7 Mistakes Done When Blogging

Making money online has become a very popular method to generate some cash but it`s not as easy at it seems. Lets see , is anyone really making money out of blogging ? The question is obviously yes . There are even five figure bloggers and six figure bloggers.

So people wonder why they are not making serious money with their blogs. My own blog hasn`t got much time since it`s started but for now there is a decent traffic and I am not looking to monetize it very soon as this is not my priority. I run two other blogs that I spent a lot of time putting them up , promoting and adding fresh daily content. Here are some of the reasons why I think that bloggers trying to do what John Chow`s doing just not get it right.

1. Be more original

More and more blogs are started everyday , and as far as I have seen all of them are rushing to place as many ads as possible , in every little corner of their blog. Let`s see if you are looking to make 1000$ a month from adsense , and just started your blog , you should think more about gaining more traffic first, you should look for around 200.000 monthly visits or so. You must set realistic goals that go with your blog’s gradual growth. There are lots of bloggers that I would say “They really teach you how to Blog” , apart from making money with your blog which is a very different subject.

2. Writing useless content

It`s just pointless. Your blog`s traffic will only increase when you write good content. Gaining some constant readers , or getting reviewed by other bloggers in your niche means you have to be original and not time wasting blogger that is just looking to make a living online.

3. Not spreading your blog enough

A quite delicate subject “Traffic” , when it comes to blogging. Traffic seems to be one of the hardest tasks among writing content , promoting or affiliate marketing and so on. When starting a blog , no one want to spend hundreds of dollars on advertising , very expensive templates etc. Any one is free to use free traffic generators services: Such as Entrecard. These sites work pretty well for me and I am sure will do for anyone. Try to be more active in the social media communities, they can bring huge amount of traffic to your blog , submit your blog to directories, do it daily.

4. Advertising Too Early

People set blogs and start advertising right away. Wrong. Everyone should focus on content first , bring in some traffic and then start placing ads strategically on your blog.

Using Time Stamping Feature In WordPress

The purpose for this post is to let everyone that doesn`t have an idea what Time Stamping feature does, and how does it actually work. I have been using this feature for the last two months since I started blogging full time for several of my blogs. When I started out this blog, I was only averaging one post every day, but I progressed to posting 2 or 3 posts on daily basis. There is no way to spend the whole day in front of your computer, writing posts and publishing them individually, especially if you own more than one blog that you update nearly every single day. So I have decided to use this great feature Time Stamping , that lets you do all your posts at once, then time stamp them.

This post has been written on at 9:00 am but went live 6 hours after. using the Time Stamping Feature.

Using time stamping is great because you will no longer have to publish each post individually.This post has been written on at 9:00 am but went live 6 hours after. You set your own desired times, when you want them to hit your blog`s homepage.For example I normally write my blog posts every morning, for one good reason, my inspiration is at the highest levels during the morning. It can take nearly 2 hours to write my blog posts for that day, so imagine if you wake up at 8 a.m, you already have written your posts for the day ahead until 10 a.m, and let time stamping feature do the rest for you, and publish each post at the times you set them to go live on your blog. What I like most about is that I don`t have to be worried about providing content for the whole day, and go on with other daily tasks.

A blog that isn`t updated daily is a dead blog. Your readers want to read new content, your subscribers might check their RSS readers to see if anything has been updated. If you don`t afford to pay for your posts or maybe you don`t have any interested guest bloggers than Time Stamping is a must. You can even write your posts for three days ahead, and let them be published evenly.

I normally set my posts to be published every 5 - 6 hours. There is no excuse what so ever not to update your blog. Lets say you want to go on a two weeks vacation, the least number of post you`ll need to provide to your blog would be around 14 I would say. You want to have fun and get some rest wherever you go, so the most you would be able to do is maybe moderate comments and spend some time on Twitter or other social networks you are active in. What you can do is write 14 posts with three days before you leave on vacation, take your time to make them great, and Time Stamp Them.

How do you actually use Time Stamping?

It`s actually more easy than you can imagine. Log in your wordpress admin panel, hit the “Write Tab” on the navigational menu, write your post, don`t forget to include title all the tags and categories. You will see right beside the wordpress editor, a box like the one you see on the right ,that is where you set the times you want your posts to go live. If you refresh the page you`ll see that, the time that is set there actually updates minute after minute, so instead of hiting the publish button once your post is ready, hit edit and set the date and time when you want your post live, then hit the publish button.

If you never used the Time Stamping feature in Worpdress, I highly recommend it, it saves time, it`s accurate and one of the most helpful tools in WordPress, if you have a really busy schedule.

Do Your Posts Run Dry?

Anyone can have difficult times and some lack of inspiration. That can happen quite often, so let me give you some tips what to do when your posts run dry. Writing is not for everyone, but as long as you blog, you should improve your writing skills, as content matters the most after all. I have seen many some bloggers, post very rarely on their blogs or not at all. It might be just lack of inspiration, because there is always something to write no matter your niche is.

Blogging can be really tough but profitable on the long run, it requires a lot of patience and time, to see it slowly grow and improve in its rankings. Professional blogging requires a lot more than just providing content and involving in social networks . Now I know how it feels people tend to do great at the beginning and maybe give up when the harder part comes.

Everything done naturally will always be more valuable. Don`t try to get stressed at your computer providing content, doing research or whatever, let it all come naturally. I am saying this because it`s nearly one year since I became active only, I know not much but enough to tell that working online is all about working smart more than working hard.

Proving unique content will pay back as you go along, don`t even think about starting a blog without having any knowledge about what your doing. You should blog about thinks you like, it`ll be a lot easier for you to enjoy blogging, and take it more seriously.

Frustrated about your blog? Not gaining enough visitors? Maybe you are not doing what you should be doing. Always try to keep in touch with all the news upcoming in your niche, provide useful content, don`t go to far with things that have already been discussed in hundreds if not thousands of other blogs.

I am going to share some of the greatest places to get inspired when you have difficult times providing content for your blog. There isn`t anything wrong in getting inspired, there is a problem if you try to steal other`s work. Well enough with this.. lets see the positive part of it all, there are a few ways to fight your lack of inspiration.

1. Other Blogs

Most of the post in my case come naturally, there is only some research that I need in order to put the posts together. But as many of you out there, I have difficult times as well, and this happens when I stop visiting other blogs so often,in my case it happens very rarely, because I am very active providing content for five blogs at the moment,including this one. As long as my niche is affiliate marketing , blogging and social media I concentrate on reading some of the greatest blogs related to mine.

2. Forums

Forums are not only traffic generators but people actually share interesting stories which will always inspire you as a blogger. Are you a member of forums related to your blogs niche? I highly recommend joining forums and see what is being discussed. Be active, do it daily. There is no better way to improve your blogging skills other than sharing experiences with other bloggers. Forums are a great place for you to find out what the hot topics of your niche, its a bit like doing keyword research, see what`s hot in your niche and write about it. Try to add things that have not yet been discussed so much. There are some blogs I would recommend, Digital Point , Warriors, Bloggeries , Blog Premiere.

3. Use Google Blog Search

If you don`t have an idea of what Google Blog Search is, I`ll tell you, it`s nothing more than the most powerful search engine for blogs. See what topics are highest ranked in the search engine. Check out new blogs on your niche , meet your competitors. I bet you can get a lot of inspiration this way.

4. Never go to far. Get rest. Organize your time

When I started being active online , I thought it`ll be a lot easier. But I soon realized that in order to achieve my goals I need to spend a lot more time at the computer than just 4 or 5 hours day. I now manage several blogs , running niche websites , buying and selling domains , doing reviews on different services or products ,doing freelance work, this can only be done if you organize your time and be aware of each and every task being done correctly. If rushing into things to quickly you might end up noticing you have than nothing. Getting enough rest is what improves the quality of your work.

5. Read e-books

There are a lot of e-books that can open up your mind, inspire and teach you a lot of new things. Blogging is like a business, you have to know how to market yourself. Some of the e-books I have read are pretty good , some are great but there are some that are real junk. I though about reviewing some of these e-books but I came up to a conclusion, I can learn something just about from anything, I am sure even in those junk e-books will be something you didn`t know and might inspire you after all.

Top 10 Must Have WordPress Plugins

Ok. You have been blogging maybe for some time now, and realize that something is just not working out for you, or things just have to get a little bit easier. This is why developers have written code for what we call plug-ins. Most of them are to make our work easier, and upgrade our wordpress blog with some “must have” features. Below is a list of ‘must have’ WordPress plugins.

1. Akismet - If you are tired of receiving spam in your blog`s comments this plugin is what you really need. Akismet is one of the best spam-fighting services that is different from others, it checks the content of the comment anonymously with an online server, to determine whether it is spam or not. I have been using it for a while now, and can tell is something you must have in your plugins list.

Donwload Akismet Plugin 2.1.6

2. Related Post - This plugin allows you to show a list of related post either after or before each of your post. This will increase the stickiness of your blog. One of the best tools to increase your page views.This plugin will output a series of related entries based on keyword matching.You can set the number of posts to show up.

Download Related Post Plugin 1.5.1

3. Sitemap Generator - We all know what google is an how important is to rank well in the search engines, to do so we need a sitemap. This plugin helps the search engines to crawl easier your site, by creating a sitemap. This is not just another XML sitemap plugin, but rather a sitemap generator which is highly customizable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel. Some of its features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more. In other words a must have plugin.

Download Site Map Generator Plugin 3.1.0.1

4. Social Bookmarks - Come on you have seen the social buttons on many blogs, at the end of each post. This can be easily done by installing the social bookmarks plugin.It automatically ads a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them in a number of social bookmarking sites. Furthermore, the plugin ads a page in the WordPress admin section that lets you customize it.You can change the design of the buttons and their placement.This is one of the easiest ways to spread your content to the world.

Download Social Bookmarks Plugin

5. FeedSmith - This Plugin allows you easily monitor your RSS readers and use the services of FeedBurner. FeedSmith redirects all your RSS Feeds to a single FeedBurner feed so you can know exactly how many people have subscribed to your RSS feed. This plugin has also been updated by FeedBurner.

Download FeedSmith Plugin 2.3

6. Smart Youtube - Smart Youtube is one of the greatest plugins I have seen so far for playing Youtube videos on your blog. Youtube Plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos in your post, in the comments section and in the RSS feed. It allows you to correctly embed the videos within the posts area. The great part of this plugin is that, youtube videos will show up in the RSS feeds as well.

Download Smart YouTube Plugin 2.0

7. All in One SEO Pack. Search engine traffic is what most bloggers want. There are some things to be optimized first before having organic traffic to any one blog. All in One SEO Pack does some of the work required to rank well in the search engines and bring traffic to your blog.This plugin optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines by letting you define your home page title, description and keywords, define your post, page, category, archive, tag and search title formats , use categories for META keywords, avoid indexing of duplicate content, autogenerate descriptions.

Download All in One SEO Pack Plugin 1.4.6.13

8. Broken links checker. You might have wondered if you have any broken links through out your blog. So what exactly does this plugin do?

- This plugin is will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found.
- Checks your posts and pages to detect links that don’t work and missing images.
- It will also notify you on the Dashboard if any are found.
- Makes broken links display differently in posts. Link checking intervals can be configured. -
- New/modified posts are checked ASAP.
- You can unlink or edit broken links in the Manage -> Broken Links tab.

Download Broken Links Checker Plugin 0.4.3

9. Peel Away Ad Plugin. You might have noticed some blogs or web pages with a fliping corner at the top right hand side of the pages.This is the Peel Away Ad pluing. It is actually an advertising script , that automatically inserts a flipping corner at the top corners of your blog. It can be easily customized in your dashboard, in order to show more than one ad at the time, by rotating them. Peel Away Ad is a lot more friendly than popping windows, that for some users are very annoying. It can a have a really high click through rate because of its positioning.

Download Peel Away Ad Plugin

10. WP gravartar - This is the best way to build up your blog`s community, and let users interact between them. It also bring your comment section to life, by inserting 20 x 20 incons.The size is also customizable. This plugin lets you use Gravatar, MyBlogLog, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or Favico.ico.

Download WP-Gravatar Plugin 2.7.1

I will be updating this list with the newest versions of all plugins listed here,feel free to suggest new ones, I might add them to the list.

Forum Signature - SEO

Someone asked me if forums signatures were good for link building and gaining SERP. The answer is yes. Forum links are great at building links and creating traffic. Forums get indexed pretty quickly by Google’s web crawlers (spiders). To get the most out of your forum links follow these tips. Anchor text is very important when it comes to search engine optimization. Use a keyword anchor text in your signature. If your website is about “bird feeders” then your forum signature should have the words “bird feeder” with a hyper link embedded. The main mistake webmaster make is using words like “click here”, “here”, “go here”, etc. Your keyword anchor text should always be an accurate description of web page it’s linked to. The keyword anchor text is a valuable search engine optimizing tool when used correctly. Not only does it benefit the search engines it also helps web visitors understand what the web page link is about. Try to post comments in a variety of forums and not just one. It is better to have 10 links from 100 forums than to have 1000 links from 1 forum. I see this mistake quite often. A person stays in one forum and will have 10,000 posts and then make a statement like “I have 10,000 posts and have not moved up in search engine rank…what to do? The obvious answer to the question is to quit posting in that forum and find another 100. Google will only give weight to about 20 forum signature links. My advice is post until you reach 100 comments then move to another forum. Here is the guideline, find ten forums and start posting 10 links in each one for 10 days which equals 100 links per day and 1,000 links in ten days with about 200 quality back links. Now here is the easy part. Find 10 more forums and repeat. In 4 months you will have over 10,000 key word anchor text links in over 100 sites. If you follow the suggestions on forum posting you will catapult yourself in the rankings of Google and Yahoo.

What are web directories and how can they help my site?

The Internet is a huge place and finding your way around can sometimes be difficult if you’re looking for something in particular. This is where web directories come in. Web directories are like the Directories or Yellow Pages you have in the real world.

Web Directories basically organize websites under relevant category topics. If you had a website that sold Shoes, you would have your website listed in a category like “Shopping –> Clothes –> Shoes” or something similar.

So the natural question to ask out here would be, “Do people even use web directories to find stuff online?” OR “Aren’t the search engines like Google and Yahoo supposed to help people find what they’re looking for?”

It’s true that not too many people use web directories these days to find what they’re looking for. However, it’s not that they’re not used at all; they are still used by some people. More importantly, getting your site listed in a web directory does serve a couple of other purposes than just people finding your site there.

Getting a link to your site from various web directories can help improve the chances of your site ranking higher for particular search terms in Google, Yahoo and MSN. After all, if you want your website to be successful, it would have to be found by people and the best way for that would be your site coming up on top for the searches that matter. When people search using particular words, you would want your site showing up in the first few results for those words.

So how exactly do web directories help in improving my search engine rankings?

The answer would be better understood if you learned a little bit about how search engines rank websites. Websites are ranked based on many different factors: right from the content of the website to how many other sites are linking to the site. (Quality, high page rank sites will improve site as well , in the search engine results). While each factor is important in its own right, there is none more important than how many other sites link to your website.

If another website links to your site, the search engines like Google & Yahoo consider that link as a vote for your site and take that as a factor when ranking your website. It also looks at how the site is linking to yours, if that site links to you mentioning keywords like ‘click here’, it wouldn’t be considered as important as a link that mentioned ‘cotton t-shirts’ or whatever the appropriate term may be for your site.

This is where getting links from web directories help. Firstly, every link from a directory is counted to a certain extent by the search engines when deciding the site’s ranking. Secondly, in most cases, you get to choose how you want the directory to link to you. So, in effect, you not only get a link but a link with your target key terms. This becomes hugely beneficial because it isn’t easy otherwise getting a link and especially one that links to you the way you want it.

Apart from just the link factor, if your site is new or just been launched, a web directory link would help the search engine in finding your site and including it in its database. So given the benefit of web directory links, it only makes sense to get your site submitted to as many directories as possible.

Using Social Bookmarking Sites To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

Most of the people don`t have the idea or don`t know what the difference between a social bookmarking site and a social network is. This is the purpose for this article. Now we all know a lot about Digg , StumbleUpon , Technorati , Reddit , Google Bookmarks , Del.icio.us , Propeller and the list may continue. Now what is the real difference between a social bookmarking site and a social network. Actually there is a big one. Social bookmarking sites are there to let members bookmark their own links , posts and easy get some valuable back links , there is no much of interaction in social between members in a social bookmarking site. A social network is a bit more complex , users have to interact between each other. Digg for example lets it`s members “digg stories” , add friends , send shouts and so on. The reason for digging is to make a story popular , now if your story submitted to Digg doesn`t get digged there aren`t a lot of chances to gain a lot of targeted traffic , the same goes for StumbleUpon where if you don`t get your posts stumbled and reviewed there a small chances to gain visitors as well. It`s just like having friends in the real life , to help you out. If you have a lot of friends among the Digg`s users then you must be lucky. Social bookmarking sites are there for people to discover stories by using the categories search or the main search bar. Most of the social bookmarking sites tend to be well indexed in the main search engines , that means they have great page ranks. Imagine having bookmarked 10,000 links in Reddit , you can easily get traffic everyday. Use social bookmarking sites in your as your link building tool.

All bookmarking sites are free. The traffic from them is also targeted to your content , people actually search for thing and come up to your story by using keywords. The purpose of this article is to show you how to drive all the free traffic to your website easy and free. Most people are lazy , this bookmarking does involve some work , so you need to work a bit on self improvement. There is a saying “People that get up early , are ahead of the others”.

6 Steps To Use Social Bookmarking Sites

- Write Eye Catching Headlines

- Great Article Description

- Catchy First Paragraph

- Unique Content

- Use Bookmarking Buttons on Your Website

- Use the Right Category

Write Eye Catching Headlines

You can have the best content out there on your niche and unique. If the first line of your submission which isn`t that interesting , then your article won`t get to many visits either. Always try to improve your writing skills , this can be done by reading some of the best bloggers , reading other articles on your niche , that really interests you. The headline is the part of your article that people see first.Some do allow you to place pictures besides your article , do so , pictures ads are always more eye catching and covert better. So if you want your articles to get read you have to make your titles catchy.

Great Article Description

Try to provide an detailed and interesting description of your articles.This should in many cases be the first few sentences of your post , that will encourage the reader and make him more interested in reading the post.

Catchy First paragraph

This is very important as well , as there are a lot of readers just pop into your site , start reading your post , if they find it interesting in it`s first paragraph the chances to go further are greater. Always try to give a brief description of your entire post in the introduction. I am not my self an experienced writer , and nor are 90% of the blogger out there , but trying to get straight the basic things in writing is an asset.

Unique Content

Anyone surfing the web for an article would want the best they can get. Now it`s not always happening this way. But publishers should always focus in creating unique and interesting content. No one wants to read junk articles that can be found every where on the web. With the same writing structure. I get pretty annoyed when I come across a blog which entirely copies the content from other blogs or websites. It`s very easy to tell if someone is not being unique. They never get a high Page Rank , their link popularity doesn`t ever grow , they never get quality back links from others in their competitive niche. In the end , they find out how does copying content affect your blog and your earnings.Therefore make sure that your article body contains quality information and links.

Use Bookmarking Buttons on Your Website

Insert a bookmarking button at the end of your posts. This can be done individually or you can get a special plug-in that will help you place the button in each and every post. I suggest you using Share This , one of the best services for sharing content on the web , by placing a simple button that easily lets your readers do the submissions to social bookmarking sites and social networks , and spread you content to the world.

Use the Right Category

There are a few ways people can find an article on a social bookmarking site. They can either come through search engines on a specific post , they can do a quick search using the search tool bar , they can read the story from the front page or they can use the categories. So this explains the importance of choosing the right category. To make it easier for the users to find whatever they might be interested in.You want targeted traffic to your site , remember in order to convert in earnings it must be targeted.