I recently enjoyed a powerful new training video from my friend David Walker.

I have long encouraged home stagers and others to add a blog to their web presence. In fact, I think you would be better off having moving from your static web sites to a Word Press platform altogether.

Whether you blog for fun, expression or as a way of sharing content about your home staging business, it would never hurt to learn how to make money with your blog. Agree?

Well this new report may disappoint you slightly, if you are looking to make the $100K the title suggests. Because it is not a how to make money video per se.  Instead it discusses the attitude you should exhibit when you blog, and I think he makes an excellent point. One that I have adapted to my blogging and I think you should to.

It’s called “The $100k Blogging Secret” and you can access it for free:

http://askearlabout.com/BloggingBoss.php

In this video David reveals the “secret” behind how a tiny minority of Bloggers earn $100k+ per year with their blogs…

While the majority fail to make a single red cent.

Frankly I fall in between and decidedly closer to the lower number, although my results have improved of late, so when I found this, I took note.

It’s powerful stuff and it’s yours FREE via the link below:

http://askearlabout.com/BloggingBoss.php

Be on the look out for more free bonus training from David after you access the video – you are going to LOVE IT!

Learn The $100k Blogging Secret right now for FREE and access even more training at zero cost to take your online business to the next level!

http://askearlabout.com/BloggingBoss.php

I have to tell you, it made a difference in how I blog. Now I can’t claim, I’ve made 100K since then – but I can tell you that once you get the point he makes in the training, you will be far better equipped to do so yourself.

Technorati Tags: blogging boss, blogging secret, blogging secrets, profitable blogging, David Walker, 100K blogging secret,

Technorati Tags: 100K blogging secret, blogging boss, blogging secret, blogging secrets, David Walker, profitable blogging

One of the plug ins I am sure to add to all my blogs is one called “CommentLuv.”

The default setting in Word Press blogs is to not link back to those people who comment on your blog. The Comment Luv plug in overrides this and creates a link to the last blog post of anyone who takes the time to comment on your blog.  This serves to encourage people to make comments and helps you get a conversation going with your blog viewers which is good.

You want to stimulate these conversations any way you can, and frankly it’s not easy to get your lurkers to speak up.

The advantage for the commenter is that this is a backlink to their blog and as such helps with their ranking in the search engines.  I routinely visit and comment on a half dozen or more blogs almost every day.  When I do, I not only support the worthwhile blogs I visit, but help myself out by generating new back links to my various blogs.

As a homestager, you should seek out other home stagers blogs to read and to get ideas for your own blog posts. Encourage them to install the CommentLuv plug in so that you get the back links you need to build your sites rankings.

If you can find a half dozen or more non active rain blogs to visit on a regular basis and get them to return the favor your activities will help encourage other people to comment on the blogs and will over time build you a ton of back links which will raise your site to the top of the search engines in time, and keep you there if you already have the dominant ranking in your market.

You can access the CommentLuv plug in from within the plugin section of your blog or search for it in Google or other search engines.

Technorati Tags: CommentLuv, plug ins, back links, backlinks, word press, commenting

Many home stagers will try to add a blog to their website and that’s a good idea. It can help drive traffic to your site, and help you build credibility and earn your main site some good “Google Juice.”

Unfortunately while blogging is relatively easy once you have it set up, there are many steps to doing so, and even more if you want to establish a profitable blog.

My personal blogging mentor, Mike Paetzold has just released a wonderful new product called Profitable Blog Steps.   In it he provides a comprehensive ten module step by step plan to get your blog up and running, and specifically covers the key steps to make yours a profitable blog.

Not only does he tell you what to do, he shows you in a series of 10 videos.

If you are interested in setting up a profitable blog look no further. Grab this now, as Mike is offering a special launch week discount to those willing to take fast action. This special deal expires on June 9th, so do yourself a favor and grab it now.

To learn more and profit more  get your own copy go to Profitable Blog Steps now!

Technorati Tags: a profitable blog, profitable blog, profitable blogs, profitable blogging, profitable blog topics, Mike Paetzold, profitable blog steps

Technorati Tags: a profitable blog, Mike Paetzold, profitable blog, profitable blog steps, profitable blog topics, profitable blogging, profitable blogs

If you want to get some ideas and materials to jump start your own home staging blog you might want to take advantage of what is called PLR in the industry.  PLR or private label rights material is similar to the generic drugs you get at the pharmacy or the “House Brand” can of peas you might get at the supermarket.  You buy them and you have the rights to use them as your own.

In particular I want to point to a package created by Affiliate Niche Research on Home decor.  For the price of a good dinner, you get a ton of useful information that could get you started online, and or supplement your existing material in your blog or newsletter.

Go to Affiliate Niche Research to check out this package. Limited time deal. Once these are fully subscribed they disappear, once past the time limit and they disappear.

Susanne does great work, but keep in mind its a start, not a finished product. You need to take the material and make it your own. Add your insights and specialized knowledge. That way it is your comments and value added. This is just the preliminary research that will give you a ton of ideas and save you hours of work.

Yesterday we talked a bit about the “Inspection” blog post. Today we will cover “Insights” and the “Index” type of post.

2. The INSIGHTS Blog Post.

Quick tips are great “in between” posts since they are so short. They are normally between 100 and 250 words. If there’s a great bit of information that you want to share with your niche but it doesn’t really warrant a full blog post, you can post a quick tip. The tip should be focused on one key area of the niche. For example, “How to Grease a Muffin Pan” is a perfect quick tip article for a cooking blog.

For a home stager, it could be on Where to store valuables during a house showing, or How to dress up your front door.

If you put you mind to it you could probably generate a list of 50 such tips in no time. Write the titles down, and use them for infill when you are busy.

The third I is for “Index” which is just another word for a list.

Blog readers love lists! If you’ll look at the most popular blogs you’ll see that they make good use out of this type of blog posts. You can make lists fit any niche topic imaginable. They are great ways to convey information online because they can easily be scanned by web readers who like to skim over information.

You can create resource lists that will help your readers find information on your niche. You can also create lists of different ways to accomplish a goal in a niche, like “5 Things to Do Before a Showing.” The possibilities are endless.

How about a list of things to do, room by room? Or perhaps a list of X things to pack away before you begin to stage their house.

Technorati Tags: Homestaging Tips, Tips, What to write

Five Different “Kinds” Of Blog Posts

Blog posts come in many different forms and lengths. If you want to keep your blog fresh and interesting, you should post often. Creating different types of blog posts will help to keep your audience interested. It will also keep you from getting bored with your blog.

Blogging can be done as an adjunct to your business, to help attract customers or it can be a sideline of your business designed to generate revenue, as well as attract customers to your Home Staging enterprise.

If you are going to invest time and effort on your blog, why not use it as a profit center as well?

The five types of blog post are the
1. The INSPECTION Blog Post.
2. The INSIGHTS Blog Post.
3. The INDEX Blog Post.
4. The INTERVIEW Blog Post.
5. The INSTRUCTION Blog Post.

1. The INSPECTION Blog Post.

Review blog posts can help you monetize your blog. You “inspect” – take a closer look at – a product. When you review a product and include an affiliate link, you’ll make a commission off of each sale generated with your affiliate link.  Review blog posts should go over some of the major plusses and minuses of the product. Even if you loved the product, you should keep your review balanced by mentioning a few things that could have been improved. Your audience will appreciate your honesty and be more likely to trust your recommendation.

What type of a product could you as a home stager comment on?  How about paints, cleaning products, furniture stores, etc.

While there is no reason why you couldn’t do a blog on any vendor you choose to without compensation, why not find a product that has an “Affiliate Program” and join it.

One of the easiest ways to identify such products is to join one of the major affiliate market places like Commission Junction.  It’s free to join, and once you do, you will be able to search from thousands of vendors to find products relevant to Home Staging that you could review and comment on.

Such recommendations, if done honestly and forthrightly will be well received by your readers, and could potentially add a new revenue source to your business.  Not a bad idea to market yourself and make money at the same time.

To learn more about commission junction go to www.cj.com.

In the next couple of days I will go into more detail on this and the other four types of blog posts.  By combining these ideas you can add a lot of reader interest in your blogs.

2. The INSIGHTS Blog Post.

Quick tips are great “in between” posts since they are so short. They are normally between 100 and 250 words. If there’s a great bit of information that you want to share with your niche but it doesn’t really warrant a full blog post, you can post a quick tip. The tip should be focused on one key area of the niche. For example, “How to Grease a Muffin Pan” is a perfect quick tip article for a cooking blog.

3. The INDEX Blog Post.

Blog readers love lists! If you’ll look at the most popular blogs you’ll see that they make good use out of this type of blog posts. You can make lists fit any niche topic imaginable. They are great ways to convey information online because they can easily be scanned by web readers who like to skim over information. You can create resource lists that will help your readers find information on your niche. You can also create lists of different ways to accomplish a goal in a niche, like “5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Sales Letter.” The possibilities are endless.

4. The INTERVIEW Blog Post.

Although these require a bit of preparation, they can be very valuable to your blog. You can interview someone in your niche and share the results of the interview with your blog readers. This will not only help provide valuable content for your blog, but you can also get more traffic to your blog. Likely, the person who you are interviewing will publicize the event on their blog and around the ‘net which will bring more traffic back to you.

5. The INSTRUCTION Blog Post.

Like quick tips, how to posts help you provide valuable information to your readers. However, unlike quick tips, these posts go into detail on a certain topic. Some how to posts are even separated out into two or three part courses. For ideas on what to create how to posts about, look at the most frequently asked questions in your niche and develop posts around those topics.

Here is another article written by a home stager on a topic that most anyone of you could write about.

In addition to encouraging you to write articles on your own, you too can borrow articles like this to share with people on your mailing list. What, you don’t have an email list to mail to? If that’s the case, you really need to sign up for Market Maker. Actually, you eventually should develop two lists. One of prospective clients who could use you home staging services and a second of area Realtors who could be using you to help build their careers. At any rate, as long as you include the resource box at the bottom, you can use these articles, which means you don’t have to write each and everyone yourself.

This article is by Katie Mudd of Fredericksburg, Virginia Discusses Curb Appeal.

* Make sure the street and, sidewalk, walkway and porch are free from litter and debris
* Reseal a worn or stained driveway and repair cracks in the walkway
* Re-Paint the Shudders and front door
* Apply new door hardware and a brass kick plate
* Replace the house numbers
* Put a flower box with seasonal flowers alongside the door
* Install a new front light fixture and check that all exterior lights are in working order
* Have a cleaning service wash the siding
* Clean windows and replace any cracked or broken glass
* Replace any missing or broken shingles on the roof/If the roof is very old consider having it replaced prior to showing the property
* Make sure the gutters and downspouts are in good repair
* Mow the grass weekly and keep weeds under control
* De-clutter the deck or patio

Creating a cheerful, clean, neat entrance is one of the best investments of time, money and effort you will ever make. Don’t let a potential buyer slip through the giant crack in your walkway! Fix the crack and keep the buyer! I hope these tips for preparing the exterior of your home are helpful and I will post some interior home tips in a future article.

Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, blogging, eZine Articles, Homestaging Tips

Sailing beyond Active Rain, don’t miss the boat.

[Many home stagers post on the Active Rain Blog site. While this is a great forum and brings home stagers and Realtors in close proximity, it shouldn't be the sole marketing focus. Instead, if you post there learn in the article below how you can leverage your efforts.]

—

Listen to Sailing Beyond Active Rain on Podcast

Sailing Beyond Active Rain – Home Staging Business Tips

Posting on ActiveRain has many benefits but if that’s all you are doing, you are missing the boat.

Active rain is a good place to share with other homestagers, to learn from them and to get exposure of your business with other active rain members. But most Realtors and home stagers are not on active rain, so don’t let yourself spend all your marketing efforts there.

Instead, multiply your results.  Post articles on your own blog and on article directories and not just on Active Rain.

This will significantly boost the number and value of back links to your web site. It will accelerate your rise in the search engine results and win the top ranking in your market.

A post on Active Rain, puts some wind in your search engine rankings because the Active Rain site is seen by Google as an authority site. It has a page ranking of 6 which is pretty good, and a link from active rain back to your site gets more credit that a link from your cousin Mary’s occasional blog.

That said, if your only back links are coming from Active Rain, there is reason to believe that each additional post is less and less meaningful from Google’s perspective.

To really fill you sails, you want to get back links from dozens and then hundreds of other web sites.  And it’s easy to do. Particularly, if you are already posting regularly on Active Rain.

There is no reason why you can’t post the same article you intend to put on Active Rain on your own blog first.  I highly recommend that you set up a either a free Blogger Account, or better yet a free WordPress blog. There are a lot of reasons for this, but most notably, having your own blog sets you up as the expert and allows you to develop your own identity.

The second additional step is to register with eZine articles, and begin publishing your articles there as well.

These steps work in combination with each other, and capture the wind of your effort like a three masted ship captures the same wind three times over.

The same article with a few tweaks can be used for all three. And the results are a swifter voyage to the top of the rankings.

Let me explain it a bit more.

Your own blog makes you an authority in the eyes of those who come to it. Be they past or prospective customers, other homestagers or realtors or the media and general public.
This increases your status as the go to person in your market on home staging.

You have an article idea.  You write it up and post it on your blog.  You then take the same post and share it on Active Rain. You get Active Rain points, and rise in their listings. Plus you enjoy all the other benefits of participating in the active rain community.

Once you have it up on your blog and active rain, your rephrase it slightly to appeal to the general public. You then post in on one of hundreds of article directories. I recommend eZineArticles as the place to start.

Once posted on eZine Articles, your post is available to be reprinted by bloggers and ezine writers around the world. The bargain is that anyone can post your article, but they cannot change its wording and must include your resource box.

The resource box is where you put a brief blurb about yourself, and a back link to your blog and to your main web site.

As your article is picked up by blog writers, you get more and more back links. It builds slowly at first, but as time goes on it grows into a gale of a windstorm sending tens, then hundreds, and then thousands of back links to your web site.  Before long, Google realizes that you are an authority, and blows you past the finish line as the regatta winner and top ranked homestager in your market.

The beauty of this system is that you go yourself to the article directory and find other home stager’s articles from other markets and print their articles as entries on your blog.  That way you can add new material to your blog on a regular basis without having to write it all yourself.

For Example, I posted this article on Active Rain, and a modified form here and as a broadcast to my Home Staging mailing list.
You should do the same thing.  You write an article a week, and post one or two others from elsewhere on your blog. It sets you up as an expert.

You take the one article you wrote and with minor revisions as necessary post it in three places.

This provides you with a great deal of leverage, and will make you captain of your own destiny.

When you become a member of Market Maker, which will be opening next week, I will be sharing other ideas and techniques that will help you maximize your return on effort as you market your home staging business. Marketing can be challenging, that’s why it’s a good idea to put as much as possible on auto pilot, and then leverage the work you do so that it has maximum benefit.

Market Maker is a limited membership program. Members will have access to some innovative marketing tools that will put them on top of their local markets and provide a genuine competitive advantage. It is highly recommended that you sign up for advance notification of the start date as only one home staging company will be allowed to join from any given market place, and initial membership will be limited to only 30 companies.

To get on the advance notice list register your company at
http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, home staging marketing, search engine optimization, SEO

Would you like to earn auto-pilot commissions every time you post to your blog? And at the same time use the Power of Twitter to drive traffic to your blog.

I know it sounds like a fairy tale, but it just became reality, with the launch of John Merrick and Soren Jordansen’s new “Tweet My Blog”.

Just by using the powerful free plugin, you will be promoting your affiliate link on auto-pilot. In other words, you can earn commissions just for posting to your blog.

But that’s just one of the many benefits of using TweetMyBlog, visit the page to learn more – and grab your free copy today.

And… Even though they are giving this plugin away for free, you should take a close look at the special offer they have in store for you when join. I instantly grabbed my own copy, and I know it will skyrocket my marketing power when using Twitter and WordPress.

Just click on the image below to access this powerful new tool. -etn

Technorati Tags: blogging, Twitter

The internet is no longer a new idea for business. Many businesses once enjoyed a first mover advantage by entering the online arena earlier than their competitors. Today, there are few fields left where just being online is providing a significant competitive advantage.

The internet has opened the market place to customers from around the world. And it has opened the marketplace to competitors from around the world. It is no longer enough to be online, a business to succeed must be able to drive traffic to their websites. In order to dominate a field it is increasingly important that businesses establish a blogging presence online.

While anyone can set up a blog easily and inexpensively, so can your competitors. But there is a lot more to blogging than first meets the eye.

Here are some useful tips that you can incorporate in your internet business:

• You must research and then use keywords effectively – your blog’s contents should reflect appropriate keywords. Effective keyword research can also place your blog and thus your business toward the top of the search engines.

• You want to stimulate Back Links to your blog. These are valuable – you have to give importance to back links. Your blog posts should be able to incorporate appropriate back links.

• More important than the frequency of your blog posts is their regularity. You must be able to post regularly if you want to be effective. If you forget to make posts, you will loose regular readers and possibly leave viewers with an impression that you are not truly up to speed in today’s internet world.

• While regularity is the key, your blogging efforts will be rewarded most if you post frequently and if the contents are interesting. With effective blogging, you can establish your online business reputation and, you can demonstrate to the world your business expertise. To gain a positive reputation, make sure that you post interesting and relevant blog posts.

These are the basic tips you must follow to be effective blogging. As you can see, blogging requires more than a slap dash approach. Most advisors online will tell you that blogs are not that hard to compose. They are right. However, according to expert bloggers, you need to consider the interests of the readers and online researchers.
Try to understand why they are coming to your blog in the first place.
Think more in terms of what they want to discover, and less about what you want to tell them. But be sure you do get your licks in. It’s all about how you frame your blogs attitude and conversational style.

Remember that once you start posting blogs on your business’ website, you have to post frequently (ideally at least once or twice a week) so that your customers and readers will not forget you or your business.

Blogging for business is one of the most effective means of making your business a success. Set up your blog now, you will profit in the future.

If you learn to become an effective blogger, your business will benefit. If you want to learn more about effective business blogging, you can easily conduct researches online because you can find a wealth of information there.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Is your blog collecting dust and not getting enough traffic? It’s a common problem for bloggers. Their blogs are good, but no one is coming to visit. They want to know how to increase traffic. Increasing traffic is actually easier than it seems–provided you know how. In this newsletter, we will go over 7 specific methods of increasing traffic. These are guaranteed methods to draw more visitors to your blog.

Tip #1: Sign up for pinging services
It seems pretty obvious, but most bloggers, even those who are more experienced, don’t sign up for pinging services. If you’re new to blogging and don’t know what pinging means, pinging basically means that when your blog is updated, a “ping” is sent out by the service to let pinging sites know that your blog has been updated. People who are visiting sites with pinging services will then see your blog flash across the side of the screen as “newly updated”. Pinging services include Yahoo’s blo.gs, weblogs.com, Google Blog search, and ZingFast.

Tip #2: Sign up for Technorati

If you go to technorati.com, you’ll see an option on the left side of the screen to “Claim Your Blog”. Doing so allows you to get updated link counts, add your photo or branding to Technorati, and see your Technorati link. Having your blog claimed on Technorati helps to increase traffic because the
millions of people who go to that site will have a chance to see your blog on there.

Tip #3: Sign up for FeedBurner, a RSS service

What FeedBurner basically does for your blog is it helps you to promote your blog’s content, build your audience and measure your audience. In other words, it helps you increase your blog’s traffic.

Tip #4: Bookmark your blogs at places like del.icio.us

You can set up an account and profile at del.icio.us. Then, using that, you can add links to your blog along with excerpts from your blog. Anytime someone visits your profile on del.icio.us, they will see a link to your blog and excerpts.

There are other social bookmarking sites that you can use in much the same way. The bottom line is, using these social bookmarking sites can help you increase traffic.

Tip #5: Post comments at other blogs

No, this doesn’t mean you should go and spam other blogs with comments that are only there to promote a site. It means that you should visit similar blogs to your own, post legitimate comments and then sign your name(along with a link to your blog). This way, people know you aren’t there just to promote your site–you’re there to post a good piece of feedback and also say where you’re from.

Tip #6: Ask owners of other blogs to post a link to yours

Find other blogs that are similar to yours. If they seem to be decently popular(that is, they have a good amount of comments for each post), you can try to contact the owner of the blog to add a link to your blog if they have a links section. To make them really want to do this, you can offer to link back to their blog on your blog. People do this reciprocal blog linking all the time and it does help to increase traffic.

Tip #7: Use keywords in your blog

Like regular web pages, having a good keyword density on a blog is a terrific way of getting search engine spiders to notice your page. (FYI: Search engine spiders are programs from search engines that browse sites and report back their findings to the search engine database, which then lists that site. The more keywords on your site, the more likely it is for a search engine spider to pay a visit)

If your average blog posting is around 200 words, try to use 2-6 keywords per blog post. 2-6 keywords in a blog posting of 200 words is a keyword density of between 1 and 3 percent, a respectable number. Remember that you don’t want to use too many keywords, as that will make your blog look bad. Also be sure that the keywords used are relevant to your blog. Before even making a blog posting, decide what the post will be about and then select a keyword or two to use in your post. Then do it.

It’s a surefire way of getting more traffic to your site!

To your success,

You’re a blogger and are constantly hearing about pinging. The
thing is, you don’t know what it is and what it can do for your
blog. Well that’s fine because a lot of bloggers don’t quite
understand pinging. In this newsletter, we will explain what
pinging is, how it helps your blog, and what the best pinging
services are. After you’ve read this newsletter, you’ll know
exactly how to use pinging to make your blog popular.

What is pinging?

When a blog is pinged, it essentially tells a web blog tracking
system that the blog has been updated. Thus, pinging is the
process of telling tracking services that a site has been
updated.

So how does pinging work? Well, a ping service scans regularly
blogs for updates. Whenever there is a new update for a
particular blog, that is reported back to the pinging service’s
site. You can almost think of ping services being just like
search engine spiders–both scan sites looking for information,
and both report that information back to their specific site.
The difference is, a ping service only reports back new blog
posts.

Why is pinging useful for my blog?

Pinging, in effect, tells people that there is a new blog
posting available. Those who are loyal followers of your blog
will see the ping and want to visit your blog. Those who haven’t
read your blog before will see the ping and perhaps think “hey,
there’s a new blog I haven’t been to before, I think I’ll check
it out”. Pinging helps to increase your traffic because it tells
people when your blog is updated. Those who visit sites with
pinging services will see this information in the form of a
scroll on the left or right side, or top of the page. The scroll
is usually in XML format and typically includes the title and
URL of your blog, as well as the date and time of the update.

OK, so now I know what pinging is. Who offers pinging?

The answer is, there are several pinging services available
which you can use to have your blog pinged. We’ll go over some
of them right now.

Weblogs.com
Weblogs.com is probably the most well-known pinging service.
Weblogs.com monitors sites for updates and then pings whenever
there is an update to report. Virtually every blog software is
available to use Weblogs.

Yahoo’s Blo.gs
Another popular pinging service. This one is offered by Yahoo
and has a built-in integration with movable type and other
tools. One cool thing about this service is that it offers the
ability to give out updates via Instant Messenging services like
AOL and ICQ. It is a direct pinging service, so those who sign
up for subscriptions to your blog will be sent an email anytime
your blog is updated.

Blogrolling.com
Blogrolling allows its bloggers to manage their
blogrolls(updates) through a web-based interface. Recently
updated blogs are also highlighted on Blogrolling’s web site.
Data is automatically retrieved from other sites like
blogger.com and weblogs.com every 5 minutes. Often times your
blog is already being pinged by Blogrolling, so you might not
have to sign up for it. Search on the site first for your URL
before signing it up.

Technorati

Available at http://technorati.com/ping, Technorati is
another service that pings blogs. It gets its data from a
variety of places and is definitely a site you should go to for
blog pinging.

These are just 4 of the many different blog pinging services
available. A quick search on Yahoo or Google will reveal many
other possible blog pinging services to use for your blog. It is
best to sign up for as many as you possibly can to ensure that
your blog is well-pinged. A well-pinged blog will definitely
help your blog attract more visitors. So sign up for as many as
possible and watch your blog traffic increase.

To your success,

Earl Netwal
Micro Business Specialist

Technorati Tags: blogging

[ad#ad-1-1-1]
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.

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.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Over the past few years, blogs have become incredibly popular.
Just about everyone who uses the internet also has a blog. You

want to get in on the action, but you’re not sure how to get

your own blog.

Luckily for you, sites like Blogger.com have made it easy to

set-up and make posts on a blog. In this newsletter, we will go

over everything from signing up for a blog on Blogger.com to

choosing a template (look) to finally making a first post.

What is Blogger.com?
Simply put, Blogger.com is a site that hosts blogs for free.

This makes it even easier for you to have a blog because there

is no need to set up a web site and host the blog yourself. All

you have to do on Blogger.com, once you’ve signed up, is login

to your blog, write a blog post and click submit. It’s that

simple.

What will my web address be on Blogger.com?
Your web address will be http://yourname.blogspot.com. One thing

that people dislike about Blogger and other free blog sites is

that they don’t have as great of a freedom in choosing a name.

You are limited to choosing only what is available. So if you’re

looking for http://yankeesfan.blogspot.com, you probably won’t

be able to find that.

Signing up for a blog on Blogger
The first thing you’ll do is go to blogger.com. Next, you’ll

scroll down the page and click on the button labeled “Create

Your Blog Now”.

You will then be taken to a page where you will enter an email

address(used to log into your blog), a password, and a word

verification. You’ll also have to check “I Accept Terms of

Service”. Click continue.

Next, you will be taken to a page where you will choose the blog

title, blog address, and another word verification(which is done

to prevent auto-signups). When you type in your blog address,

you can click a link that says “check availability”. This will

tell you whether or not the desired name is available. If the

first name you wish to have is not available, keep typing in

different variations of the name until you find one that is

available.

After you have put in all the information, click “Continue”.

Choosing a Template
After you click “Continue”, you’ll be asked to choose a

template. The template can be changed at any time after you

sign-up for the blog, so you don’t have to choose an “official”

template now.

If you scroll down, you’ll see a variety of different templates.

Click on the one that you like best and then click “Continue”.

Your First Blog Post
After you’ve chosen a template, you’ll see that your blog has

been created and that there is a button to “Start Posting”.

Click that button.

You’ll be taken to a page that is similar to the posting page at

a message board. There is a “Title” field, where you can put in

the title of this particular blog posting. Then there is a

bigger field, which is the body of your post. Type all you want

in this “Body” field, as there is no limit.

Note that there are options above the field to bold, italicize,

underline or spell check the text. There is also the option of

changing the size and color of the text, plus the ability to add

bullet points, numbered lists and even pictures. For now, you’ll

just do a simple “Welcome” post.

In the “Title” field, type “Welcome!” In the “Body” field, type

your message. You could start with a simple introduction,

talking about yourself and the purpose of the blog. When you’re

done typing the message, click the “Publish” button. It is worth

noting that you can choose to save the post as a draft, if you

want to go back and later finish the post.

After you’ve clicked “Publish”, you’ll see that your blog has

been published successfully. Click the “View Blog” link to view

the results of your work. You’ll now see your post.

Logging into Blogger after the first post
You’ll go to Blogger.com and click on the “Old Blogger” link at

the top right of the page. Type in the email address and

password that you signed up with.  You’ll be taken to the

“Dashboard” of your blog. If you want to enter a new post on

your blog, click “New Post”. Then follow the instructions

mentioned in the previous section. Or if you want to edit the

template, add/edit elements to your page, you’ll click

“Settings” and then “Template”.

That’s all there is to it. Blogs, whether they are hosted at

blogger.com or another free blog site, are incredibly useful and

fun.

To your success,

Earl Netwal

Micro Business Specialist

P.S. Blogger makes setting up and running a blog very easy for

those who have never done it before. Frankly my first blog attempts

were on Blogger. However, I don’t recommend Blogger for those who

are trying to build a business online.

PPS. Blog sites like Active Rain which serves the Real Estate

industry and other industry centered Blog sites are great, easy ways

to begin blogging. They lack the individual control of your own blog,

and don’t build your Google Ranking as well. They can however be

an interesting industry exchange as long as you don’t get carried

away.  You need to focus more on your customers with your own blog.

PPS: A third option is to blog for bucks with a blog dedicated to

promoting products as a separate business activity. Many are making

significant incomes in this regard. One fellow from Singapore has put

together a program thats inexpensive to get started with if that’s

your interest. It’s called Atomic Blogging and you can find it at:

Atomic Blogging

Technorati Tags: Blogger, blogging

So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone.

Fortunately, you should be able to make the best decision for you if you are armed with adequate knowledge of both. In this newsletter, we’ll go over services like blogger.com and others, plus software that allows you to host your own blog. We’ll also go over the pros and cons of each. After reading this, you will know which is best for you.

Who offers free blog hosting?

Many sites offer free blog hosting. Among them are Forumer, Blogger, BlogEasy, Aeonity, BlogThing and Blogates. A quick search for “free blog” on Google reveals many possibilities.

What software can I use to host my own blog?

Like free blog hosting, there are many possibilities for software that makes hosting your own blog easy. Most of them are free to use. These include:

WordPress(the most popular software)
Apache Roller
Blosxom
Geeklog
Textpattern
LifeType

There is also blog software which you can purchase for use on your site. These include:

Community Server
Movable Type
Radio UserLand

One negative about using software and hosting your own blog is that the process can often times be complicated. You have to download the software and install it to your server, which doesn’t always go easily. It’s particularly hard for those who don’t have a lot of experience installing things on servers.

[I had difficulties until I got myself a web host that used C-panel and then learned how to use the C-panel to control my own site. Prior to that I had to pay a guy who would eventually get around to doing things on his time line. Having control is much better and not that hard, once I was properly set up and familiar with how to use the C-panel.]

Why should I remotely host my blog at a place like Blogger?

Places like Blogger allow you to host your blog there. It’s a good option for many people.

The Pros

-It’s easy to set up and maintain a blog. You don’t have to go through the trouble of installing software and configuring it to work on your server. All you have to do is sign up for an account and start posting.

-It’s friendly for beginning bloggers. Sites that host blogs offer good tutorials on how to make your blog postings, so that even someone who is completely new to the concept of blogging can do it easily.

-Most blog hosting sites are completely free to use. There is no need to pay for things like a domain name and hosting.

-Monetizing your blog is easy. Rather than having to manually put HTML/Javascript codes on your blog to manually set up things like AdSense and Pay Per Click advertising, you can select an option on most blog hosting sites that does much of the work for you.

The Cons

-You don’t have as many options to customize your blog. Remotely hosted blogs are admittedly somewhat limited in terms of what you can actually do on them. You have to stick with what is provided to you in terms of look and features.

-The URL you get is always yourname.BLOGSITE.com. You don’t get to have a custom domain name like YOURNAME.com. This can possibly hurt traffic to your blog.

-Blogs hosted on free blog sites don’t look as professional as self hosted blogs.

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

-You have more options and more flexibility. You are able to tweak the blog to your liking.

-Your URL is your address for your blog. Rather than having go to where your blog is hosted to read it, they can read it right from your site.

-The ability to make your blog look professional. Blogs that are hosted on sites of their own tend to look a lot better than those hosted on free sites.

-More space for your blog. Free blog sites usually place a restriction on how much space you have for things like photos and music. By hosting your own blog, you are able to use as much space as you need.

The Cons

-There are sometimes problems with setting up blog software to run on your site and server. If you aren’t experienced when it comes to working with mySQL, the process will be hard. [easier with C-Panel]

-Updates aren’t as easy to post.

-You have to manually set up programs to monetize your blog. However, if you are good with HTML/Javascript, this shouldn’t be
too hard.

-You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both. Which should you choose? Well, it depends on who you are and what you intend to use your blog for. If you intend to use it for business, then a self-hosted blog is the best idea. If it’s a personal blog, then a free hosted blog will probably be fine for you.

To your success,

Earl Netwal
Micro Business Specialist

P.S. Closely examine all of the pros and cons mentioned above. That way, you’ll be able to make the best decision for you! Keep in mind that there are ebooks and video programs available to help you quickly master the technical skills required.

P.P.S. Do you Have C-panel? If so, I recommend a course by Bob the Teacher which helped me learn how to use it quickly and painlessly. This basic information is essential to your internet independence and ultimately your success.

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