I’m often asked by beginners if they should build a website or a blog. My answer is always the same:

“Contrary to what you may have heard, a blog is a website.”

In fact, here’s how wikipedia defines a blog:

“A blog (a contraction of the term “web log”) is a web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.”

So you see, a blog is indeed a website.

Okay, now that I’ve cleared that up, let me explain why I prefer operating a blog site.

It really comes down to one word – simplicity. I’m technically handicapped, so I really need a simple platform from which to present my views and opinions, and conduct business.

And you just can’t beat the simplicity of a blog. In fact, today’s blogging software takes simplicity to a whole new level. To build a professional looking blog nowadays, it’s basically point and click, and you’re done!

It really is that simple.

When I decided to start my blog, I looked at the three most popular blogging platforms. Google’s Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad.

Typepad is a paid service with subscription plans starting at $4.95 per month. Blogger and Wordpress are both free services.

After reading information on all three services and doing some exhaustive research, I decided to go with Blogger. Why?

Again, it came down to simplicity. You just can’t beat the simplicity of Blogger’s platform. And Blogger’s boatload of free, easy-to-install features were also appealing to me.

Of course, that’s strictly a personal preference. And the last thing I want to do is sound like a commercial for Blogger. Perhaps you’ll find Wordpress or Typepad more to your liking.

Honestly, you can’t go wrong with any of the top services. You can build a professional looking blog with either of the three.

And that’s really the point, isn’t it?

So should you blog?

Well, that depends. If you’re opinionated like I am, have something to say and want to share your views and opinions with the world, then you’ll probably find a comfort level with a blog.

But whether you decide to blog or not, if you’re building a website as a “for- profit” enterprise, it’s important that you take it seriously and treat it like a business. Because that’s exactly what it is.

That means approaching your business with commitment and passion. It means paying close attention to the appearance and functionality of your site – making sure it’s user-friendly.

It also means following up with your customers, refreshing your content regularly and concentrating on getting plenty of backlinks to your site.

If you’re not prepared to do those things on a consistent basis, then you’re not ready for a website.

But if you do decide to make that commitment, I look forward to seeing you on the internet!

David Jackson
http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/should-you-blog-688418.html

There are lot of things that you can do with affiliate blog marketing. Purpose of affiliate blog marketing is get free traffic generation to your affiliate sites. There are many ways to get one. Affiliate blog marketing have become the near perfect platform for both generating free traffic to your affiliate program and monetizing that traffic. Modern blogs have the amount of plug-ins is huge and the flexibility of the platform is incredible. On the other hand, you can drive tons of traffic to your blog using some strategies: 1. Bookmarking your posts 2. Pinging your posts 3. Having a Podcast show and submitting it to the different podcast directories 4. Leaving useful comments on other people’s blog 5. Writing for other blogs in your niche 6. Using trackbacks 7. Publishing the interview in your blog 8. Having a weekly appointment with your readers And much more… Blogs today are used for… 1. PreSell Pages 2. Review Pages 3. Salesletters 4. Optin Pages 5. Membership Sites 6. Traffic Funnels 7. Articles 8. Press release 9. Sqeeze pages 10. Blogs Blogs are also used effectively in combination with paid advertising like PPC and banners as well as with video and podcasting. There is a good idea integrate your blog with Twitter immediately. Very good idea is using blogs in “Linkweels”- you can create a affiliate funnel where you are creating value and rank to those other sites, and then pushing it around the circle and down into your website. Very important are of affiliate blog marketing is affiliate blog are well-written keyword rich promotional articles. Why articles are the best promotional tool for your affiliate blog ? Because you will continually receive targeted visitors to your affiliate blog for the work you do once. It means that a single well-written keyword rich article that is related to the topic of your affiliate blog will continually bring targeted visitors to your affiliate blog after you’ve submitted it once to a high traffic article directory. There are lot of things that you can do with affiliate blog marketing but purpose of affiliate blog marketing is get free traffic generation to your affiliate sites.

Eugenijus Sakalauskas

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers.

These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the
moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to
help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is
called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you
no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers.

Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to
teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very
practical tips or advice.

This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical
and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current
(it isn”t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight.

The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum.

Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same
time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing
here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if
they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new.

This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed. You don”t have to produce
one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new.

Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will
be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so
the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call
your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily
rememberable domain name.

People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world
(that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them
to spread the word and pass on your URL.

Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry
about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember
then you”ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller
articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of
reader for your blog is to comment on other people’’s blogs.

You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers
there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you
leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always
have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and
hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog
conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another
blogger’’s article you can do a trackback to their entry.

What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’’s sort of like
your blog telling someone else’’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks
often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another
blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the
attention of another blogger.

The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They
may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time
down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone
to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If
they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since
you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about.

To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always
respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that
summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to
collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to
a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike
in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of
new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog
Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it.

You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit
back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with
this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to ArticleBase.com. This is another tip that doesn”t bring in hundreds of
new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you
simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your
pillar articles and submit it to ArticleBase.com.

Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their
website or in their newsletter. How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource
Box”.

You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two
sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your
article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large
newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all
of the techniques I”ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you
do everything above you may bring in readers but they won”t stay or bother to come back.

Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of
over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

Warmly,
Gary Neame

Gary Neame
http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/10-blog-traffic-tips-679289.html

Are you already blogging or getting ready to start a blog? You may be interested in knowing that all blogging platforms are not created equal. If you intend to build an online business that will represent you well on the internet, here are some things that you will need to keep in mind.

The first thing is that a free blog will not serve you well in the long run. If you start a blog with a free service you do not own it. If you are just writing a personal diary or family blog, it may not make as much difference to you.
if you are running an online business, it means everything. A free service may remove your blog at any time if they do not like what you are doing. You do not want to take the chance of working hard for months or years, only to have it all disappear with no recourse available.
 
This means that you do not want to use blogger, also known as blogspot, or the free version of WordPress. These blogs are considered to be throw away sites, and you do not want to spend time on something that can be deleted by someone else.
 
When are ready to get serious about blogging, go to Typepad or to hosted WordPress. I often recommend Typepad for people who are just getting started online because it is very simple to set up and get going. All you need to do to get started is to purchase a domain name and sign up with Typepad. The small monthly fee you pay is your hosting fee. Typepad also has very good customer service and an online knowledge base to answer all of your questions.
 
Hosted WordPress also requires you to purchase a domain name for your blog. Then you will need to get an account to host your site. I recommend a hosting service with c-panel hosting, so that you will be able to take full advantage of everything the internet has to offer. there are too many details to go into here, but believe me when I say that c-panel hosting is the way to go.
 
Then you will need to choose a theme for your WordPress blog. There are thousands of free themes available, as well as many that you can purchase. You can search for these online very easily. I prefer a theme that is two columns, with my sidebar on the right, and also one that is widget ready. This means that you can easily add the plug-ins that WordPress is known for, like the ones for video, search engine optimization, and audio capability.
 
No matter if you decide to go with a hosted WordPress blog, or the simplicity of a Typepad blog, either way you will own your blog and be able to create a site that will enable you to build your online business.
http://www.blog-link-generator.com
http://www.rss-announcers.com

Manish Kum Bansal
http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/blogging-hosted-wordpress-also-requires-you-to-purchase-a-domain-name-for-your-blog-723552.html

Blogging is something that has taken the web by storm. You probably visit news networks and see that there are blogs by certain individuals posted. This is because they can take a topic and they can turn it around quickly. They are also writing it well and getting their point across in a way that makes it very interesting.

You can do this too. You just have to know how to market your blog. You first need to open up a blog account at one of the blogging sites. Make sure you create a blog name that is catchy. You don’t want people to visit your blog once and then never come back. You need them to come back again and again.

As for how you’re going to bring in the revenue, you’re going to sell adspace, sign up for AdWords, and you may even want to try some affiliate marketing. When you have a lot of people coming to your blog, you shouldn’t have an issue selling ad space to businesses, making commissions off of Adsense, for more details visit to www.blog-and-ping.com and selling a product through an affiliate program. This gives you multiple income streams from this one blog.

So if you can put your words on paper, this is a great way for you to make some cash. It is also easier than going to work for 8 or more hours a day. Make sure you generate a blog name that is attractive. You don’t want people to visit your blog once and then never come back. You need them to come back again and again. Your blog can make money for you even when you’re working your day job. Better yet, it makes you money while you are sleeping.

If you need money now, like I mean in the next hour, try what I did. I am making more money now than in my old business and you can too, for more details visit to www.blogers-guide-to-profit.com read the amazing, true story, in the link below. When I joined I was skeptical for just ten seconds before I realized what this was. I was smiling from ear to ear and you will too.

Imagine doubling your money every week with no or little risk! To discover a verified list of Million Dollar Corporations offering you their products at 75% commission to you. Click the link below to learn HOW you will begin compounding your capital towards your first Million Dollars at the easy corporate money program.

harbanslalverma
http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/do-you-want-to-open-up-a-blog-account-at-one-of-the-blogging-sites-739297.html

Having a Blog does wonderful things for your online business. It’s really beneficial on multiple levels.

When you create a blog, you should have a goal for that blog. Your blog can’t do everything, just like your business can’t do everything.

Your blog needs a goal, a purpose for being. Will your blog be your personal journal? Will it be a news aggregator? Will you give people advice? Is it an opinion piece?

When someone goes to your blog it’s important that that person knows what to expect. Have your blog have a certain style, and offer a certain flavor they can’t get anywhere else.

That’s how you insure repeat readers.

A blog can do many things for you.

1) You can use your Blog to connect to other people who are doing or are trying to do the same things you are. If you use services like Technorati, you can find blogs that are in your same area.

You can network, and link with these other Blogs and really feel the social benefits of having a blog. You will be in the know.

Success doesn’t happen by yourself. You need other people’s help along the way. So this way you be involved with your community.

2) Having a successful blog is a great way to brand your business. A blog will give you a central hub for you to talk to your customers.

With the reach of your blog, your customers can “do business with you” before actually doing business with you. The more the customers experience of you the better.

Blogging gives you an easy way to stay in touch with your customers. It also gives your customers an easy way to keep up with you and your business.

3) Blogging also provides a lot of new marketing opportunities. The way the blog platform works, especially with the popular Blogs platforms like Wordpress TypePad and Blogger, provides unique abilities to market your business.

When you like to another Blog’s entry, usually what happens is that their Blog automatically links to your Blog back. Kind of rewarding you for linking to them. You can get loads of traffic just linking out from your blog.

Quang Van
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/power-of-a-blog-to-boost-your-business-740857.html