blogging 102

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

One of the biggest “benchmark” figures that most people quote when trying to make a full time living from home is $4000 per month. Roughly one thousand dollars per month. Most people seem to think, especially those JUST getting started, that this sort of consistently earned income would give them the comfort to quit their day job and commit to creating an online blogging empire of their very own.

I’m going to give you the absolute EASIEST way to do it, and while it does take a little bit of work to get started, it’s pretty simple to support (and scale UP) once you have.

Filed Under: Sell More Stuff From Your Blog (and start right now)

The best way to begin? Unless you have a hardcore “passion” for something you really want to offer, service wise, yourself….affiliate marketing is the best place to begin. But listen up: You’ve got to be smart, and you’ve got to be savvy, and you have to go the OPPOSITE direction of most of the silly advice that you’ll see out there in wild.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, your earnings WILL be predicated on the programs you pick. Your OFFER is often completely related to your outcome.

The easiest way to sell more stuff, without working ONE lick harder is to pick better offers. For example, there are plenty of affiliate offers that convert really, really well that pay $75 and up per sale. Some on CPA style sign up’s as well. (which have better conversion rates as a general rule, often 8-10%) If you make one sale per day, on a $100 dollar payout, on ONE affiliate blog, you are already almost hitting your target of $4000 per month. You simply need another 30 bucks a day, and you’re there.

So just do this: Write articles like this one. Drive ALL of the readers to your blog, where you have content created around one HYPER specific product or offer. Pick the product properly, look for high converting, high EPC offers that are already selling well. (the biggest mistake people make is looking for “micro-niches” – don’t do it, find stuff converting already in BIG markets) Use lots of off site strategies like article marketing, press release submissions, social strategies and you will SHOCK yourself at how easy it really IS, to make a full time living from your blog (and FAST!).

Author: Alexa Ross
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable Multi-cooker

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

Who else is thinking about starting a corporate blog? If you are anything like many of my high falutin friends in big business or professional services like law or medicine, the thought of starting a blog to attract clients, patients or customers seems a little bit silly, doesn’t it? If you said YES to that, the chances are you are not too plugged in to the content creation (and distribution) revolution that’s taking place online right now…and the bad news is that it will most likely leave you far behind, and fast!

Why do I say this? I think you probably already know, but many of the younger, more aggressive professionals are coming straight to the market with a firmer grip on technology as a driver for their business building efforts, and many of the “old boys club” are simply suffering as a consequence.

With this in mind, let’s look at 2 simple ways that a corporate blog can build BACK your brand and even more importantly, allow you connect with your clients and customers in a dramatic fashion.

- The online marketplace is exceedingly transparent, and very vocal. What does this mean? People have opinions, and are NOT afraid to share them online. Many of the folks who may think twice about complaining to your front desk, or calling you directly, will have no trouble venting on a social networking site, a blog, web site or local search marketplace results. By starting and maintaining a blog, you are not only giving yourself a voice, you are also giving folks a chance to “connect” with you personally, and often, we’ve found our clients who do this, will get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to customer complaints.

Why? People will comment on YOUR blog first, or contact you before going public with their complaints. Of course a blog also allows you to share your ethos, your USP, your strengths and even your weaknesses if you’re so inclined to share them. (which can actually help people connect with you even more!)

- Search Engine rankings: Plain and simple, blogs are incredible search engine magnets. They’ll rank well for highly targeted, and highly coveted keywords that you NEED to own for your market, and if you keep them updated somewhat regularly, you’ll get so much FREE traffic, that you’ll probably find advertising is no longer necessary! (Don’t laugh…many professionals do SO well with blog marketing, that they simply stop paying for advertising altogether)

Author: I. R. Hollander
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Electric Pressure Cooker

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes

Has Google finally embraced RSS with their new XML
powered Sitemaps program? Well, sort of, but it seems
more like a hug than a strong impassioned embrace!

It does use XML technology which allows for the
crawling and updating of your site’s web pages.
You can even include your entire web site (all urls)
with this indexing program. For anyone targeting the search
engines, especially Google, this program (still in beta)
is a MUST HAVE.

If you require timely updating of your most popular pages
Google’s new Sitemaps may prove indispensable. It’s a little
premature to assess the importance or impact of Google’s
new program but anyone wanting to give their site a
competitive edge should be gearing up.

How it works:

There are several ways to set-up a XML Sitemap, perhaps
the easiest way is to use the open-source Generator which
you can download from Google. This is a Python file that
you can upload to your webserver and this generator
will create a sitemap from your ‘URL lists, webserver
directories, or your access logs’.

It would probably be wise to check with your hosting provider
to see if they can accommodate this Generator on your webserver.
It you have a small site there should be no problem but if your
site runs into the 1,000’s of URLs or pages — check to see how much
bandwidth such a system will take up. It’s better to be safe
than sorry!

Once done, you have to then submit your newly generated XML Sitemap
to Google and the search engine will use this XML Sitemap to
update and index your site whenever you make changes on your site.
You will need to have a Google account.

You may also submit text files containing URLs from your web site
to be included in Google Sitemaps but these text files will have
or will be given low priority for the time being.

To get started on your own Google Sitemaps Account you can click here:
Google’s Sitemaps [https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login]

What’s great about it:

Besides seeing Google finally grab the RSS wildcard, it
gives you better control of how and when the search
engines update your web site pages. Perhaps, the most
important aspect for Internet Marketers, you can now assign
the importance that’s given to any of your particular
pages. As most marketers know, certain pages on your
web site are more important than others; these pages
earn money, build your contact list, or direct your
site’s visitors in the right direction. In other words,
you can now place more emphasis on your web site’s
‘bread and butter’ pages. A BIG Plus!

With Google Sitemaps you can decide the importance
placed on these pages by using the priority XML tag.
This rating system is relative, it only relates to
the pages on your own site.

Likewise, you can also indicate how frequently your
pages changes by using the changefreq XML tag. More or
less instructing Google when your page will be updated
or changed. This is a win-win situation for everyone;
Google gets the freshest content for its users and
you gain more control of the frequency of the updates
done with your site or web pages. This may have a direct
influence on the profitability of your web site.

For those who are actively marketing thru the search
engines and keywords — Santa may have come a little
early this year. Of course, the jury will be out for
awhile but Google Sitemaps will probably have a
positive impact on your bottom line.

What it means for Google:

For those of us who have been following and watching
the RSS wildcard for the past couple of years, it takes
away some of the frustration and a little of the puzzlement
from Google seemingly total disregard of RSS.

RSS is not a fad, it is not a trend and it’s not going away.
Instead, its importance is growing. It is fast becoming ‘the’
way data is moved on the web. One could even speculate that
in the very near future all web pages will have an RSS
component, perhaps a hybrid of ‘XML/HMTL’ or an embedded
XML code that will work with all browsers, search engines
and servers.

For Google to ignore the growing importance of RSS, blogging,
podcasting, broadcatching, the RSS featured Firefox browser,
MyYahoo, not to mention all those orange XML logos popping
up on most of the major sites on the web — is beyond comprehension.
Why Google does not have an RSS search on its main search engine
page still seems baffling. Bringing out a homepage and not
including an RSS feature is just foolhardy (They may introduce
this feature later).

For those firmly in the RSS corner, Google’s continued
disregard for RSS became more than a little frustrating
to observe. It was downright rude! Perhaps Google was waiting
to incorporate RSS in a program like this new XML Sitemaps?
Can this mean that Google has finally accepted the importance
of RSS and they’re starting to make amends? More importantly,
could there still be a few more RSS goodies in the Google Jar
left to be announced?

One can only speculate but when it comes to RSS and Google,
lets just hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

Author: Titus Hoskins
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: How Electric Pressure Cookers Work

Reading time: 4 – 7 minutes

What is RSS? To begin with, it’s one of those things everyone says is easy to understand. And it is, as soon as you have your own ‘ah-ha’ moment.

I think the easiest way to explain it is to walk you through an example of RSS in action. I’m not going to try to explain everything on the subject, but this should help get you started.

>> Let’s sign you up for the Excess Voice RSS Feed

If you want to read the Excess Voice newsletter every two weeks you can either read it in your email inbox, or read it in your web browser.

You already know how it works when you subscribe to a newsletter via email. You sign up, hope the spam filters don’t block some or all issues, and then read the newsletter in your email program, whatever that might be.

With RSS, instead of subscribing via email, you subscribe via a web page.

>> Let’s walk through the subscription process

If you have a Yahoo! account, go to My Yahoo! and click through to the Add Content page. On the right side of the ‘Find Content’ area you will see a link that reads, Add RSS by URL.

Follow that link and, to add the Excess Voice RSS feed, simple paste this url into the field provided,
http://www.excessvoice.com/excessfeed.xml (Don’t click on this link. Cut and paste it.)

Now click the Add button and you’re done.

If you don’t use Yahoo!, register at Bloglines.com and follow the same process. Bloglines is a free service and is where I read all the RSS feeds to which I have subscribed.

>> What happens now?

Now, whenever you go to My Yahoo! or Bloglines, you will see when the Excess Voice feed has been updated. In Yahoo! it tells you how many hours or days ago the feed was updated. In Bloglines the feed name will appear in bold, and a number after the name tells you how many items within the feed have been updated since you last checked. (Bloglines is one of several similar services. It’s just the one I found first and have used ever since.)

>> What you see…

When you check the Excess Voice feeds, you will see that with each feed, you don’t get the complete content…you don’t see the whole newsletter, the complete article or all of the review. You see the title and the first ten lines or so of content. Just enough so you can decide if you are interested or not.

If you want to read the whole article, for example, click on the link provided and you will be taken to the page on the Excess Voice site where I have published the complete item.

Meanwhile, here is what I am doing behind the scenes to deliver this information

I added one new document to the root folder of my web site on the server. It’s an XML file, “excessfeed.xml” (no need to know what that is).

Within this XML file I include the necessary coding and the preview text and links you see in My Yahoo! or Bloglines.

Whenever I add a new article, review or newsletter to my site, I update the content in this XML file and upload it to my server.

Yahoo! and Bloglines will periodically check that XML file so see if it has been updated. If it has, they let you know in the ways I described above.

I can decide how many feeds I want to create and how many items to have within each feed. I can even add small images. And I can schedule when the feeds are updated. For instance, with my newsletter, I send out the newsletter broadcast at the same time as I upload the revised XML file. So it is published by email and on the web at the same time.

>> How do I do all this XML coding?

What’s XML? I have no idea. I use a WYSIWYG software tool called FeedForAll. It provides me with a simple interface that enables me to create, format, edit and upload my feeds.

>> As an information seeker…now you can go RSS crazy

Once you get the idea and have chosen your preferred RSS Reader (Yahoo!, Bloglines etc), you can subscribe to dozens of different feeds…news, newsletters, articles, blogs and more.

Sign up with one click, and unsubscribe with one click (No more newsletter unsubscribe hassles.)

>> As a publisher…gain more readers

More and more people are turning to RSS. They use it instead of subscribing to newsletters. They also use it to choose which elements of content they want to hear about from various sites.

>> As a webmaster…publish tons of fresh, updated content

Yes, if you have a website, you can have RSS content delivered directly to your site. You want the latest art and culture news from the BBC showing on your site, automatically updated? No problem. Hence the ‘Syndication’ in RSS – Really Simple Syndication.

>> In conclusion…

This brief explanation isn’t intended to tell you everything there is to know about RSS. But I hope I have covered enough to give you your own ‘ah-ha’ moment.

Author: Nick Usborne
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Programmable pressure cooker

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes

A brand new marketing tool predicted to replace email is
currently sweeping the World Wide Web like a storm.

The Internet is experiencing the so-called “orange” revolution
and there’s no stopping to it. The online marketing world is
rigorously seen chanting a 3-letter mantra, R-S-S.

Yes, RSS is here and it’s got substance, material, style,
sophistication…

In a word, it’s got the ‘X’ factor.

RSS, which stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, is the newest
and the fastest growing technology online. Many publishers,
webmasters and marketers are adopting RSS. It has helped spam go
down to a great extent and made bulk messages a thing of past.

No wonder spammers are shaking in their boots all over the web!

Here are 6 strong reasons why RSS beats email marketing to the
core:

1. Kiss Spam Filters Goodbye – RSS can help you distribute your
content directly to your subscribers, without any spam filters
interfering. Your messages will never get blacklisted and
blocked and will always be delivered promptly, unless and until
your subscribers choose to end the relationship themselves.

2. Subscribing Is Easy – Your subscribers don’t have to worry
about giving out any of their personal details to subscribe and
read your RSS feeds. All they need to do is, add your feed to
their online or desktop RSS reader and that’s it. They are ready
to receive and read content from you without any hassles.

3. Un-subscribing Is Easier – Removing your subscriber’s email
from your email list automatically has it’s own share of
problems, and it doesn’t work all the time. However, when you
talk about RSS, it’s easy for your subscribers to unsubscribe
from your publication. They can stop receiving
messages from you any time by simply deleting your feed from
their RSS reader. Simple as that!

4. Get Your Message Out In An Instant – Whenever you have
something new to publish, all you have to do is update your
already published feed and your message gets updated everywhere
it’s subscribed. No more worrying if your subscribers got your
message or not.

5. Never Get Accused of Spam – It’s very easy to get accused of
sending unsolicited mail nowadays since people forget they even
gave you their email address. RSS solves this problem
completely, as the messages which you send out, will appear
directly in your subscribers RSS reader. So the question of
contacting them illegally does not even arise.

6. Build Long Lasting Relationships – Not only RSS builds a
strong relationship with your existing subscribers but also
helps in attracting new potent subscribers who are interested in
what you offer. People who subscribe to your feed want to
receive content from you and hence, can be regarded as
subscribers you can count on.

RSS can work like a charm for your business and help you gain
thousands of quality subscribers and leads within a few weeks…

You just have to become a part of the orange revolution!

Author: Mustafa K
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: PCB Prototype & Manufacturing