It’s Christmas In August with the “thou shall win” contest!

You can expect over $2500 worth of awesome prizes to be won. As they always say, ‘This is one contest everyone should be excited about’.

The Grand Prize

A ticket to the Event Apart which is held in the USA. The Ticket is worth about $1,000.00 and will be good for any 2008 event. Courtesy of PB from Piss Biscuit

Winner #1

1. 12-month private membership at LifeFoc.us, courtesy of FullTiltBlogging.com, the brain child of Aaron Abber (Worth $324)
2. 30-min live blog consultation by Rockfuse.com (Worth $30)
3. 1 month 468—60 Ad Spot from Tech Suave (Worth $30)
4. 3,000 Entrecard Credits from Brian Hawkins @ Extreme Ezine

Winner #2

1. $500.00 dollar credit for Blog Re-design courtesy of Piss Biscuit.
2. 30-min live blog consultation by Rockfuse.com (Worth $30)
3. 1 month 125—125 Ad Spot from Piss Biscuit (Worth $40)
4. 2000 Entrecard Credits from Brian Hawkins @ Extreme Ezine

Winner #3

1. Blog Review courtesy of Piss Biscuit (Worth $100)
2. 60-min blog consultation by The Net Fool (Worth $60)
3. 1 month 125—125 Ad Spot from Etienne Teo (Worth $25)
4. 2,000 Entrecard Credits from Jay @ DatMoney.com

Winner #4

1. 1 Copy of Premium Theme from WooThemes by Piss Biscuit (Worth $100)
2. 1 Custom Banner Design (468—60 or 125—125) from DatMoney.com
3. 1 month 125—125 Ad Spot from Yours Truly, Blog for Beginners (Worth $20)
4. 2,000 Entrecard Credits from Jay @ iBlogtoBlog.com

Winner #5

1. 1 Copy of the Revolution WordPress Theme from Brian Gardner (Worth $80)
2. 1 month 125—125 Ad Spot from Etienne Teo (Worth $25)
3. 1 month sidewide PR3 link on both DatMoney.com & iBlogtoBlog.com
4. 1,000 Entrecard Credits from Michael Aulia’s Tech Blog

Bonus Prize

The contestant with the highest no. of points (both maximum and referral points) will win 3,000 Entrecard Credits from WP Beginners

Dont’ Miss this One!

To generate a lot of buzz and interest in your blog, you have to find a topic that people want to read about. While it is ok to follow trends, it is best not to be trendy since trends come and go. Can you imagine if you started a blog about Beanie Babies 10 years ago? You wouldn’t have much to write about today. With that being said, it is fine to ride the wave a little bit. By that I mean, it is ok to blog about what is going on in our world and what is hot right now. The best way to do this is to find a topic that has some staying power and then post on what is current. For example right now “going green” and engines that can run on water is hot. That is because people are becoming more concerned about the environment and gas prices are ridiculous. One way to blog about this topic and to always stay relevant is to create a blog on environmentalism and then write posts about water fueled engines and ways to go green.

There is a lot of money to be made in the Going green trend and there is a lot to write about so you do not have to worry about running out of things to say. This topic can be monetized by :

Selling Advertisement Space: If you can get a lot of traffic to your blog, then you can sell advertising space to other marketers. Depending on your traffic, you may be able to charge top dollar.

Adsense: Adsense ads can be placed on your blog easily and quickly. You make money when someone clicks on an ad.

Selling Books on How to Convert One’s Engine: If you look through the Clickbank marketplace, you will find plenty of books on how to convert a person’s engine to run on water. Place a few links, write some reviews or post some banners on your blog to make some affiliate cash. You can also sell books on the topic from Ebay or Amazon.

Selling Biodiesel Kits From Ebay: Biodiesel kits are selling for hundreds and thousands of dollars. You can make a percentage of the asking price by simply signing up as an Ebay affiliate.

“Going Green” and ways to decrease fuel costs are hot topics right now. For bloggers, this is a great opportunity to cash in and provide individuals with information on how to help preserve the environment. Remember, to ensure that you are always relevant and that you will not have to create a site about every new trend, envelop what is hot into a broader topic. For example, you can blog about “going green” and water fuel cells on your environmental blog. This way you can simply maintain this blog forever. You won’t be starting new blogs every few months. You can invest in the design of one blog and then use it to discuss relevant topics.

Having a well designed blog which reflects your blog’s subject is very important if you want to capture the attention of readers. Your blog should have a clean look and easy flow. If you are not a blog design expert, don’t worry, you have plenty of options.

The first consideration will be which blogging platform you are planning to use. If you choose Blogger, you may be stuck with the templates available at the site. If you look around, you may find some Blog skins or templates that may work with the new version of Blogger. Do an internet search and then play around with it. If you don’t have any luck, then you may have to go with the default templates. However, the good news is that the updated Blogger has a lot of options and you can dress up your blog with pictures and videos really easy. Going with one of the plainer templates and then adding some pictures and video will still allow you to create a really cool blog.

While there are many blog platforms, the only other one I am going to address in this article is Wordpress. Wordpress is a really popular blogging platform as you probably already know. There are also some really cool free templates that you can use. There are available templates for nearly every subject matter, which makes it great for you to pick up an appropriate one really quickly. Check out wpthemespot.com, wpskins.org and freewpthemes.net

Another option, as it concerns designing your blog, is to have one built. This allows you to have a blog created exactly how you want it. You won’t have to settle or try to make a template fit your blog. There are plenty of places where you can hire someone quite affordably to create a blog template for you. Try Get A Freelancer, Elance, Rentacoder and Guru for starters.

Having a professional looking, well put together blog will allow you to make a great first impression. It will also make people want to add your blog to their favorites and come back. Of course, your blog can’t just look good, it has to have some substance. A nice looking website will get you some attention but it won’t make readers commit. You have several options when it comes to designing your blog. You can use Blogger which comes with ready-made templates and then add pictures and videos to make it unique. If you choose to use Wordpress, there are plenty of places where you can find free themes. Lastly, you can hire someone to create a design for you. You can look for designers at places like GetaFreelancer, Guru, Elance and Rentacoder. You can also check out internet marketing forums like Digital Point.

Investing a little bit of money or time to create a good looking blog will most likely be time or money well spent. A nice looking blog will make you appear more professional and give the impression that you are serious about your blog. If you take yourself seriously then other people are apt to so as well.

Having a successful blog is all about getting people to visit it. Having thousands of people eager to read your next blog post is the dream of many bloggers. If you are looking to make money, you can’t do that without a captive audience or visitors. The more rapport that you can build with your audience, the greater credibility you will have. Credibility and rapport translates into dollars. Your blog needs to be sticky.

People try many ways to develop a sticky blog. They may try to be controversial (this can effective), outrageous or give away the “ farm” in one blog posts. While you should give away freebies every now and then, giving away every PLR product that you own in one post doesn’t leave you with anywhere else to go. The correct way to get people clamoring to read your blog is to be a mixture of all these things, plus a little bit more. Go ahead, be a little controversial, a little outrageous, throw your audience some freebies every now and then but also don’t forget to be honest, provide your readers with great resources. Don’t peddle products that you have not tried or don’t believe in. Sure, you may make a sale, but you have ruined your reputation and people will likely not come back. They may also make rude comments on your blog letting everyone else know how much of a cad you are. Also mix up your blog mediums. Add some pictures or videos.

1. Be Controversial: It’s fine to be a little controversial. Go against the grain a little bit when it makes sense and when it is warranted. Don’t do it just to do it. This might include giving an honest review about a product that every one else is talking about how great it is when it really sucks. You going against the grain will earn your reader’s respect and they are likely to buy products that you do recommend to them.

1. Be Outrageous: Being a little outrageous and colorful can make your blog fun to read. Go ahead and show a little bit of your personality.

1. Give Away Freebies: If you have got some good PLR products laying around or if you are interested in creating a few short reports that your readers might like or can resell go ahead and give it to them. It will endear them to you.

   
   

1. Be Resourceful: Let your readers know about other websites that they might find useful and helpful. Don’t worry that they are leaving your blog to visit another site. They will be back because you have proven yourself to be a good, reliable resource.

1. Be Honest: Tell the truth. People will eventually be able to see through the bull crap and some dedicated reader who doubles as an online detective, will catch any lies that you might tell. So be as honest as you can.

1. Don’t Promote Junk: This is one way to throw your credibility in the crapper. If you have not personally reviewed a product or you have and you think that it is junk, don’t promote it on your site. In the long run you will you lose.

1. Go Beyond Text: Make sure that your blog does not only consist of text. Add some pictures and videos to liven things up.

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

If your current blog isn’t bringing in the money that you need or you simply love blogging, you may want to consider hiring out your services to other blog owners. Some people would like to make money from blogs but either do not have the time to post regularly, simply are not interested in writing posts, or are poor writers. This is where you come in. You can help out another blog owner and fatten your bank account as well. There are several ways that you can go about finding or creating blogging jobs for yourself. We will review some of them.

1. Create blog posts packages: Write 365 blog posts about a popular topic and then sale them to another internet marketer: This is a way to create a blogging job for yourself. You can write about any topic that you want and you can work when you want to. If you would like, you could sit down and write 365, 250-350 word posts. If you work fast, you could have this done in about 2 weeks. Then you just need to visit some marketing forums such as the Warrior Forum or Digital Point forum and sale them. Be sure to write on a broad topic and to optimize some of the posts for keywords in the niche. The risks with this method are that people will not buy your post package or that they will not be able to afford it all at once. In these cases, write out about 30 posts and then send them to your clients on a monthly basis.

2. Promote your services at internet marketing forums: Many internet marketers are looking for blog writers. Promoting your services on sites like Digital Forum and the Warrior Forum are great places to attract clients.

3. Promote your services online: You can promote your services through pay-per-click. This is a way to get fast, targeted traffic.

4. Promote your services at free classified sites: Free classified sites like Craiglist or Backpage are good places to advertise your services. Just be sure that you get at least partial payment upfront.

5. Check out blogging job boards: There are job boards that are specifically aimed at writers looking for blogging jobs. There is apt to be plenty competition so make sure that you have a resume and samples on hand that you can send out quickly.

6. Go Offline: There are plenty of businesses that would love to start a blog but who do not know where to begin. Even if your knowledge is limited, you probably know more then 90% of businesses offline. Offer a free seminar on blogging or call up businesses in your area and tell them that you are an internet consultant and would love to give them a free consultation. Then up-sell them after you have gotten your foot in the door.

Finding or creating blogging jobs is a great way to earn some money. Because blogs tend to be shorter then articles you can write them quickly. If you would rather write on your own schedule, then consider creating short blog post packages and selling them to marketers. You may want to create a blog and update it for your clients as well. This is great and simple way to earn from your blogging efforts.

Driving traffic to your blog is the only way to make money. Besides, who wants to contribute to a blog that no one sees? There are various methods to get traffic to your blog. We will discuss some of the primary ones below.

1. Adwords/MSN/Yahoo: Adwords, MSN and Yahoo are all good methods to get fast traffic to their website. It can be expensive if you don’t know what you are doing. Make sure that your blog is monetized or ask visitors to join your email list so that you can get a return on your investment.

1. Social Network Sites: Social networking sites such as Stumble Upon, Facebook, Propeller, Slideshare, Digg, Twitter, Newsvine, and Scribd, if used correctly can send you an avalanche of traffic. The important thing to remember is to offer good information and to be consistent.

1. Joint Ventures With Other Blogs Owners: Search out blog owners that may have a blog who’s subject is complimentary to your own. Offer to provide their readers with a free gift (e-book, access to a membership site, etc.) in exchange for being able to write a post about your website that would be posted on their blog.

1. Forums: Forums are an easy, cheap (free) and fast way to get visitors to your blog. Go to BigBoards.com and find forums that are related to your niche. Create a signature link with your blog’s address in it and begin to contribute. Offering related news stories, free reports or a thoughtful posts will help endear you to the forum. You have to keep this up however. Visit everyday or every other day for 10-15 minutes and get your posts count up. Members with high posts count are generally more respected.

1. Free Classified Ads: If you use the right, free classified ad websites, you can really get a lot of free traffic to your blog. For this to be successful, you will need to pick a topic that a lot of people are interested in and one that is available on the free classified sites. A blog on physics will likely not be able to find many interested readers from free classified sites. Instead, if you have a blog on something like repairing credit, learning to play an instrument, dieting, or muscle building, you should be able to find an audience. Try Craigslist and Backpage to get you started.

1. Blog Comments: Making informed and personal blog comments may allow you to pick up a few visitors, it might even lead to some joint ventures between you and other blog owners.

1. Article Directories: Article directories are still a good place to pick up traffic. Again, write a couple of article every week to build up your article count.

1. Free E-book Sites: Free e-book sites allow other marketers or interested readers to download free books. Make sure that you place links to your blog in the ebook. To find a good list of ebook directories, simply do a search in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Have you always been the in-house disk jockey for the family parties and friend gatherings? Do you have a penchant for music, an ear to pick up the right tune and the sense to figure out people’s choice in advance? Have you ever been complimented for your choice of albums? Do people ask for your opinion? If the answer to the questions are ‘Yes’, then you my friend can use the digital medium to your fullest advantage! Try mixing songs digitally and upload those to your website. There are many websites that host digital remixes and song. You can upload those there as well. Most of such songs are sold at $1.00 – $2.00 per download and you can start earning in no time doing something that you already enjoy doing!

Don’t worry if songs are not your niche! Are you into photography? Do you like taking photographs? Do you see beauty in nature, life, people’s faces and places and try to capture those in a frame? Digital photographs have a great market. There is an ongoing requirement for digital photographs that are used by websites to promote and design their products and sites. Stock photography websites stock up such digital photographs from photographers and then sell those to companies at good rates. You can also venture into this field by first circulating the images for free but along with your copyright and then once you have a market start charging for the same. You can host digital photographs of other photographers and make a living out of it.

What if you enjoy writing or if you have graphic skills? You are at the top of the income chain, my friend! There is an increasing demand for people with good writing skills and visualizations. Utilize your skills to create digital products like – digi-comic, digi-stories, egreetings, eposters, screensavers, etc. and sell those. Write about a travel trip that you may have had, put in the details graphically, paint and sketch using the state-of-art graphic tools and create a product that’s a complete package. You will be able to sell it in no time. And if you do not want to do it yourself, you can always hire people for small projects – like a 10 page comic book, get the graphics and the content done and then upload those in your website.

If you have animation skills, can work in Flash, then you have great prospects in the field of creating digital products. Animations are used to promote products, websites, films, videos, etc. and many companies require animations. Creating animations as a freelancer and uploading those at your website, will ensure that your products are open for public viewing and prospective buyers can contact your directly.

What we have discussed above is just the tip of the iceberg. These are some digital products that you can use to start off your online business – these are not the whole of the digital world. There are many more avenues and products to explore. The world has been made smaller and easier by the digital revolution and one should make the most out of it.

Digital products in simple words mean any product that is in digital format. This is the age of knowledge economy and so is the product sold and bought in the knowledge economy market. From traditional economy and traditional products, the world today is moving fast towards the knowledge economy sector – the products too have changed – converted to a format that can be easily copied, altered, customized, and distributed across places and nations in seconds – it is the digital world and the products sold and bought in this market place are digital products.

As the name suggests, digital products can be of many types – from your customized answering machine message to a web-conferencing tool – all come under digital products. As a user we do not generally wonder much about what we are using. The format in which you are reading this feature or the music that is playing on your iPod are all digital products delivered to you via a digital medium. Today people are making a lot of money by doing business on digital products. It immediately cuts off the requirement of mass/bulk production facilities as in other forms of traditional goods (e.g a bar of soap or packet of pasta) and also the requirement of a middleman or a distribution network.

From the comfort of your home, you can create a digital comic book utilizing your writing and graphic skills and circulate it to people all over the world. They can view, read and enjoy your digi-comic from their homes, without having to even step out of the house…this is the wonder of the digital revolution! Don’t think that digital products can only be used for monitory gains by those who are professionally skilled in one field. What you need to succeed in creating great digital products is a dash of imagination, a spoonful of creativity, lots of vision and a good marketing sense. You can create a great remix of your favorite song on your laptop and sell it to people interested in music. You can create and edit home videos that may attract organic traffic which in return will promise you good revenue.

Following are some of the digital products that are in circulation in the World Wide Web generating revenue and enjoyed by millions.

Songs, Videos, Images, Cartoons, Animation, eGreetings, ebooks, Motion Pictures, Sports footage, videos from concerts, home videos, Personal videos, reviews, tools for web, features on technical and creative topics – all these and many such products fall under the genre of digital products. You can use any of the above products that you are confident in to create an online business platform – for example a blog or a website and earn revenue by selling the product. However before you tread into the world of digital products, remember that the cyberspace is regulated by the laws of the land you reside in. Copyright infringement or royalty violations are dealt very stringently in most of the nations. Ensure that you have the appropriate copyright of the digital product before you use it to generate revenue.

Self-updating blogs were all the rage not too long ago. In some circles they are still popular. People hope to make money mostly with Adsense and even with affiliate products. Adsense advertisers may see some short term success, but in my humble opinion a self-updating blog is not a good long term, money making strategy.

Why? Because essentially they are junk blogs and while you may get a visitor to click on an Adsense ad one time, they are likely never going to come back to your blog because it offers nothing of value. Therefore, you will spend all of your time, money and effort trying to get new visitors to come to your crappy blog.

It would be a much better use of your time and resources to create a really good blog that people will naturally want to come back to and tell their friends about. This will allow you to spend less time and money on visitors. It is a much wiser use of your resources to pay for a visitor once and then benefit from them over and over without further investment.

Well then if self-updating blogs aren’t a good, long-term strategy what is?

Great question! A quality blog offers the reader good, updated information that somehow improves their life or experience. Interaction and ongoing dialogue is also important. It’s not brain science or rocket science, but it works. When you make the effort and the commitment to find information, stories, articles, videos and pictures that might interest your reader then they see that, appreciate that and will likely come back to see what you have written next. The formula is simple, you just need to execute it.

Provide Good Information: Your blog posts do not have to change the world but they do need to be informative or satisfy something that the reader is looking for. If you are having trouble coming up with things yourself, check out Google News or some of the free article directories for topics.

Provide Daily or Consistent Updates: The beauty about blog posts are that they do not have to be very long. 250-500 words will work just fine. Therefore, it should not take you very long to throw together a quick blog post. If you don’t feel like writing it yourself, pay some one to do it, add a video from Youtube or provide a link to an interesting story or article.

Create Some Sort of Dialogue: If you create some sort of dialogue or respond to the common concerns of your reader, they are more apt to become invested in your blog. Therefore, make sure that you do not ignore your readers. Write blogs on topics that they are interested in learning or reading more about.