What Is a Blog – The History of Blogs

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:32 am

What is a blog? A blog is a combination of a personal webpage and a journal – in some cases. In other cases, it is a way to get customer feedback. Others use blogs as a personal journal. There really is no answer these days to what is a blog, simply because a blog can be many different things, with many different uses – depending on the blogger who is blogging.

Blogging officially began in 1994 when a student, Justin Hall, began his personal blog. He blogged for eleven years, and he is recognized as one of the earliest bloggers. A weblog was originally a combination of a personal webpage and a journal. This is still one definition of a blog, but there are many other definitions as well today.

The term weblog was invented by Jorn Barger in 1997, but it was shortened to Blog by Peter Merholz in 1999. The word blog may have actually been a typo. Peter used the phrase ‘we blog’ in the sidebar of his weblog. Blogs started popping up more often on the Internet in 1999, and in March of 2003, the Oxford English Dictionary added the words weblog, weblogging, and weblogger to the dictionary.

Since 2003, blogs have been increasing in popularity. People have blogged about current events, war, politics, television shows, television stars, terrorism, and almost any other topic you can imagine. Blogs are used to inform people about services and products by allowing people to post reviews of specific services and products. They are used to stay up-to-date on events that occur within families, clubs, organizations, and businesses. Blogs are used to swap recipes, to learn, and to vent. If you can think it, it is probably on a blog someplace.

Blogs have gone from personal journals to a way to inform the public and discuss politics and world events to business use. Yes, people make money with blogs. In fact, blogging can earn you a very nice income if you know what you are doing. One blogger even auctioned his blogging services on EBay for thousands of dollars! Niche blogs are used to earn money as well. These are blogs where a person writes on a very narrow, yet popular topic, and uses affiliate programs or Google AdSense ads to earn revenue.

A blog entry was even used to catch a killer in May of 2005, when a person was blogging and mentioned in his blog that his sister’s boyfriend was at the house – right before he and his sister were murdered! Blogs have been used to figure out what caused people to commit suicide, and even to figure out why some people have committed crimes.

Teenagers were the first large group of people to use blogs. Blogging became a favorite past time between the years of 2000 and 2004. Teenagers still blog, but adults have caught the blogging fever as well.

Over the short years of blogging history, blogging has become simpler in some ways, and more complicated in others. Today, using a service such as Blogger at http://www.blogger.com anyone who has access to a computer with an Internet connection can be set up and blogging in less than five minutes. In that way, blogging has become simplified. However, RSS has come into the picture, which in some ways makes blogging very confusing for beginners.

Blog Your Way To Riches!

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:56 am

If you are looking for a great business idea, a Blog, short for “Web Log,� is a hot way to generate lots of traffic to your website! People are searching the internet for free information and having your own Blog is a great way to deliver it to them. Why would you want to give away free information? Because with time people will come to view you as an authority figure on whatever topic your Blog is about, and then eventually they will gain trust in you, and people will buy much more readily from people who they know and trust!

A Blog is basically a webpage that focuses on information rather then on flashy graphics. This is great if your knowledge of HTML is slim to none. The only thing you need to do is, post “articles� to your Blog on whatever topic you decide your Blog will be about, such as, Business opportunities, business ideas, affiliate programs, home based business, work at home, make money online, etc. The optimal number of words that should make up each of your articles is 450-600. The best way to run your Blog is by posting one new article a day. This way people will keep coming back to your Blog every day to read your latest article, and as I mentioned earlier this will not only familiarize people with whom you are but it will also build their confidence and trust in you, creating a state of mind in people that facilitates buying!

On your Blog you would want to put a link to your website along with your biographical information such as: [John Doe is the owner of yoursite.com. John specializes in helping people to work at home with their own home based business through the aid of various online business opportunities and affiliate programs. To make money online visit www.yoursite.com]. Your bio would be positioned at the end of each and every post you make so that people will always know were to find your site. As peoples confidence in you grow, more and more people will begin to visit your website and some will eventually buy from you!

If you don’t like the thought of writing an article every day and you don’t mind spending a little money you can pay a “Ghost Writer� to write your articles for you. No, one will know you are not the actual author and you will have the copyrights to the articles. You can find many ghost writers on the internet who will charge very reasonable prices. For instance for your Blog you would need about 30 articles written a month. You can find ghost writers who will write 30 quality articles for you every month for as low as $19.99!

There are lots of internet sites that will host your Blog site for free and setting up your Blog with them is E-A-S-Y! Once your Blog is set up the only thing you will need to do is post your articles each day. Sooner or later search engines will become aware of your Blog site. They will spider it, word for word, and when someone types a phrase or keyword that matches what is on one of your articles into one of the search engines, your Blog will show up on the search results with a link back to your Blog so be sure to include phrases and keywords into your articles that have a high search rate!

One last thing I should mention is that, you can also put cost-per-click(CPC) advertising, such as Google AdSense, on your Blog to earn additional revenue. You will be paid every time someone clicks on one of their ads on your Blog. Google makes it just as easy for you to put their AdSense ads on your Blog as it is for you to set up your Blog and it’s free! As time goes on and more of your articles are bringing in more traffic to your Blog, the amount of revenue CPC advertising will bring you can be quite substantial!

Having a Blog is a terrific way to drive lots of free high quality relevant traffic to your website. It’s easy to set up, requires no HTML, and it can also generate additional revenue for you through, cost-per-click(CPC) advertising. Most importantly it helps establish you as an authority figure, an expert in your field, who people will begin to believe in and eventually do whatever you say!

Make Money With Your Blog: The Clean And The Dirty Methods

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:58 am

Making money with your blog is not a hard process. However, there are MANY different paths that you can take in creating your new income stream. You can make a blog to promote affiliate products, a blog to promote solely the Google Adsense program, or you can ever create blogs to promote your own websites.

If you are going to use blogs to make money with affiliate programs, I suggest you find the main keyword subject of your blog, and type it into google like this:

“affiliate program” keyword

This will help you find affiliate products to promote on your blog. Once you find an affiliate program that you would like to promote you can gather the linking codes and add them to your blog’s template. You can also use Clickbank.com to help find affiliate products to promote. Clickbank pays you twice a month which is great, because you get the money you made from your blog really fast. Just go to clickbank.com and click “Promote Products” and enter your search terms in the top-left corner.

If you are going to use Adsense to monetize your blog then I suggest that you get some articles ghostwritten for you. Ghostwriting means getting someone else to write the articles for you, so you don’t have to do anything. I am currently paying $8 for a 600-700 word article, so base the prices you pay from that. There are a few sites that you can get ghost writers from, here are 3:

Scriptlance.com
Rentacoder.com
Getafreelancer.com

Remember though, if you find someone willing to work for just a few dollars an article, the quality may be very poor. I suggest you do NOT use people from India when getting articles ghost written, as English isn’t their native language. Make sure you also get a sample article from the ghost writer before you select them for your project. You need to make sure they have good writing ability and that you like their style of writing.

Now that you’ve gotten your articles, all you have to do is put your Adsense code on your blog template, and post an article every day or every other day. After you are done posting make sure you ‘ping’ your blog (bring spiders to distribute the content), this will make sure that you will have some traffic coming to your blog!

Now, if you want to just use your blogs to promote your own websites in the search engines, then I suggest you only use Blogger.com blogs. These blogs have a “weight” to them because they are a subdomain on Blogspot.com, which is PageRank 10. These blogs can get your websites indexed in as little as 2 days!

You need to be creating 5 new blogs per day per website that you are trying to get indexed with Blogger because they will delete blogs. This is not uncommon and it even happens to people that have personal blogs not promoting anything. However, this is not a reason to avoid them - you are the one who will be losing out on the fast search engine indexing.

For Blogger.com, I suggest that you create blogs with the following settings:

- Change the blogger template from NOINDEX/NOFOLLOW to INDEX/FOLLOW: This tells the search engine spiders to INDEX the blog and FOLLOW the links on the page.
- Remove the blogger bar at the top of every blog you create: To do this you must edit the template, and replace the body html tag with this code:

noembed tag, body tag, close no embed tag.

- Notify Weblogs.com
- Show 1 Day of Posts on the Front Page
- Archive Posts Daily
- Non-Public Blogger Blog (Unless you are adding Adsense to the blog) - this way no one can find your blog from the Blogger.com web site, you only want the search engine spiders to find it from pinging.

If you go as fast as you can you can create about one blog every 5 minutes. If you don’t want to do this whole process you can try using BloggerGenerator.

Now that you have your blogs created you have to post links to your websites. Post them in normal link format, from 10-100 links each post. After each post make sure that you ping your blog at Pingomatic.com or Pingoat.com. Post to these blogs twice daily or at least every day until Blogger has removed them. If you get lucky your blogs won’t even get removed and perhaps even get PageRank on the next update!

Making money with your blog is not challenging at all as you can see. If you start right now you could begin to see profits by as early as tomorrow morning. Make sure you use this information and not let it sit in the back of your mind!

Blog Your Way to the TOP

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:26 am

So you’ve heard that having a blog is a good idea for your business, but are you sure WHY it’s important? Understanding how blogs operate and how to use them for your business will give you great payoffs for your investment of time and energy. Not using your blog effectively will simply waste this fantastic resource.

WHY SHOULD I ‘BLOG FOR BUSINESS’?

Blogs are a great method for giving your business credibility. Whether you post about industry news, recommend links to related topics or post valuable inside information or experiences, your audience will view you not only as a commercial venue but as a business interested in its community.

You can also use your blog to build traffic to your commercial site and to build a list of interested prospects. All of these issues are solid tools for marketing your product or service online.

WHY BLOGGING IS GREAT FOR CUSTOMERS

Blogs are not viewed the same as a typical website or sales page. The postings are often less formal or are presenting readers with interesting tidbits that entertain or inform about your topic or industry. Regular postings that draw the attention of your target market will build interest in your product and establish you as an ‘expert’ as well as create a good relationship with your prospects.

Your prospects can easily receive notice of your recent postings right in their email inbox. By regularly posting relevant information your prospects will look to you first when needing the service or product you provide.

Since many blogs offer readers the ability to post comments you immediately provide an opportunity for feedback or questions. This can clue you in to what your market needs or thinks, which can quickly be responded to in your next post.

BLOGGING FOR TRAFFIC

There are several methods of traffic buildings with blogs. One method is through the blog provider. Often the provider offers readers the option of searching for blogs with a word or phrase. Using that phrase in your blog or title will bring interested visitors.

The other method is through search engines. Search engines love fresh content and blogs make this easy. Simply ‘ping’ your blog to other media (this announces your update) and the search engines will pick it up. Using commonly searched words and phrases may give you the top ranking you were looking for. You can also link to your business website with the phrase and increase traffic directly to your sales page.

Finally, you can add an RSS feature to your blog. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows other websites to run the content from your blog. Every time you make a post the information will be automatically updated on sites featuring your RSS. This is attractive to sites with topics related to yours since they will benefit from the fresh content and you will benefit from the exposure.

If you haven’t jumped on the blogging bandwagon yet you’ve been missing out on one of the cheapest and smartest marketing tools available. Creating a blog is easy and profitable - so make yours today!

The What, Why and How of Business Blogs

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:57 am

Blog is short for Web Log or Weblog and the Blogosphere is the online blog world, some parts of which are hyperlinked extensively to each other.

This is the Wikipedia definition: Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site.

I recommend that you read lots of people’s blogs to learn what blogs are. Go to your favorite search engine and type in the word ‘blog’ and the subject you’re interested in. For example, ‘web design blog’, or ‘blog music’ , or ’sports blog’. You’ll find lots of blogs that way.

Blogs have become a way in which regular, non-technical people can post information to the Web as easily as they can access it.

Why are blogs so important?

Well, they’re not that important, yet. But they could be soon, and most likely will be. In fact, some would argue that they are already vital in today’s Web business world. I am not ready to agree to that yet, but it is becoming more obvious to me over time that blogs can no longer be ignored in business.

Online businesses can benefit from blogging by taking advantage of a vehicle for easily posting new, original, and business-related content on a regular basis.

Here are some more business benefits of blogging:

• Blogs help to position you and/or your company as experts and leaders in your industry.

• They’re interactive in nature. At the end of each blog entry is usually a link that allows anyone to add their own comments to your blog entries. This allows your customers and potential customers to make comments about your products or services or ask you questions to help them in their buying process.

• Blogs are marketed easily and quickly by their RSS feeds

• Blogs allow you to stress your choice of products, services, relevant news stories, quotes, pictures and more with your audience, customers and potential customers.

• People are generous with adding links to your blog if the content is good, especially within their own blogs. More links means more traffic and better search engine rankings.

Here are some ways in which you can make revenue from your blog:

1. Selling advertisements. Whether you use banners or text links, if your site draws a regular audience interested in your blog topics or theme, try to offer ad space to organizations that are looking to market to your audience. In fact, if your blogs becomes really popular then advertisers will call you.
2. Offering Google’s AdSense. Google’s website explains, “Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money.” learn more about AdSense.
3. Affiliate Programs. Affiliate programs allow Web sites who provide links to your site to receive payments or reciprocal advertising in exchange for promoting your Web site. In the case of blogging, this is reversed, where you post links within your blog, and collect money from the owners of those links when they result in a click-through and sale.

Here are some websites where you can get your blog listed in:

• BlogWise - http://www.blogwise.com
• Blog Search Engine - http://www.blogsearchengine.com
• Blog Hub - http://www.bloghub.com
• Blog Daisey - http://www.blogdaisey.com
• Get Blogs - http://www.getblogs.com
• Is Blogs - http://www.lsblogs.com

How to blog for business:

First you need to get blogging software. You can choose to create a blog that is housed on another site such as http://www.blogger.com (which is a blog service) or you can host it on your own Web server. I recommend the latter since the links that are developed by others pointing to your blog won’t be counted in the search engines. This is because the links are attributed to domains, so a link to http://MyNewBlog.blogger.com gives a link credit to blogger.com and not your domain.

If your blog is a business blog, you really ought to host your own blog as opposed to using a blog service. You’ll need the extra functionality and control.

If you plan on hosting your own blog and if you plan to use a UNIX Web server platform then you need to go with blogging software such as Movable Type, for example. If you have a Microsoft Web server platform for your site then you’ll need software such as BetaParticle blog. Here is a great list of various blog software: http://www.lights.com/weblogs/tools.html

Next you’ll need a database to hook your blog up to. The database is what stores the blog entries, among other things. If you don’t know if you have a database on or connected to your website server, or if you don’t know how to hook up your blog to your database, contact your host company or Web server administrator for help.

Once you have the blog set up on your domain (for example http://www.MyWebsite.com/blog) and you’ve hooked it up to a live database, you can start blogging. Generally, each entry is also a day. So you can write a new entry every day, or whenever you want, and that entry will show up on the blog at the top, moving older entries below.

You ought to think of a theme for your blog. In other words, your blog could be about your personal experiences in the industry you’re in. It could be about your company’s product reviews, or new services. It could be about your thoughts and opinions about issues related to your industry. It could be a place where you regularly find and list new resources to help others in your industry. The list is endless. But be sure to stick to a theme and be original. You want to offer something of value to your website visitors.

Sticking to theme helps you position yourself for future advertisers and also makes for better reading for your visitors. Furthermore, you want to give a good impression with your blog and with each and every entry if you want it to augment your online business. Finally, sticking to a theme helps with the search engines since it’s believed that engines determine website themes and use this information for ranking.

Of course your blog could be about personal things too. Many blogs are just that, an online journal. But since we’re interested in Web business here, I am discussing business blogs only.

What’s great is that blogs get indexed easily and quickly by search engines. Each entry is another “page” that can be potentially listed in Google for example, which will drive more traffic to your site.

Another neat thing about running a blog once it’s set up is that you do not need to be technical at all to make regular entries. This is helpful if you want to delegate the writing to someone else, since technical skills won’t be a prerequisite. This allows you to have the most qualified person regarding the blog’s theme and hopefully the best writer actually making the entries.

Be creative. Add images to your blog entries to spice things up a bit. Although blogging can be lonely, keep at it. Sometimes it seems like you’re just writing new entries each day for yourself only. It may be a while before someone chooses to add a comment to one of your entries. You may not hear from anyone for a long time. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t reading it. In fact, check your website statistics to see just how many people are visiting your new blog. As you add more entries, get your blog listed on other sites and market your blog. It will build, and eventually you’ll have a nice following of engaged readers.

Most importantly, be sure to pepper your entries with calls to action. For example, if your business blog is attached to your travel website and the blog’s theme is traveling and finding great travel deals all over the world, make sure you add a link to an entry that points people to a travel special you’re running on your website. What would be even better is a blog entry about the fantastic vacation you took to Hawaii and included at the end was a link to cheap Hawaii vacation deals on your website.

Blogging: What You Need To Know About Defamation

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:09 am

Currently there are over 30 million blogs on the internet and thousands more being created each week. Assuming ownership of one blog per person, that’s a minimum of 30 million people slinging around their personal opinions on all that exists under the sun. This is a good thing. The free exchange of thoughts and ideas is what prevents the world from becoming a stagnant pool of dictatorship with the appropriate green scum floating on top.

However, to steal a line from the movie Spiderman, ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. Blogging has become a way for the voice of the people to be heard. We must be careful, though, not to abuse our power through thoughtless acts that hurt the credibility of bloggers and blogging. One place that continues to be our Achilles heel is when good posts go bad.

In the United States, libel and slander are the two categories of defamation. In many states, courts have begun treating them the same as the only difference between the two is that libel is a false written statement about a person, place or thing that harms his/her/its reputation while slander is the verbal act of the same offense. Whether blogged on the internet or whispered offline to your mother, the common denominator is that what is said is false.

Since I’m psychic, I already know what you are thinking. ‘The First Amendment of the US Constitution protects me. As long as it is the truth, I can say whatever I want.’ Well, sort of. As crazy as it sounds, truth is not the silver bullet defense for every case of libel or slander. A judge may require that besides being true the information relayed is in the public interest to know.

So reporting that the CEO of a major corporation had been caught pilfering money from the employees’ retirement fund would probably get dismissed from civil court whereas telling the world that your neighbor has smelly feet could get you into more trouble than you want. Even if it were true, why would it be in the public interest to know that your neighbor’s feet could clear out Yankee Stadium?

Now, the First Amendment does protect your right to an opinion. If you think that the Mr. Squiggly Toddler Toy is a piece of crap, you are certainly free to tell anyone within earshot as long as you make it clear that it is your opinion on the subject. Likewise, if a person puts forth a negative sentiment with regards to their experience with you and it is clear to any reasonable person that it is their opinion, your legal recourse against them is severely limited.

Parody and satire are also protected. If they weren’t, Saturday Night Live and South Park would have never made it past the first episode. And criticism of a public performance such as a symphony, a play and even a book is protected under the Fair Criticism and Comment clause.

Now the internet contributes some interesting layers of complication to the whole blogging shebang. Instead of being contained in a localized area, libel has the potential to cross international borders and not every country handles these cases the same. One of the major problems courts around the world are having to deal with is the one of jurisdiction. If I live in the US and I libel someone who lives in the UK where exactly does the case take place and who’s laws do we go by? Several cases have set a scary precedent that leans towards being able to sue anywhere around the world for libel published on the internet.

Then there is the issue of third party liability. Say you are a responsible blogger who is careful about her posts to avoid a troublesome libel accusation. One of your readers posts a libelous statement on your blog. Can you be held responsible for that person’s actions? Well, so far the law has only made provisions for internet service providers stating that they cannot be held responsible for how their customers use their services (as it pertains to defamation). Likewise, blog service providers such as Google and Six Apart would likely be immune to any lawsuits arising out of a person’s use of the service.

Whether or not you would be held responsible may come down to if you moderate your comments. If you allow comments to be posted automatically, you may be protected under Section 230 of the US Code (for US Citizens). It may be a different story, however, if you approve comments before posting them. It could be argued that your posting of the comments equates your agreement to them. To date, no one has shown up in court to argue this, hence the fact that we are kind of forced to make it up as we go along.

Defamation is a tricky issue and one that needs to be tread carefully if one is to avoid landing in court. Here are a few tips to help keep you out of trouble. Note: I am not an attorney. I don’t even get to play one on television. If you and your blog deal with some highly controversial issues or you’re just not sure how much trouble you would get into if you published that post about your best friend’s boyfriend, I recommend getting in touch with a lawyer to get the best advice.

1. Change the names. By far the easiest thing you can do is to change or to avoid using the name of the person you are talking about and to strip away as much identifying information as possible. If a reasonable person can visit your hometown and quickly identify the “mealy-mouth cow� you blogged about online, you might want to do some editing.

2. Make use of a disclaimer. Kevin S Brady has an excellent one on his website. Even something as basic as “By making use of this blog site, you agree that the opinions expressed are the property and responsibility of their respective owners� may provide some defense in the event of a lawsuit. (Check with a real attorney please).

3. Consider writing your rant as a parody or satire. Extreme exaggerations that no reasonable person would believe are not considered defamation because, quite frankly, they are unbelievable. Be careful though, this type of writing takes a certain je sais quoi, and could easily backfire on you. Have a reasonable person proofread your entry to make sure it passes the believability test.

4. Watch your language. Be sure to use wording that makes it clear that this is your opinion about the subject. Statements like, “That Mr. Squiggly Toddler Toy is a piece of crap� makes it sound as though you are stating a fact when in all actuality you are making a personal judgment about the toy. Something like “I think that Mr. Squiggly Toddler Toy is a piece of crap� or “That Mr. Squiggly Toddler Toy fell apart after the first use� are safe bets. At least as far as the law is concerned.

5. And last but definitely not least, don’t tell false tales. Now this may seem like common sense but how common is common sense these days? Really. If you feel the need to resort to lying about a person, you may want to seek professional help in examining why you want to do that. ‘Cause chances are, it’s not to protect the public.

Blogging is a great way to meet people and stay current in the world and doing so responsibly will only make the experience better. Stay safe, stay sane and most of have fun

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:25 am

There is a great deal of hype and talk about blogs, but when one strips them down and looks at them clearly, they discover that a blog is nothing more than a web site. In essence, a blog is a website featuring an easy to use content management system that allows for quick updating in chronological order. The roots of blogging trace back to online journaling and community-building efforts, but approached from a business perspective, blogs are uniquely positioned to make you money. Their structure, treatment from search engines, and ease of use make them a wonderful moneymaking tool.

The structure of blogs is perfect for revenue-producing efforts. This is because the sites are, invariably, heavy on content and are naturally organized in an intuitive fashion. Regardless of what platform one uses for blogging, they will be able to produce a content-based site featuring a series of potentially well-targeted pages.

Search engines love content. Textual content keeps search engine spiders well-fed and persuades them to visit again and again. Google, Yahoo and MSN reward informative sites chock-full of information with better positioning in search results and index these sites quickly. Because blogs are content-driven, they serve as a model for how to build a “cooperative relationship� with a search engine. In the end, effective blog use produces high search engine rankings and, thus, great traffic levels. Traffic, of course, is a key to profitability. It is hard for a site to profit if no one sees it! The traffic advantages vis-à-vis search engines is one of the chief selling points of blog use.

If you are familiar with running a traditional website, you have undoubtedly learned two things. First, success will hinge, in large measure, on your ability to provide fresh content to your visitors. Second, adding new content to a static site can be a definite hassle.

One must write the content (or pay to have it written), convert it to HTML, insert it into the static page and then upload the page to the server again. The inefficiency of doing this makes it all too tempting to “overlook� making updates as frequently as one should.

Blogging solves this problem. All major blog platforms allow users to create new “posts� (which are nothing more than blocks of content) via an easy interface and to add them to the blog with a few simple mouse clicks. The result is empowering. Instead of dreading content updates, webmasters can actually look forward to adding new material in moments. Whether a blog user writes their own content or outsources the job to a pro, adding the new text is a simple and convenient proposition. This makes it easy to build the content-rich sites that soar to the top of the search engine rankings. It also creates a heightened level of stickiness for the blog, making return visitors far more likely. That traffic, when coupled with the right moneymaking strategy produces impressive results.

If you are relying exclusively on traditional static websites for your online ventures, you may want to reconsider your perspective. Using a blog affords some unique advantages and can be a great way to create profitable, highly-visited sites that require minimal effort.

Why Blogs Are Money Makers

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:56 am

Blogs are, at their heart, nothing more than websites featuring a solid content management system allowing for the frequent and easy addition of new material. However, if you approach a blog from this purely “clinical� perspective, you may be missing out on some great opportunities to maximize your blog’s profitability.

Blogging grew as a means of communication, community building and online journaling. These very personal sites created a larger blogging community that continues to increase in population every day. This spurred the creation of several services and opportunities unique to blogging that traditional static sites cannot utilize.

Blogging gives one a chance to grab a great deal of traffic that is often unavailable to traditional sites. We all know that traffic is a critical component to profitability. The more people you get to your blog, the more moneymaking chances you experience. Thus, it is important for any for-profit blogger to understand some of the unique ways they can improve their numbers simply by virtue of their sites structure.

One example is the blog directory. There are search engines and directories that service blogs exclusively. These sites can be well-visited and can supply a healthy stream of traffic that other sites cannot access. Some of these blog-only opportunities, like Technorati, can drive huge numbers to a blog.

Blogs also have the unique opportunity to “ping� these directory sites. A ping is the equivalent of advising the search engine or directory that your blog has been updated. By pinging, one can increase the visibility of their blog and the traffic it receives.

The blogging community also created the commenting system embraced by most blogging platforms. Blogs can be structured to be a community exercise and comments are welcome. Bloggers tend to visit those blogs that visit them, and comments on a blog are likely to read by its visitors. Thus, one can take the time to make high-quality, relevant comments on other blogs as a means of creating visitors to their own offering.

This kind of community participation can do wonders for search engine placement, too. That’s because bloggers are notoriously generous when it comes to providing backlinks. Bloggers are prone to add other blogs of interest to their list of links. These links do generate traffic directly, but perhaps even more importantly, they also provide backlinks the search engines interpret as a sign of an authoritative site. Your blog is thus rewarded with higher placement in search engine results.

The effect of these links is amplified by the structure of most blogs and blogrolls. The list of links becomes part of the blog’s overall template. They are reproduced not only on the main page, but on each of the individual “post pages.� Although many of those individual pages will lack powerful page rank, the sheer number of backlinks produced can be incredible.

By tapping into the legacy of the blogging community, one can increase the profitability of their blog. As traffic goes up, so do profits, and blogs offer some very handy ways to nab visitors!

There Are Some Pitfalls in Using Free Blogs

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:09 am

The world of blogging has become a serious place. In many circles it has almost become a fashion statement to run your own blog, and for good reason. But as online publishers, by the thousands, scramble to create new themed blogs every day, there are some pitfalls associated in using many of the so-called free blog services available.

Many bloggers use a free blogging service to support their first entry into the field. Naturally, this makes a great deal of sense for someone starting out. Free providers do offer some extremely simple to use and relatively competant and dynamic platforms. Furthermore, avoiding a financial expense certainly reduces the risk concerned to an absolute bare minimum.

Free blog hosting services can be a great way to introduce oneself to the concept of blogging and to discern a little bit concerning the process. Nevertheless, they are usually (With some exceptions, using the right methods) a poor choice for those hoping to generate any substantial blogging income. There are simply too numerous pitfalls associated with their use and functionality.

For a start, many free blogs hamstring the user’s capacity to utilize one of the greatest and most effective ways of producing a profit via blogging, namely; Adsense. Different free blog hosts offer the free blog and server room in exchange for the display of their own Adsense ads. The terms of service directly disallow the user from featuring any additional contextual ads. This is how the free services develop their revenue, and the prohibition makes complete sense to the providers, who are essentially still providing a free service to the blog owner. However, it takes one very powerful mechanism out from the blogger’s moneymaking armory.

Second, whenever one adopts a free service they hand over mastery of their Web page to a large degree. This is not just a matter of ads or content restrictions which one may be able to generate an income. The void of mastery has far reaching implications which are far more serious. Blogger.com, for pattern, is known to commonly freeze and/or revoke blogs altogether for unknown grounds. Those blogs just disappear and a great deal of effort vanishes with them.

Further, lesser-acknowledged services may be severely hindered or given restricted potential and may just go down - taking the blogs straight down the drain with them.
Third, there is the issue of credibility. Whether it’s right or wrong, surfers appear to accord a major measure of credibility to (and are accordingly more likely to visit) sites which have their own URLs. A blog which is an obvious sub domain at a free host can cause likely guests and customers wary of a blog’s credibility and can register an adverse effect on fruitfulness.

Finally, there is the matter of flexibility. Different free blog services limit your options in agreement of appearance and may use platforms which unavail different elements which can potentially aid in fruitfulness. For part, the blogs at Blogger.com tend to lack the variety of categories appearing in their Wordpress equivalents. Further free services may offer only a few templates which can only be tweaked ever so moderately. In order to behave optimally, one need be equipped to append any and all appropriate changes to their moneymaking blog.

You can find a variety of competant and dynamic blogging programs which won’t charge you a dime. The competitive fields of hosting and domain registration cause owning your own allotment of cyberspace surprisingly affordable. Which means the present context, enlisting a free blogging service as a method to launch part of your online business, just does not make the best of sense.

The least expense required to own and effectively run your own World Wide Web documents is an absolute steal when one considers the drawbacks associated with the flipside

Crazy Blogs - Trend or Truth?

Posted by rimel - 12/06/07 at 11:06:38 am

There are many trends today in the blogosphere. From “Bitch Blogs� to having cartoon women in your blog header, as well as many others. One such “trend� as it may be called by some is not in fact a trend at all, but an interesting societal statement. So-called “crazy blogs�, coming from those with mental illnesses of every variety from manic depression to multiple personality disorder (MPD), seem to be popping up all over the place. How many times have you seen a blog themed with the blogger’s own personal mental disorder?

Are these people faking their illnesses because it is the trendy thing to do? Or is there more to these blogs than meets the eye?

Interestingly, the National Mental Health Association (NMHA) reports these statistics:

* More than 54 million Americans have a mental disorder in any given year, although fewer than 8 million seek treatment (SGRMH, 1999).
* Depression and anxiety disorders — the two most common mental illnesses — each affect 19 million American adults annually (NIMH, 1999).
* Approximately 12 million women in the United States experience depression every year — roughly twice the rate of men (NIMH, 1999).
* One percent of the population (more than 2.5 million Americans) has schizophrenia (Schizophrenia Bulletin, 1998).
* Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, affects more than 2 million Americans (NIMH, 2000).

So it would stand to good reason that if 54 million Americans have mental illnesses, quite a few of them are going to be blogging about it. So if these illnesses are real, why are people so skeptical? I personally believe that when a person says they have a mental illness, immediately the person hearing that statement looks for “signs�. Obviously, when a person has a physical illness, it is often noticeable to the naked eye - a broken limb, a cut or open wound, an amputation. When a person is mentally ill, often with brief meetings or over the internet, there are no such “signs�. If we notice the person is speaking coherently, in complete sentences, without running through the town square shouting gibberish, we automatically assume the person to be “sane�.

But with the introduction of the internet and blogs - people who, if you lived with them on a daily basis, you would know that there is a serious mental health problem can actually “hide� their illness quite well over the internet. With the use of the backspace key, editing, and re-thinking what they write, people can appear to be whatever they want to be on the internet. And with the help of the right combinations of psychiatric medications and regular therapy, the person can appear to be quite normal to casual observers.

So are these bloggers lying about their illness for readers, or because it is “trendy� to do so? Likely not. In fact, every single blogger I know who has a mental illness and posts about it in their blog has a serious illness which they and their families have to deal with and cope with on a daily basis. Most likely we only know the “face� that is presented to us, and not the person behind that public image. Mental illness of any kind is a problem that seriously affects not only the person with the illness, but their relatives, friends, spouses, and community. We should be helping them and being considerate of them - not judging them or excluding them.

This entire post has been written by a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic with borderline personality disorder, PTSD and clinical depression - all which I have had since I was 12 years old (except for the schizophrenia which it’s onset was at age 20. I am currently 27 years old). I write pretty well for being “nuts�, don’t I? Would it surprise you to know that I have my own business where I make handmade candles and incense - so that I can earn a living but don’t have to come in contact with the public? Would it surprise you to know that I’m a married woman, and my husband helps me deal as best as he can? Would it surprise you to know that you see people like me all the time, at the grocery store, in the bank, at the restaurant? Would it surprise you to know I have a blog…?