Tips to Boost Your Google AdSense Income

Google AdSense can be a lucrative source of income, and due to this big making money opportunity, everyone is making effort to have his or her share of the pie. Even now at this time, there are thousands of fresh blogs being created by some online money makers around the globe.

Creating one fresh blog for AdSense purpose is a very simple task, even if you a newbie. There are tons of info on how to setup and use Google AdSense on the internet, and the good thing is, it is free. This article too meant for that same reason, and in it, you would read few tips on Google AdSense.

Many may probably have come across these tips somewhere else, but for those have not, I hope you will find it helpful. So, here the tips.

Tips to consider when adding Google AdSense on your blog:

1. Ads Placement.

Place your AdSense ads likely on the spot where it easily can be seen when visitors arrive on the site. The spots where most visitors will observe for the first time are, on top and below the post title, on the left and right side of the post body and on the top area above navigation bar. Ads placed near rich body content and navigational bars are consider the best spot because visitors are likely focus on the most on those areas.

2. Use Text Ads

Text ads have more advantages than image ads. You can blend in text ads with the post content and you can squeeze more of them in the space taken up by image ads. Another advantage using text ads is better description on the ads.

3. Make you ads blend in with the site

Customize your AdSense ads to blend with the site appearance. Using to many different color on your ads can make your site look ugly and in addition on that, many visitors hate sponsored link. That is why customize the AdSense ads to blend in with the site layout and main content, and loose the ads border. Visitors are more likely to click on it thinking it is linking to another useful content source.

Though those tips can help to increase your AdSense income, you need to understand that the most important thing about making money online from a blog with Google AdSense is getting the most traffic to your blog. The simplest way to say it, the more traffic you have, the more clicks you get, the more money you can earn.

4. Getting traffic to your website to boost your AdSense Revenue

You still doesn’t know how to gain traffic via targeted and long-tail keywords? Read this keyword tool.

Websites You Should Have Bookmarked Part #1

1. Authority Black Book
http://www.authorityblackbook.com/
Learn Web 2.0 Tools And Tactics That Generate Traffic Instantly?
Do NOT Buy Any Product That Says Web 2.0 Until You Read The 100% FREE Authority Black Book!
Here's A Small Sample Of What You'll Learn In The Authority Black Book:
Over 500 links to the most powerful and useful Web 2.0 traffic and buzz resources on the web! We're talking immmediate traffic to your mini-sites, Adsense sites or affiliate sites.
How to use RSS subscriptions to explode your reach! So many marketers and webmasters are doing RSS the wrong way... we'll show you the right way!
How to create and syndicate video to the top video sharing sites for high-powered and valuable backlinks (Google likes video links!)
Linkbait: What is it, How to write it, and how to generate massive buzz and hundreds of backlinks in your niche using it.
A tool to instantly and with the click of a button bookmark any page on the web in all the social bookmarking sites – FREE!
Where to get buttons for your browser to submit your pages to all the leading buzz sites like Netscape, StumbleUpon, Reddit and dozens more!
Thorough explanations of more technical steps and strategies by Jack Humphrey, the author of Power Linking Profits and the Authority Black Book.

2. Beginner's Guide To Search Engine Optimization
http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization

This guide provides a complete overview of many of the processes, techniques and strategies used by professional search engine optimization specialists.

This guide represents the opinions of Rand Fishkin, the author, and of contributors who assisted in its creation. This guide is not representative of the guidelines of any of the search engines mentioned (Yahoo!, MSN, Google or AskJeeves). If you have contributions, criticism or would like to discuss this piece, please visit this Beginners' Guide thread at Cre8asiteForums.

3. BlogBash: Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging - Learn from 30 Experts
http://chitika.com/blogbash.phpBlogBash - 30 days 30 experts!
was one of the most successful events ever done on the Chitika Blog. Dreamed up by Chitika's CTO Alden DoRosario and inspired by an interesting series from the Month of Apple Bugs, Chitika's goal for this event was to "empower the blogger."
The experts wrote about an array of wide-ranging topics, from "Dare to be Odd" and "Shopping and Blogging: How to make the marriage work", to "Help me! My mom is my blogs only reader!" and many more.
Go ahead; explore the deep secrets of these 30 expert bloggers, learn from their mistakes and their success as we celebrate YOU the blogger!

4. Blog Profits Blueprint
http://www.blogmastermind.com/blueprint/
Most bloggers are rewarded with little more than "chump change" for their time, expertise and efforts. Download My New Blog Profits Blueprint FREE and let me show you...

"How To Earn US $5000+ Per Month FromYour Blog, 'Working' As Little As 2 Hours Per Day"

Let me Take You 'Behind The Scenes' Of My Blogging Empire And I'll Show You How I make a Full Time Income Blogging Part Time...

Here are some of the things you'll learn....

5. Dive Into Web 2.0
http://www.deitel.com/eBook/tabid/2478/Default.aspx
introduces the principles, applications, technologies, companies, business models and monetization strategies of Web 2.0. The eBook provides you with Web 2.0 literacy and points you to extensive resources where you'll find additional information. Dive Into Web 2.0, along with the many free Resource Centers on our website, evolved from research we’ve done to build our own Web 2.0 businesses. In the spirit of Web 2.0, we are sharing this research with the community.
Dive Into Web 2.0 is a chapter from our book, Internet and World Wide Web How to Program, 4/e (Prentice Hall, ©2008; order from Amazon.com or Informit.com). By offering this chapter as an eBook, we're able to keep it up-to-date with the latest developments in Web 2.0. Check this site regularly for the most recent version. The eBook version of the chapter contains extensive hyperlinking to 80 Deitel Resource Centers and many other Web 2.0 websites and blogs.

Using Titles Effectively on Blogs

My Mum drilled into me at a young age that first impressions are important.

Outside of the design of your blog (that’s a whole other post) perhaps the best way of creating that impression is though your post’s title.

Titles are so important on many fronts - including:

Grabbing Attention in Search Engines - Head over to Google and type in virtually any word you can think of and you’ll often find millions of results. The interesting thing is that for most search results in Google (and other SE’s) there is very little for readers to go by in deciding which result to click on. There is a title, a short excerpt and a URL. The most highlighted of these is the title and I believe it is key in getting SE referral clicks.

Getting RSS Readers Attention - in a very similar way titles have the ability to grab the attention of those following your blog via RSS in news aggregators. Even if your feeds are full post feeds rather than excerpts it’s likely that most news aggregator readers scan the titles of posts for things that interest them rather than reading full text. The same principle is true in other indexes and directories like Technorati, del.icio.us, digg etc

Loyal Readers - Good titles also impact the way your loyal readers interact with your blog. As I’ve already mentioned - web users scan pages and one of the best ways to make them pause as they roll their eyes down your site is to capture their attention with a good title that intrigues them enough to slow down their frantic web surfing and actually read some of the content that you’ve pour time and energy into.

Search Engine Optimization - While there are many factors that contribute to how search engines ranks a page of your blog, one of the most powerful onsite factors are the words that you use in the title of that page. This means making sure that the titles of your posts end up being in the

Using Titles Successfully

There are many strategies that successful bloggers use to draw attention to their posts with titles. There is no real right or wrong and as with many aspects of blogging what is a ‘good title’ is a little subjective. Having said this - you might want to consider these six factors in writing titles for your blog posts:

Keep it Simple - Most research I’ve seen into titles seems to argue that the most effective titles are short, simple and easy to understand. While breaking these rules can help grab attention (see below) they can also confuse, frustrate and put a glazed look in the eyes of potential readers. Shorter titles are also good for Search Engines - keep it under 40 or so characters and you’ll ensure the whole title appears in search results.

Grab Attention - Good titles set your posts apart from the clutter around them and then draw readers into your post. Grabbing attention might happen using tactics of ’shock’, ‘big claims’, ‘controversy’ or even ‘confusion’. While these tactics do work at getting people in - it should also be said that they can do more damage than good if the rest of your post doesn’t live up to the promises your title makes. By all means try to grab attention - just just ‘trick’ your readers into thinking you’ll provide them with something you can’t give them.

Meet a Need - An effective title draws people into reading more because they feel you’ve got something to say that they NEED to hear. Indexes like del.icio.us illustrate just how effective this is. Quite often the articles that get to the top of the list are ‘how to…’ or ‘tutorial’ type articles that show readers that they will learn how to solve a problem or need that they might have.

Describe - Some readers will be drawn into a post by a cryptic title that doesn’t tell them much about what they’ll be reading - but the majority of readers need to know something about what they’ll find if they read further. Titles should describe (in a word or few) what readers will get in the main post.

Use Key Words - As I mentioned above - titles are a powerful part of SEO. If you want to maximize their power you need to consider using the keywords that you want your post to be found with in your title in some way. This of course is challenging when you are attempting to ‘keep it simple’ and to also ‘grab attention and intrigue’ - but it can be done. Words at the start of titles are thought to be more powerful than words at the end when it comes to SEO.

One last tip on titles - Take your time with your titles. Many bloggers pour a lot of effort into writing engaging and interesting posts - but then just slap any old title onto it without realizing that in doing so they might be ensuring that their post is never read.

Treat your title as an mini advertisement for your work. Take at least a few minutes before hitting publish to not only make sure your post is in order - but that your title is going to do everything it can to maximize the chances that people will engage with what you have to say.

Blogs Will Change Your Business

Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later

It's time for a frank talk. And no, it can't wait. We know, we know: Most of you are sick to death of blogs. Don't even want to hear about these millions of online journals that link together into a vast network. And yes, there's plenty out there not to like. Self-obsession, politics of hate, and the same hunger for fame that has people lining up to trade punches on The Jerry Springer Show. Name just about anything that's sick in our society today, and it's on parade in the blogs. On lots of them, even the writing stinks.

Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they're simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they're going to shake up just about every business -- including yours. It doesn't matter whether you're shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They're a prerequisite. (And yes, that goes for us, too.)

There's a little problem, though. Many of you don't visit blogs -- or haven't since blogs became a sensation in last year's Presidential race. According to a Pew Research Center Survey, only 27% of Internet users in America now bother to read them. So we're going to take you into the world of blogs by delivering this story -- call it Blogs 101 for businesses -- in the style of a blog. We're even sprinkling it with links. These are underlined words that, when clicked, carry readers of this story's online version to another Web page. This all may make for a strange experience, but it's the closest we can come to reaching out from the page, grabbing you by the collar, and shaking you into action.

First, a few numbers. There are some 9 million blogs out there, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day. Some discuss poetry, others constitutional law. And, yes, many are plain silly. "Mommy tells me it may rain today. Oh Yucky Dee Doo," reads one April Posting. Let's assume that 99.9% are equally off point. So what? That leaves some 40 new ones every day that could be talking about your business, engaging your employees, or leaking those merger discussions you thought were hush-hush.

Give the paranoids their due. The overwhelming majority of the information the world spews out every day is digital -- photos from camera phones, PowerPoint presentations, government filings, billions and billions of e-mails, even digital phone messages. With a couple of clicks, every one of these items can be broadcast into the blogosphere by anyone with an Internet hookup -- or even a cell phone. If it's scandalous, a poisonous e-mail from a CEO, for example, or torture pictures from a prison camp, others link to it in a flash. And here's the killer: Blog posts linger on the Web forever.

Yet not all the news is scary. Ideas circulate as fast as scandal. Potential customers are out there, sniffing around for deals and partners. While you may be putting it off, you can bet that your competitors are exploring ways to harvest new ideas from blogs, sprinkle ads into them, and yes, find out what you and other competitors are up to.

19 Strategies for Finding Readers

These points come from a variety of older posts I’ve written on the topic - sort of a ‘best of’ kind of thing. I’ve updated some, others are straight extracts from things I’d said before and a few are new:

1. It takes time - It may not be what you want to hear, but it unless you’re a genius, extremely lucky or have an amazing new idea, it takes time to build a readership. So settle in for the long haul and muscle up some patience.

2. Content Content Content - I’ve said this over and over again so will keep it brief but unless you have ‘good’ content you’re unlike to build a readership. What is good content - start by thinking about it in terms of usefulness and uniqueness and I think you’ll be on the right track. Other words that come to mind when it comes to good content might be ‘fresh’, ‘variety’, ‘up to date’ and ‘well written’.

3. Link to others - Perhaps one of the central features of blogging is that they are linked. The intricate web of links and relationships was one of the first things that attracted me to blogging and it’s part of the reason it’s got real viral properties that allow ideas to spread so quickly. Participate in the linking to other blogs and you’ll find that many benefits come. For a start you’ll be participating in the conversation, you’ll be getting the attention of others and your readers will appreciate that you’re interested in helping them find the best content out there.

Of course you don’t want to be linking randomly to everyone and anyone - be selective and link to quality content that is relevant to your niche topic. As you engage in linking you’ll find that others will link back (assuming you have something worthwhile to say yourself) and you’ll find the traffic begins to flow - both from their sites and as a result of your increased search engine ranking.

4. Get Links from other Bloggers - I can hear the comments already - ‘Easier said than done Darren!’ This is true - but if you’re smart, genuine, helpful and polite there are ways of increasing the chances of getting links from others.

5. Participate in other people’s conversations - I suspect that a number of my first regular blog readers first came to my blog because I left a comment on theirs. It was not a strategy I thought about - I just found myself quite addicted to reading others blogs and giving feedback. When you leave a comment leave your own blog address. Often people like to know who is reading their blog and will come visiting you. Don’t comment just for the sake of it. If someone leaves me a ‘hi’ comment or is obviously spamming my blog I won’t visit them and delete the comment. Make genuine comments on posts that connect with you. You might make a good friend in the process and in the long run will find the flow on effect of this is more interest in you and your own blog.

6. Interact with Readers - When a reader reaches out to you with a comment, email or link from their blog - interact with them. For starters it’s good manners and secondly it’s a good way to increase the chances that they’ll come back again. I get a lot of people telling me that they don’t have enough readers to their blog - while I can related to this frustration I generally encourage them to see what they’ve got as a good starting place. Interact with those who do come to your blog and make it the best experience you can for them and you’ll find that they spread the word for you.

7. Update frequently - With the advent of news aggregators people can be notified of your new post in real time. I noticed that when I publish a new post that my stats nearly always go up slightly just afterwards as those readers with aggregators log in to have a quick look at my latest musings. This works a lot better on some blogs than others (some topics seem to attract more RSS subscribers than others do). Another side benefit of frequent posting is that search engines like it and many believe that the more you post the more often SE’s will send their spiders out to index your blog. Similarly - the more you post the more you’ll get indexed by blog engines like technorati (and numerous others). Of course I’m not encouraging massive amounts of meaningless content - keep it of a high quality.

8. Add a signature to your outgoing email - This is an oldie but a goodie. Many bloggers do this. Simply add the domain name to your outgoing email. Most email programs will allow you to do this automatically via a signature option. However be careful with automatic signatures if you don’t want your blog to be read by everyone that you email.

9. Promote your RSS Feed - Most blog platforms come with a RSS feeds built in but there are ways of increasing your subscriber list. The most obvious of these is to put it in the sight of your readers by putting your RSS button in a more prominent position. There are a variety of different buttons available that you can make available to readers to help them to subscribe to your blog via their news aggregators with one click that might also be worth investigating. Also, if your topic is not one which many readers seem to use RSS in, you might need to do some education on the topic of RSS feeds. Write a post on how to follow your blog via RSS and you might find more do.

10. List your site on Portals, Blog Indexes, Directories and Search Engines - There are MANY places that you can list your blog to help it get more attention. In fact there are too many and you could probably spend all your time submitting your blog to them all. I’d recommend that you don’t become obsessed by this and work on other factors in this list first and then in your spare time add your blog to some of these types of things as you go. Making sure you get listed on some of the bigger sites like Technorati should probably be a priority (here’s how for Technorati) - but don’t make this the first thing you do. In terms of getting into search engines - you can submit yourself (most have ways of doing this) but most people believe that the best and quickest way to get indexed these days is to get a link from another site that is already indexed.

11. Search Engine Optimization - While some bloggers don’t think much of SEO I think it is well worth knowing some basic SEO principles and keeping them in the back of your mind as you blog. After all SE’s are the place that most people go to when they are searching for information on a topic. Don’t become obsessed by SEO, but don’t ignore it either.

12. Participate in others Blogger’s Projects - From time to time other bloggers will invite your participation in a blog project of theirs. Put your hand up, volunteer some time and contribute in some way. Don’t just do it to get a link on their site, but take the opportunity to build a relationship with them and their readers. Not only will you make a friend, but over time you build some credibility as a blogger who is not just thinking about themselves. On the flip side start your own blogging project. Some of the more popular things to get involved with these days are Blog Carnivals.

13. Participate in other web forums - Blogging is not the only vibrant online activity at the moment. I visit a number of other discussion forums and e-zines that explore similar ideas/hobbies/interests to me and my blogs. I’ve found an increasing amount of traffic to my blog is coming as a result of my contributions to these forums as many of them allow you to add your link as a signature to your posts. Don’t spam these forums - but be a genuine contributer that adds useful comments and you’ll find people are drawn to your other projects.

14. Explore other formats of communication - Another of the more effective things that I’ve done over the past year in my blogging is worth hard on email newsletters for a few of my blogs. I don’t do it with all of them (mainly due to the time it takes) but here at ProBlogger I’ve grown a list of over 1600 email subscribers who I send weekly information to. These newsletters both are about keeping people in touch with what happened on the blog each week as well as giving extra tips and information to build a sense of community and ownership of the site. Other bloggers use forums similarly.

15. Offline Techniques - Blog Promotion need not only happen online. Consider how you might promote it offline and you could just bring in some new readers also. Such techniques can include putting your URL on business cards, letterhead, using press releases and other assorted methods. Read more on this here.

16. Make it viral - One of the things about infectious diseases that makes them so deadly is that they are very easy to pass on from one person to another. There are a number of things you might want to consider doing to help with this. For instance a lot of bloggers these days are adding links on their posts that allow readers to bookmark the post in social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and digg. Other bloggers have features that allow bloggers to ‘email a friend’ about a particular post. Others (like ProBlogger) allow readers to subscribe to comment threads via email. All of these types of plugins allow your readers to do the work for you in either spreading the word about your site or making it more sticky. Speaking of social bookmarking - there are also ways of writing content that tend to be picked up more in this scene that you might like to explore if that’s a source of traffic that you’re interested in.

17. Advertise - I’ve written a lot over the past year about running advertising on blogs as a form of income - but on the flip side of many advertising platforms that you can run as a publisher are the opportunities to actually advertise your blog in the attempt to find new readers. In the last few months I’ve dabbled a little in this side of things, mainly using AdWords (the advertiser side of AdSense) but also advertising on a few sites using BlogAds. I’ve actually been learning about AdWords using Perry Marshall’s e-book (aff) on the topic and am finding it quite helpful if you’re looking to a good introduction to using it (he has a free 5 day taster too). Of course you’ll need to weigh up the cost of advertising vs the benefits that you think it’ll bring - but I know of quite a few bloggers who run an AdWords campaign in the first month of a new blog to give it a kick start and swear by the method.

18. Link baiting - This is one of the terms that has become quite common among bloggers over the last year. In essence ‘link bait’ is some sort of comment that will attract links to it and in many ways is no different than paragraph 2 above - write good content and people will link up. Of course there are many tactics that many bloggers use to link bait - I’ve explored a few of these here.

19. Take all advice with a grain of salt - Be yourself and have fun! - The web is full of advice like the above - what I’m saying isn’t rocket science. There are no rules of blogging and it seems everyone’s experience of growing a blog (or not growing one) is different.

I’m sure there are a lot of blogs out there that ignore all or most of the above advice that have a bunch of regular readers and healthy hits. So relax, be yourself and have fun with it. Experiment with new tools, styles of design and writing.

My suspicion is that bloggers who obviously enjoy the blogging process and who are themselves are the type of bloggers that people are drawn to. Bloggers that are uptight and who complain constantly about how their blog isn’t achieving what they want it to achieve probably do quite the opposite and turn people away. Traffic is a good thing for a blog but it’s not the ultimate measure of a good blog in my books. Write it for yourself and have some fun and a lot of the rest will end up looking after itself.

10 Steps to Guarantee You’ll Never Make More than 0.14 cents per month with AdSense

Every day I come across and courses which promise to teach people how to make thousands of dollars a day with AdSense by following a few easy steps - so I thought it was time for one that shows you how to guarantee to keep your blog from making money with AdSense. Here’s my top 10 tips for a guaranteed earning of 0.14 cents or less per month from your blog:

1. Position Ads Out of Sight - Ensure that you put any ad units that you put on your blog below the fold where they’ll be sure not to annoy your readers. If you do choose to put your ads above the fold (why you would I’ll never know) make sure they are placed in the white zones in the diagram to the right. Obviously the bottom of the page is best but the top right corner and right hand skyscraper positions can also work against you very well. Do your best to keep the ads away from the areas that people’s eyes will be drawn to (ie away from content, pictures etc). This helps keep the money from rolling in quite well.

2. Only post to your blog once every few weeks - Lull your readers into a hypnotic trance decrease the chances of them ever visiting your blog.

3. Unclear Post Topics - If and when you do choose to post make sure that your posts have as little focus as possible in terms of topic. Write about multiple topics in every post in an attempt to confuse the AdSense bots. Never blog about anything with a commercial aspect to it and attempt to keep your posts as uninteresting, unoriginal and as useless to readers as you possibly can.

4. Poor Post Titles - Never use the keywords that relate to your post in your post’s title. In order to get lower paying (and irrelevant) ads use the word ‘blog’ as much as possible both in your titles and posts. Also try to find topics to write about that AdSense has no ads in their inventory for. Do this by simply adding keywords into Google.com until no ads come up next to the search results.

5. Never set your ads to show Alternative Ads - If you do your readers will see ads that might make you money when Google can’t find any of their own to show (something that ideally you will have if you get #4 above right). A much better strategy is to just allow the PSA (public service ads) to appear which will guarantee you earn nothing at all.

6. Click your own AdSense ads - This might make your AdSense total go up for a little while but the chances are that you’ll never see the money because you’ll be banned from the system. You might even go into negative earnings if Google decides to get their lawyers onto you!

7. Break Other Rules - If clicking on your own ads doesn’t get you banned fast enough try breaking some of the other AdSense terms and conditions like blatantly encouraging your readers to click your ads, using obscene language, writing constantly about violent and adult topics, labeling your ads with things like ‘free prizes if you click here’ or by putting flashing arrows pointing at the ads etc. Another good one is to add YPN ads to the same pages that AdSense ads are on. This has the double bonus of possibly getting you banned from both programs in one hit! If AdSense do contact you to make a change to some rule you’ve broken it’s best to ignore these emails, or if you decide to write back be as argumentative and uncooperative as possible.

8. Make your ads stand out - Set your AdSense ad design to completely clash with the rest of your blog’s design. Blending your ads is for sissies - be bold! In essense what you’re aiming for is to make your ads look as much out of place and as ad-like as possible. Here’s a few of my personal favorites (keep in mind I’m not a very good designer - I’m sure you could do worse if you put your mind to it):

9. Never track your AdSense ads performance - Definitely do not use channels to monitor how your different ads perform. This way you’ll ensure that if you do happen to fluke some well performing ads - you’ll never know which ones they were and will never be able to reproduce the results elsewhere.

10. Lower your Traffic - Ultimate the probably one of the best ways to ensure you never make much money from AdSense is to work hard at maintaining as little traffic as possible to your blog. You can do this in many ways including:

• Ignoring any readers that do happen upon your blog
• Practicing black hat SEO principles to make sure you get banned from Google and other Search Engines
• Writing the worst content possible
• Stealing other people’s content (and other unethical practices)
• Post as infrequently as possible (I know I’ve said this already - but it’s worth repeating
• Never promote your blog in any online or offline forums

If you do have an occasional surge in traffic you can always remove the ads from the page that is getting the most traffic. Some bloggers do this well by only showing ads on certain pages (like their front page) and not showing them on other pages that get traffic.

How do You ‘Sell’ Your Blog?

am no stranger (nor are you, probably) to how the wider media sometimes depicts bloggers: as closeted wannabees who add to the rise of ‘faux journalism’. Books are currently being published on the subject.

This could understandably contribute to any beginner blogger’s self-consciousness; especially those who are staring at their ad revenue reports, wondering if any money is every going to start showing up

I used to be bashful when I talked about my blog. Not anymore. Why should I be? I’m proud of it. I’m proud of what it catalogues; thoughts, my goals, even my ambitions.

No doubt you feel the same about yours, too. But any hint of shyness, or pause, when you talk of your blog is hardly going to attract readers. Or advertisers.

Recently, I migrated from Blogger to Wordpress; a rather stressful time for me, for I was deathly afraid that over a year’s worth of work and effort would somehow evaporate into nothingness (luckily, it didn’t). I had several reasons for the change; the main ones being I was a little tired of the limits of Blogger, and I wanted a purer control of my own writing and ‘brand’, for lack of a better word.

When I discussed my plans with non-bloggers, they all asked me “Why?” Why change? Why bother? What’s the difference?I replied, “I just felt like it was time. It didn’t feel comfortable anymore.”

Granted, this was rather a drastic change. It needn’t be. Standard templates only need to be tweaked slightly to give yourself the opportunity to individualise (and hence ‘validate’) your blogging status. This mightn’t be important to some people; for others it just might be the chance to assert their creative will, and this newly found confidence can lead them on to loftier plans.

And sometimes stamping your own blogging status begins with how you speak about blogging in the first place.

Here’s my challenge:Put your blog’s URL as part of your signature in your email (if you haven’t already).
Mention it in conversations.
Enter blog carnivals.
Do what you can (short of spamming, naturally!) to spread the word of your blog.
What are you waiting for?Help sell your blog to the world.
Isn’t it worth it?

How to Get Your Blog to 100,000 Visitors and Beyond

I’ve had a lot of requests to detail how I got 100,000 visitors (now past 150k as I write this) to Free Money Finance. While the topic is not clearly in the subject area of personal finances, it can be part of how you increase your income (and thus improve your net worth), so I’ll cover it. Plus, this will serve to help out other bloggers as well as remind me of what else I need to do to grow this blog. If this isn’t your cup of tea, simply ignore these posts. I post frequently enough that a new, money-related post is not far behind this one.I’ll over this topic in a series of “steps”, each one presenting a simple, unique step I took to get to 100,000 visitors. I’ll also try to keep the steps in the order I did them, though several happened simultaneously, so that won’t be easy.That said, here we go.

Step 1 to getting to 100,000 visitors and beyond: Pick the right topic.

This might seem to be a simple step (and maybe even counter blogging — can’t I just blog about what I want?), but it’s critical. To me, the right topic is one that:You’re passionate about — If you’re not passionate about it, you won’t post regularly, you’ll lose interest, and your readers will be able to tell your heart isn’t really in it (and they’ll go away). If you are, your readers will identify with you and get to “love” your personality. And they’ll come back. And tell their friends to stop by.You’re knowledgeable about — You don’t have to be an expert on the topic, but you need to know more than most people to get a lot of people to your site. Otherwise, why would they stop by (or come back)?Is it popular — Let’s face it, if you want to write about the exercise habits of your hamster, not many people are likely to visit your blog. You have to have a topic that many, many people want to read about if you want to get to 100k. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t write about your hamster (or anything else a large group wouldn’t want to read about). If you blog for your own pleasure, then go for it — make Hammy a star.

But if you want to get to 100,000 visitors, you need a topic (like personal finances) that many people what to know more about.Watch out for the rest of FMF’s series later in the week at Free Money Finance.

What is a blog?

So what is a Blog anyway?It’s a good question to ask at the beginning of a Blogging for Beginners Series as it is a question I am asked every week.There are a number of ways I could answer this question ranging from the broad to the highly technical.

Here are a few definitions from other much wiser people on the ‘what is a blog?’ question to get us started (and once you’ve seen what they have to say on the topic I’ll share my own thoughts):‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ Source

A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.’ Source

‘From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ Source

‘A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.’ Source

‘A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.’ Source

‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’ Source.