Blogging

6 Easy Ways To Get Traffic To Your Blog

by Erwin Tan

You’ve put a lot of work into your blog, and you put more in every day. But without a steady stream of traffic, no one’s the wiser. Use these seven tips to get more traffic to your blog.

1. Do your SEO and keyword research homework.

Make sure the HTML of your site is search engine friendly. Here’s a basic search engine optimization checklist:

  • Do your post titles have appropriate keywords?
  • Do your anchor links have keywords in them? Using “here” as a link is a missed opportunity.
  • Does your domain name include a primary keyword?

2. Submit your site to the 1st and 2nd tier engines like Google, Yahoo, Dmoz, MSN and Looksmart, and to the blog directories.

Here’s a short list of sites that offer free blog listings:

Technorati
http://www.technorati.com/

Bloglines
http://www.bloglines.com/

WeBlogALot
http://www.weblogalot.com/

Globe of Blogs
http://www.globeofblogs.com/

BlogHop
http://www.bloghop.com/

Blogarama
http://www.blogarama.com/

3. Ping like you mean it.

This is a way for you to raise your hand to the blog trackers when you’ve posted new content. You can do it site by site at places like Technorati, or go to Ping-o-matic and mass-ping your blog to over 20 sites. Make sure your blog is set up to ping the appropriate sites every time you publish a post.

Normally, I use Pingoat to ping my blog.

4. Feed your RSS.

Make sure your blog has one and that it’s working. An RSS feed is a bit of XML that allows your blog to push content to RSS readers. That way people don’t have to visit your site to get your latest insights – they just open their RSS reader and read the news. If your blog is at Blogger.com, don’t worry about an RSS feed – its already been created for you. If you’re not at Blogger.com and your current blog doesn’t have RSS functionality, visit Feedcraft.com and sign up for their free service that will set up an RSS feed from any website (blog or not).

5. Swap links.

Make a list of relevant sites you’d love to link to your blog. Write them a short friendly note and offer to let them use a few of your posts as content on their site in exchange for a link back to your site. Also, link to their sites from within one of your posts.
Be sure to offer to exchange links in the links section of your blog. Most blog software programs offer this.

There are also sites that special in helping bloggers swap links. Web Log Empire is a large one. If you’re willing to pay for a link to your site, check out Text-Link-Ads.

6. Be part of the blogging community.

Go to other blog sites you admire. Contribute to their blogs in ways that add real value. Write good, thoughtful comments that are content rich. Give away what you know. Do it a lot – at least 3 posts a week. Over time you’ll become recognized as someone who has something worthwhile to say. As your reputation grows, people will seek out your blog. This is not an overnight process, but by paying your dues and building an audience you are positioning yourself to become a star.
By the way, if your site doesn’t have the functionality for visitors at add comments, Haloscan is a free service that will let them do so. It also allows for “trackbacking”, which is a way to manage pings.
[ratings]


4 Ways To Build Your Own Blog

by Erwin Tan

A blog is an important communication tool for business. You can use your blog to distribute information to your potential customers, as well as build a relationship.

So how do you build a blog?

There are several ways that you can do it, but it all depends on how much time you want to spend on configuring your blog, as well as the types of customizations you want to do to your blog.

Below are several places where you can either get a blog, or get the scripts to build your blog.

Blogger – http://www.blogger.com – This is by far the easiest of all the blogs to build. It takes about 30 seconds to create a blog, and you don’t need to know HTML. If you decide that you want to customize your blog, it does have an extensive knowledge base, and you can quickly learn how to add to the template to make it your own. It’s also very search engine friendly.

Word Press – http://www.wordpress.org – Word Press is one of the most popular blog scripts on the internet. It has tons of features, and it’s search engine friendly. Some of the most popular blogs on the internet use this system for blogging. Some examples of features include plugins that allow you to create an mp3 player on your site so that you can use for podcasting. Other features include: technorati tags, photos, sitemaps, and an extensive collection of templates so that you can use to change the look and feel of your blog.

The code is light and fast, and it is search engine friendly.

Nucleus CMS – http://www.nucleuscms.org – This is the system that I use for my main blog. It has a few features that Word Press doesn’t have, like the ability to create an ezine from your posts and send them as email. You can use a cron job to automate the process, and you can send out your ezine when you want it to go out. This is especially helpful if you want to build a list of subscribers.

It’s allowed me to combine two tasks: blogging and ezine creation.

There’s an extensive collection of plugins you can use to customize your blog, as well as a theme system. The only drawback here is the lack of themes. However, new themes are being designed, and it’s pretty easy to design your own, or customize one of the theme available.

Code is search engine friendly, and you can use plugins to create a Google Sitemap, add keywords, as well as technorati tags. You can also create multiple blogs from one installation.

Drupal – http://www.drupal.org – This is really a content management system, instead of a blogging system, and instead of just creating a blog, you can create a community of blogs, or a complete community, including forums, group meetings, and more. The code is very search engine friendly.

There is a rich text editor so that you can code your posts.

Regardless of what system you choose to create your blog, choose a system that you feel comfortable with. You can quickly and easily use blogs to build relationships with your customers, as well as distribute your content. By building and writing a blog, you can demonstrate your expertise on your topic, while building relationships with your customers and readers too.

Ultimately, blogging can become one of the best tools you can use to market yourself and your business, and it’s free to implement.


The 2 Easiest Ways To Make Money Online

by Erwin Tan

The first of the two methods is Google Adsense. Google Adsense is a great way to make money online! Using Adsense, you can have Google display small, non-obstructive, targeted ads on your website that will earn you money every time a visitor clicks on it. This is also by far one of the easiest ways to make money online. All you have to do is find information that people want to know, provide this information for free on your website, and have Google display ads on your website so you can make money online from it. Its as simple as that.

Two questions might be running through your mind right now. The first might be, “What if I don’t have a website?” Not a problem! You can still make money online through Adsense by going to sites like blogger.com or wordpress.com and setting up a free blog. Blogs are relatively easy to set up and they take little internet knowledge to update. Many people who make money online have blogs, some reaching six figure revenues. The idea is to keep these blogs updated with fresh content that people will want to read. If you have a large amount of people counting on your blog for information, then you can make money online using a blog.

The second question you may be asking is, “What if I don’t have anything to write about?” Also not a problem! You can still make money online with free content by going to article sites that allow you to reprint their articles. Simply copy the articles that pertain to the topic of your blog and repost a few every week. Alternatively, you could go to free content sites (do a Google search) that offer free e-books. Search for a book that you would rarely find online, but also something that interests you and pertains to the topic of your blog. Break this book down into little sections (Possibly a chapter each, or less) and post a section every day. After you are done with the whole book in a couple of months, you will have good traffic, and you will be indexed in search engines. If you want to make money online, this is a sure-fire start. However, another crucial part to success is once you have one of these blogs going – REPEAT IT! Create more and more blogs on different subjects. The more times you repeat your successful projects, the more money you make.

The second way you can make money online is through marketing information products. Do you have a special talent? Everyone does! You can make money online through your talents by writing an e-book about something you are passionate about. Make sure, however, that when you are thinking of an idea for an e-book its going to be something that will train others, or solve problems. People will be more likely to purchase your information product online, if they feel like they need it quickly. Say for example that you like to bake cookies. You might write a book about the history of cookies, how many different types of cookies there are, and what ingredients work best in cookies. This might be an interesting book, but no one would feel the need to buy it anytime soon. However, if you instead write an e-book about hundreds of different cookie recipes, people that want to bake cookies right away will download your e-book the same day. This is how a vast majority of people make money online. Even if you are doing adsense, you should strive to have at least one e-book selling online at all times. This is because once you have done the work in setting up the e-book and the website for it, all the income is passive from that point on and you can focus your attention on other methods to make money online.

Alternatively, if you don’t know how to write, you can still make money online selling e-books by having some one write the book for you. There are many websites that will allow you to hire freelance writers. It will cost you, but it will take the burden of creating your product off your shoulders and you will be able to focus on marketing the book to make money online. If you are creating the sales pitch for your website, try to look at some successful sites that sell products similar to yours. See the way they sell their products and what makes the way they market it enticing. Try to implement strategies from successful marketers in your website.

P.S.
Sorry for the long article. But I felt that whatever I said are really important for those who really want to make money online.


How To Make $19,156 Per Month With Adsense

by Erwin Tan

 

I’m sure by now everyone knows about Google Adsense. For those who know nothing about it, click here to find out more.

Back to the topic. I’m sure you heard of professional bloggers and website owners earning thousands and thousands of dollars every month from google adsense in their blogs and websites respectively. But there are some who barely made a few dollars per month or day. They may say they are at least earning, but is it enough to cover their monthly internet bills and expenses and worst still.. their precious time wasted tickling away.

What I’m going to share with you in this post is about how a British named Michael Cheney, who successfully found out formulas to improve his adsense earnings. He has been earning more than $19,000 every month, and he spent the less amount of his time on google adsense compare to his other marketing businesses.

He came up with step-by-step videos showing people how to find the way to earning big money every month in google adsense. It’s just like watching him over his shoulder, learning how he does it and in the matter of time, you can sell big leap in your google adsense earnings everyday!!

Click Here To See His Secrets

“Does
Your AdSense Pay Suck?”

This
man makes over $19,000 every month using AdSense.
Click
Here to see EXACTLY HOW he does it in these videos..

P.S.

Michael emailed me a couple of days ago telling me that he reached $1000 on weekends and he shared with me some new tricks that has improved my google adsense earnings by 150%. I will share with you these tricks in near future.


How To Start A Blog

by Erwin Tan

What I’m going to share with you today is the most basic but essential ways to start a blog.

Firstly, get yourself a free blog host to sign up. I would recommend Blogger and WordPress.
Read through all the instructions upon signing up. *Read through the terms & conditions thoroughly*

Once you’ve got a blog up and going, I recommend that you pick a topic and kind of stick to it. Decide what it is you’re going to say. Themes can be pretty broad (mine’s Enterprise Computing, for example which gives me broad leeway but doesn’t just include everything). I go outside those boundaries from time to time, but pretty much I stick to the topic. A good way to get started is by referencing and quoting material from other blogs and Web sites you read and then commenting on them as you see fit. Eventually you will start to mix in longer essays that express a thought that you want to develop.

Write about what interests you, not what you think your readers want. If you just try to guess what people want and write about that, you’ll get bored with writing and it will become drudgery.  The way to get people to read your blog is to link to their blog and say interesting things. People notice when you link to their blogs (either through their referer logs or through Technorati) and will follow the link back and read what you have to say. If its interesting enough they might link to you, comment on what you say and, in so doing, drive traffic to you. Read your own blog and follow the links (at first) to prime the pump.

At a minimum, make sure that your email address or a comment form is available on your blog for people to send feedback. You may want to experiment with comments on blog entries and see whether you like them. Some people do and some people don’t.


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