As you may know, Google has it's very own blogging service called Blogger.com. If you start a blog with them, you'll have your own page on the blogspot.com domain which is currently ranked number 32 of the most visited domains on the planet according to Alexa. What does this mean to you? If your pages are being linked to by a site with that high of a ranking, it will increase your sites ranking. But that's merely a side benefit of using this method. The real benefit of following this guideline is having your pages indexed nearly overnight.
You're going to end up using two services, Blogger.com and Yahoo.com. You won't have to limit it to just Yahoo, but we'll start there. When you have a blog on Blogger.com you are provided with an RSS feed of the content that you post. By adding the RSS URL to your free "My Yahoo" page, you force Yahoo and Google to talk to one another and what their talking about will be your content. You essentially make it seem to both of the search engines that there is something worth looking at and therefore they send their spiders to crawl your blog. Now when the spiders crawl your blog they'll also crawl any other link that you have posted. If you update your blog on a semi regular basis and include any new links to pages you have created or affiliate programs you've joined, those pages or links will get indexed, and often overnight.
So how do you go about accomplishing all of this? It's really not all that difficult. Start out by getting your blog setup and begin familiarizing yourself with how to post to and change the look and content of your blog. If you don't know HTML that's OK, there are plenty help files that show you exactly what to do. When you start your blog, and when you sign up for new programs try to use the same unique identifying name. For example, mine is TheBestWaytoCash. I can shorten it to BestWaytoCash or TheBestWay or just BestWay depending on how many characters the site allows you to use. Later, you can do a search for your unique name to see if your sites have been indexed.
After you have your blog set up, you'll want to add the RSS feed to an RSS reader. We'll start out with your "My Yahoo" page. If you don't have one yet, get one right away. It's free and fun to have anyway. On your "My Yahoo" page locate a link that says "Add Content" and click it. The next page will have a large "Find Content" field. Just to the right of the empty field you'll find a link in small text that says "Add RSS by URL", click there. On this page you'll see a blank field with an "Add" button next to it. Type your RSS URL in and click "Add". Try it with mine to see how it works. My RSS feed is (http://thebestwaytocash.blogspot.com/atom.xml). Leave out the (). You'll notice that the only difference between your regular URL and your RSS URL is the /atom.xml on the end. That's because /atom.xml is one of the types of RSS feeds currently being used. I'll have more on the various types of RSS feeds in future articles.
From this point on, you should try to post new content to your blog as often as you can. Readers tend to like shorter more frequent articles rather than longer less frequent ones. You will end up getting some readers if you have content worth looking at. In my next article, I'll show you how to increase your page rank and make your indexed links mover toward the top of the search engine results.
Till next time, have a great day and good luck.
Talk to you soon,
By Scott Riedy
30.6.08
Use RSS to Get Your Sites Indexed Overnight
How to Make Money from Your Blog Content
Writing a blog can be fun and exciting, but it can also be rewarding. If you do not know how to make money from your blog content then you need to consider implementing the following suggestions in your blog.
Make Money Tip #1 Adsense
Adsense is an incredible service offered by Google to help you make money and help others advertise as well. Basically, with Adsense you choose several ads that blend or complement the information talked about in your blog. Then, when individuals click on the ads that are present in your blog, you receive money! Best of all, Adsense is free to use on your site, so this is a great opportunity to make money without really having to do very much.
Make Money Tip #2 Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate programs are another great way to make money as well and work on the same premise of Adsense. The web surfer has to click on the affiliate website's link and when they do so they are redirected from your blog to the link they clicked on. You will get paid affiliate income for the click, and if they make a purchase when they are on that website you will get paid affiliate income again.
Make Money Tip #3 Blog Ads
Blog ads can help you make money as well. Blog ads are not too different from Adsense or Affiliate marketing, but they are in the sense that blog ads connect web surfers with advertisers. Then, when any ad placements are made a commission is exchanged.
Make Money Tip #4 Business Blog
You can use your blog to simply converse about any topic that is important to you, but you can also use your blog as a tool to help you make money. Advertise your business services; make your blog a business blog by focusing at least part of your blog on your business services. This way, you can still communicate whatever it is you need to and make money as well.
When it comes to making money from your blog you can do so easily with these tried and true tricks of the trade. Whether you utilize Adsense, affiliate marketing, blog ads, a business blog, or a combination of all of the above, you will certainly benefit and make money. Don't delay and start implementing these types of money making strategies in your blog today. Not only will you make money, but your blog will become more popular as well.
By Evelyn Lim
Use These 7 Ideas and You Will Never Suffer From Blog Block Again Guaranteed!
Is this you? It has been 3 or 4 days since you updated Your Blog. You know you need to make a Blog entry but you suffer from the Dreaded Blog Block. Here are 7 things you can write about so you will never suffer from Blog Block Again
1 - Write An Article
Do you have an Article handy that you wrote before? Have you been meaning to write that article but still haven't gotten around to it. Maybe now you should. Need a topic for that article just ask yourself some of these questions
What am I good at?
What do I like to do?
What do people ask me for advice on?
Is there a better way to do a task?
2 - Someone Else's Article.
Also known ass OPC (Other People's Content) Just go to an Article Directory and Find an Article related to your Blog. Have an opening sentence or 2 why you chose the article and a closing paragraph with related link to one of your web pages
3 - A Blurb about one of your web pages.
A Short 3 or 4 line Summary about your web page and then direct them to your link for more information.
4 - A Quick Tip
A Tip is something that is too short to qualify as an article but important enough to deserve a Blog Entry. If you are a Gardner you may write a short 2 to 10 Line Tip on the best way to keep the rabbits from eating your Carrots.
5 - A Review of your Website
This is a fantastic way to draw attention to your web site. Write a review of your web site. Gloss over the Weak Spots Brag about the good points. (Just don't over do it)
6 - A Review of your Blog
If you have more then one blog then see Step 5 and write a review of your other Blog or even a post in your other blog
7 - Coming Attractions
It's 3am you have a great Idea for an Article but you just don't feel like writing it now. Create a Blcg entry stating that you will write the article Shortly with a brief summary of the Article. This gives you something to write about now and ensures you don't forget to write the full article later.
Here are a few Bonus Ideas to ensure you never suffer from Blog Block.
Quote of the Day
Fact of the Day
Software Review
product Review
the latest Rumor or Gossip
Current Events
When all else fails write about something cute that your Child, Grandchild or Pet Did.
By Mike Makler
Even a 70 Something Technological Challenged Mom Can Get Started in Blogging With These 10 Tips
Blogging is all the rage. With these 10 Simple Steps even My 70 Something technological challenged Mom was able to Join the Growing number of Bloggers.
Step 1 Pick a Topic
Pick a Topic or Theme for your Blog. Your theme should be something you are good at or something you like. Things to Blog About
your Hobby
Your Passion
Your Job
Sports
Politics
N.Y. Yankees.
Promote a Web Page
Step 2 Pick a Title
Pick a Title for your blog. If your Blogging about Model T Fords then Your Title should be something like
Restore Your Model T.
Henry Ford and the Model T
Model T Pick Your Color as Long as It's Black
Model T They Don't Make Them Like that Anymore
Step 3 Pick a Sub-Domain Name
When you sign up for your free Blogger Account you will need a Sub-Domain Name. Your Sub Domain should be related to Your Topic Your WebSite URL will be something like http://sub-domain.blogspot.com. Have 3 or 4 Sub-Domains in mind in case one is taken.
Step 4 Get Your Free Blog Account
Go to http://blogger.com and sign up for a free account
Step 5 Your Blog Description
Log in to Your Blog account and Enter your 500 Character description (After you log in click on the setting Menu and Basic Setup.) Use Keywords related to your topic in your description.
Step 6 Some Key Blog Settings
On the Basic Menu be sure and Set - Add your Blog to our listings? to YES
On the Publishing Menu be sure and Set - Notify Weblogs.com? to Yes
On the Formatting Menu set up your Time Zone
On the Archive Menu be sure and Enable Post Pages
On the Site Feed menu see the Address for your Feed http://sub-domain.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Step 7 Your First Post
Click Posting and Create and Type in the Title and Body of your first post. Be Sure and make it related to your topic.
Step 8 You Ain't Got a Thing If You Don't Do That Ping
Go to http://pingomatic.com and set up your Pings. Pingomatic will announce your Blog to many of the Major Blog Search engines. Be sure and Book mark the Pingomatic page after it is done pinging. You will want to ping every time you post to your blog.
Step 9 Get a Feed Burner Account
Feed Burner allows you to Burn Your Feed so it can be viewed in a web browser Here is a Sample Feed Burner Feed about the NY Yankee's http://feeds.feedburner.com/YahooSports-Mlb-NewYorkYankees.
After you burn your feed in Feed Burner be sure View it in a web browser and click the Add to Yahoo button.
Step 10 Blog Early and Often
Post and Ping Often. If you suffer from Blog Block here is a helpful article to help you find topic to write about Guaranteed!
http://ewguru.com/blogblock
Congratulations you are now an offical member of the blogging community.
By Mike Makler
How to Use a Blog to Dramatically Improve Your Web Business!
A blog is an online journal in which the author publishes his or her thoughts and opinions on a subject which interests them. A good blog will be updated frequently with new points of interest which the blogger (author) and readers can discuss.
Recently, blogs have appeared all over the internet. Thousands are being created every day on every subject imaginable. Everyone has interests and so you can always guarantee that other people will have the same interests as you. If you start a blog on something you are interested in you can be sure that thousands of people will be interested in what you have to say. Having thousands of people reading and following the content in your blog has enormous potential. Here are some great ways in which you can use blogs to your advantage.
1. A blog is a great way to promote your web business. Your blog should be about the same subject as your web business because this way you can easily promote the products and services that you are trying to sell. Due to the fact that you can guarantee your readers will be interested in the product you are offering, it looks like you are doing them a favour and not just blatantly advertising to them. A blog is also great for keeping your customers and prospects updated on new products or deals available.
2. A blog is an unbeatable way to build yourself a great web presence. One of the main reasons why visitors will not buy from you on the internet is because they fear that you are not trustworthy. However, if you have a blog which is updated regularly with high quality comments that show you know a lot about what you are selling, this will build your credibility immediately. Visitors will see the amount of time and effort you put into your blog and will think it very unlikely that you are going to cheat them. Boosting your credibility using a blog will skyrocket your sales.
3. A blog will help you build better relationships with your prospects and with your existing customers. Capturing prospects' email addresses is made very easy with a blog. To build a good relationship with your readers, follow up with them privately on comments that they make. For example you could say that you found a comment they made particularly interesting and then give an intelligent, knowledgeable response. They will feel particularly good about themselves that you have sent them a personal email response and this will encourage them greatly to purchase a product that you are recommending or promoting.
4. A blog is an excellent way to boost your search engine rankings. Many websites receive over 80% of their traffic from search engines and so this is a major advantage. Search engines love blogs because they are frequently updated with fresh content. Due to this, new blogs are often indexed a lot more quickly than new sites. A good blog, full of interesting, quality content can reach the top Google and Yahoo positions very quickly. If your blog has links to your website within it, then you can guarantee that this will boost your website's search engine ranking as well.
5. Blogs in themselves can be a great source of income. Google Adsense is a great way to make money quickly because Google's technology makes the ads that appear to be relevant to your blog's content. You can guarantee that your readers will be interested in what appears in Google's ad boxes. Every time someone clicks on a Google ad you get paid! Affiliate sales are another way to make easy money with blogs. Just promote someone else's product subtly within a comment and you could earn up to 75% of the sale. Making money through an affiliate program is extremely easy and my strong recommendation is http://www.clickbank.com.
Most importantly, make sure your blog is based upon something that really interests you. Blogs can be very time consuming but so long as what you are writing about interests you, then you will find blogging a very enjoyable experience.
For more information on this subject or about making money online go to http://www.info-ebooks.co.uk
100s of free ebooks and software products are also available at this address. Gain free access to these by sending a blank email to:
infoebooks@freeautobot.com
Thank you for reading
By William Johnston
Seven Sizzling Ways to Turn Targeted Traffic Towards Your Blog!
Blogs are an unbelievable way to achieve success on the internet. Blogs can establish a web presence, express your opinions and generate serious profits. However, without visitors a blog is useless no matter how good the content. With thousands of blogs being created every day, you need to know exactly how to get people to your blog over everyone else's. Here are 7 breakthrough ways to bring traffic to your blog:
1. Optimize your posts for the major search engines. Search engines love blogs because they are frequently updated with fresh content. All blogs have the opportunity to make it to a high position on search engines but here are a few tips to beat your competition for the top spots.
Make sure you use plenty of primary keywords in the titles of your blog posts.
Make sure you use secondary keywords in the body of your posts, however be careful not to use too many since this will make your post sound unnatural.
Use keywords in the anchor text of links in the body of your posts since links have a higher importance to the search engines than ordinary text.
If possible try to use your most appropriate keyword in the URL of your blog. Search engines love keywords in the URL and this will have a serious effect on your positioning.
2. Write posts that people will want to read. Put yourself in the position of someone following your blog. Always write relevant content which will be of interest to your blog followers. Good content will lead people to recommend your blog. As a rule, each post should contain a single topic. If you wish to discuss two topics then break it down into two posts. This makes life easier for readers and makes information easier to find. A great mistake that many bloggers make is writing large, infrequent posts. Get into the habit of writing short posts but making sure that you post regularly at least 3 times a week. This way, people will return to your blog because they are sure there will be something new to read.
3. Use your blog posts as articles. Writing and submitting articles is a sure-fire way to gain more visitors. Just turn your blog posts into articles by formatting them, and perhaps adding a bit more detail. This way you are building traffic and writing for your blog at the same time. Recommended sites for submitting your articles are http://www.ezinearticles.com and http://www.goarticles.com.
4. Build links to your blog. This will also have a great impact on your search engine ranking, especially Google. Build links to your blog by exchanging links with other blogs of the same topic as yours. This way you can guarantee targeted traffic. Come to an agreement with another blogger that you will each write a positive review on each other's blog. This way you will get a good testimonial for your website and receive a link on another blog. If you have a main website, then make sure you link from every page to your blog. This way you gain lots of links and whichever page visitors enter your website, they will always have the opportunity to visit your blog.
5. Ping the blog services. There are many services which track and connect blogs all over the world. By sending a small ping to all of these services you will let them know that you exist. They will come and check you out and this could spell serious visitors if your blog is full of good content and is regularly updated. Sending this ping is not at all difficult. Just go to http://www.pingomatic.com where you can send a ping to a number of services very quickly for no cost.
6. Submit your blog to blog directories. Just like if you have a website or an ezine, it is essential to submit your blog to the top directories. A good listing in these directories could mean 100s of visitors every day. You can find a great list of blog directories at http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/. And don't stop at blog directories. Don't be afraid to submit your blog to the big directories such as Yahoo and Dmoz.
7. Capture your readers' email addresses. This is vitally important because it is essential that you can keep in touch with your readers so that you can update them about your blog and make sure they are still reading. Just make sure you have a subscription box on every page of your blog and offer a free bonus such as an ebook as a reward for subscribing. With a good list of subscribers, you can conduct surveys to find out what topics your readers want your posts to consist of. Keeping in touch with your readers will lead them to trust you and they will continually come back to your blog and will recommend it to their friends.
Just be imaginative. Keep trying different techniques to getting people to your blog and see which methods work best. Remember, creativity is one of the keys to internet success.
Get the Internet on Your Own Terms
RSS for the Rest of Us
I don't know about you, but I'm seeing a whole bunch of articles and websites telling me that I need to get into this RSS thing.
Is it really time?
RSS (it stands for "Really Simple Syndication") is the latest wave of internet technology designed to take advantage of the "Content is King" mentality. Imagine getting direct access to the content you want, without having to give out your personal information. Wouldn't that be nice?
Here's how it works: You find a website you like and look for the little orange XML button, or a link that says "Syndicate this site". When you click that link, you get the raw feed of content from that site.
An example:
My Simplified Selling site allows you to syndicate my content. That means you don't have to remember to visit my site to discovers articles of interest, but instead they are fed to your preferred RSS reader (more on this in a moment) at your behest.
That means you no longer have to open your browser and visit a particular website to see what's new, to find out if anything interesting has been posted. All you have to do is open your RSS reader and content from all over the web is gathered into one place and presented for your review. An RSS reader is one-stop shopping for online information.
RSS Readers
There are hundreds of RSS readers on the market. You can collect RSS Feeds on your "My Yahoo!" page, or your "MyMSN" page. Current, updated content from your preferred sites is presented for your reading pleasure. Check the first few lines and if you're interested, just click and you are instantly transported to that particular article. No more hunting around on a site looking for an article you like.
Newsgator (www.newsgator.com) is a third-party add-in that turns your Outlook mail client into an RSS reader. Not to be outdone, Microsoft has incorporated an RSS reader into the latest release of Outlook.
You can also get stand-alone RSS readers from Bloglines (www.bloglines.com) and RSSReader.com (www.rssreader.com). A quick Google search for "RSS Reader" returned over 2 million pages. You'll have no trouble finding an RSS reader that you like.
But why?
That's really the question. Of course we know why the internet folks want you to subscribe to their content, but why would the average websurfer want to go through the hassle of setting up and subscribing to RSS feeds?
Privacy
RSS feeds are more private than newsletters. Unlike when you subscribe to newsletters (where you must give your email address to the content provider so that the information can be emailed to you) when you subscribe to RSS Feeds, you don't have to give your email address (or any personal information) to the site owner, because they aren't mailing you their information.
Something to consider - it is possible that content providers will start asking for personal information when subscribing to an RSS feed. It hasn't happened yet, so subscribe today before they start!
Portability
When I change email addresses or work on a different computer, I don't lose the content I like, because my RSS reader is keeping track of the content I want to see - without the involvement of the content provider. It's like radio stations on your Walkman. The station manager doesn't know when you change the station and if you move across town, you don't lose the stations. It's all in your Walkman. When you're using an online RSS reader (like My Yahoo! or MyMSN), your subscriptions are available from any computer, anywhere in the world.
No 'Unsubscribe' Headaches
When I'm tired of getting a newsletter, I am required to contact the publisher and "unsubscribe" to make the mailing stop. With RSS, you don't have to interact with the website owner to get off the list. Simply click the button in your RSS reader and it will stop collecting data from that site. You are in complete control.
No More Spam
Today, RSS is pure content. Because you didn't give out your email address to subscribe, you know that you won't get spammed. The internet folks have an incentive to keep the feed relatively ad-free. While you're reading their content in your RSS reader, if the content stops being interesting or becomes non-stop pitching, it is very easy for the reader (you) to disconnect. Most of these folks would rather keep you tuned in than to lose you forever.
Think of it like television. If "CSI: Crime Scene Investigations" becomes a long series of commercials and no plot, people will change the channel, many never to return. So the producers see to it that they have interesting content that keeps viewers returning for more. RSS will likely follow the same route.
Get yourself an RSS reader and start subscribing to feeds today. You'll get the internet on your own terms.
By Chris Ellington