Do you know the power of blogging? If done correctly, it can become a very powerful way to obtain top positions for your home-based business and help you build a residual income?

According to Wikipedia, “a blog is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.” There are millions and millions of blogs today, but their origin was really from online diaries. I remember several years ago, a group of team members had a forum that I belonged to and we would post daily articles and make comments about all aspects of developing a home-based business, leadership, coaching to other areas such as, the most effective ways to create a residual income. That was before blogs became mainstream as they are today.

Since 2004, blogging has become mainstream for companies, organizations, politics, TV, and home-based business professions. One recent estimate, there are approximately 100 million-plus blogs and growing exponentially daily. A blog is simple to set up and in basic terms is a website about whatever you want to write about and post online. Whenever you search for information on Google, you will likely come across multiple blogs on any subject today. To find out more about the types of blogs and how to set one up, I would suggest you just Google it.

How does blogging help your home-based business?

In order to get top placements on Google, one needs to understand that good relevant original content is king on Google. Your central focus as it applies to blogging for the search engines and achieving top rankings is to write around keywords. No, I don’t mean babble, but good content that will help your readers with their home-based business and ultimately help them achieve a residual income. For example, if you want to build a home business presence online, one key phrase that you could focus on is residual income in your postings. You don’t need to keep mentioning residual income in every line, but randomly and thoughtfully in your article is an effective strategy.

Part of the power of blogging is to write daily and consistently post your information in various blogs. For example, when I write an article about a home-based business, I post to places like blogger, blog father, and Bloglines. I have noticed that Google will pick them up and index them on their databases usually within a day. There is no quick fix to obtaining top positions on the search engines with blogging and anyone that advises otherwise is naive or lying to you to get your money. I can blog at hundreds of great websites for free by the way, so don’t pay someone to do this. Just sit down and write some stuff, that’s what I do to build a successful home-based business.

To optimize your blogging experience while building your home-based business, I would suggest you bold your keyword or phrase a couple of times. I would not suggest you do it for the entire article. The search engine spiders seem to like it and take notice of the keywords bolded. Always include your name and a couple of other links in your blog to your primary website and even a couple of other blogs. It has been my understanding that you can place the same content in multiple blogs and you will not be penalized by the search engines. Just don’t try and copy other information that doesn’t belong to you as those search engine spiders may pick it up. This will further your ability to generate a residual income in your home business.

Blogs have increased in popularity over these past months. Many people have started to create their personal blogs to express their thoughts and feelings. Internet companies have also started their blogs to inform consumers of the latest product news and reviews.

Because of this, blogs are also being used as internet marketing media. Before, internet marketing is done by placing banners and links on popular websites, such as news and information sites. Links were also included in newsletters and marketing letters sent to the members of their mailing lists.

Many people spend time reading blogs. People read their friend’s blogs, their favorite author’s blogs, blogs on topics that they are interested in, and blogs on product reviews. With the increasing popularity of blogging, it is even feared that people rely on blogs to get the latest news.

While getting news reports from blogs isn’t reliable, some people look for product reviews through blogs. In some cases, this is more dependable. While it is true that some media persons are being paid to write good reviews about a certain product, blog writers write about their actual experiences with products and services from a company.

Since there are many people who read and start their own blogs, blogs are a good medium to market a product. Increasing blog traffic means an increase in product sales.

Blog traffic can be increased by joining affiliate programs and sites, which will list your blog under a certain search category or name. You can also have your blog advertised on popular websites. This, however, will cost some money and is not advisable if you have just started blogging.

A writer who has just launched his/her blog will want as much traffic as possible to increase advertisements on the site. Also, some advertisers pay every time their link is clicked or the page that has their link is viewed.

When you have increased traffic on your blog, you should try to keep your visitors coming back and recommending your blog to friends and colleagues.

This can be done by having informative or amusing content and a good blog layout and design. You may develop your blog’s content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles.

The blog’s layout and design also play a big role. While most of the companies offering free blog hosting offer pre-selected templates, there are also some that allow customization that if you utilize this feature correctly can increase your blog’s traffic.

Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs.

• Customize the banner

The banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service.

You can personalize this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner. You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog.

In this case, you can create your own graphic or you can purchase professional looking graphics online for less than $10.

• Personalizing photos

Of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own. However, if you don’t customize the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page. Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page.

It can also add to the design of your blog. You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog’s templates.

• Add a favicon

Don’t you think sites with icons on the address bar before the website’s URL are cool? Many people do. These favicons add a professional look to the URL. These easy to do using photo or graphic editing software.

• Check out blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures, and skins from sites

There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures, and skins. You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider.

•  Include RSS feeds

This is a cool way to inform people about newsreaders about your blog headlines. Tutorials on RSS feeds are available on the internet.

•  Audio makes your blog more personal

Not only does audio personalizes the blog; it can also keep your visitors coming back. You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file,s or playlists loading with your blog.

• Advertisements

If you have signed-up with Google Ad-Sense, which I am sure you would like to do, make sure that the ads are conveniently placed that these will not hinder your readers’ ease in accessing the information on your blog.

Try using these tips and you can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.

In the early days of blogging, most people used blogs as a digital platform-a diary of sorts-to share their opinions and vent frustrations. Today, however, blogs can be used to earn money for everything from writing about hobbies to reviewing favorite products! Oh, how technology advances… In prior posts, I’ve talked about making money with blogs. But, what does it take to monetize a blog successfully? That’s what this post is all about…

Step #1 To Earn Money For Blogging About What You Love: Research, Research, Research Don’t let that repetition scare you:

doing research can actually be kinda fun… Finding profitable ideas is a lot like playing an online detective. You can stakeout popular blogs that already exist and keep an eye on the trends people care about. Take note of what people are saying in the comments and get a feel for what content resonates the most. (Shortcut this by seeing if the blog lists any “featured” or “most popular” posts…) You can take things even further by visiting forums in the niche you’re interested in and browse around to see what kind of questions people are asking there. Be sure to also watch for trends with those questions, as they can easily shed light on what sort of problems your future readers are having. Most niches will usually have a few common problems that exist within them.

Step #2 To Earn Money For Your Blogging:

Who Are YOU, and Why Should Others Care? The only unfortunate thing about blogs being so easy to start is that anyone can have one. For this reason, you need to establish some sort of credibility. You don’t have to be a flat out an expert to blog about a topic, but it’s worth mentioning why you ARE qualified to do so. If you run a parenting blog, for example, you could bond with your readers and establish credibility at the same time by writing a short post about your children. An owner of a marketing blog might not be an absolute guru, but could very easily have more experience than most. In short: you don’t have to know it all, you just need to know enough!

Step #3 To Earn Money For Your Blogging:

Make Your Content Sticky You can have all the marketing chops in the world to drive visitors to your blog, but if your content is only as exciting as watching paint dry, you’re toast. After all, nobody is going to come to your blog specifically looking to click your ads or buy products you promote as an affiliate, right? That’s why you need content that’s engaging… If you’re not too camera-shy, you could even mix things up a bit by shooting a quick video and posting it to your blog. In fact, video is a great way to bond with your readers by letting them actually see who’s doing all the behind-the-scenes typing.

Step #4 To Earn Money For Your Blogging:

Test Different Types Of Ads Just as some people offline respond better to infomercials while others are more apt to buy through direct mail, similar preferences exist, online. Depending on the type of blog you run, visitors might be in search or “research mode”. If that’s the case, perhaps text links and contextual ads might perform best. On the other hand, other visitors might be more responsive to visual ads. In that scenario, you might test different banner ads. Aside from testing TYPES of ads, you should also make it a point to test different areas of your site to place them. Many popular sites, for example, have done well by placing ads between pieces of content. The only way to know for sure is to test!

Step #5 To Earn Money For Your Blogging:

Keep It Consistent! First, it was raining pandas on content farms with Google’s major “Panda” update. An even more recent update was their “freshness” change. More than ever, big boys in the search engine world are placing a heavy emphasis on fresh, unique content. If you want to get your share of the love from search engines, you’ll need to maintain a consistent content schedule. Doing so will not only help your sites rank higher, but it will also give you more terms to potentially rank for. How To Earn Money For Blogging Even If You HATE The “Technical Stuff” As I’ve mentioned before in other posts, I’m actually pretty new to blogging. If you’ve yet to get started but would love to share ideas, blog about your passions, and make money while doing it, what’s holding you back? If it’s the technical side of things, I highly suggest you give Empower Network a try. One of the big selling points for me was the fact that my membership included a blog that’s already optimized for the search engines and ready to go. Whether you want to use it as a platform for other things or promote the Empower Network itself (my suggestion), everything has already been created for you. For more info, including how to earn 100% commissions, be sure to check out this quick video: Click here now to see how to earn money for blogging on the Empower Network.

Hands down blogging are the easiest entry into the world of Internet Marketing and online profits. It is also the fastest-growing sector. Depending on the source, there are either 70 million blogs or just in excess of 100 million. No matter? the figure is organic as every day tens of thousands of people start a new blog.

What is the call of the blog?

Most blogs tend to be recreational, familial, or knowledge-based. Often it is just an online journal of the day to day tedium of someone’s personal life that they want to share with the world. Others put up blogs as a way of staying in touch with family members — usually password restricted. Still, others want to share their expertise or knowledge in a certain field. It is the last of these which has captured the minds and creativity of those with a penchant for earning money.

Originally blogging started as a commercial-free venue for information dissemination. Not so anymore. Savvy internet marketers soon recognized it as an effective form of marketing and it wasn’t long after that ad began to pop up on blogs.

Blogging is now a fully vested online commercial enterprise. Think of it as a virtual publication, as a magazine, or a weekly/ report covering a singular topic or theme. If the content is good visitors return to read new posts. As with any good publication, advertising pays the bills and puts leftover cash into your bank account – sometimes to the tune of five figures a month!

The siren song of money is seductive and the great thing about blogging is that practically anyone can do it — I know of six and seven-year-olds making more than just pocket money, senior citizens supplementing their inadequate pensions, and people of all ages pulling in incomes that stagger the mind. It’s no wonder that there is a worldwide stampede to blog for money. Consider these points:

Ease of Entry. If money is the siren song, then the mantra of? anyone can do it? is the refraining chorus of the song. The learning curve is not as steep as say starting your own online store but if that is your ultimate destination, then a blog is a good place to cut your teeth. In the offline world, it would be akin to starting with a hot dog stand to eventually owning your own gourmet dining restaurant.

Affordability: As the hot dog stand, blogging is cheap – sheesh! Even free! Yes, you can actually start your online blogging venture without spending a dime. Platforms such as Blogger and WordPress are free (note: the free version of WordPress does not allow for advertising). Google? free websites? and you will find a list of many more. Do all offer a selection of? done for your templates? which means that you do not have to learn how to put up a website or learn a new cyber language. No money to pay a webmaster, no fees to pay for hosting. Can’t get any cheaper than that.

Easy Back Office Administration: You can take your time to familiarize yourself with all the options that are available to you to make your blog unique. The good thing about this is that as you become more confident on the net, you can always log in to your back office and tweak both the appearance and other elements of your blog, such as comments, ads, social marketing. There is plenty of online training that will help you with your new venture. Before you know it you’ll be speaking a different language about traffic, monetization, virtual real estate and billboards, search engines, spiders, and bots.

Money. You can start making money right away. Don’t expect to hit the high notes on the decibel chart of WOW! but on a good day, you will be able to look out the window and see the promise of a money truck rolling up to your driveway as a reality. The neat thing is that as you begin to make a few dollars here and there, your motivation goes up, you polish your skills, and the money grows.

Time Friendly: Most people who look at the internet as a potential source of income have a J.O.B. and would like to

1. 3 earn and additional income and

2. .3 develops a secure financial safety net.

3. 4.4 Many want to quit that J.O.B.

Take action. Devote just one hour a day if that is the most you can, and you are on your way to building your own internet muscles. Equally important, your mindset shifts. By just devoting a mere hour a day, you will be taking action and begin to build your internet marketing IQ and a new brainpower blueprint will emerge. A latent entrepreneur emerges.

It’s no wonder that tens of thousands are taking up blogging for money – it’s more than just a hobby!

In this article, I will reveal how you can write and publish your blog content and at the same time, how to queue posts for automation releases in the future.

The Title

The title of your blog must be bold in its message and very sticky, what I mean by this is simply make it exciting and controversial at the same time. We also want your blog post to be well optimized with keywords within the title which will, in turn, alert the search engines to crawl your site based on relevancy. Again I am going to emphasize this point once more so it sticks in your skull! Your title must be very catchy not the slogan type but more on point of what the content is about and at the same time raise eyebrows with interest, ‘but please people, for God sakes,’ do not insult your reader’s intelligence by trying to be smart.

Here are a couple of examples of well-written blog titles:

• Will Google Become the World’s Largest Affiliate?
• Tribes of Amazon Find an Ally Out of ‘Avatar’

Notice how each title contains two important keywords that not only catch the eye but are also likely to be searched for by the target audience.

The Post: A few tips

• The blog post should be around 200 – 500 words long it doesn’t need to be longer. If you feel your blog post you have written prior to posting does not seem great then read it to yourself aloud to hear if it flows well with your message.
• Be generous with what you know and you will be regarded for it
•  Don’t be rude in your post but be direct and on topic with what you are saying to your audience. Ensure your content is engaging and controversial people will respond to that. You should also inject your persona into your writing so that everyone can feel your words come to life and are not yawning whilst the poor keyboard is waiting to be banged upon by their boring heads.
•  Always be consistent with what you are offering your readers and make your information is always up to par.

Adding Tags

Tags are keywords used to describe and summarize blog posts. They help people to find posts on topics they are interested in and they are also used by blog search sites such as to classify your posts appropriately. Technorati is an important traffic source, so it’s worth taking your tags seriously.

Choosing your tags is important and can positively affect your blog and the readers who are searching for a certain topic. The tags act like keywords on your blog and are identified by both searchers and search engines. An example of a relevant tag to a topic is SEO review; the tags would be like, search engine optimization, internet marketing, how to SEO your site. These tags give a clear distinction to what is topic is about before clicking them to read.

Categories

When you decide to post large quantities of content to your blog, I would suggest placing each subject post into separate categories that are related. Allowing categories makes it easier for your readers to quickly find what they are looking for as well as sifting through older archives that are pushed back deep into your blog. You can add a new category by clicking the Add new category button.

Trackbacks

Trackbacks let sites know when you are referencing them. When you add the trackback URL for another site to your blog post, your blog URL should then appear under ‘trackbacks’ for the blog or website you are referencing. This enables anyone interested in pursuing the topic to click through. The Trackback URL is different from the regular URL and can usually be found just below the blog post text.

Comments

Within the web, the 2.0 world of blogging comments is a critical element of an interactive and lively blog. On this note, spam is a concern that can take up much of your time trying to sift through the spam comments and the genuine ones thus making them active or deleted. I would recommend the WordPress Plugin Akismet, which automatically recognizes and delete spam comments from your blogs.

Queuing posts for automatic publication

The truth is there are days when you suffer from writer’s block. This can be frustrating however, all is not lost thanks to a special Plugin that is available these days to use in times of need which allows a stockpile of posts to get through in bad times.

Post Queue is a plugin for WordPress that queues your posts and then automatically releases them according to the schedule you specify.

You just decide on the length of time between the publication of each post, and on the appropriate date, an entry will be selected from your queue and posted to your blog.

You might wonder what is RSS.

RSS simply means Really Simple Syndication (RSS). It is just a tool useful for saving or retaining updated information on websites that you frequently visit or websites that are your favorite.

RSS utilizes an XML code that scans continuously the content or subject matter of a certain website in search of new information then transmits the information updates by way of feeding the information to subscribers.

RSS feeds are like news on the internet which are generally being utilized in blogs or news sites, though any website wanting to broadcast and publish information can use them. Once new information is sent, it will contain a headline, a little bit of text, and either a rundown or a brief review of the news or story. A link is needed to be clicked upon to read further.

So as to accept RSS feeds, a feed reader is needed, called an aggregator. Aggregators are widely and freely available online, and all that is needed is a bit of searching, you will be able to locate a certain interface that best interest you. What’s more, RSS feeds can likewise be read and retrieved from cell phones and on PDAs.

Once you encounter a website that you want to add or insert to the aggregator, the process can be done in two ways. Almost all sites offering an RSS feed display an RSS? or XML? button in their homepage and with one click, it promptly adds that particular feed to one’s aggregator. Some aggregator however, requires the need to copy and then paste the URL of the feed into the program.

Whatever the method used, you can be certain that the feed will be accessible soon as you have inserted it, likewise, in just seconds, the next update can arrive. In the event that you do not anymore would want to accept or take in updates, you may simply delete or erase the feed from the aggregator.

Through e-mail subscriptions, you can receive newsletters. RSS feeds, on the other hand, can be more convenient in keeping up with newsletter updates since they are prompt and available in an instant; you no longer have to wait for a scheduled time or day to obtain a news summary, plus, this news will never be detained through a spam filter.

RSS feeds are widely used every day by individuals who understand and appreciate the accessibility of fast reports and news that can be readily read and only read certain updates that appeal to them.

Aggregators

Aggregators are a popular use of feeds, having several kinds. Web aggregators or portals as they are sometimes called, create this view which is then made available on a Web page. Also, Aggregators have been incorporated into e-mail patrons, users of desktops, or dedicated and standalone software.

Offering a collection of special features, such as combining more than a few related feeds in just a single view, hiding certain entries or statements that have been already viewed, and classifying entries and feeds, the aggregator is a versatile component.

Why make a feed available?

You will have more viewers since now, your viewers can conveniently see your site without even going out and looking for that certain site. While at first, it may seem corrupt, it will in fact enhance the visibility of your site; this is so because users can easily keep up or keep track with your site, to allow them to view in a way that they want to; it’s more probable that guests are aware should something that is in their interest is available or accessible on your site.

For instance, every month your website broadcasts a new feature. Having no feed, your viewers will always have to keep in mind to go to your site at a certain time to see if they discover something new; that is, if they can remember and if they still have the time. However, if you supply a feed for your viewers, they can just point to their aggregator and it will instantly provide them a link along with a description of happenings or events at your site immediately.

What format to choose?

Syndication is very confusing as it uses a lot of formats that can usually be come across on the web. However, this can easily be solved as in general, syndicated libraries are used by aggregators who conceptualize a particular format that a feed is in, in order that they can utilize a certain syndication feed.

With this, whatever format to pick is just a matter of personal preference. RSS 1.0 is far-reaching, and practical should it be integrated into Semantic Web systems. RSS 2.0 is very easy and simple to create by hand. And atom is an IETF Standard, does it brings constancy, stability, and a natural and accepted community to support its usage.