Earn-by-blog

It’s been all over the SEO-student rumor mill for weeks now, and has finally made it into my Inbox - in droves.

The new get-traffic-quick scheme for search engine results has arrived - flooding ping notification sites with update announcements, even though your blog hasn’t been updated.

The question is does this- or some variation of it work? If not, where did this idea come from?

Okay, bad news first.

Pinging sites like Yahoo and Syndic8 every half-hour for several days or weeks, to notify of updates when they haven’t been made, does nothing but clog up the system.

It’s called spam-pinging and it has been around since 2002.

If you haven’t updated your blog, or you’re pinging updates of a site that isn’t even a blog (or RSS feed, where applicable), in the long run it’s just going to make it harder to get listed at these sites.

In the short run, you could get yourself banned from sites like Yahoo, though it isn’t officially their policy to drop sites for spam-pinging.

Yet.

True, not all sites that have recently updated lists you can ping to be on are set up to block pings of sites that aren’t updated. But they’ve found ways to block certain sites and users before - it’s only a matter of time.

So even in the unlikely event that you could find some way to make this work temporarily, you’d just be setting yourself up to be dropped, in as little as a day in some cases.

So if this method doesn’t work, why are there tools available to help you flood these directories?

Well, let’s look at the situation logically.

Until the middle of 2004, certain adult web properties were able to create several bogus blog sites - in particular, blogspot.com. They’d found that the links leading back to them from those sites helped their page rank in Google, as well as their search results placement.

Although Google got wise to them and closed this loophole by fall of this past year, several legitimate blog sites have found that they continue to enjoy high rankings for some keywords that are easier to get.

Some people erroneously assume that it’s because their updates appear on Weblogs.com and/or in Blogger’s Most Recently Updated pages several times a day.

Having noticed that occasionally, they would get spidered around the same time they posted, they realized that there was a correlation between pinging and better search engine listings.

And they’re not completely wrong - there is a parallel. But a parallel is not a cause. It’s just one facet of the relationship between blogs and getting better results in Yahoo, Google and MSN.

Their frequency of updates had something to do with their rankings, yes. But it is not what guarantees they get spidered - and if the blog isn’t set up to take advantage of the visit from the search engine spiders, they don’t get listed.

To begin to have an understanding of how to get similar results for your site, you have to look at the bigger picture. Spam-pinging isn’t going to do it, and as I’ve said in other articles, there are other ethical, faster, simpler ways to do this.

So what is this bigger picture?

First of all, blogs have a natural tendency to rank higher in search engines because they

Have well-structured site architecture Make use of anchor text linking Are well linked, Are frequently updated, and, Are focused tightly around a narrow theme, among other things.

Couple this with the ease of being able to get one-way links from several sites favored by the search engines, and you have two-thirds of the formula for a well-ranked blog.

However, just because these sites appear on publicly displayed ping notification lists and other sites that keep abreast of blog updates, this doesn’t mean that you can get away with pinging them without updating your site.

It also doesn’t mean that sites that have authentically updated and sent pings will appear in Google, Yahoo or MSN simply from being frequently updated.

The good news is, you don’t need to deluge the ping sites to get noticed. Doing so is often a waste of time, and may be a harmful one.

Your best bet for now is to continue to achieve your natural search engine position through blogging, basic search engine optimization, and a common sense approach to frequent updates.

And yes, by the way, there IS an ethical way to get into search engines and achieve high rankings with a blog, but it’s not a matter of volume.

It’s more a matter of timing, supply and demand. But explaining that process takes a level of detail and an amount of space not available here.

It’s inevitable. Everyone hits the wall. Whether you’ve been blogging ten weeks, ten minutes, or ten months, eventually you’ll find yourself with absolutely nothing to say.

Or so you think.

So what in the world do you do when you’re stumped?

1- Talk about what you’ve already talked about

Pick a topic you’ve gone over before and give it some spin.

Try a new angle, like playing devil’s advocate. For example, if you are a search engine journalist, and last week your position was that most mainstream sites need Google traffic to survive, try proving your point from the “con” perspective, instead of the “pro” position.

There are dozens of ways to write about the same thing. By putting your point another way, you might give someone in your audience what a client of mine referred to as an “Ah-ha!” moment. That’s when they realize the true value of the items for sale at your site to them and their business.

2- Talk about what someone else is talking about

If you want to have a popular blog, find other bloggers in similar areas, and talk about what they said in their posts. Friendly debate can often spark the soap-opera like drama that will have both your audiences visiting both blogs to see what “the other fella” had to say.

As an added bonus, if both of you are using Trackback in your blogs, you’ve got yourself a mini-link party that other people who are speaking on similar topics will want to join..

3- Have yourself a good rant

The intimate nature and voice of blogs lends itself well to the opinionated, angry ramble. But as a professional, don’t let yourself get too unfocused, and remember to back up your opinion with facts.

4- Feature someone, something or somewhere

I like to call mine “of the Day”.

As I zip around the Net conducting my business and research, if my attention is called to a resource or tool that my audience might find useful, I hit my blog bookmarklet and save that bad boy for later.

Then when I get too busy for a full blown tip, I’ll crown the resource, feed, tool, download or freebie the featured “Deal of the Day”, changing the word deal to something else more appropriate as needed.

After a while, my audience started to look for it as a feature, as opposed to being upset at the interruption in my mad, mad rambles.

5- Let someone else talk for a change

Invite a guest blogger, or post an article that offers free reprint rights, the same way you would in a newsletter. Of course you want to leave the resource box intact, or let the guest promote their site, which brings me to the most common complaint about this tactic.

“But I don’t want to send people away from my site.”

Guess what? You’ll never believe what I found out. Ready?

In a recent startling discovery, I’ve found that 100% of my visitors eventually turn off their computers or take otherwise drastic measures that cause them to leave my site. Apparently this is beyond prevention, though you can stall them for hours sometimes with good content.

Of course you don’t want to send them on their way prematurely, but if you’re a good blogger, and have done what you can to make sure they sign up to your blog email updates or site feed, they’ll be back. Just be sure that you’re giving them a good enough reason.

In the meantime, since they’re going to leave anyway, it might as well be somewhere that gives you some direct or in-direct benefit.

So there you have enough material for five more days.

Happy Blogging!

The new hot commodity is a blog for your small business so you’ve decided you must have one.everyone who hears about blogging decidesto use Blogging for their Business,

Before you begin think about it long term. Where do you think the blog is headed? What is the objective? Do you want it to be found by the search engines for specific terms? How often will you post? Who will the audience be? What will it look like a year from now? Five years from now?

If you think you may have this blog for a long time, consider hosting it with your own domain name. Blogger provides you with a free domain name (name.blogspot.com), or the option of ftp to your own domain.

If, at some point in time in the future you want to move the blog and you’ve been using the blogspot name, you won’t be able to take it with you. This means that all of the people who have your blog in their reader will “lose” you. It also means that you’ll have to start from ground zero with the search engines.

Do some digging before you jump. A couple of good networks where you can get some education are:

- Blogging for Business
Make sure you sign up for the “Blogging for Marketers” email course. Priya has loaded the course with good blog information (and it costs you nothing).

- Blogger Forum
The Blogger Forum is very welcoming to newbies. Browse around and just by looking at previous posts, you can learn a ton. they also have a section on blog platforms which talks about the different options available.

Once you’re ready to go, what are you going to write about? Make sure you’ve brainstormed ideas so you don’t run into the inevitable writer’s block. You can always start with what you’ve written before.

Do you have a newsletter? Look through your archive and “refresh” some of those old topics as a blog posting. How about your website?

Do you have content you can turn into a blog topic? Do you participate in online forums or discussion lists? Find some advice you gave to someone there and turn it into a blog post.

This should get you started. Remember that small business blogging is a long term activity. Be ready.

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. Guess what happens after a little while? The blogs die.

In managing a list of many Web sites, most of which are blogs, I deleted countless sites from the list because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place.

How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how blogging tools can be used for more than blogs.

Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each medium has one thing in common: content.

Having a blog connects your newsletter and your business with all of these readers and delivers important content in a particular style.

I’ve been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog entries in meryl’s notes, you’ll notice they’re more personal. When blogs first hit the scene in the late ’90s, they were personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog has transformed from personal to business speak, although I still add personal notes here and there.

A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans want to know everything about them, but it doesn’t work for the average business person. Other business people want information on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products offering information of no value, few people will return.

The people whose products sell well are the ones who provide valuable information. Readers already know what kind of information they’re getting, so they trust that when they buy something, it will be of the same or better quality. This value must be reflected in their blog. It’s much like people who only sign up for a newsletter after first seeing an example.

No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn’t black or white (what did you expect?). Ask these questions:

• Can you regularly update it — at least five times a week?
• Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?
• Do you read other blogs or feeds?
• Can you provide information of value to others not just to yourself?
• How large is your newsletter subscriber list?
• How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or month?

The big decider is whether or not you can write in the blog almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to other sites doesn’t give visitors much reason to make the effort to come to yours.

Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog discussions are common, and that’s where trackback comes in handy.

Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog’s comments page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and pasting in your blog’s trackback box.

Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good indicators of what kind of reaction you’ll get when opening a blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a long road ahead and lots of work to do.

There is no magic formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity, your blog can engage many prospects and clients.

Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and keeping an audience. meryl’s notes focuses on three areas: webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much.

What I need to do for my readers is create three separate blog entry points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the geeky content.

I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl’s notes. It’s about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the geeky category, but it’s a personal blog and doesn’t belong in meryl’s notes. This blog is written for a different audience.

The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read the content through the software. When sending a new issue of a newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases are covered.

Blogging tools aren’t just for, well, blogging. Such tools are an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of tableless Web sites.

Using blogging tools is much easier than the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand. Though using a blog tool, it isn’t a blog. In this case, the blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).

Small business owners don’t have a need for the fancy and pricey CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their site.

Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and metrics. They’re used for knowledge management. With information pouring in, blog tools provide a way to share, organize and process the information.

Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best practices won’t help, since the decision to blog is based on the organization’s mission, needs and goals along with its target market’s desires and needs.

A blog about lemmings? There is one, sort of. Or maybe you’d like to start your own and talk about dumb business moves.

Blogging is a pretty popular activity online these days. It’s a great way to connect with your audience on the Web and create a sense of community.

There are many ways to start your own weblog but one of the easiest is with a free service called “Blogger.” Owned by Google, it’s a feature-rich service that makes it simple to start a blog of your own.

If you think blogging is just about typing text, think again. There are many fun things you can do once you’re up and running withyour very own blog.

1) Photo Blogging:

Post photos to your weblog with this free software called “Hello.” Get it at http://hello.com. It makes it easy to upload photos to your blog.

2) Audio Blogging:

Post to your blog by phone. Once registered, you’ll receive a special number. Call it, leave a message and it’s immediately posted to your website as an MP3 audio file. To sign up, go to http://www.AudioBlogger.com

3) Email Posting:

Post to your blog by sending an email from any email application. To set it up, you’ll need to log into your blogger account and go to “settings” then “email.” You must specify if you want your posts to publish automatically or saved as drafts for later publishing. The subject of your email will be the title of your blog post, with the email body making up the rest of it.

4) Team Blogs:

This allows groups of people to contribute to one blog. One person must create the blog, then invite others to join in.

5) Templates:

Blogger has over 30 templates to choose from. Make sure you back up your blog before attempting any changes. There are also third party template providers you can choose designs from. See:
http://BlogSkins.com
http://BlogDesigns.com

6) Blogger Toolbars:

Google has one built into its toolbar that makes it a snap to post to your site while visiting any webpage you might want to comment on. Firefox also has a toolbar of its own with blogging components. See it at http://FireFoxToolbar.com/blogger or Google’s at http://toolbar.google.com/

7) Feeds:

Blogger users can syndicate their content via an Atom Feed. Former Blogger Pro suscribers can choose between Atom and RSS formats. You can find this feature in your Blogging account under “settings,” then “site feed.” If you’d rather syndicate in RSS, your only choice is to use an outside service like http://FeedBurner.com

Comments:

If you’d like your readers to participate on your Blog, you’ll want to turn on “comments.” Found under “settings,” you can choose from preferences like allowing anyone to post a comment, allowing only regular users to post comments, or allowing only members of the blog to post (if it’s a team blog).

9) TagBoards:

Different from comments, TagBoards also allow your blog readers to post comments. These act more like a discussion board or chat room for your blog. However, they’re not aimed at individual posts but attached to your entire site. You’ll find free providers of this service at:
http://Tag-Board.com
http://ChatterBox.com

This is a great way to add a feeling of community.

10) PhotoBlogs:

If you’d like to share a lot of photos with your readers on a regular basis you may want to add a “photo album.” You’ll find many sites that offer this free service such as:
http://Shutterfly.com
http://Ofoto.com
http://DotPhoto.com

11) Polls:

Do you know what your readers think? Running polls on your site is a great way to get inside your readers minds and get them involved with your blog. A few free poll service providers are:
http://FreePolls.com
http://PollHost.com
http://BraveNet.com
http://WebPollCentral.com

12) Advertising:

If you’d like to run ads on your blog and get paid per click, you’ll want to look at Google Adsense. Since Google owns Blogger too, they make it simple to add their advertising to your site. See http://tinyurl.com/3j3k8

13) Camera Phones:

If you have a SrintPCS cell phone with a built in camera you can send your pictures directly to Blogger. You’ll need to set up an “email address” to post to. For instructions, see Blogger’s Help section on “posting via email.” On your phone it works like this: you snap a picture, select “share,” pick your specific blogging email address, then ok. Your picture is uploaded.

14) Keyboard Shortcuts:

Blogger has many different keyboard shortcuts you can use while making a post.

cntrl + B= Bold
cntrl + I= Italics
cntrl + shift + A= Link
cntrl + d= Save as draft
cntrl + s= Publish Post
cntrl + shift + P = Preview

15) FTP:

You can host your blog on Blogger’s server, or host it on your own via FTP access. You’ll find this option under “settings” then “publishing.”

16) Email Posts to a Friend:

If you’d like to allow your visitors to email your interesting posts to their friends you can enable this feature under “settings,” basic tab, then where it says “show email post links?” say yes.

If you’d like to watch some free tutorials on “Learning Blogger,” see these by Molly Holzschlng at http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=113

So what are you waiting for? Now that you know all of the really cool things you can do with Blogger, why not experiment. Who knows, maybe there’s been a “born Blogger” hiding inside of you all along. Blog away my friend; the world is waiting.

I put off starting a blog for a long time because I thought it would be hard. I thought it would be technical. I thought I’d have to install scripts and tear my hair out getting them to work.

At that point, most of what I’d read about blogs and RSS was just so much geek-speak.

Was I ever wrong!

When I finally got the courage to give it a go, I went to blogger.com and signed up for an account. To my amazement, I had a blog set up in about 5 minutes. My first post was uploaded to my site about 10 minutes later.

The only thing even remotely technical I was required to do was enter the FTP settings for the website my blog would be published on. But even that wasn’t a requirement. With Blogger, you can set up a blog on their site, Blogspot, and not even worry about FTP settings.

Since then, I’ve started 3 Blogger blogs on different sites. Blogger remains one of the most popular blog applications in the world simply because it is so simple to use and set up.

If you’re a technophobe or don’t have the time to learn something completely new, I would urge you to drop by Blogger.com and take a look. You could be blogging - and enjoying the benefits - almost immediately.

Another very simple blogging tool is Wordpress. This blog is my first Wordpress blog, and I’m very impressed with how powerful it is - as well as simple.

Wordpress is installed on your own website, but don’t let that stop you. Most hosts that have Cpanel already have Wordpress ready for you to install.

Look in your Cpanel for the Fantastico application, click it open, and then choose Wordpress to install. It will automatically install it on your site for you, and you can start blogging right away.

If your host doesn’t already include Wordpress in the scripts on your server, you can still pick it up at:

http://wordpress.org/

Then go to the Wordpress Wiki for instructions on how to install it in 5 minutes.

Wordpress is free, open-source software. It is very simple to install, even for technophobes, and has a lot of online documentation. There are also many sites with free Wordpress add-ons and templates. I’m using a template for this blog that I picked up at Alex King’s site

The Wordpress Wiki is a wealth of information on all things Wordpress, including installation instructions, help files, a long list of template sites, and all kinds of hacks and extras you can use to modify your blog and make it original.

If you’re a Wordpress user, another place to visit is the Wordpress discussion forum

If you’re a new blogger, both Wordpress and Blogger are very user friendly. There isn’t a long learning curve. And you won’t have to learn any new technical tricks. Why not give one of them a try?

As blogging skyrockets in popularity, we should be asked: Is blogging is good for the brain? Here two physician-learning specialists offer their view.

(PRWEB) March 2, 2005 — During the past five years, blogging has exploded from virtual non-existence into an important and influential sociocultural force. Recent survey data indicate that there are now nearly 10 million bloggers, 90% of whom are between the ages of 13 and 29 years old.

This incredible upsurge in activity has caused us to wonder: What effect is all this blogging having on the brains of bloggers? Why ask this question? The primary reason can be found in one of the central tenets of modern neuroscience: “The neurons that fire together, wire together.”

What this basically means is that our mental activities actually cause changes in the structures of our brains–not only what we think, but how we think as well. Given such activity-directed change, it always makes sense to ask whenever large numbers of people start using their brains in new and different ways, what effects these new activities are likely to have on brain structure and function.

Blogging, which only seems to be accelerating in popularity, is a prime candidate for such investigation. After surveying the general range of materials that the blogosphere has to offer, we believe the following basic largely supportive conclusions are warranted:

1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.

First, there are blogs and there are…well, blogs. The best of blogs are rich in ideas and promote active exchange and critique. Rather than creating closed communities of like-minded troglodytes, these best blogs foster conversation, interactions with other blogs and other information sources, and invite feedback from their readers.

Posts can form “threads” or links to other Web materials where readers can examine primary source material or articles that offer competing ideas and views. Blogs that follow this format are far from simple substitutes for television or video games. In fact, they are an ideal format for promoting critical and analytical thinking.

Because blogs are text-based, bloggers must write and visitors must read (rather than passively view) the postings. In research comparing newspaper and television news, public policy experts have previously found that consumers are far more likely to question what they read than what they see in pictures or on TV.

There are several likely reasons for this: First, text can be assimilated in a self-paced fashion, allowing time for analysis and reflection. Second, words must — by their very nature — be analyzed, organized, and interpreted before they can be understood, providing more time for critical reflection. In contrast, pictures and music have more direct access to brain areas dealing with emotion and motivation, thereby potentially avoiding or even subverting reason and reflection. Third, pictures and music not only have the potential to alter our interpretations of the words we hear, but can actually alter our perceptions of the words we believe we have heard.

Because our perceptions are formed by combining our sensory input with contextual cues from other inputs or stored memories, strongly arousing visual or sound images have a profound ability to alter the words we hear. This is the reason behind Reagan aide Michael Deaver’s famous statement to CBS’s Lesley Stahl that he didn’t mind what CBS said about Reagan on TV, so long as any voiceovers were accompanied by pictures of the President standing in front of a flag. Blogs, with their text-based format, tend to avoid the more manipulative aspects of visually-embedded media.

2. Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.

To remain popular with readers, blogs must be updated frequently. This constant demand for output promotes a kind of spontaneity and ‘raw thinking ‘– the fleeting associations and the occasional outlandish ideas — seldom found in more formal media. (Fortunately, the permanence and easily searchable nature of archived posts helps maintain some sense of decorum.)

Blogging technology itself fosters this kind of spontaneity, since blogging updates can be posted with just a few clicks whenever a new thought or interesting Internet tidbit is found. Blogging is ideally suited to follow the plan for promoting creativity advocated by pioneering molecular biologist Max Delbruck. Delbruck’s “Principle of Limited Sloppiness” states we should be sloppy enough so that unexpected things can happen, but not so sloppy that we can’t find out that it did.

Raw, spontaneous, associational thinking has also been advocated by many creativity experts, including the brilliant mathematician Henri Poincare who recommended writing without much thought at times “to awaken some association of ideas.”

3. Blogs promote analogical thinking.

Recent international surveys have shown that students in the United States have fallen far behind most of their first world peers in problem solving and critical thinking. This fall has coincided with a shameful decline in school-based instruction in critical analysis, rhetoric, and persuasive writing.

However because professionals like attorneys, philosophers, and academicians run many excellent blogs, we all can benefit from their intellectual rigor, and their use of analogical thinking when communicating to the common world of the blogosphere.

Back-and-forth blog-based exchanges between experts also provide a unique opportunity for young thinkers to witness and evaluate arguments from analogy on an ongoing basis, and to develop their own abilities to think analogically.

4. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.

Because blogs link many facts and arguments in branching “threads” and webs, and append primary source materials and reference works, they foster deeper understanding and exposure to quality information. In turn these sources can seed other creative projects.

5. Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.

Research using the Lemelson-MIT Invention index found that invention is best fostered in solitude (66%); yet other research has shown the beneficial effects of brainstorming with a community of intellectual peers.

So blogging may combine the best of “working by yourself” and “working with other people.” Bloggers have solitary time to plan their posts, but they can also receive rapid feedback on their ideas. The responses may open up entirely new avenues of thought as posts circulate and garner comments.

In conclusion, it looks as if blogging will be very good for our brains. It holds enormous potential in education, and it could take societal communication and creative exchange onto a whole new level.

Even people who don’t own a computer know what blogging is. Everyone is talking about it. Heck, even the Doonesbury comic strip ran a few panels on the subject. Anna Kournikova even has a blog for crying out loud!

But did you know that there is a secret benefit to blogging that has NOTHING to do with the subject matter? In fact, you could blog on about the sex life of the Tasmanian fruit fly and still reap big rewards.

Yep, just like nearly everything else on the Internet, there’s money to be made with blogging IF you know the secret…

OK, OK. I’ll tell you, but first let’s take a quick ride in the wayback machine and see how blogging came to be as popular as it is today.

Back at the dawn of the World Wide Web, new web sites were a rarity. Geekie guys and girls struggled with the new technology and the launch of a new page, A new web site was practically a media event. In the early days of the Internet, each new page was a cause for celebration.

In 1992, Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist generally credit with inventing the World Wide Web (and you thought it was Al Gore, I’ll bet), created the first What’s New page. Later, another Internet legend, Marc Andreesen, put up his own page. Both of these men created hot links to all of the new pages springing up on the net.

As the World Wide Web came into its own, a new breed of programmer, called a Web Master (because they had mastered the World Wide Web) created their own pages that contained suggestions on cool web sites to visit. Because they didn’t list every single new web site, just the ones that they thought were interesting, they were said to have filtered the net. In 1998, Jorn Barger, a bit of an odd duck, even by Internet pioneer standards, first used the term ‘weblog’ to describe his blog called ‘Robot Wisdom’.

As bloggers banded together to form communities, people sought easier and faster ways to create blogs. As a result, automated and easy to use blogging programs such as Blog-In-A-Box were developed so that even a half-dazed wallabie can put up a blog in between munching on stalks of grass.

But why in the world would you WANT to run a blog if you have an income-generating site?

Surely your customer isn’t interested in reading about your trials and tribulations of the daily business grind, right? Probably not. However, if you can build a blog that catches their attention, such as where the fish are biting if you sell fishing supplies, they WILL come. And so will the surprise that I mentioned earlier.

You see, among your visitors to your blog will be a software program known as a spider. Not just any spider, mind you, but the granddaddy of all search engine spiders — the Google spider. You see, Google LOVES to index blogs. Yep, it’s true. And that, as soon-to-be inmate Martha would say, is a good thing.

In a nutshell, Google loves pages that have links to other pages. Blogs link to all kinds of stuff. Google loves pages that are linked FROM other pages. A good blog gets lots of links to it as loyal readers tell everyone they know to put links to their favorite blog on their website.

Finally, Google loves fresh content. An active Blog’s content can change minute by minute, but at least it’s almost guaranteed to change daily.

So, if you can find a decent subject to blog about, and you can get a blog up and running quickly and easily, you just might be amazed at what happens to your site’s page rank in a few weeks or more.

Listen, with tools like Blog-In-A-Box available to get you going, there really is no reason NOT to get blogging!

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last year, you’ve heard the term “blog” once or twice.

To most people, a “blog” simply represents a glorified online “diary” where geeks, computer nerds, and lonely teenagers record their thoughts in cyber-space.

However, many people don’t realize that “blogs” are quietly revolutionizing the way companies and customers interact about everything from existing products to new ideas and improvements in customer service.

In short, “blog” style communication has come of age and anyone with an online business better sit up and take notice fast!

In the beginning, “blogs” were basically an online diary to record your thoughts; but “blogs” have now evolved into dynamic websites that non-technical people can update immediately without html editors or ftp programs.

Blogs allow their authors to make instant website updates through a computer anywhere in the world with a Web browser and Internet connection.

Blogs also allow readers to respond to the author’s posts, provide additional information, links, expanded opinions, and more.

In short, an active “blog” creates an interactive community with the author as the hub and the readers as the spokes of the wheel that keep the whole cycle turning round.

Unlike traditional “static” web pages where content rarely (if ever) changes, an active blog evolves in a state of constant and never-ending renewal.

With blogs, smart online businesses re-discovered a principal that small “mom and pop” stores understood for years: know your customers and stay in close tune with their wants, needs, and desires.

Large companies throw billions of dollars down a black hole every year to literally “guess” what people want to buy. Most call it the “Marketing Department.”

On the flipside, smart online businesses understand that blogs allow you to avoid guessing what’s on your customers’ minds and provide an active and up-to-the-minute means for them to tell you exactly what they do and don’t like about your services, products, and virtually any other aspect of the market.

This lightning fast communication makes it possible for small companies to literally snatch huge market share away from more traditional companies.

Blogging also has a distinct advantage over traditional email newsletters in that subscribers can get udpates without having to receive an email message. Through the power of RSS (real simple syndication), subscribers get notified of updated content though an rss news reader.

Bottom Line: publishing a blog with an RSS feed that your readers can subscribe to means your content NEVER gets blocked by a SPAM filter.

Blog software basically comes in 2 flavors: hosted and stand-alone. Hosted blogging solutions make it extremely easy to get set up with a blog, often in just a couple of minutes.

If you know how to type, you can create a blog. Log on to Blogger.com and you can set up a blog free of charge and start posting in just a few minutes.

Blogger.com (owned by search giant, Google) will even host your blog on their servers.

Typepad.com, which charges as little as $4.95 per month, is also an excellent hosted service offering additional features that enable you to quickly get your own blog up and running.

The alternative is stand-alone blogging software installed on your own website.

A very popular solution is Moveable Type, available from moveabletype.org, which provides a very versatile and powerful suite of tools for creating a full-featured blog to rival that of any size company in the world.

Now you can also add today.com into this Category as well because their Blogging Program is absolutely Awesome and very Easy for Newbies who do not have have enoughknowledge of Internet.you can start a Blog on today.com within few minutes and they also have wide variety of themes which you can use on your Blog without any installation.

Blogs and RSS feeds are great marketing tools! Now, if you’re like me, you’re probably scratching your head and saying, “Wonderful, but what in the world is a blog, and what the heck does an RSS feed?” Let’s make it quick and simple.

A blog is basically a journal or diary that is kept online. It changes every day as you add new content. An RSS feed is a little more involved.

RSS (usually referred to as Really Simple Syndication) is a means to publish regular updates to web content. The content itself is known as the feed.

In other words, RSS feeds are a great way to get information that changes often (for example blogs or even news headlines) out on the web to an amazingly large audience.

Now to answer the question, why should you use blogs and RSS feeds? Numbers, numbers, numbers! Let’s think about it. When more people view your site, you will make more sales - obviously. Of course, the trick is to get them to your site.

While you sit there reading this article, there are search engines silently exploring cyberspace for new or updated web content. Aha!

When you update your blog and use RSS feeds, your new information will be noticed by these tireless search engines and published across the World Wide Web. Hey, it’s free advertising, right?

Anita was excited! She finally had her own website and an ebook on the market. Her enthusiasm was a source of amusement to her friends and family. Every lull in a conversation was an opening for Anita to discuss her new enterprise. Though Anita netted a lot of good natured eye-rolling and teasing, she knew they were all proud of her.

It wasn’t long before Anita’s enthusiasm began to wane. After all, what good was an ebook if nobody bought it? She’d tried buying email lists and sending advertisements out, but it didn’t seem to earn any profit. Why? Spam filters, like virtual pac-men, were gobbling up the emails that Anita sent. In reality very few were ever even opened.

Have you, like Anita, been frustrated at the lack of web traffic your site receives? Follow the example of hugely successful sites like Yahoo!, CNET, ABC News, and Amazon.

Get on the RSS feed band wagon and share in the success. Join the masses of bloggers who are posting personal and professional blogs. Write your way to success. Don’t be left behind with an empty bank account, when you could be enjoying huge profits!

If this sounds too easy for such an intricately technological subject, that’s because there are people who have done the hard work for you. In fact, blogging and RSS feeds have been made simple for even the most technologically challenged.

Need proof? Go to
http://www.effective-info.com/blog-rss7.html

You’ll discover a simple plan to incorporate blogging and RSS feeds into your marketing plan. You’ll discover a brand new marketing technique that will astound you with the increase in profit your website will net.