Make Money Blogging Online-your Blogging Guide

Making money online by blogging is very possible if you have the knowledge or are willing to learn what you do not already know. There are a few steps to follow if you want to make money from blogging. If you do not already have a blog started, there are several websites available that offer free blogging, all that is necessary is that you sign up. There is no fee involved, and it is very simple. Blogger.com is one of the easiest free sites to use, and it has been around for over fifteen years. This free blogging site and others like it offer tutorials to get you started if you have never blogged before.

Once you have registered for the site you will need to set up your profile and templates. Once this is done you are ready to start making money. The first thing that you will need is traffic, and preferably targeted traffic. This means traffic that is interested in what you say on your blog. Getting this traffic can be done in a couple of different ways. One way is to comment on other blogs, and some readers will follow your comments back to your site. Make sure your posts reflect your blog interests, and try to respond, not just a two or three word phrase. If your comments are interesting and informative then you will get more targeted traffic.

Signature forum posts are another great way to get targeted traffic to your own blog website. If you already belong to one of these then you simply add your blog URL to your forum signature and then you post some comments. It is important not to spam, and to leave informative or interesting comments. Other members of these forums will want to hear more and they will come to your blog.

Once your blog starts to get targeted traffic then it is time to start making some money off of the blog. Adsense is a terrific way to do this. Open an account and once it is approved then choose the type of ad you wish to display on your blog. Once the ad is installed then you should start making some money in your adsense account. Affiliate programs are another way to make money with your blog, so it is a good idea to join some that share common interests with your own blog.

Making money by blogging is not hard if you know what to do. Start a blog on one of the free sites if you do not already have one. Then get some traffic to your blog, preferably targeted traffic. Put some ads on your blog from Adsense or another program that pays for advertising. Join some affiliate programs that share common interests with your blog. By following these tips, making money online by blogging is quick and easy. Read More .....

Is Blogging Right For You?

The answer to that question will be determined to a large degree on how you want to define blogging.

If the interaction on social networking sites like MySpace is accepted as true blogging, then there are millions of Internet users who qualify as social bloggers, and you can answer the question, “Yes, blogging is for everyone.” MySpace alone claims over seventy million users in the US.

But if we were to define blogging from a commercial standpoint, then blogging is clearly not for everyone, and it might not even be for you. Less than 8% of all those who access the Internet have commercial blogs.

While blogging certainly has an entrepreneurial appeal, and those individuals who have small offline business or online websites frequently use blogs as inexpensive promotional tools, but that is not an indication that all entrepreneurs will benefit from having blogs.

There are cases in which a private Internet forum will work better than a public blog is communication between a specific group of people is required.

In other cases, a website, once built, will demand less attention than a blog, and may be a better traffic generator. Many blog owners eventually find themselves short on the time needed to keep their blogs updated and promoted.

In spite of all the potential negatives, there are many, many reasons why blogging might be for you or for everyone. One of the most obvious is that building a blog is simplicity itself, whereas building a website can take weeks or even months and requires a real understanding of HTML coding.

All you need to do to start your own blog is to get a http://Blogger.com or WordPress account, choose your topic, and use the interface to begin your posting. You don’t need to know the first thing about coding, you don’t need to use a template; and you don’t need to find a host, nor understand how to upload your website pages to it.

Is blogging for you or for everyone?

It certainly is not for everyone, as in the instance of blogging commercially, which is reserved for those who use blogs to promote their businesses. But blogging could very well be for you, if you do have a business and want an inexpensive way to get it noticed.

Blogging is certainly inexpensive, as well as quick and easy to begin. Read More .....

SEO Benefits from Blogs

Is blog optimization part of search marketing? Absolutely! Blogs are web site content management systems with additional functionality such as comments, trackbacks and RSS. Blogs are really no different than web sites.

If you can optimize a document and that document gets indexed, categorized and ranked by a search engine, it’s part of search marketing in my book. As such, marketers should be aware of how these kinds of channels can be used within the overall online marketing mix. Blogs are one of many platforms that benefit from optimization.

I sincerely believe using blog software to manage certain kinds of content on a web site such as an online media room, to archive newsletters, post frequently asked questions and to provide product updates can make a site that is otherwise very search engine un-friendly, become a viable source of great rankings. This applies to both regular search engines as well as blog search engines. These are applications for a blog besides the common use as a platform to increase credibility and communicate a more personalized voice for a company.

Blogs are no silver bullet though and require working hard and smart - especially smart. However the payoff can be significant.

Online Marketing Blog receives the majority of it’s traffic from search engines. I can’t mention any of our clients, so I’ll risk being a bit vain and offer a few of our own examples. This is a blog after all and these are very practical, verifiable ranking examples.

The top referring search phrases in the past month for this blog include “marketing blog“, “online marketing“, “rss button” and “social bookmarks“. Even more niche phrases bring in quality search traffic such as, “blog optimization“, “press release optimization” and “social media optimization” which are all services our SEO firm provides.

Of course the rules can change slightly over time, but here are a set of benefits I often find myself explaining to people wondering about the search engine optimization benefits of having a blog.

1. Structured content - Blog software with category features allows the aggregation of content according to themes. This makes it easier to algorithmically categorize content. If you can make it easier for search engines to understand your content, you have a much better chance of ranking well on those topics.
2. Crawlable URLs - Most blog software offers uncomplicated URL structure, making it fairly easy for search engine spiders to find and crawl blog content.
3. Internal links - Blogs that post product or service related information can deep link anchor text to product information or purchase pages deep within the web site. This is very beneficial for ranking on long tail phrases.
4. Inbound link magnet - One of the biggest benefits, blogs link freely to each other - much more than web sites do. Blogs are also a significant source of many posts to social news and social media web sites. Text, audio and video are all easily supported for syndication by blogs. The more media available, the more likely it will attract incoming links. Additionally, there are many widgets and plugins that make it easy to share blog content, thus encouraging links and traffic.
5. RSS - Links to RSS feed urls that use the blog domain name will assist in building link popularity and when RSS content is syndicated or cited by other blogs, any embedded links will also assist in sending traffic.
6. Fresh content - Both readers and search engines reward fresh content with repeat visits. From a search engine perspective, that means your site can be crawled more frequently, allowing your new content to become searchable more quickly. Fresh content is also indicative of a more authoritative web site.
7. Active community - Comments and trackback features in blog software encourage interaction. An active blog community creates the kinds of citations or signals from other sites (annotated and contextually relevant links) that search engines tend to reward in the rankings. Loyal blog readers can boost a site’s visibility through advocacy on other blogs, in forums offline at conferences as well as on their own blogs and within the comments of your blog.
8. Non-Search traffic - I think the greatest benefit of having an active blog has little to do with improving your search engine rankings though. The best thing about blogs is that they allow you to generate substantial amounts of traffic via RSS and links that have NOTHING to do with search engines. My recommendation to marketers in 2007 is to pursue traffic alternatives to search engines as aggresively as their budgets and marketing programs will allow. The result will be incremental increases in site traffic with search engine referred traffic an added bonus, if not correspondingly enhanced.

Bonus benefit of a blog:
Blog & RSS Directories - With a blog and corresponding RSS feed(s), your site can now benefit from visibility within blog and RSS search engines. Web sites without feeds (your competition maybe?) are not included in these kinds of directories and search engines.

Here are a few additional blog marketing tips from this blog as well as a recent blog optimization article on Search Engine Land.

So there you go. A basic list of practical reasons a blog can be beneficial as a site optimization tool and for improved web site traffic. What SEO benefits have you found from having and promoted a blog?

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