3 Tips On How To Make A Name For Yourself

If you're just starting out or having been online long, chances are you don't really have a reputation. Not yet. This is good, because you want to be sure the reputation you do develop is a good one. But how do you develop a good reputation online?

Here are three tips to help you.

1. Copy what the experts are doing.

Do a search online for "internet marketing experts" and see what names come up on the first page. Click some of them and have a look at their sites. Where possible, check out their biography. You can find these by taking a name and adding "bio" or "biography" to your search. Notice how long they've been online, how many web sites they own, how many products they have produced, and any other information that indicates they've been around awhile.

Run a search for the top names you come across and see what you get. Pay attention to how they are promoting and, especially, look for any feedback or comments from people who have done business with them. These are the experts you want to copy because they know how to establish a good reputation online.

2. Participate in forums related to your business specialty

Visit related forums and see how you can contribute. Find posts where you can offer your expertise to help them. Over time, you will become recognized as an expert in your field.

3. Offer quality products and over-deliver

Make certain that anything you produce, whether it's a small e-book or a full web design service, is of the absolute best quality. Be receptive to your customer's feedback, both good and bad. Respond to their concerns respectfully and do whatever it takes to please them. Become known as a business person who is easy to work with, reliable and consistent. Over-deliver on your promises. Don't just sell the service or e-book. Load your offer with a lot of other helpful and relevant products.

Do these three things and you will boost your online reputation and your sales.

Jonathan Budd Is An Expert Internet Marketer Who Shows People How To Make Far More Money Then They Are Now With Highly Profitable Cutting Edge Systems At:

Making Money By Blogging With A Long Term Plan

Quite a few people dream of making money by blogging and this goal is not too far-fetched. The important thing is that you need in order to success in this is willingness to work hard and a basic idea of blogging and how it works. However, very few people actually successfully achieve this goal. The most common reason for failing are that they have unrealistic expectations of how much money they will make. When the goal is not met, this often causes them to feel heavily disappointed and they lose the motivation to continue working toward their goal.

To become successful at making money blogging, the main thing that you will need is a surplus of traffic. The higher your traffic is the more advertisers will agree to pay you and the more you are exposed the more people you have. As more and more blogs come about each day, attaining regular visitors isn't easy as it used to be. Nowadays, having a terrific writing style or a new idea is not enough; you also need to market your blog effectively

Too many bloggers spend their time not marketing their blog, but writing content instead. While content is king, you will fail at making money by blogging if you do not market your blog and let others know that you exists. A great way to market your blog is add it to blog search engines. Once your readers know that you have new content to add regularly they will return to your site on a regular basis. However, it doesn't matter how many times you update your blog if no one is reading it, so don't just focus on the content, marketing your blog is also a very crucial step to make money by blogging.

Success is not going to happen overnight, even if you are a marketing genius. Building a readership takes months. Even if you are not making a profit in the beginning you have to stay committed. It is the long term in blogging that will make the wait more than worth it. To stay motivated, you should set goals for how much content you have or how many readers you want to acquire. If you take follow your plan and take affirmative action you will succeed in making money by blogging.

Max Whitson began involved in learning about Internet marketing at the youthful age of 14. Now, Whitson is an internet marketing guru and has lead hundreds of people to success by making money from home.

Branding, Domain Name, URL, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Blogger Custom Domain
After Google Blogger introduced the much improved New Blogger (previously Blogger Beta) and introduced Blogger Custom Domain (click BACK button to get back to this page), it is now possible for you to register your own domain name (own property) for your blog rather than using a sub-domain like myblog.blogspot.com which is the property of Blogger. If you intend to register your own domain for your blog, there are a few factors you should take into considerations, among which are:
Branding
Some, especially those meant for business blogs, may want to consider branding (having a unique name which one hope would get well known and easily remembered). For example, this blog, BloggerDough blog used the blog URL

freetips08.blogspot.com/

with the hope that BloggerDough will become a well known brand. It was created to be part of a business website BloggerDough with the URL:

www.freetips08.blogspot.com

created to help other bloggers earn from their blogs. However, choosing a URL like that may not be good for SEO (search engine optimization) as search engines gives great importance to the words in the URL. Perhaps if eventually that blog gets ranked very high by search engine, then it may be found by those searching for "blogger" or "dough" but it would face great competition and not likely to be in the top of the list of result in the SERP (search engine result page). However, if ever the brand gets well known, surfers may type the website URL direct into the browser address bar to get to that website or they may search for "bloggerdough" and the possibility of that website appearing very high in the SERP is very good, likely even at the first of the list as not many other website, maybe even none, are optimized for the key word "bloggerdough". So that website will face no competition for searches for bloggerdough. This is the advantage of branding and a strategy you should go for only if you are prepared to make efforts to promote the brand. An unknown brand will not help you.
Putting key words into URL
Search engines place much importance on the words in the website URL. Try goggling for "blogger for dummies" (key words blogger and dummies) and at time of publishing, web pages from Blogger for Dummies appeared at number 1 and 2 on the list of the SERP and this blog was at number 9 in the SERP because this:

dummies-guide-to-google-blogger.blogspot.com

appeared in the Google site search box at the top in the blog Header.

Another 2 blogs of mine, Dummies Guide to Google Blogger was found at number 6 and 11 in the list, the first was because this the words "blogger" and "dummies" were in the blog URL.

SERP for "blogger for dummies results 1 to 10

Above is supposed to be a single screenshot of a SERP page for "blogger for dummies", but the screen is not tall enough to display the whole page, so it comprises 2 screenshots, the second one obtained by scrolling horizontally downward.

Exactly Which Is The Best SEO Guide?

SEO is important to every individual who owns a website. However, if you do not fully understand the technical aspects and do not have the funds to ask for professional help, you must find the information elsewhere. One of the best ways of doing this is to source some of the excellent information found in some of the best SEO guides available on the internet.

Even though you can download many SEO guides for free, many of them are misleading and contain out of date information. Therefore purchasing a current guide; and one that gets updated on a regular basis is by far the most sensible thing to do. The best way to find a top-notch SEO guide is either to ask other internet marketers for their choices, to do an online search or pose the question in a relevant forum.

In my opinion, the best SEO guides is the one published by Aaron Wall as it offers all of the professional advice you will need to become proficient in SEO. The ebook can be instantly downloaded and provides easy instructions that anyone can follow to effectively use the latest and most effective SEO techniques. By following his advice by building links and publishing information the right way, you will ensure your website climbs in the search engine rankings in record breaking time.

Ask any internet marketer about this book and he is almost guaranteed to say that it is without doubt one of the best SEO guides, if not the best internet marketing guide ever published. Perhaps the best part of SeoBook is the fact it reveals that money doesn't necessarily need be spent. In other words, it doesn't recommend investing thousands of dollars in optimization companies.

On a side note, when picking the best SEO guide, you must ensure that you get your money's worth. As I've said, a top guide will encourage you to take control of the process yourself. What really matters with the that it should teach you how to achieve good search engine rankings without paying consultants exorbitant amounts of money.

To conclude, if you are not sure how to choose a guide on SEO, you can do several things:

1. Ask respected internet marketers for advice on the best SEO guides.

1. Go onto a SEO forum, and start talking with other marketers. Ask for their opinions.

1. Do an online search for SEO guides then research those guides you're considering purchasing or downloading for free.

Invest the time to find the best SEO guide before you shell out any money. Remember, the time you spend now will help you make money in the future.

Ultimately, it is a much smarter idea to buy a SEO guide than to seek help from a professional because the process is easier, faster, and much cheaper. Such guides will also help you understand SEO, thus allowing you to ensure your Web sites rank higher in the search engines without spending too much money.

Tim Godfrey is the founder of the exclusive internet marketing tips resource, RocketTheProfit.com

To learn more ways to quickly achieve top ten Google rankings grab our free 5 day SEO masters course

Blogging Essential - Three Mistakes That Can Spell the End of Your Blog

Who would have thunk it? Blogging, started out in 1994 as random musings by a handful of internet users who considered them nothing more than online diaries. Not anymore. Blogging is not only commonplace but it can also be a key component in online business success.

Why has it become such a phenomenon? No doubt convenience plays a major role. Blogs are easy to set up and use. Also unlike traditional website building, blogs require no technical expertise which means no fooling around with HTML code and the like.

But more than anything blogging gives people a voice to be heard. You can post some thoughts on any topic you wish and instantly have a worldwide audience to read it. If they agree or disagree they can let you know it by providing comments on your blog. Not only is this more interactive that the traditional website but search engines look at comments on your blog as fresh content.

However like everything else in life, there is a flip side. To make blogging work for you there are some things you need to keep in mind.

1. Respect for Your Audience

You want as many people in your targeted niche (and beyond) to check out your blog so do your best to avoid offending them. For instance you may have a blog about politics. This is a good way to attract an audience and have spirited discussions and debates. The key is to make sure that you don't cross the line. It's easy in a politically charged atmosphere to let your emotions get the better of you. As the person who runs the blog you must keep a check on what's happening. Don't let a first-class debate collapse into name-calling and verbal abuse. By losing control of their emotions and or their comment board, a number of bloggers have wound up losing a potential loyal audience.

2. The Over Design

There are many blog layouts to choose from but do not overdo it. Your priority should always be to provide good unique content to your audience. The blog design should complement your writing not compete with it. Your text should also be clearly readable. Don't put your content on a background that's going to strain the eyes of your blog visitors. If you want to experiment fine but you can never go wrong by starting out with a basic design.

3. Where Have You Been?

Blogging is easy but one thing that separates a good blog from the rest of the pack is how often you post information on your blog. You may have been on a couple of discussion forums and heard people say they do not post to their blog if they have nothing to say. That's all well and good but what predictably happens is the amount of time between having something to say gets longer and longer. They start out with great enthusiasm and post daily, than every few days, followed by once a week which then turns into a couple times a month.

This is not going to work. People want information. You should post at least three times a week. Write the content yourself or borrow it from others (just make sure to give them credit). You can write a short blurb about an article you saw online and then give the link to your readers so they can check it out. The point is to not let your blog sit idle for long periods of time. That's a good way to lose an audience hungry for information. It also doesn't help you with the search engines which love blogs that update frequently. Since the majority of your internet traffic will come from places like the Google, Yahoo and MSN it's best to give them what they want.

Blogging is a phenomenon that will continue to grow. While it's effortless to set up and operate never lose sight of the fact that you must respect your audience first while giving them quality frequently updated content in an easy to read format. Welcome to the world of blogging. Enjoy the ride.

Article written by Daryl Campbell. After your blog is up and running it is time to start making money. Find out how to blog monetize at The Internet Marketing Guide

How to Make Money Online

If you're wondering how to make money online, there is no shortage of viable options. From raking in money from ad revenue generated from a blog to selling various items on sites like Craigslist, the money is there to be made. The trick is knowing how to do it and knowing how to dodge the scams that seem to be luring around every corner.
For example, all one has to do is go to a search engine and type in "how to make money online" and millions of links will instantly come up. Everyone is out for easy money and there are a lot of scam artists out there waiting to prey on people who are just looking to make an honest buck from the comfort of their own home. Unfortunately, the only way to find out if the company is legitimate or not is to go through the process of trial and error. Online investigating will help, but it's by no means a fail proof safeguard.
One simple thing to do is to post items for sale on auction sites or online forums. With forum sites, specifically Craigslist, you don't have to worry about paying for a product posting fee. However, you do have to meet the person face to face. With sites like Ebay you do have to pay a small fee to get your product listed, but you don't have to meet the person face to face and usually you can factor in shipping costs into the selling price of the item.
As always, it's important to know that no matter how much money a person may be offering, it's important to place your personal safety first. Don't meet people online for product/cash exchanges if it all possible. The $4 spent in shipping is a small price to pay for peace of mind.
Discover how a lazy surf bum unlocked the $100K a month code with the Reverse Funnel System at http://www.ReverseFunnelRevenue.com today. Also, be sure to check out the Reverse Funnel System review blog

Easy Ways to Make Money Online

There are several options to choose from if you're looking for easy ways to make money online. First and foremost, I would suggest keeping your regular job, if you have one, and calculating exactly how viable it is to get all of your income from the internet. Sometimes, the money isn't as reliable as you would think and other times external factors like the economy, lack of demand, etc. can put a serious damper on your monthly income.

Now that that's out of the way, it's time to get down to the easy ways to make money online. First and foremost, clean your house. Go through everything, and instead of donating old clothes, knickknacks and furniture to charity, try to sell it on a site like Ebay or Craigslist. Ebay is certainly easier, and more people will see what it is that you're selling, but Craigslist.org doesn't charge you to put your stuff up for sale and you probably won't have to deal with shipping.

Still, if you're looking to maximize your return, Ebay is definitely the way to go. The first thing to do is make sure you take pictures of everything before you put it up for auction. This ensures that the buyer has less of a chance of misunderstanding your post and it also draws more people to view your item. Usually, it's worth the extra dollar or two to get a gallery photo and pay for your auction to be highlighted.

When selling multiple items, offer to reduce the price of shipping when more than one item is purchased by the same person. People looking for deals will be more inclined to take a look at what else you're offering, and it's another one of the easy ways to make money online.

Discover how a lazy surf bum unlocked the $100K a month code with the Reverse Funnel System at http://www.ReverseFunnelRevenue.com today. Also, be sure to check out the Reverse Funnel System review blog

You Can Sell Yourself to Make Money Online

Don't think about the e-Bay sales once you have seen the title of this article. You can help the Internet business owners by providing various services. You can identify your skills and easily write about you to make money online. Lets go little deeper.

Today blogging is an important activity of each and every individual in this world. So you are having plenty of work. Yo can help a blogger to make money online with the blog building business.

Making money online is really a combined work for a blogger or a webmaster. i.e. they need articles, link development, directory submission, Article submission to different ezine article sites etc. You can master yourself in any one of these services to make money online.

Other services that fetch you easy money online includes-
• Graphic creation and selling them
• Logo and banner creation
• Customize PLR products
• Building an autoresponder email campaigns
• Preparing personal videos for bloggers
• Forum posting ($1 for 10 postings)
• Blog comment posting ( you can earn $1 for 5 comments)
• Website building
• Press release submission
• Search Engine optimization
The first thing you should do to provide these services is to build your own site or blog which describes your service.

Then join in different discussion forums on the Internet and place a simple slogan about your service in the signature. You can upload your website address of your sales page also in the signature.

Thats all!!! Now you'll get enough private messages in your inbox of your forum that sought your valuable service of selling yourself to make money online.

As bottom line, I do want to remind you that you should sign up a paypal account to receive the money from your customers. I think now you have learnt a simple way to make money online. Isn't? All the best!!!

Top Five Tips to Get Five Figure Income in Six Months

So, you have started your make money online blog and checking the adsense account for daily earnings. You might have frustrated to see the results from your adsense earnings. Day long work may fetch you only few dollars (some webmasters are earning few cents also...)

1. I have worked a lot and visited numerous make money online blogs to derive simple five tips to earn money online easily. 1. Start a follow-up e-mail course on "make money online". Don't forget to include your ad with each lesson. Usually people will get your products once they see your ad repeatedly.

2. Don't hesitate to give a percentage of your profits to a noble cause. Usually most of the customers would like to buy your product, if you're actually giving a percentage to a school, charity, environmental improvements, etc. For e.g. You could say, "Our business donates 2% of sales to a trust that concentrates on wildlife conservation".

3. Concentrate to make money online by selling advertising space in your blog/website, on your classified ad site, in your free e-books, in your e-zine, etc. For example, you can specify the price of each space where your customers can place their banners.

4. You can give free web space on your server to the potential customers with a condition of publishing your banner ad in their website hosted in your server. If you gave away 1000 free web pages and received only one click a week off each one, that would be an extra 52000 visitors a year!

5. Most of us want to have simple solution for our complex problems. Tell your customers what problems they have and how your product will win their confidence. For example, you could say, "Aren't you frustrated after using so many creams and medicines to cure acne? Well now you don't have too. Our natural treatment product will bring back a joy in your face forever..."

Just follow these simple steps to promote a product in your website or blog to earn money online without any fuss. Hope you'll start make money online within no time...

Top Five Tips To Make Money Online

Who don't like to make money online? But they require sheer hard work and solid steps towards the goal of earning money online.

So, you have decided to launch a new blog to make quick money online. If so, you should make out a plan and work accordingly.

New or old, all the blogs do require traffic. Traffic is the key to pull the targeted visitors from search engines. If you perform good search engine optimization, search engine will listen what you're telling. Otherwise, you should run behind them.

The perfect tips to get make money online are-
1. Search engine optimization
2. Quality content and traffic building
3. Popularizing your Blog
4. Reader interaction
5. Building useful links (One-way linking and also .edu links will fetch you more traffic)

Last but not least, you should know that your blog should contain useful content. Although content is the king, original content is king of kings. In addition to building original contents, do research to get useful keywords and also use relevant wordpress plug-ins to get more visitors to make money online.

Few Perfect Options to Make Money Online

Do you know the Internet is flooded with empty promises to make money online at your home? The main reason for this is that most of the promises of earning hundreds per day are scams. But there are few lawful ways to make money online. You should keep in mind that these legitimate ways won't make you rich overnight.
The perfect tips to earn money online are as follows: -

1.Online advertising of your skills will fetch you good results for making money online. If you know freelance writing, data processing, logo designing, website designing or any specialized skills you are very marketable.

2. Some of the home based business people are also earning quick money by blogging. Although I am a newbie in this area, I can't throw more light on this strategy. But I am real familiar with people who are minting money by placing ads of different companies in their blog (Johnchow.com, problogger.com, etc)

3. Do browse for content sites like rentacoder.com, elance.com, getafreelancer.com, scriptlance.com. If you know how to write articles for the websites, then you can make money online like anything. The current market rate for this task is $1.5 per 100 words.

4. You can earn simple money online by joining paid survey site; this is really a perfect way to make quick money. Even if you refer few of your friends to this site, you will get $1.25 per referral. But you should be aware that there are few scam websites available in the net. Don't fall as a prey to them.

5. Are you having few old stuff laying around your home? You can make money online from them also! Just join an auction site like eBay and sell that used things at nominal rate by floating a bid. But you should offer the best the people is looking for otherwise instead of making money online you'll be losing money online.

So, earning money online is really an exciting thing. You can learn while you earn also! By these simple make money online tips, you can do a spot of gardening, take care of the kids or do errands for your neighbors. Happy Earning!!!

Top Ten Legally Free Image Sources

So, you have build your new website. Now it is time to post regularly in your blog. A research confirms that a post with image grabs more visitors than a simple write up.

Although you might have come across free images, those images are belonged to people who created them. "Legally free" means you can make use of these images in either in your blog or site without paying single pie as a royalty.

Fortunately, there are number of sources that offers free images, and I've collected them here. So read on for top ten sources where you can find legally free image sources: and don't worry - they're all legal!

Are you looking for mainstream images? Then, following are the perfect place to look for the same-
1. Free Stock Images
2. DexHaus
3. Cepolina
4. Visipix
5. PD Photo
6. Free Digital Photos
7. Free Photos Bank
8. Digital Dreamer
9. Kavewall
10.Free Foto

East or West. Adsense is the Best

Are you frustrated with making money online? I think you're also just like me. I spent nearly 6 hours with Internet daily to study about - "How to make quick Money?" But unable to find suitable program to earn money online. I bought every single make money online e-book and found that all of them were scams.

Finally, I cam across Adsense program that fetches good earnings. So I do want share this experience to the newbie adsense signers.

Simple tips to make money through Adsense-

1. Obtain Web Hosting and a Domain Name or sign up for blogspot blogger
2. Get into Adsense program.
3. Build Original Content for your Website with Xsite Pro.
4. Promote, Advertise and everything else in your power to get traffic.
5. You will get good amount for your daily livelihood.

Sign up with adwords to get more traffic. Beware there is no way you can make money online, without spending a dime. Beware of scammers- they will tell that they will teach make money online without spending a single pie. Don't believe them.

All the best!!!

SEO Tips: Link Building

This article is a follow-up to an article I wrote about On-Page Optimization (SEO tips on page optimization). On-Page optimization enables each of your web pages to make the most out of the mojo that they have -- but you need inbound links (Search Engine FAQ) to create that mojo in the first place.

I use the term "mojo" as a generic descriptor for the importance given to a web page or a web site based upon inbound links. Similar terms include page rank, site rank, trust rank, and authority. Those terms tend to carry too much linguistic baggage, so I use the term "mojo" for simplicity unless another term is specifically required.

Mojo is created by getting inbound links to your web site and to your web pages.

Getting inbound links is one of the most important, and time consuming, tasks involved in SEO.

Here are a few tips to generate inbound links. Each of these tips are appropriate for some web sites, but none are appropriate for all web sites. Select the link building strategies which are most appropriate for your specific web site.

Submit to Web Directories
Start with big slow directories like the Yahoo Directory and the DMOZ Open Directory Project, but don't stop there.

Search out the small directories which are dedicated to topics relevant to your web site.

For more suggestions on finding directories to submit to, read How can I find web directories? (Find Web Directories)

Reciprocal Linking
Write individual e-mails to specific webmasters whose web pages compliment your own and tell them that you would like to trade links with them.

Make sure to personalize each e-mail, or your e-mails will be quickly deleted as spam.

To achieve the best results from your e-mail, include the following in your initial e-mail:

* Mention two positive items about their web site, so that they know that your e-mail is not a generic spam.

* Include directions to the specific web page where you have added the link to their web site.

* Mention the Page Rank (http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/pr-page-rank.shtml) of the page where you have added a link to their web site.

These web sites exist to help you search for reciprocal link partners in the same market niche' as your web site:

* Find Link Partners
* Link Partner Finder
* Themes Reciprocal Link Finder

Write Articles for Other Web Sites
One method for getting inbound links is to write quality articles and submit them to other web sites for publication.

Each article should include a link back to your web site.

These links are better than links from link pages, because there tend to be very few outbound links on the article page.

Write a brief article on some topic related to the topic of your web site. Do not write an article about your web site, but write an article that would be interesting to people who would also be interested in your web site.

Send this article to webmasters who maintain web sites on topics similar to the topic of your article. Explain to them that they can post your article for free on their web sites, in return for a link to your web site.

To find web sites to submit articles for publication, visit Where can I submit an article for publication? (Submit Articles)

Create and Submit Press Releases
Write press releases about your web site and submit them to press release distribution services.

To find places to submit press releases for publication, visit Where can I submit my press release?

Join a Reciprocal Link Program
Reciprocal linking programs exist to help webmasters share links with similar web sites.

Some of the reciprocal link programs are:

* Link Market
* Info Wizards
* LinkExchanged
* Link Partners
* Links-Pal
* Linkateer
* Webmaster Link Exchange
* LinkLeads
* Link Traders
* LinkExchangeIt
* SiteSell
* 123ExchangeLinks
* Ads4Links
* Spocka
* Links For You

If you have a blog, try blogLinker, the automatic link swapper for blogs.

These link networks can generate a lot of e-mail. You will probably want to create a new e-mail account just for these networks.

Join the DigitalPoint Ad Network
The DigitalPoint Coop Advertising Network enables you to automatically trade links with thousands of web sites across the Internet.

Join a Reciprocal Linking Forum
Several web forums exist for the purpose of sharing and trading reciprocal links. These linking forums include:

LinkRequests
Link Trade Forum

Start a Reciprocal Linking Program on Your Web Site
You can also setup a reciprocal linking program on your own web site.

For more information on setting up a reciprocal linking program on your site, read How can I add a reciprocal link manager to my web site?

Start or Join a Web Ring
You can use an existing web ring service such as WebRing, or you can create your own web ring using the PHP-Ring webring script.

Join or Create a Top Site List
Search for top site lists which are relevant to your web site.

Add yourself to the existing lists. If no relevant top site lists exist, create one.

Provide a Useful Service
Create dynamic content on your web site which other web masters can include on their web sites by linking to it.

Every webmaster who uses your content automatically adds a link to your site.

Firearm News http://www.firearmnews.com/news/ is an excellent example of this. If you add a small bit of JavaScript to your web page, your users will receive up-to-date news on firearms.

Of course, you will also have to contact other webmasters to let them know about your service -- perhaps even with a press release.

Buy Links
If all else fails, you can always buy links to your web site.

Spider-Friendly Navigation

Most blogs that I see are not remotely spider friendly. By that I mean the search engine spiders have to wade through a good bit of html only to find there isn’t much there but the posts. Each and every blogger has to view their blog the way the spiders do, and then fine-tune things to be not only spider friendly, but also to spoon-feed the spiders what you want them to eat. How do we do that? Well, for starters use a utility that examines your blog the way a spider does.

Spider Simulators.

There are several simulators available that will do the hard work for you. They visit your URL, strip out the HTML code, and serve up the meat of your blog site the way a spider sees your site. Here are the best sites to use:

• WebConfs Spider Simulator
• SEOChat Spider Simulator
• Webmaster Toolkit Spider Simulator

Fix Your Theme

Now that you have looked at your site using one of the simulators, you may notice that there are no meta names or descriptions listed. You may even find that the top lines are spam for your theme designer. The first thing you need to do is realize that most themes are designed for looks, not for search engines. You need to add some “meat” to your theme by way of meta descriptions and keywords. In WordPress, you will probably need to open your theme editor and use the header.php which is where most theme writers put meta information. Examine what you see closely. With Blogger, you will need to use Blogger’s theme editor for the main page. For starters, try adding a line in the section of your theme for keywords. Although Google does not put much emphasis on keywords, some search engines do. A meta keyword listing would be something like [meta content=”term1, term2, phrase one and two, another phrase, term3″ name=”keywords” /] (we used square brackets so this code will display. Replace with angle brackets).

The terms and phrases, obviously, should be something relevant to your site that you would like the search engines to pick up. Try running a simulator again and see whether the keywords are now being picked up. With the WebConfs spider simlulator you not only get the meta listing, you also get links from each of your keywords to other suggested keywords. Experiment, learn about meta and how spiders looks at your site. Fine-tune your site. You may have information in a sidebar that is being wasted. Notice where the spiders put sidebar information. Keep in mind that most spiders consider text at the top of a page to be more important than text near the bottom.

Exactly Which Is The Best SEO Guide?

SEO is important to every individual who owns a website. However, if you do not fully understand the technical aspects and do not have the funds to ask for professional help, you must find the information elsewhere. One of the best ways of doing this is to source some of the excellent information found in some of the best SEO guides available on the internet.

Even though you can download many SEO guides for free, many of them are misleading and contain out of date information. Therefore purchasing a current guide; and one that gets updated on a regular basis is by far the most sensible thing to do. The best way to find a top-notch SEO guide is either to ask other internet marketers for their choices, to do an online search or pose the question in a relevant forum.

In my opinion, the best SEO guides is the one published by Aaron Wall as it offers all of the professional advice you will need to become proficient in SEO. The ebook can be instantly downloaded and provides easy instructions that anyone can follow to effectively use the latest and most effective SEO techniques. By following his advice by building links and publishing information the right way, you will ensure your website climbs in the search engine rankings in record breaking time.

Ask any internet marketer about this book and he is almost guaranteed to say that it is without doubt one of the best SEO guides, if not the best internet marketing guide ever published. Perhaps the best part of SeoBook is the fact it reveals that money doesn't necessarily need be spent. In other words, it doesn't recommend investing thousands of dollars in optimization companies.

On a side note, when picking the best SEO guide, you must ensure that you get your money's worth. As I've said, a top guide will encourage you to take control of the process yourself. What really matters with the that it should teach you how to achieve good search engine rankings without paying consultants exorbitant amounts of money.

To conclude, if you are not sure how to choose a guide on SEO, you can do several things:

1. Ask respected internet marketers for advice on the best SEO guides.

1. Go onto a SEO forum, and start talking with other marketers. Ask for their opinions.

1. Do an online search for SEO guides then research those guides you're considering purchasing or downloading for free.

Invest the time to find the best SEO guide before you shell out any money. Remember, the time you spend now will help you make money in the future.

Ultimately, it is a much smarter idea to buy a SEO guide than to seek help from a professional because the process is easier, faster, and much cheaper. Such guides will also help you understand SEO, thus allowing you to ensure your Web sites rank higher in the search engines without spending too much money.

Tim Godfrey is the founder of the exclusive internet marketing tips resource, RocketTheProfit.com

To learn more ways to quickly achieve top ten Google rankings grab our free 5 day SEO masters course

NO! to Link Spamming

In the World Wide Web, link popularity or gathering quality back links is an imperative SEO strategy to higher ranks among SERPS. Web Masters have a strong desire for commercial success but are faced with equally austere competition from peers. The phenomena has been paving way for exploration of all kinds of means and ways to garner high quality backlinks – both legitimate and not so legitimate from the point of view of Google Search Engine spiders.

Link spam is one of the illegitimate methods of achieving quick and easy link popularity. Under the purview, a webmaster links to a Link farm or a website with no other business but to provide web pages full of irrelevant links on various communities. Link Spam may also imply other miscellaneous methods viz. hidden links, Sybil attack, Wiki spam, spam in blogs, spam blogs, page hijacking, referrer log spamming and buying expired domains.

All these methods basically intend to fool the Google’s link-based ranking algorithms (including HITS algorithm) into believing that the webmaster’s website enjoys substantial number of favorable votes. The votes in turn explicate to the search engine spiders that the website is informative, useful, unique and popular, which in turn means better creditability. The objective behind Link spam is absolutely and solely to increase link popularity and never to enrich the content of the website or better the user experience.

As the saying goes, “prevention is better than cure” – Link spam can be avoided by having the knowledge of it and preventing it then and there. Understanding the underlying logic behind the illegal nature of link spamming sheds a good amount of light on what can be a link spam, even if not described here in the text.

Some examples of Link spamming include

(1) Putting links where visitors cannot find them – Hidden Links

(2) Forging multiple identities or creating multiple websites at different domain names and linking them all to each other, thus indulging in fake link popularity - “Sybil attack”

(3) Misusing the open edit-ability feature of wiki system to place links from Wiki to the spam site – Wiki spam

(4) Irrelevant and unwanted nonsense post received from an automated software - Spam in blogs

(5) A fake blog created solely for link spamming, also known as spam blogs

(6) Creating a rogue copy of a popular site that shows contents similar to the original website to a web crawler but in effect diverts the traffic to irrelevant and spiteful websites

All link spam based propagation of text links visible on the face are bogus and barely a fallacy. In gist, these methods simply overlook the very purpose of Google’s algorithms – that is to ensure popular and informative sites appear in the SERPs in descending order for the benefit of the user. Therefore, as soon as one of these practices is detected, the relevant website is removed (either temporarily or permanently) from the Google’s search engine index, as a penalty

Blogger’s guide to HTML

Knowledge of some basic html coding is a very useful tool for bloggers. Web design programs are fine if you like to use them, but may prove somewhat tricky when trying to adapt code to paste into a layout or post. With a bit of html, you can easily transform your blog into something unique, interesting, and even easier to use. So here’s a quick guide to HTML code and links to useful sites where you can find out more:

Formatting:

Most blog clients have a formatting feature built in to the post editor. But if you want to
align text in the navbar for instance, you will have to do this yourself.

To create a paragraph (with spaces automatically inserted between paragraphs), you would
insert the following code:

<> Your paragraph of text here < /p >

By default, text is aligned within a paragraph to the left. The code for this is as follows:

< align="”left”"> Your paragraph of text here < /p >

To align text to the right hand side of the page, you would add code like this:

< align="”right”"> Your paragraph of text here < /p >

And to centralise:

< align="”center”"> Your paragraph of text here < /p >

You can also use this simpler code to centralise text, images, tables, etc:

<> Text/image/table/etc here < /center >

To insert a line break (no paragraph space), use this:

< /br >

Line breaks can be useful if you don’t want text to be beneath an image instead of following
on at the side.

Horizontal rules can also be useful in design. You can insert a simple horizontal rule across the available space in the page like this:

< /hr >

Which looks like this:

To make the horizontal rule span only half of the page, try this instead:

< width="”50%”">

You could align it to the centre of the page:

<> < width="”50%”"> < /center >

And you can even change the colour and thickness!

< width="”50%”" color="”ff0000″" size="”10″">

HTML code for a page link:

Basic links are simple, and usually appear as a feature in blogging platforms. However, there are some interesting features you can use with links, such as linking to different areas of the same page (or different areas of another page entirely!).

The basic html code for a page link is as follows:

< href="”pagename.html”"> Your link text here <>

You can change the link text to anything you want, such as My Link, or LOOK HERE!.

Let’s suppose you want to link to a different part of the page. Here is where “anchors” come in handy…

You can create an anchor to the top of a page as follows:

At the top of your page, insert this code: < name="”#top”">

Then wherever you want to provide a link to the top of your page, use something like this:

< href="”#top”"> Back to top < /a >

Save your work and try the link out: you should be taken to the top of the page. You can change these values to link to different areas of a page (as you may have already noticed in this post). Be careful to always insert the “#” symbol and to end the link with < /a >
otherwise you may find the whole page is linked!

If you want to link to another page which includes anchor links as part of the make-up, use something like this:

< a href=”yoursite.htm#top” which will link to the top of the page called “yoursite.htm”

You can input links to email addresses in order for readers to send you an email directly from your blog or site. Rather than using the “http” address, you would use “mailto:your@address.com” like this:

< href="”mailto:your@address.com"> Your email link < /a >

Changing font styles:

You can change the style and color of the font appearing on your blog. To make text bold or italic, use the following codes:

<> Bold Text < /b >
<> Italic Text < /i >

To change the color of text, use the following code:

< color="”red”"> Red Text < /font >

You can change “red” to any other colour, such as purple, yellow, blue, green.
Alternatively, you can use hex colours as I will describe below.

Colours:

You can use almost any colour in the spectrum to make your fonts, backgrounds, tables etc.
more colourful. To do this, you will need to enter the hex code for the colour and implement as follows:

< color="”ffcc00″"> Your font colour < /font >

This inserts golden yellow text, but you can use any colour you wish. Hex colours are comprised of six digits which include the numbers 0-9 and A-F. Black, for example is “000000″ and white would be “ffffff” For a complete list of web colour codes, try Cedges Colour Code applet, which is great for previewing colours too!

Adding Background Music

The majority of websites on the Internet do not have background music. This may lead many novice MySpace members to believe adding music to the background is a difficult process but it really isn’t. In fact MySpace makes it incredibly simple for members to add music to their profiles. The steps to add music to a MySpace profile are as follows:

* Log into your MySpace account
* While logged in visit this web address: http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music
* Listen to the music available and select a suitable song for your profile
* Click on the link that says “Add” below the song title
* The music is then automatically added to your profile

It is important to note that users can only add one song at a time to their profile. Clicking the “Add” link on a second song will result in the original song being replaced on the profile by the new song. Songs can be removed from a profile at any time by going to the “Edit profile” section of your account and entering the “Profile songs” subcategory. Here you have the option to remove your chosen song.

Adding Videos to MySpace

Adding videos to MySpace is also not as difficult as it seems. Even those with no HTML skills can add videos produced by other members or even their own videos to their MySpace profile. The steps to add a video to your MySpace profile are as follows:

* Log into your MySpace Account
* From your MySpace homepage, click on the “Add/Change Videos” link
* You are then taken to another webpage where you can either search through a database of previously uploaded videos or upload your own video
* To search the database, click on the search videos button and browse through the available videos
* After watching a video you can add the video to your profile in a couple of ways. First you can click on the “Add to my profile” button or you can copy the source code provided and paste this code into the desired location on your profile.

Alternately you can add your own videos to your MySpace profile by first uploading them to MySpace and then adding them to your profile. When uploading a video care should be taken to ensure the video does not violate the terms of service.

Creating Interactive Features on MySpace

Creating interactive features on MySpace is a bit more involved. Members can create features which allow visitor interaction but these features require more extensive HTML knowledge. The best way to acquire the information necessary to design these types of features is to research the subject of HTML code in books or on the Internet. However, if you find a feature on another MySpace website you would like to include in your own profile you can contact the member and ask them how to add this feature.

Mind Tricks For A Home Based Business

Could your way of thinking prevent you from creating a successful online home based business?

Do you wonder how your mind operates when it comes to money, being rich and creating wealth online? If you haven't thought about it before, you may have some negative programming in your subconscious.

A few questions to see how your subconscious is programmed:

When you have decided that you want to make money online, do you believe you can be successful?

Do you believe that there is "abundance" when it comes to money, and that you can make money, get rich and then create wealth online depending on your needs? Why or Why not?

What are your beliefs when it comes to internet marketing? Is there just too much competition? You could never tap into that market?

Where have the beliefs about making money online come from? The opinions of others?

If you're like me, you might have some negative programming in your subconscious regarding making money online. With all the scams out there, it's easy to label everything as such.

You could spend years learning as much as you can about online internet marketing and making money. And deep in your mind that negative subconscious programming can still exist.

But there's something you can do about it.

There's an important concept to keep in mind when we are dealing with the 'inevitables' of any online home business. Something is not going to work out as we had planned it. Sooner or later we will encounter that familiar emotion called frustration. Some days you will think that you're about to go crazy. At times, you may even get upset.

An important ingredient for home based business greatness is the ability to see that there is no failure, only feedback.

The reason why most people fail with an online business is because they mistake negative feedback as failure. You perform an action and you get a result. That positive result is making money online with your home based business. That's positive feedback and let's you know to continue with what your doing.

The negative result requires us to change what we are currently doing. The negative feedback let's us know that it is time to discontinue with what we're currently doing, and adjust it. That's all it is.

That negative feedback has taken out many people who otherwise could have been very successful internet marketers. They didn't lack the commitment or motivation; they just didn't change what they were doing when the negative feedback made its presence.

Great reward = great risk or temporary setbacks.

Realize that there is massive success just around the corner. You must believe that. So long as you are learning from your mistakes, bringing out you best traits and subduing your negative traits. You will eventually internalize a new, success-drawing belief system. You need to constantly work that muscle and it can be hard with all the things that can happen with your online business.

Those meant for greatness will be tested and have to deal with constant obstacles, whereas those who are destined for mediocrity will have it easy. Their results will be mediocre while entrepreneurs like us are destined to lead grand, magnificent lifestyles.

Consider this; there is absolutely nothing wrong with mediocrity. But we have chosen to take control of our lives and start working from home with an online business. We are meant for more than mediocrity. We are meant for greatness.

This is a great thought process to have and an important step.

Model the internet marketers who are making money online. One of the best things that you can do.

Nothing can replace being shown step by step how to build wealth online by a group of like minded people that will help support you. Re-enforce that positive mind set programming.

Stop looking for the get rich quick.

Realize that you're going to have to constantly learn and improve to have a successful business. Research and decision making are important for all businesses.

Now put your mind to it!

Don Downes is a top internet marketer who works with other industry leading internet marketers from around the world. He works with successful business coaches who specialize in helping individuals create 6-figure incomes working from home.

Home Business Tips

7 Home Business Tips to Help You Choose The Perfect Home Based Business

We live in the age of the Internet. No where has the Internet made a larger impact than with the work at home entrepreneur. You want to start your own home based business, but, there are so many options. Some are legitimate, some aren't.

The purpose of starting a business is to make money and be happy doing it. You certainly don't want to waste your time and money on a scam. So what do you look for when starting your own work at home business?

The following home business tips are a few things to look for in a home based business opportunity.

Stability- With so many scams out there, one thing to look for is a stable opportunity. Are they listed with the BBB (Better Business Bureau)? If so, you will be able to see when they listed. Look for a business that has been around for a while. There are some new opportunities that are worthwhile but I always like to know the business has been successful. Also, a stable company will usually let you join for free so that you can take a more detailed look at it before you invest your time and money.

Product- What product(s) will you be offering? Is it something that most people need, use, or would want? More importantly, is it something you need, would use, or want? It is impossible to market a product that you don't use, because if you don't use it, how can you convince anybody else to use it? Also, keep in mind that most times, you will be selling the opportunity as well, so you need to be convinced that it works before you can convince others.

Investment- What are the start up costs? What about the marketing costs? How does the compensation plan work? How long does it take before you will break even? Compare what you will be spending to the money making potential.

Training- Does the company you have found provide thorough training with a strong support system or are you virtually on your own? Nothing is more discouraging than having something to sell and a business to promote and not know where to begin. Make sure your business gives you ideas on how to market your product. It's even better if they show you how to do it.

Look for ways to get people to join you while your business is growing, like Guaranteed Sign-ups, or an advertising co-op.

Forums- This goes along with the training you will get from your business. Can you get in contact with others in the business that have been successful? It's nice to know the path others have taken to become successful in your business. They can give you helpful ideas and help you avoid some of the pitfalls they have encountered.

What I have found most helpful is forums and message boards. They go a long way in giving you self confidence, encouragement, and ultimately, success.

Potential- What is the monetary potential for the business? After all, that is the bottom line, isn't it, to make money and the freedom it allows?

Your Gut Feeling- If something doesn't feel right, you need to back away until you get all your questions answered. First and foremost, you have to believe in the opportunity. Don't jump into anything. Take it slow and be patient.

I hope these home business tips give you a head start in in becoming a successful work-at-home entrepreneur.

The rest is up to you!

Lisa Willard is a life-time learner and online marketer. Are you interested in learning the secrets of building a business online. Contact me at lwillard@omega1w.net or visit my personal website at http://www.OnlineCandleTeam.com

Blogging Tips and Advice

1) Write every day if you think you're a good writer, write twice a day.

2) Don't be afraid to do anything. in fact if you're afraid of something, do it. then do it again. and again.

3) Don't tell your mom, your work, your friends, the people you want to date, or the people you want to work for about your blog. if they find out and you'd rather they didn't read it, ask them nicely to grant you your privacy.

4) Have comments. don't be upset if no one writes in your comments for a long time. eventually they'll write in there. if people start acting mean in your comments, ask them to stop, they probably will.

5) Have an email address clearly displayed on your blog. sometimes people want to tell you that you rock in private.

6) Don't worry very much about the design of your blog. image is a fake out.

7) Use Blogger. it's easy, it's free; and because they are owned by Google, your blog will get spidered better, you will show up in more search results, and more people will end up at your blog. besides, all the other blogging software & alternatives pretty much suck.

8) Use spell check unless you're completely totally keeping it real. but even then you might want to use it if you think you wrote something really good.

9) Say exactly what you want to say no matter what it looks like on the screen. then say something else. then keep going. and when youre done, re-read it, and edit it and hit publish and forget about it.

10) Link like crazy. link anyone who links you, link your favorites, link your friends. don't be a prude. linking is what separates bloggers from apes. and especially link if you're trying to prove a point and someone else said it first. it lends credibility even if you're full of ****.

11) If you haven't written about sex, religion, and politics in a week you're probably playing it too safe, which means you probably ****ed up on #5, in which case start a second blog and keep your big mouth shut about it this time.

12) Remember: nobody cares which N*Sync member you are, what State you are, which Party of Five kid you are, or which Weezer song you are. the second you put one of those things on your blog you need to delete your blog and try out for the marching band. similarly, nobody gives a **** what the weather is like in your town, nobody wants you to change their cursor into a butterfly, nobody wants to vote on whether your blog is hot or not, and nobody gives a rat ass what song you're listening to. write something Real for you, about you, every day.

13) Don't be afraid if you think something has been said before. it has. and better. big whoop. say it anyway using your own words as honestly as you can. just let it out.

14) Set Site Meter and make it available for everyone to see. if you're embarrassed that not a lot of people are clicking over to your page, don't be embarrassed by the number, be embarrassed that you actually give a crap about hits to your gay blog. it really is just a blog. and hits really don't mean anything. you want Site Meter, though, to see who is linking you so you can thank them and so you can link them back. similarly, use Technorati, but don't obsess. write.

15) People like pictures. use them. save them to your own server. or use Blogger's free service. if you don't know how to do it, learn. also get a Buzznet account. several things will happen once you start blogging, one of them is you will learn new things. thats a good thing.

16) Before you hit Save as Draft or Publish Post, select all and copy your masterpiece. you are using a computer and the internet, **** can happen. no need to lose a good post.

17) Push the envelope in what you're writing about and how you're saying it. be more and more honest. get to the root of things. start at the root of things and get deeper. dig. think out loud. keep typing. keep going. eventually you'll find a little treasure chest. every time you blog this can happen if you let it.

18) Change your style. mimic people. write beautiful lies. dream in public. kiss and tell. finger and tell. cry scream fight sing **** and don't be afraid to be funny. the easiest thing to do is whine when you write. don't be lazy. audblog at least once a week.

19) Write open letters. make lists. call people out on their bullshit. lead by example. invent and reinvent yourself. start by writing about what happened to you today. for example today i told a hot girl how wonderfully hot she is.

20) When in doubt review something. theres not enough reviews on blogs. review a movie you just saw, a tv show, a cd, a kiss you just got, a restaurant, a hike you just took, anything.

21) You may constantly write about the town that you live in.

23) Out yourself. tell your secrets. you can always delete them later.

24) Don't use your real name. don't write about your work unless you dont care about getting fired.

25) Don't be afraid to come across as an asswipe. own your asswipeness.

26) Nobody likes poems. don't put your poems on your blog. not even if they're incredible. especially if they're incredible. odds are they're not incredible. bad poems are funny sometimes though, so fine, put you dumb poems on there. whatever.

27) Read tons of blogs and leave nice comments. Write something about your friends.

28) Don't apologize about not blogging. nobody cares. just start blogging again.

10 Effective Methods To Increase Web Traffic

If you own a website for your business, attracting website traffic and more importantly sustaining it will be one of your top priorities if you want to succeed in your home business. Needless to say, there are many ways to increase website traffic. You do need to find the best strategies of learning how to tap this traffic, hopefully a growing one at that, perhaps self-replicating stream and preferably free.

This article provides some ideas to increase online traffic.

(1) Search Engine Optimization

It would benefit your business to ensure that your website is search engine friendly as this will certainly help grow your website traffic. Ensure all the meta and alt tags are completed and there is a H1 header, optimizing the text for your chosen keywords. There are a number of sites which provide a "spider simulation" which shows you what your site looks like to a spider and what you can do to improve its search engine ranking. A report on the quality of your website is generated for your view and to take necessary steps for improvements.

(2) Directories

Directories are website listings and there are many to choose from. A good method to choose a reputable one would be to look for directories that have a good traffic rating, one that receives significant high volumes of website traffic (use Alexa). A few good examples to start this would be Yahoo and DMOZ.

(3) Traffic Exchanges

Every website you view in a traffic exchange generates credits which are exchanged for views of your own site. Most Traffic Exchanges are free to join and they generate traffic for you almost instantly. There are basically two types of exchanges, manual surf and auto surf. The manual surf exchanges are preferred as they require the person to view and click the sites. The more sites you view the more people visit your website and the more your website traffic grows. To increase web traffic even further, join a few of them so as to generate more visitors, which can help in your page ranking too.

(4) Article Writing

One of the most time consuming but effective methods of increasing search engine traffic. Most of these article directories offer this service free. Ensure that your article is optimized for keywords and that you include your website url bio line at the bottom of the article before you submit. Ezines, Magazines, Business Blogs, and webmasters are always on the lookout for good content to include in their articles as they are also in the quest for better search engine rankings. This method is very effective in getting one-way back links to your site.

(5) Blogs

There are more than 10 blog platforms to choose from. High on this list are word press and blogspot. Ensure your blog is located on your site, and check that it links to your key pages and that you ping each time your blog is updated. Search engines favor sites with frequently changing, unique content so you will need to provide regular updates to your blog. A regularly updated blog will attract readers which in turn builds and increases website traffic.

(6) Forum Marketing

Join a few good forums so that you can leave your URL in them. This will increase traffic in two ways. Firstly, people who read your posts are likely to click the link to checkout your site. Secondly search engines will generally accept the link which adds up to your link popularity. Another benefit of joining these forums is also to learn from other experienced and successful marketers. You'll be surprised at their willingness to share their knowledge with you.

(7) Viral Advertising

If you have an idea and you tell 10 people and they each tell 10 people and so on, by the time the idea goes through 10 levels it has been passed on to a million people.

You can use this similar principle as your business marketing strategy too. If you produced a free report or ebook filled with links back to your site and gave it away, the chances are those you gave it away to would do the same thing. Your links would then multiply significantly over the Internet giving a viral effect and your website traffic will grow.

(8) Reciprocal Links

They are also called link exchange and link swapping. Webmasters hope that people will click on their link in other websites thereby generating website traffic. However, be selective in who you do reciprocal links with. Always ensure that your link partner is relevant to your business niche and preferably has good Page Ranking. This strategy is one of the very best ways of generating free, targeted website traffic. It also is highly rated by search engines

(9) Classified Ads

Before the web came along, if you wanted to advertise you would turn to the newspaper "classified" section. Classified ads didn't die with the web, they just went online. One of the most popular classified sites is Craigslist.com. This can be a powerful tool for getting search engines to notice your site and send you traffic.

(10) PPC Marketing

PPC stands for "Pay Per Click" and is one good way to increase traffic into the website you are promoting. Google's Adwords program is one of the most successful PPC engines. You buy ads from Google by writing an ad and bidding on keywords to determine how much you will pay when someone clicks your ad. This is a powerful tool to advertise your product or webpage to millions of people who access the Internet at very low bid.

To find the best Work At Home Ideas and Opportunities so you can work at home visit: http://www.PeterLeeHC.com

Why Blogger is the Best Blogging Platform for Beginners

If you're just considering starting your own blog, you may be wondering which of the many blog services will offer the best blogging platform for your needs. If you're new to blogging, are on a budget and/or are not tech-savvy, I recommend Blogger as the best blog platform for beginners. Here's why:

It's free, with no strings attached.

TypePad has some great features, but you'll pay for them. Their most basic level starts at $4.95 per month (after a 14 day free trial). WordPress.com is free, until you want to do things like include Adsense ads or display your blog on your own domain name. Blogger is completely free.

It's easy to use, even if you're a tech-dummy.

Blogger, in my experience, has always been the best blog platform for the tech-challenged. However, their new version makes customizing templates and rearranging widgets easier than ever before. Their XML templates allow for dragging and dropping of widgets, which means you don't have to know HTML (even a little bit) to make your blog look the way you want it.

You can show up in search results faster.

Because Blogger is now owned by Google, you'll have a powerful spider on your side. In general, when you start a new website or blog it can take weeks for the search engines to crawl the site, which means you won't appear in search engine results for a while. My Blogger-powered blogs have all shown up in search results the same day I post my first post. I have one client whose Blogger-powered blog ranks higher than his own website. I have another client whose newly created Blogger-powered blog out-ranked her already popular MySpace blog in less than a week. There is power in having Google on your side.

There are plenty of free templates available.

If you don't like the classic templates offered by Blogger, you can choose a more attractive template fairly easily. There are many tech-savvy folks online who spend a lot of time creating new Blogger templates and/or converting free templates from other platforms to work for Blogger. If you want to browse your choices for more attractive Blogger-compatible templates, I recommend the layouts at FinalSense, Isnaini and GeckoFly. For more recommendations, check out the Top 5 Free Blogger Templates listing at About Weblogs. You can also Google "free blogger templates" and browse the results.

Of course, there are also some disadvantages of using Blogger, like not being able to file your posts in traditional categories and the inability to "drip" your posts to show up on future dates. For a new blogger on a budget, though, I wholeheartedly believe the advantages of Blogger outweigh the drawbacks. Especially if you're as tech-challenged as I am, I don't think you'll regret giving Blogger a try. If you're really worried about the decision, you might want to open free accounts both with Blogger.com and WordPress.com. Play around a little bit on both and decide for yourself which is the best blogging platform for you.

Whether you're a new or seasoned blogger, I'd love to know your experience. Which platform did you use for your first blog? Any advantages or disadvantages? Which do you feel is the best blog platform for new bloggers?

Tips On How To Make A Name For Yourself

What is your reputation online? Do you know?

If you're just starting out or having been online long, chances are you don't really have a reputation. Not yet. This is good, because you want to be sure the reputation you do develop is a good one. But how do you develop a good reputation online?

Here are three tips to help you.

1. Copy what the experts are doing.

Do a search online for "internet marketing experts" and see what names come up on the first page. Click some of them and have a look at their sites. Where possible, check out their biography. You can find these by taking a name and adding "bio" or "biography" to your search. Notice how long they've been online, how many web sites they own, how many products they have produced, and any other information that indicates they've been around awhile.

Run a search for the top names you come across and see what you get. Pay attention to how they are promoting and, especially, look for any feedback or comments from people who have done business with them. These are the experts you want to copy because they know how to establish a good reputation online.

2. Participate in forums related to your business specialty

Visit related forums and see how you can contribute. Find posts where you can offer your expertise to help them. Over time, you will become recognized as an expert in your field.

3. Offer quality products and over-deliver

Make certain that anything you produce, whether it's a small e-book or a full web design service, is of the absolute best quality. Be receptive to your customer's feedback, both good and bad. Respond to their concerns respectfully and do whatever it takes to please them. Become known as a business person who is easy to work with, reliable and consistent. Over-deliver on your promises. Don't just sell the service or e-book. Load your offer with a lot of other helpful and relevant products.

Do these three things and you will boost your online reputation and your sales.

How to Make Money Blogging

If you know how to make money blogging, then it is possible to make a living from your blog. There is a lot of money in blogging if you know how to go about it, although not all of them are suited to all people.

To most bloggers, their blog is a means of communication, and something that they love doing just for the fun of blogging. They do not feel the need to money from their blogs, or at least not initially. However, the longer many people are involved in blogging, the more they tend to add monetization to their page. They can do this in a number of ways, although if you are new to blogs, you should probably get your blog known before trying to find ways of making money from your visitors.

Blogging is not so much a skill as an art, and there are many excellent bloggers that wouldn't know where to begin to make money with internet marketing. So, if you are used to making money on your websites, then make sure that you understand how to blog before you try to make money from that as well. The reason for that is that blog readers are not like search engine users. They are not necessarily seeking information or the answer to a problem. They likely want to be entertained, or to find out what their favourite blogger has to say next.

When you are considering how to make money blogging, therefore, you have to consider what type of blog you need in order not to scare away those in it for the fun. Any 'how to' blog would be a good candidate, although it depends on the subject that you offering information on how to do it! 'How to Avoid Spending Money Online' would be a very popular blog, but not conducive to attracting people just dying to open their wallets for you!

'How to Avoid Spending Money Online - only $97 Buy it here'. Ha-Ha! Some chance. So consider the topic of your blog. If you are offering information, for example info on training dogs, then you can add some Adsense blocks o your blog and make some money that way. If your readers want to, they can click on one of the links for more information.

You could also add an affiliate product that is relevant to your topic. Don't overdo it, just add the one and see how it goes. To do this, you have to be able to control your blog content and formatting. To have total control you should run your blog from your own website, rather than from blogger.com or Wordpress.com. Download your own blogging software, and Wordpress offer a free download from wordpress.org - that is probably your best bet if you need total control.

There are other ways in which you can use your blog to make money, one of them being to advertise your websites on your sidebar. You can modify your sidebar using html from your Dashboard, though will have to be using the downloaded version. You can also include a good affiliate offer in your sidebar. Any product will do that is related to the topic of your blog. Don't have a blog about carp fishing and offer dog training courses. I know it seems obvious, but you would be surprised!

Another thing you can do to make money indirectly from blogging is to include an opt-in form somewhere on your blog. You could add one to each blog, but the easiest is simply to put it on your sidebar. This works best with a three column blog, but you could add it to the top or bottom of your sidebar for maximum effect.

These are just one or two ways how to make money blogging, and it just takes a bit of imagination for you to think of many more that you can use to make money while enjoying your blogging. People don't mind paying for stuff they want to buy, and those that are not interested don't have to click on your links. Many people make their living from blogs and if you know to do it properly, you can do the same. All it takes is a bit of thought and the knowledge of what can be done and must be done to achieve it.

For more ways in which you can make money blogging, click below where you find a whole number of possibilities for you to use your blog for profit: CLICK HERE: Blog Profits If you want to be a financial success, your blog can help you to achieve your ambitions.

Making Money By Blogging With A Long Term Plan

Quite a few people dream of making money by blogging and this goal is not too far-fetched. The important thing is that you need in order to success in this is willingness to work hard and a basic idea of blogging and how it works. However, very few people actually successfully achieve this goal. The most common reason for failing are that they have unrealistic expectations of how much money they will make. When the goal is not met, this often causes them to feel heavily disappointed and they lose the motivation to continue working toward their goal.

To become successful at making money blogging, the main thing that you will need is a surplus of traffic. The higher your traffic is the more advertisers will agree to pay you and the more you are exposed the more people you have. As more and more blogs come about each day, attaining regular visitors isn't easy as it used to be. Nowadays, having a terrific writing style or a new idea is not enough; you also need to market your blog effectively

Too many bloggers spend their time not marketing their blog, but writing content instead. While content is king, you will fail at making money by blogging if you do not market your blog and let others know that you exists. A great way to market your blog is add it to blog search engines. Once your readers know that you have new content to add regularly they will return to your site on a regular basis. However, it doesn't matter how many times you update your blog if no one is reading it, so don't just focus on the content, marketing your blog is also a very crucial step to make money by blogging.

Success is not going to happen overnight, even if you are a marketing genius. Building a readership takes months. Even if you are not making a profit in the beginning you have to stay committed. It is the long term in blogging that will make the wait more than worth it. To stay motivated, you should set goals for how much content you have or how many readers you want to acquire. If you take follow your plan and take affirmative action you will succeed in making money by blogging.

Max Whitson began involved in learning about Internet marketing at the youthful age of 14. Now, Whitson is an internet marketing guru and has lead hundreds of people to success by making money from home.

For more information, visit http://www.makegreenfromhome.com