This article is about blogging and why you should never blog on a free host like blogger.com or wordpress.com I am writing this to alert people out there who are building blogs on free blog hosts like blogger.com and wordpress.com
Installing wordpress is free and gives you full control over your blog. There are other platforms like moveable type to choose from as well. Take a look around and find the platform you like or that best fits your blogging style. I’ve learned an expensive lesson and now will only build blogs on my own domain names.
The reason?
Lets start with blogger.com
They have a new out of control spam bot. Search the blogger help forums and you will find the horror stories. Legitimate blogs are being deleted, people are getting locked out of their blog until reviewed, and assumed to be a spammer because either the bot flagged the blog or someone clicked the little flag button at the top of all blogger blogs.
That and the fact that they have constant problems with the publishing getting stuck at 0%, slow load times, etc. it makes blogging through blogger.com a buggy experience at best and your content or reason for blogging is up to someone else’s interpretation of what is or is not legitimate.
I understand getting rid of splogs and spammers, but in blogger.com’s case the cure is worse than the disease. They were not always that way. I’ve been on blogger a long time and the service used to be good.
As far as wordpress.com, they are just as bad. If the blog links to a website and looks as if it might be promoting people to go to that website they will suspend your account without warning and lock you out of all the content.
I’m not sure what they think blogs are for, but they seem to think they have a noble purpose in life and that they alone decide what is a “genuine blog” or not.
A “genuine blog” is one that is controlled by the individual who writes to it, not one that must adhere to someone else’s idea of what their blog should look like and what it should say.
If you blog on freehosts just be aware your content and your blog is in the hands of others who will decide for the world whether or not your blog should be seen by others.
I recommend all bloggers get their own domain names and install their own blogs. You probably have learned that using a freehost for your company’s website is bad for business so why put your company’s blog on a freehost?
The same goes for individuals. Blogs allow you to express yourself the way you want to express yourself. That is the beauty of blogging. Are you willing to sacrifice your individuality to conform to what blogger.com or wordpress.com thinks is a “genuine” way to express yourself?
Many times the person deciding your fate is someone who has never had any authority over other people and who think that now they have Godlike powers to decide the fate of content written by others. These are people who likely produce no content of value themselves and think they know what is best for the rest of the world.
Get your own domain name and install a blogging platform that fits your needs. It’s the best advice you will ever get about blogging. You only own the blog if it is on your own domain name. Everything else is just providing content for someone else.
‘What would you do if you had to start your internet business from scratch with no money at all?’ This is a question that often pops up on the message boards of affiliate marketing sites. It usually comes from newbies trying to figure out what works best and fast. And the same answer comes up from experienced internet gurus: Create money making blog empires!
Why are blog empires a perfect way for making money?
1. Blogs are easy to set up and manage:
Maintaining a blog doesn’t require programming and webdesign skills. You just register an account with a blogging service like Blogger.com, and you can start immediately posting messages.
2. There are no start-up costs:
Blogging services like Blogger are absolutely free. You don’t need to spend money on hosting and domain names. If you run 30-50 niche sites and pay a domain name for each, it’s a huge sum of money. If you run 30-50 or hundreds of blogs, when using free bloggging services, it doesn’t cost you a dime.
3. Blogs are indexed by search engines within days:
One of the main problems that website owners have to overcome is getting into the search engines. With Google it can be an annoyingly long process (think of the Google sandbox effect). In the meantime, blogs are indexed much faster, usually within days, thanks to RSS feeds.
4. Blogs are a better way to promote affiliate products:
This comes from the nature of blogs. Blogs are a series of subjective opinions written by everyday people. It is a well-known fact, that the best way to sell affiliate products is to write a sincere, positive review. Experienced internet gurus use this technique to rank in tens of thousands of dollars monthly. Word of mouth advertising is till one of the most effective methods to persuade people to buy something. A well written blog post can do this for you.
5. Blogs can be easily monetized by using Adsense:
Contextual advertising is a popular way for webmasters to earn money without effort. With blogs it is the same. Just put a piece of code into your page’s source and there you have it. Then wait for your visitors to click the ads. Even if you don’t know much of HTML codes, you can benefit from displaying text ads. Blogger offers you to put Adsense ads on your blog’s template, and you can do this from the Blogger menu with a few clicks, so no need to bother with HTML codes. It even offers you to match the color of ads with the colors of your blog’s layout. It is called blending and it increases click through rates enormously.
Secret methods of creating money making blog empires fast
Method 1:
The first method is to create blogs that concentrate on certain problems. In your posts first describe the problem, then offer a solution. This solution should be an affiliate product or service, that you promote. Most people use the internet to find information for solving a problem. For example, treatments for acne problems, solutions for money matters, where to rent a car on holidays, reliable softwares against viruses and spams, etc. This is where you can wirte about how you had the same problem and how this or that product solved it.
If you start 5 blogs a day, you will have 150 blogs at the end of the first month. Imagine how much money you can earn from this blog empire. And that would be just the first month. This method sounds simple and obvious but many affiliate bloggers do it wrong. There is a new way found out by Rob Benwell to do this successfully. You can read more about it in my blog: blogging-to-the-bank.blogspot.com
Method 2:
This is a less often used method. Use your blogs as online courses or online tutorials. Find a topic and start a series of posts like it’s a series of lessons. Your fist post should be lesson 1, the second post should be lesson 2, and so on. Place affiliate links into your posts. You can also use these blogs for generating Adsense revenue. Keep the number of lessons between 10-20. If you don’t like writing or don’t know the subject well enough, go to free article directories. Pick 10-20 articles of your subject area and convert them into a series. That’s all.
Start blogging today and in a month you will have a blog empire earning you a decent amount of money. For more information see my blog below.
Short for web log, create a blog to express yourself to the world. For anyone that has ever put a pen to paper, or even had an opinion in their head can, and should, create a blog. Blogs are perfect for practically any thought ever expressed. Good or bad. Blogs are freedom of speech on steroids. Where else can your share your thoughts on everything from civil war to civil rights? You can create a blog about your dogs eating habits. Your topic is only limited to your imagination.
Blogs are truly the essence of the internet, they provide an automatic audience for what ever you would like to share with the world, it’s like an electronic soap box. As the technology advances, I can’t imagine what blogs will be like in 20 years. You can create a blog with pictures, movies,audio and obviously the written word, which still is the most powerful.
It is truly amazing how far the internet has come, and yet we are just getting started. Just think, there was a point in time, not that long ago I might add, that it was widely believed that no one would need a computer in their house. Now some people take them with them where ever they go.
When you create a blog, you are creating a time capsule of what ever you want and letting the world see it as it is being created. The first thing that you should do is read as many blogs as you can before you create a blog. This way you can see the different ways people express themselves to give you ideas on how far you want to go..
Another incredible thing about blogs, is that you don’t have to learn how to speak another
language to create a blog. You can have a blog up and running in about 5 minutes at no cost.
It only make sense that google would jump both feet into the blog world, if they didn’t invent it, they sure helped make it what it is today. Blogger, which is run by google, has made it as easy as they possibly could to create a blog, in just under 10 clicks of a mouse you can be telling your story to the world.
Who would have ever thought that you could get paid for writing about the events of your life? When you create a blog, companies are more than happy to pay you a commission for customers that you send to their web site. Once again, google has made that process very simple. With goggle adSense, you agree to put advertisements on your blog, and when someone clicks on that advertisement you earn a commission. Depending on how many visitors you get to your blog, you can earn a good amount of money for basically doing nothing..
One word of advice, well maybe two words of advice are, DO IT. You might think that you can’t write, but I can tell you once you get started it will come easy to you. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, just get started. The world is waiting to here your story about how you feel about world affairs or affairs of your world.
Create–a–blog.blogspot.com
Short description
Blogging has been used for some years as a platform for individuals to record chronological publication of comments and thoughts on the web. They usually include philosophical reflections, opinions on the Internet and social or political issues. This article explains how one could go beyond this to capitalise the strength of blogging to enhance one’s Internet business.
A weblog, or more popularly known as “blog”, is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.
The popularity of blog is gaining momentum globally with each passing month. A recent survey conducted by Comscore.com shows the following findings:
1) 50 million of the population in the USA visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005
2) This indicates an increase of about 45% compared to First Quarter of 2004.
3) An average blog visitor spends 23 hours per week online while an average Internet user spends only 13 hours online.
4) Blog visitors are 11% more likely than the average Internet users to have incomes of $75,000 or more.
5) Blog visitors are 30% more likely to buy products or services online.
Anybody thinking of starting an online venture, would be silly not to recognise the importance of blogging being one of the best tools of Internet marketing.
Blogging is a perfect way for the average person to make money online without going through all the troubles and frustration of learning how to set up a website and be an efficient internet marketer.
Let’s now talk about nich products. Why do you need a nich product? And what has this to do with “blogging”? You may ask. It is because your online business has little hope of succeeding if you’re going head to head with the big boys. As a small Internet entrepreneur, you can never hope to compete with the big boys in terms of the power of pricing strategy and advertising. But you can be successful by finding niche markets or niche products that you seldom find at your local mall in oder to stay away from the empowering presence of the big guys.
Niche market basically is a market with a significant amount of interest online that does not encounter the same competition as in other regular products. You can easily create a niche market based on any topics including even your own hobbies, e.g. gardening, guitar, tropical fish, D.I.Y etc. As long as the topic is being searched for online, you would have a great opportunity of making some profit through adding ads to your blog and making some effort in promoting your targeted affiliate programs and products.
Many internet marketing newbies opt for blogs to set up their niche markets because as beginners, they can very easily add pages, images, banners, downloads, ebooks etc to their blogs. Unlike the regular websites, they do not need to worry about having to understand HTML (the website design language)!
Savvy marketers have discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that is free because you could create your blog almost immediately at no cost compared to the setting up of a conventional website.
Putting information in your blog to help establishing your presence in the Web is now a growing phenomenon. Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to enhance the visibility of your products and services.
With the continuing improvement in software technology, publishing, introducing plug-ins, banners, pictures etc to create a fun and interesting “website” has become a breeze even to those retirees with old and rusty brains.
The more content you add to your blog, the more traffic you get. And you can add these materials almost on a daily basis.
You could get high ranking search engine placement for many internet marketing terms just by designing your posts around certain targeted keywords. This phenomenon is more prominent when handling niche markets due to the lack of competition. Free articles could be easily obtained from many article directories in the web and posted to your blogs for the benefits of your visitors.
There’s almost no limit to what you could and want to do with your blog. You can include your ideas, opinions, expertise in your field of work, resumes, home recipes, pictures, audio or video clips, e-books, poetry, products, services, consultations etc., etc.
What are the main differences between a blog and a website then? You may ask.
Most websites are relatively permanent with only occasional updating. With blogs, you could post any new content almost on daily basis. Also, websites are usually less personal as far as their relationship with the visitors is concerned.
How do you start your first step to set up a blog? There are many host services providers you could join. Among the most popular are Blogger.com and LiveJournal.com. You could start with Blogger.com which many newbies find serving their needs just perfectly.
With Blogger.com, posting your web content is like a breezy walk in the park. Photographs of your produces etc, along with any text, could be uploaded to your blog right away with just a few clicks of your mouse.
Another facility you could use is Audioblogger that enables audio posting to your current blog site with any phone at any time from any place. It is not only effective but also easy and fun. You call a given number, record a post, then your blog is updated with an audioblogger icon and a link to your recorded audio. Your message in your own voice is instantly posted! The beautiful part of it all is the fact that this is totally free of charge!
Blogging has been used for some years as a platform for individuals to record chronological publication of comments and thoughts on the web. Now we know how one could go beyond this to capitalise the strength of blogging to enhance one’s Internet business.
This article is permitted for reprinting on condition that the content of the resource box below “About The Author” is left intact.
Derrick Harper’s Wealth Funnel System (WFS) and Developmental Performance Consultants (DPC)Introduces You to the Wonderful World of BLOGS
Boynton Beach, FL &ndash May 6, 2008
I’m sure most of you have heard the words blog, blogger, or blogging.
If you are anything like me you have probably thought to yourself “I don’t have a clue what they are talking about!” Have you had that experience before?
If so, not to worry because we, at Developmental Performance Consultants along with Derrick Harper’s Wealth Funnel System of online marketing education, want to share with you some information and insight into the wonderful world of BLOGS and how you can utilize this web 2.0 technology platform to get your products/services and business more exposure on the world wide web.
What is a BLOG? Take the words “Web” + “log” = “Blog”.
A blog is, in the case for this article, textual in content and is an online interactive journal used to build relationships between you and your potential/existing clients.
There are a couple of Blog Platforms to get familiar with; “Hosted Blog Platforms” and “Stand Alone Blog Platforms”.
A few of the Hosted Blog Platforms DPC and WFS use are: Blogger, MySpace, and WordPress. They are Free, easy to use, simple to implement, and are indexed to the Search Engines rather quickly.
The other type of Blog Platform is the Stand Alone Platform and they include: WordPress (which is currently #1 out of the top 50 Blog Spots), and ProBlogger. These are both Free to post to however, there is a domain name fee, and a hosting fee you are responsible for.
One of the advantages of the Stand Alone Blog Platform is you can post the blogs directly on your company’s website. You can also be a little more creative in the design of the Blog as opposed to the standard templates found with the Hosted Blog Platforms.
Derrick Harper & The Wealth Funnel System teach you to be the “Expert” on the products/services you offer by using blog platforms to get your personal branding online marketing campaign out to your clients. Remember, people are looking to you for the leadership skills along with your knowledge and education so you need as many avenues as possible to reach them.
We hope this education has given you an insight into the world of blogs and will be beneficial to you as continue to build your business and online personal branding marketing campaign.
One of the challenges of blogging is to come up with good posts that interest readers and keep them coming back. Sometimes I do not feel like I have good original wisdom. It is presumptuous to think I can have top quality original material all the time.
A second challenge is the time to blog. I run a $1 Billion dollar company so when I decided to blog I knew I needed to figure out how to do it efficiently. My blog is mostly about efficiency and time management; these are topics I study.
These two challenges can be solved with a simple concept. Copy.
Ideas to use when copying are:
1 &ndash attribution. Give the credit together with the link to the original author.
2 &ndash look for something you can add to. Blogs can be synergistic. Take a concept or part of a blog post and expend on it and give your opinions, insights or views. In many cases, this can start a flow of ideas that are enriched from the original post.
3 &ndash You can use either the whole post or most usually just part of it and point people to the original.
4 &ndash I usually ask for permission which has never been denied. After all copying helps the original author and garners them some readership. And of course never copy copy written material without permission (and most blogs are not copy written).
5 &ndash The simplest place to find material to use to copy is by blog surfing although this can mean a lot of irrelevant material to filter. One source of free articles sorted by topic is .isnare.com.
6 &ndash In many cases the person you copy from will point a link back to you since it is flattering to them. Charles Caleb Colton said “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” (one trick on quotes is to look them up on .brainyquote.com). These links to you can increase your traffic.
In summary, copying saves time and increases the quality of material on your site. It can even lead to traffic since in many cases you will get link backs from the original site.
A blog is basically an online journal wherein you can digitally pen down your thoughts, ideas, opinions and practically anything that you want people to read. Blogs come in different styles, formats, and settings, depending on the preference of the user. Many blogging sites, offer built in features such as hyperlink, straight texts, pictures etc. Some blogging sites, even allow you to put video and mp3’s on your blogs.
Instead of writing texts, some bloggers choose to make their blogs more audio friendly, by using spoken word entries. This is called audio blogging.
Basically a blog contains these features:
title- which allows you to label your post
body- this is the content of your post
trackback- other sites can be linked back to your blog
permanent link- every article that you write has a URL
comments- this allow readers to post comments on your blog.
One of the advantages of blogging, is that it is made of only a few templates. Unlike, other websites that is made up of numerous individual pages. This make it easier for blog users to create new pages, because it already has a fix setting that include: slots for title, body of the post, category, etc.
This is especially useful for first time users, since they can start blogging right away. They can chose from a number of templates that blogging websites provide.
Anyone who wants to start a blog can do so by becoming a member of a blogging website of their choice. Once they’ve become members, they automatically become a part of that particular blogging community. They can browse through other bloggers pages, and link them back to their own blogs. They can also make comments on other members’ blogs.
Blogging is not just limited to personal usage. There are a lot of blogs that follow a theme such as: sports, politics, philosophy, social commentary, etc. These blogs espouse on their specific themes. This way blogging becomes a medium in which people can share their knowledge and opinions about a variety of themes and topics.
Some bloggers even use their blogs as a means to advertise. Some authors advertise their books on their blogs. While other bloggers, use their blogs to shed light to currents issues, events, news and catastrophes.
Nowadays in education, blogs also play an important part. Professors use blogging to document the lessons that they have discussed and taught. This way, students who who have missed classes, can easily catch up with their assignments.
A lot of entrepreneurs benefit from blogging by promoting their businesses on their blogs, with millions and millions of people logging onto the net everyday, blogging has become a lucrative move. Some bloggers who run online businesses promote their merchandise online. While others profit through advertisement.
But by far, the most popular blog type is the one that takes the form of a personal journal. This is the kind that is usually used by first time bloggers. Individuals who want to document the daily struggle of their everyday lives, poems, rants, opinions, find that blogging offers them a medium in which to express themselves.
Bloggers usually communicate within themselves. This is one of the appeals of blogging. It creates a community of people sharing their ideas, thoughts, and comments with each other.
Blogs varying in topics, themes, and set-ups, can be found in blog directories. First time users who want to get an idea of what the blogging world is all about can browse through a number of blogs using these directories. This way they’d get an idea of what these blogging communities are like.
Blogging is popular all over the world. Blog is short for the term weblog. There are no rules when it comes to blogging. Bloggers have the freedom to express themselves how ever way they want, and the best thing about blogging, is that most blogging sites are free.
There are numerous blogging websites to choose from in the net. This give first time users the option of joining a blogging community that appeals to their interests.
Just search any blogging directory and you’d get a listing of a lot of blogging sites that are available on the net. It’s easy to search a blogging directory, because it is organized according to category. This way you would get exactly what you are after. Blogging is really for everyone. It is fun, simple and easy.
A distinguishable structure for the sake of a scrivener to accumulate up prospects and fans in the jingle on their fake to the fore as a grub streeter is from stem to rigorous the manoeuvre of a entrap log or ‘Blog’.
“This whimsy of self-publishing, which is what Blogger and blogging are absolutely encircling, is the next bulky sign of fallible communication. The pose grown-up welling up was Entanglement activity. Bold of that joined it was e-mail.” – Eric Schmidt
This online machine has allowed miscellaneous writers to tune thoughts, humor, public affairs, and more with any and all who would visit. Since the Internet is a debt of connectivity it also allows for automatic feedback in ways emblem publishing cannot offer.
Essentially the trap has created a means looking for someone who has not been discovered to realize an audience who is interested in what they preoccupy to say.
In search some, a blog is intended to be unique in that they do not stimulate the blog for bracket gather consumption, putting with the advancement of blogging it has behoove more obstructive to insure your blog pass on leftovers essentially a away the account journal.
As Eric Schmidt cuspidate gone away from, blogging has robust a into of self-publishing. In this took place the architect becomes the managing copy editor and publisher and has comprehensive artistic control. The utter of Google Adsense can also imperial look after remaining profits to take offset over the territory of any costs associated with your blog.
A blog can be pure usable to a writer. It provides an retailer pro non-stop calligraphy, but it also allows people who censure out of your work to arrogate in your estimable posts and intuit a greater friend at court to you. Some unordered blog-thought has been transformed by street of their owners into choose constitute articles and stories.
“At its best, blogging is all thither change. The constitution suits writers who penury to bear off owing fast.” – services essay - Naomi Darvell
Multifarious blogging sites entertain the fondle of photographs and audio. Seeing that exemplar, if you had a rules signing you could hold photos from the happening in the richness of your blog. If you well-spring a recording of a administer of your book that you are authorized to rebroadcast it also can be placed in your blog. Links can be provided to spur on visitors to verify sophistry tally to blogs via means of other order friends – and greatest of all a blog can further visitors in decision where they may upon other abode of the dead you’ve produced along with gen on how to reach any straight away obtainable books you may have.
People who enjoy reading blogs drive put out a segment of blogs that bear, motivate, and add up to them imagine or laugh. Having a blog that is tied into a familiar website can be minded of a wish itemized in connecting with those who may already comprise an trust in the property your work.
Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. Guess what happens after a little while? The blogs die.
In managing a list of many Web sites, most of which are blogs, I deleted countless sites from the list because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place.
How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how blogging tools can be used for more than blogs.
Blog content is king
Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each medium has one thing in common: content. Having a blog connects your newsletter and your business with all of these readers and delivers important content in a particular style.
I’ve been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog entries in meryl’s notes, you’ll notice they’re more personal. When blogs first hit the scene in the late ’90s, they were personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog has transformed from personal to business speak, although I still add personal notes here and there.
A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans want to know everything about them, but it doesn’t work for the average business person. Other business people want information on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products offering information of no value, few people will return. The people whose products sell well are the ones who provide valuable information. Readers already know what kind of information they’re getting, so they trust that when they buy something, it will be of the same or better quality. This value must be reflected in their blog. It’s much like people who only sign up for a newsletter after first seeing an example.
Who should venture where one has not blogged before?
No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn’t black or white (what did you expect?). Ask these questions:
- Can you regularly update it — at least five times a week?
- Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?
- Do you read other blogs or feeds?
- Can you provide information of value to others not just to yourself?
- How large is your newsletter subscriber list?
- How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or month?
The big decider is whether or not you can write in the blog almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to other sites doesn’t give visitors much reason to make the effort to come to yours. Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog discussions are common, and that’s where trackback comes in handy.
Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog’s comments page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and pasting in your blog’s trackback box.
Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good indicators of what kind of reaction you’ll get when opening a blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a long road ahead and lots of work to do. There is no magic formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity, your blog can engage many prospects and clients.
Pick a niche
Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and keeping an audience. meryl’s notes focuses on three areas: webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much. What I need to do for my readers is create three separate blog entry points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the geeky content.
I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl’s notes. It’s about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the geeky category, but it’s a personal blog and doesn’t belong in meryl’s notes. This blog is written for a different audience.
The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read the content through the software. For an explanation of syndication and feed readers, refer to What Is This RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom Business? When sending a new issue of a newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases are covered.
Blogs in disguise use the same tools
Blogging tools aren’t just for, well, blogging. Such tools are an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of tableless Web sites. Using blogging tools is much easier than the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand. Though using a blog tool, it isn’t a blog. In this case, the blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).
Small business owners don’t have a need for the fancy and pricey CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their site.
Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and metrics. They’re used for knowledge management. With information pouring in, blog tools provide a way to share, organize and process the information.
Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best practices won’t help, since the decision to blog is based on the organization’s mission, needs and goals along with its target market’s desires and needs. A blog about lemmings? There is one, sort of. Or maybe you’d like to start your own and talk about dumb business moves.
The growth and popularity of blogs in general has been phenomenal within a very short period of time. Blogs or web logs as they were previously called is where all the action on the World Wide Web is, right now.
It is amazing how quickly web sites have been relegated to the back seat. Actually the role of web sites is rapidly being re-defined but it is clear blogs will be the place where all the traffic will be congregating for a long time to come. What some thought was a passing fad is clearly here to stay and is a permanent development that has already had far reaching effects on communications and the way we transmit and receive information.
Yet most entrepreneurs who have quickly jumped onto the blog bandwagon do not seem to fully understand and appreciate what blogs are really all about. Worse still, many of those who have remained away have no idea what all the fuss is about.
A clearer understanding of blogs is bound to benefit any e-commerce business owner or online entrepreneur.
Everybody can be a publisher or media owner
Probably the most significant impact of blogs is the fact that it is rapidly changing mass media, as we have known it since the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. Powerful media companies have been in the hands of a few people who have carefully controlled what we see in our media. Sometimes deliberately to achieve their corporate goals and objectives. Blogs are effectively transferring that power back to the people and away from the hands of a few.
This era of blogs means that anybody can be a publisher or media owner and effectively transmit whatever information they want and push whatever cause is dear to their hearts. The impact of blogs in politics for example has been a clear demonstration of the power of blogging. We have some blogs covering politics that have a couple hundred thousand visitors on a daily basis.
This may be a scary development to many folks including media owners but it presents a number of excellent opportunities for entrepreneurs to reach huge audiences with their messages at a tiny fraction of what their budgets used to be in the days when blogs did not exist.
Breaking news, courtesy of the blog community
Further power of blogs to handle breaking news in real time, complete with photographs and video clips, has clearly been evident in retimes. For example during the Tsunami tragedy last December. Footage of the damage being caused by the giant waves was seen in blogs long before the traditional media channels got wind of what was going on.
This opens up a whole range of new opportunities that can be tried out in the years to come. Not many entrepreneurs have realized this yet.
Anybody who didn’t have a site can own a successful blog
Blogs are so easy to set up, maintain and run that a new breed of online entrepreneurs is on the rise. It consists of many individuals who for one reason or another were unable to set up and maintain heir web sites.
We are now in an era where an online entrepreneur needs little else other than lots of creativity, there is actually so much that he or she can do without a single cent in capital.
Distinct advantages of having a blog
Blogs tend to get lots of traffic. Lots more than websites do. Besides search engines seem to love them. Blogs are also able to build up links much more easily than web sites. Thus it is no longer surprising for a nobody-novice to suddenly shoot up in stardom and recognition.
No entrepreneur can afford to be left behind
The benefits of a business having in it’s stable a blog or two that is capable of attracting huge traffic, is very important and can be extremely useful in helping a business to achieve its’ marketing goals and objectives.
Any entrepreneur whether online or offline who does not have a blog to help promote their business is making a very serious mistake that they will definitely live to deeply regret. In fact even playing catch-up with a blog that already exists will continue to be more and more difficult.
There are a number of advantages that blogs have which will continue to be extremely useful to entrepreneurs and webmasters. One of them is the fact that they easily allow for customer comment and anybody can be able to post a comment at your site. In a way this is a form of research and sampling because it enables the business to get feedback and thus be able to gauge the sort of response they will receive when they finally roll out their product or service into the market.
Start using your blog more carefully and watch your traffic and revenues steadily climb as a result.