Is Blogging For You?
What is a blog? Is blogging for you? Why should you start your own blog? On this lens I shall explore your options, than you can decide if you should become a blogger too.
What Wikipedia has to say about blogs:
A blog (a contraction of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular
entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. 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.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photograp...
Who should I have a blog?
Ask yourself this question. Who am I and why do I have/want a blog?There are many possible answers to this question. Your answers well be very differant from my answers, as they should be. Each of us is unique. Each of us therefor creates a unique blog. Just as no two people are alike, so also are no two blogs alike. Your challange is to look deep within your heart and find out who you are. Finding out who you are, well determin what type of blog you create.
Do You Have a Blog?
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Reasons to Have a Blog: To Communicate With Others
I suppose you could say that the #1 reason to have a blog, is so that you can communicate with others.Your blog may be a private blog, a password protected one that only your cloest friends and family can read. Maybe your's is a business blog on which you share info about your products and services with your customers. Or maybe you just have where you rant about life, the universe, and everything... 42. No matter what type of blog you have, it's goal is always the same: you have something to say, and you want people to hear you say it. What better reason is there for you to start a blog of your own?
Great Blogging Stuff on CafePress
Reasons to Have a Blog: To Promote Your WebSite
Share the link Love and Google Well Rain it's Blessings Upon You.
You've started a website, now all you need is traffic to it. How do you promote your site so that people well find it? One way is to start a blog.You may wonder, how can starting a second website (a blog) promote my first website? The answer is quite simple. Google. Yes, Google is the reason for it. Google may index your website, weeks or months after you build it. Google takes it's time.
Websites are made by the millions, with millions of new ones cropping up each and every day. That's an awful lot of indexing for the Googlebot to do. The Googlebot searches out first and formost sites that are updated frequently and have many links to them from other sites. Most websites are built and than updated only once or twice a year, or at the most once a month. Blogs on the other hand are updated weekly, often daily.
Google loves blogs. Google searches out and activly indexes blogs. Bloggers love to pot links to blogs they read. Your readers well post links to your blog on their blog. You post links to them on your blog, and you post links to your website on your blog. The more you post on your blog, the more Google indexes it. Google well search for links on your blog, and it'll index those sites as well. Thus your website gets indexed as well.
What Type of Blogger are You?
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New eBay
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Reasons To Have a Blog: You Can Fire Your Web Designer!
If you are a business owner, and have a webdesigner, you can shout hip-hip-hooray! and fire him today. If you are starting a personal blog than you don't need to hire a web designer at all. Why?Free hosted blogs require little to no knowledge of html or computer tech. The top three blog hosts: Blogger, WordPress, and MySpace are the easiest most simple ways to get your blog up and running. Of the three only MySpace requires a knowledge of html. Blogger and WordPress both come with dozens of templates. Changing the color and layout of your blog is as easy as clicking a button. Changes can be made in a matter of seconds.
Great Books for Bloggers on Amazon
Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites
Amazon Price: $35.99 (as of 07/26/2008)
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
Amazon Price: $26.06 (as of 07/26/2008)
Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 07/26/2008)
Publishing a Blog with Blogger: Visual QuickProject Guide
Amazon Price: $11.55 (as of 07/26/2008)
Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care
Amazon Price: $14.93 (as of 07/26/2008)
Seth Godin: One of the World's Top Bloggers
Before there was Squidoo, there was a blogger... read for yourself one of the world's most successful blogs:
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byReasons to Have a Blog: Sell Your Product/Service
You have a product or serivice to sell. What better way to get the word out than through your blog? Each time a new item comes out, post a pictuure of it on your blog, tell people how wonderful it is and why they should buy it. Don't forget to tell them how much it costs, and add a link to where they can purchase it.In spite of all the super-hype about Google Adsense, affiliate links, and "payed to post" sites, selling your own products from your blog, is still the #1 proven best way to make money with a blog.
There are of course variouse ways to sell your goods off your blog. For crafty types who sew dolls and cloths or carve wooden toys or potters who throw clay and other such folks, simply posting pictures of your hand-made items well do.
For small-business ownwers with brick & mortar shops tell your customers about the latest shipment of goods, and any sales you have going this week.
For painters, get yourself a CafePress account, a Zazzle account, and a Printfection account. Scan your artworks into your computer, upload them to your account, build a shop, and now you can sell your at on t-shirts, framed prints, postage stamps, mugs, ceramic tiles, greeting cards, and tons of other items. CafePress, Zazzle, and Printfection all allow you to build a web-store on their site, and you can link to your shops or individual items, and even post photos of the finished products on your blog. To date CafePress and Zazzle account for a large precentage of income brought in by bloggers (including myself!).
Sell Your Art on Your Blog!
- Purple Iris by EelKat : CafePress.com
- An example of a shop on CafePress. Check it out and than make one featuring your own art!
- eelkat - Zazzle Contributor Gallery
- An example of a shop on Zazzle. Check it out and than create one for yourself!
- Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts: The Printfection Ed - Printfection.com
- Custom printed t-shirts and merchandise from Copper Cockeral Cards & Gifts: The Printfection Ed. Check it out than create your own shop!
Is Your Blog Making Money?
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Blog Content: Reviews
What can I write about?
Today I watched the greatest movie ever! The story was wonderful! The script was amazing! The actor was to die for! EVERYONE should see this movie! I must share my review of it with the world!!!!!Have you ever thought that as you were leaving the theater? Yes? Well, with a blog, now you have a way to spread the word and tell others just how great that movie really was.
Of course, it works the other way too. Ever seen a movie that was just a complete watse of your time and money? Want to wanr others not to waste their time and money on that no-good movie? Blog about it!
Reviews aren't just limited to movies either: books, video games, the latest music, the new ice cream flavor, the diner down the road... anything that you buy, eat, visit, read, listen too, or watch can have a review written about it. Everything you do, see, taste, smell, and hear promotes a feeling in you... it makes you love it or hate it. You want to buy it and tell others to buy it too, or you want to tell others to avoid your mistake. With a blog, now you have a soapbox platform on which to speak your mind on the best and the worst of everything.
Great Blogger Stuff on CafePress
Solo Blogging or Team Blogging?
Which is best for you?
Most blogs are personal, private blogs created by one person, who posts their own personal thoughts and views on life and the world at large. These are known as solo blogs, because they were created by a single person and are posted on, updated, and maintained by that same single person.This is not your only option, however. Team blogs are also quite popular. Team blogs are stared by one or most people, and posted on my two or more people. These are quite common with small businesses which alow members of the staff team to post their own views on the business.
Fan groups of a certain actor/book/movie/etc. also produce team blogs, where the members are allowed to contribute posts.
Family blogs also use the team blog method. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins keep in touch with each other by starting a family blog where each member is given the password and allowed to post whenever they feel like it.
ProBlogger
The ultimate blogger. ProBlogger, the blogger who quit his job and lives off the $200,000 a year income brought in by his blog... read for yourself, the world's #1 most read blog:
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byWhat does your blog say about you?
...or does color matter?
When you open a blog to read it, what is the first thing you notice? For most people, the answer is: the color or the banner or the background. Followed by the title of the blog. Than the title of the post they want to read. Only after reading the blog post do they know anything about you and what you believe. But before they even read the post, they have already developed a first impression about you. How did they do that? Let's look at your blog to find the answer:Say a new visitor opens your blog for the first time and your blog has a black background, red text, and skulls on the title banner picture.... the first thing this new visitor thought, was something like: "This chick must be a goth!". Now if the reader likes Goths, he'll keep reading, but if he thinks Goths are evil, he'll close the page without reading it. This blog may or may not have been built by a Goth, but the visitor doesn't know that yet, because he has yet to read the blog. He based his judgmennt on looks alone.
Now, let's look at some other blogs this same visitor explored today:
The next blog he opened was petal pink, with hearts raining down, and painted ponies prancing with fairies across the title banner. His first thought may be: "Cool! This girl loves chick-lit!" or "Yikes! What a prissy sissy!" or "How cute! My little girl would love this site!".
The next blog in his journey, was stark white with crisp black font and plain blue text links. "This must be a business blog." he thinks.
Are you getting the picture? In all three examples, our visitor never read a single blog post, all he did was open the blog and judge it's owner based solely on the colors, background, banner pictures, and layout details.
Your job as a blogger is to look at yourself and look at your blog and ask yourself: Does my blog reflect me? What is my blog saying to my readers? Does my blog layout invite folks to stop and read or does it turn them away? Only you can be the true judge of that.
What type of blog do you want? What type of readers do you wish to attract? What first impression do you want visitors to have? What do you want your blog to say about you?
What Color is Your Blog?
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Getting New Readers & Keeping Old Readers
Do you want to get new readers and keep old readers comming back for more? Than you better update your blog and update it often. Updating your blog is the secret to bringing in new readers AND keeping your old readers. How? Google. Google? Yep. Google.Google is designed to give Google searchers to newest, hottest, freshest, most up to date content on the net. That means if you last updated your blog two years ago, chances are pretty good that Google well stick it on page 10,000,000. If your blog was updated last month, than it might come up 10,000 in the search results. Updated yeaterday, you can bet it'll be in the top 100 pages, and if it's a niche topic than chances are even better that it'll be on one of the first five or so pages. Updated within the last hour? Than it may even show up on page one. Why?
First Google searches by tags and keywords and creates a list of all the websites and blogs that feature those keyword tags.
Now Google starts ranking those sites. First it looks at how many times a keyword is typed throughout the site text.
Next Google takes that list looks for the websites that are updated most recently.
Of the ones updated most recently it than looks for those that have been updated the most often and ranks them higher.
From these it looks for the ones that the most sites link back too.
Of those it searches for the ones with the most relevant links out to other sites.
All of this searching takes the Googlebot about 13 seconds. The end result is a list of what Google believes to be the sites most relevant to the searchers request.
To get in Googles search results you need keywords, relevant tags, links to relevant sites, links to your site from relevant sites, lots of text content (70% text and 30% html is considered to be best), and most important of all, you need new content added as often as possible.
While many well say to post daily, the most successful bloggers all report that the post only 3 days per week, but that they make those posts count (they are long and filled with relevant content.)
The end result for you the blogger is that by updateing often, you are always bringing in new readers who find you through Google searches. And by updateing often, you keep your readers coming back to see what you have to say.
Great Blogging Stuff on eBay
Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand byHow Long Have You Been A Blogger?
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Reasons To Have a Blog: It's FREE!
...and it's super easy to do!
The best things in life are FREE: family, friends, laughter, warm spring days, blogs... yeah, you read that right: blogs are 100% FREE!If you want to register your own domain name and host your blog on your own server, than you'll have to pay money. In the long run this could be good for your personal blog, and it's certainly the best thing for a business blog, but for you, right here, right now, all you really want to do is sit down and get blogging, right? Well, than go ahead and do it!
Blogging requires no money, and if you are using Blogger you don't even need to know html or computer tech. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3. Set up a FREE Google account. Log in to Blogger. Name your blog. Choose a template color. Start typing your fisrt post and you are off and running.
By far Google's Blogger is the best, fastest, and easiest to use. Other good free blogs can be started from WordPress or MySpace as well, though both require a bit more computer tech and html knowledge. For the beginner, I recommend any of these three blog hosts.
What Wikipedia has to say about Blogger:
The World's #1 Blog Host... and it's FREE!
To start your own blog go to: Google's Blogger
Need More Help Building Your Blog?
Get Advice straight from the blog posts of successful bloggers:
- The 5 Types of Blog Posts that Experts Write
- The 5 Types of Blog Posts that Experts Write from PureBlogging.com. Blogging tips, news, and tutorials to help you improve your blog. You will find articles on blog design, promotion, SEO, SEM, monetization, blogging platforms, Wordpress and more.
- How to Write Remarkably Creative Content | Copyblogger
- Creativity is vitally important to crafting effective copy and content. But mention the word creative around direct response copywriters, and ...
- Seth's Blog: How to get traffic for your blog
- Seth Godin's riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.
- The People's Media Company - Associated Content
- Not a blog, but helpful to bloggers looking to earn an income.
- 5 Tips to Encourage Blog Comments
- For most of us bloggers, we love comments. Comments are a welcome indication that we are not alone out in the Blogosphere. However the reality is that only a small proportion of a blog's readership will leave comments.
Are you one of these people?
If you want to bring new people to your blog then yo
Great Stuff for Google Blogger Bloggers on CafePress
What Wikipedia has to say about WordPress
The World's #2 blog host... FREE or subscriber versions available.
To start your own blog go to: WordPress Blogs
WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP. All data is stored in a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg.
The latest release of WordPress is version 2.6, released on 15 July 2008. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2.[http://wordpress.org/about/gpl/]
Great Stuff for WordPress Bloggers on CafePress
What Wikipedia has to say about MySpace
World's #1 social networking site and #3 blog host... FREE to join.
To start your own blog go to: MySpace
MySpace is a popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, USA,My Space is not their space anymore - Article on the move to Beverly Hills. Retrieved March 16, 2007. where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media; which is owned by News Corporation, which has its headquarters in New York City.
The company employs 300 staff and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 6, 2006 in the Netherlands and a news story claimed 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006, and the site reportedly attracts 230,000 new registrations per day.
Great Stuff for MySpace Bloggers on CafePress
Which Free Blog Host Do You Prefer?
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Blog Ethics: Don't get fired from your job!
Once you start blogging, everyone reads your blog. EVERYONE. Your mom. Your dad. Your next door neighbor. Some kid you don't know in China. A businessman you never heard of from Canada. A house wife in Britain, who's a stranger to you. Your school teacher from 30 years ago. Your ex who you haven't seen in 5 years. Your co-workers. Your boss... you get the picture, right?Every day literaly millions of people read what you write in your blog. People from all over the world. People millions of miles away. People on your own street. It's easy to forget this and write things that are confidential.
One of the most common complaints passed out by bloggers is: My boss fired me after reading my blog! Sound silly? It's true. Every day someone gets fired, because of something they wrote on their blog. You don't have to read very many blogs before you start reading posts about this either. Usualy, the poster had no idea that their boss was reading their blog, and was shocked and horrified to find this out. More often, though, they were even more shocked and horrified to find out that their boss had done a background check on them, by typeing their name on Google. Google of course directed the boss to the blog, where the boss found out the poster were blabbing trade secrets, or back-lashing the boss' business tactics. Next thing they knew, they were fired.
How can you avoid this horror story from happening to you? Easy. Just use your head, and watch what you write on the internet. Remember that even if you deleted something you wrote, it's still stored in some database somewhere, and Google will still find it. Plus, Google stores chaches: photo-copies of the page, which stays in Google's index for years after the site was deleted off the net. Think before you write and remember that no matter how hard you try to hide your true identity, you are never truely annonymouse on the internet. If you have posted ANYTHING on the internet, Google can and well find you, and so too can anyone who searches for you on Google.
EK's Star Log
Last Five Posts From My Blog:
Need to see a blog in action? EK's Star Log has been online since 2005 and has more than 30 differant blogs behind it. This one is the Blog*Spot edition:
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What do you think?
Leave your comments and suggestions here. Be sure to check back often, as I'll be updateing this lens from time to time.
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NorDac
Great info for the beginner Blogmaster. Personally, I like wordpress blogs. They seem to do better in the search engines (better SEO), and there are a ton of plugins that you can add very easily to make modifications. Some of the best ones are spam catchers and the DoFollow plugin Posted February 03, 2008 |
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