Creating Blog Communities For Profit

You are probably thinking, here we go, another automated blog script. You know the deal, create a 1000 blogs, all with your adsense code on it. Then use an automated blog posting script to post to my blogs using scraped content via RSS, or content from PLR sites.

Well, if that's what you thought, you would be mistaken.

I could never get comfortable with programs such as Traffic Equalizer or Armand Morins Directory Generator. Why? Because they just created garbage sites of no value, other than try to create adsense revenue.

I did not want to be a part of "littering" the internet with garbage. While the money was good for the creators, they new that it wouldn't be long before Google caught up with them, and the techniques would no longer be effective.

You can guarantee this moment coincided roughly with time they released these programs to the general public. Why not cash in with all the "payment detail screenshots", and squeeze the last bit of juice out of the technique, on a hungry and desperate market, looking for an easy buck.

If you too felt this way, good, I am not alone!

My technique for using blogs for profit does not involve automated scripts, spamming blogs or any other such technique.

Trust me, Google is going to LOVE YOU.

Blogs however are only one small part of the equation.

Stay tuned for more info...

Andy

When it comes to blogging platforms, there are 2 major choices, Blogger and Wordpress.

Blogger is owned by Google, and many feel that by using the Blogger service, Google will index their blogs sooner.

You can get indexed quickly using Wordpress, very quickly.

Be sure and use a plugin for wordpress that displays RSS feed links such as Denis DeBardy's sem-subscribe-me.

This plugin displays sign up links for Google Reader, Yahoo, My Msn, AOL, Bloglines, and others.

Do this. Create your blog, write a couple of posts, be sure and use a Keyword in the title.

If you haven't already, sign up to Google, Yahoo and Msn for your own personalized page.

After you have written your post, simply scroll down and add your blog feed to your own personalized pages in Google, Yahoo and Msn.

You have now just informed the 3 major search engines about your blog, and more....

When you create a post, be sure and create a Category first to place it under. Place a keyword in the title of course.

Now, when you submit your post, Wordpress treats the category as a 'tag' and automagically, pings major blog directories such as technorati.

From now on, every time you submit a post, your content will also be updated in Google, Yahoo and MSN, automatically via RSS.

This was just a quick rundown on why you should be using Wordpress, and why I use it in my blog communities.

More to come...

Humans are gregarious. We love to gather in communities. It is just our nature. Why we are like this is really a moot point.

Inside the larger communities of say a small town, you will no doubt be aware of even smaller, more focused or more concentrated groups.

I live in a small town, I like it that way. My boys play soccer, my wife rides a horse, I ride a motorcycle and like to play with classic cars. I have friends that play football, go fishing, have boats, enjoy 4WDing etc.

There are clubs for each of these activities, even in the small town where I live. So what is a club?
Sounds an easy question, and it is. Clubs are formed by enthusiastic individuals, or groups of individuals, in a common need to share a passion, an interest, or an activity with other like minded souls.

How many clubs do you know that are run on a shoestring budget, with nothing but the work of usually a few dedicated enthusiasts, keeping it all going.

The work involved in organising a few hundred kids just to play soccer for 4 months, is staggering. Why do they do it? Because they love it. I'll say it again, because they LOVE it.

But what happens when the season is over? What if it is too cold to go boating? What about when you are at work and you have to wait until the weekend to indulge your passion? Does the passion go away?

Of course not. Why are magazines so popular?

The point is, peoples activities become in many cases become the main focus of their lives. They live for it. It is what gives their lives pleasure, it gives them a reason to go to work so they can afford to indulge their passions.

By creating blog communities, we are creating another outlet for peoples passions. Another means for people to communicate, share knowledge, experience and build commaraderie.

The beauty of creating blog communities is that we are indeed providing a valuable service, and it just happens to be a bonus, that we can profit from this.

Till next time

The search engines want good content for their subscribers. If I was using Google everyday, and was constantly being directed to worthless adsense sites, what would I do? What would you do?

Go somewhere else, simple.

Google knows this, and Google is a business. Google works very hard to make sure it's subscribers are fed the best, most relevant content available.

The mantra was "Content is King". It has now been refined somewhat to "Fresh content is King".

In pusuit of this fresh content, there have been numerous tools, techniques and services pop up to create this fresh content.

You have the PLR sites, to whom you pay around $30 a month to receive fresh articles on various niches, that you can use to create websites. Problem is 1000 other people also receive the same articles.

These articles are generally written by people from non english speaking countries, so they are created cheaply, and usually with some rather interesting grammar!

The next invention is the article spinner, or website content wizard that rearranges these articles to make them seem unique.

Of course there are those who directly go to online services like Elance and Rentacoder, and pay people to write the content for them.

Doesn't all this smell of gaming the system? How many people do you want to compete with on Acne, Quit smoking, panic attacks etc. etc. for a bit of adsense revenue, and maybe an affiliate program that eveyone else has signed up for?

How much time does all this take? How many tools do you need to stay ahead of the game? How many articles do you want to proofread?

How long will your sites last before next big algorith change? How many adsense templates do you want to buy? How often do you want to upgrade the latest whizzbang RSS to whatever tool?

Think about this for a moment. Would you bet your whole finacial future on this internet marketing model? Doesn't this sound like a lot of work?

The internet is like any community. Do something good, let a few people know about it, and they will tell other people about it, and they will tell even more people. Create a snowball, set it on its way, and watch it grow.

This is not rocket science. If you enjoy a meal at a restaurant, you tell your friends.

Mike Filsaime made a small fortune with his Butterfly marketing course, which is incredible when you think this is such a basic, everyday human trait. If there was ever a case of not seeing the forest for the trees, this was it.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that the most popular sites on the internet these days are the web 2.0 sites like My Space, YouTube, Bebo, ning etc.

The key to their success is their interactivity. People can contribute, and therefore become a PART of a website, or a website community.

Most of these new sites, cater for all sorts of people, from all walks of life. Wouldn't it seem like a good idea, to create similiar sites around a specific niche?

Imagine creating a niche online community, that was fully interactive. Your visitors and members would no doubt be highly targeted. Instead of promoting a wide range of avertising on your sites, you would be able to target ads they are directly relevant to your sites visitors.

As your site gains in exposure and poularity, the value of your ad space goes up accordingly.

The prime value of creating a niche online community, is that your visitors and members supply the content. All you have to do is provide a suitable platform, for your members to contribute.

The one way to get started is to provide visitors to your site an opportunity to have their own blog.

You are in effect, giving them a free website, a website where they can post content, share their information, share their passion.

The key here if you missed it, is your visitors supply the content. And that content is listed on a blog. A blog with an RSS feed that inherently comes with the ability to automatically ping, or update numerous blog directories automatically.

This is just the beginning. I'll let this info sink in for a bit.

More soon