29 Dec 08 Making your Blog into a Money Maker

A short guide on the art of blogging and making money

The world of the blog has grown tremendously. From the humble origins that it came from, it has since evolved into a kind of release, so ingrained to our daily lives. Almost every person has a blog in today’s modern world. Doctors write their blogs to release tension in their daily lives and perhaps talk about interesting cases they encounter day to day. Sports Fans talk about their favorite teams. Fashion Buffs get to criticize celebrity fashions and promote new trends. And, normal day to day people just talk about what they see and do everyday.

Now, the blog has evolved to become a viable source of income. The internet has seen the demand for blogs and found a way to make money out of it. Hopefully, with this guide, we can teach you how to make money from it yourselves. So, sit back and relax for the guide to making money using online blogging.

Action Steps

Generate traffic

The most important thing about making money on blogs is traffic. About 90% of the income you generate through blogs is gathered through the traffic you create with your blogs. Before monetizing your blog, set it up to grow its traffic, because if your traffic doubles your income would more likely double as well. One way to increase traffic is by promoting your site through social bookmarking websites. Another way to increase your traffic is by improving your ranking in search engines. To improve your ranking you can employ SEO tactics that will create landing pages and increase your viewership.

I recommend. There are several ways you can generate traffic for your blog and one of them is through social bookmarking websites like Digg and Del.ico.us. Another way to generate traffic for your site is through SEO tactics. To avoid getting your site banned you can read through this article about avoiding Bad SEO tactics. You can also learn about SEO further through the experts in http://www.seoconsultants.com/.

Sell ad space on your blog

If you think you write well on topics that people want to read then you can use it to sell viewers of your site to companies that want to advertise through it. It is simple you write a blog, a viewer comes in and reads your blogs. They see the ad there and they click on it. After clicking on it the advertiser pays you per click.

I recommend. A great way to sell ad space is through Google Adsense. Google Adsense is the way Google sells their ads. The good thing about this is that the ads that are sold are relevant to the content that you put out making it more targeted to the specific consumer. In a way you are giving them a service.

Promote your site

You can make money blogging by promoting a site that you own. Most websites in today’s internet age have blogs to promote themselves. So if you are planning to set up an online store or promote your services online get noticed by maintaining a blog about your products and services.

I recommend. Look into free blogging software that comes with your domain. An example of this is www.gossimer.biz. Maintaining a blog with the same domain name gives your company instant name recognition. If you want to start slow, you can start blogging through hosted blog sites. Two of the more popular blog hosting sites include www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com.

Pay per Post blogs

Another way you can make money blogging is by doing it in a pay per post basis. There are many different pay per post blog sites out there. The way it works is that, first, you submit your blogs that tackle a specific niche, to “get paid to blog” web sites. After which you write sponsored posts. With this method, you don’t really need a large viewership because with even just 20 people reading your posts everyday you still get paid around fifteen dollars a day.

I recommend. There are several “get paid to blog” sites out there. You can try submitting your blogs to sites that include Payperpost and Blogetive. These sites have a large number of paid offers out there.

Tips and Tactics

Remember that blogs don’t have to be a Russian novel. It could be as short as 200 words. What is important is that you update your blog regularly. Search engines tend to favor blogs that are updated regularly.

You can promote your blog through other blogs. Most bloggers foster community. You have several options here. You can join a blog network and get base fee in addition to income from page views. You can also go to other blogs and comment. There is usually a space where you put in the URL for your blog.

Set your readers up with the ability to subscribe to your blog. With a subscriber button you can inform your readers when you have a new post and continue to increase your viewership.

Using SEO to grow your traffic is good and all, but do not do it by sacrificing content. You may get the traffic temporarily but what you should aim for is a loyal base of viewers. If you have a loyal following it is easier to grow it through word of mouth.

Best Sites to learn more

http://www.work.com/ is a great site to learn about blogging and ecommerce. If you are totally new to blogging, you can read through this short guide on blogging for non bloggers. You can also read through the articles about business blogging and marketing your business through a blog if you consider yourself business minded.

I you are totally unfamiliar with blogging and other internet related lifestyle, you can read articles in http://www.wikipedia.com/. This vast repository of information should have all the information you need.

If you want to learn more about ad placement through Google Adsense, you can go to Google’s Adsense page. This will walk you through putting ads on you webpage, where the ads come from and most importantly, how you will get paid.

Recommended Solution Providers

Not everybody can write, that is why you can always get someone to write for you. Online freelancing communities, such as http://www.odesk.com/ and http://www.elance.com/, are good sources to get writing talent at a cheaper price.

If you want to setup a domain to build your site or online store you can get domain names from sites like http://www.gossimer.biz/. They offer a free blogging software to help you create a blog for yourself.

If you want to do the writing yourself but you are not sure how, you can look into writing 101 classes like this article.

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Filed in Business, How-To Guides, Marketing with 3 Comments

27 Dec 08 Internet Security

With the increase in the usage of Internet based applications, the modern computing world is faced with a constant threat about widespread, Internet-gobbling viruses. So much so is their effect that news related to virus attacks has become a part of our daily information dose. General alerts about Trojans, worms, viruses, and other Internet-based threats are on a rise everywhere. Unfortunately, that’s not good news. Money is hard to come by in this economy, and not every company can afford to have their networks revamped every time their system becomes venerable to hackers.

Recently in the news was the story of a security vendor, RSA, which found that a Trojan in their server took more than 500,000 online banking accounts credentials, credit cards and other reports. The compromised data was collected from hundreds of financial institutions around the globe. The company’s IT Fraud Action team later disclosed shocking information that the hackers behind the attack may have spent years in developing the Trojan. These viruses are tricky and sometimes the average institution or customer does not even come to know that their computers are infected with it. The threat to the data stored in company servers is huge and to protect it, is the first priority for any business. The best remedy here is to take a defensive and professional approach towards Internet security.

First in the line of protective steps is to find an Internet security suite that covers all the basics of Internet security, such as viruses, spyware, spam, and firewall (and gives the user rights to customize its settings!).
Many small to mid-sized organizations take a reactive approach to threats and do not give combating Internet based threats due recognition. It is often seen that such companies implement security once an incident has occurred and they’ve recognized their vulnerability. Choosing a right kind of service provider that can defend against phishing, spamming and other email related thefts can reduce your worries to a great extent.
The IT team should be always updated about Internet security software updates and subscriptions. The developers of these softwares constantly add security updates and fixes to their products.
Install firewall almost immediately after configuring a system, laptop, server or any remote device. A firewall is the first line of defense against threats to Internet security. It could be in the form of a hardware device like a router or a software program.

Typically, by employing more tools, you can make your network protective, while the tools inter-operate with each other. If no viruses attacks are detected, that doesn’t mean the technology isn’t working; rather, it could be acting as a preventive warning to the security traps.

Protecting your network is like protecting your house. Hackers are like thieves who are looking for valuable data. You will never want your company to be an easy place for any attacker and would want to guard it with security alarms and protective software’s.

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Filed in Internet Security with 1 Comment

22 Dec 08 Keys to Building a Successful Online Community

A short guide to what makes an online community work

The convenience and ease of the net has eliminated the need for most people to go out. We now do our shopping through the net. We don’t need to fall in line in the bank to perform business functions. In some cases, people even work through the World Wide Web.

This however doesn’t stop us from being social beings. We need to interact with other people. This is not an efficient activity by any means, but you have to remember that we are not machines and we need to have human contact. This is where online community sites come in. When you look at today’s web world it is dominated by sites like, Facebook, MySpace, and other online communities. This is because of the need for humans to connect. You can set up one, too. Here are some simple steps to help you build your own online community:

Encourage them to join. It is important that you know what is encourages other people to join your community. After all, Members are the life blood of your community. Find a common thread, this is especially true because people tend to mingle with people they share common interest with. As communities go, your community should be able to offers benefits that outweighs the hassle of signing up. Some other reasons for a person to sign up for a community includes gaining “street cred”, as a hobby, to learn something new and others that are personal to the new member.

I recommend: take a look at the community sites Second life. It brings people with common interest in gaming together as an online gaming community. Flickr does the same thing wit people who love sharing photos. Of course, YouTube achieves this by presenting videos. These communities provide the benefit of communicating with other people while pursuing their interests.

Keep it going. It is important to get members to join but that is only half of it. You also need to keep their attention in the community. One way to keep the community alive is by encouraging participation. You could grow your community by allowing members to express themselves, making them contributor instead of just plain vanilla members. Like any community, recognition counts, so, give members the ability to rate other peoples work, encouraging them to discuss, improve as well as commend. It is also good to place fresh content every day or every other day.

I recommend: Sites like YouTube enjoys much success through this initiatives. They encourage rating and commenting. They feature new posts everyday through their editors. Of course they also encourage casual viewers to post their own videos by promoting contests through their sponsors. Another example of a community that works well with this is Craigslist.

Recognizing obstacles and dealing with them. It is not enough to know how to encourage people to join and keeping them interested. Much like any endeavor there are hindrances that stop you from enjoying the benefits of it, online communities are no different. Most common excuse is being busy and having no time. You can deal with this by being giving incentive for participation. Hostile, narrow minded or even boring, low quality conversations can discourage people from participating in communities, so, you have to be mindful of maintaining a respectful environment without cutting into the freedom of participations. Some other barriers include lack of interest and lack of knowledge on the subject matter.

I recommend: You can see sites like MSN Live-searchwhere they offer points for every game you play. These points can then be exchanged for merchandise. You can look at communities like craigslist where inappropriate behavior is policed by the member’s itself. After several flaggings of your post, the system will automatically remove the said posts. Lack of knowledge and interest is dealt with by Yahoo! by having a wide variety of content. With its wide array of content it is hard not to find something that is particularly relevant to you.

Get the best. A lot of the potential members of online communities look at how these online communities work. They look at the best user interface; how fast it loads, all the features it provides; and a thousand more little things that they look at. If you are not adept at web 2.0, then it would be best to get some professional help because unless you get the best interface, graphics and features in your site you don’t really stand a chance.

I recommend: There are countless businesses out there that can provide you with the best internet related services providers out there, including http://www.gossimer.biz/. Gossimer is a domain registration and web hosting company that offers great assistance in getting your web 2.0 site up and running (I am CEO of Gossimer). Companies like this offer a long list of services, customized to provide you with the best website out there.

Tips and Tactics

Maintaining respect and movement is important in any community. If things start to become stale, time to start stirring the pot.

Recognize holes early. Online communities are popping up everywhere so it would be best to recognize holes in your strategy faster than you competition.

Take your member’s pulse. Being a community, your most valued assets are your members. That is why it is best to ask them what they want to see in the community. If it is viable, why not give it a try.

Encourage discussions. The main advantage you have over other forms of media is its interactivity. Unlike TV, Newspapers and magazines, online communities have the aspect of sharing. Make good use of that advantage.

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Filed in Business, How-To Guides with 4 Comments

27 Dec 08 Internet Security

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