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Becoming a Successful Blogger

Today, let’s take a break from information marketing, autoresponder sequences, search engine optimization strategies, and squeeze pages. Instead, let’s return to blogging.

As you know, there’s no shortage of bloggers. It’s unclear how many blogs exist, but Technorati reported over 100 million back in 2007. It’s safe to say that number has grown. The problem is that most bloggers never break out of their small circle and make money. That’s a shame. Blogging is one of the most important tools at your disposal for generating an online income.

Today, I’m going to reveal 5 keys to becoming a successful blogger. If you’re already blogging and have wondered why you’re not able to gain traction and build momentum, use the following list as a litmus test.

#1 – Authenticity

You want your readers to trust you. In fact, being able to cultivate that trust is the only way you’ll be able to draw people to you over the long run. I’ve seen many bloggers post wonderful information about cars, electronics, relationships, and more, yet lack a personal flavor in their writing.        

When people read your posts, they want to get a sense of you. They want to know what you’re about. That’s why John Reese, Jimmy Brown, and other marketers who blog can generate enormous interest. They’re authentic.

#2 – High-Quality Blog Posts

Being a blogger is partly about selling yourself to your readers. While authenticity is critical, you also need to give your readers something valuable to chew on. One without the other is a recipe for failure.

For example, suppose you blog about information products and earn an affiliate commission for each sale. You’re not going to convince any of your readers to buy the products unless you provide them with a thorough review.

“Value” doesn’t have to mean information. It can come in the form of humor, creativity, or sheer playfulness. If your readers find your posts entertaining, you’ll be a hit. For instance, I’ve mentioned dooce.com in the past. Its blogger, Heather, has a massive following who look forward to her entertaining posts. So loyal are her readers that her blog generates enough money through advertising for her to work on it full-time.

Remember, quality attracts attention.

#3 – Post A Photo Of Yourself

Sounds simple enough, right? A picture of yourself goes a long way toward drawing your readers in and gaining their trust. Yet, I stumble on blogs every day that lack a photo of the blogger.

Post a picture of yourself on your blog. It doesn’t need to be a professional shot. Any photo will strengthen the connection you share with your readers.

#4 – Promote Your Blog

You’ll need to get the word out about your blog if you hope to build a large readership. The only way to do that is through marketing and promotion.

I’ve mentioned guest blogging in the past. That’s a powerful way to attract readers because you’ll gain exposure to the host blog’s readership and you’ll gain valuable links back to your blog. But, don’t stop there. Commenting on blogs, participating in social media, and even advertising on popular blogs in your market can bring a lot of readers quickly.

Exposure is the currency of blogging.

Consider:

• Secrets of Guest Blogging
• Blogging for Money
• How to generate traffic to your site fast
• Using autoresponders to build traffic
• Link Building Tutorial
  
• 
  

#5 – Learn To Communicate

Being able to write well is important if you plan to be a successful blogger. But, communicating with your audience goes far beyond good writing. You need to be able to “get through” to your readers with a writing style they find engaging.

Sometimes, that means violating rules of grammar. Like this. Other times, it means using a turn of phrase to drive a point home (for example, put a little elbow grease into your marketing or you’ll be back to square one). The goal is to connect with your readers. And that requires being able to communicate with them.

Related Posts for Recommendation:

• How to develop a compelling Blog Writing Style
• Learn to give good Blog
  

Making Money Online With Your Blog

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention the types of products you should promote on your blog to generate an income. The fact is, blogging can support nearly every type of online business imaginable. You can promote your own information products or membership sites. You can review affiliate products, market your services, or build your authority as a professional speaker.

If you’re not blogging, now’s the time to start. You’ll find that once your blog gains traction and builds a readership, it can generate an impressive online income.

Generating traffic is the second most important thing in blogging. Aside having a good content, you have to make people visit because if they don’t, your blog is only useful to yourself and you can’t even make money with it. Now the question is “how can you make people visit?” The answer sounds simple “Tell them to visit” but I tell you, there is a lot of work in telling a lot of people to visit your blog because you will have to convince them, The question is “where will you find them?” and “how will you tell them?” generating traffic is not for the lazy, you have to do a lot of work and research how other people have been successful.

There are two methods to which you can generate traffic; the long and the short term.

Short term: Short term is the fastest way to generate traffic though it fades off over time; it is still the fastest and also very important.You can use the following tips to generate fast traffic to your blog:

• Comment on top related blogs and talk about yours but you have to do it reasonably that it doesn’t look like spamming.

• Join social networks where you can meet people and talk to them about your blog. This method has really worked for me. You can write small and attractive articles and put your link to refer people to your blog.

• Write articles and summit your articles for publishing on article networks,these articles generate back links to your blog.

All these methods are short term, you have to work on the long term to make your traffic last forever.

• Use of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is very important, as more of your traffic comes from search engines, the more stable your traffic is so you have to know what make a site rank top on search engines.For instance Google uses the number of back links your site has as well as title-content relativity.

• Use feed burner to burn your RSS Feeds.

• Summit your sites to directories and search engine. This method takes a very long time to generate results but generates good results on the long run. The time varies in relation to the search engine.Google will start to crawl your site within two weeks of submission while Alexia will promise you in eight weeks.

you can find out your website’s back links: http://www.domain-pop.com/
Domain-Pop not only lists the website’s back links, but it also tells you the Page Rank (PR) of those links.

Page Rank (PR) is a number from 0 to 10 that Google uses to classify a website’s importance. The higher the number the better, When you have other websites linking to yours it shows Google that the other site is giving yours a ‘thumbs up’. This in turn shows Google that your site is gaining in popularity.The more links to your site from other sites, especially other sites which are either similarly related to the topic of your site or other sites that have PR already, then the higher the page rank Google will assign to your website.

Read more about blogging and Instant traffic issues

Ajetomobi Babatunde is an author, entrepreneur and internet Marketer. He specializes in SEO and effective tools and shares his methods freely check out http://easycashrake.blogspot.com.

Read about a realistic way to get web traffic for your web sites.

Searching for profits Amanda Watlington joined us this week on the show to discuss her no nonsense approach to internet marketing. Everything was on the table in this show from blogging naturally and effectively to search engine optimization techniques. We all also covered her thoughts on article marketing and the new social media craze that has taken the online web owners by storm. With Amanda’s 20 year experience in web marketing I am sure you will have a new perspective looking at the internet.

Amanda Watlington was a pleasure to speak to and I am sure you will enjoy the show just as much as i did listening.I would love to hear your thoughts on this week show, so if you would like to you can leave a comment below.

Also don’t forget to join the Diva Affiliates Program!

 

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Just imagine. Every time someone visits your website, there
browser notifies them of your RSS feed. No, it’s not as
interruptive and no where near as annoying as popup
subscription boxes but still a good chance to get people to
subscribe to something you have to offer. In a nutshell,
that’s how auto discovery works. There ’s usually a small
flag somewhere in the browser telling people your feed is
available for them and if the visitor is interested in
subscribing, they will simply click subscribe – much like
bookmarking a page.

Now you know how it works, why is it so important? For one,
many feed readers and browsers already support auto
discovery RSS feeds. But perhaps what’s more important,
Microsoft is incorporating this starting with Internet
Explorer 7. Internet Explorer still commands a good chunk
of browser share out there, especially those who are new to
the Internet or non technical Internet users. If your RSS
feeds are not auto discovery enabled, it’s a good chance
you’ll lose out on a bunch of subscribers.

As it is today, browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari can
auto discover feeds. Many use this to subscribe because it’s
just so much easier. While this group may not be that large
but why should you not take advantage? If just making your
feeds auto discovery friendly you get an extra subscriber,
even if it’s only one it would be worth it because it costs
nothing but maybe 2 minutes of your time.

So how do you find out if your feeds are auto discovery
friendly? The good news is, if you’re using a blog to
manage your content, many have this feature built in. But
it doesn’t hurt to just check it anyway. If you don’t use a
blog, chances are, your feed is not auto discovery enabled.
For step-by-step instructions how to check if your page has
auto discovery, visit

http://www.techbasedmarketing.com/auto-discovery-step-by-step.html

Before I go, here are two little tips that would help your
RSS distribution and subscription using auto discovery.
1. Put the auto discovery tag in other web pages too. Just
because it’s not a blog doesn’t mean you can’t have an RSS
feed on it. Take advantage of that, put your feed in your
main website’s template. Now you have two opportunities to
get in touch with people. When you update your website and
when you update your blog.
2. If you use a service like FeedBurner to track your
subscriptions, remember to update the feed URL in your blog
or website template. This way, you’re capturing all your
feed traffic statistics.

What’s next? Go make your RSS feeds auto discovery friendly
right now. Because RSS is not always visible to us, don’t
run the risk of forgetting this.

Lynette Chandler helps entreprenuers leverage readily
available technology for their marketing. Watch a 3 Minute
Video Tutorial How Auto Discovery Works
http://www.techbasedmarketing.com/videos/autodiscovery.html

What is a blog? Is a question that still many ask today that are new to the internet and want to start their own online web log or create a blog specifically for making money online.

Blogging is basically an online content management system that manages all of the content for you in a systematic order. This makes it easier for those that are brand new to web design and internet marketing to begin the same day of installation, to be able to start adding fresh content to their site.

To have a blog you first need to have some blog hosting which comes from the hosting service you use. Once you purchase your domain name. I recommend that when you do buy hosting, that the hosting company provide cpanel for you with Fantastico installed, so the process of installing is much easier. You can however, choose not to host your own blog and just start a regular blog through wordpress.org but you will be limited in the amount of design process and the control over your site that you want.

Once installed a blog can bring you some great added benefit, as compared to a regular website. Since the search engines pick up on content management systems a lot quicker than they would a regular site. It is also much easier to add and change things around within your site with out even using an html editor. Basically using the great wordpress plugin’s is all you need to have things working wonderfully.

Listing your blog in blog directories such as blog catalog, bloglog and technorati will increase traffic to your site a whole lot quicker since online readers will be able to put in a search for information and find your information. I do recommend this be placed as a priority once your blog is up and ready to go.

Blogging has taken on so many dimensions since it first was released as blog software years ago. Now it is a must for anyone wanting to get your site indexed a lighting speed. Bloggers are now able to build just about anything they want on their site add audio, flash, site maps , social networking plugin and the list goes on and on…..

So when you do decide to create your own site, I hope you take the opportunity first to create your own blog.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / FOR RELEASE BEFORE 2008/ FOR RELEASE AFTER 2008

Work From Mom Entrepreneur: Launches New Podcast offering advice on Internet Marketing and Blogging!

Contact: Elizabeth Ashe

Company: http://www.internetmarektingstrategydiva.com

Address: 6303 Yellowstone st

Phone: (407) 926-9466

Email: eashe1@cfl.rr.com

URL: http://www.internetmarketingstrategydiva.com

Orlando, Florida – Elizabeth Ashe a work from home mom and internet marketer. Recently just launched a new internet talk show teaching people how to promote and make money from the internet.

Internet Marketing also known as emarketing or online promotion is the self promotion of services or products on the internet. It can bring a low cost effective way of increasing traffic and gaining a loyal audience over a period of time.

Elizabeth Ashe started the “work from home – internet marketing” podcast. To teach anyone who wanted to work from home how to create creative ways of using search engine optimization , email marketing, Blogging, affiliate sales and ways to gain credibility in their niche more effectively.

Elizabeth Ashe says “As a work from home entrepreneur, we as consumers need and effective and easy way of increasing our online presence. This in the long run will increase our bottom line and bring us more traffic!”

As the internet becomes more advanced it is important that online internet marketers take time to learn and apply techniques used on the web. Listening to podcast’s is a great and speedy mobile way of learning on the go. Elizabeth Ashe encourages online entrepreneurs to apply and learn the new web 2.0 style of networking and self advertising as a great way to develop their business.

About: http://www.internetmarketingstrategydiva.com

Elizabeth Ashe is the owner of http://www.internetmarketingstrategydiva.com and would love to be able to teach others effective ways of working from home and how to grow their online business. To learn more about the podcast and Elizabeth Ashe visit http://www.internetmarketingstrategydiva.com

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This week on the show we are joined by Kelly McCausey of wahmtalkradio and we are going over the topic of memberships sites. Kelly has been online now for about 5 years teaching work at home moms how to start an online business. In the time that she has been online she has been able to help many come to understand many internet marketing ideas through awesome membership’s site.

We are going over the fabulous topic of her new site and who can be a blog evangelists and all that is has to offer.  A Blog evangelist is something that is so new and something not to be taken as another offer or site. This all one learning system is complete with all that you can learn about Blogging and providing Blogging services to your local community.  Kelly is also a revealing a special announcement right here on the show for the first time so make sure you tune in to listen.

Also don’t forget to check out mom mastermind because the special lifetime membership is soon to taken away and gone forever. As they update the site and add tons of new features this is the last month to get in become a founding club member.
http://makemoneyonlinediva.com/blogev

So head on over there right now!  mommasterminds

 

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Blogging is great sociable way to have fun online while at the same time being  able to teach and share your experiences with other.

The platform that was created as a content management system has grown and expanded so much, that now many plugins enable your wordpress blog to be taken to whole new level.

Blogs allow for the ability to use the site for so much than a basic online journal. From everything from data feeds and scripts and rss posted in many directories.

The possibilities are endless and that is why for your blog to be on that level as the higher ranking ones. You need to check out these awesome wordpress plugins.

All in one seo pack allows you to enter data for your title tags, keywords, and description of post for each individual one.

Google Site maps allows your wordpress blog to be able to focus on pings throughout MSN, YAHOO, GOOGLE ETC.

Related Post plugin will let your readers search around your blog more for more consistent material.

W-p Affiliate plugin allows you to post your affiliate links and mask them so no one can steal affiliate commissions.

Sticky post allows your post to stay up as long as you need it to no matter what.

RSS footer plugin- Makes it super easy to add a line of content at bottom of feeds  with a link back to site.

W-p link directory plugin is one that I just recently found out about, and it helps to set up a directory of listings of links for the site of your choice. Great for seo too.

Permalink Redirect plugin- Makes sure there is 301 permanent redirect if the requested url is not listed and keeps the browser on your site.

Stay Tuned for part two…. of some fun plugins I will list soon for your blog.