Generating Traffic with a Newsletter

Have you ever received a newsletter in your email? A large number of internet users do and many actually read them!

With affiliate programs, you can easily sell products without even having to have the product in your hand. As nice as it sounds, you still need to have you own website; it is a requirement for many affiliate programs. Having a website is ideal, but to really make money with affiliate programs, you need to have a website that receives a relatively high amount of traffic. If you would like to increase the amount of traffic that your website sees, you should examine newsletters. They are a great way to increase website traffic.

Before examining how newsletters can help you increase your websites traffic, it is best that you first understand newsletters. When it comes to understanding newsletters, there tends to be a little bit of confusion. Newsletters come in a number of different shapes, sizes, and styles; they are all used for different purposes. Newsletters are essentially emails that are sent to those who have requested to receive them. Some use newsletters solely to update their customers and other uses them just as means of regular communication. Despite a variation in purposes, one the most common uses of a newsletter is to increase traffic.

One of the most common questions asked, concerning email newsletters is “why?” A large number of individuals, namely affiliate program participants, wonder why they should even bother writing and then distributing a newsletter. In all honesty, there are an unlimited number of reasons why you should write and distribute newsletters to those who are interested in receiving them. The number one reason is because you can do it as little or as often as you want. Many webmasters only send out newsletters as often as their time allows them to do so. It is also important to note that your newsletter content can be whatever you want it to be. In fact, you may even want to think about tying in your affiliate program or the products that you are selling.

In conjunction with an affiliate program or an affiliate product tie in, you can not only use newsletters to increase your website traffic, but also to promote your affiliate products; products that you are responsible to help sell. You can do this by writing a quick review or recommendation of the products or products that you are helping to sell. If you haven’t tried the product yourself, you may want to try and find other internet users who have. Most of the time, you will find that many internet users are more than willing to write a quick review, just for the sake of helping others.

If you are an article writer or if you enjoy writing, you may want to write your own newsletters. If you are not an article writer or if you are, but you just don’t have the time to produce you own newsletters, you don’t have to. There are a number of alternatives for you to choose from. One of the easiest alternatives is to pay a professional to write your newsletter for you. If you are looking for a free way to make a newsletter, you are urged to examine article directories. Many article directories give out free usage rights for their articles. This means that you can easily find newsletter content, that you didn’t write, without having to spend a dime! When using article directories, it is advised that you use articles that are, in one way or another, related to your website or the affiliate products that you are helping to sell.

As you can see, there are a number of reasons why you should at least think about writing and disturbing a newsletter. In addition to those reasons, there are also an unlimited number of benefits to using newsletters to your advantage. Whether you make the decision to write your own newsletters, hire a professional, or use free content from article directories, you are urged to give newsletters a chance. In the end, you might be surprised just how effective they are.

How to Get A Free Blog

Over the past few years, blogs have become incredibly popular. Just about everyone who uses the internet also has a blog. You want to get in on the action, but you’re not sure how to get your own blog.

Luckily for you, sites like Blogger.com have made it easy to set-up and make posts on a blog. In this newsletter, we will go over everything from signing up for a blog on Blogger.com to choosing a template (look) to finally making a first post.

What is Blogger.com?

Simply put, Blogger.com is a site that hosts blogs for free. This makes it even easier for you to have a blog because there is no need to set up a web site and host the blog yourself. All you have to do on Blogger.com, once you’ve signed up, is login to your blog, write a blog post and click submit. It‘s that simple.

What will my web address be on Blogger.com?

Your web address will be http://yourname.blogspot.com. One thing that people dislike about Blogger and other free blog sites is that they don’t have as great of a freedom in choosing a name. You are limited to choosing only what is available. So if you’re looking for http://yankeesfan.blogspot.com, you probably won’t be able to find that.

Signing up for a blog on Blogger

The first thing you’ll do is go to blogger.com. Next, you’ll scroll down the page and click on the button labeled “Create Your Blog Now”.

You will then be taken to a page where you will enter an email address (used to log into your blog), a password, and a word verification. You’ll also have to check “I Accept Terms of Service”. Click continue.

Next, you will be taken to a page where you will choose the blog title, blog address, and another word verification (which is done to prevent auto-signups). When you type in your blog address, you can click a link that says “check availability”. This will tell you whether or not the desired name is available. If the first name you wish to have is not available, keep typing in different variations of the name until you find one that is available.

After you have put in all the information, click “Continue”.

Choosing a Template

After you click “Continue”, you’ll be asked to choose a template. The template can be changed at any time after you sign-up for the blog, so you don’t have to choose an “official” template now.

If you scroll down, you’ll see a variety of different templates.

Click on the one that you like best and then click “Continue”.

Your First Blog Post

After you’ve chosen a template, you’ll see that your blog has been created and that there is a button to “Start Posting”. Click that button.

You’ll be taken to a page that is similar to the posting page at a message board. There is a “Title” field, where you can put in the title of this particular blog posting. Then there is a bigger field, which is the body of your post. Type all you want in this “Body” field, as there is no limit.

Note that there are options above the field to bold, italicize, underline or spell check the text. There is also the option of changing the size and color of the text, plus the ability to add bullet points, numbered lists and even pictures. For now, you’ll just do a simple “Welcome” post.

In the “Title” field, type “Welcome!” In the “Body” field, type your message. You could start with a simple introduction, talking about yourself and the purpose of the blog. When you’re done typing the message, click the “Publish” button. It is worth noting that you can choose to save the post as a draft, if you want to go back and later finish the post.

After you’ve clicked “Publish”, you’ll see that your blog has been published successfully. Click the “View Blog” link to view the results of your work. You’ll now see your post.

Logging into Blogger after the first post

You’ll go to Blogger.com and click on the “Old Blogger” link at the top right of the page. Type in the email address and password that you signed up with. You’ll be taken to the “Dashboard” of your blog. If you want to enter a new post on your blog, click “New Post”. Then follow the instructions mentioned in the previous section. Or if you want to edit the template, add/edit elements to your page, you’ll click “Settings” and then “Template”.

That’s all there is to it. Blogs, whether they are hosted at blogger.com or another free blog site, are incredibly useful and fun.

Blogger makes setting up and running a blog very easy for those who have never done it before. So what are you waiting for? Sign-up for a free blog at Blogger.com today and enjoy posting!

The Spectacular Tricks of Pinging

You’re a blogger and are constantly hearing about pinging. The thing is, you don’t know what it is and what it can do for your blog. Well that’s fine because a lot of bloggers don’t quite understand pinging.

In this newsletter, we will explain what pinging is, how it helps your blog, and what the best pinging services are. After you’ve read this newsletter, you’ll know exactly how to use pinging to make your blog popular.

What is pinging?

When a blog is pinged, it essentially tells a web blog tracking system that the blog has been updated. Thus, pinging is the process of telling tracking services that a site has been updated.

So how does pinging work? Well, a ping service scans regularly blogs for updates. Whenever there is a new update for a particular blog, that is reported back to the pinging service’s site. You can almost think of ping services being just like search engine spiders—both scan sites looking for information, and both report that information back to their specific site. The difference is, a ping service only reports back new blog posts.

Why is pinging useful for my blog?

Pinging, in effect, tells people that there is a new blog posting available. Those who are loyal followers of your blog will see the ping and want to visit your blog. Those who haven’t read your blog before will see the ping and perhaps think “hey, there’s a new blog I haven’t been to before, I think I’ll check it out”. Pinging helps to increase your traffic because it tells people when your blog is updated. Those who visit sites with pinging services will see this information in the form of a scroll on the left or right side, or top of the page. The scroll is usually in XML format and typically includes the title and URL of your blog, as well as the date and time of the update.

OK, so now I know what pinging is. Who offers pinging?

The answer is, there are several pinging services available which you can use to have your blog pinged. We’ll go over some of them right now.

Weblogs.com

Weblogs.com is probably the most well-known pinging service. Weblogs.com monitors sites for updates and then pings whenever there is an update to report. Virtually every blog software is available to use Weblogs.

Yahoo’s Blogs

Another popular pinging service. This one is offered by Yahoo and has a built-in integration with movable type and other tools. One cool thing about this service is that it offers the ability to give out updates via Instant Messaging services like AOL and ICQ. It is a direct pinging service, so those who sign up for subscriptions to your blog will be sent an email anytime your blog is updated.

Blogrolling.com

Blogrolling allows its bloggers to manage their blogrolls(updates) through a web-based interface. Recently updated blogs are also highlighted on Blogrolling’s web site. Data is automatically retrieved from other sites like blogger.com and weblogs.com every 5 minutes. Often times your blog is already being pinged by Blogrolling, so you might not have to sign up for it. Search on the site first for your URL before signing it up.

Technorati

Available at http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping, Technorati is another service that pings blogs. It gets its data from a variety of places and is definitely a site you should go to for blog pinging.

These are just 4 of the many different blog pinging services available. A quick search on Yahoo or Google will reveal many other possible blog pinging services to use for your blog. It is best to sign up for as many as you possibly can to ensure that your blog is well-pinged. A well-pinged blog will definitely help your blog attract more visitors. So sign up for as many as possible and watch your blog traffic increase.

Pinging tells people when your blog is updated. It is an incredibly useful, and easy to sign up for service, so be sure to sign your blog up for pinging!

Tips on Increasing traffic to Your Blog

Is your blog collecting dust and not getting enough traffic? It’s a common problem for bloggers. Their blogs are good, but no one is coming to visit.

Blog owners want to know how to increase traffic. Increasing traffic is actually easier than it seems—provided you know how. In this newsletter, we will go over 7 specific methods of increasing traffic. These are guaranteed methods to draw more visitors to your blog.

Tip #1: Sign up for pinging services

It seems pretty obvious, but most bloggers, even those who are more experienced, don’t sign up for pinging services. If you’re new to blogging and don’t know what pinging means, pinging basically means that when your blog is updated, a “ping” is sent out by the service to let pinging sites know that your blog has been updated. People who are visiting sites with pinging services will then see your blog flash across the side of the screen as “newly updated”. Pinging services include Yahoo’s blogs, weblogs.com, Google Blog search, and ZingFast.

Tip #2: Sign up for Technorati

If you go to technorati.com, you’ll see an option on the left side of the screen to “Claim Your Blog”. Doing so allows you to get updated link counts, add your photo or branding to Technorati, and see your Technorati link. Having your blog claimed on Technorati helps to increase traffic because the millions of people who go to that site will have a chance to see your blog on there.

Tip #3: Sign up for FeedBurner, a RSS service

What FeedBurner basically does for your blog is it helps you to promote your blog’s content, build your audience and measure your audience. In other words, it helps you increase your blog’s traffic.

Tip #4: Bookmark your blogs at places like del.icio.us

You can set up an account and profile at del.icio.us. Then, using that, you can add links to your blog along with excerpts from your blog. Anytime someone visits your profile on del.icio.us, they will see a link to your blog and excerpts. There are other social bookmarking sites that you can use in much the same way. The bottom line is, using these social bookmarking sites can help you increase traffic.

Tip #5: Post comments at other blogs

No, this doesn’t mean you should go and spam other blogs with comments that are only there to promote a site. It means that you should visit similar blogs to your own, post legitimate comments and then sign your name(along with a link to your blog). This way, people know you aren’t there just to promote your site—you’re there to post a good piece of feedback and also say where you’re from.

Tip #6: Ask owners of other blogs to post a link to yours

Find other blogs that are similar to yours. If they seem to be decently popular(that is, they have a good amount of comments for each post), you can try to contact the owner of the blog to add a link to your blog if they have a links section. To make them really want to do this, you can offer to link back to their blog on your blog. People do this reciprocal blog linking all the time and it does help to increase website traffic.

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Tip #7: Use keywords in your blog

Like regular web pages, having a good keyword density on a blog is a terrific way of getting search engine spiders to notice your page. (FYI: Search engine spiders are programs from search engines that browse sites and report back their findings to the search engine database, which then lists that site. The more keywords on your site, the more likely it is for a search engine spider to pay a visit)

If your average blog posting is around 200 words, try to use 2-6 keywords per blog post. 2-6 keywords in a blog posting of 200 words is a keyword density of between 1 and 3 percent, a respectable number. Remember that you don’t want to use too many keywords, as that will make your blog look bad. Also be sure that the keywords used are relevant to your blog. Before even making a blog posting, decide what the post will be about and then select a keyword or two to use in your post. Then do it. It’s a surefire way of getting more traffic to your site!

Signing up with a service like Technorati is a quick, painless way of increasing traffic to your blog. So sign up today!

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Why Trackbacks are Useful to Blogs

If you’re a blogger, chances are you’ve heard of trackbacks. Most likely, you probably don’t know what these are and what they have to do with your blog.

If not, that’s alright, as most people don’t quite understand how trackbacks work and why they are useful for a blog. In this newsletter, we’re going to go over trackbacks—what they are, how they work, why they are important to blog traffic, and how to get more trackbacks. After you’ve read this, you’ll know practically everything there is to know about trackbacks.

What are trackbacks?

The concept of trackbacks is a bit hard to explain. So we’ll use an example to explain it in the best way possible.

OK, say you see a great blog post on another person’s blog and want to link to it on your blog. You could do this the old-fashioned way by manually putting a link on your site to that blog. However, if you do it this way, the person whose blog post you are linking to won’t know that you are linking to them unless you tell them.

This is where trackbacks come in. A trackback is a program which will notify the owner of a blog when one of their posts has been linked to at another blog.

How do they work?

A blog that has a trackback system set up will have a link at the bottom of every blog post. This link will say something like “Blog This!” Anyone who clicks the link can then put a link to that blog post on their site. The person who posted the original blog will then be notified via email that their blog posting has been linked to. Additionally, the link that was clicked(“Blog This!”) will change to “Trackbacks”. From that point forward, the “Trackbacks” link will keep track of how many people have chosen to blog about that particular post. So after the first trackback, it will say “Trackbacks: 1”. The number of trackbacks recorded will be updated as they occur.

Why are trackbacks important to blog traffic?

The easy answer is that trackbacks are important because they increase awareness of your blog. Trackbacks also make a blog seem more credible. After all, people have to think your posts are good enough to be trackbacked.

Anytime a person makes a trackback on your blog, they make a post on their own blog about your blog. This, in turn, lets their readers know about your blog. Chances are, their readers will want to visit your blog to see what the big deal is. If they see something on your blog that they like, they’ll keep coming back for more, which means you’ll have a whole new fanbase of readers. That means more traffic for your blog.

Can you imagine what would happen if 5 different bloggers trackbacked a post on your blog? Depending on how popular their blog is, that’s potentially as much as hundreds of new readers for your blog! Pretty incredible, right?

Also, every trackback made, assuming it is a legitimate one (and some trackbacks are spam, especially if they are there only to link to another site) adds credibility to your blog. Blogs with high amounts of trackbacks look credible because lots of people like the posts enough to trackback them.

How can I increase the number of trackbacks I get?

The easiest and best way to increase trackbacks is to frequently post. If you post frequently (2-3 times a week), people will have quite a few posts that they can trackback. However, it is important to make sure that your posts are of a good quality. Quality blog posts are those that people can relate to and are easy to read. If you post a long boring rant, people probably won’t want to trackback that. But if you post a decent sized rant that is entertaining (and that people are likely to agree with), you’ll get trackbacked.

The number of trackbacks you get is totally dependent on the number of visitors your blog receives and how frequently you are able to make quality posts. If you’ve got a good amount of visitors and write good blog posts, you’ll get trackbacks.

Trackbacks are a wonderful thing for every blog. You are able to know when your blog posting has been posted about at another blog, plus you potentially of increase web traffic. It’s a win-win situation for you!

What are trackbacks?

The concept of trackbacks is a bit hard to explain. So we’ll use an example to explain it in the best way possible.

OK, say you see a great blog post on another person’s blog and want to link to it on your blog. You could do this the old-fashioned way by manually putting a link on your site to that blog. However, if you do it this way, the person whose blog post you are linking to won’t know that you are linking to them unless you tell them.

This is where trackbacks come in. A trackback is a program which will notify the owner of a blog when one of their posts has been linked to at another blog.

Trackbacks are great website promotion tool.

Making Cash With Your Blog

Believe it or not, but it’s actually possible to make money from blogging. One teenager has, in fact, earned $5,000 a month just from making posts on his blog! Of course, not every blogger is this lucky. It does take some skill, and some luck to make money from blogging. What it also takes is some knowledge of how exactly to generate income just by posting blogs. In this newsletter, we will go over three specific methods of making money on your blog: Adsense, Pay Per Lead, and Affiliate Links.

So how exactly do I make money on my blog?

You do it by working with another company that wants to use your blog as a form of advertising. It sounds like selling out, right? Not exactly. The advertising can be as in your face or subtle as you want. And it can still make you money, provided you have enough visitors to your blog.

What is Adsense?

Adsense is a program offered by Google. The program, if installed, will display ads provided by Google.

How do I get Adsense?

You’ll need to go to Google.com, first. At the bottom of the screen is a link for “Advertising Programs”. Click on that. Then click on the link for “Adsense”. Scroll down on the page that comes up and click “Click Here To Apply!” You then fill out the form with information about yourself. After 12-48 hours, Google will notify you via email whether or not your site has been accepted. When you’ve been accepted, set up your ads by doing either of the following:

1.If your blog is hosted on Blogger.com, you can set up your AdSense ads by going to your profile, selecting settings>template>add an element. Then select AdSense and login with your account info. Next, you’ll configure your ads and save the template. That’s it.

2.If you are self-hosting your blog, you’ll have to set up AdSense in more of a manual way. You’ll create your ads (which can be as small or as tall as you want) and then copy the HTML/Javascript code Google gives you. Then you’ll paste it into your blog (on the left, right, or top of the screen).

For the first few days, the ads displayed by Google will be Public Service Announcements. After the ads have been up a few days, though, the ads will switch to ads that are relevant to your blog.

How does Adsense work?

Every time a visitor clicks an Adsense ad, you get a little bit of money (usually around 30-60 cents). The amount you get for each ad clicked depends on the number of unique visitors you receive on your blog. The more visitors, the more money that can be earned.

Google will then send a check or pay you through Paypal once you’ve made at least $100 from the ads.

It is important to remember that Google will penalize you if you click your own ads, or if you ask visitors specifically to click ads. So don’t do that!

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click is basically just like AdSense, except you don’t just work with Google—you work with multiple companies. BidVertiser is one such company you can sign up with to do Pay Per Click advertising.

How do I get Pay Per Click

You sign up with a site like Bidvertiser and then follow their instructions to set up the Pay Per Click ads on your site.

How does Pay Per Click work?

It works by paying you money each time someone clicks an ad that you display. You won’t get paid for multiple clicks from the same user in the same visitor, nor will you get paid for someone simply visiting your site. You only get paid for legitimate clicks.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are basically links which people pay you for. Companies will actually pay owners of popular blogs to post links on their blog. You can do as much Affiliate linking as you want.

How do I get Affiliate Links?

You can get Affiliate links by searching for “Affiliate Link Programs” on the internet. Once you find an Affiliate link program that looks good to you, sign up for it. Then you can follow their instructions for putting the link(s) on your blog.

How do Affiliate Links work?

Like the other two methods mentioned above, Affiliate links work by paying you money each time they are clicked. You get paid for each click per unique visitor.

So that’s it. There’s three legitimate ways to make money from blogging. It is important to keep in mind that the amount of money you are able to make depends on how many visitors your blog draws. If you draw a lot, you’ll make a lot. If not, the money you earn will be modest. But it’s still extra money, so why not do it?

Making money using Adsense, Pay Per Click or Affiliate Link programs is easy and effective. Start monetizing your blog today!

Stop Blog Spammers

Blogs are now an extremely popular and important part of the internet. Millions of people blog every day. As blogs have evolved over the years, so has the commenting system.


Now anyone can make comments on a particular blog posting. As blog commenting has grown more popular, so has spam commenting. In this newsletter, we’ll go over why comments are a great form of feedback for your blog, how they help the credibility of your content, what spam comments are and how to prevent them from happening.

Comments – A great form of feedback

When blogs first came around, they were simply online journals. No one could post comments on a blog posting. That all changed in 1998 with OpenDiary, a site which allowed people to comment on blog postings. Now every blog, whether it is remotely or self-hosted, includes this option to comment.

Commenting is great because it allows real people to tell you what they think about your form. It gives you feedback on what you are doing right and what you may need to improve. Comments can be encouraging to you and motivate you to post more quality blog messages. Or they can be constructive criticism to make you work harder to get better at writing content.

Whatever the style of comment is, it is still very useful to your blog. High numbers of comments have the ability to make a blog look credible because they show that the blog is being read by a lot of people. That’s something that every blog owner wants, and comments help to let them know just how many people enjoy their content.

Bad comments

Unfortunately, spammers have now started to use comments as a way to spam. How do you know what a spam comment is? Well, a spam comment is a comment that only advertises another site or product. If the comment seems bland/generic with a cheap link thrown in, then it’s definitely a spam comment.

Here is an example of a typical spam comment:

“Hey, this site is really cool. Check out my really cool site at spamsite.com.”

Of course not all spam comments will be this blatant, but you get the point.

Fortunately for bloggers, as spam comments have grown, so has the ways to prevent it. Here are a couple ways that you can prevent spam comments from even being posted on your blog.

#1: Close off commenting on older blog posts

There are options for you to stop comments from being posted on any particular blog post. Lots of times, spammers will post comments in weeks or months old posts. So take away this opportunity from them to keep it from happening. Most blog hosters now offer this as a standard option in the tool panel. If one of your posts has been up for a couple weeks, close it up.

#2: Take advantage of software offered to prevent comment spam

If you host your own blog using WordPress, you can use an option in that software to prevent spam. Even if you aren’t using WordPress, you can still use other Spam comment blocking software like Spam Karma, Akismet, and Bad Behavior. While these aren’t 100% effective, they have proven to be quite effective in preventing spam from happening.

#3: Take a look at your settings and see what can be tweaked to toughen your protection

Lots of blogs now have settings to help prevent spam. If you already have a spam blocker on in your blog and are still experiencing spam, take a closer look at the settings to see if there’s anything that can be tweaked to make your protection stronger. However, if you do this, you should closely monitor your posts to make sure legit comments aren’t being blocked out. If they are, you might have to lighten up a bit.

#4: Regularly read your blog comments

Be sure to keep an eye on your comments. Even the best software or setting can’t prevent everything, so you will have to occasionally manually remove comments on your own.

By applying the above principles, you can ensure that your blog is full of only good, quality comments, which will help your credibility tremendously.

Comments are a great form of communication between yourself and your readers. They help the credibility of your blog!

Deciding on a Remote Blog or Self Hosted Blog

There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone.

So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone. Fortunately, you should be able to make the best decision for you if you are armed with adequate knowledge of both. In this newsletter, we’ll go over services like blogger.com and others, plus software that allows you to host your own blog. We’ll also go over the pros and cons of each. After reading this, you will know which is best for you.

Who offers free blog hosting?

Many sites offer free blog hosting. Among them are Forumer, Blogger, BlogEasy, Aeonity, BlogThing and Blogates. A quick search for “free blog” on Google reveals many possibilities.

What software can I use to host my own blog?

Like free blog hosting, there are many possibilities for software that makes hosting your own blog easy. Most of them are free to use. These include:

Word Press(the most popular software)
Apache Roller
Blosxom
Geeklog
Textpattern
LifeType

There is also blog software which you can purchase for use on your site. These include:

Community Server
Movable Type
Radio User Land

One negative about using software and hosting your own blog is that the process can often times be complicated. You have to download the software and install it to your server, which doesn’t always go easily. It’s particularly hard for those who don’t have a lot of experience installing things on servers.

Why should I remotely host my blog at a place like Blogger?

Places like Blogger allow you to host your blog there. It’s a good option for many people.

The Pros

· It’s easy to set up and maintain a blog. You don’t have to go through the trouble of installing software and configuring it to work on your server. All you have to do is sign up for an account and start posting.
· It’s friendly for beginning bloggers. Sites that host blogs offer good tutorials on how to make your blog postings, so that even someone who is completely new to the concept of blogging can do it easily.
· Most blog hosting sites are completely free to use. There is no need to pay for things like a domain name and hosting.
· Monetizing your blog is easy. Rather than having to manually put HTML/Javascript codes on your blog to manually set up things like AdSense and Pay Per Click advertising, you can select an option on most blog hosting sites that does much of the work for you.

The Cons

· You don’t have as many options to customize your blog.
Remotely hosted blogs are admittedly somewhat limited in terms of what you can actually do on them. You have to stick with what is provided to you in terms of look and features.
· The URL you get is always yourname.BLOGSITE.com. You don’t get to have a custom domain name like YOURNAME.com. This can possibly hurt traffic to your blog.
· Blogs hosted on free blog sites don’t look as professional as self hosted blogs.

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

· You have more options and more flexibility. You are able to tweak the blog to your liking.
· Your URL is your address for your blog. Rather than having go to where your blog is hosted to read it, they can read it right from your site.
· The ability to make your blog look professional. Blogs that are hosted on sites of their own tend to look a lot better than those hosted on free sites.
· More space for your blog. Free blog sites usually place a restriction on how much space you have for things like photos and music. By hosting your own blog, you are able to use as much space as you need.

The Cons

· There are sometimes problems with setting up blog software to run on your site and server. If you aren’t experienced when it comes to working with mySQL, the process will be hard.
· Updates aren’t as easy to post.
· You have to manually set up programs to monetize your blog.
However, if you are good with HTML/Javascript, this shouldn’t be too hard.
· You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both. Which should you choose? Well, it depends on who you are and what you intend to use your blog for. If you intend to use it for business, then a self-hosted blog is the best idea. If it’s a personal blog, then a free hosted blog will probably be fine for you.

Closely examine all of the pros and cons mentioned above.

That way, you’ll be able to make the best decision for you!

How Can Pinging be Beneficial for Blogs

You’re a blogger and are constantly hearing about pinging. The thing is, you don’t know what it is and what it can do for your blog.

Well that’s fine because a lot of bloggers don’t quite understand pinging. In this newsletter, we will explain what pinging is, how it helps your blog, and what the best pinging services are. After you’ve read this newsletter, you’ll know exactly how to use pinging to make your blog popular.

What is pinging?

When a blog is pinged, it essentially tells a web blog tracking system that the blog has been updated. Thus, pinging is the process of telling tracking services that a site has been updated.

So how does pinging work? Well, a ping service scans regularly blogs for updates. Whenever there is a new update for a particular blog that is reported back to the pinging service’s site. You can almost think of ping services being just like search engine spiders—both scan sites looking for information, and both report that information back to their specific site. The difference is, a ping service only reports back new blog posts.

Why is pinging useful for my blog?

Pinging, in effect, tells people that there is a new blog posting available. Those who are loyal followers of your blog will see the ping and want to visit your blog. Those who haven’t read your blog before will see the ping and perhaps think “hey, there’s a new blog I haven’t been to before, I think I’ll check it out”. Pinging helps to increase your traffic because it tells people when your blog is updated. Those who visit sites with pinging services will see this information in the form of a scroll on the left or right side, or top of the page. The scroll is usually in XML format and typically includes the title and URL of your blog, as well as the date and time of the update.

OK, so now I know what pinging is. Who offers pinging?

The answer is, there are several pinging services available which you can use to have your blog pinged. We’ll go over some of them right now.

Weblogs.com

Weblogs.com is probably the most well-known pinging service. Weblogs.com monitors sites for updates and then pings whenever there is an update to report. Virtually every blog software is available to use Weblogs.

Yahoo’s Blogs

Another popular pinging service being offered by Yahoo has a built-in integration with movable type and other tools. One cool thing about this service is that it offers the ability to give out updates via Instant Messaging services like AOL and ICQ. It is a direct pinging service, so those who sign up for subscriptions to your blog will be sent an email anytime your blog is updated.

Blogrolling.com

Blogrolling allows its bloggers to manage their blogrolls (updates) through a web-based interface. Recently updated blogs are also highlighted on Blogrolling’s web site. Data is automatically retrieved from other sites like blogger.com and weblogs.com every 5 minutes. Often times your blog is already being pinged by Blogrolling, so you might not have to sign up for it. Search on the site first for your URL before signing it up.

Technorati

Available at http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping, Technorati is another service that pings blogs. It gets its data from a variety of places and is definitely a site you should go to for blog pinging.

These are just 4 of the many different blog pinging services available. A quick search on Yahoo or Google will reveal many other possible blog pinging services to use for your blog. It is best to sign up for as many as you possibly can to ensure that your blog is well-pinged. A well-pinged blog will definitely help your blog attract more visitors. So sign up for as many as possible and watch your blog traffic increase.

Pinging tells people when your blog is updated. It is an incredibly useful, and easy to sign up for service, so be sure to sign your blog up for pinging!

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The Truth About Trackbacks

Trackbacks are a wonderful thing for every blog. You are able to know when your blog posting has been posted about at another blog, plus you potentially gain more visitors. It’s a win-win situation for you!

If you’re a blogger, chances are you’ve heard of trackbacks. Most likely, you probably don’t know what these are and what they have to do with your blog. That’s alright, as most people don’t quite understand how trackbacks work and why they are useful for a blog. In this newsletter, we’re going to go over trackbacks—what they are, how they work, why they are important to blog traffic, and how to get more trackbacks. After you’ve read this, you’ll know practically everything there is to know about trackbacks.

What are trackbacks?

The concept of trackbacks is a bit hard to explain. So we’ll use an example to explain it in the best way possible.

OK, say you see a great blog post on another person’s blog and want to link to it on your blog. You could do this the old-fashioned way by manually putting a link on your site to that blog. However, if you do it this way, the person whose blog post you are linking to won’t know that you are linking to them unless you tell them.

This is where trackbacks come in. A trackback is a program which will notify the owner of a blog when one of their posts has been linked to at another blog.

How do they work?

A blog that has a trackback system set up will have a link at the bottom of every blog post. This link will say something like “Blog This!” Anyone who clicks the link can then put a link to that blog post on their site. The person who posted the original blog will then be notified via email that their blog posting has been linked to. Additionally, the link that was clicked (“Blog This!”) will change to “Trackbacks”. From that point forward, the “Trackbacks” link will keep track of how many people have chosen to blog about that particular post. So after the first trackback, it will say “Trackbacks: 1”. The number of trackbacks recorded will be updated as they occur.

Why are trackbacks important to blog traffic?

The easy answer is that trackbacks are important because they increase awareness of your blog. Trackbacks also make a blog seem more credible. After all, people have to think your posts are good enough to be trackbacked.

Anytime a person makes a trackback on your blog, they make a post on their own blog about your blog. This, in turn, lets their readers know about your blog. Chances are, their readers will want to visit your blog to see what the big deal is. If they see something on your blog that they like, they’ll keep coming back for more, which means you’ll have a whole new fanbase of readers. That means more traffic for your blog.

Can you imagine what would happen if 5 different bloggers trackbacked a post on your blog? Depending on how popular their blog is, that’s potentially as much as hundreds of new readers for your blog! Pretty incredible, right?

Also, every trackback made, assuming it is a legitimate one (and some trackbacks are spam, especially if they are there only to link to another site) adds credibility to your blog. Blogs with high amounts of trackbacks look credible because lots of people like the posts enough to trackback them.

How can I increase the number of trackbacks I get?

The easiest and best way to increase trackbacks is to frequently post. If you post frequently (2-3 times a week), people will have quite a few posts that they can trackback. However, it is important to make sure that your posts are of a good quality. Quality blog posts are those that people can relate to and are easy to read. If you post a long boring rant, people probably won’t want to trackback that. But if you post a decent sized rant that is entertaining (and that people are likely to agree with), you’ll get trackbacked.

The number of trackbacks you get is totally dependent on the number of visitors your blog receives and how frequently you are able to make quality posts. If you’ve got a good amount of visitors and write good blog posts, you’ll get trackbacks.

You Should Post Blogs Regularly Because...

Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest. The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog’s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won’t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it’s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea. A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week.

The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in sub par posts which people won’t care about. It is important to find a balance—frequent, quality posts that won’t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

It’s all about following a consistent pattern of writing. Maybe you’re not a natural writer and this is difficult. That’s why we’ll give you an outline to help you.

1. Pick a topic that is interesting to you and to your readers. Maybe if your blog is a personal blog, you could write about the latest happenings in Hollywood.

2. Carefully think about what you’ll write about the topic. It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you’ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it.

3. Before writing your content, pick out some keywords that are relevant to your blog. If you naturally use keywords throughout your post, you will please search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won’t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way. 4. Begin writing your post. Don’t limit yourself to a particular amount of words. Just do what’s natural. And if any blog post is hard for you, just take a timeout and relax. You should be able to finish the post a bit later on, after you’ve had some time to think things through, you should be able to finish the post with no problems.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for individuals or businesses. They are used to get an opinion out on something and to engage readers. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Gaining and maintaining visitors isn’t the only reason to post often in your blog. Catching the eye of a search engine—and achieving a high ranking—is another valid reason for posting frequently. Most likely, each posting in your blog features some keywords or keyword phrases scattered throughout it. Logic says that the more natural keywords you have on a blog, the better. Thus, the more posts you make on your blog, the more keywords you have on there. And the more keywords you have, the more likely a search engine bot is to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine.

Frequent blog posting can be easy as long as the person who is posting takes the time to plot out what they’ll write about. So take a few minutes to think about your post and then just do it!

Using Audio File Formats on Your Website

Adding music or video streams to your website is a definite plus for revenue generation. Audio-video streams serve two purposes. Primarily, audio and video streaming is used for entertainment. A more practical use of audio-video streaming is for revenue generation by using this technology to promote and demonstrate your products.

Normally, professional website designers are leery of adding multi-media streams to a website. However, the spread of high-speed internet connection throughout the world has finally removed the barrier for the use of multi-media streams. In this article, let us deal exclusively with audio streams. Audio files have different formats. The most popular among these audio formats are the MP3 and MIDI sound format. The question is, “what exactly is a MIDI and an MP3 and what are the differences?” Below is a collection of sound file formats together with their descriptions to help you decide which one to use in your website.

MIDI is a music file type that is considerably lightweight when it comes to the size of the file. The reason for this is that MIDI utilizes the built-in devices in the sound card of your computer. Of course, sound cards don’t sound the same so playing one MIDI file on two computers simultaneously may produce slightly different results. Another problem of MIDI files is that they sound mostly like ring tones of older model cellular phones. Having this installed in your website may give it an amateurish feel. You definitely don’t want to be labeled as an amateur especially when you’re selling something. On the plus side, because of their small size in terms of kilobytes, people who use 56kbps modems to connect to the internet will be able to appreciate the speed at which your website loads into their browsers.

MP3 is an audio file that is highly compressed to achieve a smaller file size. For people using DSL internet connections, downloading a 5MB MP3 file will most probably take less than a minute. For the slower 56 kbps modems, it takes approximately 3 to 5 minutes to download a single song with average playing time. Because of its compressed nature, the sounds produced by MP3 files are not as good as those you hear from your CD. Furthermore, you will have to “loop” a music file if you want it to play continuously in the background while people surf your website. MP3 files are very difficult to loop. The biggest disadvantage of using MP3 files is that they require MP3 player programs. Once you enter a website with MP3 background music, your Windows Media player or Real Player might open automatically to play the file.

The best sound file format in terms of quality is the WAV file format. Using WAV format to record your audio will give you recording studio quality audio. The BIG PROBLEM of WAV is its file size. Even with a DSL or cable internet connection, your browser will have a hard time loading a web page using WAV for its audio stream.

Familiarity with flash files is an advantage when trying to incorporate audio streams into your website. To make the music play continuously, you will have to perform the process of looping. Flash files can be used with either MP3 or WAV but, only WAV files go through the looping process without any difficulty.

As you can see there are many different ways to add background music to your web pages and you don’t have to worry about slow loading pages if you choose the right file format.