I am sure many of the the readers to this post have not seen much of a development on this blog. The reason being, I am migrating the blog to a self hosted platforms for many obvious reasons which are

- Branding - I wanted a brand and now I am the unoblogger (not yet though)

- Website I can call my own

- Better options in terms of monetization and publicity

I am branding this blog and myself "Unoblogger" and the logo is as below
Please choose to Subscribe to Unoblogger by Email

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, we saw in the previous post about what a search engine is and in this post we will see about what is optimization of search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process undertaken to improve the volume of the traffic to the website and improve the quality of the traffic as well.
Now we know that the website which is indexed on search engines need to be featuring in the first few pages to drive the traffic back to the website from the search engines. Targeted keywords is an important player when it comes to optimization.
So, better the ranking of a webpage or earlier the presentation of a site in the search engine results pages (SERPS) there is a greater possibility that more searchers visit the website.

- Optimizing for the search engines involves a lot of steps or tasks which will ensure that you are featured in the SERPS and stay there
- SEO is an ongoing process which involves tracking your traffic, realigning keywords, etc
- SEO methods involve
- streamlining the HTML codes of the websites
- presentation of the website
- understanding and realigning the structure of the website to suit the spiders

- Make sure that everything there is about your website regards the search engines and is "Search Engine Friendly"

If you have got an understanding, SEO is an art and a science of making sure that your website features in the search results pages whenever a searcher uses certain keywords to search for information on search engines.
It is not a tough job and is not an easy job as well, this SEO.

I will sure list the various steps involved in SEO for the benefit of the readers in the posts to come. Make sure that you do not miss future posts, subscribe to Earn Money Blogging by Email

Suggested Reading :

What is a Search Engine?

After a few posts I've written on ways to start a blog I think it's time now to start a new series for money making through blogs. There have been quite a few people I've come across stating that money making through blogs is a distant possibility and I am sure of that fact as well. Although it is distant it sure is a possibility. In this series "Earn Money Blogging" which is also the name of this blog we will see

- various money making options available for bloggers
- Which of the money making avenues are better and which are worse
- how to effectively monetize your blog
- tips and tricks from bloggers on money making
- sharing my own statistics on money made through blogs

I would want to close this post with a picture that is seen most times on the net.


This is a pic of Jeremy Schoemaker, who flaunted this cheque worth $132,994

Even now critics say that this is a rare possibility that people earn this much of money for a few reasons

1. The internet is diluted and there are lots of information available which will reduce traffic to your site and inturn reduce your earnings
2. Too many advertising opportunities which have diluted the advertisers' spending
3. Lots of frauds on the internet claiming to have earned money
4. Possibility of earning any money now is not possible (this pic was in 2005)

All said and done these reasons below are written to support why money can still be earned through blogs

1. If your SEO is on track you can still manage to attract great traffic in turn earning great money
2. There are ways to attract traffic and these ways utilized will provide you with ample traffic
3. Making sure that you give quality blog posts time and again
4. why be worried about critics when you have living examples of bloggers who've earned money through their blogs?

Let me publish posts that talk about making money effectively and efficiently and various ways of doing so in the coming days and months for you to realize the potential yourself. You might want to subscribe to Earn Money Blogging by Email to keep track of my future posts.

As the name suggests the search engine is a tool which helps find information on the internet. One has always been in trouble at some point of time or other for being disorganized with his or her stuff. Many a times we would scour the entire room or a stack of files to find one paper.

We are so lost with one room of papers, imagine sieving through the entire world wide web to get an information.

The most recent information on the number of web pages is about 120 billion web pages on the world wide web. To put the same in digits we are talking about 120,000,000,000 web pages. We understand of this number because only last week did Cuil a new search engine founded by former google employees was launched with this number. Google, although does not disclose their count of indexed web pages, claim that they have about 1 trillion unique web pages.

Anyways, the numbers aside, imaging the amount of trouble you will have to go through millions and millions of web pages to find something you want. That is a herculean task ain't it.
So to simplify life these search engines were developed. Search engines have an entire list of web pages and the information on these web pages and their content.

It is not that the moment you have your website, it will be listed (Indexed) in the search engines. To have your website listed the search engines need to know that your website exists. There are two types of search engines

Crawler based Search Engines

These type of search engines use a bot or spider. What a spider does is crawl through your website to list the various pages and index the same on the search engine. Google is one such crawler based search engine

Human powered Directories
These types of search engines where you submit your website to the directory and the same listed on the search engine. These types of search engines would only list the websites that is being submitted to them. Open directory is one such type of search engine.

There is also these hybrid search engines which use both the crawlers and the directories to index pages. We will see more about various search engines and submitting to them in the posts to come.Subscribe to more such posts by Email

"Traffic is the movement of motorized vehicles, unmotorized vehicles and pedestrians on roads"

"The number of visitors to a Web page or Website. Refers to the number of visitors, hits, page accesses, etc., over a given time period. As a general term, it describes data traveling around the Internet."

"A reference to the number of visitors a web site receives."

Many definitions for the word traffic, we would more so be interested in understanding what a traffic is in internet terms. In simpler words it is an aggregation of people (visitors coming and going) to a webpage or a website during a period of time

It is important for a website to have traffic to and fro for it to survive on the internet. Internet is a connection of tubes interlacing countries, regions, localities, homes, offices and to survive on internet you need to have traffic.

Traffic helps increase a few things to a website
1. The revenues increase, as mentioned in the previous post you can earn more provided you can attract more people to visit your website.
2. Increased Pagerank, the more people visiting the website will increase the page rank of the website. Page rank is a ranking provided by google to all the pages on the internet and is based on an equation
3. More Pageviews, which inturn increases pagerank and the website density and the revenue
4. Exposure as a blogger, more people visiting the website or the blog would not only be repeat visitors but also share their finding with friends in communities inturn much more visits

So, internet traffic is very important as we see and we will come across ways of attracting traffic in the posts to come. I am to start another series and this series will be called Traffic Generation. Any post pertaining to traffic and generating traffic will be labelled under this series.Subscribe to more such posts by Email

Suggested Reading:

External and Internal Links
Traffic generation tips

All said and done people write blogs for a reason, it can be to pour out their feelings on something or to share their knowledge. The latter types of people would want something in return when they share their knowledge.

If you are looking at earning through blogs then this post should give you an insight as to what blog promotion is and why should it be done.

My previous post on Traffic Generation, I feel was prematurely delivered. I am sure a lot of you were unable to understand the technicals and the basic question on blog promotion. This post is dedicated to answer questions on promoting blogs. As mentioned, if you are a blogger looking to make some revenue through your blog then you need to get the word out that your blog is available to serve questions pertaining to a niche. Niche writing is something that sells.

So why should anyone visit your blog for you to earn?

- Advertisers shun fraud clicking
You might be thinking that the advertisements can earn you money and you will engage yourself to click these ads. That's very wrong not only in terms of ethics also in terms of advertisers not happy with that. Every blog will have to get regular and genuine traffic and the ads clicked by these traffic is acceptable.
If you click fraud then you can lose membership with the advertisers, you'll be banned.

- Fulfilling the earning equation
There is a simple equation which states how much a blog can earn in terms of advertising revenue. Any blogger can earn approx $ 1 for every 100 visits, so more the visits the better the earning per day
Hypothetically speaking

100 visits = 400 pageviews = 1 dollar
500 visits = 2000 pageviews = 5 dollars
1000 visits = 4000 pageviews = 10 dollars
10000 visits = 40000 pageviews= 100 dollars

So more the visits the better the earning potential, please be informed that this is only illustrative and depends a lot more on pagerank, search engine optimization et al.

- Increasing Pagerank
Google pagerank is the rank given to your blog or your webpage which gives an idea as to how valuable your page is to the internet.
There is a math behind page rank on which I would write a post later, but for now it would suffice for you to understand that better the page rank better the earning in terms of ads featured. So you need to promote blogs to make sure there is better traffic which in turn would help at least a little to improve page rank of your blog.

Now that you have three best reasons to promote your blog you get your act right and start to promote your blog. I would follow this post with a series for Blog Promoton, where I will list ways to promote blogs and talk about each blog promoting activity in detail.Subscribe to more such posts by Email

Suggested Reading:

Things to do after your first blog
Jargons on blogging

Posted by Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips in 2007 is through a project where a lot of bloggers have provided their inputs on ways to increase traffic. I felt it is a very good project listing the bloggers also, gaining reputation

Now, without further delay, the 30 Traffic Generation Tips:

1. Sridhar KatakamKeep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Ian DelaneyNothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3. Scott TownsendInform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4. KyleSimplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5. Grant GerverTry to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6. DanielA simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7. RorySubmit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8. Ramen JunkieNewsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9. Eric AtkinsCreate a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10. Megan TaylorParticipate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11. GuidoComment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12. Brian AuerYou must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. Shankar GaneshJust browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. Andrew TimberlakeA great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15. Cory OBrienRead lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16. JesterLeave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takesjust a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeingwith the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almostALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17. Goerge MantyPost 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18. EngtechCommunity. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. ChrisSquidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including someof the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your ownwebpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20. SplorkI’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21. Jen GordonI came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only foradditional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22. KatI’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. InspirationbitWell, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Mark AlvesParticipate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Tillerman Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. NickParticipating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27. Brandon WoodA simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28. Alan ThomasDon’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29. KWizWrite something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30. Dennis CoughlinFind the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

Traffic whether you like it or not forms a very basic ingredient for your blogs success and this project gives an insight from various people (pro bloggers).

Suggested Reading:
Things to do after your first blog
Google Analytics

As mentioned in the previous post about what to expect I am writing this post about what are links. I am only concentrating on providing a basic understanding of links and would follow this post up with a lot more information on why linking is important.

Definitions for Link
"A causal, parallel, or reciprocal relationship; a correlation"
"An association; a relationship"
"A segment of text or a graphical item that serves as a cross-reference between parts of a hypertext document or between files or hypertext documents"

The above definitions provide an idea of the word links and it depends on the industry and the context where the word is used. For our blogging terms we just need to understand the following
- Every page is interlinked or chosen to be interlinked, clicking on one link will lead you to the other page
- A link will lead you to another page or another website
- Also called hyperlinks, is a cross reference between texts

There are primarily two types of links
External Links : Are links which lead the people who are on various websites and by clicking these would be brought to your website
Internal Links: Are links which lead you to the main page(Homepage) from internal pages or to internal pages from the main page

I am sure these terms are over the head to a few people, I was among the few about 8 months back before I launched the first blog World Cuisines. It has been a constant learning and now I am sharing the learning I've had through this blog. Anyways, to explain this logic of linking I would cite an example
Imagine the network of air travel, there are a lot of flights to a lot of places from a single origin and back. There are both domestic (Within a country) and international (Cross country) flights that take of and land at the airport.
Now, Imagine your website as the domestic network and the whole Internet as international network.
The flights moving from one city to another within the country(Website) is internal links
The flights moving from one city to an international city, which is outside of the country(website) is an external link. It is very important for the airport(the homepage) to have many domestic and international flights to have more revenue.
Likewise it is absolute necessity to have a lot of external and internal links, it would be a lot clearer and you would have a better understanding of the reason for this statement once you have clarity of what is SEO and ranking. We will see about importance of linking in the posts to follow.

Suggested Reading:
Google Analytics - Effectively using it
Things to do after your first blog

You must have heard about analytics from google, if you have not it is time you understand about analytics. This is the first and foremost task to do to analyze your blog by way of traffic, source of traffic, keyword used to reach your site etc., This post is to give a clear idea of how to go about with google analytics, where in my previous post, Things to do after your first blog, I had just mentioned about it. Quickly getting to the post. Google Analytics is one of the best tools out there for analyzing traffic on your website. It is capable of giving you an enormous amount of information about who is coming to your site, what they're looking for, and how they're getting there.In fact, it has so much information that it can be overwhelming!. These information are very much needed when you've decided on making money online and easpecially earning money blogging

Things that you need to do to set analytics and start using are listed in this post

Setup Your Account

In order to use Google Analytics, you'll need to set up an account with them. This will provide you with a unique identifier to add to your site. You can only access information about your own site; you can't access information for other sites unless the site owner explicitly grants you access. The only people with access to your information will be people you grant access to.

1. Go to Google Analytics.
2. If you do not have a Google account, click Sign Up Now, to the left of the sign-in box. This will take you to a page where you can sign up for a Google account.
3. If you have a Google account, use your email address and password to sign in.
4. Click the Sign Up button to continue.
5. In the next window, provide Google with the URL of the site you wish to analyze.
6. Give the site an account name that is easy to remember. If you will be tracking multiple sites, this is especially important.
7. Select the country your site is based in, or the country it is serving. Then select the appropriate time zone.
   • If your site is based in India but all your users are in the U.S., you may want to select a U.S. time zone to figure out when in their day most choose to use your site - or you may want to set it to your city's time zone to see when you need the most workers on staff.
8. Click Continue.
9. In the next window, provide your contact information.
10. Click Continue.
11. In the next window, read the Google Analytics terms of service. If you agree with them, click the Yes box.
12. Click Create New Account.
13. Google will provide you with a block of code. Copy this - you'll need to insert it into your web site

Insert Google Analytics JavaScript Into Your Pages

• You must insert the code into every page you want tracked. If you have a technical person who takes care of your pages, have them add the code for you.

Inserting Google Analytics code for most sites

• To insert the Google Analytics code, you need to get into the guts of your page - the HTML.
• If you are using a service like WordPress, you'll need to open the footer.php file to place this code.

1. Find the tag at the very bottom, just above the page.
2. Do you see the code urchinTracker(), utmLinker(), utmSetTrans(), or utmLinkPost() above the tag? If so, you must paste the Google Analytics Javascript above that code. If not, paste it immediately above the tag.
3. If you have templates, insert the code into them as well.
4. Once you have uploaded the pages back to your site, you can begin tracking information!

Inserting Google Analytics code on other sites

• Ed Batista: Google Analytics on TypePad

Get an Overview of Your Site Performance

Google Analytics calendar pulldown menu

• The moment you set up your account and insert Google's JavaScript into your pages, Google Analytics has great charts that will give you an overview of your site's performance, if you know how to read them.

1. Log in to Google Analytics.
2. In the center of the page is a section titled Website Profiles. Click on the View Reports link to the right of the name of the site you're interested in. This will bring you to the Dashboard.
3. At the top of the page is a chart that gives a visual representation of your site traffic over the past month.
   • This chart will only give you data from the time you inserted the tracking code into your pages.
   • If you want to change the span of time the chart displays, click on the dates in the upper right-hand corner. Click on dates in the calendar that is revealed or manually type in dates to view a different span of time.
   • To compare traffic over two different time periods, select one date range you want to use, click Compare to Past, and select the range you wish to compare it against.
   • Just below the dates is a menu that says Visits. Click on it to change the graph to pageviews (how many times the pages on your site have been viewed), pages per visit (how many pages on your site users visited on average), average time on site (how long each user spent on your site), bounce rate (what percentage of users left after visiting only one page), or percentage of new visits (how many visitors had never been to your site before).
4. Immediately beneath that chart, you'll see a header that says Site Usage, with six small charts underneath. Under Site Usage, you'll find quick information on various site traffic statistics for the time period shown in the main chart. Each one has an individual chart.
   

   Google Analytics Dashboard (Creative Commons screenshot by Panayotis Vryonis)
   • Visits tells you how many visits there were to your page. A visit is defined as a page view when that user has viewed no other page on your site in the past half hour.
   • Pageviews tells how many times the pages on your site have been viewed.
   • Pages/visit tells how many pages, on average, users view when they come to your site.
   • Bounce Rate tells what percentage of users left after viewing only one page on your site.
   • Avg. Time on Site shows how long each user spent on your site.
   • New Visits shows what percentage of your users have not visited your site before.
5. The Visitors Overview graph shows how many visitors have come to your site.
   • This number is usually lower than the Visits statistic, sometimes a lot lower, because some visitors may visit your site over and over again.
   • Click on View Report to view more detailed information about your visitors.
6. "Map Overlay" displays what countries your visitors are coming from.
   • The darker the green, the more visitors come from that country.
   • Click View Report to get in-depth information on where your visitors come from.
7. Traffic Sources Overview shows which percentage of users are getting to your site by typing your URL directly into their browser, and via search engines, referring sites, and other avenues such as emailed links.
   • Click on View Report to get breakdowns of exactly what places your users are coming from, and what keywords they're looking for.
8. Content Overview specifies the top five most viewed pages over the time period you're looking at.
   • Click on the name of any page to get extremely detailed information about where the people viewing that page came from, how long they spent on the page, how many of them were new to the page, and a lot more.
   • Click on View Report to get access to information about the performance of all pages on the site.

Step 4: See How Your Site Is Performing Daily and Hourly

Google Analytics main menu

• If you want to find out whether your site has peaks during certain times of day or on certain days of the week, Google Analytics can tell you.

1. In the menu to the left, click on the word Visitors.
2. To the left beneath the main chart, you'll see a number of different statistical breakouts.
3. Click on any of the words to get a bar-chart breakout of the daily performance for that aspect of site traffic measurement.
4. If you want to learn hour-by-hour trends, click on the word Hourly above the bar chart to see an hour by hour graph for the time period at hand.
5. To compare two different time periods, click on the dates above the line graph. Select the first set of dates you want to work with, check the Compare to Past box, click on the second set of dates, and click the Apply Range button.

See Where Your Traffic Comes From

Are you getting most of your traffic from search engines? Is there a blog that links to your pages and generates a bunch of traffic? Here's how to find out.

1. In the lower right-hand corner of the Dashboard you'll find your site's top 5 most-accessed pages. Click on any of these.
2. Below the chart on the right hand side, you will see a heading labeled Landing Page Optimization. Click on the link beneath it labeled Entrance Sources.
3. Beneath the chart, you'll see a table. This table lists all the places your users came from to visit your site.
   • In the first column to the right of the source name is the number of pageviews your page received from that source.
   • The next column tells how many of those were unique pageviews - someone coming to your page who had not been to that page before in the time frame you're reviewing.
   • Time on Page tells you how much time, on average, users from that particular source spent on the page in question.
   • Bounce Rate shows how many people from that specific source left your site after looking at that page, without viewing another page.
   • % Exit shows how many people from that specific source went to another site from that page. (This number may be lower than the Bounce Rate number; if they close the window or shut down their browser, it is not considered exiting.)
   • When you set up certain financial measurements in the Goals section, Google will crunch the numbers to show you how much return you're getting with the $ Index column.
4. If you want to get information on other pages, under the Content menu on the right, click on the Content by Title menu item. You can now go through all of your content to learn information on every page!
5. Return to the main dashboard by clicking on the word Dashboard in the upper-left corner.

Content by Nicole Gustas

Now, we have our google analytics and the same can be used effectively to streamline traffic and the content to attract more traffic. This tool from google will be of great help in your pursuit of making money online.

More such posts are due and I am sure you dont want to miss it. How to keep track of my posts without visiting my blog? Subscribe to Earn Money Blogging by Email

Suggested Posts:

What next on earn money Blogging?

Things to do after your first blog

You've decided on writing a blog,

You want to share your ideas with the world. You want to make a name for yourself. You want to stand out. You want to have some fun too, learn a bit and leverage blogging in other aspects of your life (both personal and business.) All true? Then get ready…

Here’s the first list of things to do after you launch your blog:

Promoting your blog

A few people get to waste their resource to promote their blog, it is always better to start promoting the blog once you have about 10 posts minimum.

Why 10 posts?
- This ideally is a number which would seem better once we start to index the blog.
- Also you will have created a rich enough content experience to keep someone interested.
- You have given Google a chance to find you,
- Some blog directories won’t add you without that amount of content.

My suggestion to you, once you have 10 posts in your blog go ahead reading the post.

Linking effectively

This is not talking about the internal links between posts

There are link exchange programs, google for the list of link exchange sites. The idea is to make yourself visible to the blogosphere. Link to the people the bloggers and websites alike to help them return to your blog and once they are happy with your content they would link to you creating a valuable backlink.
Dont be worried about who links to you, the more the better should be your thought.

Commenting in other Blogs.

I am sure you are already commenting on posts of various blogs you have visited. This is very important now that you have your own blog. Increase the amount you comment - leave intelligent, meaningful comments on blogs you’ve targeted for attention - and you’ll start to create a powerful spiderweb of contacts. The web crawlers or bots which visit pages to pages through links identify your links and visit your blog.

Add Your Blog To Site/RSS/Blog Directories.

There’s a huge (and constantly updated) list at RSSTop55 Best Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites but that list is completely overwhelming. Google for it.
You don’t need to go crazy adding your site to a million places - but it can’t hurt. Do 10 a day, every couple of days, for a few weeks as the blog develops. More important, make sure you’ve got a sitemap and it’s submitted to Google Webmasters, since Google rules the day and having your content easily found via search is critical.

Setup Blogroll

On your sidebar list the various blog related to your niche and list them with links. In the early stages of your blog it’s a great way of finding worthwhile, relevant content. You want to find that stuff so you can check it out and interact with other bloggers.


Sign up for Google Analytics

This is a tool from google which helps you to track your blog effectively. This is what provides statistics on you blog with data on visitors, page vies etc. I will talk about google analytics on another post. This post on google analytics will throw more light on what it is, how to effectively use google analytics.

Signup for Mybloglog

MyBlogLog is a popular blog community where you can promote your blog through a network of contacts. It’s easy to setup and has a few worthwhile features. First, it shows you which other MyBlogLog members are visiting your site (which is fun + interesting.) It also has some basic stats (such as visits / popular clicks on your site) and will help drive traffic. MyBlogLog is a useful way of connecting with people online, so it’s worth doing when you launch your blog. It would help if you had a Yahoo account but not necessary.

Social Bookmarking Sites.

Early on, the most effective social bookmarking/news sites will be StumbleUpon. It’s less important to write great linkbait for StumbleUpon users, and although you may not get thousands upon thousands of visitors instantly, with a bit of work you could see a few hundred per day quite quickly. Tamar Weinberg has some worthwhile instructions on StumbleUpon - How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide.
Digg is the king of social bookmarking sites. Make it to the front page of Digg and you’re looking at 10-60,000 unique visitors. But getting there isn’t so easy. And until you’re really comfortable writing (and writing great linkbait) it’s not worth the effort.

Get People To Comment On Your Blog.

A blog looks so much more alive when people are commenting on it. This is a big reason why you see “Most Recent Comments” promoted so heavily at the top of sidebars - people like to see other people commenting. There are some ways to write blog posts to get more comments, but you’ll also want to encourage your friends and contacts to participate. Get your buddies out of lurker status quickly and others will follow.

Learn How To Improve Your Blogging.

Being a blogger means you’re always learning and improving. As mentioned in the post are you ready to blog There’s no end to the road, it just keeps on winding along. There’s no shortage of high quality blogs out there about blogging. You’ll want to check these religiously. You’ll probably print quite a few posts out and pin them up near your desk.
Part of learning is experimenting. Don’t be afraid to try new things quickly. Mix up your style of posts, test out new headlines, write lists, move things around in the sidebar. The beauty of blogging is that you can make so many changes - and if something doesn’t work, change it back.

It doesn’t matter where your blog starts. It will be a bumpy few months as you get a handle on what you’re doing, experiment, and connect with your growing community. Everyone looks back at their start in blogging and chuckles at all the blog mistakes they made.

Don’t stress out about stats. It’s not worth it, and although it’ll be tempting to obsess over them at the beginning, it can also be demoralizing to see less visitors than you expected. Traffic will always go up and down, you’ll see big spikes and maybe even big drops. Since there’s no end to the blogging game, the fluctuations at any given time in your traffic numbers aren’t important - it’s the trend that matters. And since you just started there’s no real trend. So don’t worry about it.

Have fun and be prepared for a significant emotional and time investment. Blogging is easy. Blogging successfully is another story. It takes a time investment to blog successfully. As your blog gains popularity, your brand develops and you find your voice, you’ll think nothing of the time you’re investing, it will make complete sense and be totally worthwhile. You’ll have fallen into the Blogger Mindset. But initially it may seem frustrating and odd to devote so much time. Get ready to open your mind and jump in. I would cover a lot more thing to do after your first blog.

snippets from: http://www.instigatorblog.com

Suggested Reading:

Creating blog on Wordpress

Creating blog on Blogger

Blogging Platforms comparison

Other blogging platforms

This is a post I wanted to write to let people know what is coming up, this blog is about earning money not just anywhere but on the internet. Even earning on the internet is possible in a lot of different ways like selling products online, selling consultations, freelancing, writing articles, etc, etc., My forte is blogging now and I am here to let you all know how well to earn money by blogging on the internet. Now, after several of my posts you would be sure as to what a blog is, whether you are ready to blog by answering a questionnaire, what topic to choose, what blog platforms are available to choose and how to go about creating a blog on blogger or wordpress. Now that you have answers for these questions and your awareness on blogging improved lets dvelve into the better part of blogging. From now on for a better part of writing posts on this blog I would give you insights into the various ways and means you can earn by blogging.

First up I want you all to see to the left column of this blog you will see something with a title "To Advertize or Monetize". This is to list the various options we have to earn money by blogging. The widgets will help bloggers and advertisers alike by helping to find a good and reliable option to choose beaming or publishing advertisements. Although I have listed the sites that help clinch a good advertising deal to bloggers or advertisers, I wont stop at that.

This blog is for people to understand the pros and cons of anything related to blogging and why would advertising stay out of this. I will have dedicated posts talking about an advertiser or a site that helps bloggers advertise on their site or blogs. Also, would have something about tracking your blog performance, visitors, traffic, etc, etc., As mentioned earlier it is an ongoing learning process where you get from blogger to better blogger to good blogger and the ultimatum id being the best.
I am learning and I am here to share my learnings with fellow bloggers and the to be bloggers(I am a humanitarian:)) so that not only dont I have the drive from within I would also have the drive from you all to give you quality posts.

The next five posts will be as follows
1. What is Search Engines and what is SEO?
2. Things to do after your first blog
3. Bettering your Blog
4. Understanding Google Analytics
5. What are links?

Although I have listed the next five posts I want to write about you will have to comeby everytime to check on this blog cause we dont know about time. You can choose to Bookmark this blog or Subscribe by email. Do feel free to comment as well, give me the motivation!!

We all looked at creating a blog on blogger and in this post we would be looking at creating a blog on wordpress. Like blogger, Wordpress is also a blogging platforms(Check the post on blogging platforms comparison) which people claim us superior to blogger. Let us look at creating a blog in the steps as mentione below

Sign Up for a Free Wordpress Account
To sign up for a Wordpress account, you'll be prompted to enter a username and password of your choosing. You'll also be asked to confirm that you've read the terms and conditions of the Wordpress website. Finally, you'll be asked whether you want to create a blog or simply a Wordpress account. If you want to start a blog, make sure the box next to 'Gimme a Blog!' is checked.

Create Your New Wordpress Blog
To create your Wordpress blog, you'll need to enter the text you want displayed in your domain name. Free Wordpress blogs always end with '.wordpress.com', so the name you choose for users to type into their Internet browsers to find your blog will always be followed by that extension. You will also have to decide on the name for your blog and enter that name in the space provided to create your blog. While the domain name you choose cannot be changed later, the blog name you select at this stage can be edited later.
You will also have an opportunity to select the language for your blog in this step as well as decide whether you want your blog to be private or public. By selecting public, your blog will be included in search listings on sites such as Google and Technorati.

Your Account is now Active
Once you have successfully completed the 'Create Your Blog' step, you'll see a screen that tells you your Wordpress account is active and to look for an email confirming your login information.
Understanding the Dashboard
When you log into your newly created Wordpress blog, you'll be taken to your user dashboard. From here, you can change your blog's theme (design), write posts and pages, add users, revise your own user profile, update your blogroll, and more. Take some time to explore your Wordpress dashboard, and don't be afraid to test out the various tools and features available to you to help customize your blog. If you have any problems, click on the 'Support' tab in the upper right corner of your screen. This will take you to the online help section of Wordpress as well as the active user forums where you can ask questions.

Dashboard Toolbar
The Wordpress dashboard toolbar will help you navigate through your blog's administration pages to do everything from writing posts and moderating comments to modifying your blog's themes and customizing your sidebars. Take some time to press all the tabs on your dashboard's toolbar and explore the pages you find to learn all the cool things you can do in Wordpress!

Choosing a Theme for the Blog
One of the best features of starting a free Wordpress blog is making it your own with the various free templates and themes available right through your Wordpress dashboard. Just click on the 'Presentation' tab on your dashboard toolbar. Then select 'Themes' to see the various designs you can choose from. You can try several different themes to see which one works best for your blog. Start experimenting with the different options available to you.

Wordpress Widgets and Sidebars
Wordpress provides a variety of ways to customize your blog's sidebars through the use of widgets. You can find the 'Widgets' tab under the 'Presentation' tab of your main Wordpress dashboard toolbar. You can use widgets to add RSS tools, search tools, text boxes for ads and more. Explore the widgets available in the Wordpress dashboard and find the ones that enhance your blog the best.

Your First Wordpress Blog Post
Once you've taken the time to familiarize yourself with the Wordpress dashboard and user environment and customized your blog's appearance and functionality, it's time to write your first post. Enter the title and text for your post, and select the 'Publish' icon to kickoff your blog! Dont be alrmed with the way the site is, it is as simple as using a MSword document.
Excerpts from Susan Genelius

Suggested Reading:
Are you ready to blog
Choosing a topic to write about
Jargons used by the blogging community

There are many platforms as mentioned in the previous two posts, Blog platforms comparison and Platforms for blogging. I have, although not much, an understanding about blogs and how to handle posts in blogger. If you've noticed both by blogs Earn Money Blogging and World Cuisines are built on blogger as a platform. Once you create a blog with the name you feel is apt, then the name would be followed by .blogspot.com. Now that is an issue to a lot of people as they feel that dependency on any platform to host a blog would have a few drawbacks. I am quite not sure about the drawbacks cause I've not come across one.

Whether you have a website or you depend on a blogging site to launch your blog, it does not matter as to what tools you use and how your blog is perceived. So without wasting much of space on this post I would give a step by step process on creating your post.

Creating an Account with Blogger
In order to get started with Blogger, you'll first need to create an account. It is a simpler task if you are member with any of the google based sites namely, orkut, gmail, flickr,etc., On the www.blogger.com, click the "Create Your Blog Now" button:

On the following page you'll be prompted to create a Google Account. You can use your Google Account on other Google services. If you already have a Google Account perhaps from Gmail, Google Groups, or Orkut, please sign in first. After you've done that, you'll need to enter a display name and accept blogger terms.

Once you're done with this, you'll be prompted to Create a Blog and get started!
Once you click on creat a blog, you enter a Title and Address (URL). You'll also need to type in the verification word displayed on this page, to confirm that you are a real person and not a computer. When you're done, click continue:
Once you click continue, you can choose a template for your blog from the next page as per your requirement.

Next, Blogger will create your new blog and reserve your spot on BlogSpot. As soon as you make your first post, your page will appear at the address you chose. You're all ready to blog!

Once you create the first post there are a few things you need to do, which we would look at in the next post. Subscribe to my posts by email.

Now the assumption being that you have understood the nuances of choosing the right topic after reading my previous post how to choose a topic. Once the topic is decided we need to launch the topic and there are a lot of launch vehicles available where you can pen down your posts. Lets see a few tools or blog platforms available for us


Blogger

Blogger is a free, hosted blogging tool. It's one of the oldest blogging tools around and today has millions of users. Blogger promises that you will be blogging within 10 minutes of coming to the site, and in fact does deliver on that. This tool is about the simplest one around, and though free, nonetheless has an impressive array of features.
The biggest hole in Blogger's offerings is the lack of post categorization, followed closely by the need to know HTML and Cascading Style Sheets to make custom changes to the templates provided. Unlike some of the most complex hosted services, Blogger doesn't make customization easy, though it does provide some attractive skins to choose from.
One unusual feature of Blogger is the integration with the Audioblogger service. Program the Audioblogger number into your phone, and you can put audio recordings on your blog quickly by simply calling the number and recording yourself. This offering is unique among blog software packages.
Of special note is that Blogger does allow you to FTP the files generated for your blog to your own Web site. Used together with customization of the Blogger template, this fairly unique functionality means that your readers may never realize that you are using Blogger. It also means that you can publicize your own domain name, rather than the more usual Blogger URL: blogname.blogspot.com.
Blogger is perfect for the future blogger who’s in a hurry and less than interested in design customization. If your priority is to start blogging now, you can't do better than Blogger. Clearly, it's also a great tool for those on a budget, since there are absolutely no costs. In fact, you need not even have a Web site or a domain name, so you can literally get started using Blogger without spending a penny.
Very few professional Bloggers stick with Blogger for very long, if they even start there. Because it is so simple, and perhaps because it is free, most professional bloggers choose to use blogging software that has more prestige (read: is harder to set up and install). However, it is an ideal tool to use when first beginning, especially if you want to test blog for a couple of weeks before devoting any serious time or money to a blog.

Cost: Nothing
Time to launch: 10 minutes

Typepad

Typepad is one of Six Apart's hosted half blogging software services (read about Movable Type below) and one that has proved very popular with journalistic blogging efforts. Jim Romenesko uses Typepad for his Obscure Store blog; Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post writes Achenblog using Typepad.
The Typepad pricing scheme and features are divided into three levels: Basic, Plus, and Pro. Design customization is extremely limited at the Basic level and only fully accessible at the Pro level. If you want to run a group blog, or give some people editor access and others publishing access, you must go with the Pro account.
At all account levels, Typepad has a built-in feature called Typelists that allows you to build lists, associating each item with a URL. These lists can be added with a minimum of fuss to the left- or right-hand column of your blog – no need to touch the templates. Use a Typelist for your current reading list, links to other blogs, or links to new stories.
In some ways, it is actually more usable than its elder brother Movable Type. Typepad is a good option for users who want to get started quickly but still want all the bells and whistles. Customization is possible, but complicated, so it's also a good option for those who just want a blog that works without fussing too much over how it looks. However, Typepad Plus and Pro do a better job than most blog software at allowing you to configure layout options without having to go into the templates.


Cost: $4.95 - $14.95 monthly, depending on level of service chosen
Free trial: 30 days
Time to launch: 20 minutes


Blogware

Tucows is the creator of the Blogware blog software package, a robust system with a great selection of the top blogging tools. Blogware, like Typepad, can be difficult to customize, even for an experienced HTML jockey. However, it also provides a fair number of options within the administration interface to let you set up layouts and styles without getting into the templates.
Purchasing a Blogware blog is a little different than some of the other blogging software packages; you must get your Blogware blog through a reseller, so expect prices and packages to vary. It's a good idea to shop around to get the best package for your needs. A good reseller to start with is Blog Harbor.
It's unusual – and useful – that Blogware permits you to upload files via FTP to the server where your blog is hosted. If you're looking to create a blog that has a few non-blog pages, this is especially helpful.

Cost: varies by reseller, but expect to pay from $8-$15 a month
Free trial: usually offered for 30 days
Time to launch: 20 minutes


WordPress

WordPress is a solid, powerful blogging system ideal for publishers who are on a budget but who don't want to give up any functionality. Professional blogger Darren Rowse maintains nearly 30 blogs using WordPress, from his popular ProBlogger to an Athens Olympics Blog. In two weeks the Athens blog received close to 2 million readers, said Rowse – a real testament to WordPress' ability to handle heavy traffic loads.
Each WordPress post is formatted with search engine friendly URLs that also look good to humans. Comments can be extensively moderated: you can review them before they go live. You can also filter comments containing certain words or more than a certain number of links.
WordPress' built-in blogroll management tool allows you to categorize blogs, set criteria for the display order of the links, and turn off and on visibility. You can also import an existing blogroll from some link manager services.
This software has inspired numerous developers to write plugins and extra features for use with WordPress, which makes plugin installation a quick and painless affair. You will find that the selection of additional themes (or skins), for instance, numbers in the hundreds, and that WordPress fans and friends have developed tools for adding photo galleries, a music player, an event calendar, and even geo mapping.
WordPress promises a 5-minute installation, but for that to be true you do have to have some familiarity with uploading files to a Web server and using an FTP client.

Cost: Free
Time to launch: 20 minutes

Movable Type

Movable Type, created by Six Apart, is perhaps the best known of all blogging software tools. Built by a husband and wife team looking for a better tool for blogging, the system is powerful, but not simple to install or use. Although it has been used to create Web sites that don't look entirely like blogs, doing so requires quite a bit of code tweaking. Movable Type is used by blogger Joshua Micah Marshall to create Talking Points Memo, and by Kevin Roderick who writes the L.A. Observed blog.
As a blogging tool alone, Movable Type has nearly every feature you might desire, and continues to add more. Many of their users are highly technical themselves, and have created additional plug-ins that can be added to the standard installation. You might say that Movable Type is the blogging package chosen by bloggers who care what other bloggers think, and who notice and appreciate other Movable Type blogs. If you are looking for street "cred" in the blogosphere, this is the software for you.
The least attractive functionality of Movable Type is the need to rebuild the blog whenever you make a change to a template, a configuration setting, or add a new category. Waiting for the rebuild is annoying, to say the least, and certainly slows down any customization work you do to the design or layout. This can be addressed by turning on dynamic page-building, but some users have found that the server load that occurs as a result is unacceptable to their Web host.
For the non-technically inclined, installation of this software can be quite a challenge. Don't attempt it all if you aren't already comfortable with uploading and downloading files to a Web server. There are several Web hosts that offer Movable Type installation as part of their package of services.
There is no trial period for Movable Type, but there is a free version of the software that you can download and install. The paid license entitles you to support, some promotion, and discounts on future upgrades.


Cost: MT's pricing scheme is fairly complex. Personal users will pay at least $69.95. Commercial users pay at least $199.95.
Time to launch: 2 hours


Expression Engine

pMachine's Expression Engine isn't well-known, but that shouldn't stop you from giving this powerful and extensible software a try. It is technically more accurate to call Expression Engine a content management system, rather than just a blogging software tool. However, it grew out of blogging and has all of the blogging bells and whistles: moblogging, Trackbacks, archiving and so on. Dennis Lloyd uses it for the independent information resource iPodlounge.
In addition to the usual set of blogging functionality, Expression Engine has incorporated modules for image galleries and a mailing list. Uniquely, you can crop, resize, and rotate images in the Expression Engine photo gallery tool, in addition to batch processing a set of images. The people and search engine friendly URLs the system generates are of particular interest to bloggers looking for good search engine listings. You can run multiple Weblogs through the same installation of Expression Engine, and each "new post" page can be customized exactly to fit the use. Most blog software limits you to title, entry, extended entry, and excerpt fields. With EE, you can rename those to suit your publication and add more as needed.
Templates are editable online through a simple textbox interface, but you can set up the system to generate files you can download and edit with an HTML editor. Learning how information relates and how to link across the site is a challenge: expect to spend several hours learning how to use this system. Your reward will be incredible flexibility in building a site that has constant updating needs, blog or not.
Expression Engine is ideal for publishers that need to do more than just blogging; this system is ideal for handling hundreds of members, multiple user groups with different editing privileges, and sites with several blogs. Technically speaking, it's not for the faint of heart.


Cost: $149 for a non-commercial license, $199 for a commercial license
Free trial: 14 days if installed on your own server, 30 days with a hosted version
Time to launch: 2 hours


The above comparison is provided by Susannah Gardner of Vancouver, Canada is the co-founder and creative director of Hop Studios. There are lot of other platforms available you can find them in this post, Blog Platforms.

Listed below are blogging platforms which are there for us to take advantage of. There are so many and I personally have not looked at most of them, I started with Blogger and I am sticking with it because of usability. Feel free to check the ones listed below in alphabetical order and please leave your comments on what you feel about each.

Aeonity.com
blog.com
blogates.com
blogetery.com
blogger.com
blogr.com
blogsome.com
blogster.com
bravenet.com/webtools/journal/
clearblogs.com
ehow.com
googlepages.com
hubpages.com
iseekblog.com
myspace.com
pbwiki.com
quazen.com
rticlz.com
sampa.com
squarespace.com
squidoo.com
stikipad.com
thoughts.com
tumblr.com
wikispaces.com
wordpress.com

The next post would be on a few blogging platforms with an indepth view on three or four of them. Check this post at Comparing Blogging Platforms

Many a times people who are wanting to blog start blogging with some random topic which cannot be continued because of varied reasons. So the previous posts mentioned whether you are ready to write a blog and about the jargon you will come across as a amateur blogger. Now once you are convinced about blogging it becomes essential to identify the topic you want to take up for blogging. Below are a few points that need to be considered before deciding what you want to write. Bookmark this post or send to email

Topics aplenty - There are plenty of topics available to be considered for blogging. I would like to list a few topics that can be considered, Food and Drink, money, lifestyle, technology, arts, places of interests, movies and music, relationships etc., etc., etc., Although there are these many categories of topics to choose for blogging you should stop, consider a few things before you indulge into blogging.

Does the topic interest you? It's very simple choosing a topic to blog about but that interest you have in that topic would soon fizzle out if that does not interest you. Do a reality check see what is interesting (in your eyes) and of course check the topic for saleability. Not always do people have to like what you like. While it might be tempting to start blogs based on what other people are interested in or what makes commercial sense there is little logic in starting a blog on a topic that you have no interest in.

Nose dive into YOU What a bizarre thing to say!!! what do I mean by that statement?. I mean that it is always better to start deciding on a topic for a blog by identifying your own interests, passions and energy levels for topics. There are two main reasons for this.
Firstly if you want to grow a popular and well respected blog it can take considerable time and you’ll be needing to take a long term approach to building it up. As a result it’s well worth asking yourself ‘can I see myself still writing on this topic in 12 months time?’ If you can’t I’d suggest finding another topic.
The second reason is that you readers will quickly discern if you are passionate about your topic or not. Blogs that are dry and passionless don’t tend to grow - it makes sense really as no one wants to read something that the author doesn’t really believe in.

Check for topic popularity While the blogger’s interest is important it’s not enough on it’s own to build a popular blog. Another crucial ingredient is that people WANT to read information on the topic you’re writing on. It is always better to fulfil to a demand for a particular topic.
Of course keep in mind that you are writing in a medium with a global audience of many millions and as a result you don’t need a topic that everyone is searching, just one that some people are searching for because even it’s something that even a small percentage of people have an active interest in it can be a lucrative area.

Is the Topic one that is growing or shrinking? Also keep in mind that popular topics change over time. Obviously it’s great to get on a topic before it becomes big rather than when it’s on the decline. This is not easy to do of course but predict the next big thing that people will be searching for and you could be onto a winner.
Get in the habit of being on the lookout for what people are into. Keep an eye on what people are into and what the latest trends are. Do this online but also keep an eye on TV, magazines, the papers and even the conversations you have with friends.

Aware of the competition One of the traps that some bloggers get sucked into when choosing a topic is to go for the most popular topics with no regard for the competition that they might face in those markets. The chances are if you have identified a niche that you think is ‘hot’ at the moment that someone else will have also. It’s demand and supply coming into play again - for any level of demand for information on a topic there will only be a certain number of sources of that information that will be needed on that topic.
The web is becoming a more and more cluttered place and sometimes it feels that there are no niches that are left open to blog about. While this is true in some of the more popular topics - remember that you don’t have to go for the topic that everyone is searching for. In fact sometimes it’s some of the less popular topics that have little or no competition that are the best earners.
I have seen one of the blogger who after years of attempting to do well writing about gadgets swapped to ‘ride on lawn mowers’ (a topic he’d been researching for a purchase he was making). He was amazed to find that after just a couple of months of writing on his new topic that it was doing significantly more traffic (and making quite a bit more) than his gadget websites ever had.
It is always best to become a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond.

What has the competition not looked at? This is a great question that is obviously related to the last one on number of competition. It attempts to find ‘gaps’ that are not yet filled. While your competition might have the advantage of an established audience, you have the advantage of flexibility and can position your blog very quickly to fill a gap in the niche that you might observe - in doing so you create a sub-niche within the larger topic. Example is this very topic, I can write about various ways to earn money blogging at length. The area I am not concentration is the step by step approach towards getting to where I am pointing. Are you technically sound you may want to consider tutorials for the masses.

Can you be sure of unending content flow? One of the key features of successful blogs is that they have the ability to continue to come up with fresh content on their topic for long periods of time. Conversely, one of the things that kills many blogs is that their authors run out of things to say.
Answering the question regarding whether there is enough content can be done on two levels:
1. Do YOU have enough content within YOU as an author? This really comes back to the question we asked above about your passion, interests and energy for the topic (so I’ll leave it at that).
2. Do you have access to enough other sources of content and inspiration? There are many web based tools around these days that can help you in coming up with content. Some places to check out on your topic to see what news is about include Google News, Topix, Yahoo! News, Bloglines, Technorati and Blog Pulse (among others).

Can you achieve some income on the topic? Not everyone will need to ask this question if their intention is not to build a blog that has an entrepreneurial edge to it but as this blog is on the topic of making money from blogs I’ll address it in posts to follow but for the record, if you are interested in earning an income from blogging you will need to also factor in some investigation of whether the topic that you’ve chosen has any obvious potential income streams. There are many advertising programs which are built on keyword monetization.

It is better for us to choose topics which would pay us more examples are as below
1. voip solutions pays $17.46 - Topic is on Voice over Internet Protocol
2. compare home equity loan rates pays $56.87 - Topic on Financial Solutions
3. data recovery denver pays $53.59 - Topic on Technology
4. mesothelioma survivor pays $83.97 - Topic on Medical
5. domain registrars pays $10.06 - Topic on Internet

The list goes on, the above list is for ads on PPC(Pay per click) model there is another model PPM(Pay per Impression), We will discuss that later
You can get an entire list here - http://top-paid-keywords.blogspot.com/

Choose a Niche At this point it’s time to choose a topic for your blog. It’s probably unlikely that you’ll find the perfect topic on all of the fronts above. While it’d be great to find a topic that you’re passionate about that just happens to have massive demand and no competition - but the reality is that most topics topics that you come up with will have at least one weakness to them. Don’t let this get you down - there comes a time when you just need to make a decision and start blogging. The key is being aware of what the weakness is so that you can work to overcome it.

Do your Best!! I do not usually say All the best!!, Doing your best is something you can control.

The previous post Are you ready to blog, was to enable you to convince yourself if you are ready to be blogging or to pursue something else. In this post we would look at a few blogger jargons that are used frequently by a blogger. These are a few very basic terms, I would follow this up with a lot more in the blog posts that follow. Bookmark this post or send to email

Post: A blog is a web log that is updated with entries every day (most often its three to four blogs a week). Every time you put an update on your blog by way of an article or a video, you create a post on that day and time. Posts are also sometimes called entries.

Comments: Blogs are often considered as conversations between the blogger and the site visitors, and it's the ability of your readers to leave comments on each post you make to your blog that creates the feel of a conversation. Comments are usually time-stamped and identified by the author’s name and perhaps a link to their Web site or blog. On some blogs, comments are threaded so that readers can comment on other comments, but on most blogs comments are simply displayed chronologically.

Comment Moderation: There are at times comments posted to your blog which can be spam or have abusive content or marketing etc., To avoid this the blog comments can be moderated before it is posted live on the internet.

Categories: Categories permit a blogger to subdivide content, putting posts about politics into one basket and posts about celebrities in another. Categorization helps readers read only what they are most interested in and is a good tool for those scanning a blog's archives.

Links: Links(Hyperlinks) are created to link specific words or sentences to other posts or websites or pages, etc., This helps create a network of articles.

Permalink: A URL (Uniform Source Locator) that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems support such links. Other types of websites use permanent links, but the term permalink is most common within the blogosphere.

Blogosphere: A collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections on the internet. It is a common perception that blogs exist together as a connected community(or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network.

Trackbacks: Trackback technology helps bloggers linking to posts on related subjects and bloggers. Whenever a blog is posted somewhere and you are using that information on your blog, the usual norm is to adhere to ethics and link that post or the blogger on your blog.

Ping (Pinging): There are several blogging tracking Web sites where you can search for other blogs and look for recent posts. If your blog software allows you to ping those sites when you post, that post gets included in the ping site's index, potentially increasing your traffic.

RSS/Atom feeds: In the blogosphere, syndication is a big deal. With millions of blogs to read, many consumers use news aggregators, or readers, to pull in posts and read them, rather than visiting 150 blogs every day. RSS is Real Simple Syndication and Atom are two ways of blog syndication.

Blogroll: A list of the blogs read by the blogger whose site you are on. Sometimes lists are also kept to recommend books and other media, as well. It is also called as bloglist

Post scheduling: Some blog software allows you to write posts and schedule them to be published at some point in the future. This is handy for vacations and holidays.

URL Submission: There are search engines used by people to search for information on the internet. They use specific key words to search for information. At times to enable readers to see your blog on searches conducted, we would have to submit our URLs to search engines.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Optimizing your visibility on the search page keeping in mind the key words used by people searching for information on the net is an ongoing process. You have to have tools like google webmasters, google analytics, mybloglog, etc., to keep tracking the key words used by the searchers and improve your website's visibilty.

Key words: The words used by searchers on search engines which are the key to a blog or a website featuring on search results

There are a lot more words that are used by bloggers, these are the very basic which would help you for the next few posts. We would look at other words on the posts to follow. Please feel free to drop comments to know about any blog jargon you are having trouble understanding.