by olutaller | Aug 17, 2009 | Blogging, Digital Marketing, Website development
Today, we’re going to discuss the type of content that is suitable for your blog in order to make it profitable. First off, I want you to understand that there is no fixed scope that your blog should have, which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in.
However, the difference between a profitable blog and a non-profitable blog is the way the blog is written. Just imagine, would you prefer to read your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favourite author?
You may prefer to read the novel because it appeals more to your interest, or because it is not as mind-numbing as the lecture notes by your professor. However, the most important point is people like to read “light” stuff most of the time. You see, when people log on to your blog, they are not only looking for information – they are also looking for information they can obtain easily, and better still in a relaxed manner.
So, to attract more visitors as well as to keep your current visitors coming back for more, it is very important to add a human touch to your blog posts. This can be done by simply imagining you’re talking about a certain topic with your personal friend. An extra bonus for your readers would be a great sense of humour, so try to add funny comments in your articles where they are suitable.
Another important key point is to avoid addressing your reader as a plural unit. What I really mean is you should not write as if you’re preparing a speech. Instead, you should write as if you’re having a conversation to a single person because this will make your visitor think of you more as a personal friend rather than a person of higher authority.
Besides that, it is also very useful to establish your own personality through your words. Human beings are very curious creatures, 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 McDonald’s for fastfood or Nike for sportswear.
So, the lesson for today is to simply 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.
Yours,
Olutaller
www.olutaller.com
by olutaller | Aug 10, 2009 | Blogging, Digital Marketing, Website development
Blogging is a lucrative source of profit and blogs are easy to set up and maintain. Imagine a life where you are paid to write on stuff that interests you, whenever you want, wherever you are. The mere flexibility of blogging makes it easy for you to just kick back, relax and go on a vacation whenever you feel like it.
In this article, we are going to look into the profitability of a blog and set up a blog of our own at no cost! Interested? Read on!
First, we need to obtain a blog. There are several options – host a blog on your own domain or get a free blog. For starters, let’s talk about the free blogs. You can obtain a free blog at www.blogger.com or the newer (and better!) www.wordpress.com. If you are a techie, you must have heard of WordPress, a free blog engine that is robust and infinitely expandable.
Blogger.com is actually owned by Google, so it will be detected on Google’s radar faster and you will be indexed faster. WordPress.com, however, is a relatively new option so I have no comparison on the speed of getting indexed by search engines. However, WordPress is better in the sense that it has more advanced features such as Trackbacks and Categories. You can also manage your sidebar links more efficiently (more about this later).
Get a free blog at either Blogger.com (http://www.blogger.com/signup) or WordPress (http://wordpress.com/signup/). Then, familiarize yourself by posting your first post on your blog and tinkering around with the options and templates.
Here are a few common “blog-related” words to help you out:
1) Permalink – Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL (uniform resource locator) that leads to an individual post that you make in your blog.
2) Trackback – When you post about someone else’s blog post elsewhere, your post will show up in their “trackback” section. This feature, however, is not available with a Blogger.com account.
3) Pinging – Blogging seems to be paired with pinging almost every time either one is mentioned nowadays. Pinging is actually the action where a certain aggregator is notified whenever your blog is updated, so that the aggregator may show the newest post of your blog on their website. This is a useful way to gaining traffic, which we shall discuss later.
For now, I shall leave you testing out your new blog and the features that come included with it. In the next articles, we shall discuss the many ways we can gain profit from a blog, as well as tips on how to write posts that keep visitors glued and keep coming back for more!
www.olutaller.com
by olutaller | Aug 3, 2009 | Blogging, Digital Marketing, Website development
If you run a small company, you may find that the world of blogging for business owners is a world that you want to be a part of. Blogging is a great way to get the
word out to consumers about your product or service, and it can even be useful for inspiring employee loyalty and helping you keep your workers at peak morale. If
you are looking for a way to take your business to the next level, consider what starting a blog might be able to do for you.
Blogging for business owners has a lot in common with all other types of blogging, but it has its own unique pitfalls and strengths. The key to having a successful blog as a business owner is keeping your goals clear and concrete at every step of your blogging adventure. It can be all to
easy to get sidetracked, especially if you are just learning about the exciting possibilities of blogging technology, but if you want your blog to succeed you need to stay focused. Write up a plan for how often you will update, how you will promote your blog and retain readers, whether
you will feature photographs or video, and other aspects of your blog, and then stick to it with the same kind of determination that you used when you built your company.
www.olutaller.com
by olutaller | Aug 1, 2009 | Blogging, Digital Marketing, Website development
A great idea for a blogging web site is no longer enough, because there are so many blogs and web sites about blogs on the internet, it can be tough to distinguish your blogging web site from all of the others. Whether you are starting up a new web site aimed at bloggers or whether you are looking to make your existing blogging site more distinctive, the key to building and maintaining a site that will capture the interest and attention of the blogging community is finding your niche. If you can fill a unique need in a way that no other web site does, you’ll be able to build a lasting readership among web surfers. Once you have discovered a niche, you will still have a lot to do, but finding your place in the blogosphere is the place to begin.
Every great blogging web site starts with a great idea, and you can’t build a successful site that will last without one. There are many great sites aimed at today’s bloggers, and competition for the attention of this growing demographic is fierce. To make your blogging web site stand out from the pack, you will need to offer something that no other site is currently offering, or you will need to do the same thing that an already popular site does but in a more impressive or valuable way.
One way to discover an ideal model for your blogging web site is to look at the sites that have successfully captured a blogging audience already to determine if you can appropriate some of their strategies to help realize your vision. Of course, you will also need to add a unique flair to your project in order to stand apart from your competition. Many people agree that the web sites that do the best in today’s market are the sites that have the most personality. The fiercely
individual surfers who are bloggers are a demographic that responds especially strongly to personality, so consider how you can give your site a unique and attractive feeling by lending your own voice and sensibility to your site’s design and content.
Once you have a great idea for your site, have pinpointed a special niche that you are well equipped to fill, and have infused the site with personality, the next step is figuring out how to get the word out to bloggers. In the long run, a great idea just isn’t enough to propel your blogging web site to success. You will need to draft a smart and realistic marketing plan in order to draw readers to your site. Once you hook a blogger, your great content will keep them coming back, but it is vital to get that first glance or your site won’t have a chance to shine.
More info in next post!!!
www.olutaller.com
by olutaller | Jul 30, 2009 | Blogging, Digital Marketing, Website development
There are two major types of business models that
entrepreneurs use to make money blogging. The first
and most common way to turn a blog into a profit
making machine is to sell advertising to different
companies and brands who want to reach that blog’s
readers. The second kind of money making blog is one
that helps a single brand improve its image by creating positive associations
between the blog and the product in the mind of consumers. Both kinds of
blogs can make a lot of money, especially if the creator has a keen mind
for marketing.
If you are blogging with the goal of selling advertising, there are two basic ways
that you can go about recruiting sponsors who want to put ads on your site;
you can let someone else do all of the legwork, or you can do the work yourself
and keep all of the revenue. Within the first group, many people make money
blogging by selling space through Google’s AdSense program. The advantages
of this program are numerous, as it requires very little effort on the part of the
blogger or webmaster to begin raking in profits. However, most people discover
that they make less money through this method than they had hoped that their
blog would earn. Selling advertising directly to companies who want to put
banner ads or sponsored links on your blog can take quite a bit of time, but it is
often fairly lucrative. If you have a lot of contacts in industries that are related
to the topic of your blog, you may want to try to go this route. People who have
a strong background in sales and are experienced at pitching proposals can make
quite a bit of money by renting blog space to interested companies. The most
serious problem with this model is that you often have to build quite a sizable
readership before you can attract advertisers, which can mean that you have to
do several months of work before you start to make money blogging.
As blogging becomes a more and more lucrative business, a lot of established
companies are considering how they can get into the action. One way that
companies are capitalizing on the blog movement is by having blogs that provide
a kind of friendly face for their corporation. Often, a company will employ an
established blogger to create a weblog designed specifically to appeal to that
company’s customers and to create positive associations with the brand in
consumers’ minds. More than one writer who never even dreamed that he or
she could make money blogging has been approached by a company and offered
quite a pretty penny for this kind of business.
www.olutaller.com
by olutaller | Jul 28, 2009 | Blogging, Digital Marketing, Website development
Blogging 101 is mostly about the blogging vocabulary, from this series you will be to know what blog stand for and how to create a blog and how to earn income through blogging.
To understand blogs, you need to know the terms blog, platform, domain, and web host. Once you have mastered these key elements of blogging, you can enter any conversation about blogging with confidence. After you know what exactly a blog is, you will be on your way to passing the final exam of blogging 101.
Blog is short for weblog, which simply means a series of online posts presented in reverse chronological order. That’s all! Most blogs are text, but there are also photo blogs and video blogs. The rest of blogging 101 has to do with the technical side of things. If you are setting up a blog, you will need a platform (blogger.com, wordpress etc), a web host, and a domain. A blogging platform is a computer software program that allows you to write posts and to update your blog. Your platform is also what you use to design the look of your blog, from color scheme to font size. The web host is sort of like the virtual file cabinet where your blog is stored. Your computer communicates with the host when you upload or edit a post. The domain is the online address of your blog, and usually ends in ‘dot com’. Now that you know what a blog is, what a platform is, and what domains and hosts are, congratulate yourself!
You have passed blogging 101.
www.olutaller.com
