Blog Tutorial- Learn blogging and make more money blogging

Video Blogging Start-Up Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:33:00 PDT

Blogging is one of the hottest Internet marketing innovations ever created. The ways that people are streaming video using this new communication medium are astonishing. But for the most part, everybody is basically sticking to basic text blogging. However, just like the multimedia wave that has begun to reshape website content and design with web 2.0 and social media sites such as squidoo, myspace and youtube. Video blogging is the next generation medium for posting ideas and products over the Internet. And thanks to the popularity of sites like YouTube and GoogleVideo, this field of using streaming video for blogging is poised for a massive take-off.

While video blogging will require additional kinds of resources, it is definitely worth the effort as part of your internet marketing endeavors to have video on a webpage with the use of streaming video. Here are some things you need to consider. First of all video blogging requires larger website disk space. Next, you will also need to use a faster server. Lastly, this technology is supported by a completely different collection of programs.

Video blogging is an ideal communication platform for both personal and commercial expression which promotes that one add video to a website. From a business prospective, it offers a number of benefits. Consider this as a highly effective means to display the complete line of your products or services to prospective customers. In many ways it's similar to running a commercial for free.

It's a proven fact that people want to see what they are going to buy. And all of us have experienced the persuasiveness of a thirty second commercial. Video blogging offers a similar experience. You use streaming video to display content about your product and visitors watch it. If they like what they've been shown then they'll buy it. And if your presentation is powerful enough, they'll buy the product sometimes if they don't need it.

If your internet marketing business is in its early stages, you can create and use video blogging right in your own home. All you need is your web camera, a microphone, video software, and good lighting. Once you learn how to use your web camera, then you're well on your way toward creating a videoblog as you add video to a website.

You should make the effort to invest in a good web camera. A key consideration is its resolution. The higher the resolution, the better the output. Plan out your video presentation so that you can create the best one possible. Be creative; it could be a short story, or an overview of your products and services. Regardless of how you choose to present what you're selling, be sure to capture the best profile for each item.

You should also try not to skimp on the lighting. This is a very important aspect of video production and having video on a webpage. Be sure to illuminate the entire setting that will be included in your videoblog. The brighter the area, the crisper the images become. Another suggestion is to include lighting effects for added appeal to the presentation.

A good microphone will also be necessary for your video blogging efforts. If you would like to include sound in your videoblog. When incorporating audio, it's a good idea to record a voice over for the item(s) you wish to promote. The quality of the audio is just as important as the video on a videoblog. You might also want to include sound effects or a music bed in your audio production.

You shouldn't forget to pay good attention to the use of good video editing software. This is necessary to finalize your work. For instance, you can add sounds, remove bad angles, or insert some still photos. Some video software programs are extremely user-friendly and can be used even if you know nothing about video editing. Others may require a working knowledge of the subject. Select the software that will help you accomplish what you want to achieve.

Like any other technology, Video blogging does have a few drawbacks. For one, it may slow down the computer, so it's possible that some people will avoid it. Another concern for users is that the download time may be quite lengthy, especially in the case for the few that are not using broadband. And of course, there is the cost associated with greater bandwidth.

Although these are valid concerns, they shouldn't keep you from doing Video blogging. Consider it as an alternative method for your internet marketing. If you choose to use it, remember it is best to incorporate both text and pictures in your streaming video presentation in order to accommodate anyone who visits your site.

Author Resource: Stephen C Campbell (MBA, MSc, MCIM) is a business consultant who has conducted business throughout Europe, Far East & U.S. He specialises in helping businesses use the new technologies as a part of their business strategies.http://www.affordablewebsitevideo.com

How To Build Good Blogging Relationships?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:26:00 PST

Everyone has a group of friends, relatives, and neighbors in real life that they connect with on a regular basis. Having personal relationships helps make a person successful. The same is true with a blogging network.

In the business of blogging, having a support group of other bloggers is essential to make money on the internet. Building these relationships will take time more than anything, but there are ways to build these relationships up to help your blog roll along smoothly.

Connecting with other bloggers is a great way to promote each other's blog and bring in more traffic to both your blog and your online blogging friend's web page. So, how do you establish relationships online?

Start your relationships with bloggers that have similar blog themes or ideas. They should have the same level of blog that you produce. You can push and push to get an A-lister to make a link to your blog but it most likely won't happen if they are a bigger web site than you are.

The first step is to take your time. You shouldn't jump the gun and ask to trade links, but take it a little slower. Leave a few comments on their page so that they become familiar with your name or title.

Another important key is to make yourself stand out among the other bloggers. You can use admiration and generosity when commenting, and you can even ask for a little advice on a particular topic. Asking a question is a great way to get them to respond to you and to help them get to know you better.

As you approach the blogger about swapping links you may need to point out that your blog themes are similar and that it would benefit both of you. Don't act like you just think it would be fun or exciting, let them know you are in it to help each other make a little more cash.

Another tip is to connect with your new blogging friend on other levels besides your similar blogs. Ask if they have any other networking sites they use, use as an instant messenger, twitter, or facebook. This way you can connect on a more personal level and have actual conversations instead of leaving comments back and forth.

Don't expect a friendship to develop overnight. There will be some online relationships that take off and work wonders and there will be others that have to be nourished time and time again in order to seal the deal.

Remember that you must choose your blogging friend relationships as seriously as you choose your real friends. Posting too many links on your page will only show them that you will accept anyone and anywhere just to get your name out there.

Always be honest and professional when working with other online friends and they will learn to trust you. The same works both ways. You don't have to feel obligated to trade links with a blog much smaller than yours or an online blogger that doesn't treat you with respect.

Author Resource: Court is an expert on how to make money on the internet and also provides internet marketing tips.

A Simple Guide To Blogging For Bucks

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:47:44 PST

If you're looking to make money online, but have little in the way of a marketing budget, then a free an easy way promote your website is to create a good blog.

Easy to set up, simple to use, a well managed blog should essentially be filled with quality, frequently updated, content that allows readers to learn more about your product or business. More than that it should be engaging enough to make readers want to come back and read it again.

"Pinging" your blog nearly every time your blog is updated is crucial. "Pinging" is basically a way of informing search engines and blog directories of new content on your blog. And this is great because search engines love new content and you can expect better locations in search results if you do update your site on a regular basis. JZNT5F58TGFW

That said, don't over do it. Blog directories and resources look unfavourably on over-pinging, especially if you ping small or trivial updates or changes to your blog.

Content on your blog can include podcasts, video casts and photography, but essentially it is the quality of your text that counts. In traffic terms this may be translated into the "authority factor".

This term implies that you are aiming to establish a readership and subsequently a series of backlinks to your quality posts. You do so by providing unique content that distinguishes your blog from others. In other words you are seeking to establish yourself, or brand yourself, as the person to turn to for advice on the product you're selling.

Not only can this be achieved by presenting, in own voice, accurate information on your subject of choice, it can be done by making your posts rich in keywords particular to your subject of choice.

If, for instance, someone is doing a search on an affiliate program, and your blog is specific to that, then you need to be aware of what keywords and keyword phrases people are going to be typing in their searches, and use these throughout your blog postings.

This way you optimize your blog for higher ranking in the search engines.

That said, it's important to remember that "content is king". The more content you have the better off you are going to be. Keywords are important but they need to be interspersed judisciously through relevant, thought-provoking content.

So, the key things to remember:

Be active; update your site on a regular basis.

Make it yours; stand out from the crowd. Show that you are a real person and not just a parrot. Engage your readership with your own voice, opinions and experiences. Readers value honesty and can see through strong arm selling techniques.

Relevancy; remember to use keywords wisely. Note that as search engine spiders become increasingly sophisticated, you are less and less likely to pull in traffic through keywords alone - remember at all times that "content is king!"

Build upon the main theme(s) of your blog; don't try to cover every aspect of what you are selling in your blog postings. Seperate the various aspects or subjects of your theme into managable chunks that naturally link; this in turn will aid the likelyhood of revisits to your site.

Ping your blog; improve your blogs visibility and increase traffic by alerting search engine spiders that your blog is alive. Frequently updated blogs, frequently pinged, increase your chance of making a profit online(provided you have quality content, remember!).

Conclusion. Achieving blogging success is an ongoing process, but simple enough so long as you work at it on a consistent basis. In time your aim should be to develop a name for yourself and an image that will stick in peoples minds, thus increasing your earning potential and reputation. Dilgency and honesty are key.

With practice your skill and creativity will develop and consequently the content of your blog will generate more targeted traffic,leading to sales.

Once there, well, the power of blogging is plain to the eye. Happy blogging.

Author Resource: Robbie Pringle is a member of the Tim Rohrer's TC Marketing Group, for more information on how to utilize the enormous potential of the internet

Affiliate Marketing Tips: How to choose right products from clickbank?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:08:50 PST

I joined clickbank about a couple of years ago. To start with my performance was dismal. First few months went without even a single sell and as a result money. But as time went on I started earning some money. I read some blogs and ebooks to learn some affiliate marketing tips.As I started gaining some experience the things got easier for me.

First thing in affiliate marketing is choosing a right product that you can sell through your blogs and personal pages. First and foremost , the product should be one which is of your reader's interest. For example, if you write about "skin care" then your product should be related to this. Apart from this, there are other tips and techniques to choose right products.This is what I am going to tell you in this post.

Before you start, you should know the meaning of certain terminologies used in clickbank marketplace.This is important because this helps in choosing products. You will not be able to use the stats provided by clickbank unless you know the meaning of terminologies and how to analyze them.Here is a brief definition of some important terminologies.

$Sales - $sales is the amount that an affiliate will get for each sale. For example, if you sell a product with $sales $20 then $ sales will be 20.

%Sales -This is somewhat related to $ sales. % sales means the share that an affiliate will get once a product is sold through him. For example, a product with price $100 and % sales 40% mean that affiliates will be paid $40 for each sale made through them.

%Refd - This is the percentage of sales of the product coming from affiliate sales.

Grav - This stands for "gravity" of the product, or a measure of how many affiliate are promoting it.

Having understood these basic terminologies of clickbank, let us now jump off to find some great products to sell.here are some of the points to take note of.

The main criterion in choosing a right clickbank affiliate marketing products is the conversion rate. Conversion rate means how many visitor out of 100 buy the product. For example, if 2 out of every 200 visitors to a sales page buy the product being sold there, then you have a 2% conversion rate.You should choose a product with high conversion rates to earn some income from it.

But a good question that arises here is,how do you find out what the conversion rate is?Take a look at following paragraphs where I have solved this problem for you.

1) Look at the product "Gravity". -
Every clickbank affiliate marketing product listed in the market place is marked by a "gravity" number, which is displayed at the far right, under the product title. This number represents how well the clickbank product is converting for affiliate, as it is a measure of how many sales have been referred by other clickbank affiliates. The higher the gravity number, the better the product is converting.

Shoot for gravity roughly between 50 to 100. This is one of the important clickbank affiliate marketing tips, anything lower than 50 or so probably isn't popular enough to sell well and anything that is higher than 100 is probably so popular that the market is already saturated.

2) Look at the %referred. -
If in a case you see that 84% of sales for this clickbank affiliate marketing product have been referred by affiliates then It means that major of sales for this product has been referred by affiliates but not the owner themselves.This is a good sign.

3) Look for additional factors that favor sales-
How good is the merchants sales copy? This is important for clickbank affiliate marketing the product as the sales pages are meant to SELL. You need to make sure it will attract attention of a buyer.Pick a good clickbank affiliate marketing product from the marketplace which is highly likely to sell well for you, assuming its a great fit for your target market niche.

4) Look at the $sales-
In general more $ sales means more money per sale. You should choose a product that gives you more money per sale. This is particularly true if you are advertising your sales pages to get more buyers of the product.

These are some of the tips to choose right products for you to sell.
But sells are not made entirely because of right product choice. Choosing a right product is of course important but more important is the way you promote and sell that product. I will come up with some additional tips to make your affiliate marketing campaign successful in some of the next posts. You can subscribe or return to my blog to catch those points.
Best of luck and see you again !!!!

10 steps to gigantic blog traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:38:34 PST

Do you need more traffic to your blog? This article will give you practical steps that you can take today in order to increase your blog's readership.

Post quality, original content to your blog.

Creating original well-researched content will set your blog apart from the pack. If people look at your blog and see poor quality content, they will leave your blog and probably never come back. People are drawn to great content and unique personalities. They like blogs that are written conversationally. Write like you are writing to a friend you really want to help. Include personal life stories and testimonies. This will help people feel connected to you and add uniqueness to your blog.

Help your readers solve their problems.

Many people come to the Internet to solve their problems. If you answer their questions with simple step by step instructions, they will appreciate your help and re-visit your site for more useful information in the future. You can also use this strategy to promote affiliate programs. Show them how they can use the particular service or product that you are promoting with simple steps and solve their problems.

Write for your visitors and not for the search engines.

When people write just for the search engines they tend to include search terms that don't flow with the stream of thought of the post. If what you write doesn't make sense to your visitors they will leave. You still want to optimize your posts for the search engines, just don't overdo it.

Post regularly and on a schedule.

This will cause the search engine spiders to visit your site regularly. It will also cause your readers to visit you regularly, because they know that at certain times they will be able to get fresh content from your blog. They will come to depend on it. It might be a good idea to include your posting schedule on your blog. People like consistency. If you have long lapses in posting, this will cause people to stop visiting your site. You want people to know that they can count on you for high quality, fresh, original content.

Write for a niche within a niche.

For example, Internet marketing is the main niche and ezine creation is the niche within a niche. People are looking for high quality content on a certain niche. If you can provide great information about a niche, your visitors will know where to come for the next great post. Give your readers a great reason to come back.

Optimize your blog for the search engines.

Make sure your blog posts are search engine friendly. Configure your blog to display the title of the post in the URL. You can do this in the control panel of your blog software. Another strategy is to put your main keyword in the domain name of your site. It is also a good idea to put your keywords and keyword phrases into the titles of your posts. Do keyword research before each post, so you know what are good terms to include in your post title. Then, take the time to write incredible posts. This will cause other blogs and websites to link to your blog. When you get links from related sites to your blog, your blog post will receive priority in the search engines and cause your post to appear at the top of the search engine listings.

Re-write your posts and submit them to article directories.

Use your posts to write articles that are 300 - 1000 words long and submit these to the top article directories on the Internet. Each article contains an author box. In the author box you will be able to promote your blog. Make sure to include a link back to your website. You can also use article submission services to blast out your articles to tons of publishers that will reprint your articles. Once again it is important that you write high quality articles or they won't take the time to publish them. There are a variety of companies that will do this. Take the time to research and find out which ones will best meet your needs. You could also contact websites that are within your niche and ask them if they would like fresh content for their sites in exchange for a link back to yours. If the article is well-written and useful then they will probably say yes. You could also write exclusive articles for these sites in exchange for a link back to your site.

Post on forums within your niche.

Do a search for "forums" + "your niche keyword" in order to find forums that relate to your niche. Take the time to review the forum rules and get to know the main contributors to the forum. Remember, a forum is a community of people and you are going to engage in this community. Get to know who is who. A lot of forums allow you to have a signature line attached to each post that you make. In the signature you will be able to put a link to your blog. You also might want to include a link to your RSS feed. Sign up for an account and start posting. Make sure that each post is informative and contributes to the forum. People will pick up on this right away. They will know that you are an authentic contributor. Just posting your ads to forums will tarnish your reputation, unless the forum allows it. When someone reads your post and clicks on your link, you will get traffic to your blog.

Design a useable, eye appealing blog.

It is a worthwhile investment to host your own blog rather than using free blog hosting. It would also be a good investment to take the time to create a visually appealing blog. There are many designers who can design a custom blog for you. You also want to make sure that it is easy to navigate your blog. Don't over clutter your blog with widgets and advertising. Do some research on blog usability and apply what you are learning to your blog. The time and money that you invest in a useable and eye appealing blog will result in traffic.

Get one way links to your site.

Submit your blog to all the blog and RSS directories. If you don't have time to submit to all these sites, there are services you can pay to submit your site. You can also get one way links by doing a search for "Add link" "(your target market key word)" and submitting your link to those directories. One of the best ways to get one way links is to write amazing content. This will cause other blogs and websites to link to your blog. High quality posts are known as "link bait." Once you create a great post be sure and social bookmark it to all the main directories. It takes a lot of time to write quality content, but a good "link bait" piece can cause your traffic to explode.

Author Resource:-Join Jeff Newman's Ezine and receive "Create A Website Traffic Explosion in 10 Days" and a collection of other special reports, by sending an email to mailto:ib411@aweber.com. Visit http://www.internetbusiness411.com For a membership to all of Jeff's content

5 Ways To Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:41:00 PST

So you want to build traffic to your blog? Okay, well there are a million posts on the web that will tell you the standard ways of driving traffic to your blog. I want to give you a few new traffic building ideas, ones that you probably haven't thought of yet. The following five techniques are good techniques to generate "targeted" traffic to your blog. This is traffic that comes to your blog already interested in your blog's niche ahead of time. This form of traffic converts at a MUCH higher rate than all-purpose traffic.

1. Groups

There are numerous assorted websites out there where folks meet in one location in order to share knowledge on a specific topic. Just to specify a few for you: Google Groups, Facebook Groups, Flickr Groups, and MySpace Groups. Locate one related to your topic, then sign up and use the visability to build traffic to your blog.

Question and Answer Sites

Sites like Yahoo Answers, Answers, Wiki Answers, and Expert Exchange provide an opportunity for laser targeted traffic. When you go to the site, you can find pages that answer a question directly related to your blog topic. If you had a blog related to adoption, then you could answer questions from people like, "What are the requirements for adoption?" Once you answer the question, you could place a link to your blog. What could be more targeted than that?

File Sharing Websites and Torrent Sites

Torrent sites are full with surfers that are exchanging files with each other all over the world. One awesome thought is to write an eBook on your blog's topic, and then upload it to the torrent sites. Make certain you give it a memorable title like, "10 Ways To Resolve Problem X" Once you get people to read your eBook, you have their attention. It is only natural for them to go to your website if they like your eBook. This method can build some major viral traffic to your blog if you use it creatively.

Video Sharing Sites

With the advent of the internet, large amounts of visitors sign-on to web sites such as YouTube every single day to view videos about all kinds of things. This is a traffic pond that you simply cannot walk away from. Make a video on your blog's subject, and then upload it. You can utilize Windows Movie Maker if you do not wish to spend any cash. At the end of the video, ask your viewers to go to your blog for more info. If you are great on film, and have a lot of character, you can actually go viral and get thousands of viewers. Whether you use comedy or unique abilities, if you can get visitors to watch you then you can draw people to your blog from there. Start a video tutorial series and place the first one on the video sites, then inform the viewer the others can be found at your blog. Simple tactics like this can really raise your traffic numbers.

Topical Newsgroups

Various people have forgotten about newsgroups. Make sure you do not. Newsgroups are another way to produce laser targeted traffic to your blog. It doesn't matter what the topic is, there is bound to be a newsgroup on the web that is dedicated to it. If you own Windows, then your Outlook Express program, which comes free of charge with Windows ordinarily, has a newsgroup poster that you can use to post to and read from newsgroups. You just have to input your ISP's newsgroup server info, and you're all set to go. Do not spam the newsgroups, they are extremely intolerant of it, but as long as you post useful posts, then you will see some traffic in return.

So there you go, five new ideas that should get your creative juices flowing. When it comes to blog traffic, there always seems to be some new idea floating around that you can examine. Join some blogging forums to keep yourself up to date on the latest blog inventions. Remember, the most profitable bloggers are the most active ones. Blogging is not a "one-day a week" business. Stop posting for a week or two, and you will discover this real quick.

About the Author:
The best way to drive traffic to your blog, and ultimately generate blog income, is to have a system, or blueprint in place that you can follow. I found the best blog money making system ever about 2 years ago, and nearly tripled my monthly income using it. If you are interested in doing the same, click here and I will tell you how.

7 Tips To Run Affiliate Program In Personal Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:36:49 PST

How exactly do you run the affiliate program? There are many ways.

But the simple, at least there are two ways to run the affiliate program.

The first, with arbitration techniques. For example, suppose you want to promote the product of Nintendo Wii from Amazon.com affiliate program. With arbitration technique, what you do is take advantage of pay per click ads campaign (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing / YSM, or Microsoft adCenter / MSN) on the Nintendo Wii with Amazon.com using your affiliate link.

Every time your campaign ads are clicked, the search of information about the Nintendo Wii will be brought to the landing page of the Nintendo Wii Amazon.com product details. Every time a purchase transaction through your Adwords ads put it, you get a commission from Amazon.com.

The advantages of this way, you do not need to maintain or write new articles every day. The downside (if I may say so), you must have an initial capital to start doing PPC campaign and have enough knowledge about the affiliate arbitrage strategies.

The second way, by using blogs or personal sites that you already have or make an online shopping mall. In other words, you use the media blog (either in the form of posts, sidebar spot or banner) to promote the affiliate products you are taking. Every time a purchase transaction with an affiliate product links on your blog, you get a commission from Amazon.com.

The advantages of this way, you do not need an initial capital to invest in PPC programs. Itâ€™s just with your own personal blog. The downside, you must have and write in your blog regularly.

Because of my limitations, this article will not discuss the first way that is quite advanced and sophisticated level. This article will only discuss tips to run affiliate programs by the media using blogs or personal sites that you currently have.

7 Tips Affiliate Programs Starting With Personal Blog

1.    Focus On Your Blog Visitor Needs.
What to look for your blog visitors? What information can you give to your blog visitors? Often we are so tempted to promote products that labeled as Best Seller or Hot Deals from our affiliate program follow regardless of whether your blog visitors need these products or not. As a result, not the buyer, your blog visitors even bored with the sales pitch pages you create. Try to meet the needs of the visitors first. If your personal blog contains more about the flower arranging tips, do not push yourself to promote the Nintendo Wii to your blog visitors.

2.    Select a Product and the Best Affiliate Program.
After determining what products are in accordance with the needs of visitors to your blog, the next step is to select the products and the best affiliate programs you can promote. There are thousands of products you can promote through affiliate programs that you can follow. I personally followed some affiliate programs (Amazon Associates, Commission Junction, ClickBank and Linkshare), but I feel more comfortable promoting Amazon products rather than other products of the other three programs. Perhaps because the Amazon branding is established relatively easy to make it acceptable. Or maybe because I still have a lot to learn about the three other affiliate programs. Choose the product and the best affiliate programs you think that you feel comfortable to promote it.

3.    Your Personal Experience Is The Best Recommendations.
One of the advantages of the personal blog is a personal nature. Owner relations with personal blog visitors are often like the relationship between friends. By utilizing the nature of this personal relationship, itâ€™s easier for you to promote affiliate products to visitors of your blog. Especially if you have purchased or use affiliate products that you want to promote on your blog. Ken Evoy, founder of CTPM Pilar, calls it pre-selling advantages. When you have a close relationship and a warm, honest, serve and demonstrate proficiency in the areas that you control your blog visitors, it will be much easier for you to do the selling without having to impress as sell something.

4.    Text Link is Much Better Than Banner Link.
Install affiliate banner link is much easier, but its effectiveness is much smaller than using a text link in your blog post section. Concretely, try to enter text link affiliate products that you follow in the article. Of course the topic must be according to the article that you want the product to promote. I personally tend to use text links to promote Amazon Associates product that I follow. And the result is different than just installing Amazon Associates banner links.

5.    Be Honest To Your Blog Visitor.
Promoting affiliate products on your personal blog is not something unlawful. However, there is no harm in also to be honest with your visitors by telling that you want to paste the link in your article that are posting an affiliate link. Put a (Ref) or (Aff) if you use a link that will bring visitors to your blog affiliate program to the landing page that you are taking. Why should you be honest? First, your integrity. Because of the nature of a personal blog, your blog visitors will be more appreciative if you are honest with them. Second, appreciate the time of your visitors. If they want to know more, they click on the affiliate products link on your blog even if you had marked (Ref) or (Aff).

6.    Giving More Options To The Visitors of Your Blog.
That cliche but true: Do not put all your eggs in one basket.Try to diversify your revenue streams from online business. Do not be fixated on one program alone. If possible, combine it with other affiliate programs or even with other programs in online businesses. However, it remains important to note that your personal blog is not too much crammed by various programs. Imagine if in every post youâ€™ve pasted the article 10 of the affiliate links for 10 different programs. Your blog visitors will be disgusted and run away from your blog.

7.    Promote.
The key is: do not be too quick to stop promoting affiliate products that you follow even if the value of earnings that you get was little or even none at all. Try to keep writing and paste the link (of course once again relevant to the topic of your writing) affiliate programs on your blog. Over time, it is not impossible if your affiliate products links are sought after one month, two months or even a year after you write it on your blog. If you have post pages indexed search engines, it is not impossible people will find your blog, click on your affiliate link and make a purchase. So, just wait. Do not despair.

Perhaps the seven simple tips above could be the beginning to start running affiliate programs on your personal blog. How do you think? Do you have any personal tips that proved to give positive results for affiliate programs that you run? Or it does not work?

Anthony M. Robbin is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of Bandung, Indonesia. To learn more about increasing blog popularity of your site and to also receive a free instructional manual that teaches valuable niche research techniques simply visit:http://indonesia-malaysia.com/

Your Guide For Blog Marketing, How To Use Blogs To Make Money Online

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:16:00 PST

Blogs also known as web logs are the latest thing on the internet. With there being so many blogs out there in cyber world, how do you make yours known and get people to read it. How do you have the most often read blog on the market that you are promoting? Because there are so many people that are trying to all accomplish the same thing, how are you going to stand out?

There are several things that you can do to make your blog marketing a success, and we are going to cover some of them right here.

The first thing that you should know is that you should have your blog URL pointing to your market. For example, if you are trying to promote and sell sunglasses from your blog, you want your URL to say sunglasses.YourBlogWebsite.com. Doing so will give you an extra advantage.

The next step would be to customize your blog. Rather than having the same old blog interface like everyone else has, make your unique and interesting to look at. This will also help anyone from getting your blog confused with others that look just like it. There are so many types of blog software on the market that having your own look should not be that difficult to accomplish.

Keyword research is another very important part of blog marketing. If you are not using the keywords that people search on, then chances are no one is going to find your blog. Have a variety of keywords in your blog as well. Not just the same one over and over. Not everyone just uses the term 'sunglasses' when they are searching for shades to keep the sun out of their eyes. Keyword research is an important factor to remember.

Using SEO on your blog, which stands for search engine optimization is a great idea as well. SEO will help get your blog out there and read, and will also help you get a better ranking with Google. Being as high as you can be in the Google search engine results is something that you want.

Find other sites and blogs that are in the same market as yours, but not in direct competition with you to exchange links with. This will help you out a lot as well, especially if you can get some good exchanges with high authority sites. The higher the page rank of your link exchange, the better for your blog.

Many people do not realize this, but having a different title tag in the HTML code on each page makes a big difference. If you have given the first page on your blog the title of 'sunglasses', you need to be sure that none of your other pages are named this. Doing so will make Google think that you are spamming that keyword, and that will result in them punishing your blog URL.

Once you have done your keyword research, you will want to write content based on the research you have done. Using one or two keywords, make entries into your blog using the keywords will make it easy for your blog to be indexed under those terms. That will also result in people searching on those particular terms able to find your blog.

Pinging your blog frequently is another good way to get your blog seen. Every time that you update it, use the ping tools to ping it. This will let all of the blog directories know that you have added something new to your blog. This also brings you in some more traffic.

Blog marketing is pretty much the same as website marketing. However, if you have never had a website, and are not familiar with marketing these great tips will help you get started. Be sure that you put new entries into your blog on a regular basis as well. This will help keep you up to date and current and also will keep your readers coming back for more.

Dassana Jayalath is the editor of InternetBizIQ newsletter. Visit http://www.internetbiziq.com/turbo-membership.html to get more information on Turbo Membership internet business opportunity.

How to Make Affiliate Money- Basic Principles You Need To Know

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:58:20 PST

Having problems trying to make affiliate marketing work for you? Has the promised affiliate money not shown up in your bank account? Many new online businesses promoting affiliate products fail miserable. They fail because they do not lay the proper foundation needed to make money with affiliate marketing.

Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, simply getting a website and then placing affiliate products onto your website is not going to make you an affiliate money millionaire.

Regardless of how you plan to promote your affiliate marketing business you need to lay a good foundation for your business. There are certain principles that make up a successful affiliate marketing business. You must learn what is important to your business and website in order to make money with your affiliate products.

I have listed some of the most basic principles that have been used by the elite affiliates for a long time. Employing these principles can help propel your affiliate program to the top.

Basic Principles to Make Affiliate Money:

1. Content is Number One - Your site content must be your number one priority. Without good, original content no one will be interested in your site or the affiliate products you promote. Give your visitors great, keyword related content and they will reward you. Keep you content up to date and use categories like, "most recent", "most popular", "most read" or other similar categories to highlight your content.

2. Know Your Visitors - Your visitors have come to your site as a result of keywords or phrases. You must meet those needs with your content and your affiliate products. Elite affiliates get to know their visitors. Make very sure your affiliate products provide a solution to your visitor's needs.

3. Promote Quality - Promote only quality products. Do not let the allure of affiliate money cloud you judgment. Buy the product, use the product and then promote the product only if it solves your visitor's needs. If you promote products that do not solve the problem you may make some quick affiliate money but you will not be trusted in the future by your visitors.

4. Be Open - Disclose your affiliation with your product. You can build you reader base if you are honest and fully disclose your relationship. Let you visitors know that you found and used a product that you believe can help them. If they know you purchased the product they will feel more comfortable about buying the product through your link.

5. Build Trust - Being trustworthy in the eyes of your visitors can result in more sales and more affiliate money for your business. List the benefits of your product, but also list any short comings of the product. If you lose their trust then you lose their value to your website and your ability to make affiliate money for your business.

6. Free Information - People love free stuff. Offer your visitors free information. Your success as an affiliate marketer can be enhanced by these free items. Offer free reports or free products when they purchase through your link. Do not necessarily tie the purchase of your product to receiving a free report. You can offer a free report or product if they opt-in to your mailing list.

7. Targeted Keywords - Always use highly targeted keywords and phrases for your affiliate products. The same is true for your ads. Don't pay for clicks on a keyword that does not directly relate to you products.

8. Linking Cloaking - Always cloak your affiliate link. There are some unethical affiliates who will change your linking code to their own in order to get credit for your sale.

9. Have a Plan - Develop a marketing plan. Set specific and measurable goals for you affiliate marketing business. How much do you want to earn? What is your timetable? How much do you have to invest? It you don't have a plan it will be like driving to a location in a car and not having any idea how to get there.

10. Determination - Rome was not built in a day and neither will you become an elite affiliate in a day. Stick with you goals, work at them each day and be patient about your success.

11. Testing - Test different affiliate programs. Test different affiliate products. If one product is not producing the results you want then try another quality product. Test different ads, different keywords and or make minor changes to you product page.

12. Improve Your Skills - Never stop improving your affiliate marketing skills. Work on better keyword research, ad writing, pre-sell pages and page layout. Develop better writing skills for your content or product review pages. Work to become a better affiliate marketer and set your goals to make affiliate marketing money a reality in your life.

By: Les Ross
Marketing an affiliate product is more than just picking a product and having a website. AffiliateResourcesCenter.com provides the resources you will need to build your online business and effectively market your affiliate products. Get started today at www.affiliateresourcescenter.com.

5 ways to blog better and earn more money online

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:55:30 PST

As you may already know, blogging can be quite effective in improving your ranking on search engines, driving traffic to your website or blog and increasing your revenue. Sadly, many people do not fully realize the benefits, which they can get gain from blogging.
This article will show you tips that you can utilize to make your blogging more effective, drive that traffic to your website and increase your sales.

1. Blog on a regular basis!

This is very important and can determine how successful you will be in driving traffic to your website through blogging. You must blog at least once per day. Serious internet marketers who earn six figure incomes online blog several times per day. You must consistently add new, useful and informative content on your blog so that you can keep readers coming back for more.
This can potentially make your internet business blog rank high on search engines, which will increase traffic to your website. The more you blog, the more you improve your visibility and ranking. You can write your blog posts, save them, and then just make sure that you publish them on your blog everyday.

2. Invite people with websites and blogs that are related to exchange links with you.

Links to websites with high PR on your blog will help you when Google index and rank your page. The more high PR sites that are linked to you through your blog, the more chances of you getting high PR for your website and blog.

3. Monetize your blog and increase the chances of you earning money from your blog.

You can make money from your internet home business blog through affiliate programs. What you need to do is to simply place affiliate products' names in your blog posts and hyperlink them to direct readers to the product. Every time someone clicks on the link and purchases a product, you make money! You can use your blog to advertise your own products and as well as affiliate products.

4. You must know all your keywords and use them in your blog posts.

The secret to successful blogging is making sure that all your blog posts are rich with your keywords. Don't just write blog posts without including your keywords. Keyword-rich blog posts will increase your site's ranking for your online business niche or topic keywords.

5. Seriously consider video blogging!

It is the new wave in the blogging world and can increase your exposure much more than only a text based blog can do.
Use the 5 ways outlined above to increase your online profits. Start blogging for more profits today!
To you success and happiness.

Nick J
P.S. To learn why you should really consider video blogging visit http://vidblogging.blogspot.com/

How to Set Up a Blog for Launch?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:14:00 PST

If you know how to set up a blog for launch correctly you can generate a lot of momentum in the early stages of your site. It is common for many when creating a blog to inadvertently overlook a few 'minor' steps that could slow their progress. The blog building process normally takes a bit of time before progress can be seen. By preparing your site and yourself properly BEFORE launch however you can expect to see progress sooner rather than later.

If you are blogging to make money it is a sure bet that you will be motivated to see progress as soon as possible since money tends to strengthen our motivation. With that said here is a simple 9 step process to use when creating a blog you want to establish as quickly as possible.

Establish Your Niche

The first order of business is to select a market or niche that your blog will focus on. Now you want to be sure that the niche you select has some sort of following. Now if you are blogging to make money you need to also be sure that these people spend money or else you will be wasting time and effort.

Establish Your Hosting and Domain Name

In the earliest stages of creating a blog you will need to select both a hosting service and a domain name. The name you choose should have one of your main keywords in it which will make it more relevant in terms of search engine rank.

Choose Your Theme

Select a theme for your blog that is appropriate for your niche and your intentions. Generally if you are blogging to make money you will want a more professional looking theme however your target audience also needs to be considered. Selecting a 'playful' theme or one with a lot of color may be a better fit for your purposes.

Prepare 20 Posts

To get a quick start and build momentum early on you will want to prepare about 20 HIGH QUALITY posts BEFORE you launch your blog. By doing so you will have plenty of content that you can post to the site to stir up an interest while also giving you time to produce more posts. Continual posting is a large part of the blog building process.

Determine How to Capture Names

If you are blogging to make money you will want to set up some way to capture names of the visitors to your site. You can position an opt-in box on the blog itself or you can channel traffic to a location off your site. This is your choice but if you place a box on the blog make it easy to find but NOT dominating in size.

Establish Twitter Account

If you have a Twitter account great and if not go sign up for one since this is a great way to increase the exposure of your blog. Twitter has an app called twitterfeed that allows you to 'tweet' every new entry you post to your blog. With the large membership base Twitter has and the automation of this app you can not beat its effectiveness and ease of use.

Get Comfortable Writing

Oh yeah, while you are busy during the launch of your blog you MUST continue to create content to post to your site. The more content you post the more traffic you will receive therefore if you want to attract lots of readers you will need to give them plenty to read. The blog building process takes time but if you stick with it you will be rewarded especially if you are blogging to make money.

Use Social Networking

Get involved with other social networking sites to helps increase the exposure of your blog. Blogging takes a lot of time if it is done right so choose a few social network sites you are comfortable and start making some friends and spreading the word.

Build Backlinks

Go out into your niche and visit other blogs that are relevant to yours. Check out the posts and comments and participate in any discussions. When making any 'meaningful' contributions to these discussions you will find people notice and 'follow' you back to your site. If your comments are beneficial to others the blog owner will also notice and visit your blog to see what it is all about. If they like what they see they will link to your site creating a backlink that helps boost your search engine ranking.

Knowing how to set up a blog correctly can save you a lot of time after launch in establishing yourself in your chosen niche. The blog building process will take some time no matter what you do but a strong launch can capture you a lot of momentum. This momentum is especially important if you are blogging to make money since who does not want to profit as soon as possible. The 9 steps reviewed here today will help you generate and capture momentum immediately upon launch to establish your blog as quickly as possible. Of course the final destination of your blog will ultimately be influenced by the level of your commitment and efforts after launch and throughout the life of your blog.

TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina.
To learn more about how to set up a blog and to also receive a free instructional manual that teaches valuable niche research techniques simply visit:http://blogbrawn.com/

How to choose Hosting Company for your blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:50:58 PST

One cool thing you can do before your blog concept pages go live on the World Wide Web is taking first your time shopping on the internet the type of hosting company you want to host your online business with. Don't rush my dear reader because the web hosting company will determine your online success.
There are many web hosting companies each with differentiated qualities. I agree that doing comparison regarding their quality is not an easy task, but please do take your time to choose the best one that best suits your blog requirements.

What is Hosting Company?

Your hosting company is a company that stores your blog pages and makes it visible to anyone browsing it on the internet. Usually it has got computers that stores pages and information. The computers must stay connected to the internet throughout otherwise the surfers won't access websites.

A fee is paid to these companies for renting their computer space and also for using their bandwidth which they have to pay also. The bandwidth allows the transfer of data from one computer to another over the World Wide Web. Large bandwidth allows large amount of data to be transferred unlike smaller bandwidths.
Before choosing your web hosting company, you should inquire the pricing of different types of packages they are offering so that you don't end up paying more than you ought to.

Factors to consider when choosing your quality web hosting Company:

1. Disk space-

Project your online blog space requirement for the current period and for the future one. Remember that as your online blog grows, it will require more disc space in your web hosting computer. So, be clear about the space required and inquire if your web hosting is able to support your present and future requirements too.

2. Bandwidth-

The type of bandwidth will be a major factor to consider when selecting a web hosting company. Select the company that will be able to handle many requests of your website data by surfers on the World Wide Web. This will ensure the success of your online business as it is able to handle many requests from surfers. Don't trust any web hosting company advertising that it is offering unlimited bandwidth. It is also paying for this bandwidth too so, there is no way it can offer it for free.

3. Web hosting technical support-

Select a company that will offer you technical support at any time when a need arises. Inquire how long they take to respond to calls when their clients require help.

4. Security of your online data and resources availability-

Does this company offers security through SSL [Secure Socket Layer]? If not, then it means that your client's credit card information will not be secure from hackers. If you are planning to have an online store or any other online business, then MySQL is a necessity. MySQL is a database that you will use in your many programs which will be running in your online business.

5. Reputation of company and how it treats its clients-

Also Inquire for how long this company has been in the business. Read the reviews about this company and know how they treat their clients

Remember that what you pay for is what you get regarding the disk space and the bandwidth. The greater the disk space and bandwidth you require, the greater the price you will be compelled to pay.

There is much to learn about affiliates, J. Nyamache lets you know how to go about affiliate.

What is blogging voice and how to find one?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:13:58 PST

Do an exercise before reading this post.Go to your favorite blog and read out some of the posts there. Carefully take note of the words the blogger has written. Every written word in the post makes some sound in your mind. You will feel the angry words when the blogger is angry due to some event.You can feel the heated discussion when blogger is involving himself in one and you will feel the gratitude when blogger is thanking someone. The words by itself has no tone but it still reflects the feelings by making some sound in your mind. This is the voice of the blogger whose post you are reading.

So,What is blogging voice?

It is false belief that the written materials can't express the subjective traits like mood, tone and feelings which is well expressed while speaking and talking.Written material can well express all these traits only that you have to find your voice and use words in such a way that it expresses your mood, tone and way of speaking.

Take an example, whenever you write a letter thanking your friend or family, your letter and words in it well expresses your gratitude.The reader can feel how you are feeling.Similarly, when you write a condolence letter to someone you don't sound like you are happy.Your words itself express that you are sad on someone's demise.

This is the voice and we inject it unknowingly in our writing in day to day life.Good bloggers also inject this voice in their posts. Blogging voice is just expression of blogger's feelings and opinions in his own special way through his blog and posts.It is a method by which you take your personality into your posts just by being original you.

Why I need my own blogging voice?

Most of the bloggers are not able to take their voice onto their blogs. Every blogger wants to write nice posts and for this he starts copying voice and style of someone else usually another blogger who is established in his niche.

Bloggging is all about projecting a person's views, thoughts and feelings in his own special way. If you start copying someone the originality is lost and whole purpose of starting a blog is defeated. That is why you should have your own blogging voice.

Furthermore , even with the best efforts you can't copy a person perfectly. Your own voice will keep on popping up in between. So, what you produce will be a mixture of two voices- one yours and the other of the person you are copying. Your readers can sense this disparity in voices the moment they start reading your post. So, instead of copying someone you should allow your own voice to come out.Let you readers find your personality by reading your posts. Let them feel your feelings and subjective traits like tone and way of speaking.

With this much said, I would now like to give you some advices to help you find you blogging voice and inject it into your posts.

How can you find your own blogging voice?

Finding your blogging voice is easy said than done. Take a note of following points and keep these points in mind next time you sit to write your post. Keep in mind though, your voice will not start coming out in a matter of day or two. It will take some time. But with time you will find your voice. With this said, let us jump off to the points that you should follow to find your own blogging voice.

1) Write and write more-

Good writing skills require a great deal of practice. Furthermore, writing with a voice requires even more practice. More you write ,more you inch towards your blogging voice.
Indulge yourself in daily writing sessions. Write about any subject and don't care about the grammatical mistakes or anything else while writing practice sessions. Furthermore, you don't have to spend hours writing. A few minutes of writing session on daily basis would suffice.

2) Read more-

To be a good writer you have to be a good reader first. Consume as many articles as you can. Just like daily writing sessions, make habit of daily reading sessions.Read out the opinions of others ,tear things apart and then reach to your own conclusion.

3) Know who you are?-

Different people have different senses in day to day life. Many of you might have a comical sense while others might be philosophical and still others might be analytical.A person with comical sense will throw a joke or two while explaining things.Similarly, persons with philosophical or analytical senses have their own way of presenting things. Try to know what kinda guy you are? Whether you are comical or philosophical or analytical or critic or anything else.
It is easier to take your voice onto your blog once you know what kinda guy you are.

4)Know your audience-

You talk differently with different people.For example, you talk in a different way with a boy and differently with girls or in a different way with an old man and differently with a child.Just see how your way of talking varies with different sets of people.
Same principle can be applied to blogging as well. Just know ,whom you are writing for? Whether you are writing for boys or for girls, for old people or for young men and women. Try to write with your target audience in mind. Write in a way you would have talked to your target audience.

5) Don't write to impress anyone-

Although making impression is not bad thing to do but doing it on cost of your blogging voice is bad.
Blogging is not about impressing anyone, it is about presenting your own opinion and perspective in your own special way.
It is not uncommon to lose your voice while trying to impress others with you piece of writing.So, let the words and sentences come out naturally. Don't stress upon your writing in order to make impression.

6) Express your opinion-

Blogging makes no sense when you don't have a opinion or, when you have a opinion but you don't express it on your blog. Internet is a democratic world and your opinion here matters.People come to your blog to know what you think and not what other people think.
Once you start expressing others ,you lose your voice and lose it fast.

Is there anything to add?

I know everyone has there own way to find his/her voice. I would love to know yours through comment section of this post.

How to beat blogger's block?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:23:13 PDT

Image by: re birf
Imagine a situation. You are about to write your next post on your blog. You prepare yourself and place yourself in front of your computer.And suddenly you experience a total mind block. You have no idea what and how to write. You try hard to write something only to make situation worse. You start banging your head on the wall but this doesn't help as well. You have no clue what has gone wrong with you and how to combat it. And then after sometime (usually after 2-3 days) everything becomes fine.

Have you experienced such thing while blogging? Well, I am sure you have. This is called blogger's block and is a normal thing and happens to every blogger including the top tier bloggers.

I was going through the same shit for last few days. I spent hours in front of screen and produced nothing. I am writing this post to help anyone who experiences or has experienced blogger's block while blogging.Although a lot has been said on the subject on many blogs but I want to add fresh perspectives to it.

What causes blogger's block?

Blogger's block can be compared to a similar situation occurring in writers called writer's block.The causes of these two similar phenomena are also same.
According to wikipedia the most common cause of writer's block is stress, anxiety or fear. Here are the lines I have quoted from wikipedia-

Writer's block can be closely related to depression and anxiety, two mood disorders that reflect environmentally caused or spontaneous changes in the brain's frontal lobe.
Source

Apart from stress , partial or no research on the topic , monotonous life styles and loss of motivation may also lead to blogger's block. Other less important cause is blogging in a niche that is not of your interest.( I say it less important because most of the bloggers blog in their area of interest)

I am telling you all these things because it is necessary to identify the cause in order to beat the blogger's block phenomenon. With this said, let us now head over to the steps to follow to beat this.

How to beat blogger's block?

The things you do while going through this phenomenon can either make things better or worsen it. For example, getting panicked in this situation can worsen it.So ,it is necessary to face it in tactical way to get rid of it at soonest possible. Here are some of the tips that you can follow to beat the blogger's block phenomenon.

Don't panic just relax-

As I have said earlier,stress and fear are the triggering events of blogger's block. More fear and stress will make the situation last longer. Relax yourself. Do the things you love to do. Play your favorite game or watch TV and movies or go out for a walk or eat your favorite dishes in your favorite restaurant. Just do what you love to do. This will dispel your fear and relieve the stressed situation to some extent.

Change environment-

I live in a flat located in the heart of my hospital campus. So, there is much din and bustle going on near me everytime. Although I am accustomed to it but sometimes I am not able to concentrate in this surrounding. This is the time when I go out in a peaceful environment with my laptop.
Your surroundings has direct impingement on your brain's activity.Changing your environment has a positive impact on your mind. This freshens your mind and you can concentrate better in the new surroundings.

Change your writing schedule-

Mind works at different pace at different times in a day .Normally, brain slows down after long day's work and it works most efficiently when you have just woke up in the morning. You should select a time that tunes up well with your brain's activity. For example, I work most efficiently during night when everything around me has calmed down and my mind works well in this environment. Most others feel energized in morning when they are fresh like morning petals.

Just think when your mind is fresh and you feel like you are energized from within. This is the time when you should start writing your posts.

Prepare yourself beforehand-

Blogger's block is like Tsunami, you never know when it appears before you. It is nice to plan your future posts beforehand. So that, you have ample ideas to work on with even when you are going through blogger's block kinda thing.

Always take a pen and a notebook with you ,so that, you are able to note down every idea that comes to your mind. It is easy to lose future post ideas just because you were not able to note it when it came.I have lost many ideas by not doing this.

Now just start looking into your notebook when you experience blogger's block. The ideas noted down in your notebook can help you break loose of mind block. This can help you craft a post even when you are going through blogger's block.

Engage youself in free writing-

Free writing is a writing technique in which a person impulsively write whatever comes to his mind for set period of time without regard to spelling, grammar or topic.A brief period of free writing helps fight blogger's block and helps the brain to tone up. Free writing can be regarded as an exercise of mind.

Schedule a time for free writing session on a daily basis. You don't have to do it for hours, a 15-20 minutes session of free writing is enough. Apart from beating blogger's block it also helps in preventing it and sharpening your writing skills.

Read your favorite blogs and visit different forums of your niche-

If writer's block comes from a lack of new ideas, attempts to spark creativity by visiting your favorite blogs and different forums of your niche can be useful.The posts on blogs and forums can trigger new idea formation. This has happened to me time and again.Many of the ideas on this blog has emanated while reading other blogs or feeds in google reader or forums.

Ideas need a triggering event to come through. Of course ,sometimes they may come spontaneously but most of the times they are result of some event like, going through a post on a blog or a thread in a forum.

Throw negative thoughts out of your mind-

Blogger's block also occur due to too many negative thoughts hovering in your mind.If this is the case with you ,you have to get rid of them as soon as possible.I know getting rid of negative thoughts is easy said than done. But some of the things that you can do to throw out negative thoughts are-

Focus on the good things that has occured to you. Has a reader appreciated your work or did you get many votes on some of your posts in social media sites?Just remember those moments and soon you will start thinking in positive way.

Read the top posts you have written. What are the posts that got maximum coments or managed to get extra votes on social media sites? Read out your own posts loudly and soon you may start feeling flow of positive energy in yourself.

Research if you already have an idea-

Sometimes blogger's block doesn't occur because of lack of ideas but because of failure to expand upon the existing ideas to make up a post. This usually points lack of research.In this case you have to do a thorough research to beat the blogger's block. Google the topic ,read relevant articles and visit different forums and sites to make an in depth research.

Organise the points once you are finished researching.Many a times you are not able to write just because you are not able plot your post. Organising your points can help you to beat the blogger's block in this case.

Chat with other bloggers in your niche-

A nice and productive chat with other bloggers can trigger your idea engine to get some ideas. Recently I had a nice chat with one of my friends (who is also a blogger but doesn't blogs in my niche). We were discussing the cases where bloggers were sued.It sparked of an idea and I finished writing the post- "How to blog without getting sued?"

So, getting involved in a chat does help in beating the blogger's block. Apart from triggering your idea engine it also helps in relaxing your mind.

Is there anything to add?

Everyone has different tactics to get rid of blogger' block. Things I discussed above are the ones that I practice. I know many of you can add some more tactics to beat blogger's block. You are most welcome to discuss it if you have one. It is highly appreciated.

How to blog without getting sued?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:15:10 PST

Internet used to be the playground of a few handful of people a few years ago. But now everyone has their say, thanks to blogs and social media sites. Social media sites in general and blogs in particular has transformed internet into a democratic media. The 'freedom of speech' that everybody talks about can now be seen on virtual world of internet as well.

Although this advancement has been quite exceptional but the so called 'freedom of speech' has also created situations where bloggers got sued because of it (mostly due to misuse of it). The fine line between being critical and being defamatory is obscure and has added to the plight of bloggers. As a result, the cases of bloggers getting sued has been on rise since last couple of years.

For past few weeks I have been studying some of the cases where bloggers were sued and came to a conclusion that in most of the cases a blogger can avoid the trauma of getting into the courtroom by following some simple steps. This is what I am going to talk off in today's post.

Take care of following points while blogging to avoid getting sued-

1) Don't write defamatory posts-
While as a human being every blogger has right to criticise a person or a company ,criticism based on false facts is something you should refrain from doing. Furthermore, if you are criticising someone and some company time and again on your blog, you are inviting a problem.

In 2007, a blogger named Joe Albero was sued because he made fun of Salisbury police chief time and again in his blog ,Salisbury news blog. Police chief, Allen Webster sued him because he repeatedly made fun of him sometimes calling him "Chief Jack and coke". (Source)

Take another example, in July 2008, one of the blogger from Malaysia, Raja Petra was sued by two army officials when he declared the officials to be involved in murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu.The blogger made this statement without backing his statement with citations and proofs from reliable sources and did it repeatedly on his blog. He was charged RM 1 million in damages. (source)

In both these cases bloggers were sued because they criticised someone and the statements were based on either false facts or without citations and proofs from reliable sources.Furthermore, they did it repeatedly on their blog.

So, to not get litigated for defamation you need to-

Criticise someone only when you have solid backings in the form of solid citations, quotes or proofs from authority sources.

Refrain from criticising someone repeatedly on your blog.

Refrain from making false statements on your blog.

Don't infringe copyright policies-
While researching the topic last week, I found copyright infringement to be second most common cause of getting sued.

The hottest example of this would be perezhilton.com. The author was sued by a Los Angeles based photo agency company, X17 Inc. for illegally using some of the photographs on the blog. The company charged the blog author, Mario Lavandeira with accusations of using 51 images without permission , payment or credit. (Source)

Another example, Britney spears' label record sued a Los Angeles based popular gossip blogger for illegally posting tracks from her album even before it was released. The company demanded unspecified damages plus legal cost for this copyright infringement. (Source)

The lessons to take from these two cases are-

Read the copyright policies before using any rich media on your blog.

Don't indulge yourself in plagiarism.

Take permission of copyright holder before using something in your blog.

Don't disclose other people's secret-
While it is OK to break news of your niche, it is not good to disclose secrets of either an individual's personal life or a company's policies or product secrets.

There was a case when the computer giant company, Apple charged an owner of blog to divulge secrets of the products even before the products were officially launched. Although the company and blogger agreed upon a settlement after 2 years but the mental trauma that the blogger would have suffered during these two years can be imagined. ( Source)

Although divulging someone's secret can give you overnight popularity but it would be nice to not indulge in such things to avoid future problems.

Take a close look at the comments appearing on your blog-
Once the famous blogger, Aaron Wall of SeoBook.com was sued for the comments that appeared in his blog. One of the Las Vegas based company, trafficpower.com charged Aaron Wall because some of the comments submitted by readers were defamatory for the company.

Some visitors to Mr. Wall's blog had posted comments complaining about what they said were unprofessional business practices by Traffic-Power.com, while others said they didn't think the tools sold by Traffic-Power.com were effective in boosting search-engine rankings.
Source

As a blog owner you are responsible for the things that appear on your blog (including comments). So, to avoid getting sued for comments appearing on your blog you should-

Moderate all the comments that are inappropriate or possibly defamatory and harsh.

Disallow anonymous comments on your blog.

Make a comment policy for your blog stating the types of comment that are allowed or not allowed on your blog.

Don't write anti-government posts if your government forbids it-
There has been cases where bloggers were sued and tried for writing anti-government posts. While it is allowed to criticise government policies in most of the countries, it can't be said for all countries of the world. If writing against government policies is not allowed in your country , you should not write about it to avoid getting into a problem.Please make a note that the freedom of speech I talked about earlier is not followed in all countries of the world.

Although there has been situations when bloggers has been sued for quite absurd and obscure reasons but by following the points I discussed above you can avoid running into a problem in most circumstances.

Basic SEO tips for blogging beginners

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:15:50 PST

SEO is quite a favorite topic between internet marketers and bloggers alike and many websites are in place focusing only on SEO. So, it won't be possible to discuss it all in one post. In this post, I will deal about very basic of SEO. I will not dive into advanced things and craft this post with a newbie in mind.

With this said, let us now jump off to know some basic SEO.

What is SEO and how a blogger can benefit from it?
Although this might not be a difficult question to answer for many of you but let me answer this for someone who has just joined the internet world and has no idea about it.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In its simplest form it is the things you do on your site and off it to get high search engine rankings. Search engines rank websites by taking certain factors into account. SEO is just knowing those factors and applying that knowledge to attain a high search engine rankings.

Now let us take the other part of the question. How SEO can benefit a blogger?
Well, the success of a blog depends upon the traffic it gets.You are a successful blogger if you are getting more hits on your blog.Furthermore, search engines are one of the best sources of traffic. So, by attaining a high search engine ranking you can assure you find readers to your blog.

So How can I optimize my blog for search engines?

As I have said earlier, search engine optimization is a vast topic to deal with in one post. But in most of the cases a basic knowledge of SEO is just enough to get high rankings.Here are some of the points that you should know to make your blog more search engine friendly.

Do a solid keyword research- Keywords are the words or phrases that are used by people to make searches. A keyword used time and again to make searches and with less website using it in their pages is better. Now, to find such a keyword you have to do a keyword research.Here is the link of the post where I have discussed keyword research in some detail. Choose three keywords for your post ,one primary and other two secondary.

Use your keyword in title ,sub-title and uniformly in the content- Titles are the part that get most attention by the search engines. So, it would always be good idea to use your primary keyword in title.Furthermore, use your secondary keywords in subtitles and all of them through out the content.

Make use of html tags- Search engines take a close look at the things written in bold, italic or in heading. So, make use of bold and italic Html tags to emphasize your important points. Just make sure your important lines contain your keywords.

Add fresh content regularly- Search engines in general and Google in particular love fresh added content. A site/blog with regularly updated posts get some preference by search engines.So, write more content and add pages to your blog regularly.

Make navigation easy- Search engines (and also humans) love easily navigable sites. Make sure you have interlinked your related posts with each other. Navigation makes crawling easy and also that your pages are crawled properly. Other things you can do is, list your top and popular posts from your sidebar.Details in the post-"Organic search engine optimization part-3- internal linking".

Don't use java and flash overly- Unllike humans search engines are blind to javascripts and flash. So, keep use of javascripts and flash to bare minimum.Furthermore, java and flash cause delay in page loading this will cause improper crawling of your blog and is also irritating for most visitors.

Build links for your website- A link from other website is seen as a vote to your page by search engines. More votes to your blog mean you have worth content and deserve a high high search engine ranking.Furthermore, a vote (link) from an authority site has more weightage than a link from 'C' grade site.Links increase Pagerank of your blog which is one of the metric used by Google to rank websites. For details read the post- "Pagerank Explained." Read the post " 10 powerful ways to build links" for details of link building.

Use keywords in the anchor text- Anchor texts are the words used to link a page from another one.Having your keyword in your anchor text is seen as search engines as the page being relevant for that keyword. So, instead of using 'click here' or 'here' use your keywords as anchor text.

I think this much is the basics of the search engine optimization every blogger should know. I would like to say here that often there is temptation to write with your keywords and search engines in centre of your mind. My word of advice here would be to write content for humans and use your keywords in a way that it does't interferes with the user experience.

How to get traffic to your blog through Stumble Upon [Video post]

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:16:21 PST

One of the challenges , most of the bloggers face is, getting traffic to a new blog (sometimes even old blog if you are not doing things right). You try hard and hard writing useful content , do some SEO and comment in forums and other blogs.

Still you wonder why the traffic is not coming .Here is the solution.One of the easiest way to get traffic to blog is through Stumble Upon. The traffic from StumbleUpon is quick and unlike other social media sites you don't require a lot of votes to get visitors.

You just submit your blog or blog posts and manage to get some votes and see visitors coming to your blog. Another good thing with stumbleUpon is traffic is sustained.This means you will get traffic as long as people keep on giving thumbs up to your posts.

The video below shows how you can generate traffic to your blog through stumbleUpon. This is somewhat long video (9:54 minutes) but is worth watching.Hope you would enjoy watching this one.

The video was prepared by MakeMoneyOnline and was taken from Youtube.The video was originally prepared for Web2Marketer.com.

Getting started with Stumble Upon [Video post]

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:16:48 PST

I am posting two videos here in this post for someone who is a beginner and joined the internet world just a few days ago. These first videos shows how you sign up and submit a page to stumble upon and the other one shows how you use the Stumble Upon toolbar.

But before you watch these videos let me give you some basic ideas about Stumble Upon.

Stumble Upon is a social bookmarking site and a way to randomly discover and surf col websites on the net.The site has a virtual community behind it who discover ,vote and review the pages and based upon votings and reviews the websites are presented to an user.

So how as a blogger you will be benefitted from stumble upon. You can benefit by three ways-

Discover cool websites- For being a blogger you have to be a learner first. You will get immense learning opportunity here by discovering some websites or pages having ocean of knowledge on almost all topics.
Network with others- Success as a blogger depends upon your networking capabilities with both your readers and other bloggers in your niche.Stumble Upon provides you with excellent opportunity to network with like minded people.
Traffic building opportunity- Stumble Upon can be used to get instant traffic to your blog.One of the best features of this social media site is it gives quick and good results in terms of traffic.You can get hundreds of visitors even if you manage to get only 2-3 votes from your friends or other members of the community.(this is a clue)

Now just watch these videos to get started with stumble upon.

Video by Mauibob33 and taken via YouTube.This video was originally prepared for RecognizedExpert.com

The video below shows how to use the Stumble Upon toolbar.This is 2.43 minutes video and worth watching if you are a beginner. The video was prepared by casttv and was taken from YouTube.

How your Tweets and Twitter followers are correlated? [Case Study]

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:17:05 PST

It has been a week since I became active on Twitter and I have devoted this time in learning the etiquette of this social media site. This also allowed me some time to observe some correlation between the tweets and followers you get subsequent to those tweets.

First let me give you some stats of my Twitter usage during the week. At the time of writing this post , I had made 170 updates (tweets) ,I have 57 people following me and I am following 32 people. I got 12 @ replies and sent 17 . I got 4 DMs (direct messages) and sent out 4 to others.These numbers are not great but since I have been there only for a week and mostly as bystander, so, these numbers are all expected.

During these one week I noticed some specific type of tweets getting me more followers than others. Furthermore, this has been a repetitive phenomenon ,meaning this phenomenon has been reproducible time and again. This led me to think that there certainly is some correlation between tweets and follower number.

With that said, I would now move on to the things I have observed.
The first surge in the followers number came in when I tweeted a famous humorous quote by Albert Einstein.Here is the screenshot of the tweet I am talking about.

I got 10 followers within an hour of posting the quote. I wondered ,if that was due to the quote I just posted. I was not sure of it. So, I posted another humorous quote to check if it was the earlier quote that caused the surge.Here is the screenshot of that another tweet.

This one got me 8 followers about half an hour after it was posted.

So,I was wondering what caused these two tweets to get some followers? Well, I am not sure. But my obvious guess is , these tweets were humorous in nature and humorous things are quite popular in social media. I guess, the followers picked this up from public timeline and followed me because they found those tweets entertaining.

Now take a look at the screenshots of these two tweets that were posted hours after the earlier ones.

These two tweets were made at an interval of an hour between them.The "blogging news" tweet was earlier to go.With this one I got 7 followers within half an hour. Another thing that I noted with this one was most of the followers were bloggers and most said they were passionate about blogging in their profiles.

Now I think you are correlating it well. By using the word "blogging news" , I got followers who were bloggers. My explanation for this one is- these followers made twitter search using the term "blogging" or "blogging news" and saw my tweet there, got interested and followed me afterwards( I am not sure of my explanation though).

Now take the case of "twitter news" tweet (screenshot above). This one caused the steepest spike in followers count. It got me 17 followers just after it was posted.(May be because it involved three celebrities- "Obama" ,"Britney Spears" and "Twitter". Furthermore, it was about a news that was red hot when it was posted.

I posted another newsy material to test this hypothesis further. This time I tweeted this news-

Although in terms of numbers it didn't bring me more followers ( I got 4 subscribers after this one) but I noted an interesting thing here. This time 3 out of those 4 followers were interested in Search engines and SEO (the news I tweeted was about google). I think you are getting the correlation right.

Conclusion-
The number of Tweeter followers increases when you tweet about something that is popular in social media. In my case it was humour and breaking news. Furthermore , you get targeted followers if you just tweet about the topic you are interested in. In my case I got bloggers as followers when I tweeted about blogging news and Search engine marketers when I tweeted about Google.

P.S.- These datas are based on my usage for past one week only. This certainly is not reliable and it has to be supported by further datas. I will keep you updated on how it goes. In the meantime, I would like to get some feedback from you about your experiences with twitter and some correlation between your tweets and followers if you have seen it happen.

8 reasons why a blogger should be on Twitter?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:17:15 PST

Image by: Mykl Roventin
I came to know about Twitter last year in March through some of the posts on Problogger. But for some strange reasons those 140 characters appeared less to me and I decided not to tweet. I can tell you, I was such a dumb ass to make such a decision and deserved to be kicked on my backside.
Anyways ,it is better to be late than never.

Twitter has shown tremendous growth last year and tweeting phenomena has taken over every other social media site. I have become a part of Twitter community only recently and I have discovered some areas where Twitter can be beneficial from a blogger's perspective. This is what I am going to deal in here today.( I have also posted a video at the end of the post on the topic and hope you would enoy watching this.)

OK, then, let's discover the 8 reasons why a blogger should be on Twitter?

Networking opportunity-

In some ways blogging is like running a business. Just like businesses make relations with their customers and prospects ,a blogger has to interact with his readers. Twitter can be used as a platform to communicate with your readers and also with other fellow bloggers in your niche.

You can have a nice chit chat with others or answer reader's questions or even ask questions to others. Tremendous !! I mean ,you can do miracles with those 140 characters in terms of building relationship.

Updating your readers-

You can make use of Twitter to update your readers. You can share your latest posts with them by twitting the link. Or you can share a link of a nice article you just found while surfing or you can share the breaking news with your fellow tweeterers.
Just see, how easily you can update your readers about the latest happenings in your niche.Isn't this fantastic?

Learning opportunities-

I have found some great articles when someone else tweeted about it and I feel ,I couldn't have found those articles Googling.
So, you can also get some learning opportunities through Twitter.Afterall a blogger has to learn before he delivers.

Posting ideas for future-

A nice chit chat can transform into an idea for your future post. Although this hasn't happened to me yet but I have heard some bloggers talking about getting ideas from a tweet or communication they had on the Twitter.

Making new friends-

Just like any other social media site, you can make friends on twitter from areas which are out of your reach. You can track other people's conversations and befriend someone who is involved in useful and interesting conversation.

Finding new reader-

Although I am using twitter for last few days only, but Twitter has provided me with some visitors.The numbers are understandably not great right now but I expect some more visitors to my blog once I become more involved.

Traffic from twitter is usually achieved by tweeting about one of your posts. You can also request your friends to tweet about your posts (not every one only those which are interesting).You never know when some of your post goes viral this way.So, twitter can also be beneficial in increaseing hits on your blog.

Tracking conversations about your blog-

You can track the conversations involving your blog.You can know what people are saying about your blog and this can be a nice feedback to improve your blog.
This is done by making use of the twitter search.Type in your blog's url or title and see what people are saying about your blog. Easiest way to get feedback from a community, isnt it?

Networking on the move-

Imagine ,you are in a restaurant eating delicious recipes and something interesting happens around you.Now, if you are on any social media other than twitter you have to rush to your computer or nearest cafe to share the event. But with twitter you can share the incident instantly using your mobile phone.
From a bloggers perspective, you don't lose contact with your readers even when you are on a holiday or in a train or plane.

Here is one of the videos that effectively answers the question - 'why you should use Twitter?'. I find this video extremely beneficial and interesting. The video has been prepared by jeffBT and was taken from youtube. Jeff is a young entrepreneur and runs the site besttechie.net. Hope you would enjoy and learn from this video.

How to drive traffic to a very new blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:18:07 PST

image by- Juhansonin
I started my first blog back in 2006 about two and half years ago from now.The blog was about 'Tourist places in India".This was followed by two other blogs, one on 'Medical studies' and another one on 'Hill-stations in India". Although I have abandoned these blogs now but I learnt a lot from them.Particularly the first one.One thing that was common to all these three blogs was there were no visitors until a few months of starting these blogs.

While running those blogs I learnt a lot about driving traffic to new blog and this is what I am going to discuss in this post.I have learnt these tips from my earlier experiences as well as by taking a look at activities of other bloggers in the blogosphere.

Indeed, it is quite a difficult task to drive traffic to a new blog.You don't get anything from search engines as a new blog is never ranked higher or may be not even indexed. You might not get direct traffic and links from other blogs as word about a new blog is never out until a few weeks (or even months) has elapsed since starting it.

Timing of promotion of a new blog is important-

Timing of starting blog promotion is very important. In my opinion you should not jump off to a promotion campaign until you have published 20-25 pillar posts .By being early in promotion you might disappoint the visitors if they find just 1 or 2 meaningful posts on your blog.
So, my advice here would be to accumulate some quality content and then get your hands into the promotion.

Having said this, I would now set off quickly to actual tips.

Tip #-1- Announce your new blog from an existing blog-

According to one of the surveys conducted by Technorati, vast majority of bloggers write on more than one blogs. So, I will presume that most of you already have a blog.You can just capitalise on your existing blog to drive traffic to the newer one.

Take an example, Just about a few weeks ago Darren (the man behind Problogger) launched his new blog- TwiTip.com.And guess what, he announced his new blog from Problogger.net. Now, see the results.At the time of writing this post, Twitip.com has 3529 subscribers.This,I think, is enormous figure for a blog just about a few weeks old. You can yourself watch this tip in action.

Of course, majority of you don't have that much reader base as Darren but even 50- 100 visitors coming to your new blog matters.
Alternatively, you may also place a banner-link of your new blog on your older blog.

Tip #2- Be a guest blogger in an already established blog-

Recently I came across a very nice but relatively new blog- howtomakemyblog.com.This blog is written by a very nice guy Marko. The blog came to my knowledge because Marko featured as as a guest blogger at probloggr.net.

Here is that guest post I am talking about. According to Marko ,he got 287 visitors from that guest post and also 60 subscribers just after his post was published (source). Now, these figures might not sound like great but it is really great figure for a blog which is relatively new. At the time of writing this post Marko has more than 200 subscribers to his blog.

My conclusion on this is, a new blog requires an initial offshoot to take off in the blogosphere and I reckon guest posts to be the fastest and relatively easier way to provide that off shoot.

Tip #3- Start commenting on related and well established blogs-

Commenting is the easiest method to drive traffic to a blog. Although you won't get flood of visitors to your blog by commenting but by being a consistent comment maker you can gradually build traffic to your blog. Just take care of following points while commenting-

Comment on blogs with high readership

Be first to comment on a post.

Make your comments useful and unique

Make your comments eye catching by making use of bold and italic tags.

More details on comment making in this post- "How to master the art of comment making on other blogs?"

Tip #4- Make full use of social media-

Web 2.0 has already taken its full effect and it would be insane not to use social media sites in the era of web 2.0. One of the biggest reason why I am a fan of the social media sites is because they give instant results. You submit your pages to these sites and manage to get some votes and booom, you start seeing a lot of visitors coming to your pages.

Again I will take the example of Twitip.com. One of the reasons why twitip.com took off too quickly is because Darren made use of his strong profiles on social media sites to drive traffic to this blog. I have often seen Darren voting his posts on Stumble Upon. Furthermore, he always announces his new posts on Twitter. Here is the screenshot of one of the updates Darren made on Twitter-

Now, Darren has more than 25,000 followers on Twitter and announcing his new post updates to those thousands of followers means thousands of visitors to his blog.

Apart from Stumble upon and twitter many other social sites are there on internet and making use of these sites is an excellent way to generate some traffic to your blog. Also a blog needs to have an unique content to get viral in these sites but I have seen many average and some below average posts also getting some traffic from social media sites.

Tip #5- Advertise through Adwords-

Personally I don't prefer this method but many bloggers advertise their blogs during early days and once they accumulate some readers they pull off those ads. This can be an excellent way to drive traffic to anew blog but it is not free and might not be suited for many of us.

These are a few ways a new blog generates some traffic. Driving traffic to a new blog is pretty difficult undertaking but it can be achieved by keeping yourself motivated and trying hard. The initial times are hardest in a bloggers life and if you win this situation ,I am sure you can cruise along nicely later.

My blogging plans for 2009 (It can be your plan as well)

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:18:19 PST

Slowly and slowly we are heading towards the end of the year to welcome the new one.And while lazing in the sun and doing some preparation for new year ,today I thought seriously about the plans for the next year.

I have learnt a lot in 2008 and my next move in 2009 would be to capitalize on this knowledge to make my blog more worthy than before.I jotted down some of my mistakes ,experiences and some experiments that I havn't done yet or didn't get time to work out.

I spent about 4 hrs. thinking over the issue and came up with a big fat list of 56 things which I need to do in the coming year (the list will grow as the year passes on).Next, I spent about one extra hour to arrange the list according to priority.

Today in this post I would talk about my top 5 plans for 2009. I am not sure how many of you would be benefitted from my plannings but I think some of you might get some ideas from this post.

Here comes my top priority-

1) Regular and frequent posting-
This is in top of my agenda. My posting frequency and more importantly regularity has been dismal all the year round in 2008. I have always adviced everyone to be regular in posting but I myself has not acted on my own advice. I can tell you, this is real bad feeling.(I have no excuses to make though)

In 2009, I will be getting some relieving from work load off my shoulders and I am quite serious to act on my own advice. Still ,I will not be able to maintain the daily post frequency but yes, it will be around 3-4 posts a week.

2) More laser targeted but short posts-
In 2008, I have written pretty long posts. Most of my posts are of 1000 words or longer. This has also been a reason why my post frequency has been so poor in 2008. I never cared about the post length in 2008 but I am planning to get more serious over it.

While I will still write long pithy posts atleast once a week ,my focus in 2009 would be laser targeted short posts discussing one issue at a time. Don't worry though, the short posts still will be of great value.I will not compromise with the quality.

3) No monetization in 2009-
I will not monetize my blog in the coming year at least until August. I want to focus my attention in growing the blog next year.I don't want to dissipate my energy in monetization ,rather I am willing to apply my full energy in growing my blog.

I have some plans to grow my blog and those will take some time to work on. I will pore whole of my energy working on those plan. Money is still, no no for me !!

4) More twittering-
Twitter has been the biggest sensation in 2008. According to one of the stats most of the Twitter users (about 70%) registered in 2008 and about 5000-10,000 new users join it per day.

I am seeing Twitter as one of the places where I can find new readers for my blog as well as network with those who already are readers. I have registered an account in Twitter a few months back but I have never been active there.

Next year, I am planning to do some Twittering.I am checking out some tools and plugins to make Twittering more fun and productive.By the way, you can follow me on Twitter if you desire to get connected with me there.

5) A better blog design-
In offline world the first impression is created by your face or the way you dress yourself or the way you walk. But on the internet, you don't have a face to show . The design of your blog is what that creates the initial impression about you and your blog.

I have decided to revamp my blog design to make it more professional while retaining the simplicity. I hve already changed the template of my blog and I am working to give a tinge of professionalism in it.

These are my top priorities in the coming year. The list may grow in coming few days but for now this is it !!

70 top tips to generate blog traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:18:30 PST

Image via WikipediaTraffic is the key to success of any blog and blogger. It is the measure of success of a blog. One of the greatest advices that I usually give to other bloggers is- "Be involved in building traffic first. Everything else come along with traffic."

No matter what your objectives as a blogger are, you have to think in terms of traffic and visitors. In today's post I will tell you 75 traffic generation techniques that I learned while blogging.Here is the list-

Do a solid keyword research before writing your posts.

Use your primary keyword in title

Use your secondary keywords in subtitles.

Use all your keywords throughout your content.

Build links for each of your posts with your keywords in anchor text.

Build some more links.

Write articles in other people's Ezines.

Write and submit articles in top article directories.

Build a very useful lens at Squidoo.com

Build a useful hub at hubpages.com

Submit your blog in top web directories like Dmoz and Yahoo directory.

Write useful and unique content.

Write some more.

Write list type posts.

Write about Obama.

Tag your posts.

Be first to mention an update or an interesting news.

Even better. Be first and best to write about an update or an interesting news.

Write controversial but well backed posts.

Run contests on your blog.

Request other bloggers to announce your contest.

Be active on StumbleUpon

Submit your own top posts to StumbleUpon

Exchange stumbles with other fellow stumblers

Submit your pages in Digg and Reddit

Start Twittering at Twitter.com

Twitter more.

Answer questions in Yahoo answers with a link back to your related posts.

Answer questions in Help.com with a link back to your related posts.

Answer questions in Wiki.answers.com with a link back to your related posts.

Repeat tip #28, 29 and 30 daily.

Leave some useful and unique comments on other blogs of your niche.

Make your comments attention grabbing stuff.

Make use of trackbacks.

Be a guest-poster in a bigger blog of your niche.

Do some more guest posting.

Network with other fellow bloggers.

Announce your new blogs from your existing related blog.

Exchange posts with like minded fellow bloggers.

Be active in well trafficked forums in your niche.

Leave your link in signature in forums.

Be helpful and ask questions in forum.

Write unique articles in forums.

Give a viral ebook for free with free give away rights.

Place a "tell a friend" script at the bottom of your posts.

Give away free ebooks to some one who uses "tell a friend" script.

Be active in google groups. Ask questions and answer questions.

Be active in Yahoo groups

Be active in MSN groups.

Make some useful microblogs and funnel traffic to your main blog from micro blogs.

Make friends at BlogCatalog.

Join some groups at BlogCatalog and be active there.

Make friends at Mybloglog.

Tell other bloggers about a top post or great post you have written.

Research and make free reports .

Distribute those reports for free and mail it to fellow bloggers.

Upload some interesting photographs in flickr with link back to your blog in description.

Make some interesting videos and upload them on Youtube.

Upload those videos to Google videos and Metacafe as well.

Ask your readers to bookmark your posts (No ask no gain.)

Make wordpress templates.

Make use of press releases to announce your blog or contests or anything else worth aqnnouncing.

Build lists using Aweber.

Giveaway free ebooks to those who subscribes to your newsletter.

Interview fellow top bloggers in your niche.

Create viral softwares and tool.

Take part in webinars.

Write post about what you learned in a webinar.

Make use of craiglist.

Network through Myspace.

Steps to write better posts on your blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:18:47 PST

Image by: Dabawenya
Content is the soul of any blog. Without real unique and useful content a blog is a dead blog. This is why most of the successful bloggers stress upon an useful content which is of value to the readers. In this post I will talk about the things you should do to make your posts more admirable and worthy.

Writing content is not an easy task specially when you are burdened with loads of expectations from your readers. But this can be made easy by following the basic steps every expert writers talk off. The process of writing can be divided into three steps-

Pre-writing- Things you do before writing
Writing- Things you do during writing
Post-writing- Things you do after writing

These basic steps apply to all kinds of writing like, fiction writing, journal writing and even blog writing. Following these steps can make your posts better, well laid out and interesting for your readers. But don't expect things to happen in seconds or overnight because although these steps are essential ,practice also plays its part to make your writing better.So, if you just write more and more with these basic steps in mind you can make a good writer in yourself.

I hope you are getting what I mean to say. In very short, These basic steps plus a lot of practice makes your writing rise above the level of mediocrity. Furthermore, while I can tell a bit about these three steps I have listed above, practicing is something that is completely under your control. So, just take a look at these steps as I describe them below and start practicing. Let us start with the first step- Pre-writing.

Pre-writing-

Pre-writing is the thing you do before you start writing the post. This consists a variety of things like, choosing a topic, researching, outlining and researching the keywords. Pre-writing can be considered as the foundation of your post. Without this you may fail in your endeavour. Let us take look at the things you do before writing a post-

Find a topic or an idea to write about-

Every posts or any writing starts with an idea or topic. An unique idea or a well sought for topic is admired and others are just overlooked. So, try to choose a topic that people are looking for or if you have an unique idea in your mind just go on with it.

One of the finest way to do this is by taking a look into the forums and blogs in your niche. Just try to figure out what are the things people are asking for and choose it as your topic.

Research the topic-

Half cooked food is always bad to eat, isn't it? In a similar way , a post having incomplete facts and no solid backing is way too boring to read. As a blogger you should try to present quality content to your readers with solid facts and back it with solid citations and links. This is where, researching becomes so essential.

Read articles ,books and other blogs to have a clearer idea on the topic. Note down the points that you would like to mention in your article. Talk with experts and other bloggers to get an idea about their opinion on the topic. These are some of the ways you can research the topic. Researching is an ultra essential part of pre-writing and in any case it should not be omitted.

Outline your post-

Have you seen a painter painting or an artists making his art piece. Well ,I am sure most of you would have. Just take a close look next time a painter paints. A painting or an artwork starts with an outline. Even the masterpiece of Da Vinci, the Monalisa would have started with an outline.

The purpose of telling you all this is, a good article or a blogspot starts with an outline just like a good painting. The points or facts that you have collected while researching is obscure unless it is arranged in a meaningful way. This makes your article well laid out and easy to understand. But the question is, how an article is outlined?

Well, Just think of the sub-headings ,you would like to mention in your post. Once you have your sub-headings, list the points you would mention in each of these sub-headings. This is the staple element of outlining an article. Other advanced outlining methods include,picking out images and videos to be embedded in the post, the sentences to be cited or links to be given under each of these sub-headings.

Writing-

Writing means giving ideas the shape of words. For many of us it might be an easy thing to do but for most of us including me it is pretty tedious job. But if you just try and practice more you can become a better writer.

Now, for purpose of simplicity ,I would classify a post into two parts-

Title or headline of post

General body of the post

Both these parts has some importance. Title helps grab the attention of visitors while the rest of the post is for holding that attention.
I have already written detailed post on both of these parts and would suggest you to go through these posts if you are interested. Here are the links-
How to write articles on blog- Part-5 (Writing Title)
How to write articles on blog- Part-6 (Writing Content)

Post-writing -

Post-writing is largely concerned with proof reading and editing. No film is complete without editing- cutting some scenes and adding others. Similarly, apost has to be edited before being published. Read your post time and again before publishing. Look out for any grammatical and spelling mistakes you have committed and correct them.

Apart from mistakes also look for words and sentences that are useless or otherwise not in good shape. If you are not satisfied with your own writing, chances are there that your readers won't be either. So, cut the useless sentences and add some colorful ones to make your post more appealing. I have details about proof reading a post in the post- "How to write article on blogs?- Part-7 (proof reaing)"

Once again I would like to mention, these steps are just to help you learn blog-writing and are not an alternative to practice. Remember the the phrase that you have heard so many times during your lifetime- "Practice makes a man perfect."

How to choose domain name of your blog?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. Sandy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:18:58 PST

Image by: cogdogblog
So you have decided to start a blog and would like to have your own domain name but you are not sure how to do this? Your conventional wisdom says to keep your domain name short and memorable but you are unable to find one as all short ones are already in use and not available. Then things like SEO and keywords, personal branding come into play and you get totally confused. You are left in a total mesh and experiencing a total mind block. If this is what you are feeling now or has felt in the past then this post has been specially written for you.

Actually I have experienced the same sort of things when I decided to have my own domain name for this blog. The disarrayed situation led me to make many mistakes and ignorance also played its part to make the situation worse. I am writing this post to share the things that I experienced an year ago in a hope that you will learn from the mistakes I made. But before I go on , I would like to start the things from very basic.

What is a domain name?

Just like your letters need an address to reach your home or office ,your domain name is the address that tells where your blog /site would be found. For example, if you type in dr-sandy.net into address bar of your browser you will reach on my blog. So, dr-sandy.net is the domain name for my blog.

Why should you have your own domain name?

Most of the free and semi-free blogging platforms like blogger, wordpress.com ,livejournal and many others provide you with a name. But that is with their own extension and you don't own it. The domain name will look like this-
Myblog.blogprovider.com and in some cases
blogprovider.com/myblog

For example, a blog on blogger will have a blogspot extension, like, myblog.blogspot.com

Now this name can be used if you are blogging for fun and you are not willing to pay for domain name but if you are looking for a long haul with some other objectives other than fun then you should consider having your own domain name.

Your own domain name gives a sense of professionalism and also helps to build a buzz around you. Furthermore, you won't lose your readers and back links when you plan to move your blog from one platform to other.

This is why every serious blogger with long term objectives should get serious about having his own domain name.

How to choose a domain name of your blog?

Many factors has to be considered while choosing a domain name. Some of them are absolutely needed while most others are based on your personal preferences. Here I am providing you with a list of things to be considered while deciding a domain name for your blog.

A domain name should be short and easy to remember- You should think off a memorable domain name so that anyone can reach your blog by typing in your blog's domain name in the address bar. For example, if I would have registered a domain name like DoctorSandeepKumar.com then probably I would have lost many direct visitors.

A domain name should communicate straight way-This is where I made a mistake while choosing the domain name.A domain name should tell what a blog is about. For example, if somebody says DailyBlogTips.com then you straight way know the blog is about blog tips.

A Domain name should have your keywords incorporated- For past few years the internet has become pretty competitive as more and more bloggers have joined the blogging bandwagon. The scenario will become more and more worse in the near future. So, it would be a nice thing to have an edge over rest. Domain names with keywords in it do well in search engines. So, having them would always give you a competitive edge over others blogging in the same niche.

A domain should be brandable-More and more bloggers are getting serious over branding their blog and guess what, domain name helps a lot in branding a blog. Think about problogger or TechCrunch, they have built a brand around their blog names.
The other school of thought is to make a brand around blog authors name. A nice example would be Chrisg.com of Chris Garrett. Even this blog can be regarded as an example of this thought.

A domain name with numbers or hyphens-Personally ,I don't like numbers and hyphens in the domain name. But many a times you have to choose a domain name with hyphen or numbers because of non-availability of non-hyphenated and non-numbered versions of domain names. I bought a hyphenated domain name (dr-sandy.net) because of this reason.

A domain name should have preferably .com ,.net or .org extension-Personally I prefer a domain name with .com ,.net or .org extensions. There has been reports about these extensions working well in search engines although there haven't been any reports from experts on the issue. But it would be nice to play it safe by buying a domain name with above mentioned extensions.

You may think of getting a country specific extension if you are willing to target a certain geographical area. For example, if you think your audience will be from USA then you might think of a .us extension or for india it would be .in extension. It depends on your personal preference. Their are no hard and fast rules for this.

In my opinion you should spend some time to give a thought over the selection of domain name. A carefully selected domain name will always benefit you in some way. Furthermore, apart from some essential factors much of the decision of domain name selection depends on your personal preferences. I would love to know about your personal preferences as well as your own thoughts regarding choice of domain names through comment section.