When is the best time to start your blog? If you are asking yourself this question, you had better get cracking. Anyone who starts before you will have an advantage over you, as age is one of the factors involved in getting your blog recognition. The longer the blog is online, the higher it is ranked by search engines. Of course there are other factors such as in-links and uniqueness of content among others, but the earlier you get in, the better.

Why haven’t you started as yet?

I am passionate about something and I just love to read about it: What about your personal expression on the subject?  Trust me, no matter what your interest, there will be millions of people interested to read your side of the story.

It is too difficult: It is quite simple to start a blog, just go to WordPress.com and try it; a simple point and click process.

Don’t have the time: you can write posts according to your schedule. The length of the post depends on you. Once you get started, you only need a few minutes to post.

I just love Social Networking. I can’t get myself away from Facebook, MySpace, etc.: Social Networking sites are now some of the best sources of traffic for blogs. I use Facebook to highlight my latest posts and generate interest in my blogs. Post your blog link to these sites and get free traffic.

Don’t need a blog, I use email to communicate with lots of friends: This is another huge source of traffic. Start a blog and notify friends. Put a Signature in each email so that each subsequent person you communicate with can see the link to your blog. You can use the email and notify friends of new posts. You will now get traffic from your friends and the rest of the world.

Why WordPress? It is the most popular blogging software and has a thousand other advantages I can’t list in this post. The hundreds of free plugins and inherent adaptability of WordPress means it can be used for almost any type of site from blogging to membership sites to web stores. the possibilities are almost endless.

I started my first self-hosted WordPress blog in March 2008. I decided to start with my favorite hobby: photography. The site Amateur Photoblogger got (and is still getting) lots of views. In July, I started Blog To The World and it has done extremely well. Since then my list of WordPress sites has grown. The diverse uses for WordPress can be seen in my list of self-hosted sites :

• AmateurPhotoblogger.com - Photoblog
• Blog To The World - Blog
• Find Your Web Host - Hosting Store
• Right Price Camera - Digital Camera & Accessories Store
• Tips 2 Make Money - Make Money Online Blog
• WiseOffers.com - Online Coupons
• OfferReview - Review site for promotional offers
• Healthy-Natural-Weight.com - Weight Loss Blog
• Caralluma Supplements - Caralluma Appetite Suppressant

You may want to read my previous article: Which is better, self hosted WordPress or Wordpress.com?
If you make the wise choice and choose self-hosted WordPress (you cannot use ads to make money with a free WordPress.com site), you can get hosting from Blue Host. They have one click install of WordPress and one of the highest customer satisfaction of any web host.

If you want to start with a bang using step by step training and tips you can’t get for free, do like me and get Super Affiliate Blogger. It will break down the process as simple as A-B-C.

What are you waiting for? Start blogging! Now is the best time to start your own WordPress blog.

This is a review of another one of the tools I personally use to get ahead online:

As time goes by and more people get online, search engines are getting more demanding of content providers. Not long ago, a reciprocal link (you link my site and I will link your site) was highly respected by the search engines. Now, it is all about 1 way links. Getting links into your site is a sure way to improve your page rank and generate more traffic to your site . The websites with more quality, one way links are typically the sites that rank
the highest, without a doubt.

With that said, there are several websites directory submission programs on the market. The best and easiest to use is a new program created by Brad Callen, called Directory Submitter.

The software currently allows you to submit your sites to over 1500 website directories, all free. It is what I used on Tips 2 Make Money to give it a Page Rank 2, even though it has only a few posts and I hardly update it. Yet, it has the respect of the search engines and the few articles get relatively high search engine rankings.

Getting 1 Way links using Directory Submitter is a simple, 2 step process:

1. Input your website details (i.e. title, description, URL, etc.) into the
software

2. Click on the directory you want to submit to

The program will automatically fill in your website details. Then, you simply click the submit button and your website is instantly submitted to the directory. Then, you can move to the next directory, go through the list, and by the time you’re finished you’ll have roughly 1500 one way links pointing to your website.

It is best to input several different titles and descriptions so the search engines don’t think you are spamming and penalize you. they get picky if you submit too many links in a short period of time.

The process could not be simpler and the result as I have proven, will shoot your site up the search engine rankings and raise your Page Rank above the dreaded 0 mark.

The software is constantly being updated as there is an incredible community of users established with the aim of constantly working together to make the software better and better; so you are assured of getting great value for your money.

For more details on this outstanding software, check out Directory Submitter.

I made my first post to Blog To The World on the 12th of July 2008. In the relatively short time since starting, I have learned about writing for guests as well as for the all important search engines. Most of my posts are now on the first page of search engines and several are number one for some popular keywords. This article features 10 of the strategies I use to get top rankings on the search engines.

1. Keyword Research - Use a keyword tool to find a keyword related to your blog’s niche or category. For example, if you have a blog based on Green Tea, do a keyword search for Green Tea and find a keyword on which you could write an article. Make a search on one of the major search engines and see if it is saturated with articles based on your keyword. If there are too many articles, you may search for another keyword that is not too competitive. This way, you will be assured that when you write a post, you can eventually become #1 for your chosen keyword.
2. Keywords - Ensure that you use your chosen keywords in the article and repeat it several times. Use several other related keywords in the article to ensure your post is indexed for more than one keywords. Keywords are of utmost importance because that is what guests input into the search engines when they are making a query. If your article gets a high enough ranking, your article will be featured for them to view.
3. Relevance - There must be a high degree of relevance between your keywords, blog title, url and article. Search engines place high emphasis on relevance as they want searchers to find exactly what they are looking for, which will keep them satisfied and hopefully continue to use the search engine.
4. The 4th strategy to get #1 search engine rankings for your blog is to Write Original Content. For the sake of time and convenience, it is tempting to just make a search for a keyword, then cut and paste from different articles to make a post. Many people do it, but if you want a high ranking, please don’t. The search engines use algorithms for comparing articles and will penalize you for duplicate content. You will get a low search ranking and you may find that your blog is struggling to get any first page ranking at all.
5. Post must be Informative - Search engines make money by disseminating information. The more informative your blog is, the higher it will be ranked by both search engines and guests alike. If guests know they can get some really good information from your blog, they will keep coming back to your blog.
6. Keyword Filled Topic - Try to fill your topic with the major keyword and any minor keywords you can fill in. I like to use longer, keyword filled topics (like “Strategies to get #1 Search Engine Rankings for your Blog Posts”) to ensure that one post gets ranking for not only the major keyword, bot several others.
7. Categories and Tags - Make sure both are highly relevant to your article. Note that the quantity of tags used does not necessarily improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. They have to be highly relevant and unique to each post. Using the same tags over and over for different articles may actually be read as duplicate content by the search engines. 5 highly relevant, unique tags are better than 20 general, over-used ones.
8. Post Revision - After completing the post, do a revision and search for errors and omissions. then, this is what I do. I revise my list of keywords and start editing the article, stocking it with more keywords while at the same time ensuring that it still sounds interesting.
9. Trackback - use Technorati to find other blog posts on the topic and use the WordPress trackback feature. This ensures that you get a link to the post, which is a good way to start working on your post’s ranking.
10. Finally, use Social Networking Sites to boost your post’s popularity and provide precious one way links into your post. Technorati is a must! When you use the service, about fifteen minutes after posting, your article will appear on their site for all to see.  If you can get your article stumbled at StumbleUpon.com, you will get several free hits. The success of my number one post (Buying A DSLR Camera) is owed primarily to it being stumbled. I get stumbles for it every day since writing it on 4th August, 2008. Other valuable services include Facebook, MySpace, Blog Catalog, MyblogLog, DeliCious, Twitter and Digg. There are many others, but these have proven to be the most popular.

This has nothing to do with writing, but it is extremely important for your permalink structure to include the name of your blog post. WordPress comes with the following default permalink structure: “http://www.dejagib.com/blog/?p=123”

This does not allow the name of the post to be in the URL, which is not a good thing for your search engine rankings. You will want it to be something like: “http://www.dejagib.com/blog/2008/11/25/sample-post/” or "http://www.dejagib.com/blog/sample-post/“.
When the keyword is in the URL, it increases the relevance of the article to the search engines. The best case scenario is keyword in category, title, post and URL.

You should have done this before you made any posts on your blog, but if you wish, it may be changed by going to Admin–Settings–Permalinks. Note that if you change it after you have made posts, those posts will become brand new posts to the search engines as they will still be following the old permalinks. They will look on the posts under the new structure as new posts so in effect, you will be starting over your SEO efforts.

Those are some of the strategies I use to get high search engine rankings and ensure that many free visitors will come daily to my blog.

A related post plugin can do wonders for your WordPress blog. It works by using tags, content, title, category and other similar variables to calculate posts that closely match each other. It produces a list that is usually placed under a post or as a widget in the sidebar.

If someone lands on your page and your article is not exactly what they are looking for, chances are they might find a related article that interests them. It is particularly handy if you drive search engine traffic to your site and in that case, can potentially increase your sales. It also allows people to stay longer on your site as they are surrounded with similar articles that interest them and it is also a great way to showcase old posts that were no longer getting viewed.

I have tried several such plugins, but only one of them stand out, and that is Yet Another Related Postws Plugin (YARPP). It is FREE, simple to install and configure. just upload the plugin, activate it and change your user preferences if needed. You do not need to know any coding or adjust CSS like some of the other related posts plugin. You can also use the included widget to have your related posts in your sidebar.

To get the best results (the best possible related matches), use plenty of tags that are relevant to each post.

As admin, you may choose to see the match scores that guests cannot see. this gives you a percentage figure as to how closely the posts match. The higher number meaning a closer match.

It is highly customizable via the menu driven interface. You also have the added option of adding YARPP to your RSS feed.

I use Yet Another Related Posts Plugin on ALL my blogs. You may see it in action at the foot of this post if you are viewing this as a single post. You can see how it groups related posts, both old and new.

Find out more about YARPP or download it from the plugin homepage.

Syndicate Kahuna
Time is precious, and it is even more so online, especially if you are in some make money online business. You may be extremely busy and have little time to spend blogging or better yet, you may have several blogs and not enough time to post to each one regularly. At times you may get lazy or demotivated. Whatever the reason the service I am about to describe can really come in handy.

I had those problems until I came upon a free service from Syndicate Kahuna that allows automatic posting of fresh content to blogs. You tell them what content you want and they will start sending posts in as little as 2 minutes after a quick setup. You have the option of having it auto-posted or saved as a draft in your blog admin. This way you can edit the article before posting.

How does it work?
It all begins with a simple process of adding a file to the root of your blog (It only works for self-hosted blogs) and then adding your blog(s) to Syndicate Kahuna. You can then choose up to 10 Categories from which to get content. Next you can choose up to 10 Keywords with the added features of being able to exclude specific keywords and URL’s. You can then specify how many posts you require per day (maximum of 10).

A few minutes after submitting this information, you will see your posts coming in. Are these posts 100% unique? No, but they are unique enough to be accepted as original content by the search engines. The articles are run through some kind of article submitter software that changes up some of the words so they can pass off as original. There may be a few grammatical errors, which is why it is a good idea to proof read before publishing.

A neat feature is the ‘Sites Needed’ link on the homepage. These are articles available at Syndicate Kahuna but with little or no demand. You could start a blog and be one of the few persons in that niche. You can also apply to contribute YOUR articles to Syndicate Kahuna.

Getting Paid
Finally, and most importantly, you may earn money from the service. Once you refer someone to join Syndicate Kahuna, they may want to submit content to the Syndicate Kahuna network. When they do and sign up as a paid member, you will receive a 50% commission every month.

Also, if anyone who you refer decides to join Syndicate Kahuna’s big sister (called Traffic Kahuna), you get paid every month on that as well. To make things even more exciting, they are introducing a few more (paid) services in the next few months. If anyone who you refer to Syndicate Kahuna decides to join any of these upcoming services, you get paid every month as a result!

This service is so convenient, you’ll soon be wondering how you ever lived without it. The best thing is: It is totally FREE! Try Syndicate Kahuna.

Super Affiliate Blogger

If writing is an art, then, blogging is one way of using words to come up with an art. This is because people who are into blogging are the ones who are artistic in their own sense; carefully choosing words that would best describe their feelings, sentiments, wishes, desires, and everything.

Basically, blogs were first introduced as weblogs that refer to a “server’s log file.” It was created when web logging hit the virtual market. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web logging gradually saturated the virtual community making the Internet a viable source of greater information.

However, with web logging, you still need a web site and domain names, but with blogging, you do not need anything just an account with blog providers. In most cases, these kinds of blogs are free of charge.

With the onset of blogging in the industry, personal journalism had been a common ground for people who wish to be known all over the world. Generally, blogs are created for personal use. Like a journal, people can write their daily adventures, sentiments, and whatever ideas they want to express online.

Nevertheless, with the advent of the online businesses, blogs had gradually taken the limelight in providing businesses a chance to boost their productivity online. This is where the business blogs have taken the limelight.

Business blogs are, basically, created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or online business in order to increase online sales. Moreover, business blogs are also one way of promoting the company so that the other readers will know that a certain company exists online. With blogs, entrepreneurs are able to establish a name in the virtual market through articles that can be very useful in the reader’s life. From there, you can make money out of blogs by simply syndicating it to your business’ web site. This can be done through the RSS technology.

So, if you are thinking to create a blog, whether for business or for pleasure, you need to know some tips that could help you get through and make your blog one of the interesting blogs online. Super Affiliate Blogger

Here’s how:

1. Consider your audience

Even if your blog is generally personal, still, it would be better to consider the minds of your readers. You have to think of something that would interest them.

After all, people who write blogs are not at all confined to their own personal motives. Most of them would love to be “heard” (or read) and would love to be known, in some way or another, even for just a minute. Hence, it is very important to come with a write up that everybody can understand, not necessarily that these people can relate to it but they can understand it.

2. Pictures speaks a thousand words

To make your blogging worth the browsing effort of your readers, it would be extremely nice if you will put some pictures in it. It does not necessarily mean you have to place a picture of yourself. Any photographs will do as long as it does not pose danger or insult to anyone who will be reading your blog.

3. Make constructive and beneficial blogs

Even if you are free to write anything you wan to say to the world, still, it would be better to create some write-ups that would be beneficial to your readers. After all, its information technology that you have there so it is better to be inclined to provide information rather than sheer quirky entertainment.

4. Avoid making multifaceted and complicated blogs

In order to have an interesting blog, try not to use some highly technical and highfalutin words. After all, it is not a science discourse or a debate that you are making, so better stick to simple facts and short blogs.

Bear in mind that most people who use the Internet usually do more scanning than scrutinizing each site word for word. Therefore, it would be better to come with blogs that will not bore your readers just because you have these lengthy articles.

5. Make it interactive

As much as possible and if your capacity will allow it, make your blog interactive. You can do this by placing some video or audio clips in your blog. You can even place an area for comments or for some feedback. In this way, you can get some impressions or reactions of other people. Who knows, you might even gain some friends just by making them feel at home in your blog site.

Indeed, blogs are not created just for the mere fun of it. It also has its own purpose in the world of the Internet.

Therefore, for people who wish to harness their craft, as far as writing is concerned, blogs are the best way to do it. As they say, blogging is the contemporary term of creative and commercial writing.

Spam has been plaguing email for years, but blogging now seems to be getting more that it’s fair share. Up to a few days ago, this blog was plagued with spam. Everything from adult content to fix credit, insurance, make money online, and the list goes on. Akismet brought slight relief in that I could check each comment before accepting it, which was okay in preventing spam comments from being shown on my blog, but I had to spend a lot of precious time going through literally hundreds of comments trying to figure out which was genuine and which was spam. That was until I tried Lester Chan’s WP-Ban plugin. The plugin is so effective, I am now spam free. It allows you to:

1. Ban IP addresses (usually written like: 194.165.42.151) that are sending spam.
2. Ban IP address range.These pests sometimes use numbers in a range (dynamic IP addresses) so the plugin allows you to specify an IP range.
3. You can also ban domain extensions. This was quite welcome as I get nothing but spam from .ru domains so I just banned everything with the .ru extension.
4. Ban specific domains. Those “sdiuewkwqer.com” domains can be entered into WP-Ban and you’ll never hear from them again!
5. Ban Referrers.

You can see the statistic for how many times those IP’s are attempting to spam you after being banned. Another handy feature is the use of Wild Cards so there can be generalized banning. After two days, the spam dried up. Sure, there will be new IP addresses coming in to replace those banned, but all you’ll have to do is enter them in WP-Ban as soon as you identify them as spam and they’re out of your life. You can download the plugin from LesterChan.net. Chances are you will see other free plugins that may come in handy.

Nowadays, making money online is easy. Anyone can do it. This article will show you how simple it is using only one of the ways to make money online Affiliate marketing is the best way to make money online and has ensured that even you can make a second income, or if you’re serious, provide you with a full-time job; but what is affiliate marketing?

Simply put, affiliate marketing is where persons who own products allow you to promote those products in return for a commission. The owners are responsible for selling the product so all you have to do is get someone interested in the item motivated enough to buy. This requires no cash from you, all it requires is your time and persuasive skill. When you earn commission in this way, you are known as an affiliate.

To manage the affiliate offers, there are affiliate managers who manage the campaign of several vendors. Join one of the affiliate managers, and you have access to several products you may promote. Your choice of promotional products will depend on the niche you choose for your blog. The aim is to promote items related to what your blog is all about.

Here are some recommended affiliate managers you can start with:

1. ClickBank - sells only digital (downloadable) products.
2. PayDotCom - sells both digital and physical products.
3. Share A Sale - sells a wide range of physical products.
4. LinkShare.com - offers products from big and small companies, eg. CompUSA, Tiger Direct, Homesteas.
5. MarketHealth.com - #1 in Health and Beauty products.

The important thing about affiliate marketing is that you can earn from anywhere in the world! The affiliate managers will send you your check monthly or fortnightly and may even send it to your PayPal account.

Now if you already have a hosted blog, you are only one step away from earning money online. However, if you do not have a blog or have a free one (like the ones available at WordPress.com), you will have to buy hosting. I recommend Blue Host Web Hosting for only $6.95 per month.
Blue Host is the number one web hosting service renowned for its reliability and great customer service. If you are really budget minded, there is reliable Web Hosting from PowWeb Hosting for only $3.88/mo! If you would like to choose your web hosting service, check Find Your Web Host where you can compare all the best services.

Now if you are a new to intermediate level blogger, I strongly recommend  Super Affiliate Blogger from Gobala Krishnan, one of the most successful Super affiliates. It is a complete roadmap guaranteed to make you money…moreover it comes with a 8 weeks 100% satisfaction guarantee. It covers EVERYTHING you will know about making money as an affiliate and provides all the tools you’ll ever need.

If you don’t wish to spend any money to make money, you can always do it the cheap and confusing way, reading website tutorials and blog posts and joining forums. This is what i did but everything became so confusing until I bought Super Affiliate Blogger.

Now that you have hosting, you will now be able to choose your niche, choose a domain name (usually comes free with new hosting), and start blogging. Chose WordPress as your blog platform. It is by far the best in terms of ease of use, popularity and the amount of free themes and plugins widely available. In addition, as you will soon see, it is the affiliate’s perfect tool.

After your blog is up and running, all you have to do is insert your affiliate links and if anyone clicks on your link and goes on to buy the product, you will receive anywhere from 3-75% commission! The most notable thing about this is that the affiliate manger uses cookies on your links and the life of the cookies vary. Some are 30, 60 or 90 days and there are even lifetime cookies! What this means is that if a visitor to your site doesn’t buy right away, whenever he uses the same computer to buy the product, you will be credited with the commission!

As long as you have a little spare time, you can earn money online. How much you make is dependent on how much time and effort you are willing to put in.

Now all of this may sound confusing but you can start doing it the right way by getting Super Affiliate Blogger and Gobala will simplify the process.

It took me the entire day yesterday, but I finally found the perfect free WordPress 3 column theme for this blog. Mixed Media Theme was chosen after trying tens of others. Apart from its beautiful color scheme, it loads really fast, so it thankfully replaces the other beautiful theme I was using called Zeke 1.0 which was really, really slouchy.

It comes pre-configured to accept three 125×125 banner ads and adsence 160×600 in the sidebar, perfect to put some affiliate ads and earn some advertising income from google when users click on the ads. The “about” box under the banner ads allow me to give a summary of what the site is about. The colors of the sidebar are clearly defined from the left column that contains the post. The posts are therefore well highlighted and easy to read.

The Mixed Media theme is pre-configured to work with several WordPress plugins but I am yet to upload and test them. I am happy that I could re-add one of my favorite plugins, Daily Top 10 Posts without losing much data. This plugin requires code to be added to each theme you use. I was worried my totals would restart from 0, but the overall and single post totals were sound. These statistics help me greatly in my online sessions so I din’t want to lose them. The Overall Top Posts Widget can be seen in the sidebar at the bottom left.

So…. welcome to the new look of Blog To The World and don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS Feed!

The time has come and you decided to start a blog. No matter what triggered you to do so - an ambitious plan to become the most popular blogger or the desire to get traffic - still you need to choose a quality blogging platform.

Basically the blogging solution is everything for you and your success. The blogging software will influence how easy will be blog management for you; it will influence how nicely is your blog optimized in terms of SEO; it will limit or expand your media publicity freedom.

Though the blogging itself started from the Google’s push of blogger as the way to publish your ideas in a simple and convenient way, since that time much has changes and the market today is full of different blog solutions or blog platforms.

What to focus my attention on?

Today we can say that the most widely spread blog platform is WordPress or WP. It is not that easy to explain the success of this platform, but perhaps this is the combination of good marketing and nice technology.

First of all WP was the first big blogging giant who gave people a possibility to run a blog on their own host. Yes, blogger (Google’s platform) also allows to attach a domain to the blog and change it from “something.blogspot.com” to “yourdomainname.com” But in any case the blog will remain on their hosting and WordPress gives you the full freedom - download it, install on your hosting and use it.

Another advantage of the WordPress is that it is a very easy to use blogging platform. It has made many people switch from using different site management software to using blog software. The best proof is that today - if you check what things people are searching in Google - you will see that the number of people who are looking for site manager for WP blogs is increasing. It is not easy to convince that huge mass of people to do that. And this is the best proof that WP is quite easy to use.

Another thing to consider - the number of plugins that are available on the market. Plugin is a tiny script that adds to the default functionality of the blog. For example, one plugin can make the vertical advertising banner move together with the page as you scroll it down or another plugin can help authors to share AdSense profits from one and the same page.

You understand that the more plugins, the bigger your functionality in terms of how you run, promote and monetize your blog. This is where WP blog is also a winner, because most of the plugins today are done for the WordPress blogs. There are free and paid plugins, but the most important is that the majority of the plugins are for WordPress and this is quite notable.

You can even find plugins that are working like blog posting software or even automated blog posting software which can be very useful in terms of blog promotion.

Though this article seems to be the promo of WP, but as there are no affiliate links to the WordPress platform and as this platform is free - no money is made from promoting WP. And the rest of the things are nothing but facts - WP is the leader on the blogging market.

If you would like web site hosting to start your new blog, check out Find Your Web Host at http://findyourwebhost.com for recommendations.