Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Finding a Niche

Let me tell you now, finding a profitable niche is very important if you want to blog for money as well as affiliate marketing and a lot of people underestimate this. A niche is an idea or topic, which is very popular online, but which also, does not have millions and millions of competing websites related to that topic thereby enhancing your chances of high earnings and if you want to know, you don’t have to spend money on this because there are free tools you can explore online. For some of you, coming up with a clear idea to move forward with is easy. For others, it may take an even harder nudge to get you going in the right direction. Some of you want to use your personal interests, ideas and ambitions and put them into your plan of action. Others (you know who you are) don't care what it's about as long as it is going to make you cold hard cash!

Finding a niche is not just about the profitable topic or product alone, you have to think about yourself and ask; can I keep up with this? You need to find out what you like, your hobbies and what you enjoy doing and mostly, what you talk about. Write them down and they might out to be more profitable than you think. But if money is your drive, I think u will do well with any topic with a little extra work.

Next you need to brainstorm and that’s where u have to do a lot of mental analysis although some items or services might be really in demand at the moment, it does not mean that you will make a load of money from the idea. That’s why you need to analyze what people are really into, what keyword they are typing into Google and other search engine and how many times per day there are free tools available that you can use, sites like Google technorati dogpile. For example, when people go to Google and type in “buy golf clubs online” – that is a key phrase. The person is seeking to purchase golf clubs online. Your goal (if you were the webmaster or person selling golf clubs online) would be to have your website show up in the top 5 or top 10 list of websites that Google pulls up when that key phrase is typed in. In order to achieve the top ranking, you must understand how to conduct research and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Wordtracker and Search Engine Optimization go hand-in-hand, and it’s of paramount importance that you understand how to research, optimize and pull the two together. Here are varieties of completely free research tools, which you can use to find your niche for blogging as well as affiliate marketing, alexa, nichebot, technorati, rankpulse, yahoo’s keyword tool and lot’s more.

So I think you need to act before you act, don’t just jump into blogging, do a little research because it may be a very good decision in the long run.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Using Feedburner

You need to burn your feed with feedburner. It is completely free and its the easiest way you can burn your feed online. if you burn your feed and your readers subscribe to these feeds, they will use feedburner url to reach your original posts and what's more, you can earn through feeds using adsense for feeds.

Feedburner hosted feeds for more than 250000 publishers and delivered feeds to more than 19 million subscribers. You can easily know how many visitors have subscribed to your blog and which post is the most popular. Feedburner lets you insert your Flickr pictures or del.icio.us links automatically in your feeds. Create your feed burner account. Enter your blog's web address in the "Ready to Burn" in the FeedBurner's home page www.feedburner.com make sure the title and FeedBurner address (URL) of your new feed are values you prefer.click Activate Feed. A "Congrats" your feedburner blogger feed is now ready. Read all of the information on "Congrats", then click 'Next' to continue with the setup process.

You can then redirect your feed through blogger
Open your blogger account in a new browser window. Then go to your Dashboard, click on the 'Setting' tab. click site feed link. type your full FeedBurner feed with "http://" portion into the "Post Feed Redirect URL' text field. Save setting. You are done. Now promot your FeedBurner on your Blogger site. For this Click on "Publicize" tab. A list of publicity related topics will appear. Click on "Checklet Chooser" service- a form will appear. the form is full of several options to promote your Feed Burner feed.Click the radio button next to the button you want to display on your site.Click the drop-down and select "Blogger" to add the chicklet as a widget.Blogger will open in a new window. Follow the prompts there to continue to add the new widget.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Creating a blog community

Blog comment is a very important tool in turning your blog to a meeting place but you also have to do it strategically but let’s see, how valuable is the comment tool?

• Your readers help you build your blog. Their comments are all indexed and become a part of the content on your blog. How many times have you performed a search only to find that the keywords showed up in someone's comments? It happens frequently!
• Your readers even provide you with new content ideas either explicitly or implicitly through their comments and suggestions. They also are responsible for shaping your message and passing it on to others, which is a key component of web 2.0. Your readers initiate discussion, bring new readers on board, and become part of your blog's identity.
• As valuable as your community is, you must do everything in your power to encourage its formation, and some of that responsibility rests directly with your readers' ability to comment and add to the discussion. Once they participate, they have a vested interest in the success of your community. That's why encouraging comments is so essential to your blog's success. Commenting leads to more involved readers, which leads to more referrals and more engaged readers.
• Think about it. If you read a blog post on a random blog, how likely are you to go back and reread that same post? But what if you add a comment to the post -- how likely are you to revisit that post? I would guess that you would be very likely to revisit. After all, you want to see what others said in response to your comment. You want to see what kind of conversation forms.

Here are a few ideas to capture comments:

• Provide a do follow link in return: a very easy way to encourage a comment is to remove the "no follow" attribute from your blog's comments. You'll see an increase in spam attempts, but it's worth it to encourage comments.
• Ask for them: rather than wrapping each post up neatly, leave room for discussion. Ask an open-ended question in closing or ask for comments directly.
• Provide a comment RSS feed: blogs all have RSS feeds associated with them so that readers can keep tabs on your blog through their RSS readers. Why not provide them with a comments feed so that they can easily keep tabs on the conversation? Wordpress bloggers can use the "Subscribe to Comments" plug-in for this.
• Highlight your commenter’s' posts: plug-in like "Comment Luv" provides an automatic link back to the commenter's latest blog post. This is an ethical bribe: by contributing a comment, your readers can publicize their latest blog entry.
• Commenter highlighting: you can use plug-in like "Meet Your Commenter" or "Top Commenter" to provide extra insight and incentive for comment posters.
Since your blog was not created for you, you have to make your readers a part of it.


Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Google’s Page Rank Analysis

First let’s analyze what a link is, it’s a piece of text or image that links to your blog, and some of the factors that matter are

· The address which it links to

· The text of the link

· The Page Rank of the page on which the link resides

Let’s break this down. First every blogger naturally wants a link to their blog, but to which page of your blog? To an individual post or to your blog’s home page? Since your blog is a constantly updated website, it is always wise to accumulate all the links to point to your main page instead of individual posts because they tend to be very time-sensitive.


The text of the link also affects your rankings for a certain keyword. Let’s say your blog is about Home Furniture and another site has a link that says “Digital Camera” and links to your blog. Doesn’t make much sense, right? If a lot of links that link to your site contain the terms “Home” or “Furniture”, it will greatly boost your rankings for those keywords. Hence, it’s essential to put some thoughts when requesting links from other webmasters as you want them to link to your blog with appropriate keywords.

What does Google Page Rank means it’s basically a scale set by Google to measure the popularity of websites. You can read more about it on http://www.google.com/technology/. What is interesting is that the higher the Page Rank of a certain website, the more frequent Google’s robots will visit the website to index it. Of course, the Page Rank of a page will also help it to rank higher in Google’s search engine results. In short, having a high Page Rank will bring you many benefits of Search Engine Optimization.


Your blog will start with no Page Rank (which is different to Page Rank 0) because

Google has not yet indexed your blog. Once Google’s robots find your blog through links on other sites, your blog will show a Page Rank of 0 and depending on the Page Rank of the referring page, your blog’s Page Rank will also rise eventually.


Getting high-quality links to your blog will help direct targeted visitors who are interested in your niche to your blog, enable search engines to find and index your blog and ultimately rank higher in search engine results.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Charming your readers

The distinction between a profitable blog and a non-profitable one is the way the blog is written. Just imagine, which one would interest you, your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favorite author? You will likely prefer the novel because it appeals more to your interest, or because it is not as mind-numbing as the lecture notes by your professor. The point is people like to read “light” stuff most of the time. When people stumble on your blog, they are not only looking for information, they are also looking for information they can obtain in a easy way, and better still in a relaxed manner.

You have to know that there is no fixed style when it comes to blogging, which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in, and write it however you want it but you have to choose a favorable pattern as you have a lot of competitors and you have to be unique to stand out.


So, to be a magnet for more visitors as well as to keep current visitors coming back for more, it is very important to add a human touch to your blog posts. Imagine how you will discuss an interesting topic with a close friend of yours. You could also add to it a sense of humor which makes your readers feel you or maybe tell a story about what happened to you when you went for your last vacation.

Another important key point is never addressing your readers as a plural unit. Do not write as if you’re preparing a speech. Instead, do it as if you’re having a conversation to a single person because naturally, this will make your visitor think of you more as a personal friend rather than a person of higher authority which brings on easy familiarity, however don’t lose your sense of information by overdoing it.

Besides that, it is also very useful to establish your own personality through your words.


We humans are very curious, so naturally your visitors would want to know as much about you as the information you’re offering them. Having a distinctive personality in your blog would make a world’s difference between your blog about gadgets and all the other blogs about gadgets out there. This is a lot like creating your own brand name, where people immediately remember your blog’s name when they need to find out information about gadgets, just like how people immediately think of Mr. Biggs “In Nigeria” for fast-food or Nike for sportswear. So, learn how to simplify your language and write as an equal friend to your visitors, write to them as if you’re talking to a single person and establish your own personality on your blog.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Generating Traffic: The Payment Option

These days, you will get a “payment option” for virtually anything you can think of doing. You might decide not to go through the long process of writing and filling forms to generate traffic, because if you ask me, it’s very nerve-racking. For those of you who can afford it, there is an escape.

However you have to make a research before paying for any service or buy any software because if you don’t, you might lose a lot of money. I will however recommend some of these services which are very reliable.

· I know a very reliable guy named David who can do this for you; he will summit your articles to 230 online directories for just $25 and As far as I know, none of them have any “red flags,” and thus far, you will gain high ranking in no time. His web site is http://www.article-submission-service.com/

· For Directory submission check out http://www.contentkingseo.com/directory_submission.htm it is a directory submission service that costs $27 for 50 submissions.

· Yahoo Directory at: http://dir.yahoo.com/ costs $299 per year but has over 100,000 .edu and .gov backlinks (very important for SEO) – although expensive.

· Microsoft Small Business Directory at: http://sbd.bcentral.com/ costs $49 per year with a placement in up to 3 categories.

· SEOMA at: http://seoma.net lets you submit two websites for a $30 fee and allows you to put your “anchor” text in the link which is surrounded by the keywords you would like to submit it with.

· I can also recommend a software you can use “Active web traffic” a very dynamic software. I was not paid to say this, but it’s the best you can get, it will summit your site to as low as 10,000 sites and as high as 400,000 sites depending on the version you purchased. Get it at http://www.myrasoft.com/activewebtraffic/onlineorder.htm

And lastly you can find out your website’s back links: http://www.domain-pop.com/

Domain-Pop not only lists the website’s back links, but it also tells you the Page Rank (PR) of those links.

Page Rank (PR) is a number from 0 to 10 that Google uses to classify a website's importance. The higher the number the better, When you have other websites linking to yours it shows Google that the other site is giving yours a 'thumbs up'. This in turn shows Google that your site is gaining in popularity. The more links to your site from other sites, especially other sites which are either similarly related to the topic of your site or other sites that have PR already, then the higher the page rank Google will assign to your website.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Finding a Niche

Let me tell you now, finding a profitable niche is very important if you want to blog for money as well as affiliate marketing and a lot of people underestimate this. A niche is an idea or topic, which is very popular online, but which also, does not have millions and millions of competing websites related to that topic thereby enhancing your chances of high earnings and if you want to know, you don’t have to spend money on this because there are free tools you can explore online. For some of you, coming up with a clear idea to move forward with is easy. For others, it may take an even harder nudge to get you going in the right direction. Some of you want to use your personal interests, ideas and ambitions and put them into your plan of action. Others (you know who you are) don't care what it's about as long as it is going to make you cold hard cash!

Finding a niche is not just about the profitable topic or product alone, you have to think about yourself and ask; can I keep up with this? You need to find out what you like, your hobbies and what you enjoy doing and mostly, what you talk about. Write them down and they might out to be more profitable than you think. But if money is your drive, I think u will do well with any topic with a little extra work.

Next you need to brainstorm and that’s where u have to do a lot of mental analysis although some items or services might be really in demand at the moment, it does not mean that you will make a load of money from the idea. That’s why you need to analyze what people are really into, what keyword they are typing into Google and other search engine and how many times per day there are free tools available that you can use, sites like Google technorati dogpile. For example, when people go to Google and type in “buy golf clubs online” – that is a key phrase. The person is seeking to purchase golf clubs online. Your goal (if you were the webmaster or person selling golf clubs online) would be to have your website show up in the top 5 or top 10 list of websites that Google pulls up when that key phrase is typed in. In order to achieve the top ranking, you must understand how to conduct research and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Wordtracker and Search Engine Optimization go hand-in-hand, and it’s of paramount importance that you understand how to research, optimize and pull the two together. Here are varieties of completely free research tools, which you can use to find your niche for blogging as well as affiliate marketing, alexa, nichebot, technorati, rankpulse, yahoo’s keyword tool and lot’s more.

So I think you need to act before you act, don’t just jump into blogging, do a little research because it may be a very good decision in the long run.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Using Feedburner

You need to burn your feed with feedburner. It is completely free and its the easiest way you can burn your feed online. if you burn your feed and your readers subscribe to these feeds, they will use feedburner url to reach your original posts and what's more, you can earn through feeds using adsense for feeds.

Feedburner hosted feeds for more than 250000 publishers and delivered feeds to more than 19 million subscribers. You can easily know how many visitors have subscribed to your blog and which post is the most popular. Feedburner lets you insert your Flickr pictures or del.icio.us links automatically in your feeds. Create your feed burner account. Enter your blog's web address in the "Ready to Burn" in the FeedBurner's home page www.feedburner.com make sure the title and FeedBurner address (URL) of your new feed are values you prefer.click Activate Feed. A "Congrats" your feedburner blogger feed is now ready. Read all of the information on "Congrats", then click 'Next' to continue with the setup process.

You can then redirect your feed through blogger
Open your blogger account in a new browser window. Then go to your Dashboard, click on the 'Setting' tab. click site feed link. type your full FeedBurner feed with "http://" portion into the "Post Feed Redirect URL' text field. Save setting. You are done. Now promot your FeedBurner on your Blogger site. For this Click on "Publicize" tab. A list of publicity related topics will appear. Click on "Checklet Chooser" service- a form will appear. the form is full of several options to promote your Feed Burner feed.Click the radio button next to the button you want to display on your site.Click the drop-down and select "Blogger" to add the chicklet as a widget.Blogger will open in a new window. Follow the prompts there to continue to add the new widget.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Creating a blog community

Blog comment is a very important tool in turning your blog to a meeting place but you also have to do it strategically but let’s see, how valuable is the comment tool?

• Your readers help you build your blog. Their comments are all indexed and become a part of the content on your blog. How many times have you performed a search only to find that the keywords showed up in someone's comments? It happens frequently!
• Your readers even provide you with new content ideas either explicitly or implicitly through their comments and suggestions. They also are responsible for shaping your message and passing it on to others, which is a key component of web 2.0. Your readers initiate discussion, bring new readers on board, and become part of your blog's identity.
• As valuable as your community is, you must do everything in your power to encourage its formation, and some of that responsibility rests directly with your readers' ability to comment and add to the discussion. Once they participate, they have a vested interest in the success of your community. That's why encouraging comments is so essential to your blog's success. Commenting leads to more involved readers, which leads to more referrals and more engaged readers.
• Think about it. If you read a blog post on a random blog, how likely are you to go back and reread that same post? But what if you add a comment to the post -- how likely are you to revisit that post? I would guess that you would be very likely to revisit. After all, you want to see what others said in response to your comment. You want to see what kind of conversation forms.

Here are a few ideas to capture comments:

• Provide a do follow link in return: a very easy way to encourage a comment is to remove the "no follow" attribute from your blog's comments. You'll see an increase in spam attempts, but it's worth it to encourage comments.
• Ask for them: rather than wrapping each post up neatly, leave room for discussion. Ask an open-ended question in closing or ask for comments directly.
• Provide a comment RSS feed: blogs all have RSS feeds associated with them so that readers can keep tabs on your blog through their RSS readers. Why not provide them with a comments feed so that they can easily keep tabs on the conversation? Wordpress bloggers can use the "Subscribe to Comments" plug-in for this.
• Highlight your commenter’s' posts: plug-in like "Comment Luv" provides an automatic link back to the commenter's latest blog post. This is an ethical bribe: by contributing a comment, your readers can publicize their latest blog entry.
• Commenter highlighting: you can use plug-in like "Meet Your Commenter" or "Top Commenter" to provide extra insight and incentive for comment posters.
Since your blog was not created for you, you have to make your readers a part of it.


Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Google’s Page Rank Analysis

First let’s analyze what a link is, it’s a piece of text or image that links to your blog, and some of the factors that matter are

· The address which it links to

· The text of the link

· The Page Rank of the page on which the link resides

Let’s break this down. First every blogger naturally wants a link to their blog, but to which page of your blog? To an individual post or to your blog’s home page? Since your blog is a constantly updated website, it is always wise to accumulate all the links to point to your main page instead of individual posts because they tend to be very time-sensitive.


The text of the link also affects your rankings for a certain keyword. Let’s say your blog is about Home Furniture and another site has a link that says “Digital Camera” and links to your blog. Doesn’t make much sense, right? If a lot of links that link to your site contain the terms “Home” or “Furniture”, it will greatly boost your rankings for those keywords. Hence, it’s essential to put some thoughts when requesting links from other webmasters as you want them to link to your blog with appropriate keywords.

What does Google Page Rank means it’s basically a scale set by Google to measure the popularity of websites. You can read more about it on http://www.google.com/technology/. What is interesting is that the higher the Page Rank of a certain website, the more frequent Google’s robots will visit the website to index it. Of course, the Page Rank of a page will also help it to rank higher in Google’s search engine results. In short, having a high Page Rank will bring you many benefits of Search Engine Optimization.


Your blog will start with no Page Rank (which is different to Page Rank 0) because

Google has not yet indexed your blog. Once Google’s robots find your blog through links on other sites, your blog will show a Page Rank of 0 and depending on the Page Rank of the referring page, your blog’s Page Rank will also rise eventually.


Getting high-quality links to your blog will help direct targeted visitors who are interested in your niche to your blog, enable search engines to find and index your blog and ultimately rank higher in search engine results.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Charming your readers

The distinction between a profitable blog and a non-profitable one is the way the blog is written. Just imagine, which one would interest you, your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favorite author? You will likely prefer the novel because it appeals more to your interest, or because it is not as mind-numbing as the lecture notes by your professor. The point is people like to read “light” stuff most of the time. When people stumble on your blog, they are not only looking for information, they are also looking for information they can obtain in a easy way, and better still in a relaxed manner.

You have to know that there is no fixed style when it comes to blogging, which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in, and write it however you want it but you have to choose a favorable pattern as you have a lot of competitors and you have to be unique to stand out.


So, to be a magnet for more visitors as well as to keep current visitors coming back for more, it is very important to add a human touch to your blog posts. Imagine how you will discuss an interesting topic with a close friend of yours. You could also add to it a sense of humor which makes your readers feel you or maybe tell a story about what happened to you when you went for your last vacation.

Another important key point is never addressing your readers as a plural unit. Do not write as if you’re preparing a speech. Instead, do it as if you’re having a conversation to a single person because naturally, this will make your visitor think of you more as a personal friend rather than a person of higher authority which brings on easy familiarity, however don’t lose your sense of information by overdoing it.

Besides that, it is also very useful to establish your own personality through your words.


We humans are very curious, so naturally your visitors would want to know as much about you as the information you’re offering them. Having a distinctive personality in your blog would make a world’s difference between your blog about gadgets and all the other blogs about gadgets out there. This is a lot like creating your own brand name, where people immediately remember your blog’s name when they need to find out information about gadgets, just like how people immediately think of Mr. Biggs “In Nigeria” for fast-food or Nike for sportswear. So, learn how to simplify your language and write as an equal friend to your visitors, write to them as if you’re talking to a single person and establish your own personality on your blog.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Generating Traffic: The Payment Option

These days, you will get a “payment option” for virtually anything you can think of doing. You might decide not to go through the long process of writing and filling forms to generate traffic, because if you ask me, it’s very nerve-racking. For those of you who can afford it, there is an escape.

However you have to make a research before paying for any service or buy any software because if you don’t, you might lose a lot of money. I will however recommend some of these services which are very reliable.

· I know a very reliable guy named David who can do this for you; he will summit your articles to 230 online directories for just $25 and As far as I know, none of them have any “red flags,” and thus far, you will gain high ranking in no time. His web site is http://www.article-submission-service.com/

· For Directory submission check out http://www.contentkingseo.com/directory_submission.htm it is a directory submission service that costs $27 for 50 submissions.

· Yahoo Directory at: http://dir.yahoo.com/ costs $299 per year but has over 100,000 .edu and .gov backlinks (very important for SEO) – although expensive.

· Microsoft Small Business Directory at: http://sbd.bcentral.com/ costs $49 per year with a placement in up to 3 categories.

· SEOMA at: http://seoma.net lets you submit two websites for a $30 fee and allows you to put your “anchor” text in the link which is surrounded by the keywords you would like to submit it with.

· I can also recommend a software you can use “Active web traffic” a very dynamic software. I was not paid to say this, but it’s the best you can get, it will summit your site to as low as 10,000 sites and as high as 400,000 sites depending on the version you purchased. Get it at http://www.myrasoft.com/activewebtraffic/onlineorder.htm

And lastly you can find out your website’s back links: http://www.domain-pop.com/

Domain-Pop not only lists the website’s back links, but it also tells you the Page Rank (PR) of those links.

Page Rank (PR) is a number from 0 to 10 that Google uses to classify a website's importance. The higher the number the better, When you have other websites linking to yours it shows Google that the other site is giving yours a 'thumbs up'. This in turn shows Google that your site is gaining in popularity. The more links to your site from other sites, especially other sites which are either similarly related to the topic of your site or other sites that have PR already, then the higher the page rank Google will assign to your website.