From Spyware With Love!

From Spyware With Love!

by: Doug Woodall

Itกs late. Youกve been scouring the web for that perfect present for your Aunt Bess in Idaho and finally you find it at presents4aunties.com. The site looks a lilก rough on the edges, weird colors and such, but they have that gift you know will make Aunt Bess add you to her will. You purchase the gift, log off and head to bed, tired but happy.

The next day, coffee in hand, you turn on your puter. Thatกs strange, you think, its awfully slow this morning. After waiting longer then it takes to make a pot of coffee itกs finally booted up and ready to go. You open your browser to check the Cow Tipping Blog for the latest posts.

Whats this you say, my homepage is now longer the Blog , but a site trying to sell me a DVD of the Smurfs vs the Terminator!

Oh well you say, not quite fully awake. You type in the URL for your Blog and wait. And wait, and wait. Finally its up! You start to read the mornings postings. You’re into the second post about the upcoming Cow Tipping Championship in Vegas when a Popup appears and says you need to go to heartburngone.com for the new revolutionary cure for heartburn. กClick here nowก it says and receive a free gift, the secret cure for Baldness!

Weird you think, you click the X to close it.

You don’t realize by clicking the X that a small hidden piece of code has just been downloaded to your puter.

You finish the Blog postings and decide to check your Bank Account. You type in the URL and wait, and wait. Finally the Bank Logon appears. You log in, completely unaware of the code, which is actually a Keylogger, is recording your every keystroke. The Transaction is there for Aunties gift, you’re so happy. You log off and remember you forgot to email that document for your Boss. Thatกs ok you say, I can log in from here and send it! Technology is so great ! You log into your work portal and access your email program, find the document, attach it to the email form and send it. You vaguely remember it had something to do with the updated personal info list for all of the employees at your job, it includes their Addresses, email addys and direct deposit account numbers, also their logon names and passwords to access the Computers at work.

Darn, now another Popup appears, whats wrong with this puter?

Well at least you didn’t forget the bosses document, after all you wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the bBoss. Youกve a great job, working for the Trans Global Bank after all. Offices all over the world don’t ya know.

Well time to check your antivirus program for updates. Hmmm it says no updates kneeded . You notice the Misspelling but what the heck, those things happen. Geez the puter is really slow! You decide to reboot, hoping that will fix it. Gripes, now it wont even boot! At least theres a lil extra money in the ole Bank Account to get it fixed.

The above is fiction. No animals were harmed. But its scary huh to think it could happen.

Granted itกs a worse case scenario, but I wonder…

Be smart out there people, learn how to use your AntiVirus and AntiSpyware programs. Keep them updated, and if they don’t work well for your surfing habits, find programs that will. Keep your puter protected, your well being may depend on it.

About The Author

Doug Woodall has a website at http://www.spywarebiz.com.

There he provides free information and recommended products to combat Spyware.

He is a member of the IWA (International Webmasters Association)

Doug can be reached at [email protected]

Article edited for proper content by Wendy McCallum

Permission to copy ok as long as about author info remains with article.

Copyright 2005 SpywareBiz

This article was posted on August 25

by Doug Woodall

The Viability of Blogging to a Niche Market

The Viability of Blogging to a Niche Market

by: Mal Keenan

Niche marketing is an old and very successful marketing strategy whereby a company focuses on marketing and selling to a clearly defined segment of potential consumers. The company earns by supplying a unique product or service to this narrowly defined market which other companies have not met or provided.

Are there potential buyers online? According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s latest figures, there are over 185.55 million internet users in the United States alone, of these around 139.52 million active users. The Computer Industry Almanac which compiles statistics on global internet users, records a staggering 934 million users for 2004 and this market continues to grow.

Do these users buy online? Statistics gathered on internet users, show they do and their numbers are increasing. For instance, in December 2004, online sales rose by 53%, from $795 million of the same month 2003, to $1.22 billion 2004, (gathered by CMP Media a service provider of information and marketing services to the technology and healthcare industries). For each unique marketing hook, product and service, your business blog can tap in, that’s how many niche markets you can serve.

The next question then to answer: Can your blog be the perfect vehicle for reaching and marketing to your niche?

You should realize that successful blogs go a step further in providing excellent content, as well as regular updates or new content. Most websites provide these services. Rather it is the ability of these blogs to provide the author and the readers’ a venue for oneonone conversations, in an impersonal medium. By sharing commentaries, thoughts and opinions, the author positions himself or herself as being an authority in his or her field of work. If you write content that is relevant to their needs, they’ll remember and keep returning to your blog.

But that’s not all; you need to have an abiding passion for the subject matter or product you’ll sell. Without this, your blog won’t stand out and carve itself a niche apart from the other blogs.

In essence, a well researched and crafted business blog is a potential revenue center. It has the authors’ personal touch and speaks to the need of this particular consumer. As every marketing analyst knows, when a seller understands his or her consumers well, this seller gets their business.

Copyright 2005 Mal Keenan

About The Author

Mal Keenan is editor and publisher of the Home Business Tips Blog:

http://www.homebusinesstipsnewsletter.com/blog/

Visit his Internet Marketing Plug In Training site for great strategies and step by step processes in running a successful online business:

http://www.pluginprofitstraining.com/

This article was posted on April 22

by Mal Keenan

Blogs And Your Work From Home Internet Business

Blogs And Your Work From Home Internet Business

by: Tom Worsley

As a work from home internet business entrepreneur you have several really good tools on the internet you can take advantage of in order to build your work from home business. A blog is just one of those tools that you can use and should be taking advantage of.

In recent months blogs have become more and more popular all over the internet. A blog, or weblog, is a personal Web site updated frequently with links, commentary and anything else you like. People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger. ( http://www.blogger.com ) At blogger.com Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process. This makes it very simple to create several 100 pages within a site all with the same look and feel but with different content. This of coarse is exactly what the major search engines are looking for.

There are several reasons why a work from home internet business entrepreneur like my self would use blogs in their arsenal of marketing tools. The number one reason for me is to gain better search engine exposure. I have several blogs already started. Two are merely work from home business article databases. Every time I write a new article or find a good one someone else wrote, I submit it into my blog which crates a new page in my site. The search engines will find and spider this new page. I also have a work from home tips blog which I try to post several good tips to each week. This is all great content for my work from home internet business web site that my visitors will hopefully want to read.

Blogs also create opportunities for more search engine submissions. Recently with the popularity of blogs special blog search engines have started to emerge. The only way you can submit to one of these special blog search engines is if you have a blog yourself. Blogs create a special rss or xml files that these search engines will look for.

Setting up your blog may initially take some time and effort but it’s made much simpler if you use blogger.com. But do not use bloggers hosting service. Be sure to use your own domain and hosing service. This will get you the best results with the search engines. Once you have chosen your main template look and feel of your blog all you need to do is keep posting new and good content that your readers would be interested in to your blog. Eventually over time you will have 100’s pages of great content that your visitors will enjoy reading all spidered by the major search engines giving you more traffic and exposure.

About The Author

Tom Worsley is a successful work from home Internet marketer and independent representative for SFI , Owner and Webmaster for http://www.bigmoolla.com & http://kawarthapublishing.com. This article may be republished on your site or in your newsletter as long as this resource box is included.

This article was posted on January 02

by Tom Worsley

Blog And Ping To Build Links

Blog And Ping To Build Links

by: John Taylor

Just What Is Blogging and Pinging?

There is a new partnership in cybertown called Blogging and Pinging. It is not a new comedy team or even a singing group, but a new way to build links and attract visitors to your website and to make more money. Blogging and Pinging is a marketing tool that can help anyone build their online business.

Let’s start with a definition of a blog.

Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author of the Web site.

Ok, so what about pinging? Originally, a ping was a program that bounced a request off another computer or server over a network or the Internet to see if the remote computer was responding. That same program is now used as a method of informing others that your blog exists and it also let’s them know when a new post has been made.

When you put blogging together with pinging you get a technique that is extremely effective at getting any web site, no matter how big or small, indexed by the major search engines.

Why Is Blogging and Pinging The Newest Marketing Tool?

Most of you are now saying, กYeah, so what? I can get my site indexed now. What’s the big deal?ก The big deal is that blogging and pinging gets your site indexed almost immediately and it is free!

If you have any experience trying to get a site indexed and listed in the major search engines, then you know that it is frustrating and very difficult to get done in a reasonable amount of time. After working hard to get your site together, collecting and writing content, worrying about keywords and keyword densities, you are not even close to being finished. Now comes the even harder part! Now you have to manually submit your site to all the major search engines. And finally, you get to wait.

That’s right, you have to wait for the spiders to come to index your site. This could take weeks or it could take months. There are some methods that will help bring along the spiders a bit faster, but these take lots of time and effort and money. And still, you can’t be sure that the spiders will come fast more quickly.

Blogging and pinging solves this problem. You can guarantee that spiders will come to your site and that you will get listed in all the major search engines with minimal effort and no money in about 48 hours.

How does it work? The largest search engine, Google, owns Blogger.com. This is the site that many people use to create their blogs. Google frequently sends their search engine spiders through Blogger.com to find new content.

So, if you have a blogger.com account you can add content from other websites to the content of your blog and when you blog the content of your site the URL of the page you are blogging is automatically attached. That way, when Google’s spiders index your blogger.com pages, they see your website URL within the content. If that URL isn’t listed in the Google database, the spiders are almost certain to follow the link to index your site!

So, rather than wait for weeks, months, or even up to a year, you can get your site listed virtually immediately! Google themselves will tell you that they would rather discover new URL’s by finding links than getting them via submission. So, why not blog and ping and give them what they want!

One critical success factor in boosting your link popularity is to use the blog and ping technique to notify lots of other sites anout new content on your web site. This is achieved by using your blogger.com publishing function to ping the major blog directories such as Technorati and Blo.gs.

Another good piece of news is that once Google has indexed your site, other search engines that use Google’s feed will list your site too. And it all happens at lightening speed!

Blogging and pinging is a really effective method to get your site spidered by the major search engines and, more importantly, getting those all important links.

Copyright John Taylor PhD August 2005 All rights reserved.

About The Author

John Taylor

To learn more information about Link Popularity I strongly recommend that you visit http://www.LinkAdvantage.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 11

by John Taylor

Details of Getting a Blog

Details of Getting a Blog

by: Daniel Punch

Blogs, the abbreviation of Web Logs (online journals), are becoming more and more popular all the time. People are starting new blogs at an astounding rate so it’s safe to assume that there are constantly people out there who want to know how to get a blog going. Despite personal feelings about the actual quality of the majority of blogs out there on the Internet, that’s what I hope to be able to help you do with this article.

First things first, you need somewhere to deposit your thoughts. You need to decide how you want to attack this. Your choices are:

To use a blog hosting service such as eBloggy (http://www.ebloggy.com) or BlogEasy (http://www.blogeasy.com).

To host a blog yourself on a server of your own choice.

Both options have their free or paid subsections. The blog hosting services mentioned here are free but there are paid services out there. MSN now offer ‘Spaces’, which are essentially blogs attached to your MSN account and may be of interest to some. Web hosting can also be free or paid but you’ll find it difficult to find a free service that will offer you the features you’ll need to run a blog backend. One place to look is your Internet Service Provider (ISP) that may offer some free web space. This web space often contains as many features as many professional web hosting packages although it offers less space. Blogs tend not to take up a whole lot of room so this shouldn’t be a problem. The advantage of hosting your own blog over using a service is that you have greater control over how it works, how it looks etc. You also don’t have to put up with there being ads on your page (unless you find some free hosting which usually has advertising put at the top of your site). The downside is that it can be a bit more complicated to function.

If you’re going to host your own blog you’ll need to find yourself a blog backend. This is the program that runs on the server and allows you to upload new journal entries while allowing other people to view them. You’ll have to either choose a backend that fits within your web hosting package’s limits or a hosting package that meets the backend’s requirements. The general requirements are PHP and MySQL but you can get some backends that work solely with PHP or even Java. It’s important to make sure that you can change the read/write permissions of the PHP files on your server (using CHMOD or an equivalent, talk to your host—they’ll know what you’re talking about). There’s a nice breakdown of many different beckends and their features and requirements that can be found at, http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm. I personally use Pivot because it doesn’t require MySQL and it has RSS distribution, which is nice.

Once you’ve got yourself a hosting package and a backend you need to install the backend. This can get tricky but most of them come with an install program and you should be able to work through it if you follow the instructions that will undoubtedly come with the package. If you run into difficulties your hosting provider’s support team should be happy enough to help you along.

So now you have yourself a blog up and running; it’s time to fill it with content. What you write is up to you. Generally people write about their lives, how they feel, what they think, and similar topics. You can be much more diverse and creative than this though. You could for example post creative writings on your blog, as well as discuss news and current affairs, or anything else that you can imagine. It’s your personal space to write what you like and get it out there for others to read and give their opinions on.

Making people come and read your blog could take some effort. You need to make them aware that it exists and keep it interesting so that they continue coming back. Nothing kills off a readership base like a lack of updates. At first you can start small with your ‘publicity’ by telling friends and family about it. Put a link to your site in your MSN or other messenger program nickname. Put a link in your email signature so that everyone you email sees it. Get your friends interested and they’ll tell others and you’ll probably be able to build up a small community with relative ease. For attracting the broader public you need ways to let the wider community know you are out there. Spend time at other people’s blogs, make it a habit to head over there and read their posts. If it’s appropriate put a link to your site in a comment box or guest book on their site. Visit forums related to blogs (or just forums in general) and become an active member there. As long as you have a link to your site in your signature, people will probably head on over for a look.

You can also submit your blog to lists such as Blogrank.net (http://www.blogrank.net). These are sites dedicated solely to getting people into blog sites, and while it may be hard to climb into the higher ranks, simply having your site listed will probably improve your hit rate. You could also submit your site to as many search engines as possible. Perhaps you could even write yourself an article like this one with your link in the bio field. Beyond this you’re going to have to work out your own methods for publicizing your site. Just think creatively about how and where you can get a link put in and you’ll be fine.

Getting your blog set up and running can be an involving task but the results will be worth it. A final word of warning: Don’t get too engrossed in your blog. You need a life in order to be able to write about your life! As I wrote in a previous article it has been found that blogging can sometimes have a detrimental effect on a person instead of the positive effect that it was designed for. Try not to write only for yourself; it’s a public forum for others to read so try and write entries that will be of some benefit to the wider community as well as to you. Blog safe and have fun!

About The Author

Daniel Punch

M6.Net Web Helpers

http://www.m6.net

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 13

by Daniel Punch

How to Build a Forum That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two M

How to Build a Forum That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Months Later, Part 1

by: Robert Plank

If you can get a big enough following from customer lists and newsletters you might want to start your own forum. But I always see people trying to start a forum and it falls flat on their face, mainly because they make it too big and they never promote it.

The main reason is because nobody eats in an empty restaurant. Don’t setup a กmultiple topicก forum like phpBB where it allows you to partition the thing off into different subjects. You have to start small, get enough traffic to that forum for THAT type of forum to become selfsustaining before you build bigger.

By that I mean start off with a blog.

This blog (and eventually your message board) HAVE to have a niche. You can’t just have a general purpose hangout message board, or have it based on something really vague like กMarketing,ก or กFinance,ก or กComputers.ก Instead go for something specific like a Copywriting message board. Or a message board about home loans. Or a message board about digital video.

You supply all the posts, and any user กpostsก will just be comments to this journal. Don’t require any sort of signup in order to post.

Give people an option to sign up for email updates but DO NOT use the autoresponder built into the blogging software. Instead use a separate autoresponder script. Why? Two reasons:

1.) You can write a quick teaser message that will entice more subscribers to read your posts than any boring automated notice could.

2.) This way it will be easier to move subscribers over once you graduate from a blog (keep reading).

(WordPress works great for this and is free.)

Start off allowing anyone to post, but once you start getting traffic to that page and the blog spam starts rolling in you will either have to require approval by you for a comment to go through or require the poster to type in a code to prove they are human (youกve seen the kind).

It will be easy to get SOME traffic to the blog, if you keep most of your entries to it in article format, because then you can submit these articles to ezines and the article directories with a link back to the blog.

Keep the blog format going, be SURE to post regularly and if possible write content in advance (Post To Future) so that if you miss a week your content will still be updated as if you never left. If you feel ambitious setup RSS feeds for the blog and submit to the feed directories.

Continue posting until you reach the point where after you make a post, you receive comments from 1020 different people within a day or two of the post. This 1020 has to happen without any emails being sent out, or any kind of active promotion.

Until you reach this point stay with the blog, it means you haven’t reached critical mass yet and any attempt to change over to a more complex kind of site will never work.

Once youกve got those 1020 spontaneous posts you can go ahead and make the move from a blog to a forum. But be very very careful. There are a lot of things that can go wrong, especially if your forum doesn’t กunfoldก properly, which is a technique Iกll discuss with you in Part 2 of this article…

About The Author

Robert Plank

Free (humorous) video for you about how to promote an affiliate program without seeming spammy. Take a look: http://www.affiliatebattleplan.com/Rewrite.html

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 09

by Robert Plank

16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

by: Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff

Youกve got your blog set up and youกve started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?

Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.

1. Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.

Http://www.bloglet.com

2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com)

http://www.my.yahoo.com

3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don’t write things like กnice blogก or กgreat post.ก Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.

4. Use Ping0matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish. http://www.pingomatic.com

5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com

6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.

7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.

8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.

9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.

10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.

11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to.

The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as กfeedsก) may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries. To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: http://www.rssspecifications.com/rssreaders.htm

13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts

14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.

15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).

16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.

Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats: how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter at http://www.sitemeter.com

About The Author

Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.biztipsblog.com, http://www.coachezines.com and http://www.bizbooknuggets.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 19

by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff

Blogging for Dollars

Blogging for Dollars

by: Sharon Housley

Blogging for dollars might sound like the latest game show or some new drinking game, but itกs the latest craze to hit the Internet. Bloggers began blogging for a number of reasons, but as the blog movement has increased in popularity, they have found ways to monetize their blogs and are seeing their commitment pay off.

Whether a bloggerกs focus is to communicate with customers or just to have fun, they have begun looking at ways to earn revenue from their blogs. The most popular ways for bloggers to earn some added cash for their pet projects are:

1. ) Google Adsense in Blogs

Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve contentrelevant advertisements in blogs. If the visitor clicks one of the AdSense ads served to the blog, the website owner is credited for the referral. Webmasters need only to insert a Googlegenerated java script into the blog or blog template. Googleกs spider parses the AdServing blog and serves ads that relate to the blogกs content. Google uses a combination of keyword matching and context analysis to determine what ads should be served.

2. ) Affiliate Programs (Product Endorsements)

Affiliate Programs work when an affiliate web site receives income for generating sales, leads, or traffic to a merchant website. Generally, bloggers will mention or endorse specific products and if site visitors purchase the product, bloggers will receive a portion of the sale.

3. ) Product Promotion

Businesses use blogs to detail how specific features or product addons can increase functionality and save time. Contentrich product promotion will help with search engine placement.

4.) Banner Ads

While less popular than in the past, websites with high traffic levels can still earn decent revenue by selling banner space.

As the Internet evolves bloggers will continue to seek out ways to monetize their opinions and thoughts. Daily journals and online blogs have become more than just a communication means to many.

Copyright 2004 Sharon Housley

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for the NotePage http://www.notepage.net and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com product lines. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.smallbusinesssoftware.net

This article was posted on October 12, 2004

by Sharon Housley

The Fearful, Ignorant Guy Has Got A Blog On The In

The Fearful, Ignorant Guy Has Got A Blog On The Internet. It Must Be Easy!

by: M6.net

Of all people in the world I was easily one of the most pessimistic about computers, the Internet and now that I even know they existblogs. I think blogs are pretty cool but I never thought I could have one. I thought the processes of getting a site; domain name and the actual building of the blog would just be out of my league. I’m a complete novice when it comes to technology, but I do like writing a journal, and I thought having a journal online would be both fun and make life simpler for me. No more writing with pens, other people can read my stuff and comment on it, and I could add pictures to illustrate my points and make things look more interesting.

Well, now I’ve got one! It’s awesome. I won’t lie and say it was easy, but I think if you hook up with a good web hosting company it’s not such a daunting experience as you might expect. I got a few work mates to help me. I went through a couple administrative hitches when filling in my personal information forms for the registrationjust because I’m a bit silly in the head. We had a little trouble with the blog program we used, but these challenges were eventually overcome. My boss says he’s going to make a simple program that people can hook up easily.

I chose my domain name: thepowerofeverythingthatis.com. It’s my own nameno one else on Earth can have it. I own it. I picked a nice picture out for the backgroundit looks really sweet, much better than a blank sheet in a diary. I got it from a site that gives photos out without charging a royalty (the first few): www.istockphoto.com.

I just want you to know the great feeling I got when I first typed in my domain name and my site came up! It was the equivalent to a person who’s afraid of heights being accepted into an astronaut’s mission into outer space. Or maybe it was like a turtle driving a Ferrari 300km per hour. Possibly it was like all the ants in the world getting together for peace talks.

It’s a real blast having this blog. I can write on it any time, anywhere, from my laptop, at an Internet café etc. I can write as much as I want, and I’m hoping one day my writing may inspire others to communicate with me about the subjects that I’m interested in.

Look, if you like writing about anything, and want to have your thoughts and opinions on the Internet, maybe meeting others similar to yourself in the progress; you have to get a blog and get it now. Don’t be afraid any longer, the world is in the palm of your hands; it’s time to get on!

About The Author

Jesse S. Somer is a human hoping to show his fellow Earth citizens the beautiful opportunities the Internet is making available for all our lives.

M6.Net http://www.m6.net

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 09, 2004

by M6.net

7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers

7 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers

by: Fabian Lim

Blogging is IN!

And itกs here to stay!

Blogs are easy to set up and use.

And you can create a good blog by writing out the thoughts that roam in your mind and presto and youกll be blogging like a pro before you even know it!

Here are 7 essential habits you should develop if you want to be a highly effective blogger:

Blogging Habit #1 Determine Your Purpose

Highly effective bloggers blog with a clear purpose in mind.

So decide on a purpose for your blog.

Blogs exist to filter information, organize business information, share news and profitable content, establish professional identities and bonds, discuss social issues, or muse about life in general.

Beginning in a focused manner is one of the best ways to start a blog.

And knowing your กmissionก will help you accomplish more with your blog.

Blogging Habit #2 Define Your Audience

Highly effective bloggers understand their target audience.

Their wants, needs, likes and dislikes, and possible reactions and responses.

So always reflect on your anticipated audience.

You conduct yourself differently with friends than you will with professional associates, strangers, customers, or family members.

Knowing who you’re writing to beforehand, allows you to adopt acceptable and appropriate tones in your blog journals.

Blogging Habit #3 Blog With Passion

Blog with passion!

And the best way to achieve this is to write on a topic you are most passionate about.

And the more you’re passionate about a topic, the more itกll show in your writing.

Remember, a blog is the place for voicing opinions Your Opinions!

So, engage your readers with a passion and make your writing interesting.

Blogging Habit #4 Blog Frequently

Highly effective bloggers understand the importance of blogging frequently.

Your aim, as a blogger, is to get interested readers to return to your site to see the latest scoop, whatกs new and whatกs not, the กinsก and กoutsก.

To this end, aim to post several times a week.

If not, at least once a week.

Frequent posting creates dialogue that invites your readers to return to your blog.

It will increase the กstickinessก of your blog i.e. the ability to attract returning visitors.

And theyกll keep coming back if they like what you write about.

Blogging Habit #5 Blog Honestly

Credibility counts, so be honest.

Respect your audience and all bloggers.

Words can live forever on the net so be courteous too.

Manners never go out of style.

Ethics and integrity are necessary and keep your own standards high.

So stick to them!

Blogging Habit #6 Encourage Interactivity

Blogs should not be a กonewayก communication tool.

As far as possible, always encourage feedback by encouraging your readers to comment on your blog postings.

Allow your readers to air their own views.

Whether or not they agree with you.

Turn your blog into a virtual community and platform for exchanging of ideas, views and opinions.

Blogging Habit #7 Link to Other Blogs

Highly effective bloggers understand the importance and value of linking.

Linking to other blogs allow your readers to expand their realm of knowledge and experience beyond what you can offer.

Because you want your readers to have more than a กsingleก opinion of the topic in question.

And readers will appreciate your openness and reward you through return visits to your blog.

Bloggers actually amplify each otherกs voices when they crosslink with each other, forming a grassroots network of information sharing that can form social alliances.

Most blog audiences start with small numbers, but with frequent and regularly scheduled updates, your audience should grow.

Put into practice these 7 blogging habits and transform yourself into a highly effective blogger starting today!

Copyright 2005 BizSuccessOnline

About The Author

Fabian Lim is a Web Analytics & Internet Marketing Consultant.He helps organizations and individuals succeed online. Visit his website at http://www.BizSuccessOnline.com and blog at http://www.fabianlim.name.

This article was posted on March 13

by Fabian Lim

Start Blogging Now: 10 Reasons Why You Really Need

Start Blogging Now: 10 Reasons Why You Really Need a Blog for Your Business

by: Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman

1. It is perfect for creating a web presence for independent professionals who have something to say and who need people to get to know them and what they can do for them.

2. Having your own business blog gives you credibility and a forum where you can show your expertise.

3. Readers can comment directly onto your blog, creating interaction and interest.

4. No more waiting for your web designer to update your web site.

5. You can post to your blog yourself, about any issue, daily if you wish, and get it broadcast into the blogosphere instantly.

6. The search engines love blogs and will pick up your keywords easily, boosting your rankings, making it easier for people to find you on the web.

7. Customers are drawn to personality behind the business. Human voices convey intimacy beyond PRbabble. (To read about this topic read The Cluetrain Manifesto. The first chapter is available free online: http://cluetrain.com/apocalypso.html.)

8. You can network and build up a community of likeminded readers. You blog, people comment. Others blog, you comment. Before you know it, more people have heard of you and your business because the buzz gets passed around.

9. You can test out new ideas and get instant feedback. Get your customers and prospects in on the act now and let them help you help them invite them to talk back! Let them see how you develop your products and services and they can show you how to best to serve them.

10. You can use your blog sidebars to promote your products, your affiliate products, run blog ads, sell books, and any other product or services you have. You don’t have to include this in the body or content of your article; therefore your posts your writing can remain content rich and free of promotional hype.

Finally, email marketing and electronic newsletters are struggling because of overcrowded inboxes, spam problems and filters.

On the average, 64.7% of the business email you send is not even opened, let alone read. [source: Q3 2004 Email Trend Report, DoubleClick ]

Email marketers are seeing their openrates range from only กmid20s to just over 50 %ก [source: ClickZ.com]

That means that you are losing at least 50% of your prospective buyers or readers. How much does that amount to in losses over the course of the next few years?

AOL receives roughly 2 billion email messages a day, of which about 75 percent are blocked and another 4 to 7 percent are sent to the bulk folder. [source: ClickZ.com]

Sit up and pay attention. The time to start blogging for your business is now.

About The Author

Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blog at http://www.buildabetterblog.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 18

by Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman

Blogging whatกs it all about?

Blogging whatกs it all about?

by: InkaMaria Kunz

A blog usually is a web page that contains brief, discrete hunks of information called posts. These posts are arranged in reversechronological order (the most recent come first) and each is uniquely identified by an anchor tag which is marked with a permanent link that can be referred to by others who wish to link to it.

A blog is a means of communication and there are many different types of messages carried by blogs. Some are nothing but pointers to other web sites, while others run long essays, some are personal diaries, others feature technology, and some are edited by one person, others by teams.

There are hundreds of thousands of blogs on the Internet, and new blogs are created every day. Can anybody and more importantly can you blog? Yes, there are bloggers of all types, equipped with all levels of technical skills. Bloggers approach their sites with as much variety and passion as the general Net public approaches the Web itself.

The most commonly used blogging tool is Blogger. It requires the least amount of commitment in time or resources, allowing you to go from wanting a blog to having one in about five minutes and at no cost. The Blogger software is the property of Pyra Labs (www.pyra.com). Blogger is often credited as the reason for the explosion of blogging that’s occurred in the last couple of years. It is a webbased tool, requiring no installation of software on your personal computer or on your server if you happen to have a web site. You access the tool through the Blogger web site (http://blogger.com) and the blog pages are posted to your web site or to Pyra’s BlogSpot (http://blogspot.com) community blog server. For more detailed information on this see O’Reilly’s Essential Blogging.

Reread anything before you publish. Electronic text can expose unintended meaning easily and it will also make what you say a lot more focused. If nothing else, it should help you catch spelling mistakes! Blogging is a way to share your opinions and thoughts to the rest of the world. If you post interesting things, share links with other bloggers and post comments on other blogs. Linking is the way of the Web that is the key of successful blogging.

In order to keep your blogs really fresh, invite a group of your friends / colleagues and give them blogging access. That way you will have several reporters blogging information and you won’t end up killing yourself, trying to keep your blog populated with good information. If you use Blogger, upgrade to Blogger Pro. You can have your team post to the blog from email, create and syndicate your blog as an RSS feed, and a whole lot more! Adding the ability to post comments on your blog extends interactivity and usefulness to the blog itself. Blogs are about community and information, and commenting is a real way to gauge your viewer’s blogging efforts. Blogging is one of the quickest ways to update your site. Syndicating others’ blogs into your own site is another. There is a wealth of information out there – just tap into it!

About The Author

This article was written by InkaMaria Kunz, CEO of a flourishing multilingual translations agency with offices in Germany and New Zealand. This article may be printed or used in its entirety with full author contacts and details. For more information, translations or purchases of a new website/ebusiness, contact the author thru the official website www.linguatransl.co.nz or the blog www.linguatransl.blogspot.com.

This article was posted on February 04

by InkaMaria Kunz