10 Essential Blogging Tools

So, you finally decided to take the blog leap. You've heard all about the marketing and search benefits so you stepped up to the plate and signed up for a TypePad, MovableType or WordPress blog software package and now you're a blogger. Okay, now what? Add the ten essential blogging tools listed below and you will also be well on your way to creating and promoting a blog that is a powerful marketing tool. I'll explain the use of the tool and offer some suggestions, including the tools I use on my own blogs including the DuctTapeMarketing blog.

Feed Reader
The best way to learn about blogs and blogging is to read, or at least scan, lots of blogs. One of the wonders of blogs is that you can have every new post from every blog you want to read delivered to your desktop or to online location via RSS, so you can easily read and scan the posts of many blogs in a very short time. Newsgator is a good online choice for feed reading and also has a version that integrates with Outlook. I use a free online service known as Bloglines.
Subscriber Center
You need to make it easy for your blog visitors to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed – so they can read your blog in their favorite feed reader. The best way to do this is to go to FeedBurner and burn your own RSS feed there and use the tools they provide to set up automatic subscriber links so people who want to use Bloglines, Google Reader, MyYahoo or Pluck, for instance, can click on one button to subscribe. Tech types can figure this out without the buttons but why not make it easy for anyone to figure out.
Side note: Subscribe to each of these yourself
Email Subscription Option
A lot of people will never get the whole feed thing, but everyone gets email. Create an option for people to subscribe by giving you their email address – they will simply receive your blog posts like an email message. FeedBurner offers this service for free. FeedBlitz is another option or, if you already have an autoresponder email list service they may offer this service. AWeber offers this and helps me integrate these blog email subscribers into my other mailing lists.
Blog and RSS directories
There are hundreds of blog and RSS directories and getting listed in many can be a good thing. I use a piece of software called RSS Submit , but you can also visit Robin Goode's frequently updated list and submit your blog and feed by hand.
Hint: Subscribe to the RSS feed he offers and you will be notified when new directories are added.
Ping Service
Pinging is a term used for letting the various blog and RSS directories know when you have posted new content. Again, FeedBurner offers this as an automatic option called PingShot and you should activate it. PingGoat and Ping O Matic are other options but they require that you visit and update your record each time you post new content.
Bookmark Manager
As you surf around the web or hop from blog to blog you may find sites that you want to point out to your readers. Online bookmark managers allow you to bookmark and categorize web and blog pages as you collect them and are a great tool for managing all of the stuff you find on the web. I use del.icio.us but BlinkList does a fine job as well.
Blog Stats
I like to track a few key stats in real time because it shows what other blogs might be linking to you or posting about your blog. A lot of people just like to track this kind of thing for fun and frequently visit sites like Technorati. I like to track it for networking opportunities. I use a tool called MyBlogLog because it allows me to see where traffic is coming from but also tracks what links on my blog visitors are clicking on. It's amazing how this data can help you write more effectively. (MyBlogLog also ranks your links so visitors can see which links on your site are the most popular.)
Desktop Posting
With most blog software you must go online and post using a set of tools provided by the blog software. Many bloggers like to use a desktop application to create and submit their posts as it gives them some extra tools and allows them to more easily integrate content and files on their computer.
I use w.blogger but also like Performancing, Qumana and ecto (apple folks) (w.blogger also doubles as a really simple HTML editor.)
Tell A Friend Script
My blog software (pMachine) has a feature that allows a reader to click a link and send the post to a friend. This tactic brings me lots of readers. You might try looking here for some simple scripts that do that same: http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/tellafriend.shtml http://www.stadtaus.com/en/php_scripts/tell_a_friend_script/
Republish Your Feed Headlines
The ability to republish your blog posts on other web pages, sites you own or sites of strategic partners is a great way to expose folks to your blog content. One more time we turn to FeedBurner for a painless way to republish your blog post to any web page you choose with something they call BuzzBoost.
About The Author: John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson - due out in the fall of 2006. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com.

4 - Blogging: Let's Attract Traffic

Getting backlinks from other websites is not the only option open to you in your quest for more visitors to your blog. There are other methods, both free and paid, geared to capturing high quality traffic.

Submitting articles is a tried and tested method. Go through your blog posts and recycle the content into articles in which you help people to solve a problem or offer them tips or a how-to mini manual and submit them to article directories. These directories are repositories for quality articles in many different categories and as people are always on the lookout for good, original, free content for their website or eZine, they receive thousands of visitors every day. By submitting your articles to these directories, you are not only positioning yourself as an expert in your field, but you are also exposing your blog to thousands of people who read your article. How? You are permitted to include your contact details and a brief biography in a "resource box" in your article, so be sure to include the link to your blog!

Here are some article directories to try out: EzineArticles.com, SubmitYourArticle.com and Marketing-Seek.com.

The process of manually submitting articles to directories is very tedious and time-consuming. However, this can also be automated or even outsourced. As article submission software applications still require you to perform some steps manually, you might consider making use of the article distribution services of SubmitYourArticle.com or ArticleMarketer.com (the latter permit you to set up a free account).

Participating on Internet discussion boards (forums) within your niche is also an excellent way to attract traffic. Just do a search on [your niche] + forum. Target the most focused and active forums that will permit you to append a link to your blog in your forum signature. The forum signature appears at the bottom of all your posts. Just make sure that you post useful and valuable content. You will gain the attention and respect of your peers and people will click on your link to visit your blog if they find your contribution useful and informative. You'll be building credibility even before anyone visits your site, so that makes it easier to generate profits if people already perceive you as an expert.

Also make sure that you ping your blog, which is a way of letting blog portals know that you've updated it with new posts. Free pinging services are offered by Pingomatic.com and Pingoat.com.

Making use of paid methods of advertising such as banner advertising, purchasing links from high-ranking sites, or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) such as Google AdWords also offer possibilities. PPC is complex and therefore more difficult to master, but a well setup campaign can be very effective. Make sure you consult a good PPC resource before you start, otherwise it can become very expensive. Brad Callen's "AdWords Made Easy" is available for free on the Internet. Excellent resources you can purchase are "AdWords Miracle" and "The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords". Whichever method you choose, always consider if the profits are worth the expense, otherwise you're throwing money down the drain.

Make Money Online

Copyright 2006 Chonticha Marijne

About the author: Chonticha Marijne runs several Internet ventures, including http://www.e-Abundance.com , http://www.e-AbundanceTools.com and http://www.e-AbundanceSystem.com . She is based in Gouda, the Netherlands and particularly enjoys publishing for newcomers.

Blogging Directory

Have you looked at your website traffic lately? How much visitors actually visit your site everyday. One of the best ways to attract the visitor to your site is by writing informative blogs. A blogging directory with a high page rank can do wonders to lift the traffic of your site. Thousands of people are already successfully blogging to create better relationship with their prospects, increase client loyalty and enhance their visibility and brand recognition.

If someone takes the time to get word our there about themselves and their services or products then they are serious about business. If you are one of these people then you need to get max exposure for your blogs and just writing a blog is not enough anymore. The competition is fierce so find blog directories as some of them offer a free listing. A Blogging directory is a perfect solution to people who are in search of new information online.

Most of us know what a blog directory is. Most of us have some knowledge that everyone who has an online presence needs an online blog. Most of us do not realize that blogging in the wrong way is a waste of your time!

Before getting into more information on Blog Directories it is important to know that your blog needs to be set up properly. Here are a few things to know:

Submitting your blog in an effective blogging directory can
· Boost your website traffic
· Increase the size of your email list
· Build trust with prospects and clients
· Can you earn you huge money online

Today you can search and find blogs everywhere on the net, it seems when you search the major directories that blogs show up in top positions. Is your blog appearing in these places? If not, then maybe you don`t know something that these other bloggers do know.

Before getting into more information on Blog Directories it is important to know that your blog needs to be set up properly. Here are a few things to know:

Install your blog directly on your site Make sure you are using full search engine friendly urls with these blogs Do not copy other blogs and post them on your blog as this is duplicate content and will hurt you Add at least 1 post a week if not more.

Don’t waste time on this anymore, get your blog, get listed on directories and increase your page rank. So what are you waiting for make up your own blog and start blogging.

Copyright 2006 Darren Dunner

About the author: Darren Dunner writes for www.surrealblog.com offering you the latest informationon on all types of blogs. Visit today www.surrealblog.com/

Freelance Blogging: Get Hired To Blog And Earn Thousands A Month

Blogging gives you a great way to learn some extra cash. You can even turn blogging into a full-time career, or a new business. Getting started as a freelance blogger is simple. All you need to do is create a blog, make a few blog posts (these are your work samples), and then look for blogging gigs.

Create a blog If you don't already have a blog, creating a blog is your first step. You can do this very quickly. Creating a new blog at blogger.com (which is owned by Google) only takes a minute or two. This is your "sample" blog. Think of this blog as your blogging portfolio.

Your blogging topic can be in any subject area that you choose, but give some thought to your potential clients - don't make your blogging topic too personal. If you have expertise in a particular area like finance, technology or health, make this the subject area of your blog.

Write some blog posts Now your blog has been created, it's time to make some blog posts. Your entries are published in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entry first. Your first entry can be a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about the general topic of your blog.

For example, if your blog is about dieting, you could summarize the areas (recipes, weight lost tips, health tips) you intend to cover. Or your first post could be an introduction: tell your readers who you are, and why the topic of the blog concerns you. Or you can skip the idea of an introductory post altogether, and just jump into your topic.

Look for blogging gigs Great - you've created two or more blog entries. Now it's time to look for your first blog-job. Your first step is to write a blog post about your availability to blog. You can make this entry detailed, or extremely brief. If you wish, you can add a link to your online resume or CV.

Where do you find blogging jobs? You'll find that several sites have already been set up to match bloggers with companies that want to hire them. Enter "blog jobs" into a search engine to find your initial leads.

You'll also find companies looking for bloggers at out-sourcing venues like guru.com. However, be aware that on these sites, you're competing against others for gigs - don't be tempted to underbid others. Under-bidding is a bad idea because it's terrible marketing. Once you set your price low, it's hard to lift it. Have an awareness of what blogging is worth, and set your price appropriately. Companies which want bloggers don't want the cheapest option - they want the best they can afford.

So there you have it: everything you need to know to get started as a freelance blogger today. Create a blog, make some entries, get a gig. Good luck with your blogging career. If you're a born blogger, you can turn your freelance blogging into a full-time career.

Good luck, and happy blogging.

Abouth the author: Angela Booth is a veteran copywriter and blogger. Her ebook, Blogging For Dollars: How to become a career blogger -- in your PJs, if you want, is available at http://www.abmagic.com/Blog/blogging.html You can visit the book's blog at http://www.dollars2blog.com/blog/ Angela will show you how to turn a humble blog into a great career, or a lucrative business.

How-To Get Your Blogs Site Feed Listed In Yahoo! And MSN Within Hours, Is Easier Then You Think

BLOGS... they seem to be the talk of the Internet marketing world these days, and for good reason.

Not only do the Search Engines love them for there Content Rich pages, you also have the ability to plug your Blogs "Site Feed" into an RSS feed and then have it syndicated to thousands of websites and directories giving your content more exposure to your target audience.

RSS(Real Simple Syndication) is a very Powerful technology that has been around for quite some time and when used correctly, can build an audience overnight.

If you want a crash course on what RSS is, in more depth, since the nature of this article is to show you how to get your Blogs "Site Feed" listed in Yahoo! and MSN, I've provided a link to a page full of articles on RSS related issues. http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-articles.htm

Now, depending on where your Blog is hosted, whether its through a free service like Blogger.com -- http://www.blogger.com or hosted on your websites server you should have a "Site Feed URL" that has the .XML extension.

This is your "Site Feed URL".

You'll usually locate it within your Settings area of Blog control center.

Here's what mine looks like as an example: http://theiwe.blogspot.com/atom.xml

This URL is intended for a RSS News Reader, so disregard its appearance.

Once you find your "Site Feed URL", copy and paste it into Notepad because you'll need it for the next steps coming ahead.

Now, what you need to do is go and set-up an My Yahoo! and My MSN account.

I've provided the links for you below.

- My Yahoo! ==> http://my.yahoo.com

- My MSN ==> http://msn.com

It should only take you about 15-20 minutes at the most.

If you already have accounts with My Yahoo! and My MSN, read on.

This is assuming you already have your accounts set-up, so your next step is to Login to your My Yahoo! account.

When you login, you'll be taken to your Yahoo! page immediately.

What you want to do next is go look under the Yahoo! search box to the left and click on the "Add Content" link.

This will bring you to a new page.

From there, over to the right by the "Find" button you'll see an "Add RSS by URL" link, click on it.

A new window will open with a "Web Form". Simply copy and paste your "Site Feed URL" from Notepad into the web form and click on the "Add" button.

Now, you should see your Blogs name infront of you. Simply click on the yellow "Add To My Yahoo!" button and your feed will be added.

The next thing you should see is your "Site Feed" with your "Headlines".

Click on one of them, it should take you to your Blog, to the desired Headline you chose.

Your My Yahoo! page should Now have your Blogs "Site Feed" Headlines listed at the bottom.

Scroll down to check. If you don't see them, it sometimes takes up to 24-48 hours for them to appear, so just check back later.

Now that thats done, everytime you update your Blog with NEW content, it'll "Automatically" update on your My Yahoo! page and everybody else's pages who have subscribe to your feed, plus, within 24-48 hours your feed will get Spidered and Indexed by Yahoo!.

Talk about getting the word out in a HURRY with very little effort on your part.

This is "Viral Marketing" at its Best in my mind.

And... it's so simple to implement.

Okay.

Now it's time to do the same to your My MSN account as what you did above to your My Yahoo! page.

Here's the link to go login(click on Sign In from main page): http://www.msn.com

Once your login to your My MSN account you should see an "Add Content" link under the MSN logo to your left. Click on it.

A pop-up should now be displaying. Simply copy and paste your "Site Feed URL" from your Notepad into the web form provided and click the Search button(the green button with the arrow).

You should now be looking at Check Box with your Blogs name beside it. Check off your "Site Feed URL" and then press the OK button at the bottom.

PRESTO! Like magic... your Blogs site feed has now been added to your My MSN page which will then be spidered in the next 24-48 hours and Indexed by MSN.

That's the Power of BLOGS(Web-Logs) and RSS(Real Simple Syndication)combined with two Internet giants.

The only thing you have to bring to the table IS, fresh, quality content that your audience WANTS, and do it on a regular basis.

I post my articles that I write on a weekly basis, making my Blog called... The Internet Wonders Blog - http://theiwe.blogspot.com - a search engine Magnet!

You can do the same because I just showed you HOW.

In conclusion, creating BLOGS and using RSS as a vehicle to syndicate your Blogs content is a Sure-Fire way to get your content spidered more frequently by search engines and the exposure it deserves, which in turn, will build you a large audience of buying customers that TRUST you.

About the Author: Want to get MORE 'Insider' marketing Secrets on How-To drive HUGE amounts of Laser Targeted Traffic to your website? Then you need to subscribe to Cory Threlfall's ezine called... The Internet Wonders eZine at -- http://www.internetwondersezine.com

How To Build A Quality Internet Blog

Although there are millions of blog on the net already, it is still possible to take advantage in building one in order to build traffic and promote your website.

Even if you can setup a blog in minutes, it takes some time to make it work well and optimize it for the search engines.

As for everything on the internet, search engine optimization (SEO) is of paramount importance if you want to achieve the goal of getting traffic from the search engines, especially Google.

Their crawlers are indexing new pages everyday, but the position you will have in their SERPS is up to how much your pages were optimized for a certain keyword. This applies for blogs as well, so it is important to understand how to build a search engine friendly blog.

A good starting point when building a blog is to get a quality script to install on your website. There are many open source and commercial solutions, but probably the most successful and good one is Wordpress. You can download a copy of this script on http://www.wordpress.org , and install it in minutes.

The installation process is quick and hassles free. Once you have your Wordpress copy up and running, you need to start optimizing it properly. You can start using their default template, otherwise you can find a good one on many specialized sites.

In order to perform SEO on wordpress you will need to install an hack like the one called Optimal Title, that you can easily find on google. This will help you to optimize your page titles, but the result given by this script is not good yet for a perfect optimization.

In fact, you should avoid putting your site name at the beginning of your page titles, otherwise you are risking to have all your pages filtered as duplicate content by Google. Henceforth, you need to manually tweak the script to make it view blog titles only in the header.

You can easily do it by editing the code basing yourself on the hack readme. In the same way, you can make descriptions and keywords meta tags look properly using common SEO rules. As a final note, if you are building a blog to make money from targeted advertising as Google Adsense, I would advice not to put it in the beginning, since it would make your page be full of ads rather than actual content; so first of all think to build your traffic, then to monetize it.

For more informations on blogs, how to setup them or on how to promote them with enhanced tools such as blog pings and innovative marketing techniques, you can visit my company website.

About the author: Alessandro Golkar is the founder and CEO of ForumBoosting, the forum promotion and enhancement firm that established its operations in November 2005. Along with the main business of paid forum posting, ForumBoosting is offering blog writing services to the market.

7 Useful Wordpress Plugins for AdSense

WordPress and AdSense

Wordpress is one of the most popular, free solutions for managing your website's content. Google Adsense is one of the most popular way to earn passive income online. WordPress and AdSense is a good combinationation to earn passive income online, are you agreed? Here are 7 useful WordPress plugins for adsense. These WordPress plugins is offering the advance options for blogger to managing and insertion of the Google AdSense.

AdSense-Deluxe

AdSense-Deluxe by Wayne Walrath.

Description: Embed AdSense in your blog posts and make global changes to ad styles from an intuitive (options) control panel. Includes Adsense Preview tool to see what ads would display on a page.

Google AdSense Earnings

Google AdSense Earnings by Atanas Yanev.

Description: Show you todays earnings, past earnings from selected range in DashBoard or in the Options page. Also you can show them to other people with the following code: . http://adsense-wordpress-plugin.ayanev.com.

Author Adsense

Author Adsense by Harley Quine.

Description: This plugin allows authors to specify their own Google Adsense Publisher ID. Admin can pick the ratio of author ad to admin ad. Useful for creating a program similar to writingup.com, or just for allowing your contributers to get something back.

Google AdSense Sharing Revenue and Earnings System

Google AdSense Sharing Revenue and Earnings System by Atanas Yanev.

Description: Ultimate system to share your google adsense impressions and syndicate earnirngs with your co-authors. Complete system for tracking earnings and sharing impressions, just activate the plugin and you are ready to start offering your authors revenue.

AdSense Widget

AdSense Widget by Mike Smullin.

Description: A Google AdSense widget for the new WordPress Sidebar Widgets plug-in. Requires Automattic's Sidebar Widgets plug-in. Easy to install and requires no coding or template modification. Color, size and h2 title of your AdSense widget are all fully customizable from within the WordPress Presentations tab.

Ad Rotator

Ad Rotator by Angsuman Chakraborty.

Description: Displays an advertisement (which is randomly selected from a group of advertisements specified in a text file) at your chosen location. Tested only on WordPress 1.5. Should work with earlier and later versions (future and past proofed). It can also be used with other CMS systems or anywhere where PHP is supported.

Adsense Beautifier

Adsense Beautifier by Supriyadi Slamet Widodo.

Description: Add image next to your adsense to increase your Click Through Rate (CTR) with line separator between ad and image.

About the author: Supriyadi Slamet Widodo (http://www.supriyadisw.net)

Get paid to BLOB

Everyone is complaining about PayPerPost. I'm not. I like the idea. Hell, I think it's a great way for some people (re: people like my sister who have no idea how to generate actual revenue online) to make some money with their websites. Come on, what's wrong with getting paid to blog? It sounds like a win-win situation to me.

Sure, you could use Google AdSense, but guess what? AdSense requires a very high level of traffic to generate anything worth your time; but, with PayPerPost, you don't need a high level of traffic, just a decent PageRank and the ability to deliver advertisers the content they want.

PageRank is easy to get: get link backs from relevant websites and get your website listed in dmoz. Delivering what the advertisers want, however, is a bit more difficult than that, but I've got a few tips that will help you keep the advertisers happy and the money rolling in:

• Mind your subject matter. Sure, that "jet turbine" offer looks promising, but if your blog is about jelly making, you should probably steer clear of that offer.
• Follow the rules. If an offer requires you to link to a certain site X number of times in your article then DO IT. You will not get paid if you do not follow the requirements of the post. Make sure you pay special attention to the minimum number of words in the article as well as any required phrases, links, and photos.
• Be mindful of the tone of your article. Advertisers generally prefer a positive tone in the article you’re going to write about them. The advertising requirements will list a tone that you should follow: either negative, neutral, or positive. Don't write a negative article when the advertiser wants a positive one, or you won't get paid.
• Maintain a 1-month archive. If the article is not accessible on your website for a month you will not get paid for the work you've done.

Sure, some bloggers might complain about the service, but those people are living in some fantasy world where every blogger can generate an obscene amount of traffic and get rich with AdSense, but if you want to get paid to blog then PayPerPost just might be your answer.

About the author: Jason Pullara has run a successful sole proprietorship in New York City building, repairing, and maintaining workstations and personal computers for local businesses and consumers for 5 years, and currently runs a successful content marketing website at Geekstreak.

Just How Important Are Technorati Tags And Wordpress Categories

Taking into account that search engines are currently the principal means for accessing blogs in the Internet, having one’s blog listed among the top result of a search query is paramount in order to drive traffic to one’s blog. To help boost your blog’s ranking for search engine, here is a tip that any webmaster worth his salt can tell you: Think of the most probable keywords or tags that will be used to search for your blog and then make sure to include these words in your blog post. Make them part of your title. If you are a WordPress user, make them your Technorati tag or WordPress category. Doing so would give you a better chance of being crawled by the search engines.

About Technorati Tags

Technorati is a popular real-time search engine that monitors what is happening in the world of weblogs – the blogosphere. Adhering to the idea that the relevance of a blog is determined by the number of other blogs that link to it, Technorati traces the number of links, the perceived importance of blogs, as well as the actual time of blogging. Technorati automatically receives advice from blogs as soon as they are updated. Technorati tracks down all activities in the blogosphere and indexes them immediately after posting.

As bloggers have probably realized by now, Technorati is an authority in keeping up with the blogging community. Technorati is one of the best traffic sources. Blog posts organized by Technorati tags are its main feature. Technorati makes your blog much easier to find when Internet users search by utilizing Technorati tags.

A Technorati tag is a keyword or a category used to briefly describe the subject matter of a blog post. It can be one or more words. Bloggers categorize or classify their blog posts using tags. The process of assigning tags to blog posts is known as tagging.

For instance, you have a post about cooking, you can use tags like healthy cooking, culinary delights, kitchen gadgets, regional cuisine, food trips, etc. as your tags. You can tag your post with anything you wish. Technorati will still index it and display it on their tag pages.

Technorati tags are like the tags bloggers add to pictures or images on Flickr, the photo sharing site (e.g. using the tag ”culinary delights” for a photo of a sumptuous parmesan chicken with quick salsa verde dish). Technorati tags are also like the tags used to bookmark blog posts in http://del.icio.us. Bloggers assign tags and share all the links with other users through the tags. In fact, Technorati works with these two sites. When you go to Technorati and view a particular post for a specific tag, you will also see images and links to blogs given the same tags by bloggers on http://del.icio.us and Flickr.

Technorati tags offer another way of finding information and interacting on the Internet. Technorati tags usher you to a collection of posts tagged with the same tag. Technorati tags can link to related tag categories not just on Technorati but the other tag sites as well showing a compilation of posts from around the web all related to the tag. Tags can also link to a generated blog post enumerating all the posts on your blog associated with that specific tag. Technorati tags can also be linked from within the text thru a list anywhere on your blog that will take you to the Technorati site for more posts related to the same tag.

Technorati uses WordPress categories as tags. Technorati will automatically recognize your WordPress category names as tags. You can add more tags by just adding a rel=”tag” to any link on your blog. You can also avail of the numerous WordPress plug-ins for maximizing Technorati tags which can be found on the Plug-ins/Technorati list in the WordPress site.

About WordPress Categories

Bloggers using WordPress as their blogging platform can maximize the Categories feature. Categories come with WordPress. You have full rein to add as many categories or subcategories as you like to make it easy for users to find information they need. As mentioned earlier Technorati uses WordPress categories as tags.

Each post in WordPress is entered under one or more categories. This allows posts with related content to be compiled together. Each category may be assigned to a Category Parent. Categories are displayed in hierarchy and alphabetically. Subcategories are displayed after the Parent Category. There are some basic information associated with a category – a unique name, category parent, description (optional) and the number of posts which are members of the category.

Links to categories are shown in different places on the blog. WordPress lists category links in the sidebar. WordPress also shows all the categories to which a given post belongs. When a user views a blog and clicks on one of the category links, a page with all the posts belonging to that category will be displayed.

Just like traditional website marketing, organizing content into categories, in this case WordPress categories, helps both visitors and search engines to easily understand what your blog posts are about and find other posts related to the same category.

Optimizing Technorati Tags and WordPress for Search Engines

Tags are categories that organize the blog system. Given that WordPress categories translate to Technorati tags, it follows that by tagging a blog post, you connect it with a unique category. Technorati provides a tag search that allows web surfers to browse for posts in a particular category. If your posts are properly tagged, this can bring significant traffic.

Google, Yahoo and MSN incorporate Technorati’s tag pages into their search results. This is the reason why Technorati receives much traffic. The longer your post stays at the top of a Technorati tag, the more traffic you will receive. To stay on top, you can continue posting new content related posts to a specific tag.

How high the Technorati tag ranks in the search engine results depend on certain factors. It depends in part on how relevant and unique your Technorati tags are. The more relevant they are, the more likely your blog post will appear in search results. The better you match your Technorati tags (WordPress categories) with the actual content of your blog post, the higher your post will rank in search engines. It will also be effortless for web surfers to navigate within your site. To put it simply, the higher your search engine ranking, the more traffic you receive.

Another factor to consider in attaining a high page rank in search engine results is the number of bloggers that have tagged their posts by linking back to Technorati. In fact all blog posts that tag directly to Technorati have received a boost in link popularity. Based on the number of links to your blog from other sites, your blog is given a Google PageRank (a system for ranking web pages and blog posts). The higher the rank, the easier it will be for web users to find your blog when they search for related data. A high Google PageRank will definitely increase your search engine optimization as Google PageRank serves as the basis for the entire web search tools.

About the Author: Danny Wirken http://www.theinternetone.net

Blogging Advice - Give Your Readers What They Want

Web gives a lot of exposure; weblog stabilizes the exposure with a profound purpose. The purpose of a Weblog is to complement e-newsletters, serving readers in a way that extends a blogger's expertise and leadership in the market.

So, what is it that is expected from a blog? A blog is considered to be a place to inform and to be informed. Straight talk is what readers consider to be an ideal blog message. Straight talk is a four or five sentence of direct, informative content about a specific issue or bit of news.

Blogs consists of human expressions and is expected to have a soulful purpose. Blog posts are expected to be a personal post, as it can convey blogger's emotions. So, these messages are mostly written in first person singular and are rich in emotions. Blogs are also expected to provide details from the writer's life: missed flights, break-ups, rodents under the stove, computer breakdowns, muggings, and tamale recipes and more.

A blogger should always remember that if there are doubts that readers will discount the article entirely based on its context; they shouldn't consider linking it at all.

Authentication of the message is one important aspect that a blog post is expected to adhere to. Blogs are expected to be clear about its source. This avoids chances where readers may cease to trust the bloggers. These chances may take shape if discovered that the information source has been disguised or the blogger didn't make the source of an article clear. The readers might have evaluated these sources differently had they been given all the facts. Into every aspect of the practice of weblogging, transparency is one of the weblog's distinguishing characteristics and greatest strengths.

A writer's goal and priority should always be clarity.

It is a bloggers responsibility to focus exclusively on producing content that attracts the reader. What determines the right kind of content? This can be determined by reading other blogs and hitting whatever is hot in discussion or high in trend.

The most compelling bloggers are necessarily the ones with the most insightful analyses and the best links; besides this the most successful are those who get the reader interested in their own ongoing story. Because bloggers on similar subjects link to each other, the reader finds it easier to understand opposing points of view. For bloggers, not linking to others is a death sentence for their ratings.

Earn Money with Google Adsense and Wordpress

If you have a business in online marketing using Google Adsense and affiliate marketing then you should consider using Wordpress as a basis for your site.

Wordpress is a blogging platform that can also be used as a Content Management System (CMS). Getting content online with Wordpress is quick and easy, and managing your content is a breeze.

Wordpress has an administration panel known as 'dashboard' which allows you to write and manage posts and pages in a simple wordprocessor like fashion. Dashboard also allows you to manage categories and all other aspects of your site.

The really great thing about using Wordpress as a basis for your adsense website is how customizable it is. Many thousands of different templates (or 'themes') are freely available to Wordpress users, and many of these include adsense blocks in optimal positions for maximizing your clickthrough rate. This means that creating an adsense website can be as simple as uploading a adsense ready theme to your server. This leaves you with more free time to concentrate on writing quality content for your website!

Some Wordpress themes that include adsense ad units and link units are also Search Engine Optimized (SEO), which means that the pages of your site are constructed in the best way possible for search engine spiders, and also the pages are interlinked in such a way as to ensure the search engines can reach all pages of your site in the correct manner.

Wordpress also 'pings' many services for you through pingomatic each time you create a new post. This alerts the search engines to the fact that you have created new content and tells them to send the search engine spiders out to index your site. RSS feeds and sitemaps can also be generated automatically.

As Wordpress is a blogging platform it has built in functionality to allow visitors to your site to comment on the articles you write. This is great as it encourages user interaction and site 'stickyness'. Another often overlooked advantage to this is that your readers are creating more content on your website each time they leave a comment!

Thousands of 'plugins' are available for Wordpress - plugins bring extra functions to your site and are quick and easy to install. One super-useful plugin for affiliate marketers automatically turns words into links. It is easy to create a list of affiliate links and words that you would like them associated to.

Wordpress is the adsense and affiliate webmasters best friend!

About the author:Nicky Pilkington
Find adsense ready wordpress themes and useful wordpress plugins at http://pilkster.com. Integrate Amazon products to your blog at http://awspress.com

How To Install and Setup WordPress Blog

In these days, blogging become more and more popular. Internet is full of different weblogs today. Some bloggers use services like Blogger.com. Those who want to have their blogs more under control are looking for quality blog script. In this article I will introduce probably the best PHP script for blogging. I will explain how to install it and how to setup this script to work properly.

Web hosting requirements for WordPress

Before you start the installation process, ensure that your web host offers PHP support and MySQL database. PHP version must be at least 4.1 or higher and MySQL version must be 3.23.23 or higher. If you are not sure which version your web hosting provider currently use, contact their help desk and ask them first.

How to install WordPress

You can download WordPress script from developers website for free (under GNU General Public License). Save the *.zip file on your hard disk and use software like WinZip or Total Commander to unpack these files to temporary folder. First, rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php. Then open this file in your favorite text editor (Notepad will do). Edit next variables -- the name of the MySQL database (create a new one using your web hosting control panel in case you had never created it before), your database username, password and MySQL database server (usually localhost). In the next step, upload all files to your web host. Point your browser to /wp-admin/install.php and follow the instructions on the screen. During the installation process the admin password will be generated. Note this password because you will need it in the next step.

Another and easier solution how to install this PHP script is to sign up for a quality web hosting service which offers pre-installed PHP scripts. Then easily go to your control panel, find the section with pre-installed scripts and select WordPress. The installer will do all the job for you. All you need to do is to choose the script you want to install.

How to setup WordPress

Now the script should be successfully installed. Point your browser to wp-login.php file in your WordPress folder and sign in with the username admin and the password generated during the installation. Your password can be changed from the Profile section at any time.

For many bloggers the look of their blogs is very important. From this reason WordPress offers the option to change the layout and I will show you how to do it. First look around the Internet and find some WordPress theme you will like. Try to type something like WordPress+theme to Google. You will find many websites with pretty nice WordPress themes. Then upload the layout files to wp-content/themes/your-new-layout-name folder. From the Presentation section select your new theme and activate it. Your blog has now a new look!

Ok, now is the right time to start blogging. You can easily start from the Write section of your Admin Panel. I wish you a lot of success and many satisfied readers!

About the author: Bedrich Omacka, Bedrich is marketing manager of Marble Host, web hosting company which offers pre-installed scripts including WordPress. Please visit http://www.marblehost.com for more information.

Proven Techniques Help You Blogging - Guaranteed!

The more you understand about any subject, the more interesting it becomes. As you read this article you'll find that the subject of Blogging is certainly no exception.

If writing is an art, then, blogging is one way of using words to come up with an art. This is because people who are into blogging are the ones who are artistic on their own sense, carefully choosing words that would best describe their feelings, sentiments, wishes, desires, and everything.

Basically, blogs were first introduced as weblogs that refer to a “server’s log file.” It was created when web logging hit the virtual market. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web logging gradually saturated the virtual community making the Internet a viable source of greater information.

However, with web logging, you still need a web site and domain names, but with blogging, you do not need anything just an account with blog providers. In most cases, these kinds of blogs are free of charge.

With the onset of blogging in the industry, personal journaling had been a common ground for people who wish to be known all over the world. However, not literally famous as this is not a case on being popular or well-known personality.

Generally, blogs are created for personal use. Like a journal, people can write their daily adventures, sentiments, and whatever ideas they want to express online. Nevertheless, with the advent of the online businesses, blogs had gradually taken the limelight in providing businesses a chance to boost their productivity online. This is where the business blogs have taken the limelight.

Business blogs are, basically, created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or online business in order to increase online sales.

Moreover, business blogs are also one way of promoting the company so that the other readers will know that a certain company exists online. With blogs, entrepreneurs are able to establish a name in the virtual market through articles that can be very useful in the reader’s life. From there, you can make money out of blogs by simply syndicating it to your business’ web site. This can be done through the RSS technology.

So, if you are thinking to create a blog, whether for business or for pleasure, you need to know some tips that could help you get through and make your blog one of the interesting blogs online.

Here’s how:

1. Consider your audience

Even if your blog is generally personal, still, it would be better to consider the minds of your readers. You have to think of something that would interest them. It's really a good idea to probe a little deeper into the subject of Blogging. What you learn may give you the confidence you need to venture into new areas. After all, most of the reasons of people who write blogs are not at all confined to their own personal motives. Most of them would love to be “heard” (or read) and would love to be known, in some way or another, even for just a minute. Hence, it is very important to come with a write up that everybody can understand, not necessarily that these people can relate to it but they can understand it.

2. Pictures speaks a thousand words

To make your blogging worth the browsing effort of your readers, it would be extremely nice if you will put some pictures in it. It does not necessarily mean you have to place a picture of yourself. Any photographs will do as long as it does not pose danger or insult to anyone who will be reading your blog.

3. Make constructive and beneficial blogs

Even if you are free to write anything you wan to say to the world, still, it would be better to create some write-ups that would be beneficial to your readers. After all, its information technology that you have there so better be inclined to provide information rather than sheer quirky entertainment.

4. Avoid making multifaceted and complicated blogs

In order to have an interesting blogs, try not to use some highly technical and highfalutin words. After all, it is not a science discourse or a debate that you are making, so better stick to simple facts and short blogs.

Bear in mind that most people who use the Internet usually do more scanning than scrutinizing each site word for word. Therefore, it would be better to come with blogs that will not bore your readers just because you have these lengthy articles.

5. Make it interactive

As much as possible and if your capacity will allow it, make your blog interactive. Yu can do this by placing some video or audio clips in your blog.
You can even place an area for comments or for some feedbacks. In this way, you can get some impressions or reactions of other people. Who knows, you might even gain some friends just by making them feel at home in your blog site.
Indeed, blogs are not created just for the mere fun of it. It also has its own purpose in the world of the Internet.
Therefore, for people who wish to harness their craft, as far as writing is concerned, blogs are the best way to do it.
As they say, blogging is the contemporary term of creative and commercial writing.
Take time to consider the points presented above. What you learn may help you overcome your hesitation to take action.

About the author: Wirat Muenpan is the webmaster of Article Ecommerce , Free Article E-commerce Internert Marketing For Reprint http://www.article-ecommerce.com

Why You're Not Blogging - And Why You Should Start Today

Those of you who aren't ready to wade into the Blog pool are taking your time for several reasons, according to my informal interviews with people before and after they blog. Others start blogging and then abandon their projects too soon, unaware of the benefits.

Whatever your reason, you should get started now - or get back to blogging as the case may be. Here’s some motivating enlightenment that you may find surprising.

Reason # 1 that you aren't blogging - You don't realize how huge the benefits are, and how much they may outweigh any monetary or time costs involved.

I think number one may partly the fault of people like me, who have a foot in the marketing arena, and don't explain the idea in detail.

We tend to tell you how great blogging is, but we don't tell you why, or better yet, show you. Or we tell you how to get the best results with your blog, but don't tell you where to start. Let's talk about some of the basic facts.

If you've ever dreamed of going from getting 10 hits a month to getting a few dozen visitors a day from search engines, blogging can make it possible, if you do it right. The structure of a blog, and the fact that most of them automatically generate content feeds, also make them the best food for your friendly neighborhood search engine spider.

If you would like to have visitors come back to your site over and over again, until they buy, you may want to be a blogger. An informative blog that engages your audience shortens the sales cycle. It also creates a courtship period. They can subscribe to your thoughts, see if they like you, even get to know you a little.

People buy from people they like. I don’t remember who said it first, but I’ve learned that it’s the truth.

If your visitors don't feel like they are getting a personality vibe from you, they are often less likely to buy. Vibe = buy. Remember that, and that blogs make it easy for you to vibe.

If you'd like to create new targeted search engine pages for your site without needing to hand-code a new page, or fire up your HTML editor every time, you may enjoy blogging. You log in to your blog admin panel, type your thoughts, proofread, press publish.

Presto. You’re a blogger.

If you'd like free one-way links back to your site that contain your lucrative keywords, blogging helps with that too.

Even if you've made a mess of your SEO efforts, or been the unsuspecting victim of an algorithm change, as long as you aren't banned by a search engine, blogging can help bring you back into top results. Because they have a search engine friendly architecture, and can make use of your keywords automatically, without being gratuitous, they are an easy way to get into a search engine and stay in.

Reason #2 That you aren't blogging - You think it's hard and expensive.

Granted, especially if you're busy, or have a medium sized to large business, it may be in your best interest to hire one of the few consultants that works on these types of issues.

But if you're a small business owner or home business owner with an online element, you can get away with firing up a free blog and paying for an inexpensive custom template if you can't install one on your own. Most blog consultants will do all the keyword research, etc for you, so that all you'll have to do is log in and blog.

Many of the most common blog software systems are free or inexpensive, especially when weighed against the cost of only using paid methods to attract visitors.

Reason #3 That you aren't blogging - You don't think of yourself as a writer.

Not only can you get away with a few paragraphs, you don't have to write in professional-speak, or use industry jargon to blog. By nature, blogging is done in a casual, conversational tone.

And your blog posts don't have to be long article-type entries like mine are. I'm used to writing articles, and I'm just naturally verbose. My audience is used to my mini-brain dumps, just as your blog readers will likely be happy with, or adapt to, whatever your style is. Your audience will be thrilled with a few paragraphs every day, as long as they’re informative and consistent.

So take the plunge. Start blogging today. If you’re already a blogger and didn’t see the benefits the first time around, try making it a part of your routine - and have a little fun. Give it time to work for you.

You’ll be glad you did.

About the author: Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Tinu is a web site promotion specialist who writes about many different ways to get more visitors to your web site. If you want better search engine results, more visitors and return traffic she invites you to take a free ecourse on blogging at http://RescueYourBlog.com .

9 Simple Ways to be an Effective Blogger

Plan to start blogging? Here are 9 tips to ensure you are on the right blogging track.

1. Focus your expertise

Always begin your blog with a theme or a focus. Although you can start one blog for all topics - both business and personal issues - it’s also best to separate your business from your personal blog particularly if the target audience is different. This helps you focus on the theme of your blog and enable you to blog easily without running off tangent!

2. Blog regularly

Commit time to blogging. Blogs are a little different from websites because blogs are expected to be updated more regularly than websites. Be sure to update your blog regularly. For example, I blog twice a week but I do blog extra if I have the time. However, if you worry you cannot blog regularly, try this time-saver tip of mine – set aside a day to draft 4 or 5 blog entries all at one go. Use them on days when you’re pressed for time or have writer’s block and cannot think of anything to blog about.

3. Show your personality

Don’t be afraid to show your personality when you blog. In fact, a blog is the best place to show the best bits of yourself – share as much as you can about how you feel and why you say the things you do. Don’t be afraid to use humour or honesty. Your readers will love you for being frank. Having said that, do set some personal rules as a blogger. My personal mantra is that I don’t cuss or have four-letter words in my blog.

4. Encourage feedback

Your blog exists because you want to start ‘conversations’ with your readers. You have an opinion to share and you want others to share theirs too. Some bloggers prevent their readers from leaving comments by turning off the Comments feature on their blog. I say enable your readers to provide you feedback but moderate comments – remove those which are rude. If you worry about spamming, plug in extra security by getting readers to register before they can leave comments and get the comments sent to you for approval prior to being posted to your blog.

5. Use photos to sell

Photographs always capture attention and convey emotions. They also help break the monotony of large sections of text. Remember to re-size them before you upload them to your blog. This keeps photograph sizes standard and consistent. I use photos which are re-sized to 400 pixels wide by 300 pixels tall. Don’t have gorgeous photos? Get them free from free stock photo sites such as freefoto.com or sxc.hu

6. Include links to other blogs

Include links to other blogs or websites. The mistake most people make is that they don’t want to link out because they’re worried their readers will leave. Don’t worry about them leaving - focus on writing quality engaging content. Your mission is to get them hooked enough that they will bookmark your blog and return often!

7. Use proper grammar and spellcheck

I can’t stress enough the importance of using proper grammatical language when blogging. You don’t have to be an expert in a language to use it well. Just remember that what you blog should be easy to understand without spelling or grammatical errors.

8. Ensure readability

When you blog, keep in mind that you need to ensure that your readers will be able to read easily. Follow newspaper conventions: use subheads to break up long paragraphs, keep one idea to one paragraph and use bulleted lists if the information is too unwieldy. Don’t torture your readers by having white text on a dark or black background. It hurts the eyes! Black text on white or light background always works best.

9. Be personal

The easiest way is to constantly use ‘you’ and ‘I’ liberally throughout your blog. This keeps it casual, friendly and easygoing. You definitely don’t want to blog in the third person because that would defeat the purpose of your blogging. Imagine you are having a conversation with your best friend. Use this mental image when you are blogging and you’ll never be stuck for ideas or words!

About the author: Krista Goon is the co-founder and business partner at http://www.RedboxStudio.com, a web design and web consultancy firm based in Penang, Malaysia. She has been blogging since 2003 (she writes for 3 different blogs - all on different topics) and has given talks about blogging. Find out what else she is raving (or ranting about) in her blog over at http://www.MayaKirana.com

Optimise Your Blog Traffic and Earn More Money

When blogging first came to prominence it was little more than a glorified – and public – online journal for many people. However, with its great increase in popularity, it has now become a popular way of making money via the use of affiliate links and advertising programmes such as Google Adsense. If you are considering trying your hand at earning money from blogs, or if you already have a blog set up, it is crucial that you know how to make it a success.

Produce a good quality blog

First of all, it is imperative that you are providing quality content. Make sure you know your subject well so that you can produce a blog which is informative and well written. If you are enthusiastic about your chosen subject, so much the better, as you will know what your target audience are interested in and can tailor a blog suited around those wants or needs.

If you have set up a blog purely as a potential get rich quick scheme and have not invested the necessary time and effort into researching your topic, it will show in your blog. Unless your blog is targeted at a particularly narrow niche there are likely to be hundreds of other blogs competing with yours for traffic, so if you have produced a poor quality site people will have no hesitation about going elsewhere. They certainly won’t be staying long enough to take a look at your affiliate links or click on any adverts.

Update your blog regularly

If you have produced a good quality blog you should receive a steady stream of interested visitors and be earning a little money. However, the bloggers you are probably aspiring to – those who are earning 6 figure incomes from their sites – are earning good money because they are constantly building on their success by constantly adding fresh content, maybe even as frequently as several times a day.

It is in your best interest to keep your target audience hooked, and returning to visit your pages again and again. A regular reader is much more likely to tell people about your blog or link to it from their own sites, and in the long term this is going to be very beneficial to driving up your traffic.

There is a second way in which regular blogging can greatly increase your traffic. There are sites specifically dedicated to bloggers announcing the new addition of content to their sites. Post a link to your new blog entry every time you add new content as when the search engines trawl the internet these links will help speed up the indexing of your pages. Services such as pingomatic.com can help you do this automatically.

Use of keywords

Keep in mind what keywords are likely to draw people to your blog. Within the text, some keywords are going to be given more value than others by the search engines, such as those included in the header, bold text, or those used for hot links. The more emphasis given to the targeted keywords on your blog, the better your search engine ranking will be.

However, try to find a balance between your use of keywords and providing quality content. Over use of keywords can mean the quality of your blog suffers as the text may not ‘flow’ so well. It is also worth noting that if the keyword density is much more than 5% some search engines may regard your blog as potential ‘spam’, and your engine ranking will suffer.

Blog Directories

Seek out blog directories such as blogwise.com and bloghub.com. As well as increasing the number of back links to your sites (thus raising your search engine ranking) you will also be taking advantage of the fact that many people searching for blogs do so through these directories rather than using search engines. This is particularly beneficial if your blog is still fairly new and not particularly prominent on the search engines yet.

Building a succesful blog takes time. Do not be discouraged if it does not immediately attract good traffic as this will come with time and perseverance. Your efforts will eventually be rewarded and with an increase in traffic will come great money making potential.

About the author:Leanne Williams, Leanne has had several articles published on the subject of making money. http://www.savingmoney-makingmoney.co.uk

RSS Directory Submission: The Key To Blog Promotion

According to Technorati, there are over 15 million blogs as of July 2005. And during July, an average of 80,000 new blogs were created each day. If you own a blog, how are you going to promote it in order to stay ahead of the competition?

Fortunately, there is a simple, yet very effective method: RSS directory submission. Submitting your RSS newsfeed to specialized news directories benefits your site in several ways.

RSS directory submission increases your readership. When a person is looking for newsfeeds to add to their RSS reader, it is highly likely they will visit an RSS directory to find newsfeeds on their subject of interest. I recently visited a directory looking for personal business blogs. I subscribed to several, and now read them via RSS on a regular basis. Someone else may have an excellent business blog, but since they weren’t listed in the directory, I was unable to discover their site.

RSS directory submission enables your content to be duplicated and linked to from other sites. One of the key benefits of syndicating content through RSS is that it increases your reach. You can publish an article, then have excerpts of that article placed on hundreds of other websites – with links back to the original on your site. Many webmasters want to have fresh content for their visitors, and embedding an RSS newsfeed is the easiest way to do that. You’ll want to make sure that you are listed in RSS directories when a webmaster visits looking for website content – or your competitors may get the free promotion!

RSS directory submission provides immediate link popularity. RSS directories are similar to other web directories – you get a free, one-way link back to your site when you are listed. Think about this. Most RSS directories carry a pagerank (PR) of 5 or higher. When you multiply that over 50 RSS directories, that is a lot of links back to your site – meaning increased search engine rank and more visitors.

There are several ways you can submit your RSS newsfeed to directories. The first, obviously, is by hand. You can get a list of the directories (http://www.rss- software.net/rss-directories.php), then go to each website and add your feed manually. Since there are many RSS directories, this can take quite a while. To save the webmaster time, two ways of automated directory submission exist.

The first one is RSS Submit (http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html), a program that automates the directory submission process. All you have to do is open the software, enter the URL for your feed, and RSS Submit will instantly send the feed information to approximately 40 directories. You can also manually submit your site to another 25 directories using RSS Submit’s auto-fill function.

The second method is appropriately named: RSS Directory Submission Service (http: //www.rssdirectorysubmission.com). This service is similar to RSS Submit – you give them your feed URL, and they submit it to over 50 directories. The difference between the two is price: while RSS Submit costs $44.95 for a personal, non- commercial license. RSS Directory Submission Service charges $8.95 per feed submission. And since sites usually only have one feed, the RSS Directory Submission Service is more economical for most RSS publishers.

Regardless of the RSS directory submission method you choose, make sure to do it! You will find the effort small compared to the benefits you receive.

About the Author: Josiah Mackenzie is a entrepreneur who shares business tips and advice through his website: http://www.josiahmackenzie.com . His latest project is an RSS/Blog Directory: http://www.rss-blog-directory.com

Paid surveys-Simplest way to make money online.

Paid surveys-Simplest way to make money online.

There are thousands of websites which will post ads that says something like this "TAKE THIS INTERESTING SURVEY AND GET A 1000$ GIFT CARD".This definitely can't be considered as a paid survey.If you read the terms and conditions of this type of surveys you will easily find out that you will have to sign up for their sponsors trials and offers to receive the reward. So what actually is a real paid survey? Surveys conducted by a legimate market research firm who are hired by a company to gather information about a certain product or a type of advertisement and the result they get from people helps the company in decision making in the future about how their products should be modified and what type of advertisements are more effective. Where and how can i find legimate firms offering real paid surveys? You can easily find sites and people who are selling information about paid survey companies for a price of $50 or less and can be more at times.But if you choose this option u are getting fooled.The fact is that u can find all the information they are selling,for free,by using any of the good search engines.You can also look for sites offering free lists of paid online surveys. Incentives offered:- Incentives offered by the paid survey companies vary from site to site. Generally they take the following forms.Cash,Gift certificates,Merchandise(DVD's,small appliances,electronic gadgets etc)and Charity donations.EaCh site will offer one or more of the above for your participation in an online survey.Some will offer you straight cash(eg:-Get $5 for taking this survey),Some will enter you into sweepstakes after you finish their survey(eg:-Take this interesting survey and 1 out of 100 will win $200).There are some sites which offers points system in which accumulated points can be redeemed for cash or other incentives. In my opinion you need not pay a single dime to get a database of paid survey companies because with very little effort you will be able to find all the information yourself for free.In fact market research firms are actually prohibited from charging people to take part in surveys.So if any of them asks for you to pay money to get paid u can be sure that its a scam. If any of u have the feeling that you are going to get rich by taking part in online surveys that surely will not happen(unless u win a sweepstake).But from my experience i know that it is definitely possible to make a decent money from taking online paid surveys.Make sure you have signed up for as many survey sites as you can so that you will get a lot of survey opportunities every month. How much money you can make depends on a number of factors like ,how many site you signed up with?,how often you take part in surveys?,what your demographic is? etc. Think of this as a hobby and the earnings from this as extra cash and not as a career.Eventhough its not going to make you filthy rich ,taking online surveys can be an enjoyable way to make make some extra money easily,a chance to see and use products before they are introduced to the market, a chance to express your opinions on the products u are currently using.It definitely is not too bad for a few minutes of your time. About the author:Sushith Mundayadan,Publisher of http://google-earn-money.blogspot.com/ has a wealth of experince in online money making.The content in this article was developed from his experience in these businesses and his continual research into further business improvements.

Paid Surveys: Everyone has an opinion. Why not get paid for

If you are just beginning to explore methods of making money on the internet, one of the easiest ways to get started is to join a growing number of people who make money in their spare time by participating in paid online surveys, focus groups, and product testing. These programs include anything from watching movie trailers online and giving feedback, completing 5-minute opinion polls, or testing products like perfume or cologne. There is an equally wide range of compensation for those who contribute a bit of their time and opinions. Some researchers with offer free products in exchange for your time. For example, a survey conducted by a popular music magazine might entitle you to a free one-year subscription to that magazine. Others will enter each survey-taker into a sweepstakes; for example, one in 200 people who complete the survey will win $200 in cash or a free mp3 player. Some will offer a voucher for goods, such as $10 off any order at Amazon.com. Many paid surveys offer straight-forward cash compensation. It is not uncommon to receive $25.00 for a survey that takes 15 minutes to complete. That is not bad considering it is something you can do in your pajamas while enjoying your morning coffee and bagel. In addition to cash compensation and prizes, many people enjoying participating in the process which decides which products will be sold or not. Why are companies willing to pay for your opinion? That's simple. It is estimated that companies in the US alone spend 300 billion dollars a year in advertising and market research. It makes sense for these companies to pay a small group of people to test a product before launching a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. The information gained through this kind of research is invaluable for the company. For the user, paid surveys are ideal for college students, busy parents, or anyone who wants to pick up a bit of extra money, as well as anyone interested in advertising and marketing. The great thing about taking paid surveys is that once you announce yourself as someone interested in contributing their opinion, you will receive e-mail invitations to participate. If you are too busy, if the subject of the survey is not of interest to you, or if the compensation is not what you are looking for, simply decline the invitation. On the other hand, if the survey does spark your interest, complete it and payment will be on its way. Can you think of a better way to make money? Some people who take online paid surveys make an extra $500 or so per month to cover car payments or student loans, while others devote 5 or 6 hours a day to it and make a full income. About Online Survey Networks While it is possible to surf the net and find sites where you can register to participate in paid surveys, it is highly recommendable to join a survey network, which will give you instant access to THOUSANDS of programs that are ready to pay you for your opinion. The best survey networks charge one-time nominal registration fee. This registration fee covers customer service, allowing for easy-to-follow instructions and tips on how to get started. The customer service also works to check all of the sites they recommend, so you will not wind up at a bogus site that will take you personal information and not pay you for your time. Joining a survey network ensures your privacy and cash compensation. Once you join the network, you will have access to thousands of paid surveys, and can easily pay off the cost of your registration by taking one 30-minute survey. After that, all of the profit will be yours, and the networks do not subtract a commission or fee from your payment. There are three excellent survey networks that have a reputation for reliable lists and excellent customer support. For beginners, a good place to start is Survey Scout (http://www.easy-learn-to-earn.com/survey_scout.html), as they offer a free software tool that safely automates the process of filling in your name and information when your register for surveys, in some cases cutting the time to register for a survey from 5 minutes to 30 seconds. Express Paid Survey (http://www.easy-learn-to-earn.com/express_paid_surveys.html), and Paid Surveys Online (http://www.easy-learn-to-earn.com/paid_surveys_online.html), are also excellent reputable networks. Obviously, the more networks you join, the more safe survey sites you will have access to. The more survey sites you register with, the more invitations to participate you will receive. The more paid surveys you participate in, the more you will receive in cash or free products. About the author: John Case is the author of http://www.easy-learn-to-earn.com, a free guide to making an income online, and maintains an SEO site at http://www.awordsworth1000pictures.com/

You Can Make Money Doing Online Paid Surveys!

For the past few years, there has been a lot of talk going on about earning money by taking surveys online. Yet despite the buzz, many people are still skeptical about online paid surveys. Where does this skepticism stem from? Perhaps it comes from misinformation or the lack of information. Thus I thought it would be great for everyone if I were to share my experience in this field. I do not claim to be an expert but I do have a lot of experiences with taking paid online surveys. Trust me, if you like spending your free time online, participating in online paid surveys is one way to make good use of that free time. The basic idea is to earn money while enjoying yourself. Majority of companies engage in market research. This is how they try to get into the minds of their customers. They try to find out what we use, what we want, when and how we want it. Be it products or services, the goal is the same – to give the consumers what they want. In the old days, their methods were primarily limited to telephone surveys and questionnaires over the mail. With the Internet, research methods have undergone a revolution. It is now easier to get in touch with a broader consumer base. This is where we come in. We are the consumers. The companies want our opinion. They need it. Normally, manufacturers make use of another entity – the market research companies. These are the middle men who specialize in getting information out of consumers. These are the institutions we actually sign up with when we want to participate in online surveys. One important thing you must not forget is what I said in the beginning – I earn money through surveys as a supplement to my regular income. I have no dreams of becoming a millionaire out of this. Legitimate survey companies usually offer cash payments in small amounts – not more than $100 perhaps. More often, each survey will earn you anything from $1-$5. Think about it though, small things add up to big things. A note of caution: be wary of survey advertisements offering prizes that are just out of this world. Try to verify their legitimacy by checking out blogs and other paid survey sites which review such companies. So why not try it out? Look for some well-known names in the online paid survey business. Make use of websites that have already gone through these companies and listed them according to their features. That will make things easier for you. Remember, when signing up for the first time, fill out your profile clearly and thoroughly as this will be the basis for your participation in surveys. It’s easy, simple, and fun. About The Author:Nicolas Woiwod,Over the past few years, Nicolas Woiwod has accumulated a lot of experience in participating in paid online surveys, paid e-mails, and affiliate marketing. To reap the benefits of his extensive knowledge, please visit: http://www.paidsurvey24.com

Building Link Popularity The Way Google Loves It!

One of the best ways to generate free traffic is via the search engines. If you have some prior SEO knowledge, then you know that the best way to improve your rankings in the search engines is by establishing relevant links to your website. So building link popularity is indeed important.

But very few webmaster know how to build link popularity the way Google loves it.

So how do you generate a link building campaign that all the search engines will love?

Well, before I get into this, let me first explain what link popularity is.

Link popularity, in simple words, refers to the number of websites that post a link to your website. Some SEO experts believe that the more links that post a link to your website, the more your rankings improve in the search engines. But this is not always the case. Link popularity is a little more complicated than this.

When building link popularity you want to take into account a list of things. But for the sake of this report, I just reduced the list down to 2 important factors that will affect the way Google and the rest of the other search engines list your site.

1. Choosing the Right Websites

Selecting the right sites to request a link partnership from will be responsible for the great part of your success. Your main objective, when launching a linking campaign is to establish links on sites that are truly related, or in the same theme of your website. If you are trying to build links for a site that discusses potty training for dogs, then you do not want to request a link partnership from a site in the make money niche. These two topics are completely unrelated. The Google search engine has an algorithm that recognizes unrelated linking patterns and they will penalize your website if they find them. Therefore, study the websites of your potential link partners.

2. Grow Your Links Slowly

With the way the search engine algorithms are acting right now, it is much more safer to slowly grow your link popularity day by day. It will be a lot safer to gather about 4 or 5 link partners per day rather than 20 a day. You should never blast a link request to an email list with a bunch of people looking for link partners. Any type of irregular, or excessive link growth will trigger the search engines and cause them to penalize your site. Never grow your link popularity too fast. Just be patient and you’ll be much better off in the end.

That is it for my 2 important rules for developing link popularity. Just adhere to these link building rules on a daily basis and you’ll see great traffic improvements in 3 months time.

A key rule is to try and continually build your link popularity until Google lists at least 100 links pointing to your website. This is a small rule of thumb for us SEO marketers. Any website with 100 link partners listed in Google is known to pull some pretty decent traffic.

About the author: Melvin Perry is an internet entrepreneur that specializes in list building and SEO. He is offering over 200 minutes of SEO list building videos that you can download and view for FREE at SEO List Building Videos

When Google Creates a PPC Ad, This is What They Do

A recent study has given new insight into how Google insiders write their own Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. These ads are created by Google for large corporate advertisers who rely on Google employees to produce PPC ads for them. Knowing how the AdWords system works, leads these Google insiders to develop ads in a very special way. Because they can take advantage of secret processes and patented algorithms to produce PPC ads that work extremely well. Are these unique, insider methods available to all?

Employ Unique Ad Text

Google insiders know that PPC ad text should be special - customized to include the advertiser's UVP (Unique Value Proposition). What separates you, from your competition? Find the answer. Then put the essence of that, into your ad text.

Include Your Price in the Ad Text

Including price in ad text has a bunch of outstanding benefits. Here are two;

- it gives your prospect more information - as your competitors probably aren't doing it, and

- if your price is too high for an individual to consider, happily you'll have steered them away from clicking on your ad. This is a good thing - as they won't cost you money. Money that can be saved for someone who is willing to consider your price.

Use Keywords in the Headline

The Almighty Headline. It's is the most important element of any PPC ad. Google strongly recommends you always include the search keyword in the headline. And indeed, insiders do this in their own ads.

A headline's primary purpose is to attract your prospect's attention. And it will do this much better with the keyword in the headline. Because that keyword will appear bold on your prospect's screen.

Your headline's second job is to boost the ad's Google Quality Score. According to Google; "Quality Score is the basis for measuring the quality and relevance of your ads and determining your minimum CPC bid for Google and the search network. This score is determined by your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, and the relevance of your ad text, keyword, and landing page."

Including the search keyword in the headline means you'll need to create a number of tailored ads. Each should have only a very small number of keywords. No problem – as a gift from the Google Gods, their Campaign Management screen makes it easy for you.

Use Negative Keywords

We tell our children not to be negative - it's just not nice. But make an exception for yourself, because in the world of Google, Negative Keywords are absolutely critical to your success.

According to Google; "A negative keyword is a special kind of keyword matching option that allows you to prevent your ad from appearing when the specific terms are a part of the user's search." Google insiders make extensive use of negative keywords. So should you.

Include Keywords in the Ad Text

Search keywords in ad text will be displayed in bold. This attracts greater attention – an outstanding free bonus. What's more, they'll further increase your ad's Quality Score. And always use proper spelling & grammar and in your PPC ads; Google is picky about this.

Have a Strong Call to Action

Google insiders love to do this, because it works. In your ad text, make sure you tell your prospect what action you want them to take. Use dynamic marketing language to entice your prospects to take the next step has real benefits. But what does dynamic marketing language mean?

In a nutshell, it means grabbing your prospect by the eyeballs and dragging him into your ad. Then telling him what to do.

According to Google; "Your ad should convey a call-to-action along with the benefits of your product or service. A call-to-action encourages users to click on your ad and ensures they understand exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing page. Some call-to-action phrases are; 'Buy, Sell, Order, Browse, Sign up, and Get a Quote.' "

Produce at Least Two Ad Variations

Many advertisers create a single ad and run with it. Are they insane?

You should always be split-testing your ads (have a slight variation in your ads, which then automatically alternate so you can see which variation is working better). Google put the Ad Variation function there for a reason. Best of all, it's so easy – it would be a crime not to take advantage.

Enter Keywords in the 'Displayed' Web Address

Keywords in the displayed web address will increase each ad's Quality Score. Use a subdomain or subdirectory in your site structure to allow this. I strongly recommend this technique, and have produced a free, 7 minute online streaming video to show you how to do it - and why. Visit www.BetterClix.com and select 'PPC Tips on Video' to watch.

Link the Ad to a Specific Page on Your Site

Ensure your prospect is delivered to the specific page on your site associated with the product or service in the ad. If you don't, and instead rely on her to search for info on your site, you may as well kiss her (and your money) goodbye. This also hurts your Quality Score, as Google is now measuring how long someone stays at your site, once they arrive.

If you're not using every single one of these insider methods, start today. Because you can be sure it won't be long before your sharper competitors will be.

About the author: Roger Hall of BetterClix.com develops programs and pay-per-click ads to help you succeed in your business. Find out more today how to create Pay-Per-Click ads that work, with his popular FREE PPC Tips for advertisers. Available at: => http://www.betterclix.com/adwordsmyths.html

SEO With Google Sitemaps

A Google Sitemap is a very simple XML document that lists all the pages in your website, but the Google Sitemaps program is actually much more important than that. In fact, the Sitemaps program provides a little peek inside Google's mind - and it can tell you a lot about what Google thinks of your website!

Why Should You Use Google Sitemaps?

Until Google Sitemaps was released in the summer of 2005, optimizing a site for Google was a guessing game at best. A website's page might be deleted from the index, and the Webmaster had no idea why. Alternatively, a site's content could be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm, the only pages that would rank well might be the "About Us" page, or the company's press releases.

As webmasters we were at the whim of Googlebot, the seemingly arbitrary algorithmic kingmaker that could make or break a website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning. There was no way to communicate with Google about a website - either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google when something had been updated.

That all changed about a year ago when Google released Sitemaps, but the program really became useful in February of 2006 when Google updated it with a couple new tools.

So, what exactly is the Google Sitemaps program, and how can you use it to improve the position of your website? Well, there are essentially two reasons to use Google Sitemaps:

1. Sitemaps provide you with a way to tell Google valuable information about your website.

2. You can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your website.

What You Can Tell Google About Your Site

Believe it or not, Google is concerned about making sure webmasters have a way of communicating information that is important about their sites. Although Googlebot does a pretty decent job of finding and cataloging web pages, it has very little ability to rate the relative importance of one page versus another. After all, many important pages on the Internet are not properly "optimized", and many of the people who couldn't care less about spending their time on linking campaigns create some of the best content.

Therefore, Google gives you the ability to tell them on a scale of 0.0 to 1.0 how important a given page is relative to all the others. Using this system, you might tell Google that your home page is a 1.0, each of your product sections is a 0.8, and each of your individual product pages is a 0.5. Pages like your company's address and contact information might only rate a 0.2.

You can also tell Google how often your pages are updated and the date that each page was last modified. For example your home page might be updated every day, while a particular product page might only be updated on an annual basis.

What Google Can Tell You About Your Site

Having the ability to tell Google all this information is important, but you don't even need to create a sitemap file in order to enjoy some of the perks of having a Google Sitemaps account.

That's because even without a Sitemap file, you can still learn about any errors that Googlebot has found on your website. As you probably know, your site doesn't have to be "broken" for a robot to have trouble crawling it's pages. Google Sitemaps will tell you about pages it was unable to crawl and links it was unable to follow. Therefore, you can see where these problems are and fix them before your pages get deleted from the index.

You can also get information on the types of searches people are using to find your website. Of course, most website analytics tools will give this information to you anyway, but if the tool you use doesn't have this feature, then it's always nice to get it for free from Google.

But the best part of the Sitemaps program is the Page analysis section that was added in February of 2006. This page gives you two lists of words. The first list contains the words that Googlebot associates with your website based on content on your site. The second list contains words that Googlebot has found linking to your site!

Unfortunately, Google limits the number of words in each list to 20. As a consequence, the inbound links column is partly wasted by words such as "http", "www", and "com" - terms that apply equally to all websites (hey Google, how about suppressing those terms from the report?). That said, this list does provide you with a way to judge the effectiveness of your offsite optimization efforts.

When you compare these two lists, you can get an understanding of what Google thinks your website is about. If the words on your Site Content column are not really what you want Googlebot to think about your site, then you know you need to tweak your website's copy to make it more focused on your core competency.

If, on the other hand your inbound links don't contain any keywords that you want to rank well for, then perhaps you should focus your efforts in that direction.

Above all else, you really want these two lists to agree. You want your inbound linked words to match up to the site content words. This means that Google has a clear understanding of the focus of your website.

Additional Benefits of the Sitemaps Program

Google has even started notifying Sitemaps-participating Webmasters if they are breaking any of Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This can be very valuable information if your site suddenly becomes de-listed on Google and you don't know why.

Only Sitemaps participants can get this information, and it is only provided at Google's discretion. In fact, Google will NOT notify you if you are creating worthless websites that offer no original content, or if you are creating thousands of doorway pages that are redirecting to other web sites. Google doesn't want to give the sp@ammers any clues as to how to improve their techniques.

How Do You Get Started with Google Site Maps?

The first thing you must do is obtain a Google Account. If you already have a Gmail, Adsense, or Adwords account, then you are all set. If not, you can register an account by visiting the Google Accounts page.

Building your sitemap file is pretty easy to do if you are familiar with XML, and if you aren't you can always use a third-party tool such as the ones that are listed on Google's website. Google also has a "Sitemap Generator" that you can download and install on your server, but unless you are fairly adept at managing Python scripts, you should probably stick to the third-party tools.

At any rate, once you have your Google Account and your Sitemap file built, the rest is very easy. All you have to do is:

1. Log into your account

2. Type your website's URL into the "Add Site" box and click on "OK"

3. Click on the Manage Sites link for the website you are adding, and add your sitemap file to your account.

Google Sitemaps - An Excellent SEO Tool

Google Sitemaps help Googlebot quickly find new content on your website. They allow you to tell Google what's important, what's new, and what changes often. The tools provided to webmasters through the program can play a vital role in helping you understand how the search engines (especially Google) view your website.

Using this information you can dramatically improve the position of your website and quickly clear up any issues Google finds. You can also use the tools provided by Google to gauge the effectiveness of your off-site optimization efforts so you can better focus your time and energy on activities that bring you the most success.

About the author: Matthew Coers is an Internet marketing expert. His website, ProfitChoice.com contains online courses designed to teach entrepreneurs how to build a website and make money online. Download his FREE Internet Marketing report, 7 Days to Website Success