Bloggers Club Community

There has been a huge surge in the number of people blogging even since blogging was first started by a few people as a platform for expressing their views on things that they experienced and liked. Blogging has emerged as a good source of generating revenue as well and gives a means for people trying innovative ways to make their blog popular in order to generate traffic on their site hoping for clicks in order to earn. Here in this article I will cover the various aspects of this very topic.

When you have set up a blog make sure that you have a welcome page and an about page where you describe yourself and the blog. Mention about the scope of your blog and what your likes, dislikes and interests are and what you plan on sharing on the blog. It is a well known fact that a picture speaks a 1000 words and it can make all the difference in your blog. The images that you put up on your welcome page should be in relation to the theme, idea or content of your blog. That helps the viewer relate better to what your thoughts are and will draw attention.

Once you have an idea and concept ready for a type of a blog, put in a lot of effort and get ready a few posts first before publicizing your blog. It will not be a good idea to announce your blog publicly until you have at least 10 well written articles that would give the reader a fair amount of idea of your writing style, your interests and also a general overview of the blog itself. If you make the mistake of launching your blog with a few posts, it is likely that it will get abandoned because the viewers will get an impression that your blog is not going to be a very active or interesting blog, so that will not work for you.

One of the very common and handy features which blogs provide to users is the ability to subscribe to RSS or Atom feeds enabling users to get notifications of new posts in the blog. It is certainly not easy for anybody to visit a blog very regularly just to check if there have been any new posts on that blog. RSS or Atom feeds help the reader a lot in this respect and also puts a good impression on him about your blog.
Make it a point to add links to various newsreaders as well along with your RSS feeds links so that it helps users to use them with your feed. That will make their task even easier. Giving some instructions to readers on how to use the feeds will also be a good idea.

In the blogging world today, as the number of blogs grows almost exponentially in the market, there has been the emergence of social book marking sites such as digg it, stumble upon, etc. These social book marking sites enable readers to rate and categorize various blogs and help tell other readers about good blogs. You should also include links to such popular social book marking sites to enable users who use these features to publicize your blog in such sites making a good impression about your blog. This will certainly draw more and more traffic to your blog and increase the general liking and awareness of visitors about your blog.

Being a blogger is not just about having your own blog and just writing interesting posts on it. Blogging is a form of expression where people share their thoughts. Hence it is a very good idea to visit other people’s blogs as well. At times when you find somebody’s blog that you really liked, or a post that was very informative to you and you really like it, make it a point to comment on this blog. This proves to be really beneficial to you in many ways. The owner of the blog will appreciate your comment and most likely make an effort to visit your blog and even perhaps comment on your posts, and besides that commenting on other peoples popular blogs will also give you more visibility, as people reading those posts will certainly come across your comment and are more likely to check out your blog as well.

It is a good idea initially to include a lot of external links to resources, and other people’s blogs in your posts in the beginning. If you refer to blogs and links that are already popular, that will attract other bloggers to your site to read your views and at the same time referring to popular blogs will also increase your popularity since your blogs posts will come up in searches. This is also a good way to gain popularity in the beginning.

If you are skilled in any area it is a very good idea to give away free samples of that you may have developed yourself. A web design, a wordpress plug in, or anything that can come useful to your readers. People loves free stuff.

This is part one of this article. Keep your eyes open for part two. 

Being a blog writer and making regular quality posts on ones blog is one of the keys to generate traffic on your site. It ensures viewer satisfaction and appreciation and in turn also adds to your popularity. If your blog experiences a lot of traffic and a lot of visitors coming, making comments and asking various things to you or sharing their views on the same. It is a very important thing for you as the owner of the blog to interact with these people as much as you can.

Blogs where the owners are not very responsive to users queries and comments leave a bad impression on readers. A wrong impression on a reader of your blog can prove to be a very bad thing for you and your blogs popularity. It can shatter your dreams of having a very popular and earning blog. Though being responsive can be taxing on you and it is not possible for you to be always available for people queries and problems or comments about your content, depending on your work schedules and the amount of traffic on your site, you should still make it a point to address and interact with your readers as much as possible at all times.

If you interact positively with your readers, it not only sets a good impression on them but also at the same time it also ensures that they will come back to your blog. It is also most likely that they will share your blog or your post with their friends and draw even more viewers, readers to your blog, all of which will increase your blogs popularity and traffic.

There are several ways you can increase the level of interaction you have with your readers. This is a very nice way of involving your readers in reading your post. You can ask questions within your post addressing your readers expecting answers from them. You can add polls in your blogs which will also draw more people together and help in sharing of views on common topics. When you make posts you can always refer to certain readers who read and comment on your posts regularly. That is a really great way of appreciating your readers for reading your posts.
As a blogger it is also very good by getting involved with your readers blogs. You can as well go visit their blog, read their posts and comment on them. That helps build a general mutual respect and appreciation between you and your readers. You must in fact answer your viewers questions or comments on your blog. It is also a good practice to email some of readers, especially the early readers of your posts and share further thoughts, appreciation and gratitude. Another nice idea is to display recent comments and top commenters on your blog.

Doing these few things ensures good appreciation amongst the readers of your blog as well as the new readers who stroll through your blog as well as the comments and watch the conversations. It draws them to make their comments on the same as well and share their views with all as well.

To enter this contest to win a trendy USB wristband follow these easy steps:

1. Choose your favorite article on this blog. (For example: Use your blog as a marketplace)
2. Write a post about this article and publish it on your blog with a link to the post.. It should be at least 50 words.
3. Write a comment to this post or e-mail me at info -at- andreasbard.com with a link to your blog post.

Sit back and wait for me to e-mail you about that you are the winner.

I will give away 5 trendy 1 GB USB wristbands to 5 lucky bloggers.

The contest starts today and ends on 1 of Februari 2008. I will choose the 5 blogs with the best text written according to me. I am the one and only judge.

Good luck!

Let’s start with the basics. SEO stands for search engine optimization. The FreeDictionary.com defines search engine optimization as “the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.” So let’s put it like this, SEO is the a way of improving your page rank and number of pages indexed by a search engine so more traffic comes to your site from search engines. We’ll keep that simple.

So you’ve got your blog, you’ve shelled out a bit of money to get a custom theme, now you want to get more pages indexed and improve your search engine results. Sounds simple enough. We’ll keep it simple. While you can pay people to help you with this via forums such as Digital Point, there are simpler methods for those of you using Wordpress. This is your introduction to Wordpress plugins.

Wordpress offers several plugins which can be used to help raise the SEO value so that more of your pages are indexed and more keywords are searched on your site. After some time testing what’s out there and trying to determine which plugins to use, and which don’t work I finally stumbled across something that has worked phenomenally for me, The All in One Wordpress SEO plugin. (Available here: http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/) This plugin help your blog get the fix of SEO juice it will need to be ranked higher and more often. The options allow for you to set your Title and Description. Also you can set Keywords you want to be searched for. You can set you post, page, category, archive and tag formats. Also this plugin allows you to set your categories as meta keywords. Simply put there is no easier way to get these tweaks in one place. So install the plugin, set your options, and let the search engine spiders do their dirty work.

So in conclusion, SEO is how you rank on the search engines and how much traffic you get because of that. While some people can make you think you need to pay to get SEO services, with the help of “All in One SEO Plugin” for Wordpress your SEO improvement is as simple as installing and configuring one plugin. So have at it, improve you SEO and become a better blogger!

Let’s start with the small stuff. So you’ve just purchased a domain and decided to set up a blog. You want to blog about….well that doesn’t even matter at this point! You set up your wordpress database and run the installation files. You’re ready to go. Or are you? While Wordpress does work “out of the box” the installation leaves you with a pretty boring theme. Welcome to the Kubrick theme. This theme runs default on not only your blog, but EVERY wordpress blog out there. Let’s change this up a bit. I’ll explain how. There are a few resources you can go to find yourself some themes.

• http://themes.wordpress.net/
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes#Get_New_Themes
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/02/09/83-beautiful-wordpress-themes-you-probably-havent-seen/
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/06/26/21-fresh-usable-and-elegant-wordpress-themes/
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/05/07/10-fresh-elegant-and-clean-wordpress-themes/

Quick How-To: Adding Themes to your Wordpress Blog
• Download the theme files. Normally they are contained in a folder.
• Upload the folder containing the theme files to your wp-content/themes folder that was created when you ran the wordpress installation files.
• Log into your blog and go to Presentation.
• Under Themes the new theme should show up. Click on it to use the new theme.

Those links give you some great options, but let’s be honest they’re publicly available and anyone can download and use them. I think that takes away from the “unique factor”. How do we get a truly unique you need to start from scratch. Or find someone who can. A great place to look for custom theme coders is the Services Forum on Digital Point Forums. You can normally find several potential developers to help you to create a custom theme to your liking for a fairly reasonable price. Once you get your truly unique theme just follow the how-to listed above to install the theme and you’re all set!

The advantage of having a truly unique blog is that it stands out. Your readers are no longer asking themselves if it was your blog where there had read “that one post”, or if it was another blog. Your design is unique and sticks out in their minds. It sets you apart. Now along with having your custom theme having a custom header image is another way to keep user attention. By creating a custom header it gives you something for your readers to remember. This “stickyness” enables you to brand your blog. Through a means of having a unique writing style of posting method as well as a custom header and theme your create brandability for your blog and create a blog that stands out from the crowd and gives your readers not only something that they want to come back to, but also something they can easily remember and easily find.

So what we’re trying to say here is simple; don’t be one among the crowd! When you start with wordpress you are in no way unique. If you are willing to spend a little time and money you can have a great custom theme and header created for your blog. It’s easy enough to install this new theme and by doing so you give your blog a brand. It is through this brand that your readers will recognize you and will begin to equate this theme and logo with you and with your blog. Good luck, and happy blogging!

Blogging can be very beneficial when trying to sell your product or service online, but what is the best way to approach blogging? Many people are new to the internet let alone blogging. Blogging can help you promote your business and help you sell your service or product. In this article I will be discussing ways in which you can use your blog to sell your product and service successfully. The internet is an amazing invention and what’s better is that you can use it to your advantage in many ways to achieve great results.

Blogging online is a useful way of getting information out to the viewers on the internet, however, it strongly depends on the content in which you are writing on your blog, if it appeals to the wider audience on the internet you will typically get more traffic. Always remember that writing about something you enjoy may not always get you more traffic driven to your blog, the best thing to do is to find out what topic is currently hot and catch it whilst its early, if you can replicate the topic well in your blog then you can expect to see some more traffic driven to your site. This is the first step in using a blog for selling your service or product.

The second step that is essential to this is that you keep up with your blog; you must keep writing the content and keeping the regular visitors coming back for more. Once doing so you can begin introducing your advertising. Make it small at first, start off by briefly mentioning that you offer a service such as web or logo design, since people are fond of your blog it is more likely that they will invest in your service. But the most important thing is to still keep your blog up to date since it will still be your primary source of traffic. A good idea when advertising your service on your blog is to show examples of your work, credibility is important and if you can show your viewers that you are good at what you are offering then they are more likely to go for your service.

Content is important and you will find that if you advertise you will get more people coming to you and asking about your service, this can help generate a stable income for you, but what is better is that if you keep your blog’s content up to date and make sure that it is of a high standard you will be able to drive more customers to you door. There are many people who probably offer a similar service, but by gaining the trust and respect of your viewers you can make sales much easier to achieve.

I hope that I have given you some good tips on how to achieve a blog which can generate a good flow of income by using content driven traffic. Its easy to achieve, you just have to put in that little bit of effort.

Apart from the topic or niche of your blog, having a suitable and easy to remember domain name and a reliable host can be the key to the success of your blog. The domain name is the first thing a visitor will type into the search bar before they’ve even reached your site. If your address on the net is too long or has a complicated spelling, users will be put off straight away, and this definitely would not be a very good start.

But what exactly are domain names and hosts?

According to Wikipedia, it is “a name that is entered into a computer (e.g. as part of a Web site or other URL, or an email address) and then looked up in the global Domain Name System which informs the computer of the IP address(es) with that name.”

More simply speaking, like a house, your website will have an address. This address starts with http:// (HyperText Transfer Protocol) contains the name of your site in the middle, and ends with a TLD (Top-Level Domain) like .com or .net. For some excellent Domain Name Registrars check out GoDaddy and Namecheap.

As I said in my article about niches, your domain name is vitally important to the success of your blog. Have a name that is too long and people won’t be bothered to type it in the address bar. And if you have a domain which is too complicated to spell, your potential visitors won’t be able to get to the site, and it will make searching for your site in Google a nightmare. The key really is to include one of your keywords in your domain.

For example, if you have a blog about Golf, then try and find a name along the lines of “GolfManiacs.com” or “LoveGolf.com” as this way, you have a fun and targeted domain. Many .com names will already be taken so try and think of variations for different words. So if you want to put the word “blog” in your domain, think of other synonyms of the word blog.

A host is the house itself. Your host stores all the information that your site contains so that you don’t have to. Therefore you are free from viruses and malicious attacks whilst your host ensures that your site runs quickly and efficiently..

Although there are a lot of hosts out there, do your homework and start off small. With your new blog you won’t be getting loads of traffic so don’t pay through the roof for extra bandwidth and memory. Also, make sure your web host has good communication just in case you run into any trouble. Send them a test email to find out.

Should I only get a .com Domain Name?

Strictly speaking the best forms of TLDs are .com names and .net. According to many SEO (search engine optimization) specialists, these 2 TLDs will get you the highest rankings for your keyword, as your site will appear to have greater quality and reliability for users who search the engines. Of course this doesn’t mean that you can’t have other variations. If your forum is all about the UK, then by all means take a look at a .co.uk name. Also if your site is fully dedicated to providing content, then a .info domain can be cheaper than most as well.
However try and bear in mind who your target audience is. In many cases your visitors will automatically type in .com as that is what they expect. If this market is in the UK though, then people will be more likely to type in .co.uk into the browser and so this form of TLD would be perfect.

To conclude, do your research. There are so many 1000s of registrars and hosts on the internet all trying to compete for your attention. Separate out the good ones from the bad and look for quality. There’s no point in getting a rock-bottom deal, when there is no customer service when you run into trouble. Spend your money carefully and try and get the most bang for your buck (try and pick catchy and short domain names). Then when your blog is up and running, you can work on trying to break into profit and to monetize your site in order to pay for hosting costs.

Before you do any technical work, like setting up the blog database, trying to pull in traffic or getting new readers, you have to choose your niche. There are so many topics in the world that you could potentially talk about, however if you had a generalised blog which had so many different areas to it, then your site would be spreading itself thin, and would appeal to too broad a market. As such, your site would find it difficult to rank highly in search engines.

But what is a niche?

According to Wikipedia, the correct definition is, “a need for a product or service that is not being addressed by mainstream providers. A niche market may be thought of as a narrowly defined group of potential customers.” Examples of niches could include a blog about Golf, Tennis, MP3 Players, Entrepreneurship and even knitting! By choosing your niche carefully you will hopefully be appealing to this select group of people who will be enthusiastic about the topic of your blog, and so will want to return to it regularly – which in effect will help the growth of the site.

How do I choose my niche?

This is the tricky part. At first you should make a list of all your hobbies and interests, then you should pick one of these interests and define a narrow category within this topic. In this way you will be able to talk about a subject that you love and that you have great passion for. This passion in itself will be a motivating factor in growing your blog and making it get to new highs.

Before you finalise your intended topic for the blog you should also do a bit of research. These are some steps that I regularly use to help me find the niche with the most potential growth and profit (because we all want to make money out of our forums!):

1) Go to WordTrackers Free Keyword Tool and type in your chosen niche. This tool will tell you how many times the search for your keyword has been done with the MSN (US) search engine. Their paid full version of the tool will show you the results of all major search engines though.Try and find keywords which have been searched for roughly 1000 times. Anymore than this and you will find yourself bogged down with fighting against huge competitors. Any number much less than 1000, and you will find it hard to retain a large amount of traffic to your blog, as the target market will be too small for you to be able to pull any type of profit from the site.

2) Once you have finalized your keywords and niche for the forum, head on over to Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool. In effect this does the same as WordTrackers tool, however, and most importantly, it includes information upon the type of money you could be earning if you were to place Google Adsense Ads on your forum.

- Once you have entered the page, click on the “Keyword Variations” tab. Then type your chosen keyword.

- Where it says “Choose data to display”, use the drop-down box to display “Cost and ad position estimates”.

- In the next drop-down box choose US Dollars and enter in the amount $100. This is simply a maximum value and has no real effect on the search.

- Click “Get More Keywords” and sort by “Estimated Avg. CPC” (Cost per Click) which will show you how much you can expect to be paid, if a visitor clicks an ad on your forum!

3) Finally go to Google.com and perform a search with your chosen keyword. If there are a few popular forums within your chosen niche, then you should maybe consider changing topics or you could fight for the top rankings by using SEO which I will cover in another article. If there are no major blogs which rank highly with your keywords then you are safe and can begin dominating Google with your niche blog!