TechPatio » Blogging

5 Great Tips to Encourage Commenting on Your Blog Posts

Guest Author — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:51:07 +0000

We all know that the key to making your blog a successful one is to get traffic coming in to your site on a regular basis. A blog that has dedicated readers that constantly visit it is a blog that will appear enticing to potential advertisers. However, keeping these readers at your site for a longer period of time and getting them to participate is just as important. The more commenting that goes on at your blog, the more people tend to not only spend time on it, but come back to it as well.

The best way to keep your visitors browsing your blog for longer periods of time and coming back to it more often is to encourage commenting. Turning the passive Internet user into one that participates and has something to contribute is the ultimate goal that all bloggers should strive towards. Here are five excellent methods that you can use in order to encourage communication in the comments section of your blog posts.

End with a question

This is one of the surefire ways to spark some communication. Ask a question at the end of your blog post that your readers will be likely to be able to and want to answer. For example, if you are writing a blog post about the best iPhone apps for travelers, pose a question at the end such as “What are your favorite apps when travelling? Have we missed any?” This will get people engaged and will likely encourage a bunch of good comments that will not only result in good comments, but maybe even potential ideas for another blog. Another good idea is to bold that question at the end, so that your readers see it even if they are just skimming through the blog itself.

Reply to comments regularly

Internet users who comment on blog posts want to know that their comments have been seen and taken into consideration. Be sure to answer comments made on your blog posts regularly in order to let your readers know that you are participating in the conversation actively. If possible, don’t just say “thanks for the comment,” try to continue the conversation. You can thanks them first and then maybe ask another question to continue the thread. If you have an option on your blog for sending the user and email every time someone respond to one of their comments, be sure to turn that option on, because it is yet another great way to keep them coming back and to make sure that they have no forgotten about that blog post.

Allow visitors to promote themselves

Of course, no one wants spammers to invade their blogs. Keeping irrelevant comments that are obviously spam on your blog does not help your cause; it makes you look desperate for comments. Delete these obvious spammers, but give real readers the option to promote themselves. Allow them to enter their website and perhaps Twitter handle into their comment, so that if their words make them look like someone interesting or someone who knows what they are talking about, people can find out more about them. The possibility of having people notice them and their personal blogs or businesses will encourage your readers to make their comments intriguing and well-crafted.

Don’t be afraid of controversy

Naturally, we are not suggesting that you turn your tech blog into a celebrity gossip blog, but there is nothing wrong with throwing in some edgier content every now and then. The best way to do this is with attention-grabbing blog post titles. For example, instead of calling your blog “10 Marketing Tactics That Don’t Work in Promoting Your Blog” call it “10 Promotional Tactics That Make You Look Stupid as a Blogger.” Don’t be afraid to step out of your shell and write blog titles that will get you more clicks. There’s also nothing wrong with baiting readers into discussions by presenting a topic that you know will attract many opinionated people. “Android vs. iPhone” and “Mac vs. PC” blog posts are good examples of blog post topics that are sure to inspire heated debates.

Keep your content varied

There is nothing less interesting than a blog that is predictable. Reviewing online tools or apps is great, but if a majority of your blog posts are lists like this, people will know what to expect and lose interest. By keeping your content uniform, you are also streamlining your readership. You need to try to keep your content varied and interesting. Some people like lists and short comments, other people like to read posts in paragraphs that read like a diary entry. A good way to keep your content varied if you feel that you don’t really have a lot of difference writing styles to offer is to encourage guest posting on your blog. Many of your readers are probably bloggers themselves, and offering them a backlink to their blog for a quality guest post is a good way to keep your blog posts different and unpredictable.

Engaging your readers and turning your blog into an online community is the goal of every Internet entrepreneur and getting them to comment on your posts and keep coming back for more interesting conversation is a really good start towards achieve that goal.

Guest article written by: Cindy Pearson is a blogger at the PDF Converter blog. She loves all things Internet and technology-related and enjoys sharing computer tips and tricks with the tech-savvy masses.

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Why Bloggers Need to Be in Good Health in Order to Make Money and 12 Tips for a Blogger to Stay Fit

Guest Author — Sun, 20 May 2012 13:30:40 +0000

That most of us bloggers are in need of some form of physical fitness is beyond argument. Apart from the hours we condemn ourselves to behind our computers, we have a million and one obligations calling out for our attention such that we hardly have time to exercise. Personally, even on the days I wake up determined to put in at least half an hour of exercise something always comes up. If it’s not an emergency to do with the kids it’s the car that is broken down or a function you had neglected to diarize sneaking up on you.

Besides the sedentary lifestyle imposed by our chosen career or in fact, thanks to it, getting healthy food is also a challenge. While ordering coke and a burger only makes sense when you’re working against the clock to wrap up those write ups, it shows up on your waistline as those unutilized calories are converted into body fat.

Why Bloggers Need to Be in Good Health?

Now, being a fellow blogger, I understand that the more content you generate, the more the potential to make money online. Search engines thrive on content, and the more you have, the higher the chances of being ranked higher. And the more the people who follow the links on the results page to your blog, the higher your advertising revenue. All this is true, but in order for you to continue writing your articles, you need to be in good health. This is why you need a proper diet along with some regular exercise. But you don’t need to be signed up in a gym to work out.

Health and Weight Loss Activities That Can Fit Into a Busy Schedule

Here are some weight loss tips you can use that will fit seamlessly into your daily routine:

A favourite among most people is the early morning run. Get up a few minutes earlier and jog around the neighbourhood.
While in the house, turn on some music and dance or do some aerobics. If you run out of ideas check the internet. World renowned diet and fitness companies like Weightwatchers and TRXTraining provide countless tips of in-house workouts.
Having a kick-about with the kids in the backyard for a couple of minutes helps you kill two birds with one stone; spend quality time with your children and improve your circulation.
Take a walk, either by yourself or with the kids. You can spice it up with a couple of lunges or jumping jacks just to get the heart pumping. This small activity will stimulate your body and your mind, making you more alert and improving the quality and quantity of your output.
Give the kids a ride in a play wagon or use a jogging roller instead.
Let the kids ride their bikes or tricycles as you chase them with a light jog.
Throw yourself into household chores. Trust me, you will burn calories.
Use the stairs rather than the elevator.
Drop off the bus or train a couple of stops before your destination to do some walking.
When it’s time for your lunch break, take a brisk walk outside instead of ordering in. Burn calories and work on your circulation. Your mood will also brighten up.
As you go about other tasks do some small stretches or yoga.
Movie time can be a window for exercise; squeeze in sit ups during commercial breaks.

Guest article written by: A blogger with a keen interest in health and fitness, Charles Mburugu is currently involved in promoting offers such as TRX training offer codes and a WeightWatchers coupon code. He also writes concerning unique coupon deals for weight loss and dieting programs.

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5 Tips for Tech Bloggers Who Want to Lose Weight and Blog Better

Guest Author — Thu, 17 May 2012 08:59:00 +0000

If you search online, there are treasure troves of information you can find on losing weight. For bloggers however, the situation is a bit trickier compared to others. Bloggers, and especially tech bloggers, tend to lead a more relaxed lifestyle. Sitting in a chair all day, walks to the bathroom or kitchen and scratching your head pretty much sums up the extent of their physical actions. It is this type of lifestyle that can make gaining weight really easy and losing it very hard.

There are ways however, for a blogger to get sufficient exercise and proper diet regardless of their limitations. There are exercises that can be implemented at your desk. Also, reliable online dieting sources such as Diet to go or BistroMD can provide information on proper diets for bloggers. All these are possibilities if the blogger sets their mind to it. If you can have the discipline to take care of yourself, you will be able to benefit from the many advantages of a healthier lifestyle.

Maintain a proper and balanced diet

First and foremost, let us approach your source of sustenance. You get your energy from food. Maintaining a proper and balanced diet can work wonders for your daily store of energy. Too many tech bloggers are often tempted to go for that quick alternative of a microwave dinner or pizza delivery their order from their iPhone, but these are not healthy for your body especially if eaten frequently. Weight loss will be challenging if you continue to depend on these foods.

Check the internet for reliable and low cost dieting help

Most bloggers use the internet for technical, SEO, traffic, or other matters. But how many bloggers resort to the vast supplies available online for getting the right diet? Online providers such as Diet to Go or BistroMD can plan your daily meals to help meet your daily-required nutrients. If you search you may find a coupon available as well. This coupon can help you alleviate the cost for such services.

If you want to buy any of those programs, don’t pay the full price. Just use a DiettoGo coupon or Bistro MD voucher and save some money!

Drink more water

Try to avoid giving in to the temptation of small snacks when you feel hunger pangs. Instead, drink water. This is a great solution for weight loss as well, since water contains zero calories.

Exercise by your desk

Push yourself to do mini exercise routines at your desk. Remind yourself to take stretching breaks and a few simple muscle-building exercises are a great way to encourage good blood circulation. Take a quick stroll outside or do some jumping jacks to get you breathing deeply. A power nap is good for refreshing your mind as well.

Maintain a good posture

Women especially should avoid bad posture as this can lead to back problems later on. Constantly remind yourself to sit up straight whenever you catch yourself in a bad position. If done on a regular basis, exercises like those above can help you stretch your muscles and stay fit.

If you constantly remind yourself about these practices, you will be on your way to a much healthier lifestyle. Remember that consistency is key and that your routine should not stop once you have reached your target weight. Your new regimen should become a regular habit. If you can fight this mental battle against lethargy and laziness often generated by having the latest technology in your hands, you will be guaranteeing yourself a much healthier future.

Guest article written by: Christofer loves to write about latest gadgets available in the market and what to expect from the upcoming ones. He also writes on fitness challenges faced by computer enthusiasts and tries to solve their problems.

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Dedicated Web Hosting – Managed vs Unmanaged

Guest Author — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:47:36 +0000

If you have a large site which receives a huge volume of traffic, shared hosting might not have the capacity of handling your growth. You’ll need to switch to dedicated hosting so as to serve your customers better. In shared hosting, several websites share the bandwidth and disk space of a single server. On the other hand, dedicated hosting involves renting a whole server for your own exclusive use. If you decide to go for a dedicated hosting plan, make sure the hosting company is reliable and trustworthy. You need a web host who will ensure that your site is up most of the time. Though dedicated hosting is more costly than shared hosting, it gives you the liberty of allocating bandwidth and disk space as you see fit.

There are numerous dedicated web hosting plans available with varying prices. Packages from servers with bigger hard drives and faster processors cost more. Another factor which has an effect on the price is whether the server is managed or unmanaged. Managed hosting is usually more costly compared to unmanaged hosting. A managed hosting service provides the expertise and support to carry out routine maintenance tasks. This kind of service saves you the trouble of hiring your own personnel to maintain your servers.

However, depending on your site’s requirements, basic managed hosting might not be enough. You might need to find a web hosting solution which is capable of running platforms on your behalf. Such providers take not only host your site, but also take care of the platform on your behalf. Some of the hosted solutions include hosted conferencing and IP telephony, hosted email, hosted CRM and hosted collaboration. The hosted platforms could be either dedicated to a single customer, or shared among a number of customers.

If you choose to go for unmanaged hosting, you or your should be able to solve problems on your own. This means having an understanding of the software, protocols and operating system installed in the computer. However, unmanaged hosting does not mean that you are entirely on your own. Most hosting companies continue to offer customer support to a certain extent for their dedicated hosting plans. This includes things such as hardware maintenance, software installation and configuration. You are likely to be charged a fee for this additional support.

The choice between unmanaged and managed hosting is determined by technical needs of your site, as well as your ability to manage a server and keep it operating at peak efficiency. If you have personnel who are capable of carrying out most of the maintenance tasks, an unmanaged server is the best option for you. However, if you would rather leave the job of server maintenance to skilled professionals, go for managed hosting.

Guest article written by: Charles Mburugu often writes about web hosting and online backup. He has also written articles about how to make a website.

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A Blogger’s Diet to Avoid Stress

Guest Author — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:49:05 +0000

Here is one important reason you need to pay closer attention to what you put into your mouth: it might be what is causing you stress. Don’t take my word for it, research has developed an irrefutable link between what we eat, or don’t eat, and the stress levels we experience. Now, many bloggers probably experience high stress levels due to the demands of generating unique content that will guarantee them high rankings on search engines. However, the kind of food they eat as they work only adds fuel to the fire of stress. I may be wrong, but I believe bloggers may as a result be some of the most stressed creatures walking this planet today. The good news is that just as some foods cause stress, others cure it. Despair not, fellow blogger, your relief may be only a change of diet away.

What a Blogger Must NOT Have In His Diet

I have compiled a list of foods and drinks that have been found to cause stress. Unfortunately, many of them are the packaged foods that are blogger staples. Their convenient availability of these foods and the adrenalin injection of caffeinated beveragesrender them a blogger’s best friend. They enable the men and women in this line of work to soldier on night and day, churning out articles for their blogs.

1. Caffeinated drinks

Telling some of us to give up our coffee or energy drinks is the equivalent of telling us to donate both kidneys. But if you have been a victim of the adverse effects of stress and are keen on a change, you will actively seek ways of cutting down your intake. Excessive intake of these drinks leads to a hyperactive, emotionally unstable you who succumbs to the slightest provocation. If you have noticed yourself becoming not only increasingly stressed, but extremely touchy as well, you might want to change what’s in your cup.

2. Alcohol

What? But it’s what I take to cool my nerves, you may say. Alcohol, taken in moderation is ok. The problem is when it is taken in excessive quantities. Abuse of alcohol causes the body’s systems to malfunction, disrupting sleeping patterns. We’ve talked about irritability here; well one of its leading causes is lack of sleep. The social consequences of alcohol abuse are well documented; among the ones most likely to lead to the build-up of stress are strained relationships at home and in the office. Giving up the bottle, or at least limiting your intake will give these relationships a new lease of life and bring you some peace of mind. It will also help you with weight loss as you watch the beer gut disappear.

3. Sugar

At this point you may be thinking that everything that even remotely tastes good is an agent of stress. But the way sugar drastically manipulates the body’s energy levels leads to stress in many cases. Whenever you introduce a large quantity of sugar into your body, insulin is released to lower the sugar level. However, excess sugar means that even after insulin has done its job and mopped up the sugar, it remains in the system causing your energy levels to drop. And you thought sugar was all sweet. Reaching for that candy bar to ‘relieve your stress’ is actually shoveling coal into the fire. And we’ve not even mentioned its effects on your pearly whites.

What a Blogger Must Have In His Diet

There are foods that can actually help you reduce the amount of stress you experience. A critical factor in how helpful they can be is how they are prepared. Cooking them in buckets of oil under high temperatures or adding too many preservatives, food coloring and other such additives, and using too much salt, while making the meal more appealing, robs it of its ability to counter stress. I may appear to you now as the ultimate killjoy but getting what you eat right and a stress-free you is just what your blog needs. So here are the foods that need to be on your plate to achieve this.

1. Proteins

This is what your body needs to build its muscles and strengthen them. You therefore need to boost your intake of fish, chicken, beans, milk, eggs and other protein-heavy foods. Do not worry if you cannot source, cook or portion these foods. National home meal delivery services, like DiettoGo and BistroMD can provide low-fat, fresh, healthy meals that arealready portioned and calorie controlled.

2. Carbohydrates

Like we said earlier, how the foods are prepared goes a long way to determining how useful they will be in ridding you of stress. Carbohydrates need to be taken in an unrefined form. I’m taking about corn off the cob, whole grain bread, brown rice etc, not the conventional bread made with the super-refined white flour. Or the donuts that are made with this fine, white flour, cooked in oceans of oil and dunked in sugar-laden chocolate. Sadly, this, and a cup of coffee is what many a blogger will call breakfast.

3. Iron

One of this mineral’s key functions is to help in transporting oxygen via the bloodstream. Nutritionists say that a deficiency of iron in the body leads to reduced intellectual capacity. And if anything a blogger needs, it’s his mental faculties in tip top condition and zero stress. Take ye therefore eggs, lean beef, dried fruits, peas, potatoes and wholegrain cereals in good quantities.

This is a post by Charles, a professional blogger who writes about weight loss programs, as well as dieting tips. Currently, he is contributing to a coupon blog which offers Bistromd discount codes and Diettogo promotion codes. He also blogs about social media and internet marketing.

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5 Ways to Improve Your Social Networking

Guest Author — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:03:31 +0000

These below mentioned tricks and tips are useful in making use of strategy thinking competence along with time-savvy tools over the Internet to expand your effectiveness. Following are 5 ways via which you can easily improve your social networking.

1. Have an Additional Ear Reserved For Your Visitors Words

The most imperative figure for your Web presence is the visitors you are actually related with. The segment of people connected with your social networking portal should be carefully observed and fully examined. You should be applying most of your energy listening to what your visitors are demanding for? For this reason, you should have a conversation monitoring or RSS feeder tools such as Seesmic, Social Mention and TweetDeck.

2. Participation & Collaboration are Imperative

Let your skies be thoroughly defined before you get started with your social networking practice. The engagement of your visitors and contacts on your activities are useful in defining the success of your social networking. In this regard, you can make use of KLOUT, which is a great tool utilized to track your impact on various social media portals.

3. Follow Different Networks

This is a fact that every one of us has something available over the World Wide Web. It mainly depends on your passion and as a result there are some social networking platforms that you can make use of to enhance your reach. Make sure you are able to find those which suit your needs and requirements. For instance, if you love music, you can follow deviantart.com or Last.fm for artists. Moreover, you can easily find your requirements by opting for Google Search.

4. Opting for Social Media Managers

You can easily save your time by making use of some extremely popular tools that are available for social media network management. For instance, Hoot Suite is a great tool which is useful in managing all your activities over various social networking portals. Let it be Twitter, WordPress, Facebook or any others, this tool will enable you to read through your messages, keep all your posts ready, timers for certain messages and a lot more. It is a tool which is worth making use of.

5. Use Mobile Applications For Social Networking Portals

You must be having a Smartphone with you, this greatly simplifies your reach and you need to switch to various easily available mobile phone applications so that you can access your social contacts in a better way. Your cell phone being a portal gadget happens to be one of the most effective approaches to stay connected for a longer period of time and that also through the day. One of the most commonly and popularly used app is Instagram which enables users to be in contact with your social networks very portably. you can easily share photos, update your status and a lot more on different social media networking portals such as Twitter, Facebook and many more. You will be able to find various other social media networking tools for your smart phones.

Guest article written by: I am Susan Hannan from Exams key Looking for Exams key exam assistance? Let’s take benefit of Exams key self-paced Microsoft Certifications training material and clear your IT certification on first try.

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4 tips for designing your blog

Guest Author — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:15:11 +0000

Design is the first thing that people see who visits your blog. If your design does not look nice or they find it annoying, they will surely not re-enter in your blog and keep you into oblivion. So today we bring you some basic guidelines to consider when looking for the best design for your blog:

1) Simplicity and minimalism: For the design of your blog opt for minimalism and simplicity, do not overload your blog with thousands of buttons and text, leaving spaces to create a legible space where you can see and read content with clarity and harmony. Therefore, be clear when designing your blog and be clear about the design what you want.

2) Letters legible: Use a readable font and clearer than is the right size to read the texts does not pose any extra effort for your readers and not have to strain your eyes. And please be careful with colors.

3) Colors legible do not harm to the eye: Both texts as in the header and in general, all elements of your blog, many people choose colors too bright which makes the blog unreadable and even makes us dizzy to read. We recommend using these bright colors on very specific things you want to highlight, but otherwise I recommend you opt for white, black and another color to identify with your blog. Other colors abound.

4) Simple and uncluttered Header: When you are designing graphics for your blog, note that what matters is the content, what goals in the graph is presented with which the user is going to relate so it must be clear and should read and seen clearly. I insist on clear designs that you choose and not misleading, overburden with resources and be careful while choosing graphic textures. Design your head with one photo or illustration and the name of your blog, but do not overload with textures and colorful letters.

Any advice more for beginners in the study design blogger?

Guest article written by: Hi, I am Greg, a freelancer who has a lot of experience in the field of SEO and Content Writing. Presently I am working on a technology Blog relates to Android Updates, Apps, Tips and Tricks. You can also find How to Root Android phones.

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Google, does PageRank flow through image links?

Klaus — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 11:00:00 +0000

This is the shortest Google Webmaster Tools video ever, so watching it is not going to waste much of your time… the question is: “Does PageRank flow through image links” – and the answer, is in the video:

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Let Technology Work in Your Favor

Guest Author — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:02:58 +0000

SEO, in itself is a two part job – there’s on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Additionally, on-page SEO has two main parts to it as well: (1) the keyword-focused part, and (2) the technical part.

Getting the keywords for your site right is a whole different story, and some people even believe that this is the only thing that matters for on-page SEO.

This isn’t the case. In fact, if you don’t do your best at getting your site to its top shape (technically speaking) then you might not even experience any search engine ranking improvements.

Following are the most important technical aspects of on-page SEO. Make sure to get to know all of them so you can tune your site accordingly.

Correct HTML and CSS Code

If you’re not a web developer you’ll find it really difficult to tune any HTML or CSS code by hand. And hiring someone to do this will cost some serious money.

That’s why I have a better solution that fixes all problems like this right from the get-go. Simply grab yourself a quality website platform (WordPress) and then search for some quality premium WordPress themes.

Why is it even important? Essentially, you need to make it as easy as possible for search engines to read and crawl your site. If you have many HTML errors then you’re making it significantly harder for Google to index your content.

Removing Broken Links

Google really doesn’t like broken links. For them, this is a sign that the webmaster is not very serious about doing their job. And there’s one more problem…

No matter how hard you try you’re still going to find some number of broken links on your site. That’s just the way it is, and it’s the reason why you should scan your site and remove the links every once in a while.

Of course, you don’t have to do this by hand … it would take ages. Instead, use a plugin called Broken Link Checker.

Improving Your Site’s Speed

As of late, Google openly admits that they take site speed as a ranking factor. In plain English, the faster your site is the higher it ranks.

The best way to make your WordPress site work fast is to start with a quality theme (mentioned before). Then you can take care of a couple of additional things:

Get the W3 Total Cache plugin.
Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and follow the instructions there.
Get the WP Smush.it plugin for optimizing images.
Remove all plugins you don’t use.

Using Canonical URL Tags

Canonical tags were introduced a while ago, but they are still not commonly known among webmasters and SEOs.

Basically, a canonical URL tag looks like this:

It can be placed in the section of an HTML page. What it does is it tells search engines that the current page is only a copy of the page marked as the canonical. This results in search engines not indexing the current page and giving all credit to the canonical page.

This tag can be useful if you have duplicate content on your site indexed under two or more URLs. By using the canonical tag you can choose which one of these pages you want to rank.

Note. Don’t forget about the other side of SEO – the off-page. To be honest, you won’t be able to get any decent rankings without doing link building or other off-page SEO practices.

This closes the guide. Is there anything you find challenging about on-page SEO, anything you have problems with? Feel free to share in the comments.

Guest article written by: Karol K. is a 20-something year old web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland and a writer at ThemeFuse.com, where he shares various WordPress advice. Don’t forget to visit ThemeFuse to get your hands on some premium WordPress themes (warning: no boring stuff like everyone else offers).

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5 tips for attracting advertisers to your blog

Guest Author — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:56:59 +0000

Even though the idea of blogging started off as simply having a place from which to share your ideas with the world, it quickly blossomed into a pastime that can be turned into a profitable career. If you want to pursue a career as a professional blogger, you will quickly find out that your best bet for making money is renting out advertising space on your blog. Some of the more exclusive and most popular blogs can get away with charging people for their content, and there are some that sell their services through their blogs – which you’ll see on some of the best tutorial-based blogs for example – but generally speaking, if you are going to make money from your blog, you need some advertising.

If you believe that you have reached a point in the life of your blog at which you are ready to make some money from it, here are some tips to consider in your quest to become a profitable professional blogger through advertising.

It’s all about traffic

No matter how great your design is and how nice your blog looks, if no one is reading it, then it is useless to advertisers. In order to build a steady readership and a significant amount of traffic, you need quality content and you need to have new content coming in regularly. It is a very simple concept – the more people visit your blog and the longer they stay, the better your chances are of finding advertisers who want to promote themselves on your blog. In order to get these visitors to come to your site, you need to promote it. Promote your blog through your social networking profiles, send it to family and friends, and contact other bloggers you may know who might be willing to help you get your blog off the ground.

Another good way to get some traffic coming in to your blog is by submitting guest posts to other, more popular blogs, which will provide clicks and visits to your blog if people enjoy reading what you have written for others. Putting up some money yourself to advertise on other, more popular blogs that are similar to yours is an excellent way to increase traffic as well – if you have the money to spend on that.

Get familiar with statistics

If you are going to pitch your blog to advertisers successfully, you need to know what you are going to tell them. You need to start monitoring your traffic professionally and begin creating sales reports of the progress your blog is making. Once you hit a plateau of about 100,000 visits to your site each day, you will have a leg to stand on when you are pitching your blog to companies that might want to advertise with you. For a professional report, you need to let them know what your blog is about, what the content focuses on, and how that relates to their products or services. You also need to let them know the statistics related to your traffic. You can use Google Analytics to help you present a lot of this information related to traffic, which is a free service that offers detailed analysis of your site’s traffic.

Offer free advertising

If your traffic is not really where it needs to be in order to pitch your blog to potential advertisers, then you might want to consider offering some free advertising for the time being. It might seem counterproductive at first glance, but it is actually a very common an effective strategy. If you do not have impressive traffic stats, offer some free ad space to an advertiser that you would like to have advertising on your blog. You can give them a free trial period – three months of free advertising, and if they are satisfied with the number of clicks and visits they are getting by way of your site, a fee can be negotiated.

Remember, no one but you and your few, chosen free advertisers will know that the service is free – which can give off the appearance to other potential advertisers that this could be a good place for them to advertise as well. Creating the illusion of a bustling advertising business can only get more potential advertisers intrigued by your site and spark some real advertising offers to come in eventually.

Get into affiliate advertising

Affiliate advertising through Google Adsense tends to be where the money is at for a lot of smaller bloggers. With Adsense, you are essentially creating an account with Google and allowing Google to place ads in certain places on your blog. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of the ads, you make some money. This can be a great source of money if you have a decent amount of traffic, but not enough to get serious advertisers interested yet. However, you need to really try to use these ads sparingly and place them in areas of your blog that will not ruin the reading experience for your visitors. Going overboard with Adsense ads and cluttering your blog with them usually does more harm than good.

Research your competitors and draft a pitch

Take a look at blogs that are more successful and more popular than yours, but deal with similar subjects. Find who is advertising on these blogs and put these advertisers on the top of your list. When you draft a pitch for your blog, these will be the first advertisers that you will contact, because you are already certain that they like to promote themselves on blogs that are similar to yours.

Your pitch should be comprised of everything you have gained from the first four steps of this blog post. Be sure to present your blog and its content in the best possible light and make it clear to everyone what your blog is about. Present the statistics related to the progress that you have made in attracting traffic since your blog’s inception, and even put together some educated predictions of what heights you expect your blog’s traffic to reach within the next year or so. Put together a list of all of the companies that have already advertised on your blog, but of course do not mention that they advertised for free if that was the case.

Do not talk about money or prices in this pitch, because the only thing you can do is undervalue your blog. Web advertising is not an exact science, so you never know how valuable your blog looks to a potential advertiser and how much they would be willing to pay in order to get some ad space on it.

Remember that when you are looking for advertisers, you are actually advertising yourself, so be sure to never undersell your blog because its value and worth as an advertising spot can vary drastically depending on the eye of the beholder.

Guest article written by: David Lazar is a blogger at >CometDocs.com. With a background in journalism, he enjoys writing about and following a variety of topics, including careers, technology and new media.

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