Start Blogging For Profit Today!

Who hasn’t imagined blogging for profit as a way to bring in extra money? This goal is definitely possible for even an average writer, or someone who is not a computer pro. The only qualities you need are determination, patience and time to learn blogging basics. Of course, many people who begin blogging will drop out when the going gets tough. So be forewarned, blogging for profit takes time and lots of patience to see your profits begin to come in. The most important ingredient for success is a good plan – so spend the time to get organized, and follow your plan to success.

A successful blog requires a large and consistent readership. With more traffic, you are more likely to get advertisers, and to earn income from ads. Building this visitor base can be hard, with the millions of blogs out there and more coming online each day. Beyond having just a good idea, you need to learn how to effectively market your blog and get the word out.

Many bloggers will also have poor results because they focus on writing posts for their blog, but not on marketing it. Posting often can help bring traffic to your site by keeping your blog ranked high in search engines. yet getting traffic is more important. Spend more time on marketing than on writing, by exchanging links with other bloggers, posting on blogs, writing articles and other proven traffic methods.

As with anything valuable, success will probably not come overnight. To see profit from your blog, you will need patience to keep on with your posting and working to get traffic, even when you aren’t seeing results. Building your readership takes time, to reach the number of visitors that will make a difference to your bottom line. Keep following your plan, remind yourself of your goals, and eventually you’ll find the profits start to trickle in.

What RSS Can Do For Your Business

Did you know there are lots of ways RSS can be used for your business? Here are some example uses that you may not know about. Quick note: Some can be easily abused so use them wisely, if you use it.

Twitter: Automatically create a new tweet when you have new posts. There are many ways to do this, a popular and free tool to use is Twitterfeed.

Facebook – like twitter, Facebook can also be updated automatically when you post. One recommended application to use is “My Blogs”, as using Facebook app’s can sometimes be unreliable.

Widgets: design a special widget related to your blog. The widget could then be displayed on their own blogs or even on their desktop. This can easily be done with Spring Widgets or Google Gadgets.

File delivery: If you are already publishing a podcast, then it should be easy to start offering PDF documents or video downloads via RSS.

Affiliates RSS feeds: Allow your affiliates to display your content wherever they wish. Give them the incentive by branding any links with their affiliate ID. This will credit them with any purchases made from your sites.

Find deals for your business: Who doesn’t like to save money? Save on your next business purchase. There are lots of ways you can track sales and deals from stores like Amazon. For Internet Marketing related purchases, you can save a feed like the one from Deal.com to your RSS reader.

Package tracking: have your RSS feed update to alert you to the status of your deliveries. Use a solution like SimpleTracking.com.

Track latest questions on Yahoo Answers: Answering questions on Yahoo Answers can be very effective to promote your business. Subscribe to the RSS feed of the category you’re interested in so you’ll be notified when a new question you can answer comes in.

Blog tracking – There are times when e-mail servers as a delays or are under maintenance. An alternative to e-mail is using RSS. Most blogging accounts Offer the option of an RSS feed. For example, if you use WordPress blog, the feed will usually be located at http://yourblog.com/comments/feed/ or http://yourblog.com/?feed=comments-rss2.

Competitor watch: Find out what competitors or other marketers are doing on social networks, blogs, video and more using FriendFeed.

Industry watch – there is an option with the Yahoo or MSN search engine’s, where you can type a phrase that suits your interests, and if you are using IE 7 or Firefox, an RSS feed icon will appear. If you click this icon you will subscribe to the keyword feed.

Advertisements: I’ve never tried RSS advertising, but I have displayed the odd advertisement in an RSS feed. Surprisingly this CTR for the sites I used out performed click throughs’ from the website itself. Pheedo, FeedBurner and Text-Link-Ads make RSS advertising possible.

Keep clients updated – notify your customers off your current service status. Businesses to offer usable services like online shopping, web hosting or payment gateways should use this. Using RSS, your clients can be updated by the second.

How to Get Blog Traffic – 11 Steps to Growing Readership

Many of us work so hard on our blogs and frankly, it kind of sucks if we don’t get the traffic we want. And it’s a catch-22you can’t get the traffic without the work, but it’s tough to justify all the work if you don’t get the traffic. Well, here are 11 suggestions to get the traffic you want to your blog.

#1 Be outstanding. There is a good reason this is first in line. Being outstanding to begin with will ensure that everything else becomes easy, as it will make a lasting impression on your readers, and interest will increase.

How to be outstanding:

* Being informative: Teach your readers what they want and convey the info in a way your audience appreciates. * Entertain – Insert humor, amaze your readersdo what’s appropriate to get their attention. * Connect with Your Audience – Understand and speak to their pain, worries and even their dreams and desires. * Be Controversial – Share an opinionnot everyone has to agree with you to find you interesting.

This may be seen as a “build it and they will come” attitude, which is usually advised against in internet marketing, which may be true in some respects. Of course, this doesn’t mean giving up manual traffic building, but the more “out there” or a controversial your blog is, the higher the chance is that your efforts become noticed.

2. RSS: Some may say RSS old news, but there are still many blogs that haven’t thought to use a feed. If it is not something you have come across, an RSS feed is simply something that allows readers to stay updated without constantly visiting the blog. The RSS feed alerts readers to every new post via their feed reader or e-mail account. Using a service like FeedBurner.com will make this process a lot easier.

#3 Ping Your Blog. Be sure to choose the option to ping relevant services. Most blogging platforms or scripts will allow this easily via your control panel. Using a ping service will notify various search engines and other sites that you have updated your blog.

#4 Comment on Other Blogs: Comment on other blogs in related field to your own. The option of linking back to your own blog is usually available. Make sure you are respectful! I would pay the conditions set by the blog owner, be courteous by offering real information instead of a big advertisement for your own blog. Without this kind of diplomacy, your comments will probably be deleted by admin.

#5 TrackBacks: Most other blogs will allow you to post comments about their site on your blog. When you link to their site, a link to your own post actually appears in the comments on their blog. Setting up trackbacks between two WordPress blogs is easy, you simply need to put a link to the relevant post and the rest is done for you. Again, be respectful. If you’re going to TrackBack to someone else’s comment, be sure that you have written something useful. Simple copy and pasting of their own post really does not count as adding to the conversation.

6. Keep Your Email List Up-to-Date: You probably already know that your mailing list is a valuable asset. Use this asset to the fullest by sending them to your blog to read the posts you think they will find helpful, enjoy, etc.

7. Distribute Content: A great way to get people read more of your content is by getting content out there to more people. You can distribute articles, post videos, guest post on other blogsjust get some good stuff out there and lead people back to read your blog.

8. Affiliates Link to Your Blog: If your affiliate program allows your affiliates to link to any page on your site, encourage them to link to and write about your various blog posts. The system I use at Quicksales.com (a private-label 1ShoppingCart) allows my affiliates to quickly and easily link to any blog post they want.

Affiliate referrals are cookied when someone follows a link and if that referral eventually buys, they get the commission. Of course, the conversions on blog links aren’t going to be as good as linking directly to a sales page, but it gives your affiliates the opportunity to bring value to their own readers (by linking to your AWESOME content) and potential benefit financially.

9. Social Networks: You can use various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) to drive traffic to a blog. People you connect with socially are likely to be interested in what you have to say on your blog. Make sure you follow proper etiquette and use your common sense. Also, don’t overdo it and get lost in your social networks all dayyou’ve got WORK and other important things to do. Plus, if you are remarkable, those who use social networks will be doing the work for you and talking about you.

10. Social Bookmarking: Social bookmarking includes sites like Digg, del.icio.us and Stumble Upon, where you can share links to a variety of content. Some people self-bookmark, but realize this could put your account in jeopardy, so read all the rules first. Others choose to work with others in helping each other bookmark. Being remarkable also encourages people to spread the word on your behalf.

11. SEO (Search Engine Optimization): I put this one last, where I know a lot of people tend to put it first. If your goal is repeat visitors who become faithful fans, put SEO on the backburner and SEO your other content pages where you are looking for first-time or drive-by visitors.

The problem with trying to optimize all your blog pages is that it takes away from you being remarkable. A remarkable blog is written with interesting subject lines (rather than boring keyword phrases) and isn’t always on topics that people use a search engine to find. Of course, you can combine the two (SEO and being remarkable) in some ways, but don’t let SEO take anything away from the interest and word-of-mouth your blog creates.