One of the areas of your blog that you must be careful to follow is the seo plug-ins and settings.  While one searches for the mother-load of traffic in all of the different places where traffic is supposedly found,  you should always keep the gold that everyone has in their own back yard safe and sound and within reach.

For WordPress one such pot of gold can be found with the “All In One SEO” Plug-in.  It might be a good idea to make sure that you have the thing “enabled”!  Another is the “XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress“.  Make sure that your “Basic Options” are set the way you want them.  And don’t forget to make sure that you have the “Privacy” settings (not the “Privacy Policy”) the way that you want them.

I do a lot of high tech blogging work and am actually more comfortable over at Blogging Extreme.com than trying to do the “AHH DUH” work here at Bloggers Market.com for the beginners.  It’s not rocket science that I am trying to teach here,  it comes down to providing good content for your chosen blog,  finding traffic and converting that traffic to sales. (It can be a challenge to come up with different ways to express this every week in my posts) Once you find a comfort level with this you can move on to the more technically challenging parts of blogging.

I’m always trying to bend the edge of that envelope,  and have moved on to the more lofter goals with which one aspires to in this realm of the Internet;  only to find that two of my most critical blogs had their “Privacy” settings or the “Blog Visablility” set to “I Would Like To Block Search Engines” for three months before I caught it.  I had done a complete re-build of the sites and somehow over-looked this setting,  please don’t be “AHH DUH … STUPID” like me.

Egg heads are Us ……….. ahh yes ……… we live and learn!  Who really needs the traffic anyway?

However it is important to note the true goal of blogging for money that will never change is ……. drive traffic to your blog and convert to sales.

You have to stay on top of tech to be sure, but if you can just focus on providing good content, updated reguarly and can wrangle traffic while building a list and have a good product or two to convert, you should be able to make a go of it (make money blogging) while being beat to death by the technical issues.

Of that which is mentioned above, the challenge is not really coming up with content or building a list or finding an affiliate product to sell. The real challenge is building and maintaining traffic. Enter “Keywords”

You pretty much have to stay behind this one all the time, constantly on the hunt for the most profitable and powerful keywords. Enter “Brad Callen”

This blog is pretty much aimed at the beginner, so I tend to repeat things often so that you will catch on to what is really most important. For those that get bored quick or catch on quick, you can cruise on over to the companion site for Bloggers Market.com. That would be “Blogging Extreme.com”. Whose <h1> keyword phrase is “The Location For Learning Extreme Blogging“. You will see it at the top of the website in the “Title Bar” and you edit it in WordPress with the “All In One SEO” plug-in“. The <h1>
keyword is perhaps the most “Onsite” important keyword you can come up with. Do your homework, find something you can live with and hit it hard. If it doesn’t work, start over and try again. Just remember, never give up or settle for the status quo. Keyword research is too important !

However, when starting out with the goal of blogging for an income or maybe just for fun, the biggest mistake that one usually makes, (as numbers will bear out) is the building of their blog on someone else’s system. By that I mean that they use a blogging service like “blogger” or “wordpress.com” to host their blog. Bad Idea !!!

If your serious, your going to have to “cowboy up” and get the job done, by taking your time to learn and apply the steps necessary to design, build and host your own blog. If your worried about the cost of such an undertaking ……… well, just don’t go there. If your going to do it ……… do it right, have some pride. You should treat your blog as a business (even if you do it as a hobby) and businesses have expenses.

Now, you would think that it can’t possibly be a fatal mistake to start out on one of the services and then move your blog to a host of your own when you have the time, experience, and maybe money. But once you establish your blog on some else’s service and you attempt to move it, you can kiss your traffic goodbye and any income that you were producing, if you are even allowed to earn or monetize your blog on someone else’s service. TOS can be strict.

So if your serious, THINK …………. faking it just won’t get it ! And hosting on some else’s service is faking it. That’s a big mistake !

I recently ran up on a poll that shows modern day back-up figures for those who visit a popular computer manufacture. It showed that only 35 percent of those that visit the site back-up their computers at all. And those who back-up their systems once a week were just 22 percent of the 35 percent.

I know that I am sometimes slow when it comes to the ole back-up. But I usually can get things done without too much trauma or delay. Now I’m not regular but ……….

Yeah right; not backing-up your computer may or may not have long range effects, but who will really know except you, unless you are in the IT department of a fortune 500 company. And even if you do back-up you can usually take your time restoring your computer. If your blog or website goes down, everyone knows !

When your blog or website goes missing ……… your screwed. Sorry, that’s the hard truth. Unless your backed-up. When you install or purchase your blog, you should back-up first thing. It’s not rocket science nor time consuming to right-click and compress your /public_html. Just remember to backup to your hard drive or flash media, it shows bad form to back-up to or store server side. It also shows bad form to store your desktop files server side.

What you have to keep in mind is that you are viewed by potentially millions everyday, it is imperative that you provide a professional look if you have any hope of profiting over the long run. Having your blog or website go missing in the middle of the night or neglecting to provide your site to your market, will kill any good will and trust that you have worked to build up.

When it comes to this internet thing, I’m top dog on the tech side, however I’m a loser when it comes to the search engines. I can get indexed and all that pretty easly but acutally being heard in the listings for my niche ………. I’m no where to be found. I remember that one of my first post, I did a review of a well rounded news site that had no sports section.
I just mentioned that “Derrick Jeter and the Yankess” were conspicuously missing and man ………. to the top of the search engines I went. That was the only time.

I have tried just about every trick in the book with very limited results. It would seem that my rankings improve with the more money I spend and that is exactly what the better half was mentioning, that until and when you start spending money and a lot of it on advertising and pushing your site in other peoples face, you will always be on the outside looking in. Ahh yes the paid traffic angle or “Pay for Veiw” better know in the ranks as PPC.  There is no doubting it, paying works. It always has and always will.

When considering starting a blog, you need to consider carefully ………… don’t do this just because you think it will lead you to online success or wealth, the numbers don’t prove that out. You need to search yourself and make sure that you are committed to the long run, because blogging any other way just will not work as it should.

This blog has yet to gain real traction or provide any real income to be relayed upon. That being said, I have no intention on going anywhere, because as you well know by following my posts …….. I absolutely love blogging ! However I make my living online in other areas and not with blogging as the time between posts will attest too.

Having made a commitment ( or anticipating one ) to blogging for a living, you need to understand that there is a learning curve to what you are doing. There is NO “easy as e-mail” solution to blogging or online marketing for that matter.

You will have to arrive at a point in your understanding of what you are attempting to do; that until you have good discipline, computer skills and a working knowledge of how things work online, it likely will be an uphill battle for you or anyone to achieve a living online blogging.

In the coming weeks and months, this blog will be exploring the how and whys’ for building an online presence by blogging. It seems that with all the “blog your way to the bank”
programs, the true essence of blogging is being lost in all the noise.

On second thought it could just be the Blogging Gods that are after me to post something new or suffer the consequences of re-hash !

It’s been a difficult summer for me (as I am sure it has been for everyone considering the economic state of things ) as this has been a building phase in my online business. Once the dust settles I hope that I will have the time to post more frequently.

Thanks for stopping by !

There are two good methods dealing with spam for blogs;  with “WordPress” you actually get a spam Plug-In pre-installed on the software …….. that being “Akismet” standing for “Automatic Kismet” ……. Akismet for short.  I personally use “Re-Captcha”.

I lot of people don’t care for the re-captcha because it can be a challenge all on its own when you have to deal with it.  I know I sometimes find it frustrating myself……..  however, it works.  Now nothing is fool proof  but when I started blogging I was getting smoked with the spam,  and some to these people are great at what they do.  I was seeing spam that I was sure was coming from my grandmother.

Some hosting companies go hostel when you don’t take the proper per-cautions with your form mail or comment sections of your website as it also torches the server while wreaking havoc with your own life.

Which ever method you decided to use.  This should be one of the first things that you address when building or buying a blog.  Taking time with the “spam system” will save you a world of hurt in the long run.  It’s not one of the more romantic aspects of blogging,  however you will have to address it.  Bite the bullet and decide,  and remember where you read about this subject when you realize how much time I have saved you while preserving the quality of your life.

This is the real reason that the municipals take a dim view of spam and are moving to outlaw it.