Learn how to Create a RSS Feed

Creating an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is really quite a simple process. RSS is a lightweight XML design that is really easy to setup and implement. It's a great way to pass on important updates, send out your articles or news, or send out your favorite website links!

RSS feeds can be setup in a very short time, literally a few minutes! Simply put, an RSS feed is basically a text file with a couple HTML looking tags. There is an area with the information about the feed, then individual blocks of code for each article or piece of content being syndicated. It may sound bad now, but I assure you it's very simple to setup and I'll give you a full working example by the end of this article!

The first thing you need to do is to create a file that you want to call your RSS feed. It can be anything, the name isn't important. For this article I will call it "cool_feed.xml"

All the following code will be placed inside the "cool_feed.xml" file. This file is the primary file you will use, in fact outside of one minor modification to other pages in your website you will use this file exclusively for sending out your feed updates.

The above block of code as you can see is very similar to HTML, all it is doing is telling people the version of XML you are using, and the version of RSS you are conforming to, as you can see this is XML v1.0 and RSS v0.91.

The next thing we need to do is setup your "channel" which is the name of your feed, and a description of it. In addition to the description it gives some contact information, the language and the website you run.

Your Website Title http://YourWebsite.com/ What is your RSS Feed about? en-us Your Copyright Line Your@email.com Your@email.com

As I've mentioned several times before, it's similar to HTML in that it has an open and closing block after each parameter. But you also may have noticed there isn't a closing block for CHANNEL. That is because it is sort of the equivalent of the "BODY" block in HTML, it will do it's close near the very end. Actually, we opened the RSS block up in the first block of code I gave you also, where we set the version, that is the equivalent to the HTML block and will be the very last thing closed at the end of the XML file.

Article Number One http://YourWebsite.com/Article_Number_One.html 1-3 sentences about your article

This ITEM block is your first article, every time you want to add an update you just create another ITEM block similar to this one. It simply has an article title, link to where the article is on your website, and a description field, which is normally 1-3 sentences long.

These are the final closing blocks of code for the channel and RSS blocks that you setup in the top of the file. You must have these blocks of code at the very end, in this order. I will give a couple of links to websites that can check your code to make sure it works properly.

Once you have saved all that code in your file, the next thing we need to do is modify your website. This set is NOT required by any means, but it tells your users web browsers that you have an RSS feed, if their browser supports viewing them.

All you have to do is add the following line to the HEAD field of your website:

Congratulations, you are the proud owner of a brand new RSS feed!

Ken Dennis <a target="_new" href="http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/">http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/</a>

What Is A Blog? - A Beginners Guide to Understanding Blogs

A blog is short for weblog, which simply means a website that is updated frequently with new information and is organized by date and submission. Blogs are typically a way of journalizing information whether it be personal, business, or what have you. It's like an editorial and a journal all mixed together and available online for constant updates and submissions.

As a beginner, you probably want to know more about blogs and why people are using them.

Blogging started out when the Internet was new and the individuals who were technology savvy found it fun and entertaining to post different things they found on the web for other people to visit and enjoy. It caught on quickly and a community of blogs developed, allowing people to read other peoples blogs. As time went on, new technology was developed that allowed even the non-techie to create their own blog and join the blog culture.

Blogs are popular because they relay experiences, interesting thoughts, comments, photos, web links, and plenty of other information that people find interesting. Today, blogging is really popular and many people will send you a link to their blog so you can keep up with their experiences such as vacations, studies, pregnancies, and any other thing you can possibly think of.

What started out as a way to navigate the web and figure out all of the newness that was the Internet of the early '90s, turned into a way for people to journalize their experiences, share photos, and keep people up to date on their lives. In response to the popularity of blogs, many websites launched software and free sign-ups for blogs so anyone could have their own blog and share their experiences with the entire world.

And so, blogging has continued to grow and weblogs have multiplied into the millions. In fact, there are so many blogs on the web that you can practically become part of your own community with people worldwide, sharing your life, experiences, and thoughts with people you would never have met. Blogs truly are linking people together and they are an amazing phenomenon.

If you are interested in blogging, all you have to do is join one of the many blog websites that will allow you to set up your own account and have your own blog space on the web, giving you a personal space to share photos, experiences, stories, links, and basically anything else that you care to share. Many people even find that writing blogs are excellent stress relievers and quite cathartic, so you might receive some additional benefits from your blog than just the joy of sharing your personal information. Go online today and find a blog website where you can set up an account and get started!

Michael Turner shows you exactly how to <a target="_new" href="http://www.powertraffictactics.com/">increase web site traffic</a> in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it today at <a target="_new" href="http://www.powertraffictactics.com/">http://www.powertraffictactics.com/</a>

Should Bloggers be Helping Google Fix Their PageRank System?

By now, most bloggers have heard the announcement that the Big 3 search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN - have united in support of a new tag that will supposedly combat comment spam. The new tag is a nofollow attribute that can be added to links. When added to links in comment tags, the search engines will ignore them.

An excellent discussion of this new tag and how it works can be found at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728

Google announced the new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/

And Microsoft added their support to the new tag in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx

At first blush, anything that can help cut down the comment spam that most bloggers are daily subjected to would seem to be a good thing. It can be pretty upsetting to access your blog in the morning and find 50 junk comments with links to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your blog has any PageRank, you can expect to find more of this garbage polluting your site every day. Fighting the spread of comment spam has become a necessity.

But after first cheering the proactiveness of the search engines, many bloggers have stepped back and taken a closer look and they don't like what they see. You can read a sampling of their thoughts at Search Engine Watch Forum: http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3797

Brian Turner's incisive article "New Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but Fails Blogs" discusses some of the potential abuses of the new nofollow tag: http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2005/01/new_nofollow_ta.html

And Jim Pryke's article "Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search Rankings Plummet" makes it very clear that not only will this NOT stop comment spam. But it will actually hurt bloggers as a community: http://netinstitute.com/archives/2005/01/20/bloggers-cheer-google-as-their-search-rankings-plummet

For an hilarious take on the new tag and how it will get abused, be sure to take a look at Link Condom: http://www.linkcondom.com

I have to agree with these bloggers that the nofollow tag won't even put a dent in the problem of comment spam. You have to realize that the comment spammers who cause the most problems are the ones who use automated bots to spread their spam onto every blog they find. The fact that they find a blog using the nofollow tag won't stop the bot from posting. If you have a popular blog, you'll still wake up every morning to find 50 casino/pharmacy/adult ads on your blog. You'll still have to spend the time deleting those posts to clean up your blog.

You see, the problem to bloggers isn't that those comment links pass PR. It's the fact that those spam posts make your blog look like garbage. Whether the links pass PR or not isn't the big issue for bloggers. It's the time it takes to get rid of unwanted comments and the detraction to their sites. The nofollow tag won't do a thing about that problem. You'll still have the problems, even if you use the tag.

Think about this: how effective have email filters been in stopping email spam? As most of us know, they've hardly done any good at all. Email spam becomes a bigger problem every day. Spammers really don't care if some of their emails are blocked. They just send more of it to compensate. The same will be true of the automated comment spam bots.

The fact of the matter is, there are already much better tools in most blogging software to fight comment spam AND save the time and effort of the blogger at the same time. There are already a number of plugins for WordPress, Moveable Type, and other blogs. There will undoubtedly be more in the future. These tools are already more effective at fighting comment spam than this nofollow tag will ever be.

What is unfortunate is that the people the nofollow tag will really hurt is bloggers themselves. Traditionally, bloggers have read and commented in each other's blogs. And these comments have added value. When I write an article for my blog, I love it when other bloggers take the time to add their insights on the topic I'm discussing. These comments add content to my site and continue the discussion. This is one of the reasons blogs are so easy to grow into topic-specific information-rich sites that are popular with readers. Unlike static sites, they offer two-way communication between reader and blogger. They become communities.

When someone adds this kind of value to my blog, I am more than happy to give them a link to their blog that passes PR. That will help them build the readership of their own blog, grow the community even larger, and add to the richness of the discussion. These are exactly the kinds of links that any webmaster should want on their site!

Adding a nofollow tag to comments can only quash this discussion. It can only discourage commenters with the most to contribute from taking the time to add to the discussion. After all, if the time I spend on another blog doesn't contribute to the growth of the blogging community as a whole or aid in the visibility of my own blog, am I going to spend as much time and effort doing it?

Anything that decreases the open flow of discussion currently enjoyed in the blogging community is a bad deal for bloggers.

The question that should be asked is this: why is comment spam so profitable? After all, if it weren't profitable, so many people wouldn't be going to such ridiculous lengths to do it.

The answer to this is obviously Google's link-heavy PageRank algorithm that forces webmasters to get every link they can to get their site's indexed and ranked. Most webmasters know that in order to get ranked in Google, they had better have a ton of links to their site.

That's the problem with PageRank as an algorithm. It encourages artificial linking between sites that no longer has any relevance whatsoever to the goal of providing good resources to visitors. Do we really believe that most reciprocal link directories provide a resource to our visitors? Not likely! If websites are real estate, reciprocal link directories are the slums, the seedy bars and tattoo parlors on the edges of polite society.

Whole businesses have sprung up as a reaction to PageRank. I'm talking about the link auction and link selling sites. Under the PageRank system, sites aren't being ranked by who provides the best content, but by who has the deepest pockets to buy the most links. Or, in the case of comment spammers, whoever wants to spread their bots all over the internet spamming blogs. This system has over time totally skewed the natural linking between sites that once dominated the internet - the very thing that Google's PageRank system is supposed to reward.

Ironically, blogs are one of the few places left on the web where linking is actually about providing good content to visitors and rewarding value provided on other sites. Bloggers as a group are the most likely to link to sites because of the content value to their visitors. Their links are very likely to be very topic specific. You don't find that on other sites. These are the kinds of links that I would assume Google would want to encourage through their PageRank system, not those junky reciprocal link directories or purchased links.

It would seem to me that the only effective way to cut down on comment spam and all the artificial linking techniques Google purportedly wants to thwart is not by making life harder for bloggers - the very people who link in the most relevant fashion. But at taking a second look at their own PageRank system and whether it is really serving the usefulness of their own search engine and the whole web in 2005.

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) <a target="_new" href="http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com">http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com</a>

Writing Good Blogs

There's a lot of blogs out there on the Web, most of which don't entice one to go back regularly to read updates. What is missing from these on-line journals that would essentially make them 'good' blogs? Well, the answers in life usually come down to simplicities. So let's look at the problem like we were children. Children don't complicate life with miscellaneous information, and when they speak they tell you straight to the point exactly how they feel and think about a subject. First of all, we should ask the questions,&quot; Why do blogs exist? And what are they here for?&quot; Well, in an ideal world 'good' blogs would help people connect, sharing knowledge and feelings about issues in life. As they are journals written by individuals we would hope that they'd be readable and open to comment by all other people, not just a select group of friends. The key is speaking in a way that is understandable by the masses, get rid of acronyms and local slang that only few will comprehend. Keep the sentences grammatically simple and generally short and concise. Try to write in your blog as often as possible because if people enjoy reading your thoughts and ideas they'll want to communicate or at least be filled in regularly on 'your world'. Ask questions, comment on other blogs of similar content, start communities with others you've never met, based on your interests. Keep focused; if your blog is about thoughts on war and peace, keep your thoughts on the latest movie and how hungry you are for somewhere else. The idea is to incite intelligent communication so that in time our collective stockpile of knowledge and wisdom will gradually grow like a tree in fertile soil. I think of most importance is the fact that you want this journal to be 'good' reading. Of course we all have ideas about what genres and styles we like, but writing from your heart and soul is imperative for the connection with others that you're looking for. Share yourself; don't hide behind walls of fear of ridicule and judgment. In real life relationships trust, respect, intimacy, and unity are all necessary for a bond to form. It's the same in the 'virtual' world; people want to hear from real people-not just one-sided, highly opinionated arguments from egos that don't want to hear the 'other side of the coin'. Now, in my last article I really tore apart most writers out there, and here I'm giving some pretty complex ideas on how to fix the problem of 'bad' writing. In my next article I'll attempt to go back to the simple basics of how to write for beginners. I hope I haven't come across as too judgmental, I just truly believe the 'blog world' could become a real asset to humanity, and at the moment it's missing the mark. Ideas about sentence structure, grammar, paragraphing, using a thesaurus (varying terms used so as not to sound repetitive), whether or not your blog is suitable for a personal or professional approach, are all important to creating a simple and enjoyable read for the blogging visitor. If you are a beginner, please check out my next article on the basics.

Jesse S. Somer<BR>M6.Net<BR><A target="_new" href="http://www.m6.net">http://www.m6.net</A><BR>Jesse S. Somer is a writer hoping to help potential bloggers to write interesting and informative on-line journals.

Blogging for Dollars

Blogging for dollars might sound like the latest game show or some new drinking game, but it's the latest craze to hit the Internet. Bloggers began blogging for a number of reasons, but as the blog movement has increased in popularity, they have found ways to monetize their blogs and are seeing their commitment pay off.

Whether a blogger's focus is to communicate with customers or just to have fun, they have begun looking at ways to earn revenue from their blogs. The most popular ways for bloggers to earn some added cash for their pet projects are:

1. ) Google Adsense in Blogs Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve content-relevant advertisements in blogs. If the visitor clicks one of the AdSense ads served to the blog, the website owner is credited for the referral. Webmasters need only to insert a Google-generated java script into the blog or blog template. Google's spider parses the AdServing blog and serves ads that relate to the blog's content. Google uses a combination of keyword matching and context analysis to determine what ads should be served.

2. ) Affiliate Programs (Product Endorsements) Affiliate Programs work when an affiliate web site receives income for generating sales, leads, or traffic to a merchant website. Generally, bloggers will mention or endorse specific products and if site visitors purchase the product, bloggers will receive a portion of the sale.

3. ) Product Promotion Businesses use blogs to detail how specific features or product add-ons can increase functionality and save time. Content-rich product promotion will help with search engine placement.

4.) Banner Ads While less popular than in the past, websites with high traffic levels can still earn decent revenue by selling banner space.

As the Internet evolves bloggers will continue to seek out ways to monetize their opinions and thoughts. Daily journals and online blogs have become more than just a communication means to many.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for the NotePage <a target="_new" href="http://www.notepage.net">http://www.notepage.net</a> and FeedForAll <a target="_new" href="http://www.feedforall.com">http://www.feedforall.com</a> product lines. Other sites by Sharon can be found at <a target="_new" href="http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com">http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com</a> , and <a target="_new" href="http://www.small-business-software.net">http://www.small-business-software.net</a>

Your RSS Feed Might Look Like Spam

RSS feeds seem to be the breakout technology for the year. With more users turning to them for driving traffic to their site, it's no wonder that a trail of RSS feed spam is following in the wake. A careful editing of your RSS feed could make the difference between being classified as genuine content or RSS spam.

RSS search engines are just beginning to pick up steam. As more RSS feeds become searchable, the number of visitors will increase and spam is sure to follow. It is an unfortunate side effect of free communication. While RSS users can typically unsubscribe to feeds they deem as spam, browsing with keywords in an RSS search engine is where the problem arises.

RSS spam largely consists of three main types most often found in the RSS search engines. The first type is keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing involves filling each RSS feed article with high-value keywords for a specific topic. The articles are not intended for human visitors, but instead for search engine robots to direct traffic to a target web site. This RSS spam technique is nothing more than an adaptation of the typical keyword-stuffed web page, often banned by major search engines.

The second type involves RSS feed link farms. These RSS articles often contain very little content, if any, other than a simple keyword. Their main attraction is the feed title. Clicking the feed title takes the user to a blog containing tens or hundreds of other blogs and RSS feeds, each directing to more links within the farm. The goal of this type of RSS spam is to trick the user into clicking advertisements or directing them to a product web site.

The third type is the creation of fake RSS feeds. These appear as legitimate, but often duplicated, article content. Whether they provide value or not is certainly debatable. These feeds are usually created in mass, using automated scripts, and appear similar in nature to the link farms. By attracting the users to seemingly valuable content, they hope to gain advertisement clicks or product web site traffic.

Your RSS feed might happen to fall into one of these three categories. While you may currently be experiencing increased traffic from the RSS search engines, these directories are working on filtering out the RSS spam techniques. However, you can still take advantage of RSS feeds and their power by following an RSS-friendly guideline.

Refrain from using automated scripts to create online content used by your RSS feeds. Instead, write your own original thoughts, product descriptions, and reviews. It takes a little more time, but the search engines will value this content much more highly, your visitors will appreciate the unique content, and the subscription count to your RSS feed will grow. It is also important to keep your feed updated with changing content as opposed to using a static feed, which remains the same. Search engines value dynamic feeds and will likely rank you higher as a result.

There are tools and services available, which aid in keeping an RSS feed updated with your changing content. Such services include FeedFire for converting your web site content to a periodically updated RSS feed or software such as FeedForAll for creating and editing RSS feeds.

A successful RSS feed is very much the same as a successful web page. It may take a little more time to digitize your thoughts, but the end result is well worth the effort. By avoiding the tricks in RSS feed spam, you can help make the difference in quality of feeds and enjoyment in your readers.

About the Author:
KSoft is a software company specializing in Internet products including RSS Submit <a target="_new" href="http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html">http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html</a>, software for submitting RSS feeds and pinging blogs to over 65 RSS directories.

Learn how to Create a RSS Feed

Creating an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is really quite a simple process. RSS is a lightweight XML design that is really easy to setup and implement. It's a great way to pass on important updates, send out your articles or news, or send out your favorite website links!

RSS feeds can be setup in a very short time, literally a few minutes! Simply put, an RSS feed is basically a text file with a couple HTML looking tags. There is an area with the information about the feed, then individual blocks of code for each article or piece of content being syndicated. It may sound bad now, but I assure you it's very simple to setup and I'll give you a full working example by the end of this article!

The first thing you need to do is to create a file that you want to call your RSS feed. It can be anything, the name isn't important. For this article I will call it "cool_feed.xml"

All the following code will be placed inside the "cool_feed.xml" file. This file is the primary file you will use, in fact outside of one minor modification to other pages in your website you will use this file exclusively for sending out your feed updates.

The above block of code as you can see is very similar to HTML, all it is doing is telling people the version of XML you are using, and the version of RSS you are conforming to, as you can see this is XML v1.0 and RSS v0.91.

The next thing we need to do is setup your "channel" which is the name of your feed, and a description of it. In addition to the description it gives some contact information, the language and the website you run.

Your Website Title http://YourWebsite.com/ What is your RSS Feed about? en-us Your Copyright Line Your@email.com Your@email.com

As I've mentioned several times before, it's similar to HTML in that it has an open and closing block after each parameter. But you also may have noticed there isn't a closing block for CHANNEL. That is because it is sort of the equivalent of the "BODY" block in HTML, it will do it's close near the very end. Actually, we opened the RSS block up in the first block of code I gave you also, where we set the version, that is the equivalent to the HTML block and will be the very last thing closed at the end of the XML file.

Article Number One http://YourWebsite.com/Article_Number_One.html 1-3 sentences about your article

This ITEM block is your first article, every time you want to add an update you just create another ITEM block similar to this one. It simply has an article title, link to where the article is on your website, and a description field, which is normally 1-3 sentences long.

These are the final closing blocks of code for the channel and RSS blocks that you setup in the top of the file. You must have these blocks of code at the very end, in this order. I will give a couple of links to websites that can check your code to make sure it works properly.

Once you have saved all that code in your file, the next thing we need to do is modify your website. This set is NOT required by any means, but it tells your users web browsers that you have an RSS feed, if their browser supports viewing them.

All you have to do is add the following line to the HEAD field of your website:

Congratulations, you are the proud owner of a brand new RSS feed!

Ken Dennis <a target="_new" href="http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/">http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/</a>

How Direct Sales Reps Can Use Blogging

One of the tools that a smart direct sales representative use to attract new business is a blog. A blog keeps customers and potential customers informed about products, events and services that relate to your business, new releases, contests, specials and it always keeps your name front and center. It shows readers that you are a good source of information that they can count on.

If you think about it, you also probably subscribe to a number of blog feeds on various subjects that interest you. Where do you think you are going to get information when you are in the market for a product or service that relates to your interests? Yes, that's right, you think about that blog that gives you all that great information!

Often direct sales representative's websites are nothing more than a corporate website. Websites in which they are unable to update information. These types of websites also make it difficult for a representative to look unique. They all have the same websites saying the same thing. Corporate sites also make it difficult for the representatives to hold special contests or special sales.

With a blog you can quickly update your customers anytime your company released a new product, when you're holding a contest or are placing items on special pricing. Blogs also can be more fun and unique than the traditional newsletter. Newsletters are often sent out at a set time. With blogs you can stop in anytime. With all the feeds available your visitors can subscribe to your feeds and be instantly updated without any spam filters interfering.

If you want to produce a professional looking blog, try using a service such as Blogger.com. You can then upload your blog quickly and easily readily available for your visitors. Another great thing about Blogger.com is that it is free. This means no hosting costs or domain costs.

Visit http://www.wahm-blog.com/what-is-blogging.html for more information about blogging.

About the Author... Anita DeFrank a WAHM of two and co-owner of DirectSalesHelpers.com which was created specifically for those in Direct Sales. Do you find yourself asking how to make more sales? The above is only a small taste of the wealth of information available at <a target="_new" href="http://www.directsaleshelpers.com">http://www.directsaleshelpers.com</a>. Stop on in if you're serious about your direct sales company and want to know how you can make more sales.

How to Build a Niche Site With a Blog

Building niche sites is all the rage these days.

The basic strategy is very simple. Find a niche market that isn't oversaturated. Develop a list of related keywords people are searching on. Then write an article optimized for each one of your keywords. Once you have your articles, upload them to your site. Monitize your site with affiliate links and Adsense.

For this kind of niche site to be effective and make money, it is imperative that you get free traffic, and a lot of it. And that's exactly where a blog can be your best friend.

At its very simplest, a blog is just a structure. It's the bones of a web site. A blog is a simple way to publish and display your content online. Most of us think of blogs as a chronicle of news events, or commentary on news and items of interest. Or personal diaries.

Few people stop to think that you can build any kind of website with a blog. In reality, a blog can be used very effectively to build a niche site. The fact of the matter is, a blog is the easiest way to publish your niche site content. But the biggest reason to use a blog is that it can drive traffic to your site a lot faster than a statically-built site. A niche site built with a blog is a very powerful strategy.

First, choose your niche and research your keywords. Write your first article based on one of those keywords, just as you would when building a regular site. Then set up your blog and publish that article. Your niche site is now live.

To make your site structure the most effective, be sure to choose a blog that allows the use of Categories, such as Word Press or Moveable Type. Use your 10 most important keywords as the name of your Categories. Then file all your secondary keyword articles under those Categories.

Why is this so important? If you keep building your site with keyword-rich articles, eventually you could have hundreds of pages. Each of those pages will have a link to your 10 Categories. And each of those links will use the anchor text of your most important keywords. As a result of all those internal keyword-rich links, your site will end up ranking very well in the search engines for your Category names.

Now it's time to set up your traffic strategy. This is where a blog can really shine. There are many special RSS/blog directories that are hungry for feeds. By submitting your new blog to these directories, you can start getting traffic almost immediately. Quite often these feeds will result in a lot more traffic than all the major search engines combined. This is why it makes so much sense to build your niche site as a blog. You can have twice the traffic, and get it much faster than with a static site.

Here is a list of some of the top RSS/blog directories you should submit your site to: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Once you've submitted your site to the directories, you can get it indexed by Yahoo almost immediately by adding your RSS feed to your MyYahoo page. If you don't have a MyYahoo page, just go to http://www.yahoo.com. Now click on the MyYahoo link at the top and set up your free account. Once you have your account set up, click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.

When you go back to your MyYahoo page, your blog plus your first post should be shown. If you go look at your web stats for your site, you'll find that the Yahoo spider has already made a visit! Your new site should be indexed in Yahoo in just a couple of days. This is a strategy that some marketers were selling for $50 just a few months ago. And it works like a charm.

Every time you add a post, you can alert the RSS/blog directories by "pinging" them. There is a wonderful site at http://www.pingomatic.com that makes this very easy. You just have to type in your blog URL and Pingomatic will send your ping to Yahoo and about 15 other large directories. That will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!

During the first month, I would suggest that you write and add a new article every day. Blogs that are frequently updated get the most traffic. And you'll find that the major search engines will spider your site every day. At the end of a month, you'll have a 30-article niche site that is already getting a lot of traffic. If you've monetized your site with Adsense and related affiliate programs, you should also be making money already.

Once you've started building your niche sites with a blog, you'll never go back to doing it the old way again!

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) <a target="_new" href="http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com">http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com</a>

Blogging Is Not Important - Its Crucial

It has been established that having a 'blog' helps your web site gain visitors and higher rankings in search engines. But a small study which I have just completed shows that blogging is much more important than this. Blogging appears to be absolutely essential to your web site success. If you are not blogging, your web site will fade into obscurity.

Since blogging took off in the past year or so, there have been several 'theories' about it's importance. Some people have suggested that it will mean the end of journalism, as we all become our own 'reporters'. Others have predicted it will mean the end of civilisation as we know it. More practically, there have been several well sourced articles which suggest that blogging is a significant component in a web site's success. Sites that include a blog, the theory goes, will be rewarded by Google with higher positioning on search engine results.

Like all theories, there is only one way to find out if they are true and that is to put them to the test. So, I decided to test the 'Google ranking theory of blogging'.

My site, http://www.infoselling.com has over 200 pages in it, most of which are indexed by Google. Last week, one of those pages was consistently number one (out of 42,300) for the term 'infoproduct'. Two other pages in the site were ranked consistently at 12 and 13 (the top two slots on the second results page).

Up until this point I had been writing a daily blog at the site and 'pinging' it to the various weblog sites. To test the theory, I stopped writing my blog and then re-checked the results. Five days without blogging has had a significant impact. The page which was number one, is now number six. The pages that were at the top of page two are now at the bottom of page three.

It would appear that no other web pages for the term 'infoproduct' have been added to the Google list in the past five days since the number of pages in the results is still 42,300. The only thing that I changed in my site was the blogging.

Now, it's true that other sites may have changed and that I have suffered as a result. It may not be just the lack of blogging on my part. However, the top two pages are from a site which adds pages on a daily basis - and they were immediately below me while I was blogging away! Hence, whether you add content using traditional techniques, or you blog, the number one rule for maintaining your web site ranking in Google is add content - every day, without fail. As I've discovered, even five days can have a dramatic impact. If you are not adding content to your web site every day, you stand a very real chance of losing your place in the Google search results.

Graham Jones is a psychologist who has specialized in the way we use the Internet. He is an expert on information products and runs Infoselling.com where you can get a FREE report on how to sell your own infoproducts.

<a target="_new" href="http://www.infoselling.com">http://www.infoselling.com</a>

Content Syndication Through RSS Feeds

Delivering regularly updated content to website visitors is easier through RSS resources.

RSS, also known as Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, has been used for years by online visitors. However, it has only recently begun to gain popularity among webmasters as a means of providing visitors with constantly refreshed content. These feeds were originally developed to deliver updated news more quickly, but they have since evolved to allow for nearly instantaneous updates of many types of information.

Growing websites can benefit from RSS feeds since they allow for fresh copy to be updated regularly online. Once the RSS feeds are inserted into the web pages, they provide a steady stream of syndicated content updated continuously. Most RSS feeds consist of a headline, content summary, and a link to the actual online article. They are typically composed in XML, a markup language similar to HTML, to allow webmasters to manipulate and integrate new copy into their existing site pages.

The increased popularity of these RSS feeds have benefited online sites as they the have helped to drive increased traffic and search engine ranking results. The fact that the syndicated content is changing constantly in RSS feeds means that search engine spiders are likely to visit and index your website pages more often. RSS feeds also keep webmasters from having to worry about updating their content, and visitors can rely on fresh articles being available to read whenever they want. Articles are also easy to locate on RSS feeds, as they can be categorized for easy navigation. This increases the chances of receiving visitors from other sites.

While modern technology has made integrating RSS feeds into one's website easier, contributing content to RSS feeds remains a bit more complex. To effectively post copy onto RSS feeds, you first need an RSS program that will allow you to format your content for syndication. If you are a professional web developer, for example, you might be interested in creating your own XML files to display content. This option will allow for more flexibility in the way content is displayed. If you lack the online knowledge to understand how to use XML, you might want to invest in one of the many RSS software programs that allow users to create and publish syndicated content without having to use any XML language at all.

One of the most popular software programs is FeedForAll, which is an inexpensive yet effective tool for developing and maintaining an RSS feed. This program, and others like it, allows users to utilize their own syndicated content, or to download existing feeds from the internet. It also provides users with the ability to manually edit their site to include pictures and colors which may create a more exciting online experience for customers.

As the need for the internet to provide instantaneous access to a wide variety of information continues to grow, RSS feeds have become a critical component of information distribution. It is likely that RSS feeds will serve as an important tool for sharing information on the web for years to come and could, in the not too distant future, even begin to rival e-mails as the preferred method of knowledge sharing. Therefore, understanding how best to utilize RSS feeds into your website may have lasting, positive effects on your business' growth.

Online reprint rights granted as long as the article is published in its entirety, including links and resource box. ? <a target="_new" href="http://www.websition.com/authors/1/John-Doetsch">John Doetsch</a> 2005.

John Doetsch is an author and founder of Websition.com where you will find additional <a target="_new" href="http://www.websition.com/">articles and web site content</a> written by the Internet's most gifted authors.

How to Make Money With Your Blog?

Make money blogging is fun: you enjoy blogging and getting money from blogging. As long as "making money with your blog" is concerned, it doesn't matter matter actually whether you enjoy or not. The way generating money from blogging is the same regardless of whether you enjoy blogging or painfully doing.

Let's get to the point.

Every business has the same process. That is, make potential customer come to you and sell your product, service or information. Paraphrasing it into blogging term, let the readers come to your blog and make them click the link like "Buy now", "Join Now", "Adsense Ads", etc.

We call readers as traffic. And about how many out of your readers click the link refer we as conversion rate. Of course, the higher the conversion rate, the better.

Specifically, make-money blogging follows for steps: <ul>

<li>Step 1: You blog, if not, start blogging.</li>

<li>Step 2: Bring traffic to your blog.</li>

<li>Step 3: PREsell with your blog.

That is, your blog content attract your reader to do some kind of action: buy your own product or go to the link you prepared, for example. But did you notice the word "PREsell"?. That's the most important thing in your make-money blogging plan. Many experienced Internet marketers say that people are not buying anything when you extensively try to sell something. This makes sense if you recall your own experience. Did you buy something when a blogger tried to sell something? Maybe not! Instead, give your readers useful information and create the warm mood by giving them the benefits of product that you have in mind. And then, only then place a link so that your readers click through. This is so called PREsell.</li>

<li>Step 4: Monetize: This is your final goal and the monetization has two streams.

-Sell your own product, service or information, if you have one.

-For the blogger who don't have their own product, it's still possible to earn money from their blog thanks to the many affiliate programs among which most popular one is "Google Adsense". But it's just one example out of hundred affiliate programs. if not thousand.</li> </ul>

In short, make-money-blogging is doing step-by-step action: that is, you blog, bring traffic, PREsell your blog readers and finally monetize. Without bringing traffic and achieving PREsell, it is not possible to monetize your blog. That's why you need to keep in mind the fact that make-money-blogging is step-by-step action. Due to the space limitation, I can't explain all the detail. If you want to know more about each step, you can read it from the article, <a target="_new" href="http://blog-sites.net/blogging-blogging/what-blog-can-make-money">what blog can make money?</a>.

About author
Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of <a target="_new" href="http://blog-sites.net">Blog Sites</a> and running <a target="_new" href="http://home-based-affiliate-business.com">Hom Based Affiliate Business</a> web site.

10 Benefits of Being a Blogger

I have been a blogger since September 2004 but only began to take it seriously this year. My blogging journey began when I stumbled upon a company owned by Google named Blogger.com that offered free tools to build a website.

In fact Blogger provides you with free several templates which you can customize in addition to a domain name hosted on their server. You can host your blog on your domain if you like to. Here are some benefits I found while blogging:

1) Easy to manage. A blog can be set up by even a novice in no time. All you have to do is post and publish. Blogging can get as simple as that or even more complex.

2) Easy to update. Blogs can be updated weekly or daily instead of sometimes monthly for a static website. Even adding a few paragraphs a day can be done in no time and can be beneficial to your search rankings.

3) Get spidered quickly. Search engine spiders crawl blogs with greater frequency than static webpages. I have had webpages that took over eight months to be indexed in Google where as Yahoo sometimes index my blogs in weeks sometimes days.

4) If you write articles then you can post all of them on your blog in addition to free reprint content that is widely available everwhere. The more content you have the better.

5) You can get your website indexed quicker. An article or a piece of news about your website with an optimize anchor link will send the spiders your way in no time.

6) Sell advertising space. If you have a popular blog then you can create a revenue stream by selling ad space. Blogads is one of several places where you can sell your ad space to major companies.

7) Similar to offering ad space, you can add Adsense to your blog to monetize your content. What I love about Blogger is that once you plug in the Adsense code into your main template, a new page is created and Adsense is automatically displayed when you make a post.

8) Review your affiliate products. If you have a blog that is in a niche then you can find affiliate programs for that niche and do reviews of them for a commission. Every time someone purchases the product or service through your link you make money.

9) It is still early to catch on. Blogs and RSS feeds are used by the minority of internet users which makes it excellent for you to start blogging right now. Less than 10% of the Americans which is the biggest online market use this emerging trend.

10) Can be syndicated. An easy way for your readers to stay in touch with updates is to add your blog to their My Yahoo and My MSN. They can see the latest information and how long ago it was added.

11) Yes a bonus! Savvy marketers know that if you add your blogs to My Yahoo you can have it indexed in no time by Yahoo. You can use these two websites to inform blog directories that you have updated your content.

a) http://WWW.Ping-o-matic.com

b) http://WWW.Rssfeedpromoter.com

So with all those benefits in mind there is no reason you should not start your own blog. So when do you decide to go blogging?

? Oceanroc Web Publishing

Nicholas Dixon has successfully use free articles as his primary source of marketing. Subscribe to his Free Four Day Email Course on how to use free articles to generate business and traffic at <a href="mailto:SubmitYourArticles@Getresponse.com">SubmitYourArticles@Getresponse.com</a> or visit <a target="_new" href="http://WWW.Oceanroc.Blogspot.com">http://WWW.Oceanroc.Blogspot.com</a>

How to Make Money With Your Blog?

Make money blogging is fun: you enjoy blogging and getting money from blogging. As long as "making money with your blog" is concerned, it doesn't matter matter actually whether you enjoy or not. The way generating money from blogging is the same regardless of whether you enjoy blogging or painfully doing.

Let's get to the point.

Every business has the same process. That is, make potential customer come to you and sell your product, service or information. Paraphrasing it into blogging term, let the readers come to your blog and make them click the link like "Buy now", "Join Now", "Adsense Ads", etc.

We call readers as traffic. And about how many out of your readers click the link refer we as conversion rate. Of course, the higher the conversion rate, the better.

Specifically, make-money blogging follows for steps: <ul>

<li>Step 1: You blog, if not, start blogging.</li>

<li>Step 2: Bring traffic to your blog.</li>

<li>Step 3: PREsell with your blog.

That is, your blog content attract your reader to do some kind of action: buy your own product or go to the link you prepared, for example. But did you notice the word "PREsell"?. That's the most important thing in your make-money blogging plan. Many experienced Internet marketers say that people are not buying anything when you extensively try to sell something. This makes sense if you recall your own experience. Did you buy something when a blogger tried to sell something? Maybe not! Instead, give your readers useful information and create the warm mood by giving them the benefits of product that you have in mind. And then, only then place a link so that your readers click through. This is so called PREsell.</li>

<li>Step 4: Monetize: This is your final goal and the monetization has two streams.

-Sell your own product, service or information, if you have one.

-For the blogger who don't have their own product, it's still possible to earn money from their blog thanks to the many affiliate programs among which most popular one is "Google Adsense". But it's just one example out of hundred affiliate programs. if not thousand.</li> </ul>

In short, make-money-blogging is doing step-by-step action: that is, you blog, bring traffic, PREsell your blog readers and finally monetize. Without bringing traffic and achieving PREsell, it is not possible to monetize your blog. That's why you need to keep in mind the fact that make-money-blogging is step-by-step action. Due to the space limitation, I can't explain all the detail. If you want to know more about each step, you can read it from the article, <a target="_new" href="http://blog-sites.net/blogging-blogging/what-blog-can-make-money">what blog can make money?</a>.

About author
Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of <a target="_new" href="http://blog-sites.net">Blog Sites</a> and running <a target="_new" href="http://home-based-affiliate-business.com">Hom Based Affiliate Business</a> web site.

Marketing With Blogs - Part 4

In the first three parts of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed the reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing, and provided some tips on using your blog to brand yourself, boost your reputation and sell your products and services online.

In this article, I provide specific tips on using your blog help you boost your marketing ROI and visibility online.

#7: Use Good SEO Practices

Besides using keywords appropriately, take the time to learn about using trackbacks, pingbacks, good linking practices and basic SEO techniques.

Remember that in blogging, public relations equals PageRank. The more you link to others, the more they will link to you.

Submit your blogs and feeds to directories and search engines.

#8: Track Your Results

Keep track of your sales, inbound links, citations by using tools like adtrackers, Blogpulse and Marketleap. Also offer your readers incentives to participate in surveys.

This information is very valuable because it will help you understand what your market needs and how to give it to them.

It will also help you understand how much your blogging is helping your marketing efforts so you can tweak your methods and get more out of them.

#9: Listen And Learn

When we're blogging we usually stating our opinions openly. As bloggers it's all right to be controversial and frank while blogging.

But what happens when a potential customer posts a nasty or rude comment? Some bloggers think its OK to be rude right back, and even go so far as to call that person names.

I don't believe that's the way to treat someone who take the trouble to sign-in and post a comment on your blog. For all you know they may have a genuine problem and could be speaking for others who have experienced the same.

Being rude will not only lose you a customer, it will also expose you as someone who is too immature to handle customer complaints.

Granted, some customers can be a pain in the butt, but everyone deserves to be heard. And handling nasty or rude comments with restraint will not only demonstrate your maturity, but build your customers respect for you.

People prefer doing business with someone they like and trust. So if you want your blog to be a place where your potential customers can interact freely and openly, I suggest you learn how to handle brickbats as well as bouquets with grace and maturity.

It used to be said that the internet was the great leveller because it empowers small businesses to compete with big businesses. But blogs have completely levelled the playing field for marketers.

Anyone with an internet connection can now sell their products and services solely on the basis of the quality of information they provide.

And that's the reason blogs are creating a revolution in marketing online.

Priya Shah is the CEO of <a href="http://www.ebrand360.com" target="_blank">eBrand360</a> and writes the <a href="http://marketingslave.com" target="_blank">Marketing Slave blog</a>.

This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

Blogging Dollars in 7 Hours or Less

Need to make money fast, but you don't want to spend a single cent to establish an online business? Fret not, dear friend. You could actually start earning from the web with zero capital, zero obligations and zero risks! All these can be accomplished within 24 hours! Read on and I'll show you how.

Hour 1

Try to find a profitable niche. Niches are highly specialized segments of a market where the demand is high and the supplies are low. There are few competitions in a niche, allowing you more opportunity to establish your online presence.

Think of a market that you could cater to. Then narrow it down by enumerating its subcategories. The more you are able to reduce the subject, the higher the profitability will be. For example, the general market you thought of is about dogs. A subcategory of this would be about Chihuahuas. A further subcategory would be about Chihuahua grooming.

Hour 2

Once you have found your niche, run a search at www.inventory.overture.com or www.nichebot.com . The results would show how many searches were made for that subject. The more searches there are, the higher the demand is for that topic.

Run a similar search of the same subject in any of the search engines on the net. The results would reveal your competition. Naturally, you would want a subject that has less competition. This would mean that you're looking for one that would produce few results in your searches.

Hour 3

Once you've found a lucrative niche, it's time to look for its relevant keywords. Run a search of the topic at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox to get a list of related keywords and keyphrases. Keep a copy of this list.

Hour 4

Open an account with a free blogging site. Or, if you already have your own website, download the Wordpress software at www.wordpress.com . It's free. And Wordpress can be easily integrated with any website.

Set up your account. Fiddle with the controls. You'll discover that using a blog is as easy as writing down your thoughts and clicking on a button to publish them for all the online world to see.

Hour 5

Enroll in any affiliate program of your choice. You could choose more than one, of course. Just make sure that such program is offering some products that cater to the niche you have chosen. Try to find a program that offers highly sellable products and generous commissions. Don't settle for a commission rate of less than 20%. Look for something that would give you at least 40% for every successful sale you would be able to refer. A good place to start is www.clickbank.com , but eventually you would want to "graduate" to something grander. But for your initial foray, ClickBank would suffice.

After enrollment, you would be able to immediately choose the products you want to pre-sell. Get the affiliate links for them. Do not lose these affiliate links.

Hour 6

It's time to put that blog to good use! The premise heart of this budget-friendly strategy is your blog. Blogs are excellent and cost-effective alternatives to websites. Search engines love them, and they have their own linking network as well. Also, they are easily updatable, and search engine spiders love consistently updated content.

Write an interesting piece about the niche you have chosen. It may be a personal review of one of your affiliate products, or your views on the niche in general.

The trick here lies in being able to strategically insert your affiliate links in your blog entries. It must be subtle. You won't want your blog to look like a blatant sales page. Your entries should be highly informative, first and foremost. Content is still king, and it is what will drive visitors to your site.

Hour 7

Go to www.pingomatic.com . Ping the blog directories and the search engines that can be found there. This would inform their spiders that your content has been updated, and they will check it out come the next relevant query. What does this mean? Fast indexing for your blog site!

So there you go. A zero dollar, seven hour marketing plan that would rake in some earnings. It doesn't stop there, however. Try to post a new entry everyday, and ping the search engines afterwards. Soon enough, you'll have a high traffic blog site where you could expose your affiliate links to a whole lot of people!

Good luck!

Discover the Secrets to Running a Highly Successful Online Blog with Our FREE 7 Day Report. Send a Blank Email to mailto:freeblogreport@getresponse.com PLUS: <a target="_New" href="http://www.malkeenan.com/top10tricks">Top 10 Tricks to Wordpress Revealed</a>

Making Money with RSS Feeds

First it was banner ads, then Google AdSense and now, the latest way to make money on your web site could very well be RSS feeds. Say what? I said: RSS is hot and you should be using it to drive eyeballs to your site.

Here's how it works:

Depending upon who you ask, RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary". Regardless of what you call it, RSS is a way to automatically publish (syndicate) someone else's content on your web site. Now don't worry, that's not the same as stealing someone else's content. There is nothing illegal about using RSS feeds. In fact, the publisher of the content wants you to have it show up on your site and that's why he or she makes it available as an RSS feed to begin with.

So what's in it for all parties concerned?

Using RSS is a win-win for both the publisher of the content, who gets their name out to potentially millions of sites and you, the web site owner who is pulling the content onto your site.

Content, by the way, means anything that a publisher decides it means. Typical content includes news headlines, new product update notices, blog summaries and lots of other stuff. It's the "content" portion of the equation that's good news for you.

Show me the money

One of the best features of hosting RSS feeds is that it gives your site an endless source of freshly updated and relevant content. This content acts as natural search engine spider bait which they will fill their little tummies on and come back for more every day. Their appetite for fresh content keep your rankings up.

Sticky Loyalty isn't a new Ben & Jerry's flavor, but it should be the goal of any serious webmaster who wants to create a web site that visitors return to over and over again. The use of carefully selected RSS feeds can make that happen by offering unique content which can't be found anywhere else.

Now please don't make the mistake of thinking "But they can get that same content at the publisher's site, why should they come to mine?". Just build it and they will come! Sorry, I couldn't resist saying that, but it's true. In addition to the RSS content, which they surely can get somewhere else, you are going to add your own sticky loyalty stuff that's all about whatever your site is all about to begin with. That combination of your own content and the RSS feed makes visiting you a purely unique experience that can't be found anywhere else.

You don't have to be a member of the Geek Squad to start showing RSS feeds on your site. Just visit any of the links below and get busy using RSS to make mo' money.

Free RSS to HTML PHP Script
http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm

Carp - Free Rss script
http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

RSS Equalizer
http://milleniumb.rssalizer.hop.clickbank.net

Clickbank Profits RSS Feed Generator
http://www.insiderscripts.com/cb/

Sandra Stammberger is the owner of Insiderscripts. At Insiderscript's programmers are working around the clock to develop affordable, powerful money making scripts that will help you drive traffic to your business. <a target="_new" href="http://www.insiderscripts.com">http://www.insiderscripts.com</a>

Is Blogging For You? Take This Quick Quiz

What The Hell Is A Blog Anyway?

The word 'blog' is a shortened version of 'web blog'. A 'web log' just means a log or diary-type entry on the web. So if you were away travelling on a round the world trip you might post a diary on a website so your friends and family could keep up to date with your progress. On this online diary, or 'web blog' you might also post photos for your friends and family to view.

And so - the BLOG was born. And it's really nothing more than that - a collection of thoughts and information from one individual to be read and seen by others.

So What Makes A Blog Different To A Website?

A blog is more immediate and informal. A blog doesn't have a homepage as such - it just has blog entries or 'posts'. The author or 'blogger' makes regular posts into the blog that are archived as new ones are added.

The main difference between a website and a blog is that a blog is designed to be added to much more frequently than a website. Some blogs are added to by their authors once a day or more! But it has to be said that such bloggers are in the minority.

**Is Blogging For You?

Well, it provides you with a unique opportunity to keep in close contact with a specific group of people. The CEO of a company may choose to launch a blog to keep in touch with staff members and shareholders. As a business-owner you might want to start a blog to let your customers or suppliers know what is happening in your business.

Blogs are not for everyone, so here's a few key questions to ask yourself.

** Question 1

Do you want to keep in close contact, on a one-to-one basis with a specific group of individuals?

** Question 2

Do you have the time to add a new and valuable information to your blog at least once a week? (Or can you pay someone to do this on your behalf?)

** Question 3

Do you find that people are always coming to you wanting more information about your product or services and that maybe posting regular updates on the Internet about this might free up your time to be spent on other activities?

** Question 4

Are you offering information products or services that you can provide 'tasters' of in a blog?

If you find yourself answering yes to most of these question then you should seriously consider starting your very own blog.

It's A Gut Feel Thing

Ultimately the decision comes down to whether you have things to say to others on a one-to-one basis. Unlike many websites you see out there, a blog is very much a person-to-person experience. A corporate blog wouldn't really work unless you had a face and name that people could put to all the posts.

It's also worth noting that a blog can be a two-way communication tool. Most of the blog software available includes options for readers to be able to post comments in response to what has been written. This can be an excellent marketing and research tool for your business if handled in the right way.

Whatever you do - don't take the decision to start a blog lightly. It can be a big commitment and once you've started out on that road there's no going back. People will be regularly checking your blog after you've publicised it and the pressure is then on to deliver readable material on a regular basis.

Some Blogging Software To Consider

Typepad - very popular and comes with a free trial and upgrade options: http://www.typepad.com BlogHarbour - also comes with a free 30-day trial http://www.blogharbor.com Blogger - the 'grand daddy' of blogging http://www.blogger.com

Happy blogging!

My blog: <a target="_new" href="http://michaelcheney.typepad.com/">http://michaelcheney.typepad.com</a>

Michael Cheney is Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM. Take the Free 7-Part Course "Internet Marketing Made Easy" and get your free sampler of 'The Bible' here: <a target="_new" href="http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/">http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/</a>

Blogging Can Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

Search engines are after one thing ? providing their users with the most relevant and up to date information to match the search term that was used. Search engine results are no good to users when the information doesn't relate to the search term. Nor are the results any good if they are old. People expect the most up to date, fresh information that is relevant to them.

That's why search engines love sites which are highly focused on a specific subject and which have regularly updated content. If you add material to your web site every day, you will get noticed by the search engines. If the information you add to your web site is directly centred on the precise focus of your site, all the better as far as the search engines are concerned.

That's why blogging can improve your search engine ranking. Blogging allows you to add content quickly and easily to your web site. However, you need to ensure two things:

1. The blog must be hosted at your domain ? not at blogspot.com. or any other of the blogging hosts.

2. The blog must contain relevant content and links which are well within the focus of your site.

A blog which is an online journal won't help your site's search engine ranking because the content isn't that relevant to the focus of your site. An online journal style of blog is unlikely to have keywords in the entries.

What this means is that your blog needs to contain hints, tips and short articles. It can contain summaries of articles which are carried in full on other pages. In short, your blog needs real, valuable content.

If you add real content to your blog pages, at the very least a couple of times a week, you will notice your blog gaining interest by the search engines. You will also see that your blog becomes a much more important 'entry point' for people who visit your web site. That's an indication that your blog page is gaining ground in the search engine rankings. And that will be due to its regular updating.

For more answers to questions on blogging you can get a free guide to the Top 15 Questions on Blogging from <A HREF="http://www.infoselling.com/blogging/howtoblog.htm" target="_blank">http://www.infoselling.com/blogging/howtoblog.htm</A>

Graham Jones is a psychologist who has specialized in the way we use the Internet. He is an author of 27 books and thousands of articles. He runs Infoselling.com where you can get a FREE report on how to sell your own information products, ebooks, reports and articles online.

<a target="_new" href="http://www.infoselling.com">http://www.infoselling.com</a>

How to Build a Niche Site With a Blog

Building niche sites is all the rage these days.

The basic strategy is very simple. Find a niche market that isn't oversaturated. Develop a list of related keywords people are searching on. Then write an article optimized for each one of your keywords. Once you have your articles, upload them to your site. Monitize your site with affiliate links and Adsense.

For this kind of niche site to be effective and make money, it is imperative that you get free traffic, and a lot of it. And that's exactly where a blog can be your best friend.

At its very simplest, a blog is just a structure. It's the bones of a web site. A blog is a simple way to publish and display your content online. Most of us think of blogs as a chronicle of news events, or commentary on news and items of interest. Or personal diaries.

Few people stop to think that you can build any kind of website with a blog. In reality, a blog can be used very effectively to build a niche site. The fact of the matter is, a blog is the easiest way to publish your niche site content. But the biggest reason to use a blog is that it can drive traffic to your site a lot faster than a statically-built site. A niche site built with a blog is a very powerful strategy.

First, choose your niche and research your keywords. Write your first article based on one of those keywords, just as you would when building a regular site. Then set up your blog and publish that article. Your niche site is now live.

To make your site structure the most effective, be sure to choose a blog that allows the use of Categories, such as Word Press or Moveable Type. Use your 10 most important keywords as the name of your Categories. Then file all your secondary keyword articles under those Categories.

Why is this so important? If you keep building your site with keyword-rich articles, eventually you could have hundreds of pages. Each of those pages will have a link to your 10 Categories. And each of those links will use the anchor text of your most important keywords. As a result of all those internal keyword-rich links, your site will end up ranking very well in the search engines for your Category names.

Now it's time to set up your traffic strategy. This is where a blog can really shine. There are many special RSS/blog directories that are hungry for feeds. By submitting your new blog to these directories, you can start getting traffic almost immediately. Quite often these feeds will result in a lot more traffic than all the major search engines combined. This is why it makes so much sense to build your niche site as a blog. You can have twice the traffic, and get it much faster than with a static site.

Here is a list of some of the top RSS/blog directories you should submit your site to: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Once you've submitted your site to the directories, you can get it indexed by Yahoo almost immediately by adding your RSS feed to your MyYahoo page. If you don't have a MyYahoo page, just go to http://www.yahoo.com. Now click on the MyYahoo link at the top and set up your free account. Once you have your account set up, click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.

When you go back to your MyYahoo page, your blog plus your first post should be shown. If you go look at your web stats for your site, you'll find that the Yahoo spider has already made a visit! Your new site should be indexed in Yahoo in just a couple of days. This is a strategy that some marketers were selling for $50 just a few months ago. And it works like a charm.

Every time you add a post, you can alert the RSS/blog directories by "pinging" them. There is a wonderful site at http://www.pingomatic.com that makes this very easy. You just have to type in your blog URL and Pingomatic will send your ping to Yahoo and about 15 other large directories. That will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!

During the first month, I would suggest that you write and add a new article every day. Blogs that are frequently updated get the most traffic. And you'll find that the major search engines will spider your site every day. At the end of a month, you'll have a 30-article niche site that is already getting a lot of traffic. If you've monetized your site with Adsense and related affiliate programs, you should also be making money already.

Once you've started building your niche sites with a blog, you'll never go back to doing it the old way again!

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) <a target="_new" href="http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com">http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com</a>

See RSS Feeds from Your Website

RSS feeds have made it so convenient to gather current information. If you have an RSS Reader on your desktop, then from this one window you can get up-to-date information from any sources of your choice, such as:

1. Latest news from news agencies

2. Last articles published on ezines such as this one

3. New products at retail outlets

4. New movie reviews

5. Recent entries in blogs

The list is endless, but you get the idea.

How would you like to give this convenience to the visitors of your website? Your visitors can see RSS feeds with latest info right on your web page instead of going from site to site. And it is very easy to install.

Before you start I suggest that you see some sites which display RSS feeds just to get a feel of it. You can see your My.Yahoo page from where you can subscribe to any RSS feed you want. Or, if you like, you can see some popular feeds on my website:

http://sanjay-j.com/feed.html

Ok, let's get started with these easy steps.

1. Click open this page :

http://www.feedroll.com/rssviewer/

2. From "Step One" of this page select just one RSS feed out of the dropdown list.

3. Lower on the page in "Step Two" you will see some options. In these options you can fill in your values or leave them at default setting.

4. Click on update button.

5. A similar looking page opens. Down below on this page in "Step Three" there is a code which has to be installed on your website. Copy this code and paste it on a text editor. On right side of the page you can see how the feed will look on your page.

6. Go to step 2 and select some other RSS feeds. Repeat steps 3 to 5 and you will have a collection of codes to be installed on your website.

7. Select the web page where you want to install RSS feeds. I would suggest creating a new page exclusively for RSS feeds.

8. Decide the location on the web page for installing RSS feed. In the HTML code of the web page, paste one of the codes of RSS feeds at the location you have decided.

9. See how RSS feeds looks on your page. You will need to be connected to the net to see the feeds. You can make necessary corrections until you get the right appearance.

10. Add all other RSS feed codes below the first one. Separate each code with breaks. This will put all the feeds in one column.

So that's it. Simple steps. This will display some popular RSS feeds on your web site using Java. From this starting point you can think of installing other Java scripts or PHP scripts to display any RSS feeds of your choice.

Sanjay Johari regularly contrubutes articles for several ezines. See his site for useful information for benefit of small business owners.

<a target="_new" href="http://sanjay-j.com">http://sanjay-j.com</a>

RSS is Not Only for Blogs

Contrary to popular opinion, RSS is not only good for delivering content from your blog, although blogs are what made RSS so popular.

In fact, RSS can be used to deliver a great variety of content and content types. If you can break down your content in to individual stories or individual pieces, you can deliver it via RSS.

Just to give you an impression of the power of RSS, here are some examples of content you can publish using it ?

--> MarketingVOX is using RSS to deliver internet marketing news to their readers as it becomes available. Instead of having to wait to receive all the news in a single e-mail newsletter, RSS users get them as soon as they are ready.

--> Amazon.com is using RSS to announce their bestsellers and to help their users keep track of releases they are most interested in.

--> Some affiliate managers already communicate with their affiliates using RSS. You can of course use it to communicate with any other target audience as well, such as your employees or team-members, and even your company owners.

--> FindSavings.com uses RSS to deliver savings coupons and related information.

--> Lockergnome uses RSS to provide visitors with the latest downloads and relevant software. Yet again other companies are using RSS to deliver product updates and patches directly to their customers, just as they become available.

--> A few hundred content publishers are using RSS to deliver audio content, such as .mp3 interviews and even &quot;radio&quot; shows.

--> Textamerica.com allows people to post pictures, videos & text from their mobile phones and then make this content available via RSS feeds.

--> Other companies are using RSS to deliver whitepapers and other educational content.

--> One company uses RSS as a consulting billing awareness tool. The consultants create activity reports and the RSS feeds from the activity channels carry the billable information to the accounting staff for invoice preparation.

--> Many internet publishers are using RSS to deliver their newsletters, as a supplement to their e-mail delivery. Since many people no longer want to give their e-mail address away to publishers, this is a great way to keep your e-zine readership growing.

--> Publish living digital catalogues of your products and provide your customers with your latest product releases, broken down by the categories they're interested in, and make it easy for them to order.

--> Provide your affiliates and marketing partners with RSS feeds they can promote to their visitors to better promote your products and still make a commission. Amazon.com is already doing it. When are you starting?

--> Create RSS autoresponders with scheduled messages, to keep in constant &quot;marketing&quot; contact with your prospects and slowly get them to the point of purchase.

--> Provide limited-access content to your customers, employees, team members and even investors, without fearing other unwanted eyes. Use RSS for internal communications, teamworking and other needs.

--> Provide your customers with easy access to software updates, delivered to them exactly as they become available, without the fuss of having to visit your web site or deal with huge e-mail attachments, which would get blocked by spam filters anyway.

--> Newsreporters are constantly bombarded with e-mail, so why not instead deliver your press releases via RSS? Or even better yet, why not deliver some of your releases as video comments, interviews or statements from your company managers or owners?

--> Help your visitors keep up with what's going on in your web forum, by publishing your latest forum posts or whole threads via RSS.

And yet these are still only a few examples of what you can do with RSS today, since something new comes up almost every day.

Are you as well already among those taking advantage of the marketing & publishing power of RSS?

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Rok Hrastnik is the author of ?Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS?, acclaimed as the best and most comprehensive guide to RSS for marketers by leading RSS experts. The complete guide on RSS for marketers: <a target="_new" href="http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa3">http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa3</a>

What Blog Can Make Money?

How to blog to make money from it?

Truly the whole picture of making money blogging is simple:you blog (B), traffic comes to your blog (T), you PREsell to them (P) and finally monetize (M).<br />

You may ask me "I have blog and peoples are coming. I need to know how to monetize, though not sure about what the PREsell means. So, tell me how to monetize, NOW." Understandable request. But before you rush into monetization, there is something you must take care of, otherwise you'll rush in vain.<br />

I read some articles talking about "how to monetize or in what way can you make money from your blog." They were OK and nothing was wrong. But most of them were missing one thing, very important one. If you have a lot of traffic, say 10,000 visitors a day, you may need to focus only for how to monetize. And the way of monetization is simple, something like placing banner, affiliate text link, Google Adsense, (listed a few) on your blog page. What you have to realize is that "B--T--P--M" is really STEP-by-STEP. Monetizing will work only when you make a good success in previous three STEPS (B--T--P)<br />

What blog can make money?

The answer is Any Kind! So, the right question should be "what blog can make more money?"<br />

The answer is Well Prepared Blog! :-) What to prepare? Why not just posting? If you want to just blog and you don't care things to prepare, maybe you're not serious about making money from your blog. Otherwise, please read on.<br />

First, I want to say this, "DON'T BLOG unless you know what you're going to blog!"<br />

By this, I don't mean only conclusion of you blog. Before you blog, sit back from your keyboard and take a time to answer following 3 questions:<br />

1. About what topic am I going to write? Are many people want to know about that topic?
2. With that topic, what product or link am I gonna introduce?
3. And how am I gonna do that?<br />

What do I have in mind about those questions?<br />

1. About topic, I'll do a little bit of research before I write. Have you heard about "keyword research"? There are free tools fit for keyword research. Not only for blog but for any kind of writings, if Internet is involved, I do keyword research first. For example, for this article, I took a little bit of time to find what kind of keyword people are using when they want to look for information about how to make money from blog. And I found people are using "make money blogging." This keyword research has two fold benefit. One is that it helps you fine what kind of topic people want to read. The other is that by using these keyword you'll have better chance to be positioned high in search engine result page.<br />

2. About question 2, I'm thinking about what monetization method I'm going to use. Am I going to introduce an affiliate program, a book or place Adsense?<br />

3. The purpose of asking question 3 was to emphasize the word "PREsell". In blogging, though you want to sell something or want your visitor to click links, don't rush it.<br /> What do you do if you see a blogger is doing nothing but a sales pitch. You leave him once and for all, don't you? So PREsell is the key of how to write.It is something like creating a worm mind to your suggestion.<br /> If you want to make money from your blog, start writing it only after you know what keyword is related your topic and what kind of monetization you can apply. This can make a huge difference.<br /> If you want to know about how to do a keyword research, you may want to read this blog, <a target="_new" href="http://blog-sites.net/blogging-blogging/traffic-to-blog-keyword-research">Traffic to Blog: Keyword Research</a>.<br /> To sum up, a blog that can make more money is;<br /> 1. a blog talking about the topic people want to read and this can be found by keyword research <br /> 2. a blog that uses the the keyword in the post so that search engine can easily pick up <br /> 3. a blog that PREsells product by creating warm mood.

About Author
Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of <a target="_new" href="http://blog-sites.net">Blog Sites</a> and running <a target="_new" href="http://home-based-affiliate-business.com">Hom Based Affiliate Business</a> web site.

Boost your Search Engine Rankings with an RSS Feed

I'm here to teach you about how RSS Feeds can boost traffic for your website. You may have heard of it, but I guarantee you are not harnessing the full power of the tool. RSS Feeds are very hot, and the marketing pro's are getting their websites listed in Google within 2 to 3 days.

What is an RSS Feed?

RSS stands for &quot;Really Simple Syndication.&quot; Think of RSS this way: Whenever a writer who belongs to a syndicate writes a column, they don't just write it for their local paper, every article goes up on the newswire and any paper who belongs to the syndicate can reprint it.

First, you have to download an RSS Reader, a program that combines all the news online in one place. You can download a reader for free at www.RssReader.com. Once you've downloaded a reader, you can click any topic that suits your need, and only those topics will be delivered right to you.. Why would I put RSS on my website?

An RSS feed can be thought of like this. Let's take five news sources (Yahoo, MSN, CNN, ESPN, FOX). An RSS reader would scan all five news sources and take each headline and create a summary of the article. Now, you can actually sort the news stories and have only the ones you are interested in delivered right to your website from all five news sources. Search Engines are crawling websites and looking for fresh content. If you have an RSS Feed, you are getting up to the minute news stories. These constantly change whenever a new story comes out. The Search Engines will give you a higher Page Rank because it thinks your page is updated on a regular basis.

How do I add one to my website?

I tried an RSS Feed for the first time, and it took less than five minutes. Here's what it looks like:

Bush Celebrates Shuttle's Launch (AP)
NASA sends shuttle back into space after long pause (Reuters)
Shuttle Discovery Blasts Into Orbit (AP)
NASA's aging workhorse returns to space (AFP)
NASA Returns to Flight as Discovery Reaches Orbit (SPACE.com / LiveScience.com)

As you can see, this is my very first RSS Feed. All the news stories within the last hour regarding the shuttle launch are now listed for me and my visitors to read. Guess what? It took less than 5 minutes, and I instantly have an RSS Feed. Why do I need one?

Search Engines are crawling your site and if you are not providing quality, up to the minute content then you are getting placed further down the rankings. Your competition who has this information is getting FREE advertising from the Search Engines who are placing their page 1st or 2nd when users search for a particular keyword.

How do I put an RSS Feed on my site?

You can now place an RSS Feed on your website in THREE easy steps.

? Step 1: Search for topics that you are currently interested in (use Yahoo).

When you see an orange RSS or XML box like the one above, you know that article is compatible with a feed. Copy the URL of the webpage.

? Step 2: Go to http://www.feeddigest.com and paste the URL in the digest for them to create a two line code for your webpage. You can also copy and paste the long page of code if you understand programming.

? Step 3: In Frontpage, Go to Insert - a web component - html markup and paste the two or three line script that RSS Digest gave you. Check it out! Your first RSS Feed! Try it yourself right now, create your first RSS feed in under five minutes, FREE! The only way you can truly learn about them is for you to JUMP in FEET FIRST!

Kit Elliott is the author of The Traffic Toolchest. His ethical approach to marketing makes him one of the top experts in his field. His highly anticipated book Super Affiliates Guide to Riches is expected to launch by mid-August 2005 at <a target="_new" href="http://www.superaffiliate.com">http://www.superaffiliate.com</a> . Check out The Traffic Toolchest at <a target="_new" href="http://www.thetraffictoolchest.com">http://www.thetraffictoolchest.com</a> to get over 70 valuable marketing tools.

Blogging for Personal Benefits

While there is a lot of debate about blogs replacing emails in the future, I would rather look at blogs in a different perspective. The purpose of all technology is to make life easier for the user. Blogging is an evolving technology which when harnessed by an individual could make it very easy for anyone to communicate effectively. It empowers the individual in ways hitherto not available so easily.

Blogs are dynamic web pages which can be created by anyone without any hassles of technical knowledge about web design or HTML. It is an easy to use program like the email. Just type and click to be visible as a web page. All major email players like Yahoo, MSN and Google now provide a blogging service. Just sign up for free select a template and follow the customization instructions and within moments you are online with your web page.

How can an individual use Blogging for benefit?

Use it as a Method of Personal or Public Communication

Use it to post your communications to a select group of people or widely and publicly to communicate within your specific area of expertise or business.

Use It As Your Journal

We all know the importance of writing a journal. You can make a journal of events and thoughts which you may feel will help others. You can write about your life and work, the society, your views on everything which you feel counts and others must know about it. In a evolving society individual expression and the freedom to self publish can bring about a global social revolution by shaping opinions jointly with the community and spreading like a viral.

Knowledge Sharing

Use your blog to write articles, views and comments on your industry. Use it to share knowledge about your industry. This will project you as an expert improving your business and career.

Networking

You can link to others in your area of expertise or industry by linking with similar blogs. This will help you network and create a wider context as well as content for your blog. With a comments feature added to your blog you can make it interactive with more joining your blog, adding fresh perspectives to issues.

Business Tool

It is the most cost effective tool for small business or professionals working independently. You can use the blog to promote your business, interact with your customers, give advice and develop business with an interactive web page where your readers can post their own comments and feedback.

Linking to Content

No more the hassles of book marking WebPages. You can simply put a link in your posting along with your comments which could be accessed by you as well as your community and social network.

There are also simple technical aspects like using RSS, which can create immense exposure.

An individual can put a blog to good use in ways only his own creativity and needs would limit. It is still early days. Just register and start blogging for your own self development.

This article is copyright ? of R.G. Srinivasan a Certified Trainer, Small Business Consultant, Writer and Author. He also writes a regular blog on home-business resources which you may check out at <a target="_new" href="http://www.home-businessresources.blogspot.com">http://www.home-businessresources.blogspot.com</a> for online marketing tips, small and home business resources, opportunities and online promotional strategies.