Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts

April 20, 2008

Are Pro Bloggers Really Just Cheap Tricksters?

Well that may be a little harsh, but it’s essentially true. Just about everyone who blogs about how to make money blogging is little more than a street magician. A simple illusionist and nothing more.

Some bloggers even go so far as lying to their readers about how they earn their money, but most of them will simply withhold small amounts important information that you need to make informed decisions.

Why? Because if they told you everything, you’d be able to go out and take all their business.

And that’s why I use the terms “tricksters” and “illusionist”. They may not outright lie to you, but their income is often based on keeping things from you. Like a magic trick, if you knew exactly how it was done, you’d soon lose interest and not bother watching again.

So what tricks do pro bloggers use?

The most often used trick is the affiliate link disguised as a “review” or impartial link. If a blogger suddenly starts talking about a new service or product, the first thing you should do is ask yourself “what’s in it for them?”.

It’s quite likely that they’ll give a well rounded review of a product, but at the same time use (and often try to hide) affiliate links when sending you to the product’s web site. So even if they haven’t given a shining review of the product, you have to ask why that blogger is still trying to sell you that product!

Now I’m just as prone to using these techniques as other bloggers. Case in point - those “Recommended” links on the right of the Money Blogger page? I only recommend them because they pay me too.

The chance you take when you decide to click on a link, is whether or not they will also pay you or give you the knowledge you need to make money yourself.

If you really want to learn how to make money from blogging, the best advice I can give is to read as much as you can - but take everything you read with a pinch of salt. If a blogger is sending you to obvious affiliate link, ask yourself why. Read the comments for the post and see what other people are saying about the particular product or service the blogger is talking about and then make up your own mind.

There are many more techniques which some bloggers use to trick their readers and I’ll be doing another post on the subject next week including specific examples. So if you want to know what to look out for, you’d better subscribe to Neobots Blogspot now!

The Top 3 Pro-Blogging Trickster

In a post last week, I suggested some of the most respected pro bloggers may be “cheap tricksters” and compared them to street magicians. Talented ‘performers’ whose real skill is in making you believe they have some kind of secret.

This week, I want to give some specific examples and name names!

But before I do, I want to make something clear. I’m in no way trying to denigrate these particular bloggers. All of them provide useful information and are worth subscribing to. I’m simply pointing out that the top money making bloggers don’t always tell the whole truth.

The 3 people I’m going to talk about happen to be the top 3 bloggers in the “blogging about blogging” niche in Technorati. I’m quite sure others use similar tactics, and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the tricks they use themselves. They are simply things to be aware of when following their advice.

John Chow
The title tag on John’s blog says “I Make Money By Telling People How Much Money I Make Online”, but that’s not strictly accurate. John is very good at luring in new readers with the promise of money making tips, but if you actually break down the content of his blog, genuine tips are few and far between. The majority of the content on John’s blog is photos of his lunch and paid reviews - i.e. ads.
But every month, John posts his earnings for the previous month and that hooks people in. The “I Make Money…” title becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, as with each new subscriber hooked by idea of earning $30,000/month, John is able to charge his adverterisers a little bit more.

As to whether John really even makes the figures he posts in his earnings reports, well that’s debatable too…
Jeremy Schoemaker
Jeremy has his fingers in many different pies and his blog is just a small part of his total income. Although there’s a fair amount of ‘fluff’ on his blog, generally speaking there’s a great deal more useful information than on John Chow’s blog.
Many people are hooked into subscribing to shoemoney.com by a particular photo that appears on every page of the blog. It’s a photo of a cheque for a single month’s Google AdSense revenue for $132,000. Not surprising people want to know more.

But you have to dig a little deeper before you find out that that particular cheque was for revenue from another project, not the blog. Now this isn’t a ‘trick’ as such, but it’s a well thought out ploy to get your attention and draw you in. And it works!

Then there was an incident a few months ago in which shoemoney.com “magically” received several thousand new subscribers over night after a “competition” with John Chow - a feat that would be almost impossible without bending the rules.

What I like about Jeremy as that I think he’s probably the most likely of the pro bloggers to admit that he will occasionally use “evil” techniques. But he probably won’t tell you exactly what those techniques are…

Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse (aka ‘ProBlogger’) is probably the most respected blogger in his field. He consistently posts great tips, ideas and links that will really help you to improve your blog.
But the interesting thing about Darren that many people don’t realise is that the majority of his income comes from other blogs, not problogger.net.

The majority of Darren’s income comes from his photography blogs, and it terms of style and content, these are the polar opposite of problogger.net. They often feature recycled content which has been “borrowed” from other people and rewritten, and the pages are jam packed full of ads.

Each page on Darren’s photography blog is effectively a landing page for an affiliate ad with some SEO thrown in, so people Googling for a particular camera will hopefully end up on Darren’s blog before clicking through to buy a camera.

Now there’s nothing wrong with doing this, but it’s not something you see Darren recommend in his posts on ProBlogger. And for those readers who are really trying to make a living from blogging, it’s probably not in Darren’s interest to promote the fact that most of his revenue comes from such a spammy looking site.

Summary

It may sound as though I’m having a go at these bloggers, but that’s absolutely not the case. They are successful in their field and are probably all wonderful people (although some people seem to disagree). But as a blog reader, you should realise that it’s unlikely they will ever reveal all their money making sercrets. The simple fact is, if they did that, they would lose their appeal - and a large chunk of their income - over night.

The moral of this post is not that you should stop reading these blogs. It’s that you should read more of them. Read enough to form a balanced opinion of what’s really going on. Don’t take anything at face value and make up your own mind as to whether the information you’re being fed is the truth.

I will freely admit that I use some of these “tricks” myself, and if you really want to make money from blogging, you’ll probably need to do the same. To know more about tips & tricks on how to make money from blogging just Click Here to Sign Up.

April 19, 2008

25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog

With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them.Some companies choose to hire a blog consultant, but others like to try things internally. For those “DIY” companies and individuals interested in practical tips for marketing and optimizing a business blog, try out the following list of blog marketing and optimization tips:

Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!
Obtain and install customizable blog software - WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.
Customize blog look and feel templates - aka design.
Research keywords and develop a glossary - Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.
Optimize the blog:
- Template optimization - RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
- Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
- Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)
Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
Setup a Google account for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
Format archived posts, related posts.
Enable statistics for tracking - Google Analytics, ClickTracks.
Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs - Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.
Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog - Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.
Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.
Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.
Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.
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If your blog’s goal is to promote you as an authority, interview other prominent bloggers in your industry. Your own credibility will improve by association.
Build out your online networks through services such as MyBlogLog, Twitter and Facebook and leverage them to promote particularly useful content on your blog.
Once your blog has 1000 or more subscribers, show your Feedburner badge
Host images with Flickr making sure to include an anchor text link in the image description back to the post where the image is used.
Use your blog to gain press/media credentials at relevant industry conferences and use the event to create content, connections and increase your knowledge.

This post was originally published on June 15, 2006 and has continued to receive many inbound links. As time changes, so do some tactics, so we’ve added a few tactics (after original 25) that have emerged in their usefulness. What would you add to this list?

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Edited By C14

13 Tips To Get Your Blog Noticed

Here are some simple things you can do to get your blog noticed quickly:

1. Submit your blog to all of the directories listed on Pingomatic which allows you to ping a few services all at once.
2. Submit your blog to Pingoat which allows you to ping over fifty blog ping services all at once.
3. Sign up for an account at BlogExplosion and register your blog there. After registering visit other members blogs to earn credits.
4. Submit your blog to all of the directores listed at RSS Feeds directory
5. Sign up for My Yahoo and add your blogs feed to your own “My Yahoo” account. This will get your blog included in Yahoo very quickly.
6. Sign up for My MSN, and add your blog to your own “My MSN” account. This will get your blog included in MSN very quickly.
7. Sign up for Google Pages, and add add some content (non spam) and link to your blog. This will get your blog included in Google very quickly.
8. Place a link to your blog in your signature, so that any posts to Forums, Outgoing Emails, etc, will promote your blog.
9. Place your blog on all the major search engines. AddMe.com will submit your blog free to the top 14 Search engines.
10. SubmitExpress.com will submit your blog free to the top 20 Search engines.
11. Submit your good articles to Ezine Articles
12. Locate blogs with a lot of traffic and place relevant comments in their comment box . Do not spam or place the ‘I like your site,visit mine’ type comments.
13. And last, post quality content as often as possible

I hope these tips help you get your blog noticed. Know any other good tips? Please share them here.

Source
Edited By C14

April 18, 2008

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

A considerable portion of my consulting time has recently revolved around the optmization of corporate blogs (or the addition of blogs to revamped sites). As usual, I find a pattern emerging in the strategies that need attention and the pitfalls that must be avoided. So, rather than charging $400 an hour to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here on the blog (business part of Rand fights with open source Rand, but loses, as usual).

Choose the Right Blog Software (or Custom Build)
The right blog CMS makes a big difference. If you want to set yourself apart, I recommend creating a custom blog solution - one that can be completely customized to your users. In most cases, WordPress, Blogger, MovableType or Typepad will suffice, but building from scratch allows you to be very creative with functionality and formatting. The best CMS is something that's easy for the writer(s) to use and brings together the features that allow the blog to flourish. Think about how you want comments, archiving, sub-pages, categorization, multiple feeds and user accounts to operate in order to narrow down your choices. OpenSourceCMS is a very good tool to help you select a software if you go that route.
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Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain
Hosting your blog on a different domain from your primary site is one of the worst mistakes you can make. A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot. From worst to best, your options are - Hosted (on a solution like Blogspot or Wordpress), on a unique domain (at least you can 301 it in the future), on a subdomain (these can be treated as unique from the primary domain by the engines) and as a sub-section of the primary domain (in a subfolder or page - this is the best solution).
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Write Title Tags with Two Audiences in Mind
First and foremost, you're writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. Title tags that are short, snappy, on-topic and catchy are imperative. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. A great way to do this is to write the post and the title first, then run a few searches at Overture, WordTracker & KeywordDiscovery to see if there is a phrasing or ordering that can better help you to target "searched for" terms.
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Participate at Related Forums & Blogs
Whatever industry or niche you're in, there are bloggers, forums and an online community that's already active. Depending on the specificity of your focus, you may need to think one or two levels broader than your own content to find a large community, but with the size of the participatory web today, even the highly specialized content areas receive attention. A great way to find out who these people are is to use Technorati to conduct searches, then sort by number of links (authority). Del.icio.us tags are also very useful in this process, as are straight searches at the engines (Ask.com's blog search in particular is of very good quality).
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Tag Your Content
Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. I actually recommend having the tags right on your page, pointing to the Technorati searches that you're targeting. There are other good places to ping - del.icio.us and Flickr being the two most obvious (the only other one is Blogmarks, which is much smaller). Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a "bump" towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon (which requires that you download the toolbar, but trust me - it's worth it). You DO NOT want to submit every post to these sites, but that one out of twenty (see tactic #18) is worth your while.
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Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later)
There's something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular. Luckily, there's an easy solution - don't offer the ability to post comments on the blog and no one will know that you only get 20 uniques a day. Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity. Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site (and thus, its worth), so play to your strengths and keep your obscurity private.
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Don't Jump on the Bandwagon
Some memes are worthy of being talked about by every blogger in the space, but most aren't. Just because there's huge news in your industry or niche DOES NOT mean you need to be covering it, or even mentioning it (though it can be valuable to link to it as an aside, just to integrate a shared experience into your unique content). Many of the best blogs online DO talk about the big trends - this is because they're already popular, established and are counted on to be a source of news for the community. If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view. This is less important in spaces where there are very few bloggers and little online coverage and much more in spaces that are overwhelmed with blogs (like search, or anything else tech-related).
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Link Intelligently
When you link out in your blog posts, use convention where applicable and creativity when warranted, but be aware of how the links you serve are part of the content you provide. Not every issue you discuss or site you mention needs a link, but there's a fine line between overlinking and underlinking. The best advice I can give is to think of the post from the standpoint of a relatively uninformed reader. If you mention Wikipedia, everyone is familar and no link is required. If you mention a specific page at Wikipedia, a link is necessary and important. Also, be aware that quoting other bloggers or online sources (or even discussing their ideas) without linking to them is considered bad etitquette and can earn you scorn that could cost you links from those sources in the future. It's almost always better to be over-generous with links than under-generous. And link condoms? Only use them when you're linking to something you find truly distasteful or have serious apprehension about.
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Invite Guest Bloggers
Asking a well known personality in your niche to contribute a short blog on their subject of expertise is a great way to grow the value and reach of your blog. You not only flatter the person by acknowedging their celebrity, you nearly guarantee yourself a link or at least an association with a brand that can earn you readers. Just be sure that you really are getting a quality post from someone that's as close to universally popular and admired as possible (unless you want to start playing the drama linkbait game, which I personally abhor). If you're already somewhat popular, it can often be valuable to look outside your space and bring in guest authors who have a very unique angle or subject matter to help spice up your focus. One note about guest bloggers - make sure they agree to have their work edited by you before it's posted. A disagreement on this subject after the fact can have negative ramifications.
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Eschew Advertising (Until You're Popular)
I hate AdSense on blogs. Usually, I ignore it, but I also cast a sharp eye towards the quality of the posts and professionalism of the content when I see AdSense. That's not to say that contextual advertising can't work well in some blogs, but it needs to be well integrated into the design and layout to help defer criticism. Don't get me wrong - it's unfair to judge a blog by its cover (or, in this case, its ads), but spend a lot of time surfing blogs and you'll have the same impression - low quality blogs run AdSense and many high quality ones don't. I always recommend that whether personal or professional, you wait until your blog has achieved a level of success before you start advertising. Ads, whether they're sponsorships, banners, contextual or other, tend to have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link - you definitely don't want that limitation while you're still trying to get established.
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Go Beyond Text in Your Posts
Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less consistently interesting than those that offer images, interactive elements, the occassional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs. Even if you're having a tough time with non-text content, think about how you can format the text using blockquotes, indentation, bulllet points, etc. to create a more visually appealing and digestable block of content.
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Cover Topics that Need Attention
In every niche, there are certain topics and questions that are frequently asked or pondered, but rarely have definitive answers. While this recommendation applies to nearly every content-based site, it's particularly easy to leverage with a blog. If everyone in the online Nascar forums is wondering about the components and cost of an average Nascar vehicle - give it to them. If the online stock trading industry is rife with questions about the best performing stocks after a terrorist threat, your path is clear. Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.
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Pay Attention to Your Analytics
Visitor tracking software can tell you which posts your audience likes best, which ones don't get viewed and how the search engines are delivering traffic. Use these clues to react and improve your strategies. Feedburner is great for RSS and I'm a personal fan of Indextools. Consider adding action tracking to your blog, so you can see what sources of traffic are bringing the best quality visitors (in terms of time spent on the site, # of page views, etc). I particularly like having the "register" link tagged for analytics so I can see what percentage of visitors from each source is interested enough to want to leave a comment or create an account.
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Use a Human Voice
Charisma is a valuable quality, both online and off. Through a blog, it's most often judged by the voice you present to your users. People like empathy, compassion, authority and honesty. Keep these in the forefront of your mind when writing and you'll be in a good position to succeed. It's also critical that you maintain a level of humility in your blogging and stick to your roots. When users start to feel that a blog is taking itself too seriously or losing the characteristics that made it unique, they start to seek new places for content. We've certainly made mistakes (even recently) that have cost us some fans - be cautious to control not only what you say, but how you say it. Lastly - if there's a hot button issue that has you posting emotionally, temper it by letting the post sit in draft mode for an hour or two, re-reading it and considering any revisions. With the advent of feeds, once you publish, there's no going back.
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Archive Effectively
The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a "noindex" in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.
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Implement Smart URLs
The best URL structure for blogs is, in my opinion, as short as possible while still containing enough information to make an educated guess about the content you'll find on the page. I don't like the 10 hyphen, lengthy blog titles that are the byproduct of many CMS plugins, but they are certainly better than any dynamic parameters in the URL. Yes - I know I'm not walking the talk here, and hopefully it's something we can fix in the near future. To those who say that one dynamic parameter in the URL doesn't hurt, I'd take issue - just re-writing a ?ID=450 to /450 has improved search traffic considerably on several blogs we've worked with.
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Reveal as Much as Possible
The blogosphere is in love with the idea of an open source world on the web. Sharing vast stores of what might ordinarily be considered private information is the rule, rather than the exception. If you can offer content that's usually private - trade secrets, pricing, contract issues, and even the occassional harmless rumor, your blog can benefit. Make a decision about what's off-limits and how far you can go and then push right up to that limit in order to see the best possible effects. Your community will reward you with links and traffic.
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Only One Post in Twenty Can Be Linkbait
Not every post is worthy of making it to the top of Digg, Del.icio.us/popular or even a mention at some other blogs in your space. Trying to over-market every post you write will result in pushback and ultimately lead to negative opinions about your efforts. The less popular your blog is, the harder it will be to build excitement around a post, but the process of linkbait has always been trial and error - build, test, refine and re-build. Keep creating great ideas and bolstering them with lots of solid, everyday content and you'll eventually be big enough to where one out of every 20-40 posts really does become linkbait.
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Make Effective Use of High Traffic Days
If you do have linkbait, whether by design or by accident, make sure to capitalize. When you hit the front page of Digg, Reddit, Boing Boing, or, on a smaller scale, attract a couple hundred visitors from a bigger blog or site in your space, you need to put your best foot forward. Make sure to follow up on a high traffic time period with 2-3 high quality posts that show off your skills as a writer, your depth of understanding and let visitors know that this is content they should be sticking around to see more of. Nothing kills the potential linkbait "bump" faster than a blog whose content doesn't update for 48 hours after they've received a huge influx of visitors.
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Create Expectations and Fulfill Them
When you're writing for your audience, your content focus, post timing and areas of interest will all become associated with your personal style. If you vary widely from that style, you risk alienating folks who've come to know you and rely on you for specific data. Thus, if you build a blog around the idea of being an analytical expert in your field, don't ignore the latest release of industry figures only to chat about an emotional issue - deliver what your readers expect of you and crunch the numbers. This applies equally well to post frequency - if your blog regularly churns out 2 posts a day, having two weeks with only 4 posts is going to have an adverse impact on traffic. That's not to say you can't take a vacation, but you need to schedule it wisely and be prepared to lose RSS subscribers and regulars. It's not fair, but it's the truth. We lose visitors every time I attend an SES conference and drop to one post every two days (note - guest bloggers and time-release posts can help here, too).
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Build a Brand
Possibly one of the most important aspects of all in blogging is brand-building. As Zefrank noted, to be a great brand, you need to be a brand that people want to associate themselves with and a brand that people feel they derive value from being a member. Exclusivity, insider jokes, emails with regulars, the occassional cat post and references to your previous experiences can be offputting for new readers, but they're solid gold for keeping your loyal base feeling good about their brand experience with you. Be careful to stick to your brand - once you have a definition that people like and are comfortable with, it's very hard to break that mold without severe repercussions. If you're building a new blog, or building a low-traffic one, I highly recommend writing down the goals of your brand and the attributes of its identity to help remind you as you write.

Best of luck to all you bloggers out there. It's an increasingly crowded field to play in, but these strategies should help to give you an edge over the competition. As always, if you've got additions or disagreements, I'd love to hear them.

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Edited By C14

April 17, 2008

Keyword Research for Blogger : A Comprehensive Guide

Keyword Research for Bloggers - A Comprehensive Guide

Keyword research is a fundamental part of online marketing of all kinds, and that definitely includes blogging. Blogs are famous for ranking well in search engines thanks to their structure and frequently-updated content, but if you don’t use the words people are actually interested in and actively searching for, you’re missing a lot of traffic.

But keyword research goes well beyond search engines. In fact, close your eyes for a moment and imagine a world where search engines don’t deliver traffic at all.

Would keyword research still be valuable? You bet.

Keyword research, at its essence, is market research. It tells you what people are interested in, and in what relative numbers. Better yet, it reveals the actual language people are using when they think about those topics, which provides you with insight on how to converse with them via your blog.

That information is worth its weight in gold, if you know what to do with it. And that’s what this 5-part keyword research tutorial is all about.

Oh, and don’t forget to open your eyes back up. Because search engines do deliver lots of targeted traffic, and that’s the bonus round for smart keyword researchers.

A Five-Part Guide to Keyword Research in a Real-World Niche

Keyword Research for Bloggers is no dry, academic exercise that leaves you with more questions than answers. Instead, it walks you through choosing profitable blog subjects, content topics that are in high demand, and monetization methods that work—all based on keyword intelligence—by exploring an actual in-demand (and growing) niche.

Ready to get started? First, a word of warning… at 7,739 words, this free keyword research guide is pretty hefty, so make sure you have time for a bit of serious (but fun) reading.

If you need to return, bookmark this page at del.icio.us for handy reference.

Reviews of Keyword Research Tools

Check out the following reviews of popular keyword research tools to find out which solution best fits your needs:

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Edited By C14

5 Steps to Pay Per Click Advertising That Works

Compared with the ineffective crapshoot that is traditional advertising, there’s no better way to get targeted traffic than through pay-for-performance keyword advertising in search engines. If you’re not clear on what pay per click ads are, those are the sponsored links that show up when you perform a web search in Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

While more targeted than offline advertising or banner ads, it’s certainly possible to throw away a lot of cash with pay per click. The way to do that is to fail to think strategically about where you send people who click on your ads.

The goal of pay per click advertising is to get in front of searchers who are looking specifically for what you have to offer. This takes careful keyword research, strategic bidding, and compelling ad copy just to get the click.

The problem is, that’s where most people stop.

They make the mistake of sending that targeted traffic to the home page of their website or blog. Even worse, they make no attempt to establish a relationship with those that don’t buy, so as to boost conversion rates for every dollar spent.

So, if you’re selling products or services, it makes sense to make sales and build your fan club at the same time. Here’s how to boost your conversion rates from any pay per click campaign while also boosting your subscriber numbers.

The first thing to do is build a ultra-specific page to send the search traffic to, called a landing page. Depending on the variety of key words you are bidding on, you may even build several landing pages that each narrowly address the specific needs of that searcher.
When I say “searchers,” I mean searchers. Do not participate in contextual advertising programs on publisher sites. I think we’ve all seen enough AdSense spam to understand part of the reasoning here. But even on reputable sites, contextual advertising brings too many “curiosity clicks” that kill your return on investment. You want people who are actively looking for what you are offering. You can choose to opt-out of non-search traffic with both Google and Yahoo.
The landing page does not sell your product or service. This is key. You instead offer a quality free resource –- a mini-course, ebook, teleseminar, or other type of tutorial that is directly related to what you are ultimately selling. By teaching people about the subject matter of your product or service, you are actually engaging in a highly effective form of selling, all while establishing a relationship.
Whatever your free offer, it must be delivered by an email or RSS autoresponder that allows you to stay in contact with the prospect.
You should explicitly inform your prospects that in addition to the free resource you are offering, they will also be receiving your email newsletter / blog updates. Make sure you make this part of your offer as enticing as possible. You’re delivering valuable, relevant content on a regular basis, right?

And there you have it. You’ll likely make some sales right away, but your real profits will come from the people who warm up to your offer thanks to the ongoing value you provide with your blog content.

This technique is by no means new. But it’s shocking how many people still don’t use it, as they waste good money sending targeted traffic to a home page that is not laser-focused, and also fail to offer true value to the searcher that results in a relationship.

You don’t propose marriage before you get a first date. And you likewise shouldn’t expect people to just automatically jump at the chance to give you money upon arriving at your home page.

Of course, each of the five steps above could use some elaboration, and I’ll be offering tips in the future that can help boost landing page conversions even for those who have been using this method for years. Also, the key word research and bidding process in Google AdWords (the largest pay per click program) is a topic in itself that requires mastery to be effective.

For help with that part of the process, check out Perry Marshall’s free 5 Days to Success With Goggle AdWords mini-course. I own Perry’s AdWords book and it is an invaluable resource. He’s the real deal when it comes to strategies that drive traffic from Google.

And that free mini-course sign-up page is an excellent example of a landing page that works. :)

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Edited By C14

Four Simple Steps to More Blog Subscribers

Do you know the quickest, simplest way to get more subscribers to your blog?

The answer is to ask them to subscribe, and make it as easy as possible.

Wow. That’s way too obvious, right?

And yet, day in and day out, I see bloggers who not only fail to ask for the subscription, they downright make it difficult to subscribe.

I’ve literally had to poke around on some blogs just trying to find a way to get the content delivered.

Most people won’t do that. And I’ve ended up ditching plenty of blogs because it was too much of a hassle.

So, believe it or not, you can gain an advantage over your competition by simply making it easier to subscribe. The successful conversion of visitors to subscribers is in no small part related to simple usability and motivation adjustments.

Here are the basic small changes that will boost your subscriber conversion rate right away:

Make Your Subscription Options a Top Priority

On every single page of Blogger (BlogSpot), the navigation sidebar starts off with RSS and email subscription options. If a site visitor is familiar with RSS, she can’t help but notice the large standard icon to the right. Even if another visitor hasn’t a clue about feeds, the bright orange button naturally draws the eye over to the right, and down to the prominent black box labeled “Get Our E-Mail Newsletter” with a nice “Subscribe” button.

Given my background in email publishing, there was never any doubt that my primary focus for Blogger would be to build a regular subscription-based readership. Because blogging makes publishing so much easier than it was in my ezine days, it has brought many more people into the game. But often bloggers don’t have the subscription mindset that I take for granted due to the history.

In my opinion, there’s too much reliance on search engines and short-term traffic in blogging. You can’t control Google or its ever-shifting SERPs, and you can’t really predict when and how much traffic will come from incoming links.

But your subscriber list is all yours, as long as you treat it right.

Which means you should make you subscription options (both RSS and email are a necessity) a prominent and easily identifiable aspect of your blog. And never forget that your subscriber list is full of people who have trusted you with their valuable attention.

The Fewer Steps to Subscribe, the Better

After making your subscription options a prominent element of your layout, the next most important factor is decreasing the hassle. Reduce the number of steps and the amount of data it takes to complete the subscription process, and fewer people will abandon the subscription, or get distracted by something else.

MarketingExperiments.com performed subscription pathway optimization testing for a free newsletter. By reducing the number of subscription steps by just one, and by limited data collection to first name and email address, the daily subscription rate went up 711%!

There was one other thing Marketing Experiments did to boost subscriptions — they offered a free ebook as an incentive. But that topic deserves its own post, which will be coming shortly.

The reduction in steps and hassle is one of the reasons I swear by Feedburner for RSS subscriptions. While the free service has tons of other valuable features (subscriber stats are crucial), primary benefit number one is a feed landing page that presents feed reader options that allow a simple click subscription process. Compare that to coming across a messy XML page, cutting and pasting the URL, getting to your feed reader, finding the “add feed” button…

You get the point.

Dedicated Subscription Page

This one is short and sweet. Create a static page on your blog that contains both your RSS and email options.

Ask for the Subscription

This is where most bloggers are letting subscription opportunities really slip away. If you want someone to perform a certain action in greater numbers than they currently are, you need to ask.

It’s a call to action, and the desired action is a subscription.

Many of the remaining installments in this series will focus on different strategies for asking for the subscription in various contexts. But here’s a simple one that most people just don’t do (and I’ve been lazy about myself lately):

If you’re already doing all four of these basic things on your blog, good for you. We’ll be drilling down into some other techniques that may take you to the next level. If you are not in good shape on these four elements, try making adjustments, and see what your results look like. I think you’ll be pleased.

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Edited By C14

10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers

The question I seem to be getting over and over these days is…

How did you get 6,000 subscribers in 10 months?

The answer is simple—I value subscribers more than any other measure of blog success, such as page views or raw traffic. Subscribers are the life blood of a successful blog in my opinion, and frankly, I wish I had more of them. :)

OK, that may be a bit vague.

So here are 10 specific strategies you can begin to implement today and start getting more blog subscribers right away.

1. Make it easy and obvious

As I’ve said before in more detail, make your subscription options prominent, offer an email alternative to RSS, and ask for the subscription, preferably at the bottom of each post.

2. Be laser focused

Make sure that you are primarily focusing on a particular topic, and the more specialized that topic is, the better you’ll do. It’s also key to step back and evaluate whether there are enough prospective readers in your chosen niche. It’s better to be brutally honest with yourself than to toil away and end up disappointed.

3. Offer a bribe

Relax, it’s nothing illegal. It’s an ethical bribe, in the form of a free ebook, report, e-course or audio series. Typically this only works with email subscriptions tied to autoresponders, because you want to condition delivery of the bonus on subscription.

But here’s a nifty way to do it with RSS:

If you have a WordPress blog, use the free Feedvertising plugin to link to the download page for your free gift. Since Feedvertising links only show up in the feed (and not in the post), only feed subscribers will see the link and have access to the bonus.

4. Use viral ebooks

This is a spin on the ethical bribe strategy, but instead you let other people give away your PDF ebook or even bundle it for sale with other products. The PDF in turn promotes your blog.

5. Dedicated subscription landing page

Create a page that is dedicated to nothing more than obtaining a subscription, and drive traffic to it from your blog, AdWords, or really any other source you want. You can even put it on a unique URL, and add in the ethical bribe strategy to increase signups. For more information on doing this with AdWords, read this article.

6. Become a guest blogger

Contributing content to someone else’s blog may seem crazy, but it’s a solid strategy to gain exposure for your own blog and build your subscriber base. Just make it very clear to the blog owner that you require a very brief byline at the end of the post, with a link back to your site. And make sure it’s original content, not something recycled off of your blog.

7. Start a podcast

Start a related podcast on your subject matter, and get it into iTunes and listed in the various podcasting directories. Mention your blog in every episode and the benefits of subscribing, and try to land some interviews with prominent players in your niche. Not only will you be opening up a new promotional channel, you’re also creating bonus content that can be reused as part of your ethical bribe campaign for new subscribers.

8. Post in forums

A tried and true technique since the earliest days of the Internet is to be a helpful, proactive participant in forums that are important in your niche. People will notice that you are offering yourself up to others, and will be more inclined to see what else you have to offer with your blog.

9. Networking

This is perhaps the most overlooked strategy for gaining traffic and subscribers. Don’t badger other bloggers for links, because it rarely works anymore. Find a way to help them with something, and then eventually work that initial graciousness into a business relationship and even friendship. There are real people behind these blogs, and they respond to good will just like people do offline.

10. Cross-promotional deals

Here’s another cool way to make use of the Feedvertising plugin for WordPress.

Find a blogger that publishes related, but non-competitive content. Work out a deal where you both promote each other in your RSS feeds, using Feedvertising. If one blog has way more subscribers than the other, work out a ratio deal. Since Feedvertising allows you to create up to six rotating links, the smaller blog would promote the other blog continuously, while the larger blog would reserve one slot for the smaller blog, and use the other slots for other cross-promotion deals, affiliate links, or sponsor ads.

So there you have it, with one additional word of caution.

All of the above presupposes that you are producing the best content you can. If you honestly cannot say that you are doing your best work content-wise, start there. But afterwards, using some or all of the above will definitely increase your subscriber count.

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Edited By C14

April 16, 2008

How to Develop Stickyness to Your Blog ?

Let’s Talk About “Stickyness” Today.

What is it and how can it be created on your blog.
A blogs success is in keeping it’s readers come back - everytime! You can buy traffic, run competitions, give away stuff or run a link-give-away offer even to get traffic. But they will never give you loyal readers.

Loyal readers come back to you all the time, they love your blog, they love your writing, they love you - as a blogger.
Personally, i prefer a handful of loyal readers to a large volume of one-time visitors.And to create loyal readers,you need stickyness to your blog.

Stickyness means the ability of your blog to keep pulling people in, when they are detached or within the loop - at your wish.

Let’s see how we can create loyal readers to your blog.This will deal mainly about keeping the quality in your articles,how to keep them genuine and addictive to readers.

Stick to your topics, keep them focussed.

Do you have a long category list? Even worse, does it get lengthier with each new post?
I must then warn you that your blog is at risk.Risk of losing your readers(who you managed to get with much pain!)
You know that there are already plenty of blogs out there, there is no reason someone must read your blog to get updated on technology. If you don’t blog it there’s 99% chance that somebody else will.
So, keep the number of topics focussed and less.You don’t want to write about all the technology advancements in the world - probably Nano-technology or Bio-Technology. That makes it easier for your reader to remember you, your blog and relate it to the topics you write.

So stick to the topics, keep them concentrated, keep them updated but never deviate from them. Every time you are tempted to deviate from the topics - just read your archives and you’ll be busy posting updations.
Deviating from your topic means only one thing - decrease in number of repeated visitors - directly proportional!

Keep interacting

The blogosphere is all about crowds - talking - chats - speakers - shouts and the like. Folksonomy as it’s called.Your blog readers are a pool of think-tanks, get them talking.You never know, some one out there might correct you on a point. But let it be a dialogue, knowledge sharing is mutually beneficial isn’t it? in this case, it’s a 3D thing - you - your
reader- and other readers. All of the three entities are involced and benefitted. So leave room for your visitors to think and respond to you.Interact with them, if possible, through your blog and not elsewhere. Avoid(where ever possible) email chat/IM chats but encourage people to use your contact form - they are likely to move to an archive page once the form is submitted, but in an IM chat, they are not even on your site.

Read/reply to comments

Okay, you’ve left room for interaction in the form of comments and there are lot of them.It’s not time for celebration yet.They are all questions to be answered.Unless you take care of them at the right time, they become liabilities. Now you can guess what a visitor will do and what impression he gets of the blogger when his questions are unanswered.So make a habit of commenting as well as replying to them. You can answer them all together once in a while rather than answering them one by one.This will save time as well as keep you focussed.

Ask questions

You can’t go on preaching about things all the time. Well, you may be a master of “AdSense Monetization” or “Online money making” thingy but, how can you give answers when you don’t have questions? People have questions in their mind when they visit your site,and before they leave, it’s your duty to answer them.So asking them questions, is one way of making your life easy.Ask questions, to which you yourself have an inclination to.Thereby, you are showing your visitor that you value them, you want to know their opinion.So, when writing articles it’s a good point to leave a question cleverly embedded in it. It will keep the cycle vicious.

Disagree

Disagreeing is yet another way to express your thoughts on a particular topic. Suppose you read that article on online money making at a blog, but you think otherwise.Let your thoughts flow to your posts - let others(blogger) know that he missed thinking from your perspective or what he said was absolutely wrong. Disagreeing won’t be seen as a negative thing, instead it’s an opportunity to prove that you think or not.You can disagree only if you think.So please do it to your visitors or another blogger who wrote an article on the same topic you are interested in.It shows that you are genuine and your ideas are free.Your visitors will love it.

Don’t get corrupted

When there is a flurry of information, it’s easy to get mislead, and it can get you thinking wrong even.Your readers may not enjoy it at all.Sometimes it even leads to you disagreeing or thinking otherwise about a topic you might have already blogged about.Remember, there are archives in your blog, they are read by your visitors if not you - so don’t get corrupted by wrong information that you gathered yesterday.Keep yourself focussed on the topics you are interested, filter away the wrong ones and make your articles crisp and clear.

Be Consistent

By consistency I mean, maintaining a regularity in posting cycles, and post amounts in the blog.It’s good to develop a habit of posting according to a schedule.That way, people knows what to expect and what they need to dodge. Suppose you post articles on weekdays based on topics and at the weekend you regularly open a game - people who are interested in the game will not miss fridays on your blog.

These are points i gathered from my experience - none of them fabricated. Everybody seems to be trying hard to get more and more visitors, but in the hurry we tend to forget this important point. I did and i payed the price. Hope it helps all the young bloggers out there, not to lose their hard earned traffic.

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Edited By C14

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs - SEO

Search Engine Optimization For Blogs (SEO)

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page.

But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.

Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in

http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.

I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal. But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.

Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog.

Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites

Link Exchanges:

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

Trackbacks:

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

Comments:

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. Update frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.

Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.

You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.

For more ways of building traffic to your blog, read the article "How To Build Traffic To Your Blog."

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Edited By C14

How To Boost Your Blog Traffic ?

Many first time bloggers automatically assume that once their blog is setup and they put a few posts on it, they will get some hits and regular readers. This is quite untrue. You won’t get any traffic if no one knows about your website. In this article I hope to tackle these problems and discuss some of the common ways bloggers and webmasters drive more traffic to their site by understanding the user.

Blog Usability

Before I get into getting your name out there, your blog has to have some style. Most web users are instantly turned off by tacky site designs or extreme neon colors. I know I won’t stay at a website too long if the layout or navigation annoys me. The goal is to have a unique blog, different than all the other weblogs on the net. The one thing I really stress to others is making it easy for your readers to contact you. It shouldn’t take a reader more than a click, if any, to find your email address or a contact form. This makes the reader feel like someone actually runs and cares about the website. An about page is also a great asset to have on a personal site or blog. The more a reader knows about you, the more they trust your content. I highly recommend reading this weblog usability article by usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

Content

Your blog’s usability goes hand in hand with its content. You can specialize in a niche subject as long as you have an idea of how many people might be interested in that subject. If you do well with your niche subject matter, you could get some crazy traffic for being the only decent blog online with that type of content. On the other hand you could have widely used content, such as some aspect of technology, but add your own twist with your opinion or comparing/contrasting from other tech analysts. People won’t go to your site to read something they could have read on CNet or Tom’s Hardware, they want a unique take on it. If you learn anything from this article, I hope its that reblogging is a very bad thing. The one thing to kill your traffic is having identical content to another several hundred blogs. I suggest taking a glance at Mr. Veloso’s Evils of Constant Reblogging to get a better idea. Finding out what your content should be is a key element of your blog’s identity and the type of image your blog will ultimately emit.

Technorati is Your Best Friend

Technorati is one of the best traffic providers for bloggers. It makes your blog much easier to find when people search by technorati tags. Technorati is also a large blog ranking engine. Based on the number of links to your blog from various websites, your blog is given a rank. The higher your rank the easier your blog is to find when people search for things. A higher rank gives your blog greater credibility in technorati. If you don’t already have a technorati account, get one. After you have setup the main settings, such as your profile, you need to claim your blog. Go to Account and then down the page to Your Blogs. Enter the URL of your blog in the URL field and then hit “Claim this weblog.” Once you’ve done that go to “Configure this Blog” and fill in what you can. Click the checkbox to select “Include this blog in Technorati’s Blog Finder” and fill out as many tags or keywords that accurately represent the content in your blog. When you’ve done that, click “Save Changes” and then grab your claim code. There are two types of codes that you may put somewhere in your blog for technorati to verify that your blog exists and keep track of it. If you have a blog that is Blogger powered or some other blog host that does not give you direct control of your blog files you will want to use the “Link Code” and post it somewhere on your blog. If you are using a more versatile blog publishing system, such as a custom WordPress or Movable Type installation you should copy the “Embed Code.” You can edit your sidebar, header, or footer file and put it wherever you like. You also have the option of posting a Technorati search box or various links on your blog without altering the code you just pasted. Select the options you like and click “Save Changes.” Everything is done by automatically by Technorati. One last thing you might consider is adding the Technorati ping link to your weblog. Doing this will let Technorati know when you have updated your blog. Find out how to do that on Technorati’s Ping Configuration page.

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Edited By C14

Business Blogging Toolset: 100 Resources for Entrepreneur - Writers

Business Blogging Toolset: 100 Resources for Entrepreneur-Writers

In the past few years, blogs have become a big part of business on the internet. Everything from anthropomorphized cats to celebrity gossip can bring millions of visitors and a steady stream of revenue. It can be hard to figure of where to start with your own money-making blog, but we’ve tried to make it a little easier by condensing the essential resources you’ll need to start blogging profitably into this list. Check out these sources to get started right.

Blogging Platforms

The internet is chock full of sites that can provide a platform for your blog. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of them, so research carefully before deciding which will work best for you.

WordPress — WordPress can either be a hosted platform or one you use on your own server. Basic access to Wordpress is free of charge and there are a wide variety of templates available for customization. It also comes with some attractive features like spam blocking and integrated stats as well as numerous plugins you can add yourself.
Blogger — Blogger is a free, hosted blogging platform. While Blogger might lack some of the usability that other platforms have, it makes up for it with features like the Audioblogger service which allows you to create audio recordings for your blog using your phone. Blogger is also useful in that you can upload it to your own website, meaning visitors to your site won’t even know you’re using it as a platform.
Movable Type — Movable Type is a powerful blogging tool, but perhaps not the easiest to set up and use. It does, however, offer pretty much every feature you could want and will get you some blogging net cred. It is, however, not exactly cheap. Professional users can expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $199.
TypePad — TypePad is a more user-friendly version of Movable Type, with many of the same bells and whistles but in a much easier to use format. The functionality of your TypePad blog will likely depend on how much you’re willing to invest. Lower level packages aren’t very customizable, but the Pro level provides features like group blogging and additional customization features.
Vox — Vox is a bit of a mix between a social networking site and a weblogging service. Customizability takes a backseat to ease of posting new content. Depending on the goal of your blog, this might work well for you.
Text Pattern — Text Pattern is another self-hosted blogging system. It comes with valuable tools like Textile and Sections which allow users that may not be familiar with html to easily format web content. Textpattern also is great at blocking spam, but it lacks features commonly found on other blogging sites.
Boast Machine — A free blog publishing tool, BoastMachine is mostly template driven, but allows for HTML customization. It has some notable security features like IP blocking and banning and has automatic backup and restore systems.
Blog.com — For beginners, Blog.com might be a good place to start. With easy-to-use templates and setup, you can begin blogging within a few minutes. This ease doesn’t come without a price, however, as you are limited in the amount of storage and advanced features.
B2evolution — B2evolution is one of the most fully-featured blog tools out there to use. Because of this, it can be a bit overwhelming for the new user. While there are a number of themes available, real customization can be difficult without some technical know-how. Still, the numerous features can make up for some initial difficulties with the learning curve.
ExpressionEngine — ExpressionEngine is a blogging tool with some attractive extras. Aside from the usual blogging tools, it provides integrated image galleries and mailing lists. It comes with a variety of templates, but customizing them may prove to have a bit of a learning curve. You can host the blog on your own server or ExpressionEngine will host if for you, but either way, expect to pay about $199 for commercial use of the service.

Design and Content

You aren’t likely to get too much return traffic to your blog if it is hard to read or unattractive. Your blog’s popularity depends on the quality of your design as well as content. These ten articles should help you get on the right track to creating an attractive and interesting blog.

980 Word Press Templates — Emily Robbins serves up a huge archive of templates for your WordPress blog, allowing you to easily change the look and feel of your blog to match that of your business.
10 Blog Design Mistakes — Jakob Neilson discusses how to make your blog more user friendly.
Tutorial for Blog Design in Photoshop — Breaking away from the standard blog template can make your blog look more attractive and be more memorable to users. This article details how to make banners, choose a color scheme, and design a layout.
Blog Interface Design Tutorial — Luke Wroblewski and Jed Wood discuss how to make a better blog interface so you won't get bogged down with blog archives and comments.
Gaining Blog Credibility with Design — Darren Rowse explains how the design of your blog can play a big part in how users view your credibility as a blogger.
The Importance of Content — It’s easy to forget about the content when you get caught up in making sure your site looks good. This article discusses how to make sure your content stays a priority.
Building a Better Blog — This article explains 5 elements that can help you improve the quality of your blog.
10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas — Not sure how to grab the attention of potential readers? This article can give you some helpful pointers on making your headlines pop.
Bringing Your “A” Game to Blog Writing — Being successful at blogging is due in large part to the content of your blog and how well you write about the topic at hand. This article explains how to bring your best skills to blog writing.
Using News Aggregators for Content — If you’re having trouble thinking of ideas for content, this article describes how you can utilize news aggregators to come up with new and relevant ideas.

Marketing

While it would be nice to think that internet users will just stumble upon your blog regularly, the reality is that you’ll have to work hard to draw traffic to your site. After all, there isn’t much point to blogging if you’re the only one reading what you write. Here are some tools and articles that can help you get more traffic to your site.

Blog Directory — Submitting your site to this directory of blogs can be a great way to increase your blog traffic and get your name out there.
Ping-o-Matic — Ping-o-Matic is a free service which pings search engines when you update or add new content to your blog.
Search Engine Optimization — This article discusses how to optimize your blog’s keywords and content to get more search engine hits.
How to: Boost Your Blog Traffic — Paul Stamatiou gives advice on how to bring more visitors to your site through usability, content and search engines.
How to: Market Your Blog in 2007 — Darren Rowse explains how to effectively market your blog with 41 helpful tips and suggestions.
21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic — Not getting the traffic you think you deserve? Use these 21 suggestions to maximize your blog’s potential.
How to Develop Stickyness — You don’t just want to bring new users to your site and never see them again. You want readers to keep coming back. This article explains how to make interest in your blog stick.
10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers — One of the marks of successfully getting people to come back is a large subscriber list. Here you’ll find advice on how to maximize subscriptions to your blog.
25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog — Lee Odden gives 25 great tips for getting your blog noticed and visited.
13 Tips to Get Your Blog Noticed — This article provides some useful ways to make your blog stand out from the millions of others.

Blogs about Blogging

As odd as it may seem, there are numerous blogs out there that discuss the act of blogging itself. Here are a few worth checking out.

Copyblogger — Copyblogger gives some great advice on successful copywriting for your blog.
Blogging Pro — Blogging Pro can keep you up to date on blogging news, plugins and new themes for blogs.
Scoblizer —Robert Scoble, author of Naked Conversations, focuses on technology and how blogs have affected business.
The Big Blog Company — This site discusses blog marketing and emerging technology issues.
John Chow Dot Com — Dot com mogul John Chow discusses blogs and how to earn money from them.
Blog Traffic School — Yaro Starak writes about how to build blog traffic and maintain a great blog.
Digital Inspiration — Digital Inspiration has numerous articles about blogging as well as other internet and technology related issues.
Neobot's Weblogs — Internet entrepreneur Neobot's shares news and advice about blogging and internet business.
Daily Blog Tips — Get a daily dose of blog improvement advice with daily blog tips.
Pronet Advertising —Neil Patel discusses internet issues, especially those related to blogging and social content sites.

Blogs about Business Blogging

Sometimes the best way to learn how to do something is to benefit from the experience and advice of those who’ve already done it. These blogs should provide some guidance and information for getting started on creating a blog for business.

Advanced Business Blogging — This is a blog about marketing and creating a viable brand for your blog online.
Blogging for Business — Ted Demopoulos discusses blogging and podcasts as practical business applications.
Andy Wibbels — Andy Wibbels talks about blogging for small businesses.
Problogger — Problogger gives advice on adding income streams to your blog.
Blogging Business — Blogging business discusses how to market your business using blogs and RSS feeds.
Business Blog Consulting — This blog gives advice on how to increase blog traffic and comments as well as news on the business blogging world.
Blog Business World — Wayne Hurlbert gives his perspective on business blogs, search engine optimization, and marketing.
Blog for Business — Blog for Business focuses on how corporate blogs can increase business and profits.
NetBusinessBlog — NetBusinessBlog gives advice on how to make a living online using blogs.
BusinessBlogWire — This is a blog that gives advice and tips on creating profitable corporate and business blogs.

Blogging Forums and Networking

Great blogs generate lots of traffic thanks to buzz about their site. You can create your own buzz by networking with other bloggers and submitting your articles to social media sites.

Blogger Forum — This is a great place to chat with fellow bloggers and get some advice on how to begin blogging.
Bloggst — An online community for bloggers, Bloggst has advice on starting and managing a blog as well as interviews with those in the know.
True Blogging — True Blogging is a forum dedicated to discussing all aspects of blogging and blog monetization.
Blogger Talk — Blogger Talk is another forum for bloggers to get together to talk about and show off their blogs.
Bloggeries — Bloggeries offers a worldwide community for bloggers to exchange ideas and information.
Webloggers — Webloggers is a discussion forum for just about everything to do with blogging, from legal issues to tutorials. It’s a great resource for newbies and advanced users alike.
The Blog Herald — The newspaper of the blogging world, The Blog Herald contains news about issues relevant to the blogosphere.
Reddit — Reddit brings together all of the best blog articles from the fields of politics, science and just fun stuff.
Digg — Digg is one of the most popular social content sites. Making the front page is a great way to send massive amounts of traffic your way.
Del.icio.us — Del.icio.us allows users to easily share bookmarks and links. Adding a link to Del.icio.us at the end of your blog posts can help your articles be more widely read.

Search Engines

Search engines can be a very useful way to find out what other kinds of blogs are out there. They can also help you check out and work on your rankings to make sure you don’t miss out on any potential traffic.

Technorati — One of the most widely used search engines, Technorati tracks over 93 million blogs. Make sure yours is one of them.
Sphere — Sphere is a blog search engine with a twist. Not only can you find the blog you’re looking for, but also a contextual widget that shows related posts from other blogs.
Google Blog Search — With the popularity of Google’s regular search engine, it was only a matter of time before they jumped on the blog search engine bandwagon. A little simpler than other blog search engines, it’s essentially a Google search limited to blog postings.
Ice Rocket — Similar to Google’s blog search, IceRocket searches for content on the web that is posted in blogs.
Daypop — Geared towards news and current events blogs, Daypop’s engine requires that your blog be updated frequently.
Blogdigger — A small search engine, Blogdigger allows you to find blogs in your area.
Waypath — Waypath allows searchers to easily find blogs they would be interested in reading with a “find similar” feature.
Eatonweb — Eatonweb is a blog directory with categories and stats easily accessible on the front page. Submitting your own blog is easy, too.
Blogrunner — Blogrunner provides a hot topics listing as well as features. It’s primarily geared towards news, but there are other topics listed as well.
Blog Search Engine — Blog Search Engine is just that, a blog search engine. It also provides categories and a ticker of the latest posts on the front page.

Statistics and Analysis

Keeping track of where your traffic is coming from and how much you are getting can be an integral part of helping you market and optimize your blog. These are a few resources to get you started.

StatCounter — StatCounter is a free statistics and analysis tool for keeping track of your blog’s traffic numbers.
Site Meter — Site Meter is available in Premium and Basic versions, and can offer more advanced analysis of your site.
Alexa — Alexa is a great tool for comparing your blog’s performance to other blogs on the internet.
Google Analytics — Google provides a free and full-featured tool for determining where your visitors are coming from and how they use your site.
Measure Map — Measure Map is a free tool to track your visitors’ habits.
AWStats — AWStats is an open source tool that you can use to track your blog’s statistics.
Feedburner — Feedburner provides a wide range of tools to help improve your blog’s RSS feed as well as statistic tracking.
103Bees — A great tool for search engine optimization, 103Bees gives detailed information on the search engine traffic your blog receives.
MyBlogLog — MyBlogLog is both a community building tool and a simple blog analytics tool.
ShinyStat — ShinyStat is a web analytics and counter tool with both free and paid versions.

Money Making Tools

If you’re truly interested in making a profit from your blog, you’re going to have to do something to draw in those dollars. These are a few resources that can help you make money through donations or by placing ads on your site.

PayPal — Use PayPal to set up a button on your site that readers can click on to make donations.
Google AdSense — Google AdSense is where many bloggers make the majority of their income. Ads are both pay per click and pay per view.
Yahoo Publisher Network — Similar to Google AdSense, Yahoo’s ads are pay per click.
Txtswap — Txtswap is a program that allows bloggers to exchange text links in order to bring in more traffic.
Adbrite — Adbrite can provide payment for simple text ads on your blog.
Chitika — Chitika is interactive advertising based on the content of your site. It tends to take up a little more room than other ads, but it also tends to pay a little more.
BlogBurst — BlogBurst can help you get your blog published in big time media outlets and get paid for it.
Text Link Ads — Text Link Ads is another resource for putting text ads on your site.
Bidvertiser — Bidvertiser offers an innovative system where you set the bids on pay per click ads.
ReviewMe — Want to make a little cash on the side? ReviewMe is a marketplace for paid blog reviews.

Tools and Miscellaneous

These are just a few more tools and articles that can help you make and maintain a better and more profitable blog.

Blog Basics — For the beginner, this site outlines everything you need to know about blogging.
Structured Blogging — Structured Blogging is a tool that can help bloggers create better organized and formatted content.
Qumana — Qumana is a desktop blog editor. It works on both Windows and Mac formats.
GeoLoc — GeoLoc is a fun widget that shows where visitors to your blog are coming from.
BlogRolling — This is a useful tool for keeping your blogroll organized.
101 Steps to Becoming a Better Blogger — Lifehacker provides an excellent list of tips to help you be more successful with blogging.
WordPress Backup — This is a valuable plugin for WordPress that helps you backup your blog data in case something goes wrong.
Sociable — Sociable makes social bookmarking easy by adding links to interesting links at the end or your blog posts.
Blog Carnival — Joining a blog carnival can help you get linked more often and increase traffic to your site.
Creating Scannable Content — Studies have shown that readers of internet articles don’t actually read them at first, they scan. This article details how to lay out your content to reflect this.

Whether you’re a seasoned blogger wanting to increase your blog traffic or a novice looking for advice on where to begin, these resources can offer great help getting you on the right track. Use them wisely and you can increase your chances of creating a successful and interesting blog, and maybe even becoming an online sensation.

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