What is a Blog?

So what is a Blog anyway? This is a question I am asked every week via emails, conversation and Instant Messaging chats. If you’re reading this you may well be asking the same question.

There are a number of ways I could answer this question ranging from the broad to the highly technical.

Before I share my answer to the ‘what is a blog’ question - here are a few definitions from other much wiser people to get us started:

‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ Source

‘A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.’ Source

‘From “Web log.” A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.”‘ Source

‘A weblog is kind of a continual tour, with a human guide who you get to know. There are many guides to choose from, each develops an audience, and there’s also comraderie and politics between the people who run weblogs, they point to each other, in all kinds of structures, graphs, loops, etc.’ Source

‘A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is “blogging” and someone who keeps a blog is a “blogger.” Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly.’ Source

‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’ Source. >>more

Digital World: How to really make money on the Net

For years now, we've been giving to the Internet - whether we've been shopping, uploading stuff to sites, sending e-mails to public forums or talkback pages to protest this or that - and of course, giving out real money to the phone or cable company in order to pay for our connections to the virtual world.

Now it's time to take something back. How? By getting into an on-line business, and make some money! Surely you've seen the e-mail messages (read: spam) in your inbox, and wondered whether you, too, could get in on the gravy train. Of course, you would build a legitimate model, selling a legitimate product or service; we have to much self-respect to build an on-line pharmacy selling discount Pakistani meds to Americans, or Viagra wannabe treatments (although I hear say that the money there is pretty good!).

Fortunately, though, there are plenty of legitimate ways to make money on the Net, giving you a solid side income - and maybe even a new career, if you come up with the right idea! I want to make something very clear at the outset, though: I do not claim to be a major expert on Internet marketing - but that's the rationale behind this article. If you Google "Web site promotion techniques," you'll get thousands of hits with advice on what to do, or not. But when you review the information on the sites, you realize that much of the information is very general in nature, and a lot of the sites seem to have copied concepts or whole articles one from another (in fact, a lot of them probably got the same articles from a site like http://www.articlepillar.com/, which supplies free "filler" content to sites - not that there's anything wrong with that!). Most of these sites, I have found, urge you to sign up for advanced information - which sometimes is or is not worthwhile. And many of these sites, in addition, urge you to click on various links at external sites (with which they have affiliate deals) in order to get at more information - which may or may not be helpful.

My point is that for a beginner in this space, getting proper direction can be difficult. For the forest of Web sites that purport to help you to get into "the business," there is a relative dearth of trees where you can actually get useful ideas on what to actually do in order to make money - what kind of business to build, how and where to promote it, and how to actually make money from it. While there are definitely "gems" of information out there that will help you with different aspects of getting into the Internet business, many of the sites that offer to help you with your site's SEO (search engine optimization) actually want to sell you promotion services. Again, not that there's anything wrong with that; but an educated consumer is the best customer, and if you're a beginner in the area of trying to sell on the Internet or have never tried it before, there are some basic questions you need to answer before you lay out money for Web site design and pay someone to promote the site - such as, "is this an idea I can make money from?"

What's lacking is a business model for Web success from start to finish - starting with, "where do I begin?" If you're a beginner, that would be the place to start! And so, keeping in mind that I am not, as I mentioned an "expert" in the sense that the (seemingly) millions of SEO and promotion site webmasters are - but am someone who has dabbled in "real-life" Web promotion - I bring some ideas to the table that you may or may not find useful.

Product and/or service: Should you offer a product or a service? And if so, which one? This Web page (http://tinyurl.com/oo4f2), which lists the "Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas That Made It Big Time," has been dug on Digg.com over 3,000 times - a pretty respectable number of diggs, and indicative of the heavy interest in figuring out how to make money on the Web. Hard to imagine some of the sites making the big money the author says they did - as in the millions generated by, for example, "doggles" (http://doggles.com/) - but there you have it.

Unfortunately for most of us, producing a product is a full budget, full time commitment - not for folks getting their first taste of marketing of any sort. Many people in the US make good money on Ebay, selling specialty items, and if you're willing to lay out for inventory (and, if you live in Israel, you have a place to store and ship your goods - international shipping and customs will probably price you out of the market), Ebay and other auction sites could provide a good income. Of course, whatever you're selling, you can be sure that thousands of others are selling as well. And unless the item you're selling is something that people will want on a regular basis (like a food item), you have to keep searching out new customers. Still, there are people in Israel who do have successful Ebay stores, as well as successful commercial sales sites, selling stuff to Israelis and/or Americans. But that route isn't one most newbies will want to take either.

It's a lot easier, cheaper - and potentially more lucrative - to set yourself up in the information business. Meaning, that you share with the world information about which you are passionate and/or knowledgeable. With easy to use blogging software at sites like http://www.blogspot.com, you could set yourself up with a blog - which, in essence, is an information distribution service - and work from there, using it as your springboard to fame and fortune. A blog can be just a blog, of course - but many blogs make big money for their writers, in a number of ways - and yours can, too.

A simple example of what I'm talking about can be seen at the site mentioned above (the one with the smart dumb business ideas) and its sister site (http://uncommonbusiness.blogspot.com/). Note how he weaves in recommendations for books related to the subject as part of his blog; if you click through on the link for the book, you'll see that you've credited his affiliate link with a click - with payment for the click through, and a commission on the book, if a referral from his site buys one. According to his Blogspot profile, the person who runs this site has a bunch of other sites sharing odd information about businesses, Web sites, and the computer business. Great idea! And while I didn't review all his sites, I would have to imagine he is actively promoting a few of them. And how would he (or you) go about promoting his "information business?" I'll give you the hard facts next time.

By DAVID SHAMAH

BLOGIT - GET PAID TO BLOG

Making Payments
To make payments, simply sign up for a Blogit subscription. For as little as $9.95 per month, you get unlimited access to all the writing on Blogit.

Half of your Blogit Basic payment is divided between the writers you actually read. The rest is used by Blogit to support the web site, marketing, customer service, and payment processing.

Payment Distribution
Every month, Blogit keeps track of the number of times you read each writer. At the end of the month, Blogit divides your writer payment between all of the writers, based on how often you read each one.

As a simple example, say you only read Jack during the month. At the end of the month, Blogit will send your entire writer payment to Jack.

Let's say you now start reading Jill half of the time, while still reading Jack the rest of the time. In that case, Blogit will send half your writer payment to Jill and the other half to Jack.

It's that easy. Since Blogit automatically does the math for you, you can be sure each writer is receiving a fair share.

Notes
Every page read is counted, so if you click on a blog and read five pages of that blog, that is counted as five pages read.
Comment pages are not counted.

7 tips to improve your alexa traffic rank.

1. Download the Alexa toolbar and use it every day to visit your own website. Alexa even gives you the ability to co-brand the toolbar with your own logo and give it away. You can download the toolbar here: http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/associatetoolbar.html

2. Use Alexa redirection whenever you can. No matter when or where you provide a link to your website, be sure to use the equivalent Alexa redirect URL. For example, when providing a link to my website, I use http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com. If you copy this URL into your browser, it will take you to MarketingScoop.com. To use this technique, simply replace the name of my website (marketingscoop) with yours.

3. Encourage your website visitors to add their positive testimonials on Alexa’s detailed listings page for your website. This can be done by placing a link to the appropriate Alexa page on your website and asking visitors to “Click here to rate this website”. You can find your detailed Alexa page here: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=marketingscoop.com. Again, just replace the name of my website (marketingscoop) with yours. By clicking on the URL, visitors will be able to reach your detailed rating page and write a review using the review link located on the left hand side of the page.

4. Write your own site reviews on the top 100 rated Alexa sites and include your redirect URL. The top 500 domains, according to Alexa can be found at http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 When you write a review, be sure to use the redirection URL we discussed in number 2 above specifically for your website [http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?marketingscoop.com].

5. Download the Alexa ranking button, traffic history graph, info links, and other traffic counters onto the page of your website that receives the most traffic. For example, at the bottom of my home page http://www.marketingscoop.com, I’ve added the Alexa ranking box. You can do the same for your own site by visiting http://www.alexa.com/site/site_stats/signup You’ll notice that I haven’t added the traffic history graph. This is because it wouldn’t look appropriate on my home page and because Alexa is only providing detailed history on the top 100,000 sites. So if you’re not in the top 100,000, site stats would not be available.

6. Take an inexpensive advertisement out on the ExactSeek search directory for only a few dollars per month at ExactSeek.com Search engine results are directly correlated with Alexa rankings. You’ll notice that if a website is highly ranked on ExactSeek, chances are that it will be highly ranked on Alexa.

7. Get listed on as many search engines as possible by placing a free listing in DMOZ. This is the largest human edited directory on the web and is co-branded among hundreds of thousands of sites. Be patient though, it often takes up to 5 months before you see your website listed after submission. Even though it takes longer than it should, you have little say in the matter because it’s so widely used across the Internet.

These simple Alexa strategies are easy to implement and will make a huge difference in your Alexa ranking. Ultimately you want visitors to do more than visit your home page, you want them to interact with your site. Be sure to optimize your home page for SEO purposes, ease of use, and interaction. Creating a positive user experience will get visitors to return again and again.

Make Money with AffilateBot Program

Accidentally, I found AffiliateBOT program about 2 weeks ago. It’s an exiting program for make money from internet. And last night, my first earnings from this program no longger zero. Fair to middling! What that AffiliateBOT? In the following is a program description from their web

Program Description:
AffiliateBOT is one of the fastest growing Affiliate Network in the world, bringing Advertisers, Merchants, Publishers, Bloggers and even Individuals together. Promotion:
Promote AffiliateBOT and earn $1 for each active member referred and 5% of their earnings for Life!

This has got to be a no brainer and one of the biggest earning referral program on Earth!



Imagine the possibility. If even ONE of your referred member earns $1000/month, you get to pocket a cool $50 every month! Now, imagine if you have 100s of members earning money for you?? You're like the governor, taxing your citizens 5% for life! But hey, grab the 'netizens' before others refer them to their own 'towns'. It's first come first served!

Audience Description:
Anyone who wants to earn a good living by promoting affiliate programs. Bloggers and Publishers would be best.

Owen Keeps The Faith For England

Ahead of the crunch tie between Israel and Russia that could decide England's Euro 2008 fate, Michael Owen has spoken of his continued belief that the Three Lions can still make it to Austria and Switzerland.
"It could be a difficult week," admitted the striker, whose side will almost certainly need to beat Croatia next Wednesday even if Israel do them a favour this weekend.
"We have got to block out a lot of things and be in the right mental and physical state that if something was to go for us on Saturday then we would be in the right frame of mind to go on and do our best on the Wednesday.
"It is all about preparing right and being in a position to pounce if results did go our way."
Keep On Believing
Even though their fate is not entirely in their own hands, Owen insists continued belief is vital to keep the qualification dream alive.
"In the bigger picture, Wednesday is the all-important game and we have got to believe it is the all-important game. And we have got to believe that if we win that we will qualify, if you don’t think that you will get lazy in your training and play so we have got to believe that."
Booed On At Wembley?
Of course, the wrong results at the weekend could see England already out of contention. Owen recognises that this could make for an awkward reception from England supporters at Wembley on Wednesday night.
"In the back of your mind you do think if results do not go your way it would be a tough night at Wembley. It would be frustrating going out and playing with nothing on it, but we hope one or two teams can do us a favour.
"We have to stay positive because we have to be prepared in case someone does us a favour."
Chris विल्लिंस

15 Things I’d Love to See Ad Networks and Affiliate Programs Do to Help Us Earn More Money Blogging

I write quite a lot about what works in the ad networks that I use to make money from my blogs - but sometimes there are some little niggling problems with ad networks and affiliate programs that can be quite annoying।Today I thought I’d compile a short ‘ProBlogger Wishlist’ of things that I’d love to see specific ad networks and affiliate programs rolling out। I’m not doing this because I don’t like any of the programs mentioned here (in fact most feature in my top earners list) - just because I’d like to see them improve।Feel free to add your own on these networks (and others) in comments। Hopefully some of them will lead to some positive changes:

1. Direct Deposits for Amazon AssociatesAmazonI’d love to see publishers outside of the USA able to be paid via direct deposit। I not only have to wait an extra week or so to get my cheque each month, but because my monthly payments are over $2000 my bank then charges me over $60 to cash them - and they have to send the cheque back to the USA for authentication before they’ll clear the money. This authentication process takes an extra 6 weeks. So if I earn money on the first day of a month it can be around 3 months before I see any money from it. If direct deposits are out of the question payments via PayPal would be another alternative.

2. Direct Deposit Payments at ClickbankCb LogoWhile we’re on the subject of payment via cheque - the other group I’d like to see with a direct deposit system (or a PayPal payment) is Clickbank। Come on people - get with the 21st century!

3. Increase Minimum Payouts - LinkshareLogo-4I don’t even know where I still earn money with Linkshare (I must have promoted something once of theirs and it still earns me a dollar or two a month)। The problem is that they send me a cheque for that dollar or two every month or two. Do you know how embaressing it is to go into a bank and try to cash a $2.27 check (considering it’s in US dollars and I have to get it converted I don’t bother any more). It’s time for a minimum amount earned before sending cheques Linkshare.

4. More Customization with ID Tracking at Amazon AssociatesAmazonI love the fact that Amazon added the ability to use ‘tracking IDs’ to allow their publishers to track which links are converting best (see how useful this can be in this post analyzing what people buy at Amazon from one post)। The problem is that once you add a tracking ID there’s no way to remove it. I have a growing list of them and it’s getting pretty messy. It’s also be great to get more customized reports with tracking IDs that’d allow for more drilling down.

5. Better Reporting at AdSenseLogo Main-1Speaking of drilling down in reports - while I think AdSense has one of the best reporting systems, I think it’s time that they took things to the next level and gave us some more useful tools for analyzing our results। While channels can be handy - unless you use a different channel for each post it’s impossible to tell which pages are converting best unless you use a third party application to track clicks on a page by page basis. Another simple wish for AdSense reports is a cost per click figure (something other networks give). I know this is complicated by impression based ads - but it’d be handy to have more information on this. I’d also love to see more ability to combine data from Google Analytics and Google AdSense.

6. Split Testing at AdSenseLogo Main-1A built in mechanism for split testing might be nice too। It’s now possible to rotate different ads in the one ad unit, but there’s no way to track which combination converts best. Split testing tools might be useful (in fact they’d be good at all the ad networks - not just AdSense).

7. Better Referral Reports at WidgetBucksLogo3-1Time to look at the newest ad network on the block, WidgetBucks। I’m getting good results with this network but I think there’s plenty of room for improvement. For starters I’d love to see more data on referrals. At this point there’s just a total referrals number and the promise of the total amount earned to be given at some point in the first week of next month. Most other networks give significantly more information on this including a daily breakdown (even if it is audited later). Not having these figures takes some of the incentive for promoting the program away from publishers and will slow the growth of the network.

8. Better Referral Reports at AuctionAdsAuctionads-1The other ad network that I’d like to see improve it’s referral reporting is AuctionAds। At the moment I have no idea what of my income comes from the ad units that I run and what comes from referrals. Again - it doesn’t really inspire me to actively promote it if I can’t see what the results of that promotion are.

9. Channel Names at WidgetBucksLogo3-1Another pet peeve of WidgetBucks for me is that the name you give different widgets appears in both the reports page and on the widget। While I don’t mind being able to customize the widget in this way - it’s frustrating in the reports page as there’s no actual descriptive way of labeling widgets. For example I’d like to be able to have ‘popular digital cameras’ appear on my widget - but in the back end reports would like to be able to call my widget ‘Digital Photography School Footer’. It’s getting more and more confusing the more widgets I add. In fact the whole reports page probably needs to be reworked. Imagine having 100 different widgets across different sites - the page would be a mess.

10. Less US-centric Testing at AdSenseLogo Main-1Regular readers will know about this one already - but there’s nothing more frustrating for a publisher situated outside of the USA than seeing great new ad units released and not being able to test them। AdSense did this recently with their YouTube Video unit.

11. Open Up for International Publishers at YPNLogo PnSpeaking of US exclusive deals - I’d love to see Yahoo’s Publisher Network (YPN) open up to international publishers with international traffic। The YPN beta launched in August 2005 and did so exclusively for US publishers with predominantly US traffic. It struck me this morning that it’s been over 2 years now (26 months to be exact) and there’s been no movement on that. In fact if anything they tightened things up about a year ago by booting out some publishers who had too much non US traffic.

12. Open up RSS Ads at AdSenseLogo Main-1While a 26 month beta test with no expansion seems pretty bad - AdSense have one of their own which has been going longer। In April 2005 they introduced their RSS Advertising system (AdSense for Feeds). The program is still in a beta test according to their help center page and the beta test is full and they don’t anticipate adding any more publishers too it. Still - publishers are encouraged to keep checking back to that page for updates - I wonder how many have been for the last 30 months.

13. Improved Reports at ChitikaChitika LogoChitika have made some real improvements over the last year or so - but one area I’d like to see them take to the next level is their reports। One aspect of them that I find frustrating is the channels are and a simple improvement would be to make the channel names in reports live links that take publishers to a report for the last month of that channel alone. Also useful would be the ability to group channels together (like AdSense offer). For example to be able to put the multiple channels that you might have on a single blog into one report so you can get a combined report for the full blog. At present if I want to know a blog’s performance with Chitika (I might have as many as 10 channels on a blog) I need to get the calculator out and look at each channel individually to get their totals.

14. Open up to Smaller Publishers - ChitikaChitika LogoAnother common complaint that I hear from many publishers about Chitika is that smaller publishers are not eligible to join। While I understand that this ads significantly to the workload of an ad network - most (if not all) other ad networks that I’ve mentioned in this post don’t have a minimum traffic limit for publishers. This frustrates many bloggers and could actually hurt Chitika in the long term because publishers that grow might have been put off by their early rejection from Chitika.

15. Better Conversion at AdSense ReferralsLogo Main-1I’ve asked ProBlogger readers a number of times if they’ve had any success with AdSense Referrals - the response was an overwhelming ‘NO’. The exception is those who promote the ‘Google product’s - but outside that I’ve only found a few that have had any luck with it. I’ve actually chatted with a couple of people at AdSense about it and know that they have challenges that they are working on - but I’d really love to see the Referrals program taken up to the next level in the coming 12 months. PS: Jen shares her AdSense Referrals wishlist here with some more good suggestions.As I mentioned above - I’m certain that there are many other improvements that all of these ad networks and affiliate programs could make. I’d invite you to add your own points to the wish list.My hope with this post is that it doesn’t become a ‘bitching session’ but a more constructive conversation that might help the ad networks concerned to improve what they have on offer.