First Time Blogging Tips For Using A Free Blogging Web Site
For first time bloggers, a free blogging web site is a great way to get started in the blogosphere. Popular blogging web sites like blogger and eponym allow users to set up and host a blog without paying any fees at all.
This encourages people to start blogging, because the fact that one of these sites can provide you with all of the tools that you need to get your blog up and running without spending any money means that you have nothing to lose by starting a blog.
The fact that it is so easy to find a way to blog for free is one of the reasons why so many people who have never had any other kind of web presence before find themselves drawn to blogging.
By signing up with a free blogging web site, you may find it easier to get listed in search engines that you would if you were starting your own blog from scratch.
For example, google runs the free blog hosting site blogspot and crawls its pages very often looking for updates, so if you have your site hosted by blogspot you are almost guaranteed to be listed on google’s blog search engine.
This easy access to search engines can take some of the work out of promoting your blog, and can help you gain a following with a minimum of marketing effort.
If your blog attracts a large readership, you may want to consider moving your site. Many people feel that being hosted by a free blogging web site gives a blog a kind of amateur flavor that is fine for a new member of the blogosphere, but is not appropriate for a high-profile blog.
Having your own domain can help you make your blog feel professional, and finding a company that will host your domain is not difficult or expensive. Once your blog takes off, you will probably be able to sell enough advertising space to be able to afford to buy a domain and pay for a hosting package, and still have money left over.
However, it does not make sense in most cases to invest in these glossy luxuries before you have a sizable readership.
Starting your blog on a free blogging web site is a great way to build a following before you spend any money on your blog. If and when your blog becomes popular and you are ready to take the next step and purchase your own domain, your readers will follow you to your new home.
The fact that it is possible to use a free blog host like blogspost, blogger, or eponym as a kind of incubator for your blog is great news for bloggers
everywhere.
Copyright 2006. If you want to make money with your blog then check out the website below where you can not only create laser targeted Adsense blog pages but also uncover mega paying best adsense keywords for your blog. Check it out at http://www.keyword-elite-software-review.com
Blogging 101: A Quick Mini Lesson Of Blogging Vocabulary & Terminolog
Blogging 101 is mostly about the blogging vocabulary. To understand blogs, you need to know the terms blog, platform, domain, and web host. Once you have mastered these key elements of blogging, you can enter any conversation about blogging with confidence.
After you know what exactly a blog is, you will be on your way to passing the final exam of blogging 101.
The definition of blogging is something that is very much in flux, as the new technologies that appear every day redefine what a blog is, what a blog can be, and what a blog should do.
For many years, blogs were defined as text-based websites that kept records of days, similar to a captain’s log on a sailing ship. However, this started to change as the group of people who kept blogs became more diverse.
The more bloggers began to explore the limits of the medium and of the technology that made it possible, the more the boundaries of what could be called a “blog” expanded.
Today, there are an abundance of photo blogs, and there are even video blogs as well. Mobile blogging devices may well change the definition of blogging entirely by making it possible for bloggers to create new kinds of posts. Another element of the blogosphere that is starting to redefine blogging is the corporate blog.
As more companies hire writers to keep blogs with the sole purpose of creating positive buzz about their brand, bloggers across the globe are arguing about whether these manufactured blogs are really worthy of the name. Between all of these different forces that are constantly expanding and reshaping the blogosphere, it is difficult to imagine that the definition of what is and is not a blog will ever remain fixed for very long.
Blog is short for weblog, which simply means a series of online posts presented in reverse chronological order. That’s all! Most blogs are text, but there are also photo blogs and video blogs. The rest of blogging 101 has to do with the technical side of things. If you are setting up a blog, you will need a platform, a web host, and a domain.
A blogging platform is a computer software program that allows you to write posts and to update your blog. Your platform is also what you use to design the look of your blog, from color scheme to font size. The web host is sort of like the virtual file cabinet where your blog is stored. Your computer communicates with the host when you upload or edit a post. The domain is the online address of your blog, and usually ends in a dot com.
Now that you know what a blog is, what a platform is, and what domains and hosts are, congratulate yourself!
You have passed blogging 101.
Copyright 2006. If you want to make money with your blog then check out the website below where you can not only create laser targeted Adsense blog pages but also uncover mega paying best adsense keywords for your blog. Check it out at http://www.keyword-elite-software-review.com
Why Photo Blogging May be the Ultimate Pinnacle of Modern
Many people feel that photo blogging is the most exciting kind of blogging that exists. Building and maintaining a photo blog is no more difficult than creating and updating a text-based blog, and many people feel that the internet’s high speed, full-color technology reaches the pinnacle of its appeal with the transmission of images.
Posting photographs in a blog format on a daily, weekly, or occasional basis is a great way to express yourself while reaching viewers in an emotionally charged and aesthetically engaging way, and surfing photo blogs can help you to get a whole new perspective on the world in which we live.
Many people who run image blogs are photographers by trade, but photo blogging is also very popular among hobbyists and amateur shutterbugs. To be certain, a lot of the most popular photo blogs have gained attention because the pictures on them are of the highest artistic caliber, and a lot of the people who run these striking blogs are graduates of prestigious art schools and have impressive professional portfolios.
However, some of the most well known and most often visited photo blogs are as notable for their concepts as for the pictures themselves. Certain photo blogs, like the popular “Cute Overload” which features picture after picture of adorable animals, are more about the thematic content of the pictures than they are about the style in which the snapshots are taken.
The fact that photo blogs range from forums to display the work of highly skilled artisans to playful collections of curiosities shows that photo blogging is a truly diverse form.
The fact that photo blogs are so easy to build and to update makes this kind of visual communication very democratic, and enables people at all skill levels to become a part of the global conversation about the nature and value of photography today.
Whether you are an artist or hobbyist who wants to create a photo blog, or whether you are just somebody who enjoys learning about new places and things, spending some time looking at the most popular photography blogs on the internet can be a very rewarding endeavor. You can travel to another place or another time by seeing pictures of faraway locations and long-gone eras.
You can see your own neighborhood with fresh eyes by discover how local artists have photographed the town or city in which you live. Photo blogging allows people to communicate all of these things and more, which makes it a very exciting part of the modern blogosphere.
If the best thing about web technology is that it allows people to reach each other in a very personal way from across great distances, then in many ways photo blogs are the most successful kind of
web sites.
Copyright 2006. If you want to make money with your blog then check out the website below where you can not only create laser targeted Adsense blog pages but also uncover mega paying best adsense keywords for your blog. Check it out at http://www.keyword-elite-software-review.com
The New Blogger Version 2
The new blogger version (no. 2) lost the “beta”.
On 14 August 2006, Blogger launched its latest version in beta, codenamed Invader, alongside the gold release. This migrated users to Google servers, as well including some new features. In December 2006, this new version of Blogger was taken out of beta.
Currently, it requires a Google account, and offers more advanced features; however, one can still use the previous version if desired
New features (pluses) of blogger version 2.
1. Easy customize your templates by using a drag and drop function
2. You can create a private blog to share your thoughts with just family and friends
3. More feed options you can have a feed for all the comments on your blog, and even individual feeds for all the comments on each separate post. Support for the RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 standards.
4. Updated Dashboard even more easy to use.
Let us analyze the new blogger features:
1. The easy templates customization is welcome, because blogger competitors like WordPress were using a large number of customizable templates.
2. The private blog was necessary for people who want to keep their blog away from public eyes.
3. New feed are for advanced users. The most part of blogger users will not even notice this change
4. The dashboard was easy to use in the version no.1. I didn’t saw a big difference in version 2, but it looks better.
Enough with the good part. Let’s see the minus of blogger ver.2.
I talked about the pluses of the new version, but Blogger was a big problem: It Is Very Slow.
Version 1 was at leas twice faster that no. 2.
So don’t aspect to move very fast with new blogger.
Some Blogger users were irritated that in order to upgrade to the new Blogger service (which has new features and more reliability) a user would have to create a Google Account.
To get started with the new version of blogger go to blogger.com and choose from the right corner “New Blogger”.
Of course if you don’t like the new version for your blog you can switch back to the older version. For now.
The new version of Blogger requires a Google Account to access your blog’s features.
The old version of blogger will not be around for long.
Google wants to move every one on the new version.
On buzz.blogger.com the blog for Blogger on 4 may 2007 it was published a post with the title Old Blogger is dead! Long live Blogger!
The post said “Today at Blogger HQ we accomplished one of our most significant milestones ever: we changed old Blogger’s monitoring from “page us when it goes down” to “page us if it comes back to life in a horrifying, zombie state.”"
So we must accept the slow death of old blogger version.
A little Blogger history
Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs in August 1999.
In February 2003, Pyra Labs was acquired by Google.
On May 2004, Blogger introduced a major redesign, adding features including CSS-compliant templates, individual archive pages for posts, comments, and posting by email.
Blogger redesign in 2006. All blogs associated with a user’s Google Account are located on Google servers. The service is now claimed to be more reliable, due to the quality of the servers. Along with the migration to Google servers, several new features were introduced, including label organization, a drag-and-drop template editing interface, reading permissions (to create private blogs) and new Web feed options.
Dan Ionescu is the owner of http://www.gadgets-club.com the Gadgets blog and of http://www.plasmatelevisionadvice.info Plasma television advice, tips and shopping guide.
The Top Three Tips To Implement Blog Marketing With Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is basically a bunch of new Internet software features that can help you in your Internet business. I’m sure you’ve heard of some basic Web 2.0 features such as the RSS, podcasts, social bookmarking and social networking. If not, do read up more on them because these strategies are being practically used by a lot of Internet marketers trying to make their way in the world of the Internet.
Blog marketing with Web 2.0 features have loads of advantages for your business such as bringing you loads of traffic to your blog, increase the number of your subscribers, improve your website conversion rate, give your sites a lot more exposure to search engines and much more.
To properly implement blog marketing strategies with Web 2.0 features you have to:
1. Understand Them
You have to study each Web 2.0 feature and understand how they work in blog marketing. You must ask yourself these questions:
- How can RSS feeds make visitors come back to your site?
- How do social networking sites work?
- How can social bookmarking help to improve my traffic?
- Are there other Web 2.0 features that can help me improve my site’s recognition?
The more questions you ask yourself, the more you are inclined to find out how these Web 2.0 techniques work.
2. Apply Them To Your Blog
When you know how these Web 2.0 features work, apply them to your blog and let your visitors know that you have these Web 2.0 features that they can make use of to make them feel as interacted as possible with your blog.
It is best to get articles or ebooks that show you how to apply these features step-by-step, so that you won’t get confused. Or, you can just hire a web programmer or designer to help you apply them.
3. Test, Test and Test
One thing about Internet marketing is, you can’t just bet that once you have applied a technique, you can see it working. Testing out a new addition to your site is important because you have to find out in which part of the site is the most optimized position to make it work.
For example, your RSS feed logo can be placed at any part of your site for your visitors to subscribe to, but testing it at different parts of the site for a certain amount of time can make you gauge where most of the visitors sign up for your RSS feed at. Once you have found that position, you can then just place the feed there as its final position.
Once you see these Web 2.0 techniques working on your site, you can then focus on other Internet marketing related strategies like how to turn your visitors into your subscribers or buyers, writing a good web copy, how to improve sales and so on. These three tips are the basic fundamentals for you to focus on when you are into blog marketing, so never forget about them when you apply Web 2.0 strategies.
Jo Han Mok is the author of the #1 international business bestseller, The E-Code. Unlock the code for unlimited online profits for yourself by visiting his website today at: http://www.SuperFastProfit.com
How To Create A Blog That Pays The Bills
The statistic is really staggering. Only one percent of those who start a bog succeed to monetize the site. However, the good news is those who did succeed as bloggers are able to earn enough money to live comfortable while working in the comforts of their home. In fact, there are a number of bloggers out there that are earning a good five digit income a year. The truth is that blogging can be a very lucrative online home business if and only if you have the talent and the right attitude towards your business.
What makes other fail while others succeed? Successful bloggers invested a lot of time, efforts and talents into their site. They believe that writing a blog is not just a hobby that they can do during their spare time but rather something that should be taken seriously. In other words, blogging is not just about writing something, it about writing something interesting for the readers. To become a successful bloggers must anticipate what his or her readers want to read. They must know how to hold the interest of their readers. Once a blogger gets the attention of his or her readers, there is a big chance that these readers will keep coming back to read more of what the blogger has to say. As the traffic to the site increases, there is now a high potential to earn money through the site.
Monetizing your blog
Some writers feel rather strongly about putting ads on their blog. These writers believe that having all those icons, banners and logo all over their site is taboo. Sure, nobody really wants to put so many ads on their site but the thing is advertisements bring in the money. If your site has huge traffic and you want to monetize your blog, you must be prepared to set aside some space for your advertisers. You must design your site in such a way that it will be easy for advertisers to put up their logo. A word of caution though, you must not put too many advertisements in your site otherwise your site will become too crowded and difficult to navigate. Most readers would shy away from blogs that are difficult to navigate and if you lose your readers, you will lose your income. Most online advertisers pay the site owners according to the number of views or clicks make on their ads. If the traffic to your site decreases, naturally, your income will be affected.
Another way of earning money through your blog is through affiliate programs. Choose an affiliate program that is relevant to the contents of your bog. For instance, if your blog is all about children and parenting, it would be wise to join affiliate programs that are selling products for children.
Calvin Mickens is a 10-year veteran of online
business. He has experience in all aspects of
internet marketing and has created a simple 3-step
process that anyone can duplicate for online
success. See how this simple 3-step plan can change
your life for FREE at http://envoy.3stepsecret.com
Blogging Is For Everyone
Blogging seems to be getter hotter and hotter. Although some marketers have dismissed them as a “flash-in-the-pan” venture, more and more people are starting to utilize blogs to meet people, air their opinions, advertise their business, or sell products.
A lot of people are wondering what makes blogging so popular all of a sudden. There are many reasons for this sudden upsurge of bloggers and some are listed below:
The internet marketing community has discovered they can use blogs to attract visitors to their web sites by linking them to their blogs.
They are easy to start and easy to update with no specific training or HTML experience.
There are many templates to choose from so that you do not have to build your own. You can choose colors and designs that you feel comfortable with.
There is more freedom in blogging as you are not restricted as you sometimes are with articles and forums.
The content does not need to be as long as articles that require a certain word count. You can have your posts as long or as short as you want.
You can use RSS as a content and news syndication to make sure your posts will be seen and exposed to as many users as possible.
Blogs are search engine friendly due to the frequency of updating content. There is nothing search engines love more than constant, fresh content.
More and more people are using blogs to sell affiliate products. You are not restricted as to how many affiliate products you may promote through your blog. You can place as many banners or links to your affiliate products as you want.
Google Adsense can be placed on your blog very easily and if you have plenty of traffic you will start earning some money from the clicks the Adsense ads are receiving.
Article writing can be directed to your blog to create a steady stream of visitors. Your author’s bio can be used to link to your blog when submitting your articles to the article directories.
You can promote your offline business with a business blog. This is a very cost effective way to advertise your business and reach the attention of the millions of people who are now using the internet every day.
A product you have created can be promoted and sold through your blog. The more exposure, the more sales.
Social bookmarking among bloggers is one of the hottest things going and you can become part of that growing community. Get to know your neighboring bloggers. Visit their sites and invite them to visit yours.
All in all, blogging is fun and can be financially lucrative. Don’t get left behind, get started now and make your mark on this growing trend.
Bring out the blogger in you by visiting http://www.bloggingabcs.blogspot.com for more tips and information to get you started.
How To Start A Blog That Makes Money
A blog is one of the cheapest ways in the world to generate income. There are even ways out there to start a blog for free. For those of you that are new to internet marketing, a blog is short for weblog.
In the beginning, blogs were meant to be online journals. People posted their thoughts and experiences. As time evolved, blogs became a great way to make money with the internet.
There are now thousands of people that earn a full-time living from blogging. Who knows, you might be one of them someday!
You might be asking yourself what a blog is. If you are, you’re not alone. I thought it was a really funny word when I first heard it a few years ago. A blog really is just a website. Blogs function like any other website, with a few small differences. When a new page is added to a blog, it is shown on the homepage of the blog. The homepage of the blog will always show the newest thing that has been added to the blog website.
Showing the newest content on the homepage of a blog is one of the reasons blogs work so well. Users can easily find the newest information on the site, it will always be found on the homepage. In this way, blogs are very much like news sites. Readers don’t have to search for the newest information, and this makes most blogs more user friendly than traditional sites.
Building traffic to a blog is also significantly easier than building traffic to traditional websites. You can easily configure a blog to let the search engines know each time you add new material.
Blog search engines show the newest content that has been added to the internet, so each time you post something new on your blog you will be bringing instant visitors to it. Blogging has also become quite social; you can bring many visitors to your site simply by being friendly with other bloggers.
Monetizing your blog is fairly easy and free. Google Adsense and other programs allow you to run advertising on your blog. You get paid for every click generated by the ads. There are also a handful of companies that will actually pay you to post about certain topics. Monetizing your blog is much easier than it used to be. Earning at least some money has become quite simple for most bloggers.
For those that think big, blogging can be a full time income. There are bloggers out there who are easily bringing in six figures while working less than 20 hours per week. Blogging has become big business, and will become even bigger.
If you’re looking to make some money with the internet, I don’t know if there’s a cheaper way than blogging. Your start-up cost can be zero if you want it to be. It doesn’t cost you anything to monetize your blog either. With some hard work and determination, you can make it!
Courtney helps others to succeed in their search make money online. You can find his work at http://courtneytuttle.com/
The Blogging Evolution
If you are one of the many people around the world wondering exactly what a “Blog” is and why everyone is so hyped up about, then jump on board and take a look around. Blogging has quite literally opened the windows to the world via technology.
People around the world and from all walks of life are blogging. It’s one word that young, old, rich, poor, and almost anyone somewhere in the middle has in common. So what is it?
Originally, weblogs, which is a term that has been shortened to ‘blog’, were essentially online journals that were kept in a log type format. These journals generally contained the most recent entry at the top and worked backwards from the newest to the oldest. They were originally personal pages only and not intended for commercial use. Over time that has changed but their origins were not monetarily driven.
Blogging was largely unheard of until 1999 when the media began paying attention to this new phenomenon. Incidentally, Blogger, a popular blogging platform, was also released in 1999 and was an almost instant success. Part of the immediate and massive success of Blogger is the fact that this program is not only easy to use but also allows users to interact with other Blogger bloggers through comments. It in essence created an even more tightly knit community of bloggers.
Weblogs have evolved in time from the original purpose or function, which was to point to other articles on the Internet. Many of the original web loggers are more than a little bit peeved by the new world order of bloggers.
The new blog is essentially an online journal or diary rather than something that points to information available online from other sources. It is no longer a community of people sharing information and has morphed into a community of teen angst and waterfront property sales sites. Many pioneers in this particular field feel that these changes aren’t for the better.
Even today you can still find many blogs that are sticking to the original ideals. They point to information in other places and lead others on a merry chase around the Internet in search of knowledge and clarity. They site their sources and do not copy the works of others, they are purists and they offer a great service to those seeking information and enlightenment. There is nothing wrong with the original way of blogging; in fact it feels a void that is obvious in the rampant amount of misinformation being shared on the Internet.
Despite the value of these blogs, the fact remains that the newer generation of blogging doesn’t appear to be going anywhere and as such it seems that the title of a blogger is going to be shared not only by those who offer informative services but also those sharing teen angst and the heartbreaks of divorce or even how much high heels really do hurt on prom night.
Regardless of whether you are interested in blogging as a sort of journal, a sales page, a moneymaking opportunity, or simply to share information and the process of freethinking with other like-minded people, there is a blog for that.
For more info on blogs and blogging, please visit our website. http://www.gitcancun.com
A Threat to Your Wordpress Blog: Duplicate Content
Blogging is extremely popular these days. And the most popular stand-alone blog engine is Wordpress. It is flexible, has many useful featires and there is a lot of eye-catching templates for it. But those who have a Wordpress blog must be aware of a serious problem that can cause your blog to be removed from Google’s search results. The problem is: Duplicate Content.
WordPress content management system which, when used with the default configuration, is not duplicate content proof. In fact this CMS is capable to render almost 100% of your content duplicate. As usual the fault of the system has roots in its advantages. WordPress has many features facilitating blogging and linking, such as RSS feeds to posts and comments, trackback URLs, monthly archives and so on. In the same time this variety of URLs returning similar or identical pages represents a clear case of duplicate content.
WordPress And Duplicate Content
The first evidences of duplicate content produced by your WordPress CMS can be found in your sidebar. They are category pages and monthly/daily archives. Category pages store your articles posted under the same topic — a category. Such pages have no unique content; they are just a collection of your previous posts. Monthly and daily archives also simply group your previous articles by the date of posting. Sometimes when you have only one post in a given day, the archive page for the date and your post are totally identical.
The next case of duplicate content is even more prominent. It can be your home page itself. If it contains not excerpts but the full text of your posts, then it duplicates your post pages. This also applies to the “next/previous entries” pages — those accessible via /page/2, /3, /4 etc.
Feeds. Search engine spiders crawl all the content they can reach and of course this includes RSS feeds too. The additional problem with them is that Google may choose to display your RSS URL in the search results over the link to the original post. In this case the user who clicks this result will see an XML formatted page which is not “human-friendly”.
Trackback URLs. Many WordPress templates add trackback links after posts. This links enable authors to track who links to their posts. Usually, if your post URL looks like “yoursite.com/2006-11-30/yourpost/” its trackback URL will be “yoursite.com/2006-11-30/yourpost/trackback/”.
Identical meta-description. By default WordPress doesn”t provide a tool to add unique meta description tags to your posts, and they either have none or share a single site-wide description. Having no meta description at all is a disadvantage, as a properly written one can make your snippet stand out in a SERP. Having an identical description for all your pages is a threat, as Google might get them filtered out as too similar.
Because of the duplicate content Google search can return less desired URLs (such as feeds or archives instead of original posts); your pages can be moved out of their index, or placed into the supplemental results, which are rarely displayed to users.
Oleg Ishenko, MCSE, MCDBA, BSc.
Get more useful info on SEO at our SEO Research (http://www.seoresearcher.com)
