The two most popular blogging platforms are Blogger.com and WordPress. Blogger is a remote hosted blog platform,and you cannot self-host your blog. WordPress,on the other hand,can be self-hosted anywhere in the world,or you can host with WordPress.com.
Let’s look at blogger first. Blogger.com is free is really simple and easy to set up,however,even though this may sound great,there are some serious disadvantages to using the free Blogger.com option.
Blogger.com
Google owns Blogger.com so in essence that means Google also owns your content. It also means that,at any time,Google has the right to shut your blog down,and take it from me,they do this without explanation. Imagine a year or more of work just deleted for any reason!
It is difficult to brand yourself or your business,for example;you can’t put your logo in the header. Your customers or clients know you are using a free blog platform.
Blogger doesn’t have many options or features. It is difficult to create your ‘look’because of those limitations. You can’t create categories,and it’s difficult to format.
If you seriously want to build an online business,that is both profitable and sustainable,you will have difficulty with the free Blogger platform. Because of the above reasons I always recommend using a self-hosted WordPress blog.
WordPress
What is the difference between WordPress,WordPress.org and WordPress.com?
WordPress is the open source blogging software that anyone can download from WordPress.org.
WordPress.com is a hosting platform that utilizes the same WordPress software that you can download from WordPress.org. With WordPress.com,the hosting and managing of the software is taken care of by a team of passionate WordPress people. It is not the perfect solution but much more flexible than Blogger.com. You can use your own domain name as well,hiding the WordPress URL.
With the free-standing WordPress software,you need to install it on your own server or a third party hosting provider. Obviously,it is easiest to use a hosting provider where your blog setup is a cinch,and you have a support team to help if you are in trouble.
People are put off setting up a WordPress blog because it seems difficult and complicated. However,it is not! It is very easy,and you don’t need to be an Einstein. You can set up your blog in minutes.
OK,so which blogging platform is best?
A clear winner is self hosting. Only use paid-for hosting as free hosting is not reliable unprofessional and will cost you dear in the end. I use two hosting companies,Hostgator* and Canadian Web Hosting*. Setting WordPress up on both hosts is easy.
Using the WordPress.com hosting platform comes second. You can start off using their free service and upgrade later but if your blog is successful you will need to move it to a host such as Hostgator* or Canadian Web Hosting*.
As far as I’m concerned,Blogger.com is a non-runner. I won’t waste my writing skills further.
How this site works:Access to this blog is free and within the articles I recommend free and paid-for products and services and provide links to them. Where a link has an asterisk(*) attached I get remunerated if you make a purchase. I test and/or use the products I recommend.
Turn PLR articles into gold by changing them,mixing them and combining them to make so many different products. Six ways to do just that are listed here:
1. Use them as content for a newsletter. 2. Use them as freebies to prospects. 3. Use them as blog posts. 4. Use them to make an eBook,book or info-product. 5. Use them as content in a live seminar or teleseminar. 6. Use them to create reports.
All of the above suggestions can lead you to that elusive pot of gold. You can produce products that you sell,give-away free to build your list or use as content in money-spinning blogs and ebooks.
This post is a modified version of a larger article,one of my techniques in action! All the methods I use will be revealed here in this blog over the coming weeks.
What does PLR mean? PLR is an abbreviation for Private Label Rights. PLR is a product produced by one person and the rights transferred,either free or paid-for,to another person who can market it as his/her own.
Blogger.com is another all-in-one solution to blogging but although it is one of the early blogging services and easy to set up it lacks sophistication. OK,I know with sophistication comes the learning curve but…well you decide.
Here is my assessment of the pros and cons of using Blogger.com.
The Pros 1. It’s free 2. It’s easy to set up (watch the video) 3. It includes free domain name hosting 4. It includes 1Gb of Picasa photo space
The Cons 1. It’s owned by Google#1 2. It’s not easy to customise 3. It has a horrible default domain name#2 4. It has a ‘hotmail’reputation,a lot of people consider it amateur
Overall Blogger.com is a free platform for blogs and free hosting service and is probably good for entry-level bloggers. There are some seriously good blogs using the Blogger platform but WordPress is now the preferred way to go by most ‘professional’bloggers.
Do I use this option? Yes I do have a neglected Blogger blog,if it still exists. But I don’t waste my time with it any longer. I have moved on to the more powerful option of self-hosted WordPress blogs,which I will be discussing very soon.
#1. Google is a gargantuan International corporation that people love to hate. Without a doubt it has changed and improved the Internet in many ways,but the “no evil” halo has slipped somewhat. I have known Google to be referred to as the Godfather as it’s domination appears to pervade every part of the Internet. We know the Godfather hires lots of people and makes offers you can’t refuse,but he also has a penchant for concrete boots and deep rivers.
#2. The default domain name is horrible. Your user name + .blogspot.com! How bad is that? Example:iamacheapskateblogger.blogspot.com. Err,no! There is the option to use a proper domain name*, but if you are going to do that why not use the superior WordPress platform?
By the way,I recommend Godaddy.com* for proper domain names.
Here’s the Blogger video tutorial for you:
How this site works: Access to this blog is free and within the articles I recommend free and paid-for products and services and provide links to them. Where a link has an asterisk(*) attached I get remunerated if you make a purchase. I test and/or use the products I recommend.
WordPress.com is the all-in-one solution to blogging. Sure there other integrated platforms too,but in my opinion no other comes close to WordPress.com. Here is my assessment of the pros and cons of using WordPress,com.
Pros It’s free! The WordPress blogging interface is easy to use and highly customizable with dozens of widgets available. There is a paid option with which you can use a unique domain name through WordPress. 1000s of themes many of them free. Blog owners have very broad control.
Cons There is a short learning curve depending on your experience with web programs.
Overall WordPress.com,is a free platform for blogs and free hosting service and is ideal for bloggers at all levels of experience,provided they are willing to invest some time in advance to learn the ins and outs of the system.
Do I use this option? Yes I do,but I have moved on to the more powerful option of self-hosted WordPress blogs. I will be discussing that option at a later date.
Internet marketing is exciting,challenging and confusing. It can lead to success or leave you disappointed. Many people depend on Internet marketing and yet some of those do not have a complete understanding of the basics involved in making an internet marketing business work.
In fact,many Internet entrepreneurs lose a lot of time,energy and momentum because they don’t ask the three essential questions. Do not let this lack of understanding sabotage your potential for success.
To better understand Internet marketing and its impact on your online business,you should know the answers to three key questions:
1. What is Internet marketing? 2. What about the costs? 3. What benefits are there of an Internet marketing business?
What is Internet marketing?
Marketing is actually quite simple. Marketing is to communicate an idea,product,service or organization. So marketing includes advertising,promotion and sales as well as the different techniques and forms of communication used to advertise,market and sell.
Just remember marketing is broader than just advertising or promotion. It includes market research to know what consumers want and then meeting their needs with the right product,price and delivery. Marketing includes market research,deciding on products and prices,advertising to promote,selling and distribution.
Marketing covers all activities involved in moving products and services from source to end user. This includes making customers aware,attracting new customers,retaining existing customers and building and maintaining a customer base.
Internet marketing (IM) includes the same activities,but also drags in various tools that only the Internet has. These unique tools include web pages,email,ezines,banners,blogs,RSS,text links,search engine optimization (SEO),affiliates,autoresponders,and other e-commerce applications.
What about the costs?
The sheer range of costs of Internet marketing can be daunting. There are marketing projects that can cost nothing or just pennies a day and others that potentially cost thousands per day.
It’s important to evaluate your objectives,long term and short-term,and how much each potential customer is worth to you. This will help you determine the operating budget for the marketing campaign.
Many campaigns can be found on the Internet that are free,but instead of paying you need to take time and effort. Don’t reject them all though as not all are a waste of your time;there are many that are well worth the effort. I mention some in my previous post. You can buy text links for $10 a month or you can easily spend $25-100 per day or more for pay-per-click advertising for instance. There are many cheaper possibilities for advertising of course.
What ever method you choose you must absolutely test the results. Don’t waste time or money on the duds,test,test and test again. Start small and slowly find the winners and losers. There is no perfect advertising solution that works for everyone or everything. Each product and service requires a different approach.
What benefits are there of an Internet marketing business?
Internet marketing offers many advantages over traditional methods of marketing. The nature of websites and blogs is that they continue to work to promote and market the product for a long time after the initial marketing effort is over. Similarly,on-line advertising endeavours,such as viral ebooks,ezines,newsletters,banners and text links can also increase in potency over time.
Email marketing can lead to an enormous surge in contacts and sales. It also offers the ability to personalize your message. Email campaigns can be easily be directed at a targeted audience so your chance for sales increases substantially.
Other advantages of online marketing are that it offers convenience and instant gratification. Potential customers will see your marketing message when it’s convenient and often when searching for information about a particular subject. Internet marketing,when automated offers potential customers the opportunity to act in their own time. They find and buy your product at the time it would take to watch a commercial on television or flip through the pages of a newspaper. IM takes full advantage of the impulse buy.
The power of internet marketing includes fully automated delivery of the message,automated payment collection,auto order processing and in the case of digital items auto delivery too. Want to know more? Look out for future posts that discuss the various free and paid-for emarketing methods. To your success.
How this site works: Access to this blog is free and within the articles I recommend free and paid-for products and services and provide links to them. Where a link has an asterisk(*) attached I get remunerated if you make a purchase. I test and/or use the products I recommend.
Any online business needs traffic,but if you are a beginner,you probably don’t have any money to put into it. How are you supposed to make money if you are paying out a lot just to run your business?
The answer is to get free traffic –visitors you don’t pay for. This article details how to get free traffic to your site or blog. In fact,some of these methods are much more effective than many paid choices.
1. Blog Commenting
I’m a big fan of blog comments. First,it allows you to engage the target audience and build a relationship with them. If you provide useful,intelligent comments,you reveal yourself to be an expert in your market. Find good blogs in your niche and comment on posts. Join the discussion and never “sell”in your post,usually there is a section above the comment box to insert your site address. The traffic comes from that link you provide when you submit a comment.
2. Article Marketing
Article marketing is one of the best-known methods of traffic generation,but it is still very effective. Write good and solid articles and submit them to article directories. Contact blog owners and ask if you can submit your articles as a client. Find similar sites to your own and offer to submit your articles to them as well.
3. Viral marketing
Viral marketing is a method very under used and undervalued. It is a very effective way to get free traffic to your online business. Create a quality e-book with a solid content and provide links to your websites come. Distribute to as many people as you can and urge them to pass it on. Give it away on the Warrior forum and send it to eBay sellers.
4. Build a list
Any online business needs a mailing list. You will need a professional autoresponder such as Aweber* for this. It will cost you of course but its worth it because then you have traffic on tap. Getting traffic is not easy but an autoresponder exploits your mailing list and generates income.
I will expand on these traffic generating methods individually in future posts.
How this site works: Access to this blog is free and within the articles I recommend free and paid-for products and services and provide links to them. Where a link has an asterisk(*) attached I get remunerated if you make a purchase. I test and/or use the products I recommend.
Grab this WordPress theme,‘A Little Touch of Purple’,FREE to all readers. Download it from here. Just click the link and save to your hard drive.
No strings. No sign up. Just click and download.
How this site works: Access to this blog is free and within the articles I recommend free and paid-for products and services and provide links to them. Where a link has an asterisk(*) attached I get remunerated if you make a purchase. I test and/or use the products I recommend.
Are you frustrated at the poor results of your web site performance? A blog maybe the way to go. Search engines love blogs and blogs have built-in SEO.
Blogs are one of the most popular types of websites created on the Internet. There are personal blogs,news and information blogs and blogs that sell things. There also instructional and educational blogs,photo and video blogs,in fact there blogs for every purpose and about every subject. Will any blog make you rich and famous? No! But in this article are some tips to help you write one that will.
Some blog writers become an overnight sensation;their blogs spread like wildfire around the web. If your blog goes viral you could become rich or famous or both. Remember that different types of blog will give different results. Blogs differ in content and also differ in the way the content is delivered.
Personal Blogs Personal blogs are the most common type but individually,unless you are already famous,do not get the following of the more commercial/professional blogs. The content in blogs like this will be written like a journal or a diary usually by an individual for fun. It could be about your hobby,travel experience,new baby,favourite movies or whatever. The choice is infinite and only limited by your imagination.
Personal blogs don’t get many readers,but remember that writing one is not just a way of communicating with other people. It also reflects on life,yours in particular and all those around you. However,maybe your blog will be so interesting that it will make you famous.
Some people even make photo blogs or video blogs that contain their personal photos or videos with them doing wacky antics. If the videos or photos are funny enough you can gain lots of popularity.
I’m crap at personal blogs and my best blogs are specialised,about either an individual subject or several related subjects. Being a hits junkie I prefer to go for a popular blog that attracts hundreds or thousands of page views daily.
Professional Blogs As I write this article my most popular blog is a media,non-profit type. Not like a daily newspaper that covers news across the spectrum,but news,articles and comment on a small range of loosely related topics. So if you fancy writing a media blog pick a theme.
I write almost all the articles on my blog and for impact I try to add a photo image or drawing. Where I can I embed a video from sites like YouTube or Viddler. Those two fairly simple processes can increase a post’s popularity exponentially.
Celebrity blogs are popular,review blogs too. How about reviewing all the latest movies or TV soaps for instance. Sports reporting and critique is another popular topic,unless it’s cockroach racing or something. Blogs featuring campaigning and serious subjects don’t attract the readers so much but depends on the level of debate your opinions arouse.
I class professional blogs as not being solely for monetary gain although they can be a commercial success also. When updated at least five times a week the readers will follow and the more readers the more chance of commercial success. How about fame? This type of blog can certainly make you famous. My fame (or is it infamy) grows weekly as result of writing my media blog.
Commercial Blogs Commercial blogs are an alternative to regular static web sites and can be a money spinner are likely to help make you rich rather than famous. I’ve seen blogs of product reviews that are nothing more than thinly veiled advertisements for affiliate sales. Nothing wrong with that but there are laws now that require a declaration of personal gain on websites that offer products to US and European regions. Others will follow so be prepared.
If you have your own product a blog is an ideal platform for tips and tricks,updates,tutorials and after-sales information. It’s way of keeping in touch with your customers and announcing new products.
EpiBlog I just couldn’t resist the pun! Blogging can make you rich and famous if you do it right. By following these tips,posting regularly and promotion a blog can change your life. Normally it won’t happen over night but it does sometimes. Blogging is relatively easy to do and you may get so famous that you receive fan mails from thousands of people or if you become mega rich thousands of begging letters.
Don’t procrastinate – do it!
How this site works: Access to this blog is free and within the articles I recommend free and paid-for products and services and provide links to them. Where a link has an asterisk(*) attached I get remunerated if you make a purchase. I test and/or use the products I recommend.
Choose a popular and profitable niche If you want to make money by blogging,establishing a popular blog is the key to achieving this. If your web log receives very little traffic,you will not have success profiting from it. No matter which method you use to make money from your blog,you will find the most success if you have a massive readership. Because of this,making your blog popular and developing a large following should be one of your primary concerns.
There are many ways to make your blog popular. The first thing you should consider is who your audience is and who you are writing for. You should always write about something that interests you,and that will interest others. You may think that your new kitten is the greatest thing since sliced bread,but there will be few others who want to read a blog about it. It is best to find a niche market audience that is big enough to support a wide readership but not too obscure.
Basic writing skills One of the great things about blogging is that you do not have to be a professional writer. There blogs at all levels of writing skills. You do have to obey common grammatical rules and at minimum be able to put together defined sentences,but you do not have to be highly experienced. Actually,the more you write the more you will become an expert in your field and a skilled writer too.
Tip 1. Readers are looking for useful,pertinent subjects to read,not the next work of Shakespeare. Make sure what your posts are appealing,edgy,or even controversial. Popular weblogs are never boring and add value to readers lives either through information and facts or enjoyment. Make sure your site adds something of value to your readers life otherwise you will not develop a great fan base.
Tip 2. Making your blog popular is a lot like driving traffic to a website. You can use many of the same methods to drive traffic to your site. Finding places to link back to your blog is a good way to drive traffic. Social networking sites such as Myspace,Facebook,and YouTube provide lots of opportunities for this. You can also use social book marking sites such as Reddit,StumbleUpon,and Digg to promote your blog. Blogging on a popular web log website such as WordPress and Blogger are also good ways to make your web site more popular as these blogging sites help to generate traffic for you.
Tip 3. Whether you blog on a blogging network or you have an independently hosted site,you need to make sure your website is designed well. It is true that content is king and if a web-page has great content it may receive lots of traffic even though it is ugly,having a well designed web-page that is not ugly or annoying will help to drive repeat traffic. You want your blog page to look unique,but not too unique. Keep with internet formalities such as blue links and use a large font for headings.
Tip 4. You should break your post up into small paragraphs each with a heading if possible as internet readers tend to scan the screen looking for appropriate information rather than reading everything word for word. Make sure your colours do not contrast too harshly and that the text is easy to read. Using good design will make your blog page aesthetically pleasing and encourage readers to come back and remain on your pages.
Tip 5. No matter where your site is hosted,you should try to get it indexed by all the major search engines. Some forms of site monetization require that your blog be indexed by search engines before they will allow you to take part in their program. The greater ranked your blog is,the more website visitors you will receive and the more popular your blog will become.
Tip 6. All forms of monetization for your website require readers for the program to work successfully. Before you try to implement your monetization techniques,make sure your blog site has enough readers to make your efforts worth while. If there is no one to click your adverts,visit your affiliate pages,or read your reviews,you do not stand much chance of making profits.
Go for it! Do you want to start building your blog empire? Then watch for new articles,ideas and recommendations here on ThumbsUp.
How To Get Free Traffic To Your Website Or Blog
The answer is to get free traffic –visitors you don’t pay for. This article details how to get free traffic to your site or blog. In fact,some of these methods are much more effective than many paid choices.
1. Blog Commenting
I’m a big fan of blog comments. First,it allows you to engage the target audience and build a relationship with them. If you provide useful,intelligent comments,you reveal yourself to be an expert in your market. Find good blogs in your niche and comment on posts. Join the discussion and never “sell”in your post,usually there is a section above the comment box to insert your site address. The traffic comes from that link you provide when you submit a comment.
2. Article Marketing
Article marketing is one of the best-known methods of traffic generation,but it is still very effective. Write good and solid articles and submit them to article directories. Contact blog owners and ask if you can submit your articles as a client. Find similar sites to your own and offer to submit your articles to them as well.
3. Viral marketing
Viral marketing is a method very under used and undervalued. It is a very effective way to get free traffic to your online business. Create a quality e-book with a solid content and provide links to your websites come. Distribute to as many people as you can and urge them to pass it on. Give it away on the Warrior forum and send it to eBay sellers.
4. Build a list
Any online business needs a mailing list. You will need a professional autoresponder such as Aweber* for this. It will cost you of course but its worth it because then you have traffic on tap. Getting traffic is not easy but an autoresponder exploits your mailing list and generates income.
I will expand on these traffic generating methods individually in future posts.