Blogging Web 2.0

The whole movement towards Web 2.0 is quite staggering in its sheer size and momentum.

Web 2.0 encompasses a wide spectrum of services to the web community as a whole and provides the means for people around the world to more easily get in touch with one another and make new friends and acquaintances as well as contact old ones that they might have lost touch with.

It also provides very useful tools for anyone who wants to increase their online presence and improve their internet credibility and level of respect. These tools are the social networking and social bookmarking sites that are materialising in their hundreds and even thousands. They allow bloggers and website owners to gain a huge amount of online exposure for their sites according to how hard they want to work in terms of promoting them.

Some of the more established sites like Technorati, Stumbleupon, del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook and Reddit are just the tip of a very large iceberg. They all allow you to sign up for free and create your own profile as well as include your site's url. This information is available to all other members, so potentially you can be seen by millions of people.

If only a small percentage of that number converts into unique visitors to your site, you will enjoy a huge following over time, assuming that your site is interesting enough for people to want to return again and again to read what you have written.

The secret to achieving that is really quite simple. You have to write good quality articles that are free from grammar and spelling errors and are interesting, inspiring, informational,thought provoking and provide enough dynamic enthusiasm to enthrall your readers enough to make them want to return to read more - and often.

That means you have to keep at it - writing good articles regularly to keep your growing readership satisfied and falling over themselves to come back for more.

If you can do that, you will have cracked the Web 2.0 code and will enjoy the spoils that come with a regular, enthusiastic and steadily growing audience.

What exactly is meant by "blogging to success"?

Well, it depends on which context you base the word success. If you mean successful money generation, or business success, then for your blog to see success would mean it would have to make money for its owner, in spades!

If you mean success in terms of acquiring a large, regular and enthusiastic reader base for your article writing, then success for your blog means you are attracting a large number of visitors to your blog and your work is being read and enjoyed by lots of people.

From the internet marketers point of view, a blog is a means to an end. By that I mean it is a tool for generating traffic and turning that traffic into customers who will spend their money on whatever the blog owner is selling. Bottom line is you want to use your blog to make money for you!

So how do you blog for success from an Internet Marketer's point of view?

There are several ways of marketing, promoting and utilising a blog as a way to make money and these will be covered in separate modules:

Before you can do anything with a blog, it MUST contain something that people want to read. I mean content.

And not just a few scribbled lines about nothing then a ton of ads splattered across the page. No one wants to see that and if they did happen across a blog like that you can be sure they will be reaching for the exit button faster than you can say "spam" and they will NOT be coming back - ever!

So you need to do it right. You need content and lots of it. That content HAS to be:

1. Well written
2. Free of grammar and spelling errors
3. Interesting
4. Informational
5. Convey the enthusiasm of the writer for the subject
6. Accurate
7. Free of swearing or defamatory language
8. Professional
9. Thought Provoking

In essence, your content has to grip your reader by the throat and make them want to return to your blog to read some more. That means you can't just write a few good articles then sit back and wait for the traffic to grow. It doesn't work like that. You need to keep writing, keep it interesting and keep your readers wanting to keep coming back for more - and more!

...more to follow...

Traffic generation is the name of the game when it comes to making a monetary success of your blog (or website, for that matter). Without traffic, no one will read your blog and no one will buy your products.

So you need to work on driving traffic to your blog.

Here's some ways of doing that and they're all free, because why spend money on something when you're basically most likely just starting out in this business and you're barely dipping your toes in to test the water.

1. Get links and use SEO to dominate Google'd search index for your chosen keywords. This is the single most important way of getting traffic that is likely to make money for you.

...more to follow...

Since the middle of last month, Monika and myself have had our blogging philosophy turned on its head with the entrance onto the blogging stage of one Vic Franqui.

Well, he's been around a long time, but recently co-setup Blogging Zoom which a lot of bloggers now use to give their blogs a bit of a boost.

But it was the middle of December that Vic launched his Blogger Unleashed blog which has caused a big stir.

Vic has decided to quit the black hat fraternity and start to tell a lot of secrets on his blog, which has understandably upset a lot of A-Listers.

Suffice it to say, Vic has given Monika and Me a lot to think about ob the way we run Blogging Web 2.0 as well as our own online businesses.

The main reason being all down to money. Let's face it, most bloggers don't make much money for all their efforts. Vic has shown us all how we can turn that around and make some serious money from blogging.

I'm not going into all the details here, you'll just have to go read Vic's blog for yourself and see what you've been missing out on.

Hate to delete good, honest content, so I'll leave this here and just say:

The Contest is NO MORE! 2008 came and went, so please don't ask about it!

Just sign-up with the site (for free) and start posting guest blogging style! We are constantly on the lookout for new guest bloggers and the odd freelance writer or two to come along and write us a unique article that we can publish on our site. For that you get a free, valuable one-way back-link to your site with the anchor text of your choice plus an entry into our competition!

The prize and competition rules are published on the site, so don't delay...

Get over there and start posting!

No, after several months of promoting, WidgetBucks, or more correctly widgetNObucks is a total waste of space on your blog.

It takes up valuable space in your sidebar and loads up slowly, making your blog load up slowly, annoying your visitors and possibly driving them away.

So our verdict on this piece of software is:

GARBAGE!