Blogging For Love Or Money

Build A Better Blog Day 26

Today I'm asking a question; do you blog for love or money? You may be blogging for both but I doubt it. It's a very valid question and should be answered logically.

The logical progression for bloggers is to start introducing ads somewhere in there blog in hopes of earning some much needed income. If you ask most bloggers they would be happy with enough income to pay for their hosting costs. Personally I think you should be in one of two camps. One, you should build your blog template and content to drive advertising dollars, or you should just forget it.

You can look at it this way, when you dabble you never really succeed. Sure you may capture a few clicks that equate into a few pennys, but without a real plan you will be wasting your time. Looking at several of the major blogs who make money from ads, the site is all about the ads. If you are prepared to do that go for it. You have your work cut out for you. But if you are patient you can evetually make some decent money. It takes constant change to find the right advertising structure, be it banners, links, graphics, or widgets. There's plenty of opportunity but it takes a lot of work.

If you're into blogging for love, you can still earn something to offset the cost. As you build your blog, your readership and people get to know you, it's easy to make money from things like consulting, writing copy, building blog sites or creating educational materials and selling them. Or you may simply decide this is a great hobby which has a small cost each month.

One word of caution. Don't pay for these get rich quick e-book, or services, swearing they can get you at the top of the search engines or charge you to put their clients ads on your blog. With a little effort and research on your part you can find all the information you need to make money with your blog. You don't need to pay someone else to get it. If you are serious about becoming a Pro Blogger, then I suggest you start reading the ProBlogger. Add it to your RSS reader right now.

Tell us why you do, or don't, incorporate ads into your blog?

ProBlogger's day twenty-six post: Link Up to a Competitor

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Sweat Your Blogs Details

Build A Better Blog Day 25

Today's tip is to absolutely sweat the details. If you are serious about building a successful blog you need to make sure even the smallest aspects are right. People have literally millions of options when it comes to blogs. If you work hard to build a solid following, making small mistakes will undermine all your efforts. Here is a small list of things to continually pay attention too:

1. Spelling and Grammar. Have a serious problem with either of these and some people will just move on. At least take the time to run your content through a spell checker before posting. I made this vital mistake just a day ago. Its somewhat embarrassing, especially when someone points it out.


2. Make sure all your links work. Anytime there is a link on you site its your responsibility to make sure it works. If it doesn't, get rid of it. Of course you have no control over links going away or moving, but you are responsible for making sure you remove dead links.


3. Make sure all your graphics show up. One problem with graphics, especially ones you don't control, is they are move or removed from their original location. Your best bet is to host them on your own server if possible.


4. Make sure you can post comments without blowing up your blog. I don't know how many times I've written a comment and the blog software crashes for some reason. Frustrating because I don't know if my comment was saved, and if was lengthy I'll probably never return. This is one reason having a way to contact you is so important.


5. Finally, make sure your blog simply loads as expected. Over the years I've made changes to my blog, either upgrading, theme changes or adding plug-ins which caused my blog to quit running. Some times I've discovered this on my own but I feel real stupid when a reader emails me that my blog is broken. Hosts go down on occasion and you can't control that but you should always verify your blog runs after making changes.

One area I might suggest caution with are ads. I've seen people go completely overboard with ads and make it so hard to find the content I just move on. Of all the sites I visit those are the types I feel taken advantage of. Get me to come to your site then ambush me with more ads than content. I never return. Don't make that mistake. I'll cover ads in the next installment so I won't go into those any more.

My point here is to make sure you blog is running on all cylinders. If you take blogging serious then you should make sure all aspects of your blog are working. Have fun.

ProBlogger's day twenty-five post: Go Shopping and Improve Your blog

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Decide Your Blogs Domain Now Rather Than Later

Build A Better Blog Day 24

Today I want to talk about the type of blogging platform you use. There are basically two main types; one is self-hosted, where you pay someone to provide the infrastructure to run a blog, and the other is hosted, where you use a pre-configured application like Blogger or Vox. The other part that goes along with what type of platform you choose is whether you have your own domain or use a hosted domain. Here are some examples:

Self Hosted:
yourcompany.com
blog.yourcompany.com
yourcompany.com/blog

Hosted:
yourblog.blogspot.com
blog.vox.com
myblog.wordpress.com

There are conflicting opinions whether a blog hosted at Blogger gets more search engine love than one which is self-hosted. For me, there is one major issue with using a blog hosted by someone else; if you ever want to host your own blog and have full control, migrating will be much harder. Sure there are built in programs that will suck in all your posts, but there is something that you lose not matter what you do; links to your blog. Here is an example:

myblog.blogsport.com/archives/this-is-my-first-post/

The above URL is what all the search engines have. But now you want this:

mydomain.com/2007/11/1/this-is-my-first-post

Now, if you decide that you want to host your own blog you have a problem, there could be an extremely large amount of work to redirect all your old links to new ones. How to do this is beyond the scope of this blog, but believe me, it's not something you want to tackle. The best way to avoid this problem is to plan long term. Decide up front you want to host your own blog, or at least find a solution that will let you use you own domain name.

Most people base their decision on what platform to use on cost. Services like Blogger, Wordpress.com, Typepad or Vox are all free. With free you lose some things such as configuration. You may get some leeway but mainly you get to choose the name and the theme and that’s it. If you want to make major changes you have to pay the company for access to those features. The drawback besides cost is most of these blogs can be set up in a matter of seconds and you're off and running. Before you decide to start here, make sure you have taken some time to plan you blog and what you want to accomplish.

I really want to give my personal opinion here. Pony up the few dollars it costs to have your own domain and hosting. You can get a domain for under $10 a year at GoDaddy.com and they even supply hosting services for just a few dollars more. There are dozens of great hosts. Ask your readers who they like. In the end you will be happy you did.

ProBlogger's day twenty-four post: Do a Search Engine Optimization Audit

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Numb To What Has Become Commonplace

Posted by mobile phone:
Jim Long is a guy I would love to follow around and experience life as he sees it. His job as an NBC cameraman gives him a unique opportunity to experience life as it happens. Jim chooses to share some of his experiences with his friends on Twitter. I'm lucky to be one of those friends.

The other day Jim flew with President Bush to San Diego and he gave us a behind the scenes look at how it was going. But one tweet caught my eye and I'm not sure anyone really caught it. Her is what he said right after landing back in Washington:

newmediajim: as our plane taxis we pass an honor guard placing a coffin in a hearse here on base

Jim has seen this many times but the general public doesn't. Brave soldiers are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether you agree with our current military actions or not, our fellow Americans are giving their lives. Lets not forget them please.

Thanks Jim for remembering the things that are still important.

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Get Your Blog Readers Involved, Hold A Contest

Build A Better Blog Day 23

An easy and inexpensive way to get your readers involved in your blog is to hold a contest. This doesn't have to be elaborate or time consuming, in fact, the readers need to do all the work. Here is an example of what you could write in your contest blog post:

This months contest is a reader self portrait, with a twist. Write a blog post about a picture you take or was taken of you, standing next to your favorite car. Come back to this post and write a comment with a link back to your post. I'll pick the post with the coolest post/image and and I'll write one more blog post announcing the winner. So you will get two links back to your blog. The winner will then choose next months winner and so on. Good luck.

Of course this is only an example. You will want to think it through and write out what you want to happen in your contest. Make sure you give ample time for as many readers to participate as possible, thats the whole point of the contest.

Over time you may give prizes, heck Darren Rowse gave away over $60,000 in prizes for his blogs birthday celebration. I wouldn't expect you to do this but it's just an example of what you can do. You might start an internet scavenger hunt, picture taking contest or writing contest. The possibilities are endless. Initially the idea is to build connections with your readers and their blogs. Everyone likes free publicity, become the PR or Marketing tool for your readers.

The last thing I want to mention are Blog Carnivals. The idea behind a blog carnival is several blogs that have similar focus each write about a specific topic and then supply the links to each of the blog posts written. The next week its a different blog hosting the theme and the links. It rotates through a group of people. This gives everyone a chance to get some link love. Check out the Blog Carnival website and get involved.

B log contests can be fun for everyone, just make sure you plan well enough ahead of time that everyone understands what they are getting out of it. Build up the contest. Blog about it several days or weeks before the event. Comment on other blogs about it. Use Social Networks like Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook or MySpace to promote the contest. There are plenty of avenues, you just need to make some effort.

ProBlogger's day twenty three post: Go on a Dead Link Hunt

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