It’s a question many ask, several find the answer to, only a very few do anything about: “How Do I Start A Business Blog”?

Don’t just dash into this. You need to cross a deep river. It’s a cold river. And it’s a fast-running river. But there really are amazing treasures in the jungle beyond: personal fulfillment, development and, yes, money. Lots of it, should you really wish (yes, we’ve been taking a couple of the literary excitement tablets! )

But money should never be the pure motivation for doing anything, in our view. It should be a by-product (yes, not a bad by-product, but one all the same) of a great business. Some make look upon this with scorn, but it’s a view we share with many successful businesses/business models.

Objectives

Business blogging may be there to promote an existing business; it may be there to be a business in itself. The biggest tip of all is to learn from the community of existing bloggers. There are literally millions of them out there, with hundreds of millions of hours of experience.  Learn from the community, not just the experts (by the way, often the every day community members are, by a long way, more ‘expert’ that some of the ‘experts’).

Is Blogging a “fad”?

No (I guess you’d expect us to say that, right?)  Seriously, though, no.  It may (and is) develop(ing), but those who said it was dead were/are wrong.  Just type ‘blog’ into Google and see the hits in many many different forms.  It’s as powerful as some of the best and most established forms of communication on the web.

And it’s growing. Just take a look at some recent stats to understand that growth… Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere” is about the best out there.

Quoting from this publication:

“Blogs are Pervasive and Part of Our Daily Lives
There have been a number of studies aimed at understanding the size of the Blogosphere, yielding widely disparate estimates of both the number of blogs and blog readership. All studies agree, however, that blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream.

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay…”

Will you become a millionaire?

The stories about amazing riches from blogging are just that: stories. But there are, indeed, a few tried and very well tested methods which can make $000s of dollars a month for business bloggers. For every single one of those promised “thousands of dollars”, there’s a guide written by a guru. Well, there are gurus and gurus!

Some guides are genuinely worth the money. Others are not. Like everything in life, you pay your money and take your choice!  But give yourself the weapons for the fight and, even more importantly, understand the fight.

Even those who make money the ultimate goal and like their Ferraris (Rob Benwell, for example!!) understand the real guts of business and don’t lose sight of that.  Never lose sight of it either!

5 Top Tips On Information Guides (part of a life raft to help with that river!):

-1 Don’t believe anything you read until you’ve read it not once, not twice, but FIVE times. Preferably separated by healthy doses of coffee and broken by a walk to the park. Seriously.

-2 Even then, don’t take out the credit card until you’ve read it again. And then a couple more times.

-3 Research the author of the guide and know your topic inside out, upside down.  Look at independent recommendations.

-4 Give yourself the ‘cold towel treatment’: “is this really helpful”? Does it REALLY do what it says “on the tin”?

-5 Plan. Plan. Plan. Plan a little more.

There are no quick fixes in life: helpful assistance is great, and essential as stellar marketing/finance gurus like Alvin Phang do show.  However, you must do it for yourself.  And you must do it – no-one else can.  Be guided, but you’re at the steering wheel.

-6 (I said 5, right? well, it’s a good topic…)  ENJOY YOURSELF

Rob Benwell’s

Core Tips on Business Blogging

The Search Engines (see- capital S, capital E – true reverence )  know how to separate the good from the bad. Google is, frankly, the King of this with its relevance algorithms.

This is fundamental, as there is a lot of trash out there. Some try to beat the system. However, 90 or so percent of the time, Google will serve up the most relevant information requested in its search box.

Most of the general population have, in the last few years, missed that the Yellow Pages (and equivalents) are dead. Fact. Linked (heavily to this) is that Google redefined “search”.

Blogs  and  “new” information have taken over. Yes, you guessed it: business owners are, and really, really, should, use this to their  advantage.

This is the real, dynamic power  of blogs.  Providing personal, topic-focused or “whatever else” information. Google  is passionate about new, fresh information.  Without it, most websites are crawled and logged poorly by Google et al: they provide old, irrelevant and unhelpful information. Also, despite massive advances in technology, the Google spiders (robots) are relevant simple guys: they like to crawl fresh, plain, relevant text.  Flash, images, etc, etc, really screw up the party.  Really, really remember this (ok, yes, you can submit xml sitemaps, etc, nowadays but let’s get real).

We’re not advocating completely textual pages – we don’t have them.  But don’t go nuts with the video!
Generally, webmasters have to push people to websites.  Most website traffic, is usually  direct hits. Pushed  traffic. People who already know the name of your company and know what people have for lunch on Fridays.  The information these websites provide usually does not attract the search robots.

You can pull people  to a blog. It can attract readers organically. Most blog traffic usually comes in organically. Readers find  your blog, not the other way around.  That’s the KEY difference for us.  Period.

Look out for Part II, guys.

(Firstly, apologies for the lack of recent posting. The “wheels fell off” our server and the backup wasn’t, er, backed-up properly. Hmm. It’s a long story!!)

This post ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’.  It touches on the relatively low returns from AdSense and, importantly for many of you, provides insights into the world of an entrepreneur who is looking to decapitate AdSense!! In particular the last bit sounds UNBELIEVABLE … read on, though, and you’ll get to the details of Widget Ad Generator.

As an AdSense advertiser (we are, and know that many of you are), you receive a percentage of the amount paid by advertisers for each click on an ad. Unlike other networks, Google doesn’t state what that percentage is. It varies and, in all honesty, it generally isn’t a bad share.

Revenue generation is dependent on various things:

• Page views/day
• Price paid by the advertiser (the AdWords advertiser) for each click
• The nature/type of the site’s content
• Of course, the number of people who click!

If you only generate a few hundred page views a day, you won’t necessarily receive a tiny amount. Actually, light traffic sites can and does generate big revenue if the topic which they cover on the site is niche, resulting in dedicated viewers and high click-through of ads. However, the issue is that, despite this, you’re not going to give up the day job on the revenues you make unless your traffic is decent and you’re very well positioned in the market… Not that we’re giving away our revenue

Using AdSense, therefore, for most people “How much will I make” is a “how long’s a piece of string?” type question. There are no limits. People have and do generate very large monthly income by using AdSense. But most don’t. The vast majority don’t.

We use AdSense, as I say.  However, we’re seriously considering other options, having looked at the new strategy created by Todd Thompson, the CEO of a company in Colorado. Todd has created a tool called the “Widget Ad Generator”, a great piece of innovation in the world of the internet.

The principle behind Todd’s product, which has been endorsed by the heads of various ‘net companies, is that “you just don’t need to rely on AdSense”. Simple, eh? Er, we weren’t convinced…

But it’s a good idea. And it’s based on the bedrock of affiliate marketing (we all know where the web would be without it!).

Widget Ad Generator is an easy-to-use tool which we (and probably you) won’t want to do without. Whilst there may be other ways of getting from A to B on this particular journey, the widget makes it seamless. And simple. And fast.

If you go here you can see for yourself.  Be warned – it’s a bit “salesy” (!) but when you get through it, you’ll realize the principles and the essence of this product are sound – it works. Google, look out!

As always, bye for now.

Twitter has exploded onto the scene. With the growth of Twitter has come a big shift in the way people are interacting with blogs.

Previously, if you did something interesting, people might reference it on their blogs. But now in the age of Twitter, many people mention your stuff on Twitter.

This can be good IF:—– they have thousands of Twitter followers.

BUT IF most the people mentioning a topic are all in the same small tight knit space then you are only reaching a fraction of a fraction of the potential distribution you would have before the age of Twitter.

Blogs become popular by being mentioned lots of times on other popular blogs. It’s not complicated.

So it’s very hard to become popular using social networks alone. If blog readers are deciding to spread interesting links via Twitter instead of blogging about it on their own sites then new blogs will struggle to gain readership.

There is a decision to be made if integrating Twitter on your blog – more people Tweeting your posts or more people leaving blog comments. If you don’t leave comments on blogs you’re probably in the “Twitter is more important” camp. You know what – jury’s out for me.

Come on, hit me with it!

We’ve all experienced the problem.

I’ve got to be honest: I don’t like pop-ups. However, many thousands of website owners do use them. They have their place, but it MUST be a clearly-defined place.

Looking at the stats, the conversion rate of pop-ups is high. There’s no denying it. So from a purely marketing perspective, I fully, fully understand their use. Club Blogger is nothing if not aware of the real world!

So, if you’re going to use them or know someone who does;

1) make sure that the code is working properly and not breaking your website. A good idea is to check it on different browsers, for example;

2) don’t use multiple pop-ups. I.e., some sites have more than one pop-up. One on the middle of the screen, one that shows up at the bottom later and one that reminds you to have lunch! Don’t do it!;

3) REMEMBER that you may stop people from linking to you that can’t stand pop-ups themselves. Many bloggers hate pop-ups, so if you’re fine with turning away a whole bunch of link love – – then go for it. Just be aware of what you’re missing out on;

4) “subscription” pop-ups which appear when you first a page are obnoxious. If I haven’t read the content yet, I am not going to subscribe to it. I usually leave websites which throw promotional or subscription begging pop-ups without reading further;

5) 9 times out of 10, if a site “pops up”, surfers “pop out”. Those who click through generally KNOW the site and really want to read before they stay to read the content.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

There have been a lot of studies into the correlation between domain registration length and successful Search Engine Optimization – particularly for those that are in Google top 10 for any competitive terms.

It has been theorized that the longer the registration length, the more trusted the domain to Google.

You know why? It shows you are serious about your business. Business owners that registered their domain for a longer time are mostly serious owners and have good long term plan for their domains.

It make sense that throwaway or spammy domains are registered for a short time because the spammers do not have serious funding. It is common sense that any long term plans in attempting to spam search engines will not work because of algorithm continuous improvement. This makes domain registration length of spammy domains very short (generally, at most 2 years).

Despite being aware of this, MOST DO NOT KNOW that the top 10 ranking domains for any competitive terms in Google are registered on the average of 10 years! It has been randomly sampled.

So, if you are seriously into long term ranking, register your domain for around 10 years. Stats say it shows high probability of 1st page ranking.

Of course, bear in mind that the length of registration itself does not mean your domain will rank because of relevance. You still need a lot of SEO work for this. Hand-in-hand with a long registration period, sites must provide compelling services and make themselves helpful to visitors. These are vital ingredients for long term Google ranking success and any good SEO specialist will emphasize this time and time again.

We will be revisiting this topic in more detail. I’d really like to hear your thoughts in the meantime, plus any specific experience of the topic.

If you have decided to make blogging a business venture, you might be considering obtaining a business credit card. There are many perks to having a business credit card, but you also need to be careful when selecting one in order to make sure you are getting the card that will serve you and your business the best.

Perks of Having a Business Credit Card

Many people are frightened by the thought of getting a business credit card. After all, credit cards have earned a bad name because many people have managed to dig themselves into a significant amount of debt with their credit cards. If used responsibly, however, a business credit card can provide you with all of the following perks:

• Make you appear more professional to your clients because having a credit card makes you look like an established business

• Provide you with a free form of advertisement since you can put your company name and logo on a business credit card

• Help you keep your business expenses separate from your personal expenses, which is particularly helpful at tax time

• Allow you to give cards to your employees or business partners while still being able to monitor their spending and placing separate credit limits on different cards

• Make it possible for you to get a quick business loan if needed to help take your business to the next level

While using a business credit card irresponsibly can certainly lead to an overwhelming amount of debt, using it wisely can help you take your business to the next level.

Picking the Perfect Business Credit Card

There are many factors you should consider when selecting a business credit card. One of the most important factors you should consider is the interest rate on the credit card. This is particularly important if you plan to use the card to help you get your business going rather than obtaining a traditional business loan from a bank. In this case, you want to find the card that will offer you the lowest interest rate possible. In fact, if you are applying for a new card, you should also look into the various introductory rates offered by business credit cards. You may be able to find one that will offer a 0% APR or a very low interest rate for the first several months.

If you don’t plan on borrowing against the credit card and carrying a balance from one billing cycle to the next, the interest rate may not be your biggest concern. In this case, you should look for a card that offers attractive benefits to its cardholders, such as discounts at certain stores or insurance coverage. You might also want to consider obtaining a business credit card with a rewards program, which can actually help you make money from the credit card if you pay it off at the end of each billing cycle in order to avoid paying finance charges.

Whatever your business is on the web, you’re going to need advertising if you want the big bucks. First though, we must recognize that the meaning of the world ‘advertising’ has changed since the days of the TV, Radio, Magazine and News Paper monopoly. Advertising was simple to define and easy to recognize back before the internet, but web based advertising techniques are a different ball game altogether. Let’s take a look at these new alternative advertising methods in order of their cost to your business.

Word of Mouth: The internet’s impact on ‘word of mouth’ advertising has been huge. The invention of social networks and media sharing facilities has put thousands of likeminded people in touch with each other in ways that were impossible before the web. If you have a great product that a particular group of people will really like, you can be sure that it’ll be talked about on the web.

PPC/PPI Advertising: Pay per Click advertising and Pay Per Impression advertising will both cost you a little bit of cash, but you can build a campaign relatively cheaply and reach many thousands of people for extremely low cost. PPI is best for generating brand recognition on the whole, while PPC is ideal for deployment to key demographics who might want to read more about your product or service.

Affiliate Systems: Affiliate systems are a great way to sell medium to high cost services. Using an affiliate system allows you to put your affiliates in charge of your advertising. They are rewarded only for sales converted from their links, and so the burden of advertising, and the large rewards, rest firmly upon your selected affiliates. Be prepared to give away a significant percentage of your profits though, as good affiliates work hard to promote your product and expect payment in kind.

Mail / Software use: Last but certainly not least is the use of bulk e-mailing and software advertising. These are generally considered to be distasteful and annoying advertising methods but are certainly effective. Consider your business relationship with its customers very carefully before you undertake such a project. While these are ideal for one shot small purchases, they can alienate more picky customers.

New internet marketers may buy into the myth that people who work from home only work for 30 minutes each day and then spend the rest of their time doing whatever they want. This may be true for a small minority of individuals. However, for most people online, work requires just as many hours or even more, than someone who works outside the home. If individuals are not careful, their life can get really out of balance. Their home life and family relationships can begin to suffer if they are not nurtured due to too much time working, even from home. This is why it is very important to create some sort of balance between working at home and one’s family life.

To make this work well for all parties involved, it’s important that the individual who works from home gets organized. They need to have all of the supplies that they need in one place where it can be easily found. This will help save time.

Creating a schedule is also vitally important. You need to create a schedule of your upcoming jobs or tasks. Make sure that you schedule in time for family and friends and household chores. If you do not, these parts of your life will get out of control. There may also be some hurt feelings and strained relationships. This may require you to get up early to do some work or stay up late even after everyone else has gone to bed. This may put a little bit more stress on you physically However, this might be a sacrifice that you need to make to be sure that everyone is happy and tended to.

When you are busy and have to get work done, make sure that you come up with activities for your kids to do. Create a schedule for them as a well so they don’t feel like they’re being ignored not being paid attention to. If you have young kids, you may want to purchase coloring books, or come up with fun activities that you can do with them. Once a week, take a field trip. If you have older kids, find something that is age appropriate for them.

Striking a balance between working at home and spending time with your family, especially if you have young kids at-home, can be very difficult. However, it can be done. It will require some really tight scheduling from you and great organizational skills. You many need to get up a couple hours earlier in the mornings or stay up a little bit later at night after everyone else has gone to bed so that you can finish your work. It is fine to do work during the day while your kids or at home, just make sure that you take breaks to spend time with them.

Although no number of training or tips can guarantee your success using affiliate marketing to earn money from online businesses the very first time. You have to learn from experience, some starter’s tips will help you avoid the common mistakes that people do when they jump into the Internet money-making bandwagon.

These tips are smart and easy to understand and can be used effectively. As you may be knowing by now affiliate marketing essentially involves promoting other websites (and their products) by putting up links in your website and encouraging the readers/users of your website to visit those. With every such visit to an affiliate website and/or resulting sell of a product generates revenue for you. So how to make this apparently simple concept work for you?

Tip 1: Find the right affiliate program. There are many frauds out there – pick and choose the right programs to promote. Look for programs that give you high returns and good commissions and secured way of paying you. Also looking for shocking, interesting products that may have immediate demand and create an interest among the prospective buyers is a good way to go.

Tip 2: Promotion of anything, at the very onset, puts off people. People see ‘Sponsored link’ and they shirk off from that. Also the cyber space is a faceless world and you cannot trust anybody. There are people who may steal your affiliate ID and use the sponsored links for their benefit. So the very first step towards effective affiliate marketing is to hide the affiliate links in your website – avoid having them ‘on-your-face’; be subtle in putting those forward…the technical term for this is ‘cloaking’ the links. There are many websites and software tools that can assist you in cloaking the affiliate links.

Tip 3: Do not promote anything and everything. You have a steady traffic to your website or blog, you’ve created a brand name for yourself. Do not spoil it by promoting bad products. Your readers and users trust you and selling or promoting a bad product will be detrimental in long run. You may get instant profit but to stay in the business you need to live up to your name.

Tip 4: Use forums to promote your affiliated products. These forums have specific queries and discussions and are generally niche forums. So you will get your target audience in abundance and you can target your marketing effectively. However again remember to be subtle with your message. Use your expertise to guide people and give them a solution to their problem and then slip in the link to the affiliate site cleverly.

Tip 5: Build up a strong mailing list. Identify the prospective buyers, forums and generate their interest through regular updates and mails. However don’t stick to one format of marketing to promote the affiliate products. Use a mix of different formats, emails, forum messages, blogs, postings, through features why even a signature under your name may also generate interest.

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.