a more specific group of postings they may be interested in. For an even more robust blog, a search function will allow easy access to your postings, especially when you have quite a few posts.

Keep Your Blog Content Fresh

You will want to set up your blog so the most recent postings are placed at the top, or on the first page, which is like the reverse format of a diary (where the most recent entries are on the last page). Most blogging software today is setup to have the latest postings at the top (or on the front page of the blog) to allow your newest postings to be seen first by your visitors.

At first blogging was strictly used as a tool for online diaries. Then blog and ping came along and people began making money with blogs. Then in 2006 tag and ping was introduced and blogging became an even more formidable tool in the hands of internet marketers.

Today many of the most well-known internet marketers have their own blogs which they use to keep customers informed of what’s happening. Many marketers use a blog as a way to promote their upcoming product launches and to dialog with their visitors. By leaving comments visitors and customers can interact with the blogger, using the comment box to ask questions, give testimonials, and let their thoughts be heard.

Anyone, whether experienced or internet newbie, can set up a blog, make a post, and have search engines spidering their site within minutes. Visitors can be coming to their blog in less than a day.

Blogging Tools

There are lots of great tools for bloggers to use. Many of these tools are free. Blogging software such as Wordpress combined with a multitude of plugins, tag and ping, RSS, and social bookmarking work together to making blogging a phenomenal way to get your product or information before the public.

There are plugins that put tagging on steroids, such as Ultimate Tag Warrior. There are plugins that help you put video on your blog with a simple line of code, such as Fallen Media Plugin. And at least one plugin, Akismet, that takes care of spam comments.

There are plugins that create a static home page on the blog, similar to a home page on a static web site. If you don’t want a home page, perhaps you would like to make a permanent post that stays at the top of the main page. There is a plugin that will do that called Adhesive. There is also a plugin called Adsense Deluxe that simplifies placing Adsense ads on the blog.

Favorite Wordpress plugin downloads can be found at:

Headzoo.com ? some of the best plugins for Wordpress

Wp-Plugins.net ? has an amazing number of plugins for Wordpress

There are also free themes available for you to use with your blog. A theme is the look of the blog. If you are using Wordpress, check out Themes.Wordpress.net for an unbelievable number of free themes you can download and use for your blog.

The Importance of a Good Ping List

First of all, if your blog is keyword-rich, the search engine spiders will visit your site’s quality content, especially if you update and ping your blog regularly, once a week at the very least.

For lists of possible sites to add to your ping list do a search on the term “ping list” or visit these two sites: SeoBlackhat.com/2005/09/05/rss-ping-list/ and InternetFamous.net/2007/list-of-ping-services.html.

Submitting Your Blog and RSS Feeds

Two more ways to get more traffic to your site is to submit your blog and your RSS feed to sites like Technorati and Ice Rocket. A great list of fifty-five such sites can be found at MasterNewMedia.org/rss/top55.

There are many sites where you can submit your blog, such as Technorati and Icerocket. There are also sites like these that include feed aggregators that will syndicate your RSS feeds. Or you can use a service like RSS Submit to submit your RSS feeds automatically.

Conclusion

This is just a quick rundown of the tools available for bloggers to generate traffic to their blogs. Of course, new tools are being created all the time. Last year tag and ping and social bookmarking became popular.

Now we are in a new year with new possibilities. Whatever happens, blogging is continually gaining in popularity as a way to make money online.

Indeed, it is not only possible to make a fortune with bloggging, but it is easier than most people can imagine.

If you really want to make a fortune with blogging you need as many blogs as possible. That’s the most important single determinant to making a fortune with blogging.

Just one blog can’t make you millions. Even a few blogs can’t make you millions. You need to set up and manage as many blogs as possible… because when it comes to making real money, it is a NUMBERS game.

I know your next question will be – How can I easily create as many blogs as possible, right?

Well, I admit that you just can’t create as many blogs as you want manually. You have to find a way to automate the process. After all, you and me just have 24 hours in every day. We need to find ways of getting the best from these 24 hours. And with the right software, this can be possible. There are great software that can help one to achieve in minutes what others do in hours and even days.

I know your next question after this will be – How can you easily manage the posting of content to as many of these blogs as possible, right?

This also shouldn’t be a big problem because there are now tools and software that can be used to automate this process. Of course I am not talking about blackhat software that tries to steal content from the search engines and/or other people’s websites. I am talking about completely whitehat software out there that can be used to automate the process of content posting to as many blogs as possible.

But like I have always warned my friends that are interested in making a killing in blogging, you should take your time to search for credible blogging software that will do this for you.

If you have these right whitehat blogging software and have a mindset of creating as many blogs as possible, you can indeed join the few smart bloggers out there that are making a killing with blogging.

An alternative to making a fortune with blogging is to hire an avalanche of people to handle the various aspects of blog creation and content posting. But this is CRAZY because why should anyone spend such a huge amount hiring staff when there are incredibly software available to help with the various aspects of blogging?

In “1 – Blogging: Let’s Get You Started” we ended with the subject of content. Fresh topics are important to keep your blog readership interested, and now we’re going to discuss just how you can do that.

What are you going to write about? It should be a topic that you’re passionate about or are at the very least interested in. If you’ve chosen blogging as your new career, then you don’t want to torture yourself by writing about something that you have zero interest in, otherwise you might as well return to that mundane job you just quit!

Feelings and emotions show through your writing, so your readers will notice any indifference you may have toward a certain topic that you find boring. Don’t forget the advice about writing with a personality. Forced writing will not establish you in the world of blogging at all.

Once you’ve chosen your main theme — or if it has chosen you, then that’s even better — start posting to your blog and try to get into the habit of doing that at least once every day. It doesn’t always need to be a long post; it could be a comment on something you read in the newspaper today or a segment that you saw on the breakfast news program on TV. Think of yourself as a gigantic container ship, that needs a lot of effort to get moving. At first, you’ll budge just a foot or two and later you’ll trudge slowly on until you’re at full speed. Before you know it, it’ll take a lot of effort to stop you!

Nevertheless, regardless of how well you know your topic, you’re going to run out of fresh input at some point, so let’s look at some content brainstorm ideas.

1) Check out what other bloggers have to say on the current state of affairs in your field of discussion. You can find related blogs by visiting http://blogsearch.google.com/ or http://www.technorati.com. You’ll learn from other blogs and you can also comment on what others have to say on your own blog!

2) Once you?ve established contact with other bloggers, you?ll have almost inexhaustible input to keep you going for a while, so there won’t be an acute need to search for content to write about. Should you still be stuck, then you can search for news articles related to your niche in you local newspaper or online.

3) By joining a few forums related to your niche — just choose the ones that are the most focused on your particular area — you can engage in conversations with others who share your interests. This is a great way to build up a Q&A bank and interesting discussion topics to write about. An added bonus is that your forum posts will quite handily generate traffic for your blog and, hopefully, profits.

Try to maintain your daily posting habit. The major search engines love fresh content and they are more likely to spider your blog frequently, which will also result in getting you extra traffic.

The subject of traffic will be discussed in a future article, so don’t worry about that right now. Just keep writing and posting and building up that momentum — you’ll be an established blogger before you know it!

So what is blogging really all about? First off, let me tell you that it’s a lucrative business to blog and that blogs are easy to set up and manage. Imagine getting paid to write about subjects that interest you, whenever you want, wherever you are! The flexibility involved allows you to maintain your blog at your own pace, and with Internet caf?s easily accessible all over the globe, even your vacation won’t get in the way of your blogging… Or should I say: even your blogging won’t get in the way of your vacation?

In this article, let’s take a look at the profitability of a blog and set up one of our own, free of charge! Interested? Read on!

First, you need to get yourself a blog. There are several options ? host a blog on your own domain or get a free one. For starters, let?s talk about the free blogs. You can obtain one at http://www.blogger.com or the newer (and better!) http://www.wordpress.com. WordPress is a free blog engine that is robust and infinitely expandable.

Blogger is actually owned by Google, so it will be detected by Google?s radar faster and you will be indexed more quickly. WordPress.com, however, is a relatively new option so I have no comparison on the speed of getting indexed by search engines. However, WordPress is better in the sense that it has more advanced features such as Trackbacks and Categories. You can also manage your sidebar links more efficiently (more about this later).

Get a free blog at either Blogger or WordPress. Then, familiarize yourself by publishing your first post on your blog and tinkering around with the options and templates.

Here are some words to start expanding your blogging vocabulary:

Permalink ? Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that leads to an individual post that you make in your blog.

Trackback ? When you post about someone else?s blog post elsewhere, your post will show up in their ?trackback? section. This feature, however, is not available with a Blogger account.

Pinging ? Blogging seems to be paired with pinging almost every time either one is mentioned nowadays. Pinging is actually the action where a certain aggregator is notified whenever your blog is updated, so that the aggregator may show the newest post of your blog on their website. This is a useful way to gain traffic, which I’ll discuss in a future article.

Content

Next, let’s look at the type of content that’s suitable for your blog in order to make it profitable. You need to understand that there is no fixed scope that your blog should have, which means you can write about whatever you?re interested in. Mind you, the difference between a profitable blog and a non-profitable one is the way you write. What would you prefer: reading your university professor?s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favorite author? People prefer to read “light” items most of the time. When they check out your blog, they are not only looking for information, but they are also looking for information that they can access easily.

Getting backlinks from other websites is not the only option open to you in your quest for more visitors to your blog. There are other methods, both free and paid, geared to capturing high quality traffic.

Submitting articles is a tried and tested method. Go through your blog posts and recycle the content into articles in which you help people to solve a problem or offer them tips or a how-to mini manual and submit them to article directories. These directories are repositories for quality articles in many different categories and as people are always on the lookout for good, original, free content for their website or eZine, they receive thousands of visitors every day. By submitting your articles to these directories, you are not only positioning yourself as an expert in your field, but you are also exposing your blog to thousands of people who read your article. How? You are permitted to include your contact details and a brief biography in a “resource box” in your article, so be sure to include the link to your blog!

Here are some article directories to try out: EzineArticles.com, SubmitYourArticle.com and Marketing-Seek.com.

The process of manually submitting articles to directories is very tedious and time-consuming. However, this can also be automated or even outsourced. As article submission software applications still require you to perform some steps manually, you might consider making use of the article distribution services of SubmitYourArticle.com or ArticleMarketer.com (the latter permit you to set up a free account).

Participating on Internet discussion boards (forums) within your niche is also an excellent way to attract traffic. Just do a search on [your niche] + forum. Target the most focused and active forums that will permit you to append a link to your blog in your forum signature. The forum signature appears at the bottom of all your posts. Just make sure that you post useful and valuable content. You will gain the attention and respect of your peers and people will click on your link to visit your blog if they find your contribution useful and informative. You’ll be building credibility even before anyone visits your site, so that makes it easier to generate profits if people already perceive you as an expert.

Also make sure that you ping your blog, which is a way of letting blog portals know that you’ve updated it with new posts. Free pinging services are offered by Pingomatic.com and Pingoat.com.

Making use of paid methods of advertising such as banner advertising, purchasing links from high-ranking sites, or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) such as Google AdWords also offer possibilities. PPC is complex and therefore more difficult to master, but a well setup campaign can be very effective. Make sure you consult a good PPC resource before you start, otherwise it can become very expensive. Brad Callen’s “AdWords Made Easy” is available for free on the Internet. Excellent resources you can purchase are “AdWords Miracle” and “The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords”. Whichever method you choose, always consider if the profits are worth the expense, otherwise you’re throwing money down the drain.

Your blog is your means of expressing yourself to the world. It is a very powerful way of branding yourself and a very effective means of building a relationship with your readers. In order to take advantage of the power of blogging, you should make sure you follow some simple rules that will keep you on the right side of blogging and make both your visitor’s and your experinece much more enjoyable.

Be Timely With Your Postings

If you publish a blog called “The Wednesday Afternoon Report”, and you start out posting to it every Wednesday afternoon, then your audience will begin to expect a new posting every Wednesday afternoon. You can think of your blog like a newsletter. Consistancy is key. This consistance is what will increase the number of visitors that come back to your blog. Returning visitors gives you the opportunity to build a relationship with your readers.

Give Credit to Where Credit is Due

Sometimes the perfect and most timely posting is commenting on a news item, another blog posting, an article, or a web site. This is appropriate to do, but you should give credit and a link to the source document. You can link to the source document from within your post, or link to it as a footnote at the end of your post. If the source document is another blog, you can refer to it through what is known as a trackback link.

Be a Good Networker

Your blog is a good place to spotlight other bloggers. Most blogging software out there allows you to do this through a feature referred to as a blogroll. It is basically a list of links to other bloggers who you like, or other bloggers that are blogging about the same subject as you. This will add value to your visitors experience and give them additional resources to explore.

Structure Your Blog Site Well

Structure your blog so that it is easy to read, and find past postings. Don’t put so many graphics that it detracts from what you are trying to say. Highlight relevant postings that you may have made in the past that relate to your current posting. A good way to highlight your past postings is to link to them directly from the blog post, or if they are more general, and relate to many postings, you can list the links to your latest postings to the side, next to your main blog entry.

Another good technique to use with your blog is to separate your postings into categories when it makes sense. That way, visitors can access a more specific group of postings they may be interested in. For an even more robust blog, a search function will allow easy access to your postings, especially when you have quite a few posts.

Keep Your Blog Content Fresh

You will want to set up your blog so the most recent postings are placed at the top, or on the first page, which is like the reverse format of a diary (where the most recent entries are on the last page). Most blogging software today is setup to have the latest postings at the top (or on the front page of the blog) to allow your newest postings to be seen first by your visitors.

At first blogging was strictly used as a tool for online diaries. Then blog and ping came along and people began making money with blogs. Then in 2006 tag and ping was introduced and blogging became an even more formidable tool in the hands of internet marketers.

Today many of the most well-known internet marketers have their own blogs which they use to keep customers informed of what’s happening. Many marketers use a blog as a way to promote their upcoming product launches and to dialog with their visitors. By leaving comments visitors and customers can interact with the blogger, using the comment box to ask questions, give testimonials, and let their thoughts be heard.

Anyone, whether experienced or internet newbie, can set up a blog, make a post, and have search engines spidering their site within minutes. Visitors can be coming to their blog in less than a day.

Blogging Tools

There are lots of great tools for bloggers to use. Many of these tools are free. Blogging software such as Wordpress combined with a multitude of plugins, tag and ping, RSS, and social bookmarking work together to making blogging a phenomenal way to get your product or information before the public.

There are plugins that put tagging on steroids, such as Ultimate Tag Warrior. There are plugins that help you put video on your blog with a simple line of code, such as Fallen Media Plugin. And at least one plugin, Akismet, that takes care of spam comments.

There are plugins that create a static home page on the blog, similar to a home page on a static web site. If you don’t want a home page, perhaps you would like to make a permanent post that stays at the top of the main page. There is a plugin that will do that called Adhesive. There is also a plugin called Adsense Deluxe that simplifies placing Adsense ads on the blog.

Favorite Wordpress plugin downloads can be found at:

Headzoo.com ? some of the best plugins for Wordpress

Wp-Plugins.net ? has an amazing number of plugins for Wordpress

There are also free themes available for you to use with your blog. A theme is the look of the blog. If you are using Wordpress, check out Themes.Wordpress.net for an unbelievable number of free themes you can download and use for your blog.

The Importance of a Good Ping List

First of all, if your blog is keyword-rich, the search engine spiders will visit your site’s quality content, especially if you update and ping your blog regularly, once a week at the very least.

For lists of possible sites to add to your ping list do a search on the term “ping list” or visit these two sites: SeoBlackhat.com/2005/09/05/rss-ping-list/ and InternetFamous.net/2007/list-of-ping-services.html.

Submitting Your Blog and RSS Feeds

Two more ways to get more traffic to your site is to submit your blog and your RSS feed to sites like Technorati and Ice Rocket. A great list of fifty-five such sites can be found at MasterNewMedia.org/rss/top55.

There are many sites where you can submit your blog, such as Technorati and Icerocket. There are also sites like these that include feed aggregators that will syndicate your RSS feeds. Or you can use a service like RSS Submit to submit your RSS feeds automatically.

Conclusion

This is just a quick rundown of the tools available for bloggers to generate traffic to their blogs. Of course, new tools are being created all the time. Last year tag and ping and social bookmarking became popular.

Now we are in a new year with new possibilities. Whatever happens, blogging is continually gaining in popularity as a way to make money online.

Indeed, it is not only possible to make a fortune with bloggging, but it is easier than most people can imagine.

If you really want to make a fortune with blogging you need as many blogs as possible. That’s the most important single determinant to making a fortune with blogging.

Just one blog can’t make you millions. Even a few blogs can’t make you millions. You need to set up and manage as many blogs as possible… because when it comes to making real money, it is a NUMBERS game.

I know your next question will be – How can I easily create as many blogs as possible, right?

Well, I admit that you just can’t create as many blogs as you want manually. You have to find a way to automate the process. After all, you and me just have 24 hours in every day. We need to find ways of getting the best from these 24 hours. And with the right software, this can be possible. There are great software that can help one to achieve in minutes what others do in hours and even days.

I know your next question after this will be – How can you easily manage the posting of content to as many of these blogs as possible, right?

This also shouldn’t be a big problem because there are now tools and software that can be used to automate this process. Of course I am not talking about blackhat software that tries to steal content from the search engines and/or other people’s websites. I am talking about completely whitehat software out there that can be used to automate the process of content posting to as many blogs as possible.

But like I have always warned my friends that are interested in making a killing in blogging, you should take your time to search for credible blogging software that will do this for you.

If you have these right whitehat blogging software and have a mindset of creating as many blogs as possible, you can indeed join the few smart bloggers out there that are making a killing with blogging.

An alternative to making a fortune with blogging is to hire an avalanche of people to handle the various aspects of blog creation and content posting. But this is CRAZY because why should anyone spend such a huge amount hiring staff when there are incredibly software available to help with the various aspects of blogging?

In “1 – Blogging: Let’s Get You Started” we ended with the subject of content. Fresh topics are important to keep your blog readership interested, and now we’re going to discuss just how you can do that.

What are you going to write about? It should be a topic that you’re passionate about or are at the very least interested in. If you’ve chosen blogging as your new career, then you don’t want to torture yourself by writing about something that you have zero interest in, otherwise you might as well return to that mundane job you just quit!

Feelings and emotions show through your writing, so your readers will notice any indifference you may have toward a certain topic that you find boring. Don’t forget the advice about writing with a personality. Forced writing will not establish you in the world of blogging at all.

Once you’ve chosen your main theme — or if it has chosen you, then that’s even better — start posting to your blog and try to get into the habit of doing that at least once every day. It doesn’t always need to be a long post; it could be a comment on something you read in the newspaper today or a segment that you saw on the breakfast news program on TV. Think of yourself as a gigantic container ship, that needs a lot of effort to get moving. At first, you’ll budge just a foot or two and later you’ll trudge slowly on until you’re at full speed. Before you know it, it’ll take a lot of effort to stop you!

Nevertheless, regardless of how well you know your topic, you’re going to run out of fresh input at some point, so let’s look at some content brainstorm ideas.

1) Check out what other bloggers have to say on the current state of affairs in your field of discussion. You can find related blogs by visiting http://blogsearch.google.com/ or http://www.technorati.com. You’ll learn from other blogs and you can also comment on what others have to say on your own blog!

2) Once you?ve established contact with other bloggers, you?ll have almost inexhaustible input to keep you going for a while, so there won’t be an acute need to search for content to write about. Should you still be stuck, then you can search for news articles related to your niche in you local newspaper or online.

3) By joining a few forums related to your niche — just choose the ones that are the most focused on your particular area — you can engage in conversations with others who share your interests. This is a great way to build up a Q&A bank and interesting discussion topics to write about. An added bonus is that your forum posts will quite handily generate traffic for your blog and, hopefully, profits.

Try to maintain your daily posting habit. The major search engines love fresh content and they are more likely to spider your blog frequently, which will also result in getting you extra traffic.

The subject of traffic will be discussed in a future article, so don’t worry about that right now. Just keep writing and posting and building up that momentum — you’ll be an established blogger before you know it!