Blogs are one of the most effective ways to communicate with a vast amount of people around the world. It is also a prime focus for individuals to promote and market their business.

Starting a blog isn’t very difficult, all you really need are a couple of thoughts and a computer connected to the internet. The hard part is to get strangers to read your blog and to get them to keep coming back for more. Most blogs are doomed to fail because they are not treated like any other marketing campaign. You need to plan a blog like you would a business and put yourself in a position to succeed.

Here are a few tips to make your blog successful:

Make sure you have a reason for starting a blog. There a many reasons why a blog would be beneficial to you, but successful blogs are a benefit to the people that read them. And that is what’s going to keep online surfers coming back. This will attract consumers, reduce your costs, and improve your reputation and media coverage.

The key to getting your blog recognized in search engines are the keywords and phrases you choose to emphasize. Blogs will take the text you have written and store it onto a database and send that information through templates which generates the blog we read in the search engine.

The reason many blogs fail is because of failure to upkeep. You need to structure your blogs so people can find the content they are looking for. Think of it like a filing cabinet. A reader doesn’t want to look everywhere for a specific question, make it easy and efficient for them to find their answers. Also, if you make the decision to blog, keep it up. Don’t make you posts random or sporadic, make sure you are consistent when you blog. It doesn’t matter if it’s once a week or once a month. Be consistent!

Blogs are a way to communicate and it’s very important for bloggers to socialize around the Web. Respond to comments made about your blogs and look for other websites and link them to yours. Comment on other people’s blogs and become a name around the internet and as an expert in your field. You will also be able to track the hits on your blog and the more you contribute, the more your blog will continue to grow, and your business will continue to grow.

Once you have your blog in full force and everything is going well; don’t be afraid to promote your success. Getting people to take time out of their day to read your work is not an easy thing to do. Do not be afraid to flaunt your positive reputation as a blogger, especially to other businesses. This can be key to expanding your services to different sectors and opening new doors.

It is important that your blog serves a purpose, not just to promote your business. Use your years of experience to help people and it will all come back around to help your business. Not only is this a chance to market yourself, but the networking, learning and opportunity will pay many dividends in the end.

That is a recurrent question among bloggers, specially among those starting out. Many people defend that there is no right answer, and I agree to a certain extent. There are bloggers out there posting once a week and attaining tremendous success. Usually, however, those are CEO's of large corporations or famous writers who already had a loyal audience even before starting to blog.

Quality certainly comes before quantity, but if you are serious about blogging you will need to have both. This means that you will need to post at least five times a week.

Now, do not get me wrong here. I am not arguing that you should publish some Shakespearesque posts every other day. Just make sure that you update the blog regularly, be it with an opinion, a short reference or a review about something interesting.

A blog is a website on which the owner publishes articles, videos, graphics and other informative materials. On a blog, the blog entries are displayed in the reverse order as the latest entry is displayed at the top and all the old entries are displayed beneath it. Usually, people create blogs in order to express their opinions over other topics but now-a-days, people have started building blogs instead of creating static websites based on static HTML pages as it's very easy to create a blog when compared to building a static website based on static HTML pages.

An interesting feature of a blog is that the readers are allowed to post their opinions on the blog in the form of comments on the published articles. This provides a way for readers to interact with the author and vice-versa. Usually, text and images are used for publishing articles on the blogs but it's possible to publish videos as well.

A blog can be used for a number of purposes. An individual can maintain a personal blog in order to create an online dairy for sharing day-to-day experiences whereas companies create blogs to announce new products and to inform the users about the progress of the company. Some people create blogs for discussing some specific topics and they do so by sharing their opinions and articles on the blog.

Internal Optimization means on-page optimization that you should take into consideration while writing your internal web pages. This is one thing you have complete control over. Besides, it has a major effect on the ads relevancy and CTR.

Meta Tags

Meta Keywords:
They have low impact, BUT - they DO have impact over the ads relevancy. You are advised not to leave this part of your page as blank. Always try to make it as easy as possible for the crawlers to understand your website. Create your web page with Meta keywords. If there is NO CONTENT on your webpage, the Adsense Media bot will pick-up the Meta Tags, and show ads according to that. Search on Google for pages that top the SERPs for the keyword you have in mind. These websites will give you a good idea about what to include in Meta Tags.

Meta Description: Whatever you put in the description meta tag, it will appear as description right after the Title Text that links to your page in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). This property of the description meta tag makes it quite important, as it has direct impact over the CTR of your link in the SERPs that leads to your website. It eventually decides how much traffic you will get from a search engine. Write description that attracts right kind of traffic from search engine pages.
Title Text

Search Engines give importance to the keywords that appear in the title tag of HTML Source code. Title has a good impact over relevancy of ads too. For higher payouts, choose the highest paying keyword of that category for the title text.

However, this entirely depends upon your optimization strategy. If you are more concerned about competition and getting more traffic than payouts, choose a keyword with low competition keyword (competition you can handle) with relatively higher traffic. Though, I will advise you to get more traffic first, and become authority page of that keyword. Payouts will increase with the traffic.

Tip: Title text generally appears in the SERPs as TITLE link to your page. In other words, you can say, this very line controls the CTR of your website link listed in SERPs. How you design your title is entirely your own decision.

If you are optimizing it for more traffic, you will not want your title to read as it was written for Search Engine crawlers. The title has to be concise so much so that even 10 words are considered as too many. If you are optimizing it for more payouts - Go ahead!

However, you can try to mix the high paying keywords with traffic attractor keywords too.

Give Headings

Its quite important to mark the main headline of your webpage with H1 tags and subheadings with H2 and H3 tags, and so on. This is because headings highlight and indicate the most important element of your web page - the actual content. It is important to use relevant keywords in headings and sub headings as these have good impact on rankings - especially when sorted by relevancy. This has an equally good impact on the ads appearing on your web page. Headings give prominence to the content on your web pages.

Again, you can use these headings either to optimize for traffic, fighting competition, or getting more payouts.

Embedding Keywords in the Content

Besides hosting useful and genuine content on your web pages, it’s important to include keywords at the beginning and end of an article. This helps search engines and Ad bots determine the theme of the web page. Good use of keywords help the Google Mediabot achieve higher Ad-relevancy for your website.Some people follow a strategy of hosting less content on a web page. This helps focus ads on specific keywords and avoids dilution of ads by other keywords that you may have mentioned even once in the web content. This works when you are optimizing for Adsense, but has some traffic drawbacks too. Furthermore, Google may consider it as SPAM. Therefore, it’s never advised to host 2 or 3 lines and expect good earnings. Chances are that you will be hit by smart pricing.

On the other hand, don’t make lengthy web pages as it might mislead Ad-bots to get some wrong ads, resulting in dilution of relevant ads. Sometimes, Ad bots can be very sticky to a certain keyword you used just for a reference. If you are getting irrelevant ads, changing meta tags and Title text is the first thing to start with, then move on to your content.

Internal Linking

Internal linking of web pages has traffic as well as Adsense importance. As all your link partners may not link all the pages of your website, it’s the responsibility of your web pages to hyperlink your other pages, and define the crawlers what your pages are about. In the context of Adsense, suggesting related links (related articles) to the visitor will also increase the page views of your website and also the chances of the visitors clicking on the high paying ads.

A website must interlink its pages. This can be done by displaying related articles or linking to pages with proper anchor text. This helps increase the importance of most web pages. Even a simple navigation bar can achieve that purpose.

Increasing Penetration

Write articles with more heading and subheadings. This not only makes your content more readable and user friendly, but also help the Ad Bots (and Crawlers too) to properly recognize the theme of your web page. This will make them serve you the most relevant ads. This trick also gives you another chance to mention more of those keywords in your web page. Try to include as many instances where you can specify keywords to the bots. This will have impact on your CTR and EPC. It will also help you get the target traffic. Target traffic will mean more CTR of your web page and better performance.

Recently, I have finished compile a site list that pay blogger to pay, if you find the other site please feel free let me know by writing a comment.

• SponsoredReviews “With SponsoredReviews, you set your own price. Depending on the size of your readership and the quality of your blog posts, you can earn anywhere from $10 to $1000 per review. If you are a major site, you might be able to get even more.”
• PayPerPost “Get paid for blogging. Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers. Disclosure required.”
• Ciao “Become a Ciao author and earn money. Your opinion is worth cash!
• DayTipper“Got a tip? We will pay your $3.”
• Blogsvertise “Our blog advertising service is setup for bloggers and online journal writers to earn revenue/income from their online blog/journal in an easy to use, simple and effective system. It is free to register your blog and add your blog to the system for approval. Once approved, your blog goes into the assignment queue. The blogsvertise administrator then assigns writing tasks for what our advertisers want you to mention in your blog.”
• BuyBlogReviews “Advertisers meet Bloggers to have their products or services reviewed, or to buy contextual ads. Advertisers can post different opportunities or searches through our Marketplace while Bloggers can avail these opportunities or get selected directly.”
• ReviewMe “In the ReviewMe publisher system, advertisers choose which specific blogs to review their product or website. So basically, sit back, and let the review offers come to you. In the ReviewMe advertiser marketplace, advertisers create specific campaigns for bloggers. Bloggers can find out what review campaigns are available for their blog by checking the Advertiser Clearinghouse or the View Campaigns tab in their account.”
• Blogitive“Once you are approved to the Blogitive system, you are given access to opportunities from companies to post about their news releases. You are paid per posting.”
• Smorty “Smorty is a hub between advertisers and bloggers. The system is very straight forward to use. You create your blog advertising campaign, Smorty reviews it and delivers it instantly to its vast blogger network. Each blog post is checked automatically by Smorty smart review. All approved posts appear on your admin panel for optional manual review, posts must comply with blogger rules”
• Bloggerwave “More and more people have got their own blog. No wonder. Its so easy to get started.Surf by blogger.com. Its just one of many places where you can make/ host a blog and its for free. Now you are ready to air your opinions on the net. And to make money! Your opinions could quickly turn into gold. But first you need to register with us here at Bloggerwave. “
• BlogtoProfit “Now you have a way to make Guaranteed Money for posts to your blog! No Kidding! Join this exciting new program and get your first order after your blog is reviewed! How does it work? We connect you with advertisers that are interested in sponsoring your blog, you post to your blog and get paid!”
• BloggingAds “Well, we are serious. We are looking for bloggers to post one-time ads on their blog sites for money. Blogging Ads is an easy way for you to earn money by doing nothing more than you already do - post to your blog. We pay through Paypal. You must have a Paypal account to be paid.”
• LinkPost “A LinkPost is a paid blog post written by a blogger within the LinkWorth community.Unlike other similar services, LinkWorth allows its’ Advertisers to have some control about what’s being written.”
• PayU2Blog “Blog Advertising. Bloggers in our network get paid to blog. Making money with your blog is very easy when you are a member of the Payu2blog network. Bloggers in our network blog about many topics and have fun making money while blogging.”
• InBlogAds “You’ve been writing about web sites, products, services and companies for years, now you you can also get paid for it. With our system, you get paid for each post request you fulfill.”
• WeblogsInc “Looking to get paid to blog about subjects you love? Tell us what you’re passionate about and let’s find out if there’s a fit!”
• DigitalJournal “You get the power to publish news and get paid for it. You can also comment and vote.”
• LoudLaunch “Earn more with your blog. Get paid to independently review LoudLaunch Campaign Releases. You’ve earned your audience, now be compensated for your opinion.”
• B5Media “We’re one of the largest blog networks in the world. We want to be the biggest. Want to help? It’s easy to apply. Just visit our application page.”
• WiseBread “Wise Bread is a part of the Killer Aces Media network. Killer Aces Media was founded with the mission to create quality community blogs that paid bloggers their fair value. We’ve created a model called Fair Blogging.”
• 451Press “451 Press is always looking for bright, talented writers who want to have their voices heard. We are looking for writers with unique voices to contribute to our growing network of blogs. Our blogs cover a wide range of topics. If you have a passion for a subject then we just might have a place for you.”
• PayMeToBlogAboutYou “Pay Me To Blog About You is an online market place that enables Advertisers to find Bloggers locally, nationally or globally and contract with them for placing links and creating BUZZ about products, services, events, issues, etc.”
• Helium “Write here, Right now! Rewards await.”
• DeWittsMedia “If you have a high quality weblog that is promoted well you can earn cash for link placements. You can sign up here please make sure you carefully read the NDA prior to signing up. “
• CreamAid “Share your experience about commercial stuff, meet new people, and get a royalty. “
• CreativeWeblogging “Get paid to blog with us at Creative Weblogging! We are one of the largest blog networks, with over 135 blogs in five languages.”
• ContextualLinks “Do you own a blog? Blog publishers in the Contextual Links @ V7N Network make cash and get paid by PayPal for simply adding text links to their blog posts. Currently publishers make $10 per link.”
• Bloggertizer “Write articles about products, services and websites. Only write on those subjects that interest you and your readers. Earn cash for every post!”
• BuyABlogger “Create a profile and get advertisers to directly contact you about paid blogging opportunities.”
• Shvoong “Read for free. Write for money!”
• Gather “Gather is a leading social networking and media site for adults, with some of the highest quality user-generated content on the internet. Becoming a Gather member will not only be personally rewarding, but it can also be profitable. Just for your participation, you will earn Gather Points, which can be redeemed for gift cards to well-known merchants or for charitable donations. Active members may even earn cash!”
• AssociatedContent “Those who contribute to Associated Content’s ad-supported collection of original text, video, audio and images gain exposure and often earn cash for their participation.”
• SharedReviews “We feel community sites that profit from your contributions without sharing are wrong. Join a community empowered to connect and collaborate while sharing in the profits that you help generate!”

That is a recurrent question among blogger, specially among those starting out. Many people defend that there is no right answer, and I agree to a certain extent. There are blogger out there posting once a week and attaining tremendous success. Usually, however, those are CEO’s of large corporations or famous writers who already had a loyal audience even before starting to blog.

Quality certainly comes before quantity, but if you are serious about blogging you will need to have both. This means that you will need to post at least five times a week.

Now, do not get me wrong here. I am not arguing that you should publish some posts every other day. Just make sure that you update the blog regularly, be it with an opinion, a short reference or a review about something interesting.

The homepage of your blog may not be the best page to show a new visitor for the following reasons.

• The homepage may not have the posts that he is interested in.
• The homepage may not have your best posts that can impress a first time visitor.
• Mostly the homepage has too many articles, so the visitor confused to make a choice, so he probably quits.

What do you think? A visitor will turn into a Subscribed reader after reading some of your best posts or after just scanning your homepage? It’s only after a visitor like at least one of your posts and finds that you have something valuable to offer, he will decide to keep reading you.

In many cases, people land on your homepage via Social Media Links, Links you leave on Guest Posts, Comments, Forums, and Email Footers and via Google.
We cannot control the visitors from Google, but see we can control the rest of the sources!

Ever wondered why the giant companies rush to acquire other ventures? The reasons could be many, among them; one would be that the top level management knows the cost of opportunity.

Being the First is a Step to SuccessFor instance, twitter might sell itself for 25 million dollars today, but after 2 years it wouldn’t even be available for sale, not to mention the extra millions that would be then needed.

Just have a look at the most successful Bloggers out there. John Chow started off in 1999 with his TechZone. Darren Rowse started in 2002 with LivingRoom. Amit Agarwal launched Labnol in 2004.

Being the fist gave them the opportunity to learn stuffs and master them before the rest even noticed them. By the time people started thinking of making money online, and Blogging, they were the Guru’s and the masses had only one option to follow them.

Why do Bloggers rush to pull out updates of the latest from the web? They know that the first always gets the traffic.

There is no use brooding over the missed opportunities and we don’t have a Time Machine to go back and do it all again. Good thing is that, something new always happen. Then it was Google, now it might be Bing. Don’t wait till it takes over. Grab the opportunity when its fresh, Jump IN – Be the First.

When a new opportunity comes your way, (a partnership deal, a chance to have your post re-published and the like), don’t deny it, and grab it before someone else does.

When a new Social Networking site comes out, don’t think that you are already engaged with Twitter and you don’t need it. We never used Twitter 3 years back and we were still engaged. It might be the next in social media, so jump in.

When someone writes to you to have a look at his product, do it asap. Missed chance is a missed chance.

If you have an idea that seems to work, make it happen NOW. Else it might never happen at all.

Get The Basics Right‘Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.
Let me ask you a question, “How many articles have you read about being a better blogger?”

While same techniques work for those bloggers, they do not produce even 10% result for 90% readers! Ever thought why?

The answer lies in one word: Basics. Because those 90% who do not get results do not basics right!

To be successful blogger, you here are 5 Basic Blogging Lessons You Must Remember:

1. Making Money From Blogging is Not Easy: I can hear you screaming, “But Hey, Darren, Daniel, John Chow and many others make lot of money! And they make it easily!” Yes, they make money easily but they have worked on and mastered basics! They did not started out with a high traffic blog. They started out like you, as a small blogger. But they invested time and now, they are there, Making Money without Much Effort!
2. Content is Not the Only King: Write a top class article and put it on your blog without any picture and formatting. Only a few will read it. Why? Because now, along with content, presentation is also important. Most visitors will not read your article if it is accompanied by poor design! So, take time to find relevant and good pictures, format the text well, use headings, lists and anything.
3. Traffic is the Key: Unless and untill you have good traffic, nothing will work. You will not get money, comments, subscribers, customers from a blog having very little traffic. Learn promotional techniques and work on increasing traffic!
4. You Need Goals: Ever walked on road without knowing destination? Blogging is just like that! You need to know what you want to achieve and most importantly, how you want to achieve! Without knowing destination, you will reach nowhere! So, set your goals!
5. Loners Are Not Famous: To be successful, you need connections. You have to connect with readers, other bloggers and advertisers. You have to interact with readers to get comments. You have to contact other bloggers for help and advice. You have to talk to advertisers to earn! Nothing will happen without interaction. So, learn how to communicate well and you will go a long way.

These were the 5 Basic Blogging Lessons You Must Remember. Have something else to say? Feel free to air your basic lessons in comments.

The motivation (or perhaps the idea) to write this post sprung out of (1) An online discussion I had with one of the fellow bloggers; and (2) A lunch time discussion I had with my colleague at work place. Based on these discussions and reading quite a few blogs, ironically, and to some extend intriguing is the fact that many folks want to start a blog with some objectives in mind. Many want to start their own blog to learn, to share, to interact, etc. Majority open the blog with the hidden desire to have a side income but they are little hesitant to accept it openly.

For the sake of statistics, only one to two percent of the bloggers succeed in generating truly passive income. The rest 98% to 99% bloggers who attempt to generate any serious side income from their blog fail. The barrier to enter a blog-o-sphere is very low. Theoretically, one can start a blog in less than 15 minutes with zero investments. Furthermore, there is a school of thought (or misunderstanding?) that reading few how-to articles and to-do list, the so called passive income or side income will trickle in.

Blog to Add Value for your Readers

Add Value
Pick a niche subject for your blog where you can share your expertise. The subject matter for your blog should be such that you are passionate about it. Many folks have no clue what is their niche. I suggest you do a simple experiment. To test your expertise or passion for any given subject, check to see whether you can write or think on same topic in two or three different ways. I do not mean re-wording in two or three different ways. It means two or three different perspectives that lead to different conclusions.
One of the foremost aspects of blogging is to have utmost respect for our readers. Blog readers are smart, intelligent, and always eager to learn more. The topics or discussions that you write about should be valuable to the reader (i.e. reader should feel that it was worthwhile to come to this blog). They come to your blog for adding value to their thought process and not to teach you.
Let us take two examples:

1. Everybody knows about BCCI battering down ICL. Many in blog-o-sphere and media has covered it but failed to analyze the lost opportunity.
2. Recently, removal of mutual fund entry fee received wide coverage. Again, in this me too world, majority of blogger repeated the beaten track that it is beneficial. Did you read any pros and cons whether there are any real benefits?

Share
Another aspect that I have seen on the blogs is many folks start the blog introduction with the description that says, they are here to learn, they are here to share what they know, etc. That is a mistake. My question to all those bloggers is this; when you are learning, why would one come to read your blog? If I want to learn how to play cricket, I would go to the professional coach. I would not go to play with a learner! One should realize the fact that shared learning is a two way street. You provide any thought provoking argument, and comments will follow, which will help you get a different perspective.

It is perfectly acceptable to start a blog to learn and interact with fellow blogger. There is nothing wrong in it. However, demonstrate your learning process by showing and discussing your thought process. Let us take an example. If you are learning to analyze a stock, you should write post that shows what is the basis for analysis, what method you are using, what are your resources, and what are your conclusions. My observations have been that majority of the folks do a blog survey, and publish with re-wording or summarize. That’s not learning.

Be Yourself
Another mistake new bloggers do is, they say they are here to help others in their endeavor, and not for making money.

• If that’s the case, why does your blog have three Google ad sense advertisements? Bloggers include all three allowable ads, and still say they are not blogging for money.
• On many investment sites, bloggers have subscription based stock tips and advices and still proclaim that they want to help individuals to succeed in investing or personal finance.

Ironical, intriguing, or hypocritical? You be the judge.
It is perfectly acceptable to say you are blogging to earn side income. Again, there is nothing wrong in it. However, being honest to your readers and letting them know upfront will only help you make your case.

Remember, growing your blog is like growing a Mango tree. It requires proper seeding and nurturing for a period of time. If done right, fruits are bound to grow for you to enjoy them. It requires patience and persistence to grow a Mango Tree, while a grass grows with much effort. Before you click away what is your thoughts on following two questions:

1. What do you prefer, growing mango tree for fruits or grass for nothing but aesthetic beauty?
2. What is difficult, to get a web traffic or to sustain the web traffic?

I would like to hear from you so leave your thoughts and comments below.