A Blog Can Be Very Profitable
If you decide to start a blog to help promote your website, you should be prepared to put quite a bit of effort into maintaining your blog. Frequent posts are not only good for search engines, they are also necessary to maintain your readership. If your blog lies dormant for weeks or months, people will stop visiting and probably won’t come back even if you start posting again. Blog readership is based largely on trust, and if you break that trust by deserting your blog, it is difficult—or even impossible—to win that trust back.
Because blogs are so popular, there are a number of web service providers that furnish blogs. The best news is you can get one free. Blogging software is different from each provider, so you should choose the one that best suits your purposes in starting a blog.
If you’re going to start a blog, you’ll want people to read it. Like website promotion, drawing attention to your blog takes time, effort and commitment. There are millions of blogs out there, and it’s rare for an Internet user to stumble across yours accidentally.
Getting “in” with the blogging world –
Bloggers are a community unto themselves. The best way to promote your blog, initially and over the long run, is to network with other bloggers. Look up blogs with topics similar to yours, read through them, and comment on some of the posts. It’s also helpful to link to other blogs from yours. Most bloggers keep track of who links to them, and will often post a reciprocal link to your blog from theirs without being asked.
The comments section on your own blog is also a good promotional tool. It’s a good idea to leave your comments section open and respond to some of the comments you receive. However, blogs fall prey to spammers who will throw up links to unrelated websites in any unprotected comment section. You can avoid blog spam by enabling word verification for comments. This requires people who leave comments to type in a series of characters in order to post, and keeps automatic software away from your blog. Word verification is a common blog safeguard, and will not deter readers from leaving comments.
It takes time and patience to build a blog readership. As long as you keep making interesting, frequent posts to your blog and continue to visit and comment on other blogs, you will see a steady increase in your number of readers.
BlogRolling and RSS feeds –
Many Internet users don’t want to take the time to continually add to link lists, or to visit all of their favorite blogs and find out who has made new posts. In order to make the process of updating readers easier, two new technologies have been introduced to the blogging world within the past few years: BlogRolling and RSS feeds.
BlogRolling is a linklist manager program used by millions of bloggers to make linking to other blogs easy. By installing free BlogRolling software on your blog, you can manage and categorize your links, and update your list with a WSYWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, rather than going into your HTML template. The best feature of BlogRolling is that it displays a button on your blog allowing other bloggers to link to you with one click. The free program is available at www.blogrolling.com.
—->Access To Done For You Articles For Your Website<—
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is basically a simplified news feed. By adding RSS feed to your blog, readers can be automatically notified when you post a new topic. This keeps them from having to check in on a regular basis, and allows them to visit only when your post interests them.
This may sound counterproductive—why keep readers away from your blog? In truth, an RSS feed simplifies things for readers and makes them more likely to visit. With an RSS feed in place, they are constantly reminded of your blog’s existence, even if they don’t read every post. It is far more effective than hoping people will remember to check back on your blog for a new post.
Other ways to promote your blog –
In addition to networking, BlogRolling and RSS feeds, there are a number of other ways to draw attention to your blog:
• List your blog with search engines, in the same way you would a regular website • List your blog on directories, portals and search engines specifically devoted to blogs (see the Resources section of this book for a list of online blog directories) • Link to your blog from your main website and relevant article pages • Include a link to your blog in your e-mail signature and the resource block of your articles.
Blogging can be an effective tool for promoting your website and boosting your article marketing campaign. Just remember that your blog needs proper care and feeding; neglect it, and it will wither and die.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is another common practice in the blogging world. It’s just what the name suggests: you are a guest posting something to another person’s blog that would be of interest to their readers.
Even if you don’t have your own blog, you may still be able to participate in guest blogging. However, you should familiarize yourself with the blogs you intend to communicate with first and become active in their comments section. Few bloggers will agree to let a complete stranger write a guest blog entry.
Article Directories –
Article directories are vast repositories of free information. These sites allow busy webmasters to grab free content for their websites and newsletters. The catch is that they must include a resource block listing the article author’s bio and website links in order to post permission-free.
Here’s where all your hard work pays off.
It’s good to give things away-
Why should you give your articles away for free? You’ve put hours of work into them, or paid for the rights with your hard-earned cash. Shouldn’t you make some money from your work or investment?
Actually, you will earn money—just not directly. When you allow other people to reprint your articles (including your resource box), you’ll have inbound links to your website spread across the Internet. This will boost your search engine rank and bring more traffic to your website.
The articles themselves will help you convert more visitors to sales. By establishing yourself as an expert through your informative (and free!) articles, you will earn that all-important trust Internet businesses need to flourish. The exposure you will gain by giving your articles away will more than justify the effort and the investment you put into them.
Articles submitted to article directories should be high quality, extremely informative material. The reasoning behind this requirement is simple: you’re competing with hundreds, or even thousands, of articles on similar topics. The higher the article quality, and the more information it contains, the more likely other webmasters and newsletter publishers will be to choose your articles over the competition.
Ok so I hope I could help you see how you can get into blogging for yourself, and some of the ways to get your blog articles seen. If you would like access to some of the best training on the internet on blogging and all internet marketing, I will leave a link below.
To your great success on your online business journey, Bob@lurnprofit
Please leave any question or comments below.
