So I woke up this morning and of course went to my computer and began checking on my blogs. So I typed in the url at my browser and sit back on my fake leather chair zipping my espresso-like morning coffee, as time passed by when I noticed that my blog wasn’t loading I got closer to the screen and the message from hell appeared “ 500 server error “ , I typed in my second blog’s url and the same happened , I typed in the third one and the same happened, what the $%·& , my life is over.

Of course I panicked, I went to my web host manager at my VPS and checked what was happening, nothing relevant, I checked my Google analytics account and there it was a huge horizontal line with an Everest Mountain Like peak at the end with more than 30K visits, I didn’t´t know if I should Laugh or cry, well I did both.

So you see I was doing about 4K daily visits in one of my blogs, my monetization mediums where rewarding me and I could see the gold at the end of the rainbow; Until that day.

I went back to my WHM and checked on that blogs bandwidth , It was through the roof , doing about 75 Gigabytes, also consuming all of the VPS’s RAM memory, that was why my blog crashed, and not only that blog but all the blogs hosted on my VPS. That one blog made 20,000 visits and about 30,000 page views that night making me extremely happy and sad at the same time.

I called the WebHosting’s Tech support, and of course they didn’t know what to do because of the heavy load, and upgrading my VPS wasn’t a click away, I needed to wait about a day to make it possible. So I had to make a choice and took the blog down until I figured out a way to fix it, and I did; After I took it down, I killed every processes that blog was using on the server and finally I got in to the WordPress dashboard and installed a cache plugin, configure it and got it running, I went to my WHM and got my blog up again, tested it and got everything working just fine, and not just that, but it  was running extremely faster because of the cache plugin I’ve installed.

Finally after 4 hours of stressful time, I rested , I could live and tell the tale, My blog crashed But it was the best they of my life. Now every blog of mine has a Cache Plugin Install.

Consider this, about 70 million blogs existed in 2005 a 6% of the U.S. population had created a blog and 16% of the population reads blogs, now as of February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence, 13% of the U.S. population.

I t has become one of the most popular way to make money from the comfort of your home or the nearest Starbucks. As for creating a blog, despite the millions who have already started one, millions more don´t know where to begin. You may hear its easy, but nothing is easy without you aiming to the right direction.

It’s no to late to start a blog, you are just in time, it’s all about your uniqueness, you see a blog is the one place you can be yourself and earn money from it. It doesn’t matter if you are an expert on shaving, just look at this guy http://www.shavingstuff.com/ he has a page rank 5 , get tones of visits just talking about razors, shaving, and facial hair…

First of all, you should know that  a blog is a web site. Don’t let anybody tell you that web sites and blogs are different creatures, but not all web sites are blogs. So what is the difference? Well mostly blogs run under a CMS system which allows them to make it easy  to often add content to a website and receive two-way conversations with your readers. Now a days , you can turn a blog into a corporate website without the blog, using a CMS. ( I know this is getting confusing )

Now the best CMS out there is WordPress , this blog was built on WordPress and yours should be too, it’s just the cleanest, easy to use, easy to tweak and easy to manage CMS out there. You can learn how to install it by reading Installing WordPress the D.U.D.E. way.

You can turn into a free blogging service like blogger but If you are serious about blogging and sharing your ability then I recommend getting your own Domain, your own Web hosting and Installing WordPress on it, get a cool theme and start your journey, be a part of that 156 million and don’t worry we will be here guiding you.

So everybody is used to Microsoft LiveWriter using it as a blog desktop client, with all the facilities, Image control, etc, but have you tried Word as a blog client?, is great , just look at it now is even better than live writer, you have more image handling tools, presentation forms, text and titles designing , well so much more.

You can ad tables just as in live writer, and equaly handle several blog accounts at a time.

I am Using the Helvetica Font at a 14 pt size.

You can easily ad tables and forms to get your article even more visual

If you are interested in buying a franchise then you need to be passionate about the business in order to make it successful. So, all you computer geeks out there who are interested in franchises should consider the different computer related franchises available. When you are passionate about computers then you will be most successful with a computer related franchise. The following franchises are the top 10 for computer geeks, so check them out and find the right one for you!

Franchise #1 Geeks on Call

This franchise focuses on providing on site computer services and is great for computer geeks. Computer experience is not required and training is provided, but computer geeks will especially love the Geeks on Call franchise because they are already passionate about computers. Total capital investment is $55,850 – $87,150 and liquid capital is only $50,000. Support, training, and financial assistance are provided. Geeks on Call was considered the best new franchise opportunity in 2006, so computer geeks should jump on this opportunity while it is hot!

Franchise #2 CompuChild

An affordable franchise opportunity for computer geeks who also love kids is CompuChild. This franchise opportunity requires an investment of $12,500 – $15,000. Financial assistance is not provided, but training and support is. This franchise prepares preschoolers with computer education for success in school in the future.

Franchise #3 WSI

This franchise opportunity provides wonderful income opportunities and is one of the highest ranking and fastest growing franchises. This franchise helps companies within a community benefit from the services. Capital investment is $49,700 or more and this is the same amount of liquidity required. Training and support are offered, financial assistance is not.

Franchise #4 Secure Pay

Paying bills online has become the preferred method for many individuals. But what about those individuals without bank accounts, credit or debit cards? The answer is Secure Pay. This franchise allows these individuals to pay their bills in no time over the Internet. The total capital investment is $12,975.

Franchise #5 Concerto Networks

If you are a computer geek that likes making technology simple for other small businesses then a Concerto Networks franchise is for you. The total capital investment is $24,900 – $47,900 and the liquid capital required is $30,000. Third party financial assistance is an option and training and support are provided.

Franchise #6 Sir Speedy

This document and service center is one of the world’s largest. From creating documents to online ordering Sir Speedy franchises offer document solutions to businesses worldwide. Computer geeks can really make their Sir Speedy franchise successful. All that is needed is a capital investment of $261,413 – $286,413 and a net worth of $300,000. Financial assistance is not offered, but support and training are.

Franchise #7 Expetec

If you are a computer geek interested in the IT sector then Expetec is the franchise opportunity for you. This franchise has received accolades for its success and it will be successful for you as well. The total capital investment is $71,800 – $111,500 and the liquid capital is $100,000. Third party financing is available as well as training and support.

Franchise #8 Nerds to Go

Taking computer solutions to clients is the backbone of this franchise and it works extremely well. If you are a computer geek interested in providing computer solutions to clients then this is a great franchise opportunity for you. Total capital investment is $40,000 and financing assistance is available. Support and training are also available.

Franchise #9 CM IT Solutions

Provide the IT solutions so many businesses need with a CM/IT Solutions franchise. This proven model has a huge market that any computer geek can easily harness. Capital investment is $55,400 – $104,900 and liquid capital requirement is $60,000. Financing assistance is not available, but training and support are.

Franchise #10 Fast Teks

Manage technicians that repair computers with a Fast Teks franchise. You don’t need computer experience to be successful with a Fast Teks franchise, although computer geeks are especially prepared and interested in such a franchise. The capital investment is $19,500 plus and liquid capital requirement is $5,000 – $7,000. Training and support are provided.

Find franchises for sale, business opportunities and information for entrepreneurs at Franchise Gator. | Author: Raymond Lawrence | Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Blogging is no longer only for the techno geek if you use wordpress. WordPress has made it so simple that anyone can create a blog using it. WordPress has so many options that it is possible to make a unique web log without having to know anything about the codes that are working behind the whole process. All the background stuff has been done by the wordpress programmers.

WordPress blog services let you start your blog easily and quickly, but don’t let that distract you from going along a planned strategy; you should at least know the outcome that you want, so that you can plan accordingly. Starting a blog with the correct strategy is very necessary if you don’t want your blog to end as one of the abandoned ones.

POINTS TO BE KEPT IN MIND WHILE CREATING YOUR BLOG

• Decide on the type of blog you want and the target niche. Knowing your niche will help you to use your blog to communicate specifically about that topic.
• Create your strategy keeping in mind the ultimate outcome. What do you want to achieve using your blog? Is it to build your status, or to build traffic, or involve yourself in conversation with other fellow bloggers? Once the ultimate outcome is ready you can plan on how to achieve it.
• Are you ready to give time to your blog, because blogging requires lot of time as you have to make regular updates so that your readers like to come back.
• Write posts for every category of your blog, so that when readers come to your blog they get to read articles on each category. It is not a positive sign when you don’t have posts for all categories.
• Be patient as no blog can get success overnight. Don’t compare your blog with the already established blogs. Patience is the key to success in blogging.

A Blog is like any website, build under the same platforms and programing code languages such as PHP, AJAX, JQUERY, HTML, etc with some differences and features, such as:

• A Blog is updated regularly
• A blog is an expression of an individual or group of individuals
• A Blog is usually arranged in chronological order
• A Blog uses Categories and Tags to ease the search process
• A Blog often evolves around a certain theme or niche
• A Blog is the just a website that connects with users in such a way that they become part of it.
• A Blog lets the users interact with the author by leaving comments and joining the conversation.

If you have a look at some of the entries of a blog you would get an idea what that person likes to write about. Now a days a blog is not used only by individuals with a point of view but are used by almost every major company in the world, which is great by the way since with a blog they can finally listen to their customers,  help them, and improve their products to satisfied them. So this is the Blog era where bloggers are becoming celebrities, stay at home moms are earning a leaving , ideas and point of views are being heard all over the world, and must important we are learning to help our fellow humans by sharing our experiences, giving aways tricks and tips on every single niche you can imagine, we as bloggers are just helping the world one word at a time.

So keep it going and if you still don’t own a blog, just keep coming , we will show you how to get one.

FIRST OF ALL  YOU HAVE TO LEARN THE LINGO

Blogs usually have certain common terms that the bloggers need to know

Archives

Archives detail the entries that the blogger has written. A blog is a good way to keep a track of the articles on a site. They are usually grouped into time period, like month and year. The front page of a blog may feature a calendar of dates linked to daily archives, so if you click on a particular month you’ll get a list of all the entries that were made on that month.

That is not all you can also archive your entries based on the name of the author or alphabetically. Sometimes they are as summaries or excerpts, and if you click on the title you will find the whole entry, the possibilities are endless.

Categories

Bloggers usually sort their entries into broad categories, and if you click on a particular category you will find the entries that relate to that category.

Blogroll

This usually displays links to other blogs that the blogger likes or the blogs that are related to his content.

Recent posts

Most blogs will have a section that says “recent posts” which will have the most recent entries that the blogger has made.

Comments

A majority of blogs will accept comments; you can make a comment even if you don’t have a blog of your own. Blog owners welcome comments, just be respectful even if you disagree with the blogger, its okay to say so.

Plugins

Plug-ins are sets of software that adds specific capabilities to your blog , you just select the one that works for your specific need and install it in about 10 seconds, there are thousand of small apps and thousands more to come.

Tags

A Tag is a keyword or term assigned to a post or article which helps describing it and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the article ‘s creator.

Perma Links

A Permalink is an easy way to give your articles or posts a cool way of archiving them on your server that way your readers and users will easily find your article again since it will look like “http://bloggermind.net/category/wordpress-software/” than having a number as your article name  like http://bloggermind.net/p120

There are blogs on almost everything that you can imagine, some blogs focus on providing information while others are written only for entertainment. Sometimes you get a great combination of both.

Welcome to the world of blogging.

The Internet and the software which has been developed to run on it have made it extremely easy for anyone to publish content and have it accessible to millions of people. In effect, consumers have been given a voice to air their views to a massive audience. Something which before the Internet, they could never have done.

In recent years one of the biggest examples of this has been the massive growth of weblogs (blogs), wiki’s, podcasts, vlogs and moblogs – together they form what is loosely known as social media; the ability for anyone to publish almost any content without the typical costs and hindrances associated with traditional media.

This new publishing freedom has resulted in an explosion of new content. However the term social media, or citizen journalism as it is sometimes called, may be a misnomer as many companies can do it as well!

What is Blogging?

Blogging is currently the most common form of social media, in fact as of October 2006, about 100 000 new weblogs are being created each day – that’s more than the number of books published in the US each year!

The word blog is derived from the term “weblog” which was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997. We started using blog over weblog when Peter Merholz broke the word weblog into the phrase “we blog” in the sidebar of his weblog in 1999.

A blog is essentially a website typically driven by a content management system which features articles (blog posts) and comments on the blog posts. They come in all shapes and forms – from personal diaries shared with friends and family, to arms of political campaigns, media programs and updates on current affairs. They also range in scale from the writings of one blogger, to the collaboration of a large community of writers.

The world of blogs, bloggers and blog posts is commonly known as the blogosphere which has evolved rapidly since its inception. Blogs have given consumers and companies a voice and blogging has opened up a world of information sharing possibilities.

Blogs are not a fad that will lose popularity any time soon – they are here to stay and companies who want to be taken seriously by their consumers need to consider the benefits of starting a corporate blog or at the very least listen to what is being said about them in the blogosphere.

Blogging and RSS

Pioneered by Dave Winer, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has taken blogging to a whole new level. An RSS feed is an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) file automatically generated by a blog or indeed almost any website or Internet service. Users are then able to “syndicate” or subscribe to this feed using a feed reader or aggregator. When a new post is available, the reader fetches its contents and puts the headings and usually some or all of the content of the post into your reader or directly onto another blog. When a blog is updated, its RSS feed is as well so information spreads very quickly and automatically.

In layman’s terms, RSS eliminates the need for the user to constantly check a site or blog to see if it has been updated. Their feedreader automatically does this for them and presents fresh information as it becomes available. This means that a user can constantly monitor potentially hundreds or even thousands of blogs and websites without having to spend the time visiting each one to check for fresh content.
Some examples of feed readers include FeedDemon, Newsgator and RSS Bandit.

Understanding the subject of blogging is made far easier when one immerses oneself in it, so set up a feed reader and get to it. You’ll soon lose yourself in this fascinating world of content sharing and strong opinions.

Better Blogging

By October 2006, Technorati, a blog tracking engine, registered 57 Million blogs tracked. They also acknowledged a consistent pattern whereby the number of blogs doubles every 236 days. However despite the massive growth of blogs, most do not make it past 3 months. According to Technorati, only 55 percent of bloggers are still posting 3 months after starting the blog with very few in comparison updating their blogs weekly or more.

Whether one is starting a blog for personal or corporate marketing purposes, there is no guarantee that anyone will ever find it. In order to ensure a blog’s success it needs to be marketed. Here is a list of suggestions on how to go about doing so:

Search engine optimisation: By ensuring that your blog is search engine friendly, search engines can be a major source of traffic. It is important that your chosen keywords are used in your blog headings, content and meta tags and that the search engines are able to spider all aspects of your blog.

Comments and trackbacks: By treating the blogosphere as a series of ongoing conversations and actively being a part of these conversations through comments and trackbacks, other bloggers will get to know you, link to your blog and a gradual stream of visitors will result.

List your blog in blog directories: Similar to search engines, directories are human edited and managed. Although the traffic volume is not as massive as search engines, many users do visit directories and this could be a great place for them to find out about your blog.

Ping web services with your updated content: Sites like ping-o-matic and FeedShark offer a service whereby they ping multiple web services, blog directories and search engines to let them know that your blog has fresh content.

Content – know your audience: Your blog posts must be interesting and useful to your readers. Develop your unique voice and don’t be afraid to post things others will not agree with.

Frequency: The regularity of posts is important, as there is a direct correlation to blog repeat visitors and the number of times it’s updated. Post 3-5 times per week at a minimum. Web sites and blogs that are updated often get spidered by Google more frequently.

A Holistic Approach

Blogging works in synergy with other eMarketing services, once again proving that a holistic approach is vital to ensure success on the World Wide Web.

Blogs and SEO

You’ve heard it a million times… Content is king! Because search engines love fresh, relevant content, blogs are a great way to give them exactly this. Essentially by writing one post a day, a blog allows you to add a fresh page of content to your website each day. The nature of blogs also makes them an excellent source of links to your website. Provided your content is engaging, other bloggers will link to it and search engines view these links as popularity votes thereby assisting in improving your rankings.

It is important however that the blog is set up to be as search engine friendly as possible. Start by ensuring that all blog posts are assigned a unique page which is easily indexable by the search engines. This can be achieved by ensuring that each page has a link to it which the search engines can find and follow. Pages must be tagged with keywords relevant to your SEO strategy. This means putting important keywords in your post headings, page URL and meta tags, particularly the title tag.

Blogs and Viral Marketing

In a similar vein to blogs being used as a natural link attraction tool, they can be extremely useful as a viral component to your online marketing strategy.

With valuable and engaging content, people will begin talking about and linking to your site. The blogosphere is an interconnected environment and as a result items which are interesting or remarkable are talked about and shared amongst bloggers. Over time this interest brings eyeballs to your site and ultimately awareness to your brand.

It’s Not Always Happy Day’s and Sunshine

Although word of mouth can have a tremendously positive impact on a brand, it can also cause immense damage. One of the best examples of the blogosphere influencing brands negatively is the now infamous “Dell Hell” scenario.

It all started when blogger, Jeff Jarvis had a terrible customer experience with Dell Computers. In true blogger style he documented his experience on his blog and word quickly spread to the point where it was even covered in print by Business Week. However Dell failed to respond to his musings and the bad customer experiences continued as did the negative comments on the blogosphere. Jeff’s rantings become known as Dell Hell and a recent scientific study by responsesource.com showed first that Dell has sustained long-term damage to its brand image and secondly that the cheerleaders for the poor reputation of Dell’s customer services, are bloggers.

With blogs wielding this level of power, it is critical that brands understand how to manage their reputation online and if necessary take proactive steps to limit the damage which can be caused by negative word of mouth. Online Reputation Management is something all companies need to be considering.

On a final note, a great thing to remember about blogs is that a blog is simply a method of publishing content on the Web. Calling something a blog now is a focus on the technology used on the server, the content management solution. Of course, there’s a significant culture that’s grown around this particular technology, but that culture is bound to remain a subculture. Not because the number of people who are involved in blogging is going to shrink but rather because the number of people reading content published using Movable Type, Blogger, or any of the other tools is going to grow. Fast.

eNews & UpdatesSign up to receive breaking  news, as well as tips, tricks, tutorials, Geek Celebrities updates and more!

Author: Rob Stokes
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Benefits of electric pressure cooker

To be successful at Search Engine Optimization, it’s important that you continually test out new theories and ideas. Before I use new SEO techniques on a client’s website, I always test them on one of my own. In order to better understand the application of SEO to blogs, I decided to implement the following experiment:

I would create a blog for each American Idol contestant. Using a pseudonym, I would blog each candidate until they got booted off the show.

Once the final 12 candidates were decided, I would step up my posting pace. Being that this was an SEO project, I didn’t aim to provide any valuable insights into the candidates…I only planned to “blurb” news articles that mentioned each contestant.

The goal at the end of the project (besides gaining useful knowledge) was to have 1-2 “sustainable” blogs in place, while generating massive traffic the week of the final show.

Several weeks into the project, I discovered two things:

The Bo Bice Blog received considerably more traffic and better search engine rankings than the other blogs I had created.
Bo Bice was the first Idol contestant in 4 years that TOTALLY ROCKED. I very much wanted him to win.
So, while keeping my SEO experiment going, I decided to really “blog” about Bo Bice. In doing so, I learned many valuable lessons about creating a successful blog that can generate sustainable traffic, including many repeat visits.

Beginners Lessons:

Have a narrow focus: The quickest way to drive traffic to your blog is through excellent search engine rankings. If you blog about lots of unrelated topics, you won’t rank well for any of your key terms. Even if you don’t know much about SEO, you can still create a blog that will rank well in the search engines. Pick a narrow topic and keep your posts on topic. Choose a group of keywords relevant to your chosen topic and make sure you feature these terms prominently in your posts.

Build a base of content: Unless you already have a built-in audience, very few people are going to read your early blog posts because they will be extremely hard to find in either the blogosphere or the search engines. So, save your best content for when you’ve already developed a steady stream of web traffic. Blogging newspaper articles is a good way to build up relevant content quickly. All you need to do is subscribe to Google news alerts to get relevant articles featuring your top keywords. As your receive new articles, create a blog entry for each article, excerpt a relevant snippet (making sure to credit the source), and comment on the piece. This might not be interesting to your readers…but the objective here is to reach a point where you can start creating original, unique content that people will actually read because your blog can be easily found. For the more advanced beginners, adding an RSS feed that is focused on your targeted niche will also be of great value to your blog.

Try to make several posts each week. You’ll be amazed how much content you can build up in a short period of time.

Monetize your blog (if appropriate): I placed a combination of contextual and affiliate advertising on my blog. The advertising revenue on my blog was poor given the amount of traffic I generated…however, if you are blogging successfully in areas of business and technology, you could make a good deal of money from such advertising. Google AdSense is a ubiquitous way for bloggers to earn money from blogging. Once you’ve placed the AdSense javascript snippet in your blog source code, Google’s contextual ad technology will automatically choose ads relevant to your blog content and when someone clicks on the ad, you get paid.

Advanced Techniques:

“Blog and Ping”: There is a reason why news spreads so rapidly through the blogosphere. When you update your blog, depending on your blog host, a “ping” might be sent to one or more blog search engines that track the blogosphere, showing that you’ve made a new post to your blog. People who have subscribed to your blog, or people interested in your blogging topic, can be notified about your post and read it / link to it. An active course of “blogging and pinging” will help greatly in building links to your blog and generating more traffic.

Websites and software exist that will allow you to manually send pings to dozens of known blog search engines. Ping-o-matic is a website that allows you to ping 18 different blog search engines on demand. I’ve been using RSSSubmit from Dummy Software to submit all feeds to over 70 such services at the push of a button.

“Conventional” Link-Building: To maximize your blog search engine rankings, I strongly recommend building links for your blog just as if it were a website. I did not do this for the Bice blog and that oversight (probably) came back to bite me.

Google’s “Bourbon” update hit several days before the American Idol final and this blog was the only “Bourbon” casualty in my entire portfolio…vanishing from Google the Saturday before the final. My intuition (plus other anecdotal evidence) tells me that had I built a foundation of links outside the blogosphere prior to Bourbon, the blog would not have been hit…of course, I’ll never know. The blog reappeared in Google with its excellent search engine ranking 10 days after the Idol final, depriving me of a tremendous volume of Bo Bice web traffic for the time surrounding the final…Thanks, Google:.)

Linkmarket.net is by far the best link-trading site on the Internet. They now have more than 20,000 sites that are potential link partners. For $24.85 per year, you have unlimited ability to trade links with any site on the network. No matter what your site niche is, you should be able to find hundreds of potential trading partners and generate large numbers of inbound links quickly.

Press Releases: Online press releases are an excellent way to generate notice for your blog. I created a press release announcing the launch of the blog, and once I decided to “actively” blog Bo, I wrote a release each week recapping the show and featuring highlights from the blog. Online press releases can get thousands or even tens of thousands of reads…especially if you are writing on a “hot topic”. Many of the press release readers will become blog visitors.

PRWEB and PRLeap are the two most prominent online press release bureaus. Both allow free submission of releases and both allow you to pay for better “placement”. Your press releases will also get spidered into the search engines and (sometimes) will end up in Google or Yahoo News as well. I’ve seen my Bo Bice press releases as high as #3 in Google News for a “Bo Bice” search.

Best Idea Yet

When my blog reached a consistent 500 visitors a day, I decided to actively solicit posts from Bo’s fans. Sure, most blogs give readers the ability to post comments…but I thought that if I ran the comments as actual posts, I could create a “buzz” about the blog and generate large numbers of repeat visits. I ended up getting 5-15 e-mails every day from Bo’s fans wanting their information to be posted on the blog. So long as the post met my minimum blogging criteria, I ran the submission. Traffic spiked immediately and the quality of the submissions was generally excellent.

My idea worked strategically because the readers unknowingly submitted content that was SEO’ed for the keywords that were the focus of my blog… “Bo Bice”. By running reader posts, I generated large amounts of SEO’ed content that helped generate and maintain my top search engine rankings. And, my “Blog and Ping” strategy ensured that each and every new post (several per day) was broadcast all over the Internet.

Top Search Engine Rankings Confer “Authority Status”

For most of the duration of American Idol 4, I ranked #2 -4 in Google, and #6-15 in Yahoo for “Bo Bice” and I learned such rankings conferred an enormous amount of “authority” in my chosen subject. A sampling of my e-mails I received included:

After Bo performed “Vehicle” by “The Ides of March” (the first time), an original member of the band e-mailed a message to Bo’s fans through the blog. He even asked me if I knew how to reach Bo…which I didn’t.

A CBS Early Show Producer contacted my blog to promote Bo’s appearance on the show…asking his fans to show up at their New York studios.

What’s more, I received multiple messages from the person running the AOL American Idol fan poll soliciting votes for Bo.

Results:

Currently, my Bo Bice blog is generating sustainable traffic with very little work on my part (barring any unforeseen search engine calamity). As the American Idol Concert tour rolls this summer and as Bo gets to work on his first post-Idol album, I expect the traffic to increase.

One doesn’t need to be a SEO ace to be able to create a blog that can generate a large number of visitors. Whether you wish to blog for business lead generation, ad revenue, or personal reasons, if you follow the techniques described above, you can create and sustain a well-trafficked blog by following the techniques listed above.

Todd Mintz is the Director of Internet Marketing & Information Systems for S.R. Clarke Inc., a Real Estate Development and Residential / Commercial Construction Executive Search / Recruiting Firm headquartered in Fairfax, VA with offices nationwide. He is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association.

Author: Todd Mintz
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker

By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. “Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators But 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is.” – Pew Internet & American Life Project

Tip #1 – How and Where Should I Start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), or other similar free services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com or Blog-City.com. The learning curve for using such free services allow you to spend more on developing your content rather than worrying about the advanced areas of scripting, hosting, or programming.

Tip #2 – The Things You Should Decide to Write About

Although not a required prerequisite for you in order to write a blog, it is highly recommended to try to find a topic to write about based on your level of interest and knowledge. The higher your level of interest, the easier it is for you to get your quality content posted on your blog.
Always try to choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis.Try to pay attention to a niche which suites you well. A niche is basically a targeted product, service, or topic.

Tip #3 – Always stay on topic.

Opinions are generally accepted but the content of the items in the blog should all relate to a general theme. The majority of your readers will be interested in the content that relates to a specific defined theme or loosely defined area of interest. Define a topic and try not to run too far away from it. This will ensure that you create a loyal following of interested readers.

Tip #4 – Information is king, be informative.

If you are attempting to create the impression that you are knowledgeable about a specific industry or sector, be sure that you stay current on news. Checking your facts before you’re giving out an opinion or a product review is always a good idea, your reputation is at stake. If by any chance you’re utilizing other people’s articles for you blog content, ensure that you follow the terms of usage defined by the author.

Tip #5 – Old news is not news, but old information can be
recycled and made new.

While blogging everyday can be strenuous and time consuming, it is important that the information presented is current and accurate. Information, articles or any other archived resources can be recycled / modified to add more substance to your content. As long as they’re relevant and informative, there’s no reason why it’s not a good approach.

Tip #6 – Be disciplined and stick to a fixed posting
schedule.

Realizing that blogging requires time and effort, don’t create unrealistic expectations and be unable to
deliver. If you have worked hard to develop an audience and a community you don’t want to lose them due to lack of communication. If time is not on your side, take advantage of tonnes of automatically updating contents which are available for your blog. Looking at the constantly updating nature of RSS feeds, other RSS feeds from similar topic can be inserted within your blogging post.

Tip #7 – Posting Frequency.

If your blog content is updated frequently, search engines will tend to spider the pages at regular intervals. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. To keep
your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 2 – 3 or more daily entries,  depending on your daily schedule.

Tip #8 – Quantity matters.

In order to attract the attention of search engines, you will need to produce a relevant amount of content and information. A headline or simple sentence is not going to generate the interest of readers or help with search engine ranking. Be sure to archive old blog posts to develop a large portal of similarly-themed content.

Tip #9 – Clarity & simplicity / Short & Concise.

Keep your posts and blog entries clear and easy to understand. Simplicity always produce better results at the end of the day.

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Should you insist on partaking on the lengthy road, try to maintain a clean paragraphing style, proper spacing, use different size, color and bold for your titles as well as the subtitles. Use bullet points, go straight to the point and never run out of topic. Insert images to spice up things if you’re an avid fan of long posts.

Tip #10 – Utilize the “blockquote” and “code” tags.

Being one of the few most underutilized blogging formatting tags, these 2 items can help you on  emphasizing certain points, in the most efficient and striking way. Formatting is simple and straightforward. Just get your message into a blockquote tag, and your message will apear distinctively different from the rest of your text, thus gets more attention which it deserves. Take note that the
formatting for these 2 tags differ from blog to blog depending on how the owner defines the tag in the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).Click the below link if you want to read more about CSS.

http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp

Tip #11 – Keyword-rich.

If the goal of your blog is to increase your visibility, include related keywords in the title of the blog. Use the title as a headline to attract interest. Each item post should have a title that will attract attention but still be relevant to the post. The title should be no longer than 10-12 words. Experiment with the titles if you must, possibly try to avoid general and ordinary titles. Try to include extraordinary and innovative titles to grab the readers’ attention.

Tip #12 – Spell checking and proof-reading.

It only takes a few extra moments and can save you from having to make embarrassing explanations. The hazards of Internet is that if you’re too late to correct your mistake, most likely it’s already been crawled by the search engines and read by many. It is extremely essential to think / proof  read carefully twice or even thrice, about what you post before doing so. Take note of your language and grammar.

Tip #13 – RSS Feeds

RSS to a blog is like fuel to cars. Mostly every single free blogs or bloggin software out there will have an automatic RSS feed generating feature. Although it’s most unlikely that you’ll find one without a RSS feature, simply leave it and find a new one, if you happen to come across one without it.

Tip #14 – The essence of the Internet – Traffic.

It’s no secret. You must have traffic to realize the definition of a blog.. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid and free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, word-of-mouth, submitting to numerous blog and RSS directories, etc. RSSBlogsubmit (  http://www.rssblogsubmit.com) provides a submission service for your Blog & RSS feeds. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. Never forget to share your blog to your friends, colleagues, and any other invidious that you know of.

Tip #15 – Track Your Blog

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com, ActiveMeter.com, Extremetracking.com or Sitemeter.com will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its
better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

Tip #16 – Make use of your Blog’s statistical and tracking information.

Believe it or not, your visitors’ information from your tracking scripts will provide you priceless information on how you can attract more readers. Keep note on the keyword terms used from search engines which bring you traffic. You can identify relevant closely related topics which you can venture into and add more variety into your blog, yet staying very much in topic. Simply put, more topic coverage and more variety = more traffic. You may analyze your tracking information further on how you can strategize your blog’s content. You can also apply some keyword optimization strategies here.

Tip #17 – The essence of your Blog is your Audience, listen
to them.

Always interact with your readers who post comments on your blog. Reply with a brief thank you note or just simply attend to their questions if they have any. It’s a proven fact when there’s a direct human interaction and knowing the fact that there’s a “real human” at the other end of the blog makes most of them coming back. If your audience provide suggestions, comments or feedbacks, take them constructively and inform them if you have any desires of implementing such ideas on your next update. And of course, don’t forget to thank them for their ideas. If it’s a great idea, why not throw in a free gift? Mention their website in your blog?

Tip #18 – Create and increase the “Why Must I Return” Value to Your Blog.

Everyone knows the fact that Blogs get a huge level of returning visitors because of its constantly updated content. Why don’t you add more interesting items to that return value by having fixed periodical posts / offers, e.g. Monday Top 10 Tips, Picture of the Week, Free Bonus of the Month, Free Daily Wallpapers, etc. to give them the absolute excuse to return to your blog. As long as you can efficiently and appropriately increase that Return Value constantly, it is mostly guaranteed that you’ll be getting tonnes of repeated visitors, period.

An advance notice, prelaunch announcement or anything similar to that also can act as a short term return value strategy. Encourage readers to comment on your such notices / posts. Experiment and play around with this idea.

Tip #19 – Multiple blogs.

It never hurts to use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. You can even have multiple blogs within Blogger.com itself, but you may also want to try different free blogging services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, etc. Should you have the urge to have multiple similar duplicates of your blog just to gain more traffic, it is wise to avoid it as search engines / feed directories might translate that as excessive redundant information which simply brings you trouble, and you’re tend to get penalized, banned or even accused of spamming.

Tip #20 – Digital Art, Creative Graphics.

Another proven fact – Monotonous and continous display of text will make your readers run away! Try to include non- advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries, but try to keep them at a limit. Too many graphics also mean slower loading time and messy text and graphical combination. You don’t want your blog to look messy. Most of the time, graphics can bring your blog to life. Pictures can make boring texts interesting no matter how long it is. Graphical elements are by far the fastest message delivering element available on the net today. It may deliver various messages
by a split second of a look.

Tip #21 – Maintain a Personal Blog.

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first- person narratives. Share product reviews and personal endeavors, instead of trying to make it sounds like you’re selling.

Tip #22 – Credibility & Popularity.

As thing progresses, things need to change in order to cope with the flow and nature of development. If your number of readers are reasonably huge, and still using a free blogging service to get your messages out, you may want to consider getting your own domain name and hosting plan to have a more personalized Blog. Domain names and hosting plans are pretty much straightforward. Research is all what it takes to get the best of all the available options. For the most highly recommended comprehensive listing of Free Blogging software out there, drop by at http://www.opensourcecms.com. This is by far the best place to drop by if you want to get your
research done about which blogging software to choose. Reviews, ratings, public votes, demos, etc are provided. And the best thing is, all of them are Open Source, which means they are totally free. Try going through the server requirements for each software before purchasing your web hosting.

Tip 23# – Customize the look of your Blog

If you happen to be using one of the Free blogging services out there, you might notice that most of us are using the same template again and again for our blogs. It is well understood that not everybody has the technical knowledge to change the layout as how they want it to be, but if you have the knowledge, by all means try to customize it and make it look DIFFERENT. You can grab that extra attention, if you’re different in certain ways. Create that image for yourself.

Tip #24 – Blog and Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking if you want to turn your traffic into profit. Some of the recommended income generating sources are as follow :-

Google Adsense, Amazon Associate program (www.amazon.com), Blogads.com, Crispads.com, Tagword.com, Affiliate Programs and any advertising related text links can be your place to
start off.

Final #Tip – Conclusion.

Following these blogging tips should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. Blogging is generally done out of interest and enthusiasm and sometimes for income generating purposes. The flexibility of blogging will never cease to expand. Through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

eNews & Updates

Sign up to receive breaking news, as well as tips, tricks, tutorials, Geek Celebrities updates and more!

About the Author:John Teh is an internet blogger enthusiast, exposed to the fun and the extreme possibilities of blogging on the net. Get to know more about the author at his homepage.
http://www.rssblogsubmit.com Author: John Teh Article Source: EzineArticles.com