If you’re a blogger, chances are you’ve heard of trackbacks. Most likely, you probably don’t know what these are and what they have to do with your blog. That’s alright, as most people don’t quite understand how trackbacks work and why they are useful for a blog.

In this newsletter, we’re going to go over trackbacks–what they are, how they work, why they are important to blog traffic, and how to get more trackbacks. After you’ve read this, you’ll know practically everything there is to know about trackbacks.

What are trackbacks?

The concept of trackbacks is a bit hard to explain. So we’ll use an example to explain it in the best way possible.

OK, say you see a great blog post on another person’s blog and want to link to it on your blog. You could do this the old-fashioned way by manually putting a link on your site to that blog. However, if you do it this way, the person whose blog post you are linking to won’t know that you are linking to them unless you tell them.

This is where trackbacks come in. A trackback is a program which will notify the owner of a blog when one of their posts has been linked to at another blog.

How do they work?

A blog that has a trackback system set up will have a link at the bottom of every blog post. This link will say something like “Blog This!” Anyone who clicks the link can then put a link to that blog post on their site. The person who posted the original blog will then be notified via email that their blog posting has been linked to. Additionally, the link that was clicked (“Blog This!”) will change to “Trackbacks”. From that point forward, the “Trackbacks” link will keep track of how many people have chosen to blog about that particular post. So after the first trackback, it will say “Trackbacks: 1″. The number of trackbacks recorded will be updated as they occur.

Why are trackbacks important to blog traffic?

The easy answer is that trackbacks are important because they increase awareness of your blog. Trackbacks also make a blog seem more credible. After all, people have to think your posts are good enough to be trackbacked.

Anytime a person makes a trackback on your blog, they make a post on their own blog about your blog. This, in turn, lets their readers know about your blog. Chances are, their readers will want to visit your blog to see what the big deal is. If they see something on your blog that they like, they’ll keep coming back for more, which means you’ll have a whole new fanbase of readers. That means more traffic for your blog.

Can you imagine what would happen if 5 different bloggers trackbacked a post on your blog? Depending on how popular their blog is, that’s potentially as much as hundreds of new readers for your blog! Pretty incredible, right?

Also, every trackback made, assuming it is a legitimate one (and some trackbacks are spam, especially if they are there only to link to another site) adds credibility to your blog. Blogs with high amounts of trackbacks look credible because lots of people like the posts enough to trackback them.

How can I increase the number of trackbacks I get?

The easiest and best way to increase trackbacks is to frequently post. If you post frequently (2-3 times a week), people will have quite a few posts that they can trackback. However, it is important to make sure that your posts are of a good quality. Quality blog posts are those that people can relate to and are easy to read. If you post a long boring rant, people probably won’t want to trackback that. But if you post a decent sized rant that is entertaining (and that people are likely to agree with), you’ll get trackbacked.

The number of trackbacks you get is totally dependent on the number of visitors your blog receives and how frequently you are able to make quality posts. If you’ve got a good amount of visitors and write good blog posts, you’ll get trackbacks.

To your success,

Earl Netwal
Micro Business Specialist

P.S. Trackbacks are a wonderful thing for every blog. You are able to know when your blog posting has been posted about at another blog, plus you potentially gain more visitors. It’s a win-win situation for you! For more information on Blogging go to http://www.askearlabout.com/blogging

The simplest and easiest way to get prospective customers to call you, beyond word of mouth, is a properly completed Google Place's Page. They are free, powerful and easy to maintain, once you have them set up properly. I share tips on this blog from time to time on this blog about how best to do so. I also have been known to hire myself out on occasion to help others get it done for them. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Believe it or not, it’s actually possible to make money from blogging. One teenager has, in fact, earned $5,000 a month just from making posts on his blog! Of course, not every blogger is this lucky. It does take some skill, and some luck to make money from blogging. What it also takes is some knowledge of how
exactly to generate income just by posting blogs. In this newsletter, we will go over three specific methods of making money on your blog: Adsense, Pay Per Lead, and Affiliate Links.

This approach allows you to make money blogging even if you do not have your own business. But be careful, some of these approaches could be counterproductive on a business blog.

So how exactly do I make money on my blog?

You do it by working with another company that wants to use your blog as a form of advertising. It sounds like selling out, right? Not exactly. The advertising can be as in your face or subtle as you want. And it can still make you money, provided you have enough visitors to your blog.

What is Adsense?

Adsense is a program offered by Google. The program, if installed, will display ads provided by Google.

How do I get Adsense?

You’ll need to go to Google.com, first. At the bottom of the screen is a link for “Advertising Programs”. Click on that. Then click on the link for “Adsense”. Scroll down on the page that comes up and click “Click Here To Apply!” You then fill out the form with information about yourself. After 12-48 hours, Google
will notify you via email whether or not your site has been accepted. When you’ve been accepted, set up your ads by doing either of the following:

1. If your blog is hosted on Blogger.com, you can set up your AdSense ads by going to your profile, selecting settings>template>add an element. Then select AdSense and login with your account info. Next, you’ll configure your ads and save the template. That’s it. This is one of the reasons Blogger is so popular for non business blogs.

2. If you are self-hosting your blog, you’ll have to set up AdSense in more of a manual way. You’ll create your ads(which can be as small or as tall as you want) and then copy the HTML/Javascript code Google gives you. Then you’ll paste it into your blog(on the left, right, or top of the screen).

For the first few days, the ads displayed by Google will be Public Service Announcements. After the ads have been up a few days, though, the ads will switch to ads that are relevant to your blog.

How does Adsense work?

Every time a visitor clicks an Adsense ad, you get a little bit of money(usually around 30-60 cents). The amount you get for each ad clicked depends on the number of unique visitors you receive on your blog. The more visitors, the more money that can be earned.

Google will then send a check or pay you through Paypal once you’ve made at least $100 from the ads.

It is important to remember that Google will penalize you if you click your own ads, or if you ask visitors specifically to click ads. So don’t do that!

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click is basically just like AdSense, except you don’t just work with Google–you work with multiple companies.

BidVertiser is one such company you can sign up with to do Pay Per Click advertising.

How do I get Pay Per Click

You sign up with a site like Bidvertiser and then follow their instructions to set up the Pay Per Click ads on your site.

How does Pay Per Click work?

It works by paying you money each time someone clicks an ad that you display. You won’t get paid for multiple clicks from the same user in the same visitor, nor will you get paid for someone simply visiting your site. You only get paid for legitimate clicks.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are basically links which people pay you for. Companies will actually pay owners of popular blogs to post links on their blog. You can do as much Affiliate linking as you want.

How do I get Affiliate Links?

You can get Affiliate links by searching for “Affiliate Link Programs” on the internet. Once you find an Affiliate link program that looks good to you, sign up for it. Then you can follow their instructions for putting the link(s) on your blog.

How do Affiliate Links work?

Like the other two methods mentioned above, Affiliate links work by paying you money each time they are clicked. You get paid for each click per unique visitor.

So that’s it. There’s three legitimate ways to make money from blogging. It is important to keep in mind that the amount of money you are able to make depends on how many visitors your blog draws. If you draw a lot, you’ll make a lot. If not, the money you earn will be modest. But it’s still extra money, so why not do it?

The simplest and easiest way to get prospective customers to call you, beyond word of mouth, is a properly completed Google Place's Page. They are free, powerful and easy to maintain, once you have them set up properly. I share tips on this blog from time to time on this blog about how best to do so. I also have been known to hire myself out on occasion to help others get it done for them. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

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Blogs are now an extremely popular and important part of the internet. Millions of people blog every day. As blogs have evolved over the years, so has the commenting system. Now anyone can make comments on a particular blog posting. As blog commenting has grown more popular, so has spam commenting. In
this newsletter, we’ll go over why comments are a great form of feedback for your blog, how they help the credibility of your content, what spam comments are and how to prevent them from happening.

Comments - A great form of feedback

When blogs first came around, they were simply online journals. No one could post comments on a blog posting. That all changed in 1998 with OpenDiary, a site which allowed people to comment on blog postings. Now every blog, whether it is remotely or self-hosted, includes this option to comment.

Commenting is great because it allows real people to tell you what they think about your form. It gives you feedback on what you are doing right and what you may need to improve. Comments can be encouraging to you and motivate you to post more quality blog messages. Or they can be constructive criticism to make you work harder to get better at writing content.

Whatever the style of comment is, it is still very useful to your blog. High numbers of comments have the ability to make a blog look credible because they show that the blog is being read by a lot of people. That’s something that every blog owner wants, and comments help to let them know just how many people enjoy their content.

Bad comments

Unfortunately, spammers have now started to use comments as a way to spam. How do you know what a spam comment is? Well, a spam comment is a comment that only advertises another site or product. If the comment seems bland/generic with a cheap link thrown in, then it’s definitely a spam comment.

Here is an example of a typical spam comment:  “Hey, this site is really cool. Check out my really cool site at spamsite.com.”

Of course not all spam comments will be this blatant, but you get the point.

Fortunately for bloggers, as spam comments have grown, so has the ways to prevent it. Here are a couple ways that you can prevent spam comments from even being posted on your blog.
#1: Close off commenting on older blog posts There are options for you to stop comments from being posted on any particular blog post. Lots of times, spammers will post comments in weeks or months old posts. So take away this opportunity from them to keep it from happening. Most blog hosters now offer this as a standard option in the tool panel. If one of your posts has been up for a couple weeks, close it
up.

#2: Take advantage of software offered to prevent comment spam If you host your own blog using WordPress, you can use an option in that software to prevent spam. Even if you aren’t using
WordPress, you can still use other Spam comment blocking software like Spam Karma, Akismet, and Bad Behavior. While these aren’t 100% effective, they have proven to be quite effective in preventing spam from happening.

#3: Take a look at your settings and see what can be tweaked to toughen your protection.  Lots of blogs now have settings to help prevent spam. If you already have a spam blocker on in your blog and are still
experiencing spam, take a closer look at the settings to see if there’s anything that can be tweaked to make your protection stronger. However, if you do this, you should closely monitor your posts to make sure legit comments aren’t being blocked out. If they are, you might have to lighten up a bit.

#4: Regularly read your blog comments Be sure to keep an eye on your comments. Even the best software
or setting can’t prevent everything, so you will have to occasionally manually remove comments on your own.

By applying the above principles, you can ensure that your blog is full of only good, quality comments, which will help your credibility tremendously.

The simplest and easiest way to get prospective customers to call you, beyond word of mouth, is a properly completed Google Place's Page. They are free, powerful and easy to maintain, once you have them set up properly. I share tips on this blog from time to time on this blog about how best to do so. I also have been known to hire myself out on occasion to help others get it done for them. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest. The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog’s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.

You might be asking yourself, what is frequent posting? How many blog entries should I make on a given week? How do I make frequent consistently good posts? What are the reasons for me to post frequently? In this newsletter, we will go over all of the above.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won’t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it’s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea. A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Some believe internet business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week. I feel the actual number is less important than a consistent regularity of posts.

For most brick and mortar businesses once or twice a week is more than enough. If you are building a web only business, more frequent postings are probably more important.

The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in subpar posts which people won’t care about. It is important to find a balance–frequent, quality posts that won’t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

It’s all about following a consistent pattern of writing. Maybe you’re not a natural writer and this is difficult. That’s why we’ll give you an outline to help you.

1. Pick a topic that is interesting to you and to your readers. Maybe if your blog is a personal blog, you could write about the latest happenings in Hollywood.

2. Carefully think about what you’ll write about the topic. It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you’ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it.

3. Before writing your content, pick out some keywords that are relevant to your blog. If you naturally use keywords throughout your post, you will please search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won’t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way.

4. Begin writing your post. Don’t limit yourself to a particular amount of words. Just do what’s natural. And if any blog post is hard for you, just take a timeout and relax. You should be able to finish the post a bit later on, after you’ve had some time to think things through, you should be able to finish the post with
no problems.

I like to write four or five posts at a time, if I can, on a related topic and have the task done for a while. It also has the advantage of allowing a more in depth discussion of a topic.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for individuals or businesses. They are used to get an opinion out on something and to engage readers. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Gaining and maintaining visitors isn’t the only reason to post often in your blog. Catching the eye of a search engine–and achieving a high ranking–is another valid reason for posting frequently. Most likely, each posting in your blog features some keywords or keyword phrases scattered throughout it. Logic says
that the more natural keywords you have on a blog, the better.

Thus, the more posts you make on your blog, the more keywords you have on there. And the more keywords you have, the more likely a search engine bot is to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine.

The simplest and easiest way to get prospective customers to call you, beyond word of mouth, is a properly completed Google Place's Page. They are free, powerful and easy to maintain, once you have them set up properly. I share tips on this blog from time to time on this blog about how best to do so. I also have been known to hire myself out on occasion to help others get it done for them. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: blogging

In our survey of 186 home staging businesses, Home Stagers were asked their opinion as to whether Staging tended to benefit clients most in terms of having a faster sale, or a higher price.

Respondents were not allowed to say both.

They were also asked the same question for three different time frames:

1. their entire career
2. past six months
3. projections for the future

The clear majority respondents overwhelmingly felt that the primary benefit was faster sales in all three time frames, but especially so for the past six month time frame.

While still predominantly picking faster sales, noticeably more people picked higher prices as their projections for the future.

Realtors were particularly strong in seeing the benefit as faster sales.

The “top dogs” were among those most likely to predict home staging generating higher prices in the future, although the majority of the “top dogs” also thought quicker sales the primary benefit.

The next most bullish group for higher prices were those with less than 2 years experience.

Conjecture: The nuances of this question suggest that newbies may be reflecting the optimism they bring from their classrooms and fresh positive attitudes.

The fact that those with 2-4 years experience were among those strongest to suggest quicker sales may reflect more practical experience in the recent market downturn, while the Top Dogs may be delivering a stronger product in the marketplace, resulting in more higher prices.

There is clear overall consensus that quicker sales is the dominant benefit. This suggests that this it the point that Home Stagers should then be emphasizing in their marketing. For many of today’s markets that is just the message many homeowners want to hear.

To see what some of the people who have read my survey reports have to say about them, go to http://www.squidoo.com/house-staging

The simplest and easiest way to get prospective customers to call you, beyond word of mouth, is a properly completed Google Place's Page. They are free, powerful and easy to maintain, once you have them set up properly. I share tips on this blog from time to time on this blog about how best to do so. I also have been known to hire myself out on occasion to help others get it done for them. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.