You can find many free blog creating websites. Some have different features but they are all basically the same. And the fact that it is free to build a blog you cannot beat the price. You can use a blog to develop a following online. This is called an online community by some. The larger your community the more customers you will have online and the more sales you will make.

You can use a blog to build a community online. You can establish yourself as a leader or and expert in your subject area. Your business expertise will show through on your blog. You will build a following as people come back to your blog looking for expert advice and valuable information.

If you are not familiar with search engine ranking this refers to how high your site is listed on the search engine results pages. You want to appear on the first page of the search for a particular key word related to your online business. The great advantage with blogs is that since they are updated frequently search engines rank them high on their results pages.

The search engines like sites with new and fresh content. So if you, as you should, post to your blog three to five times per week, the search engines will reward you with a high page listing.

If your budget for advertising is limited then a blog is a great way to invest your time. It will cost you only your time and no money to build your online presence for your business. You will not even have to pay for hosting. And you will be able to do it all yourself and not hire someone to do this for you.

Have you gone to a website over and over only to see that the website has not changed? You stop going to it because there is nothing new. This is why your blog will out rank the website in your market that remains static.

Because a blog is changing every day or almost every day people will keep visiting to see what is new. Also, most blogs have an RSS feature this means that people visiting your blog can sign up and get a message letting them know you have updated your blog with new content. Overall a blog is a great way to promote your small business online.

HostGator is the cheapest web host. Use hostgator coupons to get discount at the time of sign up.

©2010 Leanne Boyd - 1WebDiva.com. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet This Post

Blogs, which are sometimes called web logs are popular at this time on the web. Everybody has a blog, and everyone seems to be making profits by blogging. The question is how are they doing it? What’s so great about a blog that you can earn money by posting on it? First you must know a blog is a little like a web book. You can make posts in it about anything that you need to, and then publish it for the entire world to read. If you have not blogged before, it’s a smart idea to do so just for fun at the beginning, so you can get a feel of what it is about.

When you have become acquainted with the blogging platform, and sort of get the jest of it, you’ll be prepared to attempt to make some cash at blogging. for a new blog marketer, you would like to take it gently and one step at a time. You’ll need to do things in order which will help keep you from getting overpowered with it all.

The first thing that you want to do is find a niche to blog about. This can be anything that you know, want to know, or want to learn. Become an expert in that field. The more you know, the better. The niche can be anything that you want it to be. It can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be. Think about something that you know and love, something that you want to learn all about. You will come up with a niche that will be perfect before you know it.

Now that you know what your blog will be all about, you are ready to get down to business. First of all you want to decide how often you will update your blog. Will it be daily? Every other day? Maybe even weekly? Whichever you choose, stick with it and make sure that you hardly ever miss an update. Once you get readers to your blog you want them to know that you will update it as often as you say. They need to know how often to check and visit your blog for new information. If you post like you say you will, you will end up with a large reader base that will follow you anywhere.

So now you have a slot, and have decided how frequently your blog will be updated, it’s time to get down to some marketing. To start with, you want to get back links. Back links are significant and they mean that somebody is linking to you. There are some ways you can get these much-needed links. You can look around online and find some sites that have relevancy to your niche and request a link, or your can post comments on other blogs that are topical and leave a link behind with your comment. Either way, they both work and both count as links you need to your blog.

Are you trying to sell things from your blog? If so you are going to find that promoting products in your blog is a great marketing technique that you can use as well. People do it everyday and make lots of money from it. Whether it is affiliate links, or your own products and services that you are promoting, you are going to find that blog marketing is one of the best ways to get the word out and let people know that you are in business. Marketing from your blog has never been easier.

With all of the great tools that are out there now for blog marketing, it is really hard to have a blog fail when you use them. Make sure that you ping your blog every time it is updated, and work on those links as they will make a huge difference.

©2010 Leanne Boyd - 1WebDiva.com. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet This Post

There are those who dream of doing blogs for profit; this is a goal that just about everyone can do if they’re willing to do hard work and have a basic understanding of how to blog.

Very few manage to reach any benefit out of blogging because they have unrealistic ideas of who fast such a business will actually grow.

Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging.

Others just don’t plan. They want to turn a profit with blogs but don’t realize their plan is unrealistic so they don’t stick with it.

To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will need is a large readership. The higher your traffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you.

However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in order to make a profit isn’t easy. As more and more blogs appear each day, having a great idea or a wonderful writing style is no longer enough to get attention. You need to be able to market your blog effectively.

Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines like Technorati, and once your readers know that you update frequently they will return to your site on a regular basis.

On the other hand, once you keep updating your page, no one will come if you haven’t spent the time drawing readers to the page.

Try decreasing the blog numbers and spend more time drawing visitors by making contacts in the blogging community and other places where traffic is drawn from.

The truth is, you could be a marketing genius or you could have the best blogging idea, but you’re not going to have success overnight. Building readership such that blogging actually pays you money takes a great deal of time and it may take several months before a profit will be seen.

Stay committed to your blog project even through this difficult time and you’ll attract the visitors you want to attract. Then reward yourself for being so thorough and sticking with a marketing/blog plan.

There are many free blogging tools on the market, but loading up your blog with all of the free accessories that you can find isn’t necessarily a good idea.

Visitor counters, an exciting font, free .gif photos and a flashy background might actually backfire. The trick to getting the most out of these kinds of tools is to be selective about them.

Make an informed decision about what you can put on your blog by checking out the different kinds of free blogging software and tools out there. Don’t forget that just because its there, it doesn’t mean you have to put it on your site.

Practice restraint and only choose the options that you think will really be useful. If you can find out how many visitors are reading your blog by checking your traffic statistics, a visitor counter is likely to add unnecessary clutter to your page. If your blog is text-based, a flashy background can be more of a distraction than an benefit.

Assess what items you do need and be realistic about what will work. Even a free blog tool will not really be an asset to you in the long run.

©2010 Leanne Boyd - 1WebDiva.com. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet This Post

A blog is sometimes said to be simply a way to reflect your inner self online where the public can see and read. Blogs are written on any topic from a rant on high gas prices to what you think about the new president. The interesting thing is that frequently, blogs written for enjoyment can actually become money-making endeavors for you. The money you make from your blog depends on the time and energy you put into it as well as the popularity of the topic and the real personality that you infuse into the written word.

Blogs were started on the internet as dairies and journals. It wasn’t until 1997 that the word “blog” came into existence. Joran Barger was said to be the first recognized person to use the term “weblog”. Peter Merholz took the word weblog and broke it into we blog as part of a joke. Other bloggers latched onto the term and its popularity as a term needing dictionary status, grew and grew.

It was in the political realm and news reporting that made blogging famous. The fall of the U.S. Senator Majority Leader Trent Lott in 2002 was widely attributed to bloggers. The bloggers brought to light some comments not made public by the media. Senator Lott was forced to step down from the controversy.

A famous news anchor, Dan Rather was also fired after bloggers proved that documents used during the reporting were in fact forged. Yeah, in case you didn’t know, that’s what happened to dear Dan. This brought blogging into a whole new light and forced the media to deal with this new reckoning force. Now, blogging is well within the reach of any individual even many of those who possess only a cell phone.

Some bloggers have a hard time keeping fresh content in their blogs or other activities come up that steal away their time. When this happens, they often put their blogs along with the domain name up for sale. This is where you can make money without actually having to write a blog. You can buy these lower priced blogs, fix them up a little just like you would for a renovation on an inexpensive house and then resell them for a profit.

Advertisers spend millions getting word of their product out to the consumers. Your blog can tap into some of this money by placing ads. Ad companies such as Google ( Google Adsense) and Adbright pay you for visitors who click your ads. From there you can select from the thousands of ads that reflect the content in your blog.

The advantage of having ads is that they can generate residual income. You can leave your blog alone for a few weeks and still have money come in from them. It is not even necessary to move them around occasionally since Google can put video ads, picture ads or just plain text ads on your blog… Thus creating a kind of fresh pictorial content if thats the type of ad that you allow Google to place on your blog.

Selling products from your blog is a good way to make the traffic on your blog work for you. Your blog can help you promote items that you wish to sell. A percentage of each item sold goes to you. Note that this is percentage of the sale which is different from google ads where you get a percentage of the Click earnings. When starting out, you might want to pick products that you use and are familiar with. It is easier to connect with the customer when you know what you are talking about.

Some of the affiliated marketing sites you can look at are Commission Juncton, and LinkShare. Linkshare has a one time cost that is a little expensive, however most of Commission Junction is free, and clickbank the massive info marketplace is definitely free. These groups have a massive variety of products for you to choose from. Your blog can be the platform to showcase related products that sell themselves easily.

The biggest mistake that bloggers sometimes make is to overload the blog with too many products. The content should reflect what you are selling. Consider selling like items in one blog and starting another one for different types of products. Diversify to give yourself the most chance at making money.

Getting traffic to your blog is the most time-consuming part of the process. Recruit friends and family to display your blog link on their sites. Use your blog link as part of your signature in forums and your email. Don’t forget the power of those social networking sites.

Yahoo and MSN search engines prioritize blogs. To keep your blog on top, keep adding new content. Alert your readers to new content by submitting your blog to many of the ping services available. New content will automatically send a ping/alert to the 100-200 search engines particularly if you have added more ping services than the default rpc.pingomatic.com that is set up in your blog writing options area. This will re-prioritize your blog to higher levels in the search engines.

Making money from your blog is a realistic and achievable goal. It does take some work and elbow grease type investment to figure out the combination that works best for you. When it does succeed, its often a pleasant surprise to see small checks coming in continuously.Many of the ideas mentioned above are general commonsense ideas. Some of you may have known about them, and for some there may be just a little new information here. Understand however, that while these are all great ideas, implementing them in exactly the right way to make a ton of money is typically a trial and error process that many of you can relate to. Suppose however that there was a way to cut through the wasted trials and use an existing formula that simply works? Read a review of 5 of the web’s best known blog authors, whom all make 7 to 8 figure salaries from their blogs.

©2010 Leanne Boyd - 1WebDiva.com. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet This Post

Choosing which blogging platform to use is one of the most essential decisions that you can make as a blogger. The right program can make blogging easy, and the wrong platform can make blogging a chore. The experience you have while blogging is dependent on which program you use. The situation being as it is, discovering the ideal platform that provides a user-friendly interface along with an adaptable framework for your visitors, gives you the chance to create a weblog that has a unique and memorable look and feel to it. Finding the right program isn’t invariably easy, but with a little bit of contemplation and a little bit of study, you will be on your way to finding the perfect blogging platform.

Make sure you balance the ease of using your internet site against customizing it. Forms of blogging such as moveable types, are a little more difficult to use than automated platforms, such as Wordpress. If you are not familiar with blog websites and web software, it might be feasible not to create a fancy customized template or use a fancy font type so that it is easier to learn a user friendly program. Nonetheless, an uncomplicated program that appeals to beginners may not meet the needs of an experienced web designer who might find the limitations unacceptable.

Every blogger has particular needs so there is no ‘one’ blogging program for everyone. The blogging movement is very much concerning individuality, so it makes plenty of sense that there would be numerous different platforms available. They are all designed to satisfy the needs of numerous sorts of individuals with different project requirements. This variety is a good thing, because it means that you will almost be able to discover a program that suits your level of technical ability.

No two bloggers are the same, so blogging platforms need to be versatile. When studying blogging platforms, don’t forget that each person is different when you read critiques regarding those platforms. Novice bloggers have tendencies to write in limited platforms. Which platform is ideal for you will depend on what your exact goals are.

©2010 Leanne Boyd - 1WebDiva.com. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet This Post

Most of you probably already know that you can boost your search engine rankings by getting back links to your site, but how many of you are using blog comments to get back links?

Those of you that aren’t using blog comments for back links have probably heard some one tell you about no follow tags and how the search engines won’t follow the link from comment on blogs.

This is both true and not true at the same time. Yes, a vast majority of the blogs you find will have the no follow tag on the comments. But there are some that don’t have no follow tags.

The default installation of WordPress automatically adds the no follow tags to the comments but if you know what you are doing you can find blogs that don’t have the no follow tag or will remove the no follow tag in return for you making a certain number of posts.

But I am going to cover blog comment etiquette before I tell you how to find these blogs that will remove the no follow from your comments.

Your comments MUST BE on topic. If you can’t come up with a comment on topic, don’t leave one.

For example, if the post is on blog comments, your comment should be related to that post and have something to do with the content of the post. Don’t leave a comment talking about how to conquer the newest MLM offering.

You shouldn’t put a link in the body of your comment unless it is directly related to the post and is information that won’t fit in the comment itself, such as a video.

I personally have my comments set up so that if you put links in the body of the comment it will go to moderation and not be posted until I get around to reviewing the links. This might be done quickly or it might take me a week to get to it. Remember, some people never check the comment moderation.

The name field for the comment form should only be filled with your name or moniker and a moniker should only be used if it describes you or your business accurately. Don’t stuff the name with keywords if you start doing this you might have some blog masters ban you and put you on the spam lists. You can have keywords in your moniker but only if they apply (as stated above) to you personally or your business but you are always better of using a name that can be used to recognize you.

That is a general overview of blog etiquette but you should never do anything in a blog comment that you wouldn’t want done on your blog. Even with the no follow tags you should still be posting comments, I bet you are wondering why?

There are a few reasons why you should leave comments even if there are no follow tags, such as:

1. It is still a link to your site that people will see and possibly follow. If you leave 5 blog comments per day that is 1,500 links in a year that might catch the eye of the reader and could get you traffic.

2. If you are posting relevant comments people will remember your name and you will start to build a reputation for yourself, especially if you only used one name.

3. If you post an interesting comment people will click on your link to see what else you have to offer.

4. Just because the major search engines abide by the no follow tag doesn’t mean everybody does. The last time I checked Ask would follow no follow tags and there are some ad services that do their own back link testing that will follow these links and this could raise the amount you collect for showing their ads.

If comments have the no follow tag activated, how do you tell?

The most obvious way is to find a comment and look at the page source, pour through all the code looking for the link on the name and seeing if the no follow tag is in the link. This will drive you crazy if you do it a lot of times but it does work.

The good news is that you don’t have to do it that way. If you are using FireFox or Flock as your browser you can get an addon that will highlight all the no follow tags on a page. It is called SEO for FireFox and you can get it from SEOTools.com or you can search SEO for FireFox addon in Google.

This addon will give you a bunch of information that can be used for SEO but the one feature that we are interested in now is the no follow highlighting. What it does is look at all the links on the page your viewing and highlights all the no follow links in red. If the name in the blog comment isn’t red then the no follow is shut off on that blog.

There are a couple of plugins that blog masters will add to their blogs that automatically removes the no follow tag from the comments and another plugin that will reward the people that comment frequently by removing the no follow tags from that individuals comments. This plugin is Lucia’s Linky Love.

Once Lucia’s is installed the blog master can set up the comments so that after a person make so many comments the no follow tag is removed for that person.

It checks the name and email address to see if this person has ever commented before and keeps track of all the ones that match. If you use different names (which has already been pointed out as a no no) or different emails you will never have the no follow tags removed.

Most commonly, this is set at 3 to 5 posts before the no follow tags are removed, but the blog master can set if from 3 to a million if they like.

How do you find blogs that use Lucia’s Linky Love plugin? The easiest way is to use Google’s Blogsearch, put your keywords in quotes and then put a plus sign and then Lucia’s Linky in quotes and do you search. It should look something like this “keyword phrase”+”Lucia’s Linky” your results should show you posts that are related to your keywords and using Lucia’s Linky Love plugin.

On the blogs I use this on, you will need to post 4 times to get a link back to your site. I read the comments and I delete the spammy ones so the people just trying to get the right number of posts never make it. This encourages more comments and usually adds good information.

©2010 Leanne Boyd - 1WebDiva.com. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet This Post

Blogging news stories as they unfold is one of the most exciting and controversial applications of technology that bloggers have discovered. One thing that makes the blogosphere so active is the fact that it is possible to update a blog instantaneously, so the news on blogs tends to be more current than the news in the paper, or on television.

Unlike other news sources, blogs don’t have to pass through editors and administers before the public can see it. There are advantages and disadvantages to blogging news.

One example where blogs hit the media before the press took place during the bombing of a London subway in July 2005.

Pictures were taken of the passengers at the scene and within an hour, they had hit the press. Such first-person accounts were seen by blog readers everywhere in an uncensored and personal way.

The crisis felt really immediate to those who were reading it without the eyes of an editor on these raw pieces. The blogging was very personal to those who were reading it.

This has the potential to be the beginning of an exciting new era of reporting, one that takes “New Journalism” to its logical next step by putting the power to shape how the news is written and read directly into the hands of the public.

Many in the blogging world as well as cultural commentators in the blogging movement believe that this is a good trend and one that makes the dissemination of information a democratic process.

It decentralizes the world of news and allows more voices to debate on the issues at hand. Others, however, are just as adamant about not having this as a method of news dissemination.

There aren’t any fact checkers in the world of blogs and there is no journalistic accountability. This could lead to the spread of bad information. More than one piece of misinformation has been spread through this fashion.

The questions about whether blogging news as it happens is ethical or not are very complicated, but no matter where you stand on the topic of current events blogs you are almost sure to agree that this movement has the potential to revolutionize how modern people get their news.

If you are interested in blogging, consolidation, debt, and other financial topics are sure to appear in many of the blogs that you regularly read. Techniques to make and manage money are some of the most popular topics for bloggers to explore on the web, so it is little wonder that so many bloggers turn their attention to dealing with debt.

Falling into debt is all too easy, and getting out of debt can be very difficult for people who do not have a lot of financial expertise. For people who have a knack for dealing with finances, blogging about their insights and knowledge can be a great way to literally and figuratively share the wealth.

If you are considering getting into blogging, consolidation, debt, savings, and investment topics can prove to be very fruitful things to write about. Many professional bloggers who make a living off of their blogs spend their days writing about money.

If you know all about load consolidation, negotiation of settlements with financial corporations or any other money topic, consider using what you know to be a successful blogger.

By taking the time to share your expertise on the subject, you may help readers learn about money and get out of debt while you are simply rewarded for helping others.

©2010 Leanne Boyd - 1WebDiva.com. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet This Post

RSS Can Offer Great Benefits To Your Business -
New Media And Your Brand!

 

by Lynette Chandler

 

It is not a well-known fact, but using RSS can offer great benefits to your business. Below are some examples that are often used. Please be aware though, some of these techniques could possibly be abused. So please use carefully.

Twitter: Automatically create a new tweet when you have new posts. There are many ways to do this, a popular and free tool to use is Twitterfeed.

Facebook: like twitter, your Facebook account can also be updated automatically. Using Facebook apps can be a little unreliable, so try it using popular applications like “my blogs”.

Widgets: Make a widget of your latest blog content so others can display it on their blogs or on their desktop. You can do this easily at Google Gadgets or Spring Widgets.

File delivery: If you are already publishing a podcast, then it should be easy to start offering PDF documents or video downloads via RSS.

Affiliates RSS feeds: Allow your affiliates to display your content wherever they wish. Give them the incentive by branding any links with their affiliate ID. This will credit them with any purchases made from your sites.

Search for special deals in your niche: This can offer your readers some good money-saving deals. Sales can be tracked via a private affiliate account from major online retail outlets like Amazon.com. For deals related to Internet marketing, find a feed like deal.com, and add it to your RSS reader.

Package tracking: have your RSS feed update to alert you to the status of your deliveries. Use a solution like SimpleTracking.com.

Track latest questions on Yahoo Answers: Answering questions on Yahoo Answers can be very effective to promote your business. Subscribe to the RSS feed of the category you’re interested in so you’ll be notified when a new question you can answer comes in.

Comment tracking: some times e-mail delivery can be notoriously unreliable, especially with free accounts. This is where using RSS can be very useful as an alternative. If using WordPress blogging technology, the comment feed will usually be displayed at: http://yourblog.com/comments/feed/  or  http://yourblog.com/?feed=comments-rss2

Watching your competition: keep an eye on your competition, their action on the social networks, video accounts and blogs. The best way to automate this is to use FriendFeed.

Industry watch: There is an option with the Yahoo or MSN search engine’s, where you can type a phrase that suits your interests, and if you are using IE 7 or Firefox, an RSS feed icon will appear. If you click this icon you will subscribe to the keyword feed.

Advertisements: I’ve never tried RSS advertising, but I have displayed the odd advertisement in an RSS feed. Surprisingly this CTR for the sites I used out performed click throughs’ from the website itself. Pheedo, FeedBurner and Text-Link-Ads make RSS advertising possible.

Service status update: keep your clients and customers in the know by displaying your service status via RSS feed. This is especially useful for those that offer web hosting, shopping carts or payment gateways.

 

===
About the Author:

If you’re looking to pull more profit out of your business blog, check out the IM Blogging Bootcamp. This 4-week intensive program designed to get you actively and effectively blogging to reach more of your prospects and convert more of them into lifelong customers.

 

©2010 Leanne Boyd - 1WebDiva.com. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet This Post

And that is where my huge and growing list of resource articles comes in very handy! To kickstart our discussion on the Virtual Tool Box, please ponder the following article.

Who Else Wants To Start Your Own Internet Business The Right Way

by Napoleon Gladney

Earn Extra Cash

Earn extra cash by starting your own legitimate online business. Have you dreamed of being your own boss? Is it your desire to earn extra cash or full time income by doing what you love the most in life? Millions of people have this same dream, the difference is you are taking action. You will be the one to earn extra cash doing what you love, while the others keep on dreaming and wake up the next morning to head off to their 9 to 5 job.

There is so much information available on the Internet on how to start your own Internet business. This article will help you on your journey to earn extra cash while enjoying your work.

Once you determine what type of business you want to pursue, it is time to take some action steps towards your goals. In fact, the first step to earn extra cash online is to set goals.

After you set your goals, you will need to develop a marketing plan. Your marketing plan should include different strategies you will want to try. Not all marketing strategies will work for all Internet companies. This is why it is important to start with just a few strategies and work them through before you actually implement them.

Here are three effective Internet marketing techniques to include in your marketing plan:

* Article and blog marketing: Creating blogs and articles are the most effective Internet marketing strategies. Create articles and blogs that are informative and accurate. This is the best way to build online relationships and gain the trust of your readers. The more blogs and articles you write; the more chances you have of directing people to your website. Writing blogs can be a great way to get repeat readers to come to your site. Just link your blogs and articles to your website and you will see more traffic, as well as increase your chances to earn extra cash.

* Keyword research is essential to your success. Using the right keywords to target your readers will help you rank high with the search engines. The better you rank with the search engines, the more traffic you will direct to your website. There are Keyword Search tools that can help you determine which keywords are ranking higher than the others. The key is to find a keyword that is not as popular with your competition, but is used frequently by people searching for information on the Internet.

* Developing a list. People who show an interest in your site are the people you want to target. When they get to your site and see you have a free offer for an e-book or newsletter, they will likely give their name and email address for that offer. The key is now you are able to send them more information relevant to your product or service that will keep you on their minds every so often.

* List building: Get email addresses from those who are interested in what you have to offer. Building lists is critical in reaching your target market and puts you one step closer to earn extra cash. Capture their attention by offering something free, such as a free e-book or newsletter. This allows you to send more information about what you have to offer, as well as any special promotions. Constant contact is crucial.

About the Author:

Before you spend any money online pick up your FREE video to Start A Home Based Business On The Internet Today.

©2010 Leanne Boyd - 1WebDiva.com. All Rights Reserved.

Tweet This Post