Blogging for Profit

From: Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian
Cyberwave Staff Writer


Dear Friend and Subscriber,

The phenomenon of creating and managing web logs has ignited the imagination of the online community. Weblogs or 'blogs' and their related tools, tricks, tips and paraphernalia are springing up all around you.

Why should savvy web marketers learn about blogs and blogging? Simple…

• Do you want articles and posts on your blog syndicated on hundreds - even thousands - of other related websites... with a link back to yours? Blogging will do it for you.
  
  
• Would you like to get your site spidered by Google, Yahoo, MSN and dozens of other search engines... literally within days, if not hours? Blogging will get them for you.
  
  
• How about establishing a channel of communication with your marketplace... without having to worry about spam complaints or email filters? Blogging will become your channel.
  
  
• Need a way to build an online relationship with prospects, downlines or clients... without spending hours setting up complex technology, or wasting a fortune? Blogging is your answer.
  
  

Blogs as marketing tools

Blogs are incredibly powerful marketing tools and this is how the online business owner should think of them. They are practically guaranteed to boost your website traffic, get you higher search engine rankings, build enormous link popularity, create a web presence branded with your identity, and become profit vehicles when used properly.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Let's start your exciting voyage into blogging, and profiting from blogs, right now.

A 'blog' is an online personal diary where anyone can reveal his or her innermost thoughts, feelings, desires, dreams, ambitions, hopes, fears... you get the picture.

Yes, it's like a normal a website - with one small difference.

A blog lists posts ordered by date, in journal format. It is also easier to create than a website using today’s blogging tools, just type your content into a form and hit the PUBLISH button.
The Chicago Tribune recently defined a blog as:

"A Web site that maintains a constantly updated list of links to other sites; those links can deal with any subject or focus on a particular one. Webloggers typically offer pithy, sarcastic commentary about the links."

Blogging is the act of updating your blog with content. And it lets you reach and relate to your audience: Customers, subscribers, prospects, readers.

Email is becoming less effective as a communication tool simply because it often fails to reach the intended recipient. With a blog, your message is on the Web for anyone to see.
Another good reason to get blogging is to relate. How? By revealing your personality, and letting your individuality shine through.

It's easier to establish rapport with audiences through a blog post, an unpolished form of your thought processes, than through a corporate bulletin or edited newsletter.

With most blog software available today, all you have to do is create content. The mental barrier to web page design that holds many back from building websites is almost completely eliminated when it comes to blogging.

A good blog is updated often, with pointers to interesting events, pages, stories and happenings elsewhere on the Web. New stuff piles on top of the page; older stuff sinks to the bottom.

You could either publish in a flash for free and hope for luck to guide you to glory. Or you could do it step by step, investing in your blog, knowing you'll reap rich rewards in the future.

Just remember, to be a true member of the blogosphere, you have to work a bit harder. You'll need to spend time looking for, and visiting other blogs. You'll have to link to them and get linked back in return.

The rewards are well worth the work!

At the end of this article, there is a useful section where we will help you set up your own blog, step by step. It’s quick, easy and won't take longer than an hour, starting from scratch. There’s no reason you should delay publishing your own blog today. And after you see just how many ways a blog can make you money, we’re sure you’ll want to join the blogging community too.

So let's discuss how blogs can be profitable.

Blog Profit Models

Back in 2002, I began researching and writing a book about blogging. At this time, there were very few folks thinking of blogs as profitable tools. When I released my ebook, it received tremendous attention, simply because there was no competition. Today, the interest in creating a blog for profit is huge.

While there are many different blog profit models you can explore, we'll focus on five of the most effective ones in this article.

The Blog Content Profit Model

Blogs are about content. Text, pictures, audio files and even video. What's unique about blogs is that, by their nature, blog content is fresh, often updated frequently.
Also, blog content is easy to syndicate (distribute for display on other sites) using RSS feeds (really simple syndication).

Combine these two features and you have a nice model for profiting from blog content. Are you seeing the potential already?

By publishing high quality, tightly themed, valuable content useful to readers interested in a particular topic, you attract a narrowly targeted audience to your blog and give them a good reason to keep coming back for more.

You can profit from this audience in multiple ways:

• Display ads for relevant products and services
  
• Publish pay-per-click ads like Google Adsense
  
• Run endorsements for products you sell as an affiliate or JV partner
  
• Capture names and contact details, and build a targeted list to market to
  
• Broker the traffic to other businesses looking for your kind of audience
  
• Review products, books or services for a fee or in exchange for profit share
  
  

And that's just the list of obvious monetizing techniques. We'll take it a step further in the next section.

Blogs as Search Engine Optimization Tools

By virtue of their structure and organization, blogs are search engine magnets. Why? Just look at these search engine friendly features of blogs:

• Tightly themed on a particular subject
  
• Frequently updated
  
• Extensively linked internally
  
• Various kinds of archiving, allowing your posts to be grouped by category, or each one to become a standalone webpage
  
• Easy to keyword optimize, including anchor text in your links
  
• Template driven for ease of modification across your site
  
• Built-in process for getting inbound links
  
  

Today, one of the quickest and easiest ways to get into search engine indexes, and rank high, is to create a 'keyword optimized' blog, submit it to blog and RSS feed directories, update it regularly, and ping a list of frequently spidered blog directories each time you make a post.

Once your blog gets indexed and ranked high, you simply place links to any of your website's internal pages - and voila: Instant indexing of even your very newest pages!

We've had sites indexed within 6 hours just by adding them to our high profile blog.

Blogs as Affiliate Marketing Tools

This model of blog profits is very exciting, very profitable and only now, becoming popular. Your blog can help your affiliate marketing in 2 ways:

1. As a medium to present affiliate products to the target audience, getting sales: Use your blog to recommend other vendors.
   
   
2. As a way to let your affiliates pre-sell YOUR product or service: Allow your affiliates to send traffic directly into your blog.
   
   Lets affiliates send traffic directly to your blog by giving them a special link that sets the affiliate cookie so they get credit for any sales.
   
   As a product owner, you can offer your affiliates a blog to showcase how your product or service benefit the end-user and include a process to have your affiliate's ID inserted into every sales link on the page.
   
   By creating pre-made content for your affiliates and allowing them to show it to their prospects, you create a 'pre-selling' system they can take advantage of to boost your sales.
   
   
3. As a way to create a 'News Update' tool: Bypass email filters and get messages through to your affiliates (providing you have first educated them on the benefits of blogs and RSS feed based communication).
   
   

Blogs as Membership Sites

Certain forms of blog content are valuable enough for paid access, the membership model. You can offer valuable content on the blog, while restricting access to archives only for paying customers.
For example, if you are writing a book, you can make each chapter a blog post, get feedback from readers and build your web presence as you write. Make archives inaccessible, so the completed book can be offered for sale to an audience that's already hooked.

If you are involved in a niche that's wide enough, you could even have multiple themed blogs inside a membership area.

Another approach is to have a 'pay as you go' approach, using one of the micro-payment systems (where readers pay to read a specific article in detail, after seeing a 'teaser' copy on the blog).

Managing Outsourced Blogs for Profit

Business blogging is becoming mainstream. While big businesses have in-house teams dedicated to blogging for them, many small businesses lack resources to manage it all by themselves.

That's a niche you can exploit! Just hire a blogger (or team of bloggers).

Get a techie who can install scripts and troubleshoot programming issues. Find someone to create content (or locate 'royalty free' content) to post on the theme related to the business. Then approach small businesses with an offer to manage a business blog for them.

They get all the benefits of blogging - hands off! Real businesses are paying big money for these services today and the need is growing.

Case Studies of Profitable Blogs

Resources on blogging for profit

How to set up your blog at blogger.com

Blogger.com is now owned by Google, and offers an intuitively simple blog set up tool designed to get beginners up and running within an hour. Realistically, all it will take is 15 minutes to set up your blog.
Step by step, here's what you'll do to create your first blogger.com blog:

Step #1 - Go to Blogger.com
http://www.blogger.com

Step #2 - Click the 'Sign Up Now' button. You will reach the registration page, where you will start to create your account.

Step #3 - Select a username, and enter other data like your name, email address (use a currently active one) and choice of password. After reading the 'Terms of Service', click on the 'Sign Me Up' button.

Step #4 - Next comes creating your first blog. Blogger.com allows you to create multiple blogs using the same account, so if you plan to do this, choose a keyword rich title for each of them. Click on the 'Create a New Blog' button.

Step #5 - Choose a title and brief description of your blog. For search engine optimization benefits, make sure your title and description contain your primary (and maybe even secondary) keyword phrases. Don't worry too much, though. You will always be able to change it later on, if you want to.

Step #6 - You have a choice between having Blogger.com host your blog, or having it published to your own website. There are pros and cons to each approach.

• From a marketing and SEO viewpoint, hosting your blog on Blogger.com for the first few months makes sense, because you get an incoming link to your website from a different domain/host, and Blogger.com (owned by Google) is spidered more regularly by GoogleBot than your site. At any stage later on you can have the entire blog transferred back to your site.
  
  
• If you want the blog hosted on your domain, you can choose the 'Publish by FTP' option, and type in your FTP details. Blogger.com will automatically publish your posts to your site.
  
  

Step #7 - If you choose to host your blog with Blogger, it will have a URL of the form - http://xyz.blogspot.com - where xyz is the title of your blog.

Tip: try and make your blog title 'keyword-rich'. For instance, if your blog is about dog food, make your title something like 'dog food guide' or 'dog food advice'.

Why? Because the URL Blogger.com will create for you will be 'dog-food-guide.blogspot.com' or 'dog-food-advice.blogspot.com' - and that will carry SEO benefits.

Step #8 - You're almost done. You now have to select a template for your blog, from one of a collection Blogger has available for you to use. Of course, if you like, you can modify them, or even create your own - but it requires technical skills. To start with, you should go with the pre-done templates (they're pretty nice).

That's it. When you click the final button, your blog will be published. You can see how it looks by using the 'Preview Blog' button.

Now you have to post your first message. You will be taken to the administration page, where you'll see an online form with fields into which you can type (or cut-and-paste) your blog posts. HTML tags are allowed, so you can place hyperlinks, format your text, insert images and more.

There are many more features in Blogger.com. Explore them and take full advantage of things like your 'Profile' page, blogging by email, automatic announcements (pinging) of new posts to Weblogs.com, pre-scheduling posts and more.

Congratulations! You've now added one more to the 80,000 new blogs that were created today! That's how easy blogging is.

How to Set Up Your Blog at 20Six

If for any reason you do not like Blogger.com, here's another free blog service that lets you host a blog with them.

A step-by-step guide to setting up a blog with 20Six:

Step #1 - Visit the site and click on the 'Sign Up For Free' button at:
http://www.20six.co.uk/

Step #2 - Fill in the online registration form, read the terms and conditions, then complete your sign up.

Step #3 - Activate your account by clicking on the link you'll receive by email. You will be taken to a login page.

Step #4 - Type in your username and password, to enter the admin control panel for creating your blog. Click on the 'New Entry' link to create your first post.

20Six allows you to host a photo blog too. At any time, you can modify your details by clicking on the 'My Data' section. Also, make the most of your 'About Me' profile, by linking back to your site.

Other Blog Choices

If you are comfortable with (or have someone to help you with) installing software, your choice of blogging options increases.

Two of the best programs are WordPress and Movable Type. Both require somewhat complex installations, but offer special advantages not available with remote hosted blogging services.

How to Set Up Your Blog with Word Press

After installing and configuring Word Press on your server, log in to your administration panel.

If you wish to, you can customize your templates, change the anchor text of links, add new categories, edit existing categories and modify other preferences.

Once you're ready to start blogging, click on the 'POST' link and type (or copy-and-paste) your blog post into the field. You can alter or delete any post you make by using the 'Edit' option.

For more assistance with Word Press, go to the Support forum at: http://wordpress.org/support/.

How to Set Up Your Blog with Movable Type

Installing and configuring Movable Type (MT) can be a challenge - but it is worth the effort.

Once you have MT installed, log in using your username and password. On the Main Menu, you will find a blog that has been pre-created for you, and there will be a link titled 'Create New Blog' you can click to create any number of new blogs. Navigating to your blog's control panel can be done by clicking on the link, or using the pull-down menu at the top of the page.

An easy to use navigation bar on the left side of the page allows you to access all blog customization features, including templates, editing single or multiple posts, blog configuration details and more.

Click on the 'NEW ENTRY' button and you will get a page with an online form with fields to type your post into. MT allows many advanced features such as pre-scheduling your post to be published at a future date, bulk editing (or deleting) multiple posts through the 'Power Editing' option, and automatically 'pinging' multiple directories to alert them about updates to your blog.

MT comes with an elaborate user manual, and if you still need help, visit their Support Forum at: http://www.MovableType.org

Which blogging solution is best for you?

It's hard to make a dogmatic recommendation without knowing about your specific needs, therefore we'll give you both sides of the picture so you can make an informed decision.

The advantages and disadvantages of remote hosted Blogs

Benefit:
No problems or hassles related to installing software or scripts on your server or troubleshooting problems. You don't even need to have your own domain name or web hosting service if you plan to host the blog on the remote service itself.

Disadvantages:
The remote hosting service might get taken down for maintenance or other issues at an inconvenient time. Or if traffic is very heavy on the service, you may face delays or periods of inaccessibility to your blog.

This is more likely if you host it on a free service. If you're hosting your blog on your own domain, you have to disclose administrative details about your website (like your FTP account username and password) in order that your blog posts can be uploaded to your server.

Is it Better to have Blog Software Run on Your own Server?

Benefits:
More security. You don't have to give out your FTP details or password. Your blog's accessibility is dependent only on your server, not the remote hosting service.

Disadvantages:
You need to have some basic knowledge about installing blogging software and scripts on your own server and troubleshooting problems. It requires knowledge of changing directory access permissions, and other basic script installation techniques.

However, most of the blog software creators run helpful online forums and discussion groups to help out with problems, so if you have basic technical knowledge, you’ll be fine.

Conclusion

By now, you have probably realized the benefits of starting a blog of your own. It’s fast, easy, and you can increase your primary site’s traffic with both direct visitors and increased search engine visibility.
A blog allows you to speak with a different voice, and recommend affiliate products, or give your own affiliates a new promotional channel.
Best of all, with the tools we have given you here, you can set up your own blog for free, and start making more money immediately.

Good luck and God bless!


Respectfully Submitted,


Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian