Is it just me or does everybody else notice how blogs at WordPress seem to get Page Rank rather easily? Being a member of StumbleUpon I have opted to search through WordPress sites only. Anything WordPress that was shown to me was a result of clicking Stumble.

When I was going through the sites it seemed as if almost every single WordPress blog had a page rank. I’m not talking about Page Rank of one or two, but I saw the majority of them having three’s, four’s, and even five’s. Most of them had few or no backlinks at all! However, they had a Page Rank most bloggers would pay for.

Now there are the obvious benefits of obtaining a page rank, but we won’t go through that here. This post wasn't meant to encourage you to sign up on WordPress instead of Blogger. Why WordPress? Even though you can't advertise on WordPress, you may in the future plan to purchase your own domain. Well, if you have a Page Rank blog of your own that you can give unlimited backlinks to, then it'll be way more effective than the forty bucks or less you’ll make on Blogger with AdSense.

Just try throwing up a WordPress blog and a few posts. Then, come the next Page Rank update and see what you’ve received. You may get lucky and hit something. I shall consider this as well; I have a Wordpress blog myself. Although Blogger may be lacking in terms of Page Rank, it is nevertheless still a good choice. This post was meant to clarify some questions I got from the other posts. Again, hope it helps!

-Aud

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Apparently, one of the most popular ways of making money with your blog is through affiliate accounts. An affiliate is when you get paid for bringing business to a certain site. It usually involves either the person clicking on one of your specially coded links that have a referral code on them, or a banner displayed on your site with the same referral code on it.

The question is, when do you review these affiliates? If you are in the same niche that I’m in, then there may be a wise time to review them. If I were to put up some reviews of the sites I wish to show you in hopes of you signing up, I wouldn’t want to do that as my first post. It would end up unnoticed. Not many people will search through your archives, especially if they aren’t easy to search through. There is a time and place for everything.

It is recommended that if you post it after you have about 200 RSS subscribers then you'll have about 200 people who will potentially read the post and maybe even sign up. Keep in mind a review should always be honest to your readers because there is no point in lying to the reader, they will only sign up and quit. Faking a post is the worst thing you can do. You will get nothing out of this and you will have wasted your reader's time. In some instances, you may lose readers.

You should only review them after you get a decent amount of daily traffic. This amount will vary depending upon your blog's niche. I would suggest somewhere in the neighborhood of 200+ daily different people who read your blog (Google Analytics will provide this information), or 200+ RSS subscribers. The longer you wait, the better your chances are for success.

If you happened to have posted these offers before, then why not throw links to yourself in the middle of an article? Point an article on the topic of the affiliate site to your review. People will usually click this link to another one of your posts if they have an interest in it.

Another rather common way of getting these links out there would be in a monthly earnings report. If you are eager to share with your readers how much you are making each month, then why not put some amounts that you've earned from each program. With links right next to your earnings, you can have your affiliate code in there. This way they will choose some of the more profitable sites and hopefully sign up; this method serves as a source of appeal.

Remember: the longer you wait to actually dedicate a post about them, the better you’ll do. If you have already reviewed them, don’t republish it. You can use many other techniques to display your affiliate codes somewhere else on your site. There's always more than one way to do something. In this case, I will have to say that's true.

-Aud

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When you're me, you probably don't post on a day to day basis. I post from time to time, not daily. I’ve had plenty of time on my computer today that I spent wasting my time checking stats for various blogs, as well as spent time on forums, and even reading other making money blogs. When you want to run a very successful blog, you have to set your priorities. If you want to make money with your blog, you have to follow through on these priorities on a daily basis.

One method to make sure you have a post to publish everyday would be by writing the next days post the day before. Then when tomorrow comes and you realize you haven’t written that day's post, then you will have time to make up for it by writing one up and publishing it.

It’s all about getting into a routine. I suggest doing it on a day-to-day basis if possible. Even though I'm not doing this myself, I would not leave my blog sitting there for more than week. I’m still rather new to having my own blog and have to find a way to work in the daily tasks that require my time on the computer. It may take a little getting used too, but the main point is, don’t delay.

If you delay writing and publishing it once, you are sure to delay it again, and again, and eventually failing to do so at all. If I am to leave my blog idle for more than a week, then I will ensure myself that I will write up another post in order to make up for it. Remember to always prioritize your tasks! :)

-Aud

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When I'm looking at other blogs, I see this every once in a while and wonder, "What the heck were they thinking?" The topic clearly states one idea and throughout the post they start talking about irrelevant things. I’m not sure what the logic is here. If you are trying to increase the word count (which isn't how you would do it anyway) then you are only hurting your topic. This happens to me every once in a while. I start talking about one tip to help you blog more efficiently and it starts to stray into some other irrelevant topic. The topic isn’t terrible, but the sudden change in topic might be the difference between less views and more views.

Hopefully, most of us will usually recognize this and stop. I pull out some information that's not really necessary for the topic. There are some instances where a brief overview is needed. If that is the case, you will probably see me say something like, “I’m not going to get into that here”. This simply suggests that I will be writing about this in the future. Why try to cram it in a post when I can simply write about it in tomorrow’s post on that topic? The post would be much more accurate and detailed on the idea than it would be if I had left it in another topic. Of course, this can also lead to an open-ended discussion about what I wasn't going to talk about.

I suggest having a pencil and paper or better yet, the Fire Fox extension Quick Note available when you are writing. I usually just open up Notepad or Microsoft Word and type a few sentences down.You can jot down basic ideas for other future topics. It will help you when you have writer's block because you can then look and choose topics you might write about in the future.

Let's get to the point: don’t cram multiple ideas into one post. It will help you in more ways than one. You will be better off on Google’s search engines for more content, more keywords, and you will also have another article to submit to social bookmarking programs. A more detailed post on a topic you plan to write later is better than a small paragraph in a post about something else. It's best not to get off topic, which is what I tend to do on blogs such as these. Don't make that mistake and always check and reread your post. It doesn't take a lot of effort, trust me.

-Aud

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Hey everyone, I know I haven't really been active the past week. I was preoccupied with a few life related problems. However, I won't get into that here; it's irrelevant. :) Anyways, what I have to say today is really about this blog I've found interesting seeing as how I chose Blogger over Wordpress. This blog convinced me otherwise. Themelab presents a couple of good ideas on why Wordpress would be a better choice. I have already been through that process on one of my previous posts, but I have to admit, he was really convincing. Although I'm not planning to get my own domain soon, I might consider hosting this blog on Wordpress. In addition, Themelab also had some really nice looking CSS Wordpress templates and layouts. It also provides a LOT of resources; not just themes, but downloads that you might want for your blog. Just something I wanted you guys to check out if you had time. It might help you out if you're still having trouble deciding on which blogging platform to choose. Good luck!

-Aud

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Just thought I’d let all of you bloggers out there using the popular CPanel (if you haven't heard of it before, click here to check it out). It is probably the biggest site for hosting. Almost all of the larger hosting companies point you there. Unless you are a brilliant and experienced coder with CPanel, then you probably aren't likely to install the WordPress blog by downloading and editing the files like WordPress teaches you to do.

We settle for an option called Fantastico where it will install the blog, and sign you up. It’s very easy. The only thing was, it was a bit lagging behind in WordPress updates. However, it was just updated recently. Feel free to update your blogs now! If you plan on buying a domain, then Fantastico is a pretty good option. Hope this tidbit of information helps!

-Aud

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Continuing on from my bookmarking post a few weeks ago...

When do you bookmark and when do you NOT bookmark? Well, this is a question many bloggers usually face. Do you add your own content to sites like StumbleUpon and Digg in order to receive some instant, artificial traffic, or do you avoid submitting your own work for various reasons? There is reasoning to either side of the story.

There are quite a few negatives. The first being, your accounts on these sites may get tagged for spamming, as well as get your blog automatically banned from being submitted on these sites. Your content appears better to those very strict Stumblers who carefully examine your posts, submitters, and votes given to determine if you are abusing the site. A possible outcome for abusing this is a permanent ban from the site itself. Definitely not good. :(

Your content will also do better. If you aren’t the one submitting it, that means somebody else actually liked it enough to submit it. It’s obviously of some good quality. It’s more likely to be popular even if you haven't gotten your first +1 feedback. It’s a great benefit to let others submit articles of their own.

However, remember that there are positives that you can get out of submitting your own unique and special content. Obviously, if your site needs RSS Subscribers when you submit your own content, then you will have a free and somewhat targeted traffic coming to your site (depending upon which social bookmarking site). Having 300+ visitors to your site increases the chances of having somebody subscribe to your RSS feed. While it is a long shot, if you use the right tags, over time you may manage to snag a few.

Adding content to certain sites also puts your link in the user's feed, giving you a link back to your own site. I’ve found backlinks from www.username.stumbleupon.com before. Even though it may not be much, it’s a free and easy backlink! This can be extremely helpful for certain bloggers.

Last but not least, there is the traffic factor. To some, it may just be the desired encouragement. Nobody wants to blog to a blank audience (as I have stated before). If there is nobody to read your content then you may get discouraged. Adding content to these social bookmarking sites gets you some traffic, and maybe some feedback even if it is positive or negative. It doesn't matter, as long as it is traffic and feedback! It can help clarify exactly what you are doing well and what you should plan to do, as well as what you may want to change. The users of the bookmarking sites can get very harsh at times with their constructive criticism, so make sure you are willing to receive it. Don't start arguments, fights, etc. It will only make your blog look worse.

To bookmark, or not, it's up to you.

-Aud

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