Helping newbie bloggers get a hang of blogging
You spend so much time researching a topic, writing it and publishing to your blog. Only to being copy-pasted word for word, without giving any proper credit to you as the original author. I know how that feels. Here I will outline some of the steps you can take to stop the bad guys from stealing your content, and how to take action when you need to bring that down. [Continue reading…]
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What type of content should I post in my blog?
If you had asked me in 2008, I would answer that you should definitely write articles for your blog. Now over the years the definition of content has been changed. Now there is more than one type of blog content. Back then we would say content writing, now we say content creation. There is video, audio, image, flash, animation, slideshow, documents and many more forms of content you can create for your blog.
Now article writing is the most basic form of blog content creation. More people prefer reading text articles because it is so easy to consume. Creating text based content is a no-brainer for a blogger. Search engines like google & bing can easily read the chunks of text and can rank your page easily.
Now what if you are not good at writing?
Face it, not everyone can become a blog writer. For some people it’s a boring little thing to write in a blog. Now the question is, if you cannot or don’t want to write, will you still be able to create a successful blog?
For every successful blogs, it needs engaging content; content that people will love to consume and share with their friends.
So let me share what are the types of blog content you can produce for your blog other than written content, [Continue reading…]
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For years I have blogged and made money by selling advertisements in my blog. However I haven’t got the chance to share how I got ad deals from my blog. Frankly speaking I haven’t done anything special to get advertisers in my blog but in this article I like to share how to do it. In this fresh new article you will learn how to get the advertisers emailing you for putting ads in your blog.
Some advertisers want visitors and some want backlinks. And there are other advertisers who just want to be all around the market. So they are more like focused on brand & awareness building. So let me give you a small overview for all these types of advertisers,
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In the past I have shared what is the difference between a paid host and a free host. I always recommend using a paid web host for your online ventures. But there is no one size fits all approach in web publishing. So in this article I will be talking about 2 of the awesome web hosts around the internet, Tumblr and Blogger.
Now you must be thinking, isn’t these 2 platforms solely for blogs? Yes they are, but you can extend them to a semi-professional level. The best part is, both of these platforms are FREE forever.
Blogger (Blogspot) is owned by Google & Tumblr is recently acquired by Yahoo!
Since these 2 services are owned by these giants, there is a big chance that these 2 platforms will stay there forever (unless the parent company wishes to discontinue the service)
Now let us see why I think Tumblr and Blogger are the best web hosts for blogs, [Continue reading…]
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Starting a blog is very easy now days. You can start a blog within 5 minutes with just a click of a few buttons. But just starting a blog is not all; it’s about building a blog that matters.
Ask a few questions to yourself,
Will starting a blog help people who will be reading your blog?
The people who will read your blog, will they link back and share your articles?
Will you be able to make any money from your blog?
Will you be proud of your blog?
Will you be able to continue writing for years?
You can have a blog that really matters to your readers if all or most of the answers above were positive. Let’s find out how you can start a blog that really matters to your readers, [Continue reading…]
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People say that it’s better to host our blogs ourselves than host it with WordPress. They say self hosted blog gives us more freedom to show our creativity, our innovation and etc. In fact, what I think is that the statement remains true only if you have certain level of knowledge in web hosting and computing. Fortunate enough, installing WordPress has become very simple with Fantastico and everyone could do it in a split second nowadays. Thanks to BlogKori that I am given an opportunity to show you the easiest way to install WordPress on your hosting.
There are many different web hosting deals in the market. However in this guide, I assume that the hosting plan you have has Fantastico embedded. For your information, Fantastico is a script library collecting all sort of software to satisfy your website needs.
This is a guide to install wordpress on your server,
Checklist:
First thing first, log into your hosting account and look for Fantastico in your main page. It is a smiley face icon in blue color located somewhere under software category.
Second you will see a list of available software at the side of Fantastico page. Well, these are all the software that you can use. Identify the “Blogs” category and it is not difficult to see there is a WordPress word there. Click on it and it will bring you to the installation page.
There are some descriptions and explanation on WordPress. Read through it and then continue with “New Installation”. It will lead you to the setup page.
At the set up page, you will be asked which domain you would like to install the blog at. Let’s say you would like to have a blog with the blog domain http://webhostingdeals.org/myblog. So you will need to choose webhostingdeals.org from the drop down domain. After that in the next column you are asked which directory to install your blog. In this example, “myblog” is the directory so type in “myblog”.
(If you would to have your blog at the url http://myblogdomain.com without any directory following it, then just leave the column blank.)
Under the access data, you will need to choose a user name and password. These username and password will be used to log into your blog dashboard later on. So be sure to choose a good username and remember the password.
Under base configuration, there are 4 columns to be filled up.
Click on the “Install WordPress” button after you are done filling up the form.
A summary page is then shown. Please make sure all data are correct before clicking the “Finish installation” button.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed WordPress. At the final page, you can see your username and password highlighted in blue color. Please make sure that you will not lose them. It is also a good practice to have your details emailed and kept safely.
You can now access your blog at the URL you have chosen earlier on.
Now you are ready to post anything online. You could start writing as well as customizing your blog design with WordPress themes now. Here are some reminders for you along your blogging time. Do remember to upgrade your WordPress version from time to time to avoid any chaos and being the target of hackers. Also do backup your blogs as you never know when you will need it.
With that I believe you are ready to self host your blog on your web hosting now. Good luck!
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Blogging is an ongoing learning process. There’s no school or training about blogging and everyone has to learn with mistakes. Some learn by watching and some by doing it. As a blogger, please take a look at the list I created about the biggest blogging mistakes.
You may have done some of the mistakes without even knowing and this may results others to think bad about you. If you have done any of these mistakes, please try to correct it and feel free to share your response with me,
A blog or a website gets popular with original ideas and contents like videos, music, art or articles. Most of the time many bloggers create a blog about downloadable contents but they depend on another source for their materials. People will not like to visit your blog because you don’t have any original content.
On the other hand, lots of people copies content from other blogs and news site. If you want to create a blog on shared content then it’s ok but it’s not worth to build a successful blog. To create original contents, you have to work hard on writing. One of my reader said to me that he doesn’t writes articles because it’s a tough job and that’s why he steals content!
It’s true that you can make money online. I’ve made money and it’s more than expected. But before you take out something, you have to give something to the community. The main key behind a successful blog is traffic (visitors) if you have the traffic, you can then monetize it, become popular or even sell your own products.
Putting lot’s of ad on your site doesn’t means earning more money. Each ad says, “Click me and go away!” If you produce great quality articles and give value to your readers, then they will see the ads as reasonable, “Ohh this person is doing a great job! He deserves those ad incomes.”
Thanks to blogger, wordpress and many others who gave an opportunity to create free blogs. You setup a blog like blogkori.blogspot.com in no time. It’s a better choice to start and learn blogging, but when you get serious about it, you then must buy your own domain. Domains are as low as $10 and in blogger, you don’t have to pay extra hosting money for your blog. You should not put all of your effort to establish a sub domain because you don’t own that domain and you have zero financial values over it.
Just like putting lots of ads; bloggers think that having many blogs means more income. It’s harder to run even two blogs (I know how it feels) don’t create lots of blog but create one and try to establish it. Build links, write articles and promote it for a year and get the results.
Blog spam means posting irrelevant comments, writing on forums and everywhere just to build links and getting instant traffic. Please avoid these easy ways of getting links and try some hard ways because it will last longer.
Don’t sign up for traffic exchange, link exchange or banner exchange sites. These are black listed sites and will make your blog banned. Please focus on some real traffic like search optimization and social bookmarking. Traffic exchange sites are worthless because they send non targeted audience (you blog about books and they sent reader who is looking for sports)
Most of the time new bloggers write about everything. Today you wrote about kites and then computers. Tomorrow you wrote about baseball. By time this blog will become a self centered blog. Creating a niche is important in blogging success. Today you read this article and went away. Tomorrow you’ll come again to read more about blogging, but if I post about gardening, you’ll go away -that’s how it works.
I learned this in the first day of my blog life, “Blog about what you like!” but most of the time bloggers want to write about what others want to read. “People are talking about blogging, ok start a blogging blog! ; People love computers, lets start a tech blog!” you should only write about what you know. If you write on a topic, you’ll find your readers.
I see lots of bloggers blog on adsense but don’t even know what adsense is and how to earn. Lot’s of people start blogging with, a blog about blogging -making others follow his experiment too! So please start a blog that you really love to blog about forever and you know it well.
Have your say
I’ve pointed out these things because I’ve done some of these mistakes in my early blog life and have seen some people doing it. I’m not a blogging guru and I don’t know everything, I’m just sharing my experience with you. Please tell me what you think about this topic and your experience in blogging.
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Most people ask me how I made a blog from scratch such as BlogKori? What it takes to be a pro blogger and how I managed to write so much interesting content? Now this is a question which doesn’t have a simple answer and I can’t give you the right tip to build your big blog next week! It’s a sort of thing that takes time and effort.
When I first started this blog, I never thought I would write so many articles for it. I had another blog that I had to focus completely on that. I had 15-20 post ideas for BlogKori and after that I would close the blog. But soon people started to read my new blog and I had to close my first blog and put the spotlight on this blog.
Here I mean by dig, not the social bookmarking site digg. When you start digging a hole, you had a plan what it would be? Some wants to plant a tree, some wants to make a moat and some of them will tell you are building a canal. When you tell your friends that you’re building a channel and they quickly appears on your place to find out it’s just a 2 feet deep hole in your backyard; it just turns them away!
Most people who desperately wants to make money with it will fill up the 2 feet hole into water and put fishes (ads) and place a board next to it “it’s a money making blog!” They will even create 10’s of holes in their backyard and do the same thing.
When you decide you are going to do this, you should start digging and should do it regularly.. within few months it will become a huge in size.
Most people spend a whole lot of time into their blogs, writing, promoting and then tracking their visitors.. in the first few weeks of your blog it’s natural but on the upcoming months you should provide a continuous effort to it. If you decide to publish 3 posts a week, then try to stick with that.
It’s so much easy like this math: if you write one post each day, you will be producing an average of 250-300 articles a year. That means on the next year your blog will have 300 posts and they will generate search engine traffic. When a new visitor will land on your blog, they will have enough content to spend his next 2-3 months discovering and reading them. They will also share the content with their friends and more traffic will be generated. On the second year, you will be having another 300 articles and that means double the exposure.
In this time the first set of 300 articles will generate you the most search traffic because they have already developed a good search rankings.
You will be surprised to hear that a lot of bloggers who started blogging after you started blogging, are making a good income and getting tons of traffic! That’s not all, there must be a lot of bloggers who started blogging last month but made a large list of visitors. This is a thing when most bloggers feels they are not doing it right or it’s not going to work.
Some people learn fast and some people gets the right information in the right time. Please don’t get upset if another new blogger is acheiving something before you did. It doesn’t matters what you did in short time, it matters what impact you put in the long term. In the end, the one who survived is the winner. In some niches 200 RSS readers are much more valuable than 10,000 RSS readers in another niche. It depends on how you see your blog and this is the way others will see it too.
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Lately, a lot of my friends are asking me on how to get new blog post ideas? Now I can’t explain this on one single email or a tweet, so I decided to dedicate a new post about it.
Take a heavy tool (a hammer would be nice) and then HIT your head with it. All of your frustrations will be gone and there will be new post ideas. -Nah! I’m just kidding.
Instead of forcing your brain for new and innovative blog ideas, let’s see how you can bring new ideas naturally,
The reason why you’re not finding anything to write is because you’re not feeling creative. A person can’t blog everytime and it depends on your mood. Take some rest and do something else; play video games, outdoor activities, visit a friend and watch TV.
You have worked hard on your blog and have built a commitment that you’ll post regularly. Sometimes this commitment builds a pressure in you to update regularly. In most cases, bloggers create low quality posts in the sack of updating the blog. Don’t worry for your readers, they’re not going away. I’ve stopped updating my last blog for a long time but still there are people who are reading this blog.
Ideas are in your head and you can write when there’s a blog title. So let’s see some of the useful ways that worked for me to generate new post ideas,
Subscribe to some blogs and read them regularly. You’ll definitely find some new ideas to blog about.
Instead of writing posts, write some headlines for the next week or month. Create a notepad and write those headlines in it. Start writing when you feel creative.
Take a look at your google analytics data or any other stats tool and take a look at the keywords. See what keywords visitors are using to find your blog. You can use those keywords to create a brand new post.
You can ask your readers what to write next? You can also take questions from twitter, email and any other way you can. Adding a poll can also help you know what others are expecting, “What else you want to read from my blog?“
You can create a post with your older post links mentioned on it. I have wrote many posts that are a collection of links. You can also create a second part of a popular post from your blog.
Ask your blogger friends to write a guest post on your blog. Sometimes it’ll help you a lot to lose some pressure.
Read books, watch TV shows, radio or even billboards to find brand new ideas for your blog. You can use stumble upon to discover new blog posts and can also read BBC or CNN updates.
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This is web 2.0 and today everything has changed. To get more leads, you have to try out new and innovative marketing methods. To get the most ROI, you have to learn new things and do what everyone’s talking about.
This is not like the old times where online business was done with a static corporate website; today’s online venture should be social and you have to do it the right way. By adding a blog on your website (like your-business.com/blog) you can convert more traffic into leads. Here are some reasons why your business needs a blog,
Today’s online business is done socially and traditional banners, ads and other ways of promotions are less effective. Your blog is the biggest social influencer and it’ll help your readers turn into valuable leads. Blog is a form of two way connection; that means they can comment on your blog posts and you can reply to them. This makes them come to your site often and to trust your brand.
If you provide a blog with relevant informative posts, your visitors will transform into readers -because they don’t have to pay for it. This will help you to keep them connected and build your list through news letters and email subscriptions. Your readers can be transformed into valuable customers with your blog.
Are you paying a lot of money into SEO and to bring your name in the top search pages? It’s hard because more and more companies are coming into SEO. Your main site may have 5-10 pages, so it’s even harder to get into the top position. Blogging creates new pages every time you post a new article. Most of the time a blog article out ranks the entire site. This makes you get more SEO juice to your site.
In today’s marketing, social promotion works better than advertisement. Because social media is free and the users are influenced, they promote what they love! This means you can bring a lot of traffic to your site with viral promotion by writing great quality blog articles.
New business owners spend a lot of money for advertisement, SEO and social promotion. What they get is very low return for their money. But if you learn how to market your business your own, you can spend that money to develop your business. Blogging is a great social tool and it helped me to learn new ways of lead capture, SEO and social traffic; the same way you will learn too.
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