Blogging Advice For The Newbie

Although blogging can be used for a variety of other purposes such as generating income, promoting a cause and providing information there are many bloggers who enjoy blogging simply because it is fun.

These bloggers enjoy blogging for reasons such as staying in touch with friends, expressing themselves or keeping a record of important events. This article will explain how blogs can be used for these purposes.

Blogging to Stay in Touch with Friends

Staying in touch with friends and family members is just one of the many reasons a person may wish to start a blog. This is especially useful for those who move far away from their friends and family members. Staying in touch by phone, regular visits and even email is not always easy.

This is because it can be difficult to keep up long distance interactions with several different people at once. However, by maintaining a blog, a person can greatly simplify the process of staying in touch with friends and family members because they do not have to repeat information in individual phone calls or emails or make time to visit several different people.

When maintaining a blog, the individual can choose to post a variety of information and photos. Through this information and photos the blog owner can keep others informed about current events in his life. Friends and family members can view the blog at their convenience to catch up on important events in the blog owner's life and in most cases can post comments to the blog owner.

They can also read comments from others. This is beneficial if those viewing the blog know each other because they can not only stay in touch with the blog owner but also have a chance to communicate with other friends and family members through the comments section of the blog.

Blogging as a Form of Expression

Some bloggers begin blogging as a form of expression. They may right poetry, songs, short stories or even use the blog to vent about personal events or politics. These bloggers may wish to keep their blog private or can make the blog available to the public. Keeping the blog private is sort of like keeping a diary or a journal.

It gives the blogger a multi-media form of expressing himself without the risk of others discovering his true feelings, innermost dreams or frustrations. Other bloggers opt to make these blogs public.

This may be for a number of different reasons. Sharing these feelings with others allows the blogger to reach others who may have the same interest as the blogger.

Bloggers who use their blog as a form of personal expression may want to be cautious and consider the decision to make a blog public. This is important because the blog owner may initially not see problems with allowing others to view his personal thoughts.

However, over time he may realize his blog could either be offensive to others or could result in problems if friends or family members view the blog.

Blogging to Keep a Record of Events

Another common reason for blogging is to keep a record of important events. Examples of some types of events which a blogger may wish to document include a pregnancy, weddings, vacations, sporting events or completion of school events.

Using blogs to keep a record of these events gives the blogger an opportunity to record daily events in one simple location where they can easily look back on the blog or share the postings with others who might be interested in the events. In these cases the blog can serve as a form of scrapbook documenting the events as they occur.

The blog owner can post as often as he desires and may choose to include elements such as photos, music, audio files and video files into the blog. The blog can also be designed to suit the events being documented.

For example a journal depicting a vacation may have backgrounds, fonts and colors representing the vacation location while a pregnancy blog may feature elements which represent pregnancy, babies and being parents.

Blogging is becoming an increasingly popular way for entrepreneurs to earn a living online while doing something they really enjoy.

In many cases bloggers can profit with very little effort. There may be quite a bit of work involved in the beginning with designing a method of gaining revenue and promoting the website but once this is established simply maintaining the blog with regular postings may be enough to keep the revenue rolling in.

Two of the most popular methods for generating sales commissions from blogging include advertising methods. This includes advertising with AdSense and securing independent advertisers.

This article will discuss these two methods of advertising on a blog.

Using Ad-Sense to Generate Revenue in your Blogs

Using Google advertising is one of the most popular ways for bloggers to generate revenue from their blog. This method is so popular because it is also very simple. AdSense is a program offered by Google where bloggers agree to have advertisements on their website and are compensated when users click on these advertisements.

Bloggers simply have to create a blog and submit the website address of the blog as well as some other information to apply for participation. Once a blog is approved the owner is given code they can simply copy and paste to have advertisements displayed on their blog. Google then serves appropriate advertisements each time the blog is accessed.

Whenever possible, the advertisements served on the blog are closely related to the content of the blog because Google crawls the website ahead of time to determine which advertisements are relevant to the content.

Blog owners do have some ability to place restrictions on the types of advertisements which may appear on the blog. For example the blog owner can specify adult advertisements are not to appear on the blog and Google will filter these out.

How Advertisements on a Blog Work to earn you Money

Many bloggers use advertisements on their blogs to generate a profit. This method of advertising is more difficult, but it can be significantly more financially beneficial to the blogger.

This method of advertising is similar to the type of targeted advertising often seen in magazines. For example magazines for parents often feature advertisements which will appeal to parents such as advertisements for toys, children's clothing or foods popular with children.

Likewise a magazine for runners may feature advertisements for shoes, athletic clothing, races or training equipment. In these cases the advertisers pay for advertising space in the magazine in the hopes that the magazine's audience will be enticed to purchase products or services after seeing these advertisements.

Blog owners can use this type of advertising but it can be hard to find willing advertisers. However, there are some factors which may make an advertiser more willing to have an advertisement appear on a blog.

One of the most important factors for advertisers is the amount of traffic the blog receives. This is important because advertisers who are paying for ad space are more likely to invest in a blog with high traffic than one with very little traffic.

Another important factor for advertisers is the focus of the blog. Advertisers are more likely to purchase advertising space from a blog with a specific focus of interest to the advertiser's target audience.

Like the examples listed previously of magazines for parents and runners, advertisers want to advertise on a blog which is already reaching the same target audience.

Bloggers who utilize advertising on their website may be compensated in a number of different ways. Some advertisers may pay a set fee for the ads to run on the website for either a set amount of time or for a set number of page views.

This means the advertiser may purchase space for a set number of days, weeks or months or may purchase space for a set number of times the advertisement is served to website visitors.

Alternately the advertiser may choose to compensate the blogger according to the number of times specific actions occur. This may include users clicking through the advertisement or users making a purchase after clicking through the advertisement.

The type of compensation offered will have to be worked out between the blogger and advertiser beforehand to determine a fair method of payment.

Blogging 101 is mostly about the blogging vocabulary.

To understand blogs, you need to know the terms blog, platform, domain, and web host.

Once you have mastered these key elements of blogging, you can enter any conversation about blogging with confidence.

After you know what exactly a blog is, you will be on your way to passing the final exam of blogging 101.

Blog is short for weblog, which simply means a series of online posts presented in reverse chronological order.

That's all! Most blogs are text, but there are also photo blogs and video blogs. The rest of blogging 101 has to do with the technical side of things.

If you are setting up a blog, you will need a platform, a web host, and a domain. A blogging platform is a computer software program that allows you to write posts and to update your blog.

Your platform is also what you use to design the look of your blog, from color scheme to font size.

The web host is sort of like the virtual file cabinet where your blog is stored. Your computer communicates with the host when you upload or edit a post.

The domain is the online address of your blog, and usually ends in 'dot com'. Now that you know what a blog is, what a platform is, and what domains and hosts are, congratulate yourself!

You have passed blogging 101.

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