The use of attraction marketing has made blogging for profit easier than ever before. By using this blogging business model you can put yourself before and company, product or service that you represent. Since many companies and products come and go it’s very important to brand yourself first and foremost. By being yourself and authentic you will also attract like minded people that are interested in your niche.

At the core of the attraction marketing model is leadership and you need to provide value with your content. A general rule of thumb says that you need to be giving 80-90% of the time and asking from something from your readers only 10-20% of the time. This is where you are giving the majority of the time and you put your last with the follower becoming the priority.

You blog will become the center of all your online activity. You will need to drive traffic back to your blog using social media, SEO, marketing and more. You will also need to use pictures, video and audio to help create your brand. By adding value to your blog you will build a relationship with your followers as well as an email list of contacts. This will then allow you to introduce your following to various network marketing opportunities, affiliate products, information products or services and more. These can be your primary income generators or you can also promote banner advertising through services such as Google ads.

A blog at WordPress.org is a good place to establish a blog. Its also recommended to use a self host site service such as www.HostGator.com. These services make installing your blog very easy. You will have full control and marketing of the site and your personal brand. Blogging for profit can be fun while also being a powerful marketing tool that allows you to further your relationships with prospects and increase the awareness of your own personal brand.

Blog posting is the most important part of your blog. Your blog content or the theme of your blog should be at least as important to your readers as it is to you. While the whole point of your blog is to attract readership and draw responses, there are other factors to consider. Search engine optimization or SEO in your blog is vital if new readers are to find your blog easily. Once there, interesting blog content keeps your readers coming back for more.

The first thing you have to do is get a blog. Type the word blog into any search engine and you will find both personal blogs and blogging sites. Many of these blog sites are there because they know how to use keywords to help the SEO of their site. (Search Engine Optimization) Key word placement is not the only factor in getting top placement of your blog or the only way to build a descent readership. Among other things, active inbound links and popularity play a part in search engine placement as well. These five tips will help you attract and keep a good following.

Content is king

While it is important to post content that is interesting to the average blog reader, it is just as important to write about something that really interests you. By posting subjects you are passionate about; your blog will be more exciting. Your writing will have depth, and your readership will know this. If your passion is the material toothbrush bristle is made of, you probably won’t build too much of a readership so pick a topic that appeals to a variety of people go with that theme. To summarize this step, post material that is interesting to your readers and to yourself. Be funny, dramatic, or even frightening. Just be passionate about it.

Let it all hang out

Our second suggestion is an important step in blog posting for popularity. In the technological age we live in, our world is getting smaller and smaller. We can now turn on our computers and speak to someone in china as easily as we open our windows and speak to our neighbors. That is the key. In a sense, your readers are your neighbors. Speak to them through your blog as if they were friends. Feel free to say what you mean and mean what you say. Be excited about it. Have fun and watch your blog popularity grow.

Don’t just blog, listen and respond

A great way to maintain a loyal readership beside interesting and meaningful content is interaction. Attempt to get your readers commenting. Get them talking and they may never leave. Try to interact with everyone who comments, be it a positive or negative comment. After all, if they found something to complain about or disagree with, it is still a form of interest. Everyone appreciates one on one attention. It makes them feel wanted and appreciated.

A picture paints a thousand words

Don’t forget the other part of your blog. The first things potential readers notice when they enter your site is the aesthetic look and feel. Is it pleasing to the eye? Do you have helpful links to interesting places? First impressions are lasting impressions so make sure to imprint some of your sparkling personality into the main page and if you have more than one or two pages, try some variety.

Finally, do not be a rambler

When you blog, say what you need to say without chasing rabbits all over the site. Stay on the interesting point and keep your posts long enough to make your point but short enough not to lose the readers interest. Let the quality and content of your post overwhelm the amount of words you use to present it.

Ask yourself these five questions.

Is the content of my blog interesting to a wide variety of people?

Am I writing passionately and with meaning?

Do I listen and respond appropriately?

Is my blog pleasing or interesting to look at?

Do I get my point across intelligently?

If you said yes, you are on your way to a great blog.

Having a good blog header helps to distinguish your blog from the millions of others available online today.  A blog header helps to let your visitors know what your blog is about immediately upon arrival. The better your blog header the better first impression your guests get about your site.

When making your header be sure that it relates to your blog content.  Many people choose to use photos in their blog headers and they may also incorporate witty taglines or other content into the image. It is also important to remember what you choose to use for photos if they contain family images. With people from all around world visiting your blog, you need to be careful especially if you’re thinking of using photos of your children.  Many personal blogs also choose to use cartoon graphics. These cute graphics may create a more welcoming feel to your blog.

When looking for graphics make sure they are free for personal use or that you obtain permission to use the graphic or photo from the artist. There are many images available only for private use and listed for commercial sites.  It’s also important to contact the artist alerting them that you will be using their photos in a template for your blog. Searching for free stock photo sites are a popular way to find images that have already been released for people to use.

Should you decide to design how your blog header you’ll need some kind of photo editing software. The software program GIMP is free and comparable to Photoshop. If you don’t have any graphic design experience then you need to be prepared to do some learning. These programs have many different features and will take time to master. Make sure you have the time to invest in this process before you begin. In the end the effort to learn this new skill will pay off by giving your blog header a clean and professional look.

Don’t worry if you don’t feel up to the challenge of learning graphic design.  There are many designers that offer free headers for bloggers.  A basic design that works as a background can be modified to include the title of your blog. Other personalization such as hanging a frame with a picture about your niche, or other small graphics can be made. These templates usually require a link back to the original designer, but it’s a small matter once you consider that you’re getting the benefit of their work for free.

Other blog heads may be a collage of various pictures. These can be cropped and resized to accommodate the feel and look of your blog. These images can also be laid out in your blog header to create a tile effect.

Using these tips you can give your blog a look that is different and unique from all the other blogs available. Just remember that you need to make sure the title of your blog is still visible and readable.  It would be a shame to create a lovely header only to find out you forgot to put the title in.

Personalizing a template can be quick and easy with a free blog header.  This custom look comes without a big budget, makes your site look more professional and allows you the opportunity to develop your creative skills.

A blog benefits more than just the blogger. Blog advantages reach out to people who follow them and comment on the subjects offered. There are also people who check blogs for information, the same way you would check a dictionary for a word definition. They enjoy the personal touch the information they need contains in a blog. There are even folks who surf the free blogs in hopes of making friends and meeting someone, possibly romantically. There are as many different types of blogs as there are people.

Type any topic and add the word blog into any search engine and you will be pummeled with a virtual landslide of blog sites on the subject. People will blog about anything from Aardvark to Zyzzyva (tropical American weevil) and anything in between.

I personally blog for three important reasons: First, I love to share information about the things I am passionate about, like games and basketball. I also blog to promote products I have used and movies I have enjoyed or disliked. The main reason I blog is for money.

That is why having my own blog benefits me. In contrast to blogging on the free blogs that would not put a dime in my pocket. Sites like Blogger and Thoughts.com are great blog sites and a ton of fun to use but they are not profitable for the user. At least, not to the extent of your very own blog would be.

If you are thinking about starting your own blog, I suggest spending a few weeks or even months on the free sites to gain some foresight into how they operate and more importantly, how people interact on those sites. You would be surprised how much you can learn about people’s habits and actions just by interacting with them in a blog.

Another self-owned blog benefit that I really enjoy is making my own rules. Free sites enforce terms of service contracts that you agree to when you sign up. I can control these on my site in a manner that gives me more freedom to blog about the content of my choosing. That is not to say there is anything wrong with the terms of service on the free blogs sites. They are there to protect them and the people who use them.

One of the most valuable self-run blog advantages relates to what you must know or learn in order to operate. Unless you have money to burn, you teach yourself to be the author, webmaster, search engine pro, and overseer of the blog site, not to mention the numerous other technical works that goes into it. The most challenging of these were building the site and attracting participants.

I literally had to become a search engine professional, the intricacies of which I found changes at least a couple of times a year. It is an ongoing learning process, but there are many benefits to knowing how to hold your own when promoting a blog web site.

At the end of the day, starting my own blog site was fun and challenging and I would recommend it to anyone who is seriously considering it. Blog advantages such as the knowledge you will gain makes it a worthwhile endeavor that can be profitable, connect you with new people, and give you a feeling of accomplishment and pride. In addition, if you have other internet projects in the works, learning the ins and outs of Search Engine Optimization will benefit those as well.

I say, go for it. What do you have to lose? Nothing compared to what you have to gain.

There are a few blogging platform that are highly recommended, today I will be talking about WordPress. WordPress is a great content management system that can be more than a blog, you can turn it to a website too. It is a very powerful tool that is very suitable for your business, as Google loves WordPress, as it is very friendly for Google to index. Here are the 10 reasons I will recommend WordPress for your business.

a.    There are free hosting type and self hosting type for WordPress. I would highly recommend the self hosting one instead, as it belongs to you, as for the free hosting one, you can use it to draw more traffic to you. Setting up is easy and fast, that is the best part. It is as easy as choosing a template and giving new content.

b.     WordPress is a beginner kind website building. There is minimal technical knowledge to operate it. Codes like HTML, CSS and other computer coding is down to so minimal that even first time users can start one on their own.

c.    Wordpress is easy to publish for new content, as it is a basically a blogging platform. You can write tips, promotion, news that are related to your business. In this way you are building content with ease and best of all, it will be index fast, meaning getting free traffic faster than a static website.

d.    WordPress usually have a search bar on the top, making it easy for the users to find what they want, instead of browsing around.
e.    You can have a static home page or other web pages acting as the front pages for your visitors. You can add in a blog section to add in new content for your tips, news and promotion etc…

f.    WordPress templates can be found free, and you can change the WordPress template easily. There is no need to worry about losing your content when changing the template. Before you choose to use the new WordPress template, you can always go for a preview of the new template before deciding to actually use it. This way you can look and feel of the new template if it suits your business. Of course if you have additional cash, you can go for custom make WordPress template. This will be better for your blog as a whole, as it will distinguish your blog from other blogs which uses free template too.

g.    You can expand the WordPress to as small as you want to as big as you want. WordPress can be further expand to look like a professional website, with menus, with subsections and sub subsections. Making it easy to expand at your will.

h.    A good thing about WordPress platform is that it is supported by plugins that will help you make your blog better. The plugins are created by the WordPress users, where it is can help to improve the blog. Most of the plungins are free, so when you need to use some function like Poll (collecting data), you can find them easily in the WordPress Plugins section.

i.    As long as you have Internet connection, you can login to your WordPress account wherever you go. You can add in new content, change a new WordPress Theme, or even change the header graphics etc… You do not need to have your own laptop to do all this, it is that good.

j.    Backing up the WordPress data is a breeze, it is so easy that you only need to have the click less than 5 times and your data is saved. You can save the content in your laptop or your hosting, up to you.

WordPress was first use for blogging purposes, but it has since evolved into a website creation tool as well. With so much advantages in using a WordPress platform for your business, you can be sure that you will get traffic coming in to your business website or blog daily. As I have stated above, that Google loves WordPress and gives high authority to it, be sure to use it to your advantages.

And if you have additional reasons to add, feel free to add in the comment and share. Hear from you soon.

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Blogging is a trend that most people are doing now to make money online. A lot of gurus have used blog to reach out to their followers, as well as the searchers online, and they have been recommending to their students or followers that using blog to make money is the simplest and the easiest way to go about. So how do you make money blogging?

Make Money Blogging By Advertising

Google Adsense is an advertising media that marketers are using to market their services or product online. This is categorized under Pay Per Click system, where your readers on your blog click  on the word ads shown on your blog post, this is how you can make money.

Pros and Cons of Using Adsense in your blog

Pros- Once you position your adsense in the blog post where they will click the most, it will generate money for you, and best of all it will be passive.

Cons- Direct your traffic to other websites (even if it’s your competitor). Easily get click fraud even if it’s not you clicking. Minimum money earn, some less than $0.05, depending on the niche you are in. And if your website page rank is not in the top 5 ranking, then the Adsense earning will also be lower as well.

Selling related products or services on blogs to make money

You can also find related products online to sell, be it virtual or physical, you will see that when you get targeted traffic to your blog there will always be buyers available. The question now is how to find these buyers?

The answer is keyword research on the niche, find out the keyword phrases people are searching online, and write blog posts title to target these searchers and write content that answers or give solutions to the title. Well I use keyword research pro to help me in finding out the keyword phrases that people are searching online.

Then go to affiliate marketplace like ClickBank or CommissionJunction to find the related product to sell. I would strongly suggest that you have used the product or service, or someone you know have used it before. This way you will be able to sell the product much easier.

Make money blogging by selling your own product or services

This is what most of the online marketer’s dream is, is to have their own products or services to promote online, this is when you have started on selling for others first then start on selling for yourself. Why do I encourage that if you are blogging for money, first sell for someone then sell for yourself?

The main reason is that if you are new to the Internet marketing, you will not have experience in selling, and most properly you do not have any product to sell. So start gaining this experience by selling for others first, this way your chances of you being successful will be much higher.

Make money blogging by selling ad space or blog post in your blog

Selling ad space in you blog is another great way using blogging for money. There are two types of ad space:

1) Banner ads with graphics to attract clicks. This is a very old marketing that is still being used today, and it still works for companies who want to promote their services or products in related blog.

2) Text links advertising. This is using text that has no more than 4 to 5 words that will describe the products or services. And surprisingly, text links advertising has more results (driving traffic) than using banner ads.

The next way is to sell a blog post with links to the one who pays you for the blog post. They will provide the content and link back to their landing page or website. The main advantages for the one who pays you are to get a link back and drive traffic to their site. They will also get to increase in page rank from you (provided yours is higher than theirs).

Be it that you are blogging for money or blogging for fun, you should make consious effort that your blog has to have relevant content, products and services. This way, you will find that instead of losing your traffic, the traffic will buy instead.

So whatever you do in your blog, relevancy is key to success in making money blogging. I like to hear from you what you know, and share in the comment box below. I will be waiting for you, cheers!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

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Taken from www.LostArtOfBlogging.com

You have started your new blog, traffic is coming in to your blog, but you are not getting the new traffic to come back again. How to make your blog sticky and at the same time helping your readers to stay longer using automatic system? Simply adding 5 different plugins that will help you to get your readers stay longer and return to your blog. Here are the 5 plugins:

1) Related Post Plugin: What this plugin does is to show related post when your readers are reading a particular post. The plugin will automatically find the most related post at the end of the post the readers are in. In this way, you will increase the post views and to your older posts.

2) Subscribe To Comment Plugin: This plugin is for your readers who are commenting on your blog post, and wish to get email when there are new comment on the blog post they commented. This way, you would be able to get your readers to return even without you sending email to them.

3) What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin: This is one of the great plugins that I highly recommend, its for those first timers to your blog where it will show them a sentence to subscribe to your blog RSS. What this plugin does is to make use of drop cookies onto your reader’s computer, and it will show the wordings to the reader again. You can customized the number of times you want to show the wording to the readers and it’s lifespan. Do note that if your new visitor’s computer do not have his/her computer to enable cookies, the message will be there like forever for them.

4) Popularity Contest Plugin: This plugin will show the popularity of the blog post in terms of percentage. People will always want to check out whether the post is actually that popular, making them want to find out more, and giving them the resaon why this post is popular by demand.

5) Recent Post Plugin: This is also a very important plugin, to inform your readers who did not come in via the home page. that you have the most recent post available now. Because not all of your readers will not come from your home page, but from your other numerous posts you created, you may want to show them the latest or recent post you have created.

That will be the 5 plugins that will make your readers stay longer and making your blog sticker than ever. Some of these plugins need to be customized so that they can blend into your blog, and make it easy for your readers to see what you have written.

Remember that the use of these plugins are to help your blog become sticky, if the plugins are not used correctly, it can hurt you as well. So remember to customize them to your readers needs and likings, always change when there is no result. I would recommend for new bloggers that you install one plugin at a week’s time, and customize them according, change until you see result of increase viewing in your blog.

Do you have any recommendation of plugins that will make your readers stay longer, and view more posts? I like to hear you from the comment below. I will be listening.

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Your blog has been up the Internet for a year, your blog has good rankings from Google, have over 10 thousand incoming links to your blog, then something happen, your blog is gone, and worst of all you forget to back up what you have build over the one year. What to do now?

I must say that this is not what I am going to teach you, but on how to prevent all this by doing back up for your blog.

Why Backup Blog?

A few reasons why you must back up blog:

=> Virus or Hackers Attack: A lot of these unethical and no standard people, who were constantly do anything to mess up life up. You can prevent this by installing Anti-Virus that has a very good and updated firewall that will prevent hackers from intrusion and virus from attacking your computer then your website. But sometimes it’s just now enough.

=> Did Not Renew Domain Name: You were too busy to read your emails for a couple of weeks, and just nice that your domain name is expire at this time as well. You run the risk of losing the rankings you build for the year, and someone else might have been eyeing on your domain name for a while now.

=> Did Not Renew Hosting Server: Same reason as above or maybe worst, risk losing all that you have in your web hosting that you build for years.

What Do You Need To Backup For Your Blog?

First to save the content in Word Doc. I use the very traditional and hard way of storing every post with pictures in Mircosoft Word Doc, the title tag, the description tag, the keyword tag, the date of posting and lastly the category the post is in. The other thing to take note of is the picture in the blog post, I categorized them in months so that I can refer easily.

Second is to backup your blog content once every week.  You can do this simply exporting it, and store it in a thumb drive under the blog. The reason why you should do this is that, when you are exporting out the content, you are exporting the comments on the blog posts as well. The comments on your blog are very important as it will show your readers that you have traffic and people are sharing and networking in your blog.

Third is to store your plungins for your blog. When you lose your blog but not the content, all you need to do is to import into the new blog. But sometime you would forget what are the plugins you use for the blogs. What you need to do is to copy the file in your web server called “plungin file” into the thumb drive where you stored your blog content.

Forth is to backup the graphics of your blog: This is the easilest part of all, when you have a custom graphics for your blog, they are file under

Fifth is to store the theme you have custom made. Same is to store in the thumb drive for your blog folder called “Logo Folder”.

There you go, even if all things went wrong for your blog you can still get it all back. Another thing to take note is that you will need to constantly backup your blog (export blog content) once every week at least.

Do you have any more tips on how to back up your blog, do share below on the comment.

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You are using affiliate marketing to make money online, and you are new to Internet marketing. After hearing that affiliate marketing is the fastest and easiest way and advise for newbies (which I agree as well). Now you have a free blog that will host your content, its just that you are new to this Internet business, and you want to add in your affiliate link on your blog.

There are basically four ways that you can use to create affiliate link on blog:

Using Anchor Text For Affiliate Link

This is one of the simplest form to creating affiliate link on your blog, what you need to do is to highlight the words, click on the insert link, where you insert the affiliate link generated from your affiliate vendor or affiliate network site. Make sure that you set the anchor text to “open in new window”, or “open in new tap”, as your readers may want to continue to read what are in your blog, and to continue to make your blog sticky for your readers.

Using Pictures With Affiliates Links

When promoting a product or services, it works very well when you have pictures that will help your readers see. There has been a research that man have been condition to be attracted to pictures that look nice or the things that they visualize in their mind to look like, so if you are selling an Ebook, have a picture of a book in your blog. When you add in the picture (s), make sure to add in the affiliate link onto the picture(s). What you need to do is to add in your affiliate link onto the picture on the ‘Link URL’, this is for wordpress blogs, if you are using others, it will almost be the same. See picture below.

Using Redirect Script For Affiliate Link

For this kind of creating affiliate link, there are the free ones and not free ones. For the free ones, you can use Tiny URLs where you can change your affiliate link to a shorting version, that does not look like an affiliate link. But the thing is that it looks like a spam URL to the readers. So the not free one (which I recommend) is to purchase a domain name that has your first name with recommends in it, it will look like this www.YourfirstnameRecommends.com/ProductName. Why do I recommend this is because once you have set it up, all you need to do is to copy and paste the link to your email newsletter or anywhere you post on the Internet. The second reason is that it shows that you (your first name) recommends this product, it will look good on the whole as well. By the way you will need a script to do that too.

Using GoCodes Plugins For Affiliate Link

This is only for WordPress users only, as you can direct your readers to your affiliate sales page with a URL that look like this: www.YourDomainName.com/go/ProductName/ this is also good for you if you do not plan to invest any money on affiliate links. You can download GoCodes Plungin here.

Well this is it for the day, if you have any new idea that I miss out (I want to learn from you too), please share in the comment below. And if you find this post is helpful to you, please bookmark it or share on the social bookmarking sites below too. Will hear from you soon.

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