I Follow These Blogs and You Should Too!

Below is a list of all the blogs that I am subscribed to via their RSS feed on my iGoogle home page. They are mostly make money online blogs or other closely related topics such as internet marketing, blogging, home business and work at home. But there are a few in other niches too.

Since there are so many blogs out there in the blogosphere, especially in the make money online niche, I thought you might want to know the ones I read and recommend. This is also a great way for me to spread some link love to my blogging buddies!

I've been making money online as an internet marketer since May of 2003 (five and a half years at the time of this post) and have also been blogging for most of that time. So I guess you could say I have been around the block a few times and know my way around the world of internet business. I've visited countless blogs over the years and these are the few that have been quality enough for me to add to my feed reader so I make sure to come back to them often...

Let me start with one of my own. Yes, I subscribe to my own blogs! Don't you? I have about 40 total websites and blogs in various niches, but I will only list one of them here to keep this blog list a little shorter:

Free Internet Home Business Tips

And now for the rest of the blogs that I follow (in no particular order):

How to Make Money Online

Make Money Online with Grizzly

Internet Marketing School

The Keyword Academy

Entrepreneur Blog

Make Money Dynamo

Blog Marketing Strategies

Digital Product Reporter

Blogger Unleashed

Work at Home Blog

Internet Marketing with Josh Spaulding

Make Money Blog

The Honest Way Blog

Freelance Writing

Jonathan Leger

Make Money Blogging with Garry Conn

Money Saving Reviews

Earn Online Cash

Personal Development Blog

Well, that should keep you busy reading for a while, so I won't take up anymore of your time by making this post much longer. I hope you enjoy those blogs as much as I do. I recommend subscribing to them all if you can. You will learn everything you need to know about how to make money online, internet marketing, blogging, home business, and working at home from those blogs. Plus, you will learn some more great information from the blogs that don't cover those topics.

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg

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Blogging Love for the Week

I don't do this very often (even though I should) but today I wanted to give some blogging link love to a few bloggers whose posts I enjoyed this week. So, here are 5 of my favorite posts from the make money online blogosphere in the past week...

A Simple Sales Copy Swipe File - Since blog flipping is such a hot topic these days, I thought this was a very good post. I am just starting to get into site flipping so having some more information on writing the copy for the sale is very important.

Social Traffic Sucks - Not a very long post but it's a point that I have been trying to get across to bloggers for a long time. Stop chasing social traffic! If you want to make money online then you need to go after search engine rankings.

Credit Cards Make Money Online - No surprise that a post from Griz is on this list. Almost every blog post he writes is pure gold. If you really want to learn how to make money online then you need to read his blog and do what he says!

How to Make Money Online for Beginners - Terry rambling on with a long and informative post about teaching beginners how to make money online.

Practice Flipping Turnkey Sites When You Start Out - Again site flipping is huge right now and a very good way to make money online so this post is very relevant with the times and full of great information.

And a bonus post that I just couldn't leave off the list:

This Is Now A DoFollow Blog - Ok so I kind of cheated a little by adding this one here since it was written a couple weeks ago and it's from one of my own blogs. However, I wanted to let you all know that it is now a DoFollow blog and it has built up some good authority so get over there and start commenting!

Ok that's it for your free money making tips for today. Have fun reading all those great posts and remember to put the information you learn into action if you want to actually start making money!

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg

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A Great Way to Increase Your Traffic, Backlinks, Rankings and Profits!

Every blogger and/or website owner is always trying to increase their traffic and make more money. One of the best ways to do this is to get more backlinks and improve your search engine rankings. I am about to tell you a great way to increase your website traffic, get more backlinks, and raise your search engine rankings, which will result in you making more money!

There are plenty of blog contests going on at any given time. You know, the ones where you do a certain task such subscribing to their feed, blogging about their site, linking to a certain blog post, or something else along those lines and you get a certain amount of entries to the contest for doing each task.

Typically the prize for winning the contest is money or a free product, but it can be any number of things. The winner is picked randomly at the end of a specified time and is given the prize.

Often times the bloggers who hold these contests will ask for sponsors to donate money and prizes to the contest and it can really end up being a big deal with hundreds of entries and a lot of great prizes. The sponsors will usually get at least one link back to their site/blog and often times it's more than one link.

I'm sure by now you have figured out where I am going with this. Yep, you guessed it; I am going to tell you that sponsoring some of these contests is a great way to increase your traffic, backlinks, rankings, and ultimately your profits!

You can usually donate just about anything you want as a sponsor of the contest. If you have a product that you have created you can offer it for free to the winner, you can donate some money to the contest, you can offer to give a free review on your blog, a free ad spot on your site for a month, or just about anything else of value that you have to offer.

I am currently a sponsor of a contest on a very popular make money online blog. It is consistently ranked in the top 5 on Google for "Make Money Online" (usually #1) and it's also ranked highly for many other keyword phrases in the make money online niche. All I did was donate $25 to the contest, which I will send to the winner as soon as I am told to do so. It was that simple!

So far I have gotten at least two permanent backlinks from this blog and both were keyword anchored. This will certainly help to increase my search engine rankings and long term traffic. I have also been sent a few hundred direct visitors from the links so far. All this for a measly $25 donation. And if you don't have any extra money that you can give then you can always do one of the other free options I mentioned above to become a contest sponsor.

Sponsoring contests is also a good way to make some great new online business friends and contacts as well as get more recognition for your website/blog. You are a winner no matter how you look at it!

Check out the popular blogs in your niche and see if any are running contests and need sponsors. Usually they will say in the contest post that they are looking for sponsors for it but even if they don't you can always offer to be a sponsor and see what they say.

This is something you can do over and over again on many different blogs or websites as long as you have something of value to offer as a contest sponsor. It won't take long for all those backlinks and traffic to add up!

That's it for your free online business tips for today. Come back soon for more home business tips, internet marketing information, and money making advice. Be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed so you don't ever miss out on new posts!

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Make Money Online from Home

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The University Kid Teaches How to Make Money Online

There are only a few make money online / blogging tips / internet marketing blogs that I read on a regular basis because quite honestly most of the blogs in this industry are crap and are not worth taking the time to read because you won't learn anything. If you have been a reader here for a while then you already know that I pretty much only recommend Grizzly, Court, Vic, Monika, Terry, Josh, Matt, Garry, the Noob, and a very select few others.

However, I recently became a reader, subscriber, and all around fan of The University Kid blog. He teaches various aspects of entrepreneurship, blogging, internet marketing and making money online.

Most of his posts are very in-depth and he is not afraid to give away his money making secrets. He is one of the few bloggers out there who actually teaches how to succeed at blogging, internet marketing, making money online, and other aspects of being an entrepreneur. It's not the same old crap that you see rehashed day after day on most of the other blogs in this industry.

The biggest problem I have with The University Kid blog is that it's hard to find the older posts. There's no links to the archives (that I can find) so you have to go page-by-page through the previous posts which is not very convenient and takes way too long.

I've only been reading this blog for a couple weeks now and I have already learned quite a few new things. He has also helped me come up with some new online business ideas that I hadn't thought of before. Not bad considering I have been making money online as an internet marketer for over five years now and definitely didn't think some young university kid, who is fairly new at blogging, could teach me anything. I was wrong!

Oh and in case you are wondering, this is NOT a solicited post. I was not paid or bribed to post it, or anything else like that. I simply found a great resource for my home business tips readers and wanted to share it with you all.

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg

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Research to Riches - Niche Marketing Makes Money

So, you want to make money online? That's great! It's an awesome way to earn a living. But please read this post before you go starting another blog about making money online (there are already too many of those).

You've probably already seen about 100 different make money online blogs talking about how they earn a million dollars a minute from their blog. So, of course, you want to start your own make money online blog so you can start making money like all these guys do. I can understand that considering you don't know any better. But I am about to let you in on a little secret...

Hardly any of those so-called "make money online blogs" are actually making any money at all. Only a small percentage of them really do make a profit and even most of the ones claiming to earn thousands upon thousands of dollars per month are lying to you! It's a simple fact that blogs about making money online are the very same blogs that aren't making much money. Some do, most don't!

If you don't believe me then go ask Griz, Court, Vic, or Mark. They all own highly popular MMO blogs but they will be the first to tell you that they earn the majority of their income from niches outside of the make money online niche. They'll also tell you to do the same.

There are plenty of reasons for this that I am not going to get into right now so just take my word for it. The reason for this post is to tell you NOT to start another MMO blog if you really want to make money online.

You might be asking yourself, "If that's not the way to do it then what is?" and I will tell you right now...

Go back to the title of this post, "Research to Riches - Niche Marketing Makes Money" and I am sure you can at least somewhat figure out what I am about to tell you.

Yep, you guessed it, if you want to make money online then you should be starting blogs and/or static websites in smaller niche markets. This will sometimes require quite a bit of research on your part but it is more than worth it in the long run. And sometimes you can hit a good niche market without much research at all.

When you think of a niche that you might want to pursue you first need to research to make sure there is a market for that niche. One way to do this is to type in the niche keywords in quotes in Google and see how many Adwords ads come up on the right side of the search results. If there are none that usually means one of two things...

1) You have either just found a killer niche that nobody else has tapped into.
2) There isn't enough of a market for that niche to make it profitable enough for Adwords advertisers.

Most likely it's the second one, but don't dismiss it as a bad niche just yet. Do some more research first! More on that in a minute.

If you find there are a lot of Adwords ads then it is most likely a profitable niche. Typically a good niche will have some Adwords ads to show that it is profitable but not too many because you want to be able to make money from this niche without spending all your time trying to beat out a lot of competition.

Ok, so now you have found a niche that appears to have some profit potential but not a lot of competition solely based on the Adwords ads. Well, that's not enough. So, what do you do next?

More research! I told you this was "research to riches" didn't I?!

Now you need to figure out how often your niche keywords are searched for and how much competition there really is.

First the searches...

The most basic way to do this for free is to use the free keyword suggestion tool from Wordtracker so you can see how often it is searched per day. I've heard varying opinions but most people say that you need to take the number the tool comes up with and multiply it by 4 to get the number of times it's searched for per day on Google.

Now the competition...

Go back to Google and search for your keyword phrase in quotes. It must be in quotes or you won't get a good estimate of your competition. Now look at the top right corner and it will say, "Results 1-10 of about XX, XXX" and the X's will be the number of sites that match your exact keyword phrase. This is how many people you have to compete against to get the top ranking on Google.

If the number of searches exceeds the number of competing sites and there are Adwords ads promoting products in that niche, then you have most likely found yourself a gold mine. Get started in that niche right away!

Most likely that isn't going to happen. But if there are only maybe 20,000 or less sites competing for that niche and it does get quite a few searches, and there are at least a few Adwords ads, it's probably a niche worth going after. Anyone with a little SEO knowledge and internet marketing experience could dominate a niche like this pretty fast and make a lot of money.

Another super way to make money online through niche marketing...

Building niche trend blogs is a great way to make money and it's a lot easier to find the niche this way. What the hell is a niche trend blog? Well, let's see if I can put it very simply...

A niche trend blog is a blog you start around a certain trend or "hot topic" that is happening right now.

For example; if you would have been one of the first to start a niche trend blog about the popular MTV show "The Hills" and marketed it correctly, you probably would have a blog that is pulling in some pretty darn good profits right now. Or you could have started a blog about any of the main people on the show like Lauren Conrad, Audrina Patridge, Heidi Montag, Whitney Port, Spencer Pratt, or Brody Jenner.

Being one of the first to jump on a hot topic and get a blog going about it puts you in a good position to take the top Google rankings for those keywords and cash in on the trend. These don't usually last long but if you keep adding more and more niche trend blogs you will continue to make money off each new one. There is never a shortage of hot topics to start niche blogs on. You just need to stay on top of the gossip and get your blog going right away.

I suggest using the free blogger.com service for these for many reasons. Mainly because they are free and you don't want to be spending money to create these because you will be creating so many of them and you don't know for sure if they are going to produce any income. Also, they are very easy to create and you want to be able to get these up quickly. And since Google owns blogger.com it only makes sense that they would rank well on Google and that is exactly what you are trying to do.

Many of your niche trend blogs will probably turn out to be duds but some of them will make money, and the more you create the more chances you have to make money. This will eventually turn into a nice sized passive income. Since they are free and you won't be spending much time on each one, you don't need to worry about all of them pulling in profits for you. Just move on and find another hot topic to cash in on.

So what have we learned here?

1) Starting a "make money online" blog is actually one of the worst ways to make money online.
2) Niche marketing is a much easier and faster way to make money online.
3) Niche trend blogs are a very easy way to get into niche marketing.

You stand a much better chance of getting rich by doing research to find profitable niche markets then you do by throwing up another MMO blog and trying to compete in that niche. That's why I called this post, "Research to Riches - Niche Marketing Makes Money" because niche markets are where the money is at!

So, get started on finding profitable niches right now so you can really make money online!

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Free Online Business Tips

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How To Make Money Blogging - 10 Step Solution

First, we all want to know How to Make Money Online, and one of the best ways I have found is by creating blogs. In this article I intend to show you how you too can learn How to Make Money Blogging by telling you how combining the techniques I have gathered from across the web helps to make me $$$ every day.

Second, I am not trying to sell you my latest "Get Rich Quick" scheme because I don't have one. Each eBook you read will have a wealth of information within them which will, without a doubt, help you to discover the secrets of How to Make Money Online. I am only going to tell you which ones out of the 100's available you SHOULD read if you too want to make lots of money.

I use a 10 step guide to setting up and starting all of my blogs.

I will give you a list of the top 10 resources later that I use and recommend to everyone who is serious about making lots of money online. One of the vital aspects people seem to miss out when they first get into blogging is the fact that their blog must contain information that people want to read.

Many bloggers are looking through closed eyes in this regard and if you browse through 50 blogs you will notice that most will tell you they know How to Make Money with Blogs when really all they tell you is where they went on their vacation or how many cars they have.

Are you ready to learn How to Make Money Blogging?

If the answer is YES then read on and start to make money with your blog. I am not here to tell you how to write your blog, that's up to you, but what I am about to tell you is the 10 things I use to make money on the internet. You can choose to use these techniques or not, that's your prerogative.

Step 1 - Finding a Topic

Turn off your computer, grab a pen and some paper and sit somewhere you can relax but also stay focused (if you are just starting out this step can be a pain because we all want to know How to Make Money Online and we want to know how to make it NOW). Think of a topic you are interested in and write it down (this helps because you will be more committed to trying instead of giving up in a day or two) and also make sure it is something other people are interested in too. A couple of ways I use to think of a topic is by using MetaSpy to find out what people are searching for, Ask IQ to find what's popular and VRE Toolbar to find out how many people search for the topic (this is also useful later on to get traffic). Write down your top five keywords, you will want to use them later in your blog.

Step 2 - Create Your Blog

Find and create your blog online. I like to use Blogger but other popular Blog platforms are Wordpress and Movable Type. You can find all the help in the program you use to get information when setting up the blog. Create your content, make it original, and make it informative. This is one of the main keys to learn How to Make Money with Blogs. You need to include the keywords you wrote down in Step 1 in the content of your blog. Try not to overuse these as it sends out bad signals to the search engines, and this is 100% not what you want.

Step 3 - Go Google

Sign up for Google Adsense and insert the code in the margin of your blog. You can customize your ads in many ways, such as including text links or image links. I prefer the text links only, as they are easier to blend in with your blog and don't take the focus away from the information. Google Adsense will probably not make you a millionaire but it is an instant way of generating a small amount of money.

If you want to track where your visitors are coming from with regards to direct hits or from search engine results then I would suggest you use Google Analytics and again you can get all the help you need setting that up from within the program.

You will also want to add your URL to Google's index.

Step 4 - Find Something to Sell

If you don't want to sell anything and are happy with the income Google Adsense is bringing in then you can skip this step. If you want to maximize your income and truly learn How to Make Money with Blogs you will want to find an affiliate program to join. A couple of affiliate programs I would suggest are ClickBank and Commission Junction. You can sell anything from office furniture, pet supplies, movies and clothing to PC games, Dieting tips and Audio software.

Whatever program you join will give you help inserting the code you will need to insert into your blog, but be sure you do this correctly or you WILL NOT earn money from your visitors. If you do not know how to edit HTML, W3Schools HTML tutorial is a great place to start.

Step 5 - Social Bookmarking

There is no better advertising than word of mouth, but the next best thing is social bookmarking. You will want to make things easier for people to do this. Social bookmarking sites I use and recommend are OnlyWire and SocialMarker and they are used for people to share their bookmarks or websites that they have liked with other people in their online community.

I would not suggest you add your own links to these services, but provide visitors to your website the ability to do so.

Step 6 - Write an Article

Whether your blog is about a specific product, for example a certain MP3 Player you are promoting, or just about giving people information, I would suggest you to write an article or a review of it. Most article directories require articles of 500 words and over so I would use this as a rule when writing to ensure your article is published.

Submit your article to any of the 100's which are out there. I personally use a few of the Top Article directories such as EzineArticles, Article Dashboard, Amazines.com, isnare and SearchWarp. I also use a nifty piece of software called Article Submitter which will submit your articles to over 600 article directories, which saves you lots of time and leaves you to focus on writing your blogs.

Step 7 - Ping The Hell Out Of It

Every time you add new information to your blog, you want to let the blog directories know about it, this is known as pinging. Some Blog providers automatically send out pings when you update, but to be on the safe side you will want to do this manually too. ONLY PING WHEN YOU UPDATE.

There are a couple of Ping sites I use which will send a ping to multiple blog directories at the same time. PingMyBlog would be my first port of call and then if for some reason that site is down I would use Ping-o-matic. Remember, to only ping when you update or you could get blacklisted, and that is bad.

Step 8 - Yahoo! Answers and Forums

One of the easiest ways to get targeted visitors to your blog is to make use of the people you want to target. I would suggest you sign up to at LEAST one forum in the topic you are writing about, and don't just go straight in there and start posting comments for people to look at your blog, they won't.

The secret is to add the link to your blog in your signature and actively become a member of the forum, posting relevant topics and starting debates within them. The more you post, the more your link will show, and if you provide someone with good info the chances are higher they will click your link.

Yahoo! Answers is along the same lines as forums but the beauty of this is it's viewed by thousands of visitors each day. If you don't already have a Yahoo! account get one and then login and search for questions relating to the topic of your blog and answer them well. You can then insert the link to your blog and as with the forums, if you answer well you may have not only earned yourself a point or two on Yahoo!, but also earned a visitor to your blog.

Step 9 - Update Your Blog

This can be by several means, one is to add new reviews or content to your blog, and if you are going to do this I suggest updating every couple of days. This helps to keep the search engines happy as they love to see new and original content.

Another way of updating your blog and keeping the content fresh is to add RSS feeds to it. Make sure the feeds are relevant to your blog and provide visitors with helpful information. Visitors to a World of Warcraft blog don't want to read feeds about knitting, or do they?

Step 10 - More, More, More

Repeat steps 1 - 10, this is the only way How to Make Money Blogging.

Step 11 - A Bonus Step

If you have your own product or newsletter, give your visitors an easy way to sign up to receive updates or information. This helps you to contact the visitor again with more great info or products you wish to sell.

How to Make Money Online is easy if you follow the above steps.

Some important things to remember so you don't get disheartened with your blog is the fact that you will not become a millionaire overnight, it takes hard work and a lot of effort. If you are really serious about learning How to Make Money with Blogs then stick with it and eventually you will have an Ah-Ha moment. This is when things start to work and you think to yourself Ah-Ha, that's how they do it. Your moment could be sooner than you think.

My Top 10 resources I use and recommend are:

1. Rob Benwell's Blogging to The Bank 2.0

2. Wordpress Goldmine

3. Rob Atherton's Building A Blog Empire For Profit

4. The Blog Challenge

5. Hinge Marketing Magic

6. Blogging For Riches - Complete Video Tutorial

7. Social Bookmarking Demon

8. Adsense Inbox

9. Wordpress SEO Sniper

10. RSS, Blogs and Syndication...

About the author:

My name is Andy I'm 31 and I'm from Manchester, UK I like to read a lot (Discworld, Sci-Fantasy) and listen to music (The Doors, Wu-Tang, Amy Winehouse, Kaiser Chiefs, Blondie, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix). I also try to be a skateboarder when I get time and dry weather. Please view and leave comments on my blog.

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Blogging Power Tips For Easy Traffic

Things to do before you post and advertise your blog, and what to do after it's up and running, such as getting traffic and using AdSense.

I made this simple to understand, for maximum usability. I even added the easiest and best tricks to get great traffic, just don't abuse the tricks. If you are here to get the traffic tips, just scroll down to - Advice for Getting Traffic.

First Thing To Do

This is a big step - get Feedburner setup for you website, ASAP. Make your RSS buttons easy to see so people can subscribe. I have several new visitors who stop in for a few seconds, click the RSS button and leave, namely people from Digg. If you are using Wordpress, you need to get the plugin Feedburner Feedsmith. This will make sure that all your subscribers are going through Feedburner and not the default RSS feed in Wordpress.

Make sure to have a good list of RSS buttons available for people to choose from. The fastest and easiest way to do this is by going to toprankblog.com/tools/rss-buttons/ and making your buttons. Make sure at step 2, you set it to default and use your Feedburner URL. To get your feed address, just go to feedburner, log into your account. In the top left you will see something that says My Feeds, once you click on it, click on the feed you want to use. Once the page loads up, look under the feed name and click on Edit Feed Details. On this screen you will see the address for you feed. The feed address will look something like this - http://feeds.feedburner.com/your-feed-name

Before You Post

If you are using Wordpress, I recommend to not get banned for multiple pings. Did you know that every time you go back into an article and fix or change something, it pings the blog sites. So this will result in your post getting banned. To combat this, I recommend downloading MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. It monitors your posting and makes sure you don't get banned because of multiple pings. Once you publish an article, it sends out one ping, and then every time you go back into that article to change it, it does not ping anymore.

If you are going to be doing any type of writing in Wordpress, from just typing an article, to html coding, I recommend getting a better WYSIWYG editor. I use Dean's FCKEditor for Wordpress. It's easy to use, it doesn't mess up your articles with weird wrapping, and it doesn't mess up programming code One feature I love, is the image add, which is right on the interface, it handles the uploading of pictures, and makes it's it easy to change what you need to.

I can't say this enough; you need to get Wp Super cache. If the website is slow loading for people, they will leave. I know my web host is not perfect, but I try to keep the website as fast as possible for everyone. On this same note, I recommend getting Optimize DB plugin. This Wordpress plugin is simple and easy to use. Just go to your manage tab, click on Optimize DB, wait for it to run, then click optimize now. It works great and I use it a few times a day when I am posting a lot.

Article Publishing

Do not publish just one article first.

I recommend writing 2 or 3 articles, then putting them on the website. This way when you get the first surge of traffic, the people have other articles to read besides just one. Too many blogs have come and gone with only posting one article and nothing else. So as a result if you don't have more then a couple articles your chances of people returning or subscribing are a lot less.

If you really want to start off on the right foot, I recommend finding the best one of the 3 articles and submitting it to EzineArticles.com. Expect 3 to 5 days turn around for them to review it and put it on the website.

I lost a lot of traffic on my first great article, because it was all I had posted and people came, read the article and left and were never heard from again.

Looking back on this, I wish I had other articles I posted before hand so people had a reason to stay. My first article I posted had around 200 visitors in the first 30 minutes, the visitors read the article, then disappeared. Now when I post good articles, I get a surge of traffic, people read the article, then browse around me website and come back a few days later.

Don't sensationalize an article, do a brief intro, then get down to business. Some people have this annoying ability to write an insane amount of paragraphs, for something that could be said in a few sentences. I noticed that my articles that are straight to the point get more readers and people stay. Something about hyping up a subject puts people off, can't blame them, it annoys me to.

I don't care what people say, there are times to submit articles that are better than others. I have been testing this since I started and I find that I get more traffic later in the day around 3 - 6pm then I do at any other time. Some people think it's best to post in the evening when your article stays on the front page longer for people to see it, this doesn't work. I also found by watching traffic trends, Monday is the lowest traffic day, and Thursday to Sunday is when I get the most traffic.

Adsense Advertising

For adsense beginners, text ads are the best ads you can use. I have been switching back and fourth between image ads and text ads. I get a lot more clicks when using text ads, I do not know why, maybe because they are less intrusive for readers. But again I do not know why it works that way, but it does.

Do not put big ads between your post, on the main page. I have been experimenting and noticed that when I put an ad just after the latest post on the front page, people have a tendency of not going past it. In most cases they just leave. Now it's fine to put an ad just above the comment box, when people are on a single post page.

Advice For Getting Traffic

One of my readers turned me on to using Socialmarker.com for getting traffic to my website. Social Marker by itself has made brought more than 90% of my traffic, I highly recommend using it. What it does is connect all the social networking places together, in one easy interface. The website is free, and for each website you submit to, you have to have an account with that. It takes some time to get registered to all the websites, maybe 30 minutes to an hour, but once you are registered you are good to go and never have to do it again. The ranking you will get from keywords used during the submit process is insane. Within 2 to 4 hours, the article you post will be search able and will have great ranking in search engines. The bookmarking websites are awesome for this, I have several articles that come right to the top of search engines without me having to change my keywords, or the keyword Density to them there. I don't even have to links to the page to increase the search ranking.

Words of advice, do not submit articles to websites that are not congruent with your article. Example - if you write an article about the weather where you live at, do not submit it to Slashdot or some technology based website. Nothing will get you banned faster than doing that.

Not getting Digg or Stumble votes is not the end of the world. Digg does have the highest chance of getting the largest surge of traffic to your website, if you get on the front page, your website can crash from the Digg Effect. But I find that most of my traffic comes from Reddit, Fark, Indian Pad, and various other social-networking websites. Myspace blog has been really good for my website, whenever I write a post; I just copy and paste it over there. For the extra 100 to 200 readers I get from spending an extra minute or two, is worth it. I recommend setting up a Squidoo page, even if you have no intentions of sticking with it. The reason why I recommend it is when you make a lens, and put a link on the site to your website, you get a Page Rank boost. At this present time, squidoo does not use nofollow bot code, now do not abuse this.

Comments, Feedback, & Tracking

Don't get discouraged if you are not getting feed back, comments etc, from people. It doesn't mean that people don't like what you are writing about. The best way to see if people like what you are writing is by checking you traffic.

My traffic continues to grow and my returning readers are increasing. They just don't like to leave a comment, so I'm guessing since they are returning that they must like what I have to say, but they are not much for chatting. So if you are not getting comments, just check your traffic with a service like Google analytics and Feedburner, and see what the trending is. If you are not getting returning readers then it's safe to assume you need to modify your content.

This article is far from the end all be all for blogging. I plan to continually add new information from my experiences so help people avoid problems so that they can start off on the right foot. If you see something I need to correct, or if you have any advice or tips for new comers in the world of blogging, please leave a comment or two.

Author: Derek Zar - If you like this article, please visit my blog at http://howbits.com.

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The Best Make Money Online Information You Will Ever Find!

There are thousands of make money online blogs on the internet. Some of them are very well known and we all visit them frequently, but if you really think about it, most of them don't really give much money making information that we can actually use.

There is now a blogger who has changed that. His name is Vic and his blog is called Blogger Unleashed. The name fits perfectly because he truly is like a hungry rabid dog that has been "unleashed" and is now tearing up the make money online niche.

Some words that come to mind when I think of Vic and his Blogger Unleashed blog are: Informative, Useful, Valuable, Entertaining, Real, Honest, Blunt, and Brutal.

This guy holds nothing back when it comes to giving real money making advice. He doesn't care what anyone thinks, he just tells it like it is.

If you are easily offended then maybe this blog isn't for you, because Vic is not shy about dropping four letter words, usually beginning with F, or calling out other bloggers for giving false or flat out stupid information. But he cuts through the crap and gives online money making tips that most well-known blogger won't give.

I've been an internet marketer for almost 5 years and I make a pretty darn good living online. I thought I pretty much knew it all when it comes to making money online but Vic's posts have shown me that I definitely did not! He has taught me more in the past couple months than all the other blogs, forums, and information products combined have in the past year.

Actually he is probably pissing off a lot of so called "experts" and top bloggers because he is giving away all the online money making secrets for free.

I was going to list some of my favorite posts from Blogger Unleashed here but as I started going through them I realized there are just too many great ones and the list would have been too long. So I suggest going through his archives and finding your own favorites.

Be sure to read the comments under each post because even the comments on most of his posts are a goldmine for money making information you can use.

Why Blogger Unleashed is not on the 45n5.com top 100 make money online blogs list is beyond me. You could easily make the argument that it is the #1 make money online blog, and I don't think anyone would disagree that it's at least one of the top blogs.

Update: I was contacted by the owner of 45n5.com after he read this post and he has now added Blogger Unleashed to the Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs list.

To put everything I said above into one sentence...

You'd be wise to save Blogger Unleashed in your favorites and visit it often!

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Owner of Free Home Business Tips

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What Is Your Favorite Blogging Platform?

Just about everyone who decides to start a blog contemplates one of the biggest blogging dilemma's, whether they should start by using Google's free Blogger service or go with a hosted Wordpress blog on their own domain? When you combine ease of use, simplicity of starting, functionality, and SEO, I have to go with Blogger as my top choice and I will tell you why below.

If you do some research around the blogosphere, you will undoubtedly discover that many more people put in their vote for Wordpress over Blogger.

But I have to ask why?

I've used both for various blogs I own and from what I can see, the whole Wordpress craze comes from its Web 2.0 capability. It comes with the built-in ability for users to employ an ever growing source of third party plug-ins, as well as small add-on programs called widgets. These add-ons enhance the functionality of wordpress blogs and make them more appealing to the end-user. If you search on Google for "Wordpress widgets", you will find a huge amount of different resources for adding on WP widgets.

So if Wordpress has such a great following and is loaded with so many creative plug-ins, widgets, and thingamabobs, then why do I prefer Blogger? The answer is pretty straightforward... I am looking for traffic from the search engines, and Google in particular. And since Google owns Blogger, I think it would be crazy to think that they don't give blogger blogs better search engine rankings. And when it comes to profiting, SE Rankings are what it's all about.

Also, it is incredibly easy to make blogs using the Blogger service. Even the newest of newbie’s can have one set up within a few minutes. It is also extremely simple to add Google Adsense to Blogger blogs. Once you have your Adsense publisher ID, you can just click a link in your blog template to add a block of Adsense to your blog.

I've never had any problems with blogger at all and I have been using them for over 4 years. My blogs rank highly for many of their target keyword phrases and some of them are very profitable. As long as my blogs keep bringing in profits without messing around with all those "extras" offered by WP then I will stick with blogger.

For me it's a clear choice, if you want a more high-tech blog with lot of options, widgets, and gadgets, then you should definitely go with Wordpress. But, if you are looking to start a blog that you can put up quickly and easily to start making money as soon as possible, then Blogger is for you.

Oh and I also forgot to mention, there are now some great tools available that allow you to keep track of numerous Blogger blogs from just one place. This makes it even easier to use Blogger for your blogging needs and build a good income.

Now you have heard my opinions on which blogging platform to use and reasons for them. I'd also like to hear what you think and why? Just leave a comment to let me know why I am right or wrong, in your opinion, and any other thoughts you have on the topic.

Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Free Home Business Tips

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