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

10 Benefits of Being a Blogger

10 Benefits of Being a Blogger

by: Nicholas Dixon

I have been a blogger since September 2004 but only began to take it seriously this year. My blogging journey began when I stumbled upon a company owned by Google named Blogger.com that offered free tools to build a website.

In fact Blogger provides you with free several templates which you can customize in addition to a domain name hosted on their server. You can host your blog on your domain if you like to. Here are some benefits I found while blogging:

1) Easy to manage. A blog can be set up by even a novice in no time. All you have to do is post and publish. Blogging can get as simple as that or even more complex.

2) Easy to update. Blogs can be updated weekly or daily instead of sometimes monthly for a static website. Even adding a few paragraphs a day can be done in no time and can be beneficial to your search rankings.

3) Get spidered quickly. Search engine spiders crawl blogs with greater frequency than static webpages. I have had webpages that took over eight months to be indexed in Google where as Yahoo sometimes index my blogs in weeks sometimes days.

4) If you write articles then you can post all of them on your blog in addition to free reprint content that is widely available everwhere. The more content you have the better.

5) You can get your website indexed quicker. An article or a piece of news about your website with an optimize anchor link will send the spiders your way in no time.

6) Sell advertising space. If you have a popular blog then you can create a revenue stream by selling ad space. Blogads is one of several places where you can sell your ad space to major companies.

7) Similar to offering ad space, you can add Adsense to your blog to monetize your content. What I love about Blogger is that once you plug in the Adsense code into your main template, a new page is created and Adsense is automatically displayed when you make a post.

8) Review your affiliate products. If you have a blog that is in a niche then you can find affiliate programs for that niche and do reviews of them for a commission. Every time someone purchases the product or service through your link you make money.

9) It is still early to catch on. Blogs and RSS feeds are used by the minority of internet users which makes it excellent for you to start blogging right now. Less than 10% of the Americans which is the biggest online market use this emerging trend.

10) Can be syndicated. An easy way for your readers to stay in touch with updates is to add your blog to their My Yahoo and My MSN. They can see the latest information and how long ago it was added.

11) Yes a bonus! Savvy marketers know that if you add your blogs to My Yahoo you can have it indexed in no time by Yahoo. You can use these two websites to inform blog directories that you have updated your content.

a) http://WWW.Pingomatic.com

b) http://WWW.Rssfeedpromoter.com

So with all those benefits in mind there is no reason you should not start your own blog. So when do you decide to go blogging?

© Oceanroc Web Publishing

About The Author

Nicholas Dixon has successfully use free articles as his primary source of marketing. Subscribe to his Free Four Day Email Course on how to use free articles to generate business and traffic at [email protected] or visit http://WWW.Oceanroc.Blogspot.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on September 14

by Nicholas Dixon

How to Create Your Own Blog Using Blogger

How to Create Your Own Blog Using Blogger

by: Matt Bacak

It takes only a few minutes and is easy to setup your own weblog using the Blogger weblog system. By completing only three simple steps, creating an account, naming your blog and choosing a template, you too can join the thousands of people now blogging on the web. Hereกs a detailed stepbystep guide to help to get you started using Blogger

1. Go to Blogger.com and click on the arrow that says ขCreate Your Blog Now.ข Youกll be asked to create a username and choose a password that youกll use to access your Blogger account; choose a display name that will be used to sign your posts (e.g., moody mom, bloggerx, etc.) and provide an email address. Youกll also be asked to check a box indicating that you accept Bloggerกs Terms of Service . Then click on ขContinueข to go the next screen.

2. On the next screen to name your blog (e.g., The Blog Report, Myrahกs Insanity Report, etc.) You can choose any name you wish. After you choose your blog title, you need to choose your URL address. This is the web address that people can click to access your blog. Again, as long as itกs not taken, you can choose any address you want. Remember, the shorter and easier to spell the better it will be for people to remember. Also remember, that many thousands of people use Blogger to host their weblog and it may take you a while to find a web address that hasn’t already been taken. Finally, for security purposes, youกll need to provide word verification by typing in the box the word that is displayed above the box on the screen. Then, click ขContinueข to move to next screen.

3. On the next screen, youกll need to choose a template for your blog. This is the design of your blog, what your blog will look like to visitors. Blogger provides 12 different templates to choose from. Pick your favorite. You can change the look of your blog at a later time by choosing a different Blogger template or using of the hundreds of free templates that are available across the Internet. After you choose your template, click ขContinue.ข Blogger will begin creating your blog.

4. Once itกs created, click on ขStart Postingข and write your first post for the world to see. Click on ขPublish Postข and Blogger will tell you it is publishing your post. Then click on the ขView Blogข tab and youกll find that you’re officially a member of the blogging world.

About The Author

Matt Bacak became ก#1 Best Selling Authorก in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s eBiz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets http://promotingtips.com

This article was posted on August 08

by Matt Bacak

How To Blog, And Why You Should!

How To Blog, And Why You Should!

by: Stuart Reid

First, a quick definition for those who do not know what a Blog is. Quite simply, itกs a Web Log. In other words, a regularly updated page of your thoughts, ideas, links whatever.

Itกs very easy to publish a Blog these days and today Iกm going to show you how in a few easy steps. Don’t worry all the sites, services and tools involved are frกee.

Before we go ahead I should first explain why a Blog is so usefull. A Blog provides a number of benefits to you and your site and all for very little effort.

1. A Blog will add valuable content to your site. This in turn increases repeat visitors and increases the frequency the Google Page Bot (and therefore how often your site listings are updated) will visit.

2. A Blog can be updated very quickly (especially using the technique I show you below). Itกs much faster to update than editing your Web Page or sending out an email.

3. Blogs can be delivered as RSS Feeds and this means a user can download software to have your Blog delivered direct to their desktop as and when itกs updated. You DO NOT have to pay for sites such as Quikonnex or the new Cory Rudl software. RSS Feeds are NOT new and you shouldn’t have to pay for what is essentially a frกee technology!

Do you now believe you should publish a Blog? If you do, just read on, and see how easy it is!

First join Blogger.Com this is a popular Blog service (there are others) that makes the whole process as simple as possible. You just register your details and a title for your Blog.

Why choose Blogger? First, the Google Toolbar has a กBlog Thisก button that makes updating your Blog childs play. Click the button, and you can publish direct into your Blog immediately including a link to the website you’re currently on!

Second, Blogger will add you itกs directory and to a notification service AND they will let you publish to their site, though you can set FTP settings to publish to a page at your own domain. For now weกll publish to Bloggers host service กBlogSpotก since they are fast and the only thing they add is one banner at the top. You may also get featured as one of Bloggers daily blogs and gain massive traffic.

Blogger also has a range of templates and you can even edit these directly to personalise your Blog, right down to adding ads or links to your own site (Tip: include a navigation bar). Blogger will also archive your Blog and insert links to your archived months.

Blogger will create a Blog for you in a few steps. At the Blogger.Com main page click on กStart Nowก at the top. Enter your Username, Password and Name and away you go.

Once you have your account validated log in and create a new Blog. This is just as simple as creating a user account. Enter a Title and Description, and leave it as a กPublicก Blog. Then select host at BlogSpot. Create a subdomain for your BlogSpot then select a template. You can create your own templates but that requires extensive HTML knowledge.

Thatกs it! You have an account and a Blog setup. There are other settings to explore. You can set กPing Weblogsก to YES in the Settings/Publishing option to notify Weblogs whenever you publish. You can also set กShow Title Fieldก and กEmailก options to provide Titles to your Blog Entries and email a copy of your entries to you. Everything else is OK at as it is.

With your Blog at BlogSpot and your Google Toolbar installed

Go to > http://toolbar.google.com snipsnip http://www.atomenabled.org/everyone/atomenabled/index.php?c=5

Thatกs a big list, so just use the program selected below if you want to get started with a quick and easy client right away.

Tristana Reader > http://www.charlwood.com/tristana http://netpreneurnow.blogspot.com/atom.xml snipsnipBlogger itself has a lot of help if you need it, so itกs time for me to sign off. Happy Blogging!

===============================================================

More articles available from: http://www.netpreneurnow.com/mini.shtml

You can use this article in any format on any media as long as the resource box remains intact. If this is published online a live link would be appreciated.

Available online at:

http://www.netpreneurnow.com/articles/blogging.html

http://www.netpreneurnow.com/articles/bloggingplain.txt

Available via Autoresponder at:

mailto:[email protected]

About The Author

Stuart Reid publishes Netpreneur News and itกs Blog. Visit the main site to join the Email Ezine or to view the Blog at: http://www.netpreneurnow.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on May 08, 2004

by Stuart Reid

Why Advertising On Blogs Is A Good Idea..

Why Advertising On Blogs Is A Good Idea..

by: Michelle Utter

Move over ezine advertising..and make room for the new tool in town Blog Advertising! Haven’t heard of blogs? Then you need to get yourself in gear and inform yourself on the next big craze. Blog advertising is a very cheap and very effective way to reach your target audiences. Read my article today to find out why and more…

If you haven’t yet heard the word กBLOGก then you have some serious catching up to do because they are the hottest and most talked about item on the web this year.

Advertisers, including Paramount Pictures, The Wall Street Journal, and the Gap, are successfully reaching niche audiences for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. As a result, a handful of bloggers are earning sixfigure incomes from their blogs. But what exactly is a blog, and how can you take advantage of this widely untapped advertising venue? Thatกs my aim for this article. Letกs dig a litte deeper….

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a personกs life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

Blogs are alternatively called web logs or weblogs. However, กblogก seems less likely to cause confusion, as กweb logก can also mean a serverกs log files.

With clickthrough rates in traditional online advertising dropping, inexpensive blog clickthroughs are as high as 5%. Blogs provide advertisers an excellent opportunity to reach a devoted audience niche for as little as $10 a week. Why blogs are good media outlets:

Most blogs have dynamic keywords and are updated daily by either the administrator of the web log or his/her members. This means, a blogger receives more targeted SE visitors and more frequently then webmasters of static html sites.

Another advantage of advertising on blogs as opposed to Web sites is that readers tend to be extremely interested in the topic and very attached to the blogger. You can’t ask for a better community of users to be in front of.

Recently, BlogAds conducted a web survey of 17,000 of their readers to find out what type of people are actually surfing blogs. The results? Sixty percent of the Blogads respondents said they are more than 30 years old, and almost 40 percent reported they have a household income of more than $90,000. Perhaps most importantly to advertisers, half of those who took the Blogads survey said that over the last six months they spent more than $50 online for books and more than $500 for plane tickets; 25 percent spent between $100$500 on electronics via the Web.

Conclusion: Clearly, no company, organization or association can afford to ignore blogs any longer. Early adopters have taken the lead, and blogs are finally entering corporate consciousness.

If you find this article interesting and youกd like to check out some of my blogs, you can visit:

http://sdtadvertising.com (Click on the Advertise on this site link to purchase blog advertising)

http://www.bn4om.sdtadvertising.com (blog advertising available there too)

About The Author

This article is (c) Copyright 2004 by Michelle Utter

Michelle is an innovator and a mainstay in the Internet Marketing Field. You can visit her new website at: http://ebookadvertising.biz

This article was posted on February 07

by Michelle Utter

How to Get Started Blogging in 5 Minutes or Less

How to Get Started Blogging in 5 Minutes or Less

by: Linda Bruton

I put off starting a blog for a long time because I thought it would be hard. I thought it would be technical. I thought Iกd have to install scripts and tear my hair out getting them to work. At that point, most of what Iกd read about blogs and RSS was just so much geekspeak.

Was I ever wrong!

When I finally got the courage to give it a go, I went to blogger.com and signed up for an account. To my amazement, I had a blog set up in about 5 minutes. My first post was uploaded to my site about 10 minutes later.

The only thing even remotely technical I was required to do was enter the FTP settings for the website my blog would be published on. But even that wasn’t a requirement. With Blogger, you can set up a blog on their site, Blogspot, and not even worry about FTP settings.

Since then, Iกve started 3 Blogger blogs on different sites. Blogger remains one of the most popular blog applications in the world simply because it is so simple to use and set up. If you’re a technophobe or don’t have the time to learn something completely new, I would urge you to drop by Blogger.com and take a look. You could be blogging and enjoying the benefits almost immediately.

Another very simple blogging tool is WordPress. This blog is my first WordPress blog, and Iกm very impressed with how powerful it is as well as simple.

WordPress is installed on your own website, but don’t let that stop you. Most hosts that have Cpanel already have WordPress ready for you to install. Look in your Cpanel for the Fantastico application, click it open, and then choose WordPress to install. It will automatically install it on your site for you, and you can start blogging right away.

If your host doesn’t already include WordPress in the scripts on your server, you can still pick it up at:

http://wordpress.org/

Then go to the WordPress Wiki for instructions on how to install it in 5 minutes:

http://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=5MinuteInstallation

WordPress is free, opensource software. It is very simple to install, even for technophobes, and has a lot of online documentation. There are also many sites with free WordPress addons and templates. Iกm using a template for this blog that I picked up at Alex Kingกs site:

http://www.alexking.org/index.php?content=software/wordpress/styles.php

The WordPress Wiki is a wealth of information on all things WordPress, including installation instructions, help files, a long list of template sites, and all kinds of hacks and extras you can use to modify your blog and make it original.

If you’re a WordPress user, another place to visit is the WordPress discussion forum:

http://wordpress.org/support/

If you’re a new blogger, both WordPress and Blogger are very user friendly. There isn’t a long learning curve. And you won’t have to learn any new technical tricks. Why not give one of them a try?

About The Author

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my กWhy Marketers Should Blogก weblog at (what else) http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com.

This article was posted on January 11

by Linda Bruton

6 More Free Steps To Making Money Online

6 More Free Steps To Making Money Online

by: Darren Power

If you read my previous article you will know that the goal of these articles is to teach you ways to get started making money online without having to spend any money.

This is the second in the series and this time we deal with having your own blog. There are endless ways of making money once you have traffic, and your blog will get you traffic. The income we will be looking at today will come from Google Adsense.

There are multiple benefits to having a blog including the low cost (or no cost), the resources that will help you get traffic to your blog and the fact that you can provide your blog as an RSS feed. An RSS feed will allow readers to automatically receive your updates into their RSS reader.

Letกs get started with our 6 steps.

1. Set up your blog. You will need to decide what you are going to blog about. You should decide on a theme and name your blog appropriately.

There are a number of free ways to set up a blog & to have it hosted for free. We will go with Blogger.com for our first blog.

Blogger will allow you to set up a blog for free they will host it for free and they will ping search engines every time you update, meaning you will get spidered & found.

Visit blogger.com & click the button on the front page labelled กcreate your blog nowก then follow the step by step instructions that Blogger provide.

Some key settings you will want to get right are:

กHost your blog at Bloggerก = Yes

กAdd your blog to our listingsก = Yes

กPing Weblogs.comก = Yes

กPublish Site Feedก = Yes

2. Write some content. Before we move any further there has to be some information on the site & that means that you have to make some entries. You can write some of these entries yourself & some can be quotes from sites of interest to your reader that you can post using the Google Toolbar.

You can download the Google toolbar for free at toolbar.google.com. The toolbar includes a Blogger button. When you visit a site that has something of interest to your readers you can highlight the appropriate text & click the Blogger button. The content will then be added to your blog along with a link back to the site.

3. Once you have some content eg a weeks worth of blogging with 1 or 2 entries for everyday, you can apply for an adsense account. When you sign in to Blogger you will see an invitation to join Adsense. Use this link and apply for an account.

You can find out all about Adsense on the Adsense page but basically you get Google ads on your site & get paid if your visitor clicks them.

Google will decide what adverts show on your site based on the content it finds within.

You need to be aware that Google will decline your application if your site is not considered to have content. Nobody outside of Google knows the precise rules on this.

Once you have been accepted you can get some javascript from Google to add to you site. Copy this & then log in to Blogger.

Once you have logged into your blog you will see that one of the tabs across the top of the screen is labelled ‘templateก. Click this. You will need to know a little bit of HTML to help find the right location to paste your Google code. But with a little experimentation you will find the right place for you. See the resource box at the end of this article for more help.

I would suggest that the ads need to be seen when the site loads but should not be too obvious or dominate your site.

4. Write some more content. Try and keep your content coming at regular intervals as a number of directories will check on your site at regular intervals & the smarter ones will visit on a schedule based on your update schedule. They will probably determine this in the hours after you first submit to them. Which is what we will do next.

5. Submit your site to Blog & RSS directories. Because you are hosting at Blogger, Weblogs.com will already be notified when you update your blog. (That means that every time you make a new entry they are automatically notified) You will need to manually submit to the various other directories some of which will require a link on your site to theirs.

You can add these links to your template below your Blogger logo. For a list of directories to get you started visit www.themoneyseed.com/rss

6. Keep writing interesting content. Ideally you want people to come back again and again. As with customers its harder to get a new visitor than to keep existing visitors. So make it interesting, in fact make it so interesting that they can’t help but tell all their friends about it also.

As with most free ways to make money this will take time to get going, but if you can build a following you will make money.

Copyright 2004 Darren Power

About The Author

Darren Power is the author of The Money Seed, your step by step guide to making money online. For supplimentary information & free resources related to this article visit www.themoneyseed.com/rss

This article was posted on October 10, 2004

by Darren Power