Blogging for Fun and Profit

A blog is an online version of diary where people write and display almost anything – their opinions, photos, jokes, thoughts for the day and more. People also share stories about their pets, their passion for soccer, stamps… the limit is only your imagination!

In the last few years, blogging has emerged to become a much more meaningful activity than simply maintaining a personal diary. People use it to advertise their products and services, in fact, quite a number of companies even create their online presence by using a blog instead of a website.

Create Your Own Blog

Starting a blog is free. You can create one at http://www.blogger.com – a free service from Google Inc. You don’t need to register a domain name or buy hosting. When you sign up at Blogger, everything happens online. Your blog will be hosted by Blogger and you get an URL like http://yourdomain.blogspot.com. You simply log in to your account and start to write. This is much easier and cheaper than buying your own domain and hosting, then hiring someone to do the web design, writing and coding.

Another free blogging service available online is WordPress which is also very popular and easy to use. WordPress supports more features than Blogger while allowing you to customize your blog with various plug-in. You can check it out at http://wordpress.org.

Monetize Your Blog

While blogging for your own interest, you can in fact maximize the potential of your blog for many marketing or commercial purposes.

The quickest and easiest way to turn a blog into a money-making enterprise is to include advertising on your blog. This can be done with contextual ad programs like Adsense – an advertising program by Google. Basically, you get paid when people click on the ads displayed on your website or blog. Google Adsense program is free to sign up. You can visit http://www.google.com/adsense to learn more about the rules and guidelines of the program. Other Adsense type ads that you can use for blog monetizing are SearchFeed, AdBrite, and Yahoo’s Publisher’s Network (YPN).

Affiliate program is another potential way to make money blogging. By focusing on the subject of your blog post, you can promote relevant products from cost per sale affiliate programs like ClickBank and Amazon. You can write a review about the product or service with your affiliate links embedded inside so you get the commission whenever a sale is made.

Boost Your Blog Traffic

Blogs are quickly indexed by search engines, but you need to update it regularly. Search engines love fresh content and regular update will ensure that your website is indexed and ranked high up as well. The higher up it appears, the more traffic will come to your site, which means more sales. You can actively participate in forums discussion or post comments on other blogs to get more link back traffic.

Whether you use your blog for fun or for work, remember that it’s a highly potential tool any which way. So what are you waiting for? Start blogging away right now!

Making Money With Your Blog – Part 3

Imagine a world in which when you ask for something you get full cooperation. You ask for a favour, you get it, you ask for links for your blog, you get them, you ask for a review about your blog, you get it. Oh, I can see that look in your face.

Well, all that can be achieved using some techniques that will help you get anyone to do whatever you ask them for.

Timing: As far away from the day you need the favour done, the better. Don’t ask things for ‘today’ that will put people anxious and prevent them from helping you. In case you are in a rush, go for the people who are not occupied or that seem available.

Give before you ask: There are grate examples of people doing this successfully all over the place. If you manage to make people feel in debt with you then not only they will be willing to help you, but they will do it repeatedly.

Ego: The response you will get will be different if you show them that they have been chosen specially for this task and that there is no one else who can do the favour as good as them, than if what you are asking can be done by anyone. This doesn’t have to be true… you just have to make ‘people feel’ its true :p

Mood: It’s a common mistake to think that people on a bad mood are not willing to help. In fact, the opposite is right. Helping makes people happy, so chances are that you will get a better response from someone willing to change his actual mood than from someone who already feels good.

Just like me: We tend to like people who are like us, or like what we want to be. When asking for a favour you should go to the people who you think will connect with you at that level.

Examples: “So you want me to link to your blog, right? Show me who did this already?” Examples are the best weapon on getting what you want. Show them that others already helped you on this and that it was grate for them too.

Don’t ask, Just Do: This one I learned after asking John Chow for an interview which he didn’t give me. But what he did was write a post (‘Emailing Your Favourite Blogger’) about how to do it next time:

Don’t ask for an interview. Just send it. I’ve received countless emails asking for interviews. The author ask if I agree, they will email me the questions. You would get a much better chance of getting a reply if you send the questions with the email. The last interview I did, the blogger had the five questions right in the email.

Persistence: Studies say that in order to get the definite answer from the other side we have to ask for it 6 times. That is if they didn’t say ‘Yes’ the first time, obviously!

So that’s it! Go out and try this out, you will get lots of favours done while you relax and drink some caipirinha!