5 Tips to Managing Time with Your Blog

July 30, 2008

Are you afraid you will not have the time to devote to blogging? Blogs are certainly the way to show your inner self to the world, but lack of time always can be an obstacle. Setting few time management tweaks can help. So, consider these five tips to making your blogging more effective.

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Posted by Sloba | Filed Under Blogging | Leave a Comment

Make Money Blogging

July 11, 2008

You want to get rich quick, to make tons of money quickly? Great! You are on the right place, because in that case I want to tell you: „Go try with Lotto“! You may heard that there are people on the internet making millions of bucks. You heard well, but please realize they haven’t done that overnight. Behind those successes are good ideas, hard work and perseverance. But it’s the life, you know the story of your favorite sportsman and what he had to sacrifice until the success has arrived. Are you ready for that? Don’t get me wrong, I just want to warn you that blogging and particularly building online business is time-consuming.

So if you are starting with blog monetization right now, just few notes. Don’t blog just to blog, pick the topic on something you’re passionate about. The topic you’re confident to build business around. The topic you want to blog it anyway, for enjoy, not money, and the cash will probably come. So, blog about the topic where you can provide a value and good information to readers. Find your passion, and see is there money in the market. If there is no money in the market, then know it in advance.

In any case…persist. Persist to CRAP, which means Criticism-Rejection-Assholes-Pressure. On this topic watch this movie and see the point of these words.

Monetization options

The most important in monetizing and online business building is to have a plan. In essence, consider this before you go further: What can I offer to thrill people? -> How I offer it? -> How I can make it profitable?

The best way to make money online is to have own products. Of course, there are also alternatives. If you are promoting affiliate programs, then it’s better to create an expert website around particular topic, made full with beneficial information, in front of your selected affiliate links (rather than splashing around all different types of affiliate programs. There are always new advertisement sharing and affiliate programs, so feel free to explore. Here is just a quick list of advertisement sharing programs to start you off:

1.Advertisement revenue sharing programs:

Google Adsence – ad revenue sharing - old timer in this field,
Chitika – reliable ad revenue sharing, on the market since 2003,
Text-Link-Ads – besides the site they monetize your RSS feeds,
Pay Per Play – new kid in the block, but innovative where you get paid for audio ads playing on your site.

2. Only for bloggers:

- get paid to blog about other companies. On the network you apply for the opportunity to blog about, while accepting the advertiser prize (usually you can get 5-10$ per post). This kind of posting is not seen as a value at Google, so you should know that it can harm your Search Engines Page Rank. However Page Rank is not the most important matter, and if you are choosing this monetization option, its quite ok.

This is end of the 5th step from How to create a successful blog. Happy blogging!

Posted by Sloba | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Shorten that ugly long URL

April 19, 2008

Whenever you market affiliate products you can be frustrated, because you take endeavor to market that product and someone can just cut your link, and that way cut you for the commission.

This risk is always present. Fortunately there are services (like clickaudit and snurl) that can resolve this. There is no charge, these services are free to use.

Here is an example. This long URL http://www.roboform.com/php/land.php?affid=sloba

now can look like this http://snurl.com/250d0

But, not only that, because these services provide one more feature, which can be very helpful, which is statistics for your URL, and that means number of clicks on your shorten domain name.

Posted by Sloba | Filed Under web 2.0 tools | Leave a Comment

Implicating Adsense in the post

April 14, 2008

I found a great video on tubetorial site explaining how to implicate Adsense in the posts, using Adsense Deluxe plugin.

Its a great plugin which enable displaying Google or Yahoo Adsense integrated in text post, instead of sidebar or header.

If your focus is on Adsense advertising this is the excellent way to display ads directly to the posts.

So here is the link to watch short video on tubetorial.

And if you want to find more great plugins, you can read my post more-than-10-great-wordpress-plugins.

Posted by Sloba | Filed Under plugins | Leave a Comment

Business Promotion on Craigslist

April 13, 2008

Craigslist has approximately four billion page views each month with ten million people using Craigslist each month. And according to Alexa.com, Craigslist has a traffic rank of 66 worldwide (today when I write this).

One of the most favorite uses of Craigslist is for business advertisement and promotion. Both, large and small businesses can find their place, of the free advertising offered on Craigslist to promote their business and appeal fresh customers. On first glance Cragslist is similar to other advertising websites, but here we have forums and communities.
And the biggest advantage of Craigslist certainly is in its massive traffic.

If we focus on advertising, we all know that we don’t need much time to post the ad. So it will not take much time, and Craigslist traffic can bring potential costumers. But, like any marketing campaign, your advertisements on Craigslist must be intriguing, informative and in a location where you will reach your target audience.

Business owners are free to lay ads in the particular section. This section is split into a list of categories where business possessors can lay their ad in the most adequate position where it is likely to reach the target prospects.

If its done properly, when advertiser research for right place to post ads, advertising on Craigslist can be lucrative. However, while practicing this, precaution should be taken to avoid bringing in posts which will be detected as spam. Placing an advertisement in an adequate section of Craigslist is standard. But, posting the same advertisement in almost every section of Craigslist website for a number of different geographical regions is considered spam.

Also, taking part in the discussion forums and offering useful comments and true answers, and at the same time also placing a link to a business site can help to drive traffic to an ecommerce website.

Posted by Sloba | Filed Under web 2.0 marketing | Leave a Comment

Be aware in Promoting Your Business/Site on MySpace

April 11, 2008

The question how to promote business on MySpace can be debatable. But here I just want go through MySpace Terms of Service. If you are using MySpace in commercial purpose it’s important to read terms carefully, because MySpace is meant to be an un-commercial website (for members) by nature. But there’s a opposite between blatant commercialization and bringing up a product or service you put up and provide a link as a helpful and useful resource to visitors of your site. This post will have a look at the chances to promote a business on MySpace by offering info about whether or not your way of business promotion is allowed on MySpace and information how to push your business without being accused of spamming MySpace.

Lets see what’s in the MySpace Terms of Service!

MySpace Terms of Usage

One of the conditions of the MySpace, what all members can see when opening Myspace account, interprets as follows:

Non-commercial Use by Members. The MySpace servicing are for the personal role only and can not be applied with any commercial strives (take out those that are specifically approved by MySpace.com). Illegal and/or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services, including collecting user names and/or email addresses of Members for the purpose of sending unsolicited email or unauthorized framing of or linking to the MySpace Website is prohibited. Commercial advertisements, affiliate links, and other sorts of allurement may be removed from Member profiles without notice and can result in termination of Member’s account. Appropriate legal action will be taken for any illegal or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services.

So, here we see that MySpace is produced for non-commercial usage unless Myspace has approved the usage of a member’s page for commercialized aims. Thus be aware while designing a MySpace page to assure it will not be viewed as a commercial website by MySpace administrators. Be aware that many MySpace profiles have been deleted by administration.

If you are unsure ask questions.

If you are doubtful of whether or not your MySpace page is considered as commercial website, you should consult with MySpace administrators. Reviewing the terms of usage agreement can supply a lot of fact, but some users could yet be unsure on the possibleness that their site will be fined if administrators view it as commercial in nature.

Contacting MySpace is an easy action. Members can use the, “Contact MySpace” link at the MySpace homepage. There is an option to select a subject and a subtopic. And once this is done MySpace supplies some preliminary information which can be to the point. If these information isn’t of value to the member, they can e-mail an elaborated request to MySpace.

So, Be aware….

If you decide there’s a chance for you to boost your business through MySpace, be assure the promotional material does not pass over the line and go into spam. Spamming is dealt very seriously by the MySpace admin and it may effect in links or message being deleted or even membership may be revoked.

This is important to understand. Links to your ecommerce website structured into your MySpace website is not counted as spamming. Depending on how it’s applied it may not been viewed as advertising, and consequently prohibited.

Still, placing a link to your ecommerce website on each Myspace page you visit would be reckoned as spam. These persons may or may not be interested in the message you send, but even if they’re curious, posting these unsolicited links to many members is often considered to be spam.

You may work really hard to create long list of friends, and one day BOOOOOM, your MySpace profile is gone…..don’t allow that!

Posted by Sloba | Filed Under Social Networking | Leave a Comment

More than 10 Great WordPress Plugins

April 9, 2008

The following article is showing the list of WordPress plugins that will help you have a better experience with your blog. Most of these are must have plugins for WordPress.
Besides Akismet, which is automatically installed on WordPress, here are the plugins I found useful:

All-in-one-seo-pack - Plugin for Search Engine Optimization

Google xml Sitemaps -The Google Sitemap Plugin automagically pings Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search at regular intervals, notifying them of new content and/or changes to your site.

Optimal Title – optimize your post titles for search engines

Smart ping - Protects you from over pinging. When you edit your post, it prevent pinging so you are proteced from being considered as spammer

Another Wordpress meta plugin - This plugin allows you to specify META information, that is keywords and descriptions, for your posts and pages. Additional META keywords are derived from your categories.)

“What Would Seth Godin Do?” - This plugin will definitely help you get more RSS subscribers! It’s called “What Would Seth Godin Do“

WP-Contact Form – Great contact form plugin with security question. Here is an example on my contact page.

Darren’s Related Posts plugin or Wasabi Related Entries – As your blog grows you will certainly like to have one of these plugins which will help you to detain your readers on the blog, by showing related posts at the end of your post.

ADD This- for social bookmarking
Favicon manager - manage favicon image.

For tagging:

UltimteTagWarrior – for tagging

Tag sugest Thing - Tag Suggest Thing uses the Yahoo! term extraction API to find tags to suggest.

Embedded Tag Thing - To display a word in a post as a tag, wrap it in markup (with square brackets!)

For ads:

Adsense-Deluxe - Place Google AdSense ads inside your WordPress Posts

Ad Rotator – Rotate adsense, and any other kind of ad, graphic, etc. wherever you place the code

MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad - displaying a single line of advertising message, a special note or other information right at the top of your blog

For translation:

Global Translator - translates a blog in fourteen different languages. Hmm, its not so accurate translation, but you may want to have this for your blog.

It never hurts to be well informed with the latest on WordPress plugins and you can always explore more in this area, because you want to plug in your blog to higher level!