Blog Optimization for Profit Broken In Parts

If you have read my articles about what you should be blogging about you should have a blog filled with content you have passionately written. It should be a very interesting grapevine for the community of your chosen niche, as opposed to a lifeless factsheet. So, how do you get your words where others can read them?

No matter how delicious your content is, if nobody knows it exists you can't generate profit from it. Traffic is the lifeblood of your blog. In order to attract readers, you must offer exciting and unique information. Simple enough, right? Common sense? Not exactly.

You see, to get traffic onto your site, you have to think backwards. Where do people look when they need information? Yes, they search using search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, to name the more popular ones.

So, to get these people to visit your blog, your blog needs to rank high on results pages of these search engines. When people search for information through the search engines and see your site among the top results, they will naturally click through to your blog!

The art of getting your blog or website high rankings on search results pages is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. It is a complex and technical subject to master, but that will not stop you from learning some simple, yet effective techniques, to conquer the search engines for certain keywords. The more complex techniques are usually needed to fight for very competitive and general keywords such as "fat loss". I'll teach you how to overcome that later.

For now, let's determine the best keywords to optimize your site for.

For example, your blog talks about tech gadgets. Now, you'd want to check in Google whether it is a very competetive keyword. At this time of writing, there are 29, 000 ,000 (twenty-nine-million!) search results. Think you can beat 29,000,000 sites at your first attempt? I don't think so. In fact, I know absolutely that you cannot.

Let's try to narrow our scope to keywords you can successfully optimize for. Let's look for the keywords - "technological gadgets". At this time of writing, Google lists 792,000 results. That's more manageable but still not narrow enough. You would still need to search for more focused keywords. An example is - "technological lap top gadgets", however, let's optimize your blog for "technological gadgets" just for the sake of learning.

First, you have to pay attention to the title of your blog. Since you're optimizing for technological gadgets, you need to have that exact phrase in your blog title.

For example, a line like "Your Best Technological Gadget Blog!" would work great.

You can change the title of your blog in the Blogger control panel or the Wordpress blog when you're creating it. If you're proficient with HTML, you can even do that on other blog engines like Moveable Type. Bottom line? Learn a little HTML! Note: You will find some resources in the sidebar of this site for optimizing your blog.

Other than that, your page heading should also contain the term you're optimizing for. The page heading is the bit of text in your template code that is enclosed within the tags. This is important as it tells the search engines what your page is about (in this case, "technological gadgets"). Since we're posting a blog, the tags are usually the post titles, so remember to include the term there whenever relevant. For example, write an article/post titled - "Cheap Technological Gadgets for Everyone!". It has your keywords in the headline.

You should also sprinkle the words "technological gadgets" in your posts whenever possible. The frequent occurrence of that phrase in your blog will hint to the search engines that your blog is really relevant to that topic. But, don't overdo it. Use of the term "technological gadgets" just a couple of times in your posts is quite enough. More than that and it may appear as spam to the search engines and, more important, your readers will feel the same way. The real downside to over use of the same keywords in a single article is that the search engines may de-list your blog and you will be cast out into the internet darkness.

So, keep this in mind: Write for humans, not for search engines, using your targeted keywords!

In Part 1 of this series we optimized your blog to rank well for search results of certain keywords that we inserted into your blog. This is called onpage optimization. Onpage optimization affects your ranking in only very minor ways. However, don't skip it as every little bit helps when you're competing for search engine rankings!

Now, we are moving to offpage search engine optimization. These are factors that are not inserted into your blog but affect your search engine rankings greatly. There are many offpage factors. I will cover the major ones in this article.

The first and most obvious one is the number of links to your blog. These are links that point back to your blog from other locations/websites on the web.

As a general rule of thumb, the more links to your blog, the more the search engines think you are an authority in that particular niche and hence the higher they rank you. However, take care to observe the quality of the links. For example, keeping to our theme, a thousand links from totally irrelevant sites like online dating sites, when you have a tech blog, would not help at all because your blog is a technological product blog. In contrast, a single link from a highly authoritative site about technological gadgets will get the search engines crawling about your blog like SWAT storming a meth lab.

Anyway, the most cost effective way of getting high quality links from authoritative sites is simply to ask for it. If your blog contains high quality content that is original and will provide valuable information, chances are the webmaster of the site you want to get a backlink from will link to your blog to get the information you are providing.

Let's talk about how we should ask these webmasters of authority to link to your blog. We are discussing this based on the presumption that your blog is really content rich and offers high quality information. The most viable option would be to send an email directly to the webmaster and request a link back. Here's how.

First, let's look for the top sites in your niche. Simply search the major search engines for the term that your are targeting. In this case, let's search for "technological gadgets". The first few results will likely be commercial sites, so don't bother asking. We are looking for community-based sites and other blogs that are more accessible to a complete newcomer like you. Seems like www.gizmodo.com would be a good option!

A word of caution - stay away from Link Farms or Reciprocal Linking sites. You don't want hundreds of links overnight. This will be seen as spam and you know what happens, right? La-La Land for your blog!

So, compose an email to the webmaster of www.gizmodo.com (whose email address you can find on the site). Start by stating how you came across their site, i.e., "looking for gadget information, I came across your site". Do NOT say "looking for link partners."! Tell them how you think their site provides valuable info. Basically, try to say something really good about their site. Take some time and look over their site and maybe make a comment on a particular article or feature that you like and you think your readers might like it too.

Then, suggest that so-and-so content on your own blog will be a good fit to their site's content, as well. Ask that you be allowed to put a link on your blog to their site and ask subtly if they might be able to do the same to forge a mutually beneficial relationship between the site and your blog.

This is very important - all your emails, no matter to whom they are being sent, should have a link to your blog in the signature of the email! This means that everyone and anyone getting an email from you will see your blog address and this can mean even more traffic. This also gives webmasters an easy way to check out your blog to see if it's worth linking to. Make it easy for them!

In your email message you can even suggest what your link should say - "Your Source for TechnoGadgets"- as an example.

Along the way, you will find people who will not even respond to your email. Forget about them and move on. Remove their links from your blog to their site if they have not responded to your email within two weeks. You can set up a folder in your email program to store your link requests so you can go back and check in two weeks or so. But, really, if they do not contact you within two weeks, forget them. There are plenty of quality sites who will link to you.

Keep doing this for the first 30 search results that pop up and, before long, you should have quite a few good sites linking to you. In the next article, we'll explore more advanced offpage factors and ways to improve upon them!

Optimizing your blog for fun and profit can be a daunting task. There are secret tricks of the trade that separate newbies from techies but that does not mean you cannot do some of it yourself. This article is one of a series that lifts the curtain on this shadowland of optimization.

In Part 2 of this series, we talked about how getting high quality links from authoritative websites in your field can boost your search engine rankings. This time, we're going to explore further into linking strategies and how to determine and obtain "high quality" links. We're also going to talk briefly about Google's PageRank system.

First, let's examine a regular link. It's a piece of text. It can also be an image that links to your blog but, for our example, we are using text.

Some of the factors that matter most are:

1) The address which it links to

2) The text of the link

3) The PageRank of the page on which the link resides

Let's analyze this information one by one.

You naturally want the link to link to your blog but to which page of your blog? Do you want to link to an individual post or to your blog home page? Since your blog is a constantly updated website, it is always wise to point to your main page instead of individual posts because individual posts tend to be very time-sensitive. One of my blogs, on News and Commentary, is a good example of this. Usually posts are outdated within hours or days of posting.

The text of the link also affects your rankings for a certain keyword.

Let's say your blog is about "technological gadgets" and another site has a link that says "Miss USA Pageant" and links to your blog. Doesn't make much sense, right? You want a lot of links to your site that contain the terms "technological" or "gadget" to greatly boost your rankings for those keywords. You see, the links from other similar sites with your keywords is what the search engines read. The more accurate the keywords of the sites linking to you, the better you will rank in the search engines. Hence, it is essential to put some thought to requesting links from other webmasters as you want them to link to your blog with appropriate keywords.

Now, about Google's PageRank. It's basically a scale set by Google to measure the popularity of websites. You can read more about it on Google.com/technology/.

It is claimed that the higher the PageRank of a certain website, the more frequent Google's robots will visit the website to index it. It is also claimed that the PageRank of a page will also help it to rank higher in Google's search engine results. In short, having a high PageRank might bring you many benefits.

Now, there is much debate among webmasters about PageRank. Some webmasters say it really doesn't make that much difference. They are half right. Page Rank, in itself, is not the key to worry about. The actual power of search engines to affect your blog's visibility is in the keywords of your blog. When people do a search, using your keywords, you will automatically get a high PageRank if your keyword combination is unique and a low-competition keyword or phrase.

Remember this: Page Rank is only a side effect of our real goal which is to get people onto your blog. People do not search according to Page Rank they search with keywords they type into the search box. If your keywords are poorly thought out you will not rank at all.

Your blog will start with no PageRank at all if Google has not indexed your blog. Once Google's robots find your blog, through links on other sites, your blog will start with a PageRank of 0 (zero) then, depending on the PageRank (keywords) of the referring page, your blog PageRank will also rise. The referring page is the website/blog that is linking back to your blog. Google will find your link on their page and follow it back to your blog. Simple, eh?Getting high-quality links to your blog will help direct targeted visitors to your blog, who are interested in your niche, thus enabling search engines to find and index your blog and ultimately rank you higher in search engine results.


Getting links from other websites is not the only Free way to attract visitors to visit your blog. This time, we are going to explore alternative methods to attract high quality traffic.

The first thing you can do to generate traffic is to take advantage of all the content you have written on your blog. You can literally multiply your visibility across the internet with this simple, yet powerful, method. I use it often. I'm talking about making your blog posts available to millions of people by posting them in Article Directories. Focus on your posts that help people solve their problems or offer valuable information and submit them to article directories. These article directories are like aggregators that collect articles of similar themes together in one place, so they receive thousands and thousands of qualified visitors every day. Best of all, it's Free!

When you submit your articles to these directories, you are exposing your name to the thousands of pairs of eyes visiting them for free! On most article directories, you are also permitted to include a "resource box" where you can include your contact details, a simple biography and so on. Most importantly, you include a link to your blog! This is where you can truly leverage for Free traffic! Once you get the hang of it, do a Google Search for "Article Directories". There are literally hundreds of them. I personally post to over 350 Directories on a regular basis. If you go to my blog (see Author Box) I will show you how I do it.

Another excellent way to gain traffic is to join internet forums that are based on your niche. To find these kind of forums, just go to any search engine and enter "the name of your niche" + "forum", without the quotes. You would want the most focused forum with a substantial number of active members, and preferably always bustling with activity. Just check the dates of the threads posted on the forum.

When you join active forums that focus on your field of discussion and post very useful and valuable posts, your peers will start noticing you and paying attention to what you have to say. In most forums, you are also allowed to add a link to your site in the signature line, which is under every post you make on the forums. People will click and visit your blog if they find your posts helpful and informative. This way, your credibility is built even before they land on your blog, so traffic from the forums would be easier to turn into profits if your blog is selling your own products or recommending others' as an affilliate since they are already convinced you're an "expert" in the field.

The next strategy we'll discuss is word of mouth. Let's say you already have a daily visitor count of 100. What if you compiled a small report or gift and posted it on your blog, saying that if a certain visitor can refer three of his/her friends to visit your blog the gift will be his/hers for free? If your small report or gift is lucrative enough, it will generate a small buzz among your blog readers and they will surely refer their friends to you! There is one problem with this if you have a blog on Blogger.com. You cannot upload your report to their server so you will need to find a separate webhost to upload your gift to. Then, when a reader wants the gift, they click the download link which takes them to your webhost where the gift can be had.

Since I am on Blogger.com myself, I am currently looking into Free and paid webhosting as I have a number of Free eBooks I want my readers to download.

Whatever you do, be sure to use the "blog and ping" technique that everyone's talking about. I use this everytime I post on my blogs. Basically, when you update your blog, you can let blog portals such as technorati.com know by pinging them. You can ping a lot of portals at once by using pingomatic.com or the one I use, pingoat.com. These are free services. When you ping it's like telling the search engine spiders you have something good to eat and they will come running and index you.

Besides the techniques described here, there are also paid methods like buying links from high-ranking pages or buying banner advertisement space. A thing to keep in mind when buying paid traffic is to always weigh your profits generated from the paid ads. If your profits do no offset the expense, you will end up losing money, so choose wisely. I know that sound like common sense but, believe it or not, people throw away thousands of dollars cimply because they do not know how to track the performance of their Ads.

Personally, I have not purchased Ads or links. Until you master traffic generation by Free methods, hold onto your money and learn much more about it. It is definitely a gamble for a novice. It is sophisticated stuff in spite of claims to the contrary.

Yours for success in life.

Jim DeSantis

P.S. - Please forward this article to someone who can use it.

About the Author:
Jim DeSantis is a 15 year broadcast News veteran. For all Parts of this 6 Part Series and lots of Free Resources go to Jim's blog at http://on-line-tribune-you-can-blog-too.blogspot.com
Added: 07 Jan 2007
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/47269.html

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Freelance Blogging: Get Hired To Blog And Earn Thousands A Month

Blogging gives you a great way to learn some extra cash. You can even turn blogging into a full-time career, or a new business. Getting started as a freelance blogger is simple. All you need to do is create a blog, make a few blog posts (these are your work samples), and then look for blogging gigs.

Create a blog If you don't already have a blog, creating a blog is your first step. You can do this very quickly. Creating a new blog at blogger.com (which is owned by Google) only takes a minute or two. This is your "sample" blog. Think of this blog as your blogging portfolio.

Your blogging topic can be in any subject area that you choose, but give some thought to your potential clients - don't make your blogging topic too personal. If you have expertise in a particular area like finance, technology or health, make this the subject area of your blog.

Write some blog posts Now your blog has been created, it's time to make some blog posts. Your entries are published in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry first. Your first entry can be a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about the general topic of your blog.

For example, if your blog is about dieting, you could summarize the areas (recipes, weight lost tips, health tips) you intend to cover. Or your first post could be an introduction: tell your readers who you are, and why the topic of the blog concerns you. Or you can skip the idea of an introductory post altogether, and just jump into your topic.

Look for blogging gigs Great - you've created two or more blog entries. Now it's time to look for your first blog-job. Your first step is to write a blog post about your availability to blog. You can make this entry detailed, or extremely brief. If you wish, you can add a link to your online resume or CV.

Where do you find blogging jobs? You'll find that several sites have already been set up to match bloggers with companies that want to hire them. Enter "blog jobs" into a search engine to find your initial leads.

You'll also find companies looking for bloggers at out-sourcing venues like guru.com. However, be aware that on these sites, you're competing against others for gigs - don't be tempted to underbid others. Under-bidding is a bad idea because it's terrible marketing. Once you set your price low, it's hard to lift it. Have an awareness of what blogging is worth, and set your price appropriately. Companies which want bloggers don't want the cheapest option - they want the best they can afford.

So there you have it: everything you need to know to get started as a freelance blogger today. Create a blog, make some entries, get a gig. Good luck with your blogging career. If you're a born blogger, you can turn your freelance blogging into a full-time career.

Good luck, and happy blogging.

About the Author:
Angela Booth is a veteran copywriter and blogger. Her ebook, Blogging For Dollars: How to become a career blogger -- in your PJs, if you want, is available at http://www.abmagic.com/Blog/blogging.html You can visit the book's blog at http://www.dollars2blog.com/blog/ Angela will show you how to turn a humble blog into a great career, or a lucrative business.
Article Submitted On: September 16, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Blog Optimization for Profit - Part 4

Getting links from other websites is not the only Free way to attract visitors to visit your blog. This time, we are going to explore alternative methods to attract high quality traffic.

The first thing you can do to generate traffic is to take advantage of all the content you have written on your blog. You can literally multiply your visibility across the internet with this simple, yet powerful, method. I use it often. I'm talking about making your blog posts available to millions of people by posting them in Article Directories. Focus on your posts that help people solve their problems or offer valuable information and submit them to article directories. These article directories are like aggregators that collect articles of similar themes together in one place, so they receive thousands and thousands of qualified visitors every day. Best of all, it's Free!

When you submit your articles to these directories, you are exposing your name to the thousands of pairs of eyes visiting them for free! On most article directories, you are also permitted to include a "resource box" where you can include your contact details, a simple biography and so on. Most importantly, you include a link to your blog! This is where you can truly leverage for Free traffic! Once you get the hang of it, do a Google Search for "Article Directories". There are literally hundreds of them. I personally post to over 350 Directories on a regular basis. If you go to my blog (see Author Box) I will show you how I do it.

Another excellent way to gain traffic is to join internet forums that are based on your niche. To find these kind of forums, just go to any search engine and enter "the name of your niche" + "forum", without the quotes. You would want the most focused forum with a substantial number of active members, and preferably always bustling with activity. Just check the dates of the threads posted on the forum.

When you join active forums that focus on your field of discussion and post very useful and valuable posts, your peers will start noticing you and paying attention to what you have to say. In most forums, you are also allowed to add a link to your site in the signature line, which is under every post you make on the forums. People will click and visit your blog if they find your posts helpful and informative. This way, your credibility is built even before they land on your blog, so traffic from the forums would be easier to turn into profits if your blog is selling your own products or recommending others' as an affilliate since they are already convinced you're an "expert" in the field.

The next strategy we'll discuss is word of mouth. Let's say you already have a daily visitor count of 100. What if you compiled a small report or gift and posted it on your blog, saying that if a certain visitor can refer three of his/her friends to visit your blog the gift will be his/hers for free? If your small report or gift is lucrative enough, it will generate a small buzz among your blog readers and they will surely refer their friends to you! There is one problem with this if you have a blog on Blogger.com. You cannot upload your report to their server so you will need to find a separate webhost to upload your gift to. Then, when a reader wants the gift, they click the download link which takes them to your webhost where the gift can be had.

Since I am on Blogger.com myself, I am currently looking into Free and paid webhosting as I have a number of Free eBooks I want my readers to download.

Whatever you do, be sure to use the "blog and ping" technique that everyone's talking about. I use this everytime I post on my blogs. Basically, when you update your blog, you can let blog portals such as technorati.com know by pinging them. You can ping a lot of portals at once by using pingomatic.com or the one I use, pingoat.com. These are free services. When you ping it's like telling the search engine spiders you have something good to eat and they will come running and index you.

Besides the techniques described here, there are also paid methods like buying links from high-ranking pages or buying banner advertisement space. A thing to keep in mind when buying paid traffic is to always weigh your profits generated from the paid ads. If your profits do no offset the expense, you will end up losing money, so choose wisely. I know that sound like common sense but, believe it or not, people throw away thousands of dollars cimply because they do not know how to track the performance of their Ads.

Personally, I have not purchased Ads or links. Until you master traffic generation by Free methods, hold onto your money and learn much more about it. It is definitely a gamble for a novice. It is sophisticated stuff in spite of claims to the contrary.

Yours for success in life.

Jim DeSantis

P.S. - Please forward this article to someone who can use it.

About the Author:
Jim DeSantis is a 15 year broadcast News veteran. For all Parts of this 6 Part Series and lots of Free Resources go to Jim's blog at http://on-line-tribune-you-can-blog-too.blogspot.com
Added: 07 Jan 2007
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/47268.html

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

A BloggerÆs Adsense Vocabulary

So, you are considering taking the step of adding Adsense to your blog in order to make some extra money. It can be a wise decision. By using your blog to display contextual advertising, you have created a great opportunity, not only for the blog in question but for future pursuits, as well. Many bloggers enter Adsense without a great deal of experience in online advertising and its terminology. However, in order to better understand exactly what will be happening, it is important to get a firm grasp on some of the unique terminology used when discussing Adsense and blogs.

Here are some important terms, their common abbreviations, and meanings:

Terms of Service (TOS). All participants in the Adsense program are required to abide by Google’s Terms of Service. This is basically the “rule book” for Adsense. Those who fail to conduct themselves according to TOS may be banned from participation and/or have their account suspended. Every participant should carefully read the TOS.

Publisher. That’s you. Anyone operating a site displaying Adsense ads is considered a publisher.

Pay per click (PPC). Google Adsense operates predominantly on a pay per click basis. That means the advertiser pays for each time someone clicks upon their ad. It also means that you will get paid for every click.

Click through rate (CTR). This represents the percentage of page impressions that result in a click on an ad at your site. For instance, if your blog gets 100 impressions and 17 of them result in a click, the CTR for your site will be 17%.

Ad unit. An ad unit is a displayed block of Google Adsense ads. There are a variety of ad units from which to choose. They are usually expressed in terms of their size in pixels. For instance, a 120 x 600 tower ad unit will be 120 units wide and 600 units long--tall and skinny.

Ad placement. This refers to where your ads are placed. Publishers may place their Adsense units anywhere on a page consistent with the TOS. There are a variety of online guides, charts and recommendations demonstrating the various location options and how successful they tend to be in producing a high CTR.

Channel. You can set up channels to track the performance of individual Adsense ad units or to track earnings on particular sites. Channels are established in the Set Up area of your Adsense account.

Competitive Ad Filter. Google gives you the option not to display certain advertisements via the competitive ad filter. This allows you to avoid inadvertently advertising someone with whom you are in competition, for instance.

The world of Adsense brings with it a new vocabulary that must be mastered in order to achieve maximum success. Terms like those above become second nature in a short period of time for most Adsense units. By knowing and understanding these terms, you will be better able to understand your performance charts and will be better able to learn more about succeeding with Adsense.

About the Author:
Learn more about blogging Kind regrads David Hobson
Article Source: ArticleToGo.com

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Kick Start Your Internet Online Home Based Business With Blogging

Short description

Blogging has been used for some years as a platform for individuals to record chronological publication of comments and thoughts on the web. They usually include philosophical reflections, opinions on the Internet and social or political issues. This article explains how one could go beyond this to capitalise the strength of blogging to enhance one’s Internet business.

A weblog, or more popularly known as “blog”, is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.

The popularity of blog is gaining momentum globally with each passing month. A recent survey conducted by Comscore.com shows the following findings:

1) 50 million of the population in the USA visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005

2) This indicates an increase of about 45% compared to First Quarter of 2004.

3) An average blog visitor spends 23 hours per week online while an average Internet user spends only 13 hours online.

4) Blog visitors are 11% more likely than the average Internet users to have incomes of $75,000 or more.

5) Blog visitors are 30% more likely to buy products or services online.

Anybody thinking of starting an online venture, would be silly not to recognise the importance of blogging being one of the best tools of Internet marketing.

Blogging is a perfect way for the average person to make money online without going through all the troubles and frustration of learning how to set up a website and be an efficient internet marketer.

Let's now talk about nich products. Why do you need a nich product? And what has this to do with “blogging”? You may ask. It is because your online business has little hope of succeeding if you're going head to head with the big boys. As a small Internet entrepreneur, you can never hope to compete with the big boys in terms of the power of pricing strategy and advertising. But you can be successful by finding niche markets or niche products that you seldom find at your local mall in oder to stay away from the empowering presence of the big guys.

Niche market basically is a market with a significant amount of interest online that does not encounter the same competition as in other regular products. You can easily create a niche market based on any topics including even your own hobbies, e.g. gardening, guitar, tropical fish, D.I.Y etc. As long as the topic is being searched for online, you would have a great opportunity of making some profit through adding ads to your blog and making some effort in promoting your targeted affiliate programs and products.

Many internet marketing newbies opt for blogs to set up their niche markets because as beginners, they can very easily add pages, images, banners, downloads, ebooks etc to their blogs. Unlike the regular websites, they do not need to worry about having to understand HTML (the website design language)!

Savvy marketers have discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that is free because you could create your blog almost immediately at no cost compared to the setting up of a conventional website.

Putting information in your blog to help establishing your presence in the Web is now a growing phenomenon. Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to enhance the visibility of your products and services.

With the continuing improvement in software technology, publishing, introducing plug-ins, banners, pictures etc to create a fun and interesting “website” has become a breeze even to those retirees with old and rusty brains.

The more content you add to your blog, the more traffic you get. And you can add these materials almost on a daily basis.

You could get high ranking search engine placement for many internet marketing terms just by designing your posts around certain targeted keywords. This phenomenon is more prominent when handling niche markets due to the lack of competition. Free articles could be easily obtained from many article directories in the web and posted to your blogs for the benefits of your visitors.

There’s almost no limit to what you could and want to do with your blog. You can include your ideas, opinions, expertise in your field of work, resumes, home recipes, pictures, audio or video clips, e-books, poetry, products, services, consultations etc., etc.

What are the main differences between a blog and a website then? You may ask.

Most websites are relatively permanent with only occasional updating. With blogs, you could post any new content almost on daily basis. Also, websites are usually less personal as far as their relationship with the visitors is concerned.

How do you start your first step to set up a blog? There are many host services providers you could join. Among the most popular are Blogger.com and LiveJournal.com. You could start with Blogger.com which many newbies find serving their needs just perfectly.

With Blogger.com, posting your web content is like a breezy walk in the park. Photographs of your produces etc, along with any text, could be uploaded to your blog right away with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Another facility you could use is Audioblogger that enables audio posting to your current blog site with any phone at any time from any place. It is not only effective but also easy and fun. You call a given number, record a post, then your blog is updated with an audioblogger icon and a link to your recorded audio. Your message in your own voice is instantly posted! The beautiful part of it all is the fact that this is totally free of charge!

Blogging has been used for some years as a platform for individuals to record chronological publication of comments and thoughts on the web. Now we know how one could go beyond this to capitalise the strength of blogging to enhance one’s Internet business.

It takes some research and creativity to find the right money-generating tools for your blog. It's all a matter of your personal tastes. There are many to choose from.

We've discussed about using Google Adsense and other merchants' affiliate programs to generate profits from your blog. However, here are even more options to monetize your blog.

The first option we'll be looking at is Chitika. What is Chitika you ask? Chitika is a very innovative contextual advertising program because it can serve very detailed advertisements to your blog that fit perfectly with your blog theme. For example, on your technological gadget blog, Chitika will show advertisements for tech gadgets such as iPods. They show them in different tabs: one for "Best Deals", another for "Details", another for "Reviews" and so on. This way, it is more of an informational section for your visitor rather than a blatant advertisement, and naturally the click-through will be higher. You can apply at chitika.com

You can also be an affiliate for Amazon.com. Amazon offers a wide range of products but its predominant niche is in physical books. And, like Adsense, you can select Ad blocks that display products that fit your blog perfectly. Whatever your niche is about, you can probably find a book about it on Amazon.com. Keep in mind though, they do NOT pay big bucks. You can refer visitors to them and earn up to 10% commission. It's not a lot but if you can manage to refer big volumes of visitors, Amazon is for you. This program really shines when it comes to the ways you can refer visitors: you can use their predefined templates to pull up recent items that match a certain criteria you set, you can target your ad to show a specific item on sale or you can just simply weave your referral links into your blog posts. Every dime helps so join their Associate program if you are into selling hard and soft cover books.

Last, but definitely not least, you can sell advertising space on your blog if your blog is truly popular. Just take a look at blogs like: xiaxue.blogspot.com. That blog receives over 10,000 pageviews every day and naturally merchants will want to strike a deal with the blog's owner to post their advertisements there. If you manage to pull in huge amounts of traffic like that blog, you can definitely get people to buy ad space on your blog for prices from $150/month upwards, depending on your blog popularity.

To gauge how many pageviews and visitors you get everyday, just use the free tool available at statcounter.com. They have a very detailed setup guide there so I won't go into it.

If your blog has not acquired a large amount of visitors yet, you can still sell ad space on your blog on a per click or per impression basis. Just visit sites like: adbrite.com. For a complete list of these sites, visit: performancing.com.

This is just one in a 6 part series that should help you drive readers to your blog and maximize earnings and profits from your blog! Yes, it is possible to quit your day job through blogging. All that stands between you and freedom is working smarter, and sometimes harder, towards your goal. It's a balance. Eventually, after you have worked harder, you will be able to work smarter.

I edit 15 blogs. It took 6 months of learning and working harder before I was able to work smarter and begin making extra income.

I did not jump on every offer and rejected those marketers who claimed I could make overnight riches with no work on my part. In fact, I have spent less than $100.00! You can do this too!