There Are No Rules Only Exceptions

There Are No Rules Only Exceptions

by Jeff Chandler

Read enough blogs about blogging in your RSS reader and sooner or later, it will become apparent that there are some cardinal rules when it comes to blogging. However, I am here to say that there are no rules when it comes to blogging. Ethics? Yes. Rules? No. Instead, rules should be looked at as suggestions. It should be known that every blogger has their own handful of suggestions to give out to newer bloggers thanks in part to individuality. But these suggestions or guidelines should not be followed at face value. Instead, use these suggestions as building blocks and mold them into techniques or follow up suggestions that you can pass on to your fellow blogger. Here are three examples showcasing what I've learned based off the suggestions I took to heart when I started blogging seriously.

Suggestion #1

Don't quote other bloggers all the time. Strictly write unique content: This piece of advice is a slap in the face to the facet of blogging. Blogging is a form of communication and each individual should embrace the ability to be part of the larger conversation. Blogging is about linking to other bloggers, quoting them, expanding on another's thoughts, etc. Although writing unique content and keeping to yourself may be fine and dandy, all you're really doing is making yourself look like a snob who doesn't care less about what is going on outside of their sphere.

Suggestion #2

Being mentioned by an A-List blogger is all that matters: Yeah, right. While being granted access to the A-List crew is a dream come true for some, they are only a small part of the overall world of blogging despite how big their egos might be. There is more to blogging than writing content that is aimed at these high profile bloggers. Blog for yourself and not them. If you play your cards right, you'll develop your own A-List within your circle of friends.

Suggestion #3

Don't mix your personal blog with your business blog: Although this sounds good in theory, I believe this is a definite rule (suggestion) you can break. If you blog using WordPress, you can create categories and in my opinion, you can use categories as separate blogs. Because WordPress is so versatile, readers can subscribe to your content on a per category basis. Also, based on my own experience, it is much easier to publish content to one blog instead of two blogs or more.

5 Tips to Turn a Blog into a Business

5 Tips to Turn a Blog into a Business

By Hendry Lee

Some people start a blog purely as a hobby, but little do they know when they have gathered quite a few of loyal readers, they can turn the blog into a lucrative business. Either that, or the big corporations are going to take advantage of them.

Receiving a press release in your email is a sign that nowadays businesses realize the value and influence a blogger can bring to the table. From a mommy blogger to a guitarist who shares their rants and tips, all of them build the kind of relationship none of the big corporations have.

The problem is in finding the right approach to turn the blog into a business. Many people worry about that because as a personal brand, they may put their names at stake if the readers think they are too aggressive in selling and monetizing their blog.

Here are 5 tips that can help you start turning a blog into a business:

1. Adopt the right mindset

When you turn a blog into a business, it is easy to focus too closely on the money part and lose focus.

For instance, this is one of the reasons why affiliate marketing is getting a bad name.
People are recommending products with higher commissions, despite the quality, just to squeeze more money. Credibility and trust are two most important things for a blogger, so make sure you don't ruin it.

In the long run, you are going to make more money if you only promote products that you personally believe in.

And yes, now you know that box of diapers you received in the mail is only a sample, a small cost that they spend to tap into the relationship you've worked so hard to build.
You can turn that into a business deal... without sacrificing integrity.

2. Provide value in your offer

In certain niches, the audience is less Internet savvy. If it is possible to add value to your offer, it can be very helpful.

For instance, while promoting a product, you may do the work on their behalf first by hunting bargains and research on the reputation and service of the various online stores.

There are a lot of ways to add value to the offer.

3. Sell ad space

This is the easiest way to start monetizing your blog. If you partner with ad networks, it also becomes quick and easy. Securing sponsorship is also not uncommon for popular blogs. Once you get going with this approach, you may choose to manage this yourself though.

There are pros and cons related to ads on a blog, but in my opinion, you should never apologize for those ad checks. You take the time to share information and time is the single most limited asset. Only if you make money that you can spend more time on your blog.

4. Educate yourself about this business

A business is a business is a business. A lot of strategies in real world business can be applied online, but there are also specifics.

For instance, learning how to convert more prospects to customers through education and email autoresponder, placing ads strategically to increase value and result for the advertisers, and so on. Certainly you want the ads to be effective for them to keep running the ads.

5. Networking is key

Bloggers usually work alone, but they also need to network with other bloggers. Not only that makes them feel less isolated, but also to seek opportunities -- directly or indirectly -- to grow their traffic and business.

Once you get yourself out there, you will never know the opportunities that are coming your way. Let's not forget that bloggers are more likely to link to others who they already know and trust.

Hello Fellow Bloggers.

Have you heard about the latest traffic generation site? You will get free credits when your site is visited. Be amongst the first to join. Generate your downline. Fill up the sign up form below.

Cheers.

Hello Fellow Bloggers!

FriendsWin Video Social Networking is an AFFORDABLE service that is about to attract masses of people!

The CEO of FriendsWin, Paul Nash, has raised over $450 MILLION in venture funding in his business career. He is currently raising millions of dollars for the FriendsWin business so that FriendsWin will be very successful in the coming months.

On November 1st, FriendsWin will be doing a major advertising campaign which will attract thousands of people because of their AFFORDABLE Video Communication Services.

Now many of these new members will want to sign up as an affiliate and they probably won't have a sponsor. So what will happen is that all PAID affiliates will get those new signups in their downline and will receive commissions without even trying!

This is why you need to join FriendsWin NOW!!, right at the beginning and it will only cost you $9.97 per month for the rest of the year.

Just go here and signup ASAP; http://www.friendswinmoney.com

so you can be part of one of the fastest growing teams in the company.

To your success
Shahrir

Atomic Blogging

Marketing a Blog With No Money

Marketing a Blog With No Money
By Qurratulain Akhtar

In the contemporary times where blogging has become an industry a standalone blog is nothing and you cannot get any benefit out of it until people come to you. Whether you’re a part time blogger and sharing your personal experience for entertainment or for personal satisfaction purpose, a professional blogger aiming to earn revenues out of your blog by monetizing it or your blog is supporting your website and fetching traffic for it, you must need visitors and no one will know you until you tell them. This is what we call blog marketing. Efficient marketing needs finances and funds, but what if you don’t have such? Should you stop the marketing plan and wait for funds? Absolutely no! It’s time for you to start marketing your blog with zero funds. This needs only few things to do. Though it’s a bit time consuming but a very reliable and economical method of marketing. The things you need to do are as follows:

1. Visit the blogs related to your blog and place a suitable comment there. Do not forget to mentioned your blog in the website field.
2. Join Social bookmarking sites.
3. Submit your blog to some free Blog Resource Directories
4. Join forums, participate actively there using your signature for linking your blog.
5. Submit articles to the ezines getting a linkback.
6. Have a review exchange with another blogger with. If the post is permanent that’s more than good.
7. Place the link of your blog on other sites of yours. Sometime other sites may be irrelevant, so be a bit tricky here.

These are the basic steps to promote your blog. You can make your blog more visible if you’ve enough finances, but till the tie you don’t have any, do not waste your time and let your blog grow from the day first. Even if you’ve enough finances to promote the blog, do try these tips, they’ll help your blog outgrow to a greater extent on one hand and will save your cost on other.

10 Steps to New Blog Success

10 Steps to New Blog Success
By Uttoran Sen

1) Start a blog on your favorite topic, else you will always run out of content. 2) First write down 10 blog posts off-line and see how you are doing. If you find difficulty to write enough content on that topic, then try to write on some other topic. The best think to do is, first read some blogs on that particular topic. Do some research, search for blogs on that topic and see what others are doing. Then don't just copy other blogs, but understand that topic properly. After that you will find it easy to write more on that particular topic.

3) Choose a blogging platform. For blogs I always prefer wordpress, a self-hosted wordpress is the best option for blogging. This is a blog running on wordpress.

4) Don't start a blog with one or two entries. At-least make 10 posts on the blog's launch day. A blog with some decent content always makes a good impression. If you do this, then you will have nice readers from the first day of the launch.

5) Content is king, so make nice content. Check for grammatical and spellings errors off line, before publishing the blog. Good content brings natural links, so it is always advised to write properly. If you are not good at writing, then hire a writer. Pay someone who writes well.

6) The next step is to add the feeds. Check out feed burner and get your feeds running. You can see on the left sidebars, I have the feed subscription buttons placed there.

7) Try the blog top sites. This is a good way to show the world how popular your blog is. This also brings some traffic. Check out my blogs ranks on the top sites, the ranks are visible on the sidebar.

8) Promote your blog with the power of social bookmarking. To start with, join technorati, it's a blog search engine, and it is huge. Then try del.icio.us it is another social bookmarking website which gives a lot of traffic. There are a few more like this, digg, stumbleupon, reddit etc, I will make another post for this topic, let's not get too deep into this here.

9) Frequently visit blogs of your niche, even subscribe to it. When ever you see a new post, read it properly and give a good comment on it. Don't post spam comments; make a nice comment that gets accepted. Some blogs are no-follow and some are not. But remember the no-follow is only for Google and there is msn and yahoo also for the search. This step can help you get a lot of targeted readers apart from the link popularity. You can even give blogroll links to a few of the good blogs that you regularly visit.

10) Try to post regularly, if you don't post for sometime long, then you will lose a lot of subscription and regular readers. Blogging is a passion, don't just blog for the shake of it.