Unique Ways to Get Visitors to Your Blog

When starting a blog, it's important to note that you're most likely not breaking new ground, no matter what you're blogging about. The internet has been around for many years, and when something new comes along, it takes about five minutes of internet time for it to suddenly become old. So if you want visitors to seek out your blog, and to look at you as someone who both knows what they're doing, and provides information in such a way as to gain repeat customers, its important to look like an expert.

Whether you're talking about politics, news, or sports information, the best way to set yourself apart from other blogs is to find your niche. Sometimes that can simply mean that you write only about baseball if you want to go into the sports field, but more often than not, you should pick a side. If you want to start an NFL blog, decided what team you think you could cover better than the other blogs out there. Once you've picked a team, say the New Orleans Saints as an example, do your research. I don't mean just read the local papers, or watch highlights of the team. I mean research what kind of information your competitors are bringing to the table. If they aren't covering the upcoming draft as hard as you'd like, make that your area of expertise. While the marketplace may be flooded, any time you can carve yourself out a slice, readers will come.

After you've gotten your corner of the web, make sure people know you're out there, just waiting for them to come join you. One of the more interesting ways to draw attention to your blog would be to use the ultra popular video service YouTube. Anyone anywhere can post almost any video they can find or make on the service, opening the door for your own free advertising. Make funny or topical videos, and continue doing it, and pretty soon you'll have a cult following that is willing to talk about you to anyone, and everyone they know.

Another great way to get your name out there is to look at the other blogs that cover your ideas not as direct competitors but as part of an ever-growing family. Link to them, list them in your favorite set of blogs on a topic, and even contact them to see if they want to do some sort of collaboration. Assuming they aren't too big to notice you, this is a fantastic way to grow your site while making contacts that can be useful down the road.

However you choose among the myriad of ways to get your site into the general public's purview, know that the top factor that must be remembered is to be prolific. Continue posting when you're feeling blue, or sick, or just bored with the whole endeavor. Taking even one day off can mean the different between having a thriving site, and a ghost town.

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Best Tools to Promote Your Blog

Guest Post by Anil Gupta

In order to make a success in blogging the quality of content is very important. However, only content cannot help in making a blog popular. You need to know about various successful tools for blog promotion. Internet is full of a large number of blog promotion tools and websites. Here are a few tools which you can use for promoting your blog.

1. MyBlogLog

You might have heard about this service before. This service is offered by Yahoo for blog promotion. Here, you would be able to meet a large number of bloggers and you can ask them to visit and join your blog. You may leave your comments on other people blogs and they will return the favor. It is a trusted method for blog promotion. However, a person can send only 15 messages in 24 hours if he is using MyBlogLog.

2. Technorati

Numerous bloggers have already added their blogs at this website. If you add your blog at Technorati then it will help a lot in its promotion. You can meet likeminded people here. Do not doubt the reliability of this website by focusing on its name. It is a wonderful tool for blog promotion.

3. BlogShowOff

Recently, BlogShowOff has also become a very popular tool for blog promotion. It is very simple to add your blog at this website. You would not face any problem in understanding the procedure of adding a blog at this website. After adding your blog, you will find your blog at the top of the page. Until new blogs are added at this website our blog will stay at the top.

4. Zimbio

Zimbio is another great tool for promoting blogs. It is simpler than Technorati. Wikizines is the feature which makes this tool different from others. Wikizines refer to magazines that can be edited and created by anyone. Google picks up wikizines in a very short time. Therefore, bloggers love to use Zimbio for promoting their blog.

5. Facebook

Facebook can be used to connect with anyone anywhere in the world. A large number of people use facebook at present. You can update your status with information about your blog. Here, you can also meet likeminded writers, bloggers and readers. It is very easy to use facebook. You can join communities of your interest in facebook and get people interested in your blog.

6. Digg

You can add your blog at Digg. You can add your posts and if people like it, they will digg it. More diggs indicate increased popularity of your blog. It is very easy to use Digg. Numerous people use Digg for promoting their blog. Google picks up blog posts from Digg in a fast manner.

Author Bio:
Anil Gupta blogs about Make Money Online, seo, blogging, social media topics like how to promote Facebook fan page.

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Knowing Your Target Market for Effective Blogging For Business

Although you must have begun blogging for business after carefully selecting a good theme for your blog, you still need to be very sure of knowing your target audiences before you actually come up with your blog. It is important to understand the kind of people you want to address in your blog before you go ahead and start posting content on it. You need to do proper research else you will fail in your goal of creating the blog.

The people who surf the web have diverse backgrounds and liking so it is important that you understand what segment of the market you want to target. Which is your target market and this largely depends on the kind of service or product you offer. Once you identify the target market, it becomes easy for you to devise your blog in way that caters to the needs and interests of the customers. The nature of the product decides the demography of your customer. Before coming up with a theme for your blog you need to draft a kind of profile of your prospective customer whom you want to address in your blog. The target market segment comes with the basic demographic profile that can be segregated on basis of age, gender, and social or economic status.

• Age: what does your target market actually covers, does it comprise of children, teenagers, adults, or senior citizens?
• Gender. Are your target clients male, female, or transgender?

When considering the theme of your blog you should make sure that the theme of your blog or profile should match the target audiences. The above mentioned classification can be really broad but they certainly cover all the probable categories of the clients. These profile or sets of traits should match the characteristics or features of the products or services that you are offering. Remember, however, that these classifications are still relatively broad and apply only to basic commodities where product differentiation by consumers is still not so distinct. Examples are medicines or medical services, foods, educational services, and others.

For stricter market segmentation, you can differentiate your target markets or narrow them further according to customer temperaments, needs, goals, and fears. Specifically, you can distinguish them according to:

• Needs – sense of accomplishments, sense of belonging, self actualization
• Goals – productivity, efficiency, savings, safety
• Temperaments – serious, happy go lucky, complacent
• Fears – old age, poverty, ill health, rejection

There are still more categories to further narrow your market segment such as educational attainment, life style, mindset, family size, political views, etc. These are relevant if the products or services that you are offering are highly specialized or customized such as travel or vacation packages, luxury cars, high tech gadgets, and other.

Having a clear picture of the common characteristics of your target market when blogging for business will help you decide what theme or blog design to use, the appropriate mode or tone of your article, and the right web graphics that you need to employ.

These details may overwhelm you at first. But, you should realize that your purpose for blogging is to attract web users who are more likely to use your products or services and to influence them to buy and patronize what you offer. Bear in mind as well that customers now are more discriminating, especially if the products are quite expensive. They scrutinize details and compare them with competing brands.

So to make your blog more effective, know your products well and create a profile of your target market based on your products' characteristics and features. Then, post blog content that will appeal to your target market. Remember, your business blog is created to generate sales. Keep your focus so you will not waste time and effort when blogging for business.

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How To Make Money Online Automatically

Guest Post by Aiden Clark

Im sure you are very much aware that there are literally millions of different methods to make money online but choosing one that fits your specific lifestyle maybe a little harder. You may have also already experienced a fully automatic business without even knowing as there are many online marketers who use such systems.

When people search the internet for a cure to a problem, people are more likely to sign up for a newsletter or a free course that will uncover a few secrets that is related to what you these people are searching for. The information is delivered to them automatically using an autoresponder.

If you capture the emails of these people that are interested in a certain market then you can follow up later on with valuable information and tips related to the niche and then you can recommend paid products or services on a regular basis that would benefit the person on your list.

To achieve this business model you would need to create a free course or a series of emails that would benefit your subscribers. You must provide them with something valuable in order to persuade them to sign up to your list. Useless information or free article content is not good enough and will harm your reputation.

You would then need an autoresponder service such as aweber or you can purchase software that can be installed on your own server to cut out the monthly costs. This will be used to automatically deliver your free course and to build a relationship with the subscriber, on autopilot, over a period of time.

Once you have someone on your list, it gives you the opportunity to grow a long lasting and trusted relationship with your subscriber and after a while the subscriber will be more likely to listen to your recommendations and purchase products or services through your link.

The best thing about this business model is every thing can be set up to deliver it all completely automatically which allows you to make money online for years to come without any interference from you. As long as you set up your autoresponder to send out the pre-written emails every week, you can spend your free time on advertising your landing page.

A landing page is basically a one page website that offers a free mini course or an ebook related to your market, on this page you will list the benefits or contents of the course and ask the visitor for their name and email address to receive it for free. Your autoresponder code from your service provider would be installed on this page.

Some people find it hard to believe that by offering a free course that you can actually grow a successful online business, but its a fact that the smartest marketers will not go in for the sale straight away as you may scare away the visitor. Its much easier to sell something after you have established a relationship with the potential client.

You can make sales from the same subscribers for years to come which allows you to continually grow your monthly income. Its alot easier to sell a product to an existing customer than it is to a new one. As long as you only recommend the best products within that market, you will be sure to find success using this kind of method.

Author Bio:
Aiden Clarke is an online business mentor that learns ordinary people how to start and develop a successful online business. He offers a free, 7 day course that teaches you how to copy his exact method that earns him at least $100/day. Visit
Profit-Academy.com today to get started.

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5 Steps To Make Money Blogging - Make Passive Income!

Guest Post by Soli Katir

Don't worry. You don't have to be a computer whiz to make money online blogging. What you do is perseverance. This is what sets the winners apart from the losers. You can be one of those winners by following these five steps. Take them in order and do not skip a step and you will succeed. Once you have one small success under your belt, learn from it, and replicate it. This is how you will be growing your online blogging empire! You can do it!

Step 1: Set up a blogging account

You have websites out there like Blogger.com and Wordpress.com where you can set up an account and blog to your heart's content. The two I just listed are free to use. But do make sure to read their terms of use. I know Wordpress.com does not allow affiliate Clickbank links to be placed on any of their blogs.

Of course, there are other blogging platforms out there, but those two are the most popular. Look around and choose one that fits your style and one that allows you to monetize it.

Step 2: Research what people are interested in online

The best place to start is with keyword research. You can use Google's external keyword research tool to find out what people are looking for when searching Google. This will give you a wealth of information! Learn to read in between the words. Every term is a question someone has. Try to figure out what that is.

Step 3: Write content for your intended audience

You can also visit forums where your audience hangs out to find out what they are talking about and any issues they have. Once you know what's on their mind, give it to them. Give them good information and don't try to force a sale.

Remember that blogs are for information and not for selling. Don't let this trip you up. You might be surprised that a good informational article can do a better at selling than an actual sales letter. Think about when you read about this wonderful product that so and so found and it helped them tremendously. Didn't you want to know more about what it was to find out if it would work for you? Exactly! This is what you want to accomplish with your blogs. Give them useful information and make them thirst for more!

Step 4: Find or make products that solve the problems of your audience

If you find that many people need a solution for a certain problem, write it down and start looking for products out there that solve their particular problem. If you don't find one, think about creating your own.

Step 5: Put affiliate links or order links on your blog

Once you have found a product, you can do an internet search for product + affiliate to see if they have an affiliate program you can join. With affiliate links, you will be making a percentage commission every time someone that you sent over makes a sale.

This is the last step and it is the step that will make you money. You won't get just one payday, but several. This is what is called passive income. What you have just created will continue to work for you until the day you decide to take it down. Can you see the potential? If you continue to grow, the bigger your income can get. The numbers that you might see other internet marketers spewing is not just a dream, but it is a reality.

So, get to it! Make your blog, and make money!

Resource Box:
Sign up for this powerful software tool to help you blog in less time. It will actually put your blogs on autopilot!

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Making Money with Unused Domain Names

Guest Post by Kevin Frost

If you’re like many internet entrepreneurs, you probably have a few extra domain names lying around that you’re not actually using– domains from defunct websites, website ideas that never came to be, or tracking domains used in advertising campaigns. Like forgotten treasures uncovered in the attic, your unused domain names can be a great way to earn a little extra money online.

Selling your unused domain names can be one of the easiest and cheapest ways to make money online: there’s no expenditure required beyond a few bucks for registration fees, and the only work required is a bit of research and setting up a few accounts. Let me walk you through the process.

As they say, every mother finds her child beautiful, but in order to sell for a good price your domain names need to appeal to others as well. Here are some tricks to find out if your domain name is trash or treasure:

1. Estibot.com will give you a free automated appraisal based upon several common metrics. For example, Estibot’s report values the domain for my site MakingMoneyOnline.com at $30,000 – not too shabby!

2. Use Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to determine if people are searching for the keywords in your domain, and how much advertisers are willing to pay for a single visitor in that space. Anything over 1,000 exact match searches and at least $0.50 per visitor is starting to be interesting, though more is better. “Making money online” gets nearly 50,000 exact match searches a month, with each vistor worth $2.66 on average.

3. Check to see if similar domains are already taken. NameStation will let you check almost 40 popular domain extensions in a single query. If you own the .com and most other extensions are taken, your name is likely valuable. NameStation finds “Making Money Online” regisered in 22 extensions and available in 16 (mostly non-English speaking country extensions).

Even if the results from the above research isn’t looking good, you may still want to try putting the domain up for sale until your existing registration period runs out. You never know, someone may find a swan in your ugly duckling.

Avoid paying a listing fee to sell your domains – the most popular marketplaces will only charge you a commision if they are successful selling your domain name. I recommend creating an account and listing your domain for sale at three of the largest domain marketplaces:
1. Sedo.com – the largest domain name marketplace with over 10 million listings, Sedo sells thousands of domains each month, and charges a 10% commission if they sell your domain.
2. GoDaddy Auctions – GoDaddy is the most popular domain registrar in the world, so it makes sense to go where the buyers are. A standard listing costs $4.99/ yr. for membership plus a 5-7% commission fee.

3. The AfternicDLS will let you sell your domains at popular domain auction site Afternic.com, as well as several partner websites across the web. Membership costs $19.95 per year, plus a commission fee of 10-20%.

Everyone’s heard of blockbuster paydays like the $3 million sale of Vodka.com, or Fund.com for $10 million. Most domain names aren’t worth a fraction of that amount. The average domain sold on marketplaces like Sedo or Afternic goes for about $1,500 – $2,000. Unless you own a highly-searched one or two-word dot-com domain, you can probably expect to earn anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand for each of your domains. But hey– it’s easy money, and a heck of a lot better than the zero dollars you get if you let your valuable domains expire..

Author Bio:
Kevin Frost is an experienced domain name investor and broker who writes regular articles on domain name investing at the site Making Money Online.

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Mistakes An Internet Marketer Needs To Avoid

Guest Post by Ashley Wright

It is all good speaking about the highs of Internet marketing, but then there is always the downside to every marketers progression. The main thing that hindered my progression online was believe it or not…
Actually taking action!

There is no point learning everything under the sun, going to every seminar known to man and when it comes down to it not actually doing anything with what you know!
There is this thing called knowledge overload! If you don’t actually do anything with what you know the time will come when you want to do something with what you have learned and you start to get muddled up as you have to much information in your mind! Then you have to then go through the course again, which as you can imagine is very time consuming.

There are three types of Internet Marketer:

1. Those that buy everything and don’t even finish going through what is taught.
2. Those who buy products and courses go through them and then go and buy more and more.
3. Those that buy a course or product go through it and implement what is taught and actually see results from this.

Believe me now you want to be the last type! Your maybe asking yourself though I don’t buy products or courses. Well if that’s not the case then am sure your reading articles, blogs listening to free material etc and still not doing anything with the information you know!
Trust me when I say you can have as much knowledge as knowledge can be, but if you do nothing with it then the knowledge is powerless. The sooner you take this message on board the better!

So once you get past the stage and are actually ready to take action guess what there then comes another huge brick wall in front of you and you know what that is? DISTRACTIONS!

Distractions can hinder anyone’s progress in anyway not just as an Internet Marketer. You have to see it like this, once you sit down by your computer or laptop how many distractions are around you? Here’s a list of some of them:

* The Internet
* Instant Messenger
* TV
* Phone
* Others in your household

They are what can easily hinder your progression online, I am not saying to get rid of them for good but there are ways in how you can put away these distractions.

The Internet & Instant messenger
The best thing to do unless you need to use the Internet is to just basically turn it off! If your working on a new product, writing email sequences, blog posts etc then what you need to do is gather all your information from the Internet first of and then just switch it off. Trust me this is what made me become more productive and I just seem to get so much more done with this. You do not realize but even if you are doing some research on the net you usually seem to drift and become “too involved” with what is going on. So for example you could be doing some research on a forum, your reading a post then you see a signature box that stands out to you; you then go and click the sig box which leads you to opt in for a free report. You then read the report and guess what you have neglected what you was actually doing in the first place! So what you do is set 5-10 minutes aside for research switch your Internet and instant messenger off and then sit down and concentrate with the task at hand.

TV & Phone
Nothing different here also all you need to do is… TURN it off! It is as simple as that. If someone rings you for a long chat tell them you are busy and will return their call later on. What you have to think again here is if you are in the middle of writing and then you get chatting on the phone, you are going lose that momentum and flow that you had going. The TV is worse as every time you look at the TV screen you are loosing momentum, so the truth is with the TV you are actually not getting any momentum and you will find it harder to work when you have something such as Family Guy on in the back J

People around you
Now this is not as easy as the other two, which is to “turn it off” as it does not work on humans! First things first you want to make sure you are in an area where you cannot be disturbed. Then just let everyone around you know that you will be busy for an hour or so, so that no one bothers you.

I hope you have took a lot from this post and you start to put it into action as you will start see taking action and getting started is the way forward.

You don’t have to get it right you just have to get it going! (Mike Litman)

Author Bio:
If you are looking to further yourself as an Internet Marketer then you need to grab your free copy of Conquer Internet Marketing Monthly which is a Online Internet Marketing magazine which will help take you and your business to the next level. Get your FREE Issue here http://ConquerInternetMarketing.com.

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Free Training - Make Money Online

Last week I posted about a live training event that you can attend to learn about how to make money online, many have joined the event. if you have missed it, here's a replay:

http://www.trainmetoblog.com/tmtb-reg.html

You'll get to listen to several dozen Questions that Affiliate Marketing & Internet Marketing Expert Michael S. Brown took the time to answer.

Make sure to watch the event from start to finish at it will really open your eyes to exactly how to make money Online.

Michael also agreed that even if you watch the replay you may still submit him questions and he'll answer you!

There is not a better way to learn to make money online than from someone who earns their entire living on the Internet!

http://www.trainmetoblog.com/tmtb-reg.html

Set aside at least 1 hour to watch this :)

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How To Make Money Using Ebay

Guest Post by Shane O'Driscoll

Whether your looking to make $100 a week or $1000 a week, the internet is a great source to make money. The main problem is where to start and what will yield profits the quickest. Many people opt to start taking surveys and start making cents for filling out a survey that might take them 20 minutes to complete. In my opinion this is pointless. If your serious about making money online then look to something that is proven to make you money.

That is where we arrive at ebay. In large, ebay is without a doubt the easiest way to start making money online. Within the space of ten to twenty minutes you could have your first auction up and your first sale in the bag by the end of that day. Although there are many advanced techniques to selling on ebay, even sticking with the basics will yield you a considerable profit.

So the question is How To Make Money Using Ebay?

* Selling your own possessions or something that you know might yield a profit and you were just going to throw out.

* See if your family or friends have anything they wish to sell and sell it on for them with an agreement that you receive 15% of any profits. After ten to twenty products you wll start seeing some good commissions. Also word of mouth will help get your name out there and you can start to become an ebay broker.

* Source a supplier for a product you are looking to sell. For example, you might wish to start selling ipods or clothing and find a supplier for these will allow you weigh up the profitability.

* Using a drop shipping company to help distribute your products. These are probably the easiest way to make a good income yet you need to know what your doing (This is where the more advanced techniques arise).

* Buying products on wholesale and then selling each off at a profit. For example, you could buy 10 iphones and make $50 profit per phone. This would quickly add up as you sell more.

* Checking the want it now section on ebay, you can locate items people are looking for. Then you check out craigslist to see if you can find that item, if you can you bargain with the seller and then resell on ebay for a massive profit.

* Secret trick: Using craigslist to list an item for sale then when someone emails you regarding the product, have an auto reply set up with your ebay listing. This works particularly well for products like blackberrys or iphones. Your using craigslist to sell more of your products on ebay.

So now I hope this opens up your eyes to some of the methods you can use on how to make money using ebay.

Resource Box:
Click Here if your looking for some more ninja tactics on how to dominate ebay and make $500 by the end of your first week online.

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Passive Income From Selling Things Online

Guest post by Scott Carlson

Making money selling things online takes careful planning, a focused approach, and a certain knowledge that can only be gained through experience. While snake oil salesmen try to represent that making money online is both easy and instant, the truth is the process of building a money making website can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or more. By taking a short term perspective, you are setting yourself up for disappointment and failure.

When you decide that you want to start an online business, you need to have the mentality of sticking with it until you see the results you desire. Anyone who tells you that you can start making money immediately is doing you a great disservice. Realize that snake-oil salesman have an incentive to tell people it is easy to make money online because it will help them sell more of their package. Who wants to hear that selling stuff online requires time and lots of hard work? They could care less if the people that buy their product succeed or fail, all they care about is making the sale.

When you are studying the available systems, software, packages and products for making money online, you can pretty much tell who is full of it by looking at the guarantees they provide: There is never a guarantee you will make money with any business unless you have the knowledge required to get going, and the perseverance to see your ideas through to fruition. If you are looking for something that’s instant, chances are you don’t really have what it takes. If you are planning on starting your own website, realize that you are in this for the long run.

It makes sense, really. The most appealing characteristic of the automated online business model is that once you get the momentum moving in the right direction, your website will tend to pick up steam. Who cares about how much money you make in the first month, when the real measure should be how much you made in your first year, and then how much you improve month over month from the previous year. If you take the time to invest 200-300 hours and build something that is potentially going to generate income for the rest of your life, what happens in the short term just doesn’t matter.

Author Bio:
Scott Carlson’s eBook Education package comes with everything you need to know to start selling online. Learn how to produce or locate a quality product, build a website to sell it, and get traffic to that website. These steps are the key to generating automated passive income.

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