Are you trying to increase the amount of comments your visitors leave on your blog? One of the most frustrating scenarios for a blogger is to know that his or her blog is being visited by many people, but that no one is bothering to leave comments. After all, it is the comment and the community that builds within a blog that truly helps the blog become successful. Therefore, if you have the traffic but you are missing the interaction, you might want to consider hosting a contest on your site.

Of course, if you want to use a contest to help increase the amount of communication taking place on your website, you have to put some careful thought into your contest and how you will implement it.

The first step in hosting a successful contest is to come up with a prize or prizes that would be attractive to your target audience. If your blog is experiencing some success already, you may be able to talk a company into providing you with the prizes for free. If not, it is a worthwhile investment for you to purchase an item that would excite your target audience and make your audience members want to participate in the contest.

Once you have determined the prize, you need to find a creative way for your readers to win the prize. Some ideas include:

• Giving the prize to the person who makes the most relevant comments over a certain number of days

• Giving the prize to the person who posts the most recipes, tips, photos, etc over a certain period of time

• Giving the prize to the person whose recipe, tip, photo, etc is voted number one by your community

When determining how the contest will be won, be certain to keep the content of your blog in mind. If your blog is about being a homeowner, for example, you might ask your readers to post cleaning tips, home improvement tips or even money-saving tips. If your blog is about baking, you might ask readers to post their favorite cake recipes.

By having your community members vote on their favorite entry, you can further get your readers involve in the process. Just keep in mind, however, that voting on things such as which recipe is the best can be difficult because you may get dozens of entrants and your community members won’t have time to try them all before the contest ends.

Hosting a contest on your site is not only a good way to get lurkers to start leaving comments, it is also a great way to boost site traffic. After all, as word spreads about the great contest you are having, more people will decide to visit. If you do a good job of posting interesting and relevant content throughout while the contest is in effect, you just may be able to hook your new visitors into coming back even after the contest is over.

Pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising is one of the most effective methods for drawing traffic to a website or blog. At the same time, it is potentially one of the most costly methods for marketing. If done correctly, however, the return on investment (ROI) will pay off quite nicely.

A PPC advertising campaign is one that involves paying to have your blog appear among the “Sponsored Links” or the “Sponsor Results” you find on the right hand of the screen when you perform a search with a search engine such as Yahoo or Google. You accomplish this by placing a bid on certain keywords and keyword phrases. Then, every time someone enters those keywords into the search engine, your blog will be brought up in the sponsored results. Every time someone clicks on your link, you will have to pay the search engine a certain pre-determined amount.

As you can imagine, paying for a PPC campaign can be quite costly. After all, even if you are paying just five cents per click and you have 1000 clicks per day, that is $50 per day. That comes out to be $350 per week, which can eat away at your marketing budget rather quickly. Now, paying $350 per week may seem worthwhile if it is bringing you 7,000 new visitors. But, if only one or two of those people are people who are actually interested in your blog, the cost certainly isn’t worth it.

So, how exactly do you make your PPC campaign worthwhile? This is where your marketing research comes in handy. Since you now know the needs of your target audience, you can select keywords for your PPC campaign that will draw in visitors who are interested in what your blog has to offer.

Be certain to select keywords that are very specific in order to bring in the right type of traffic. For example, if you are maintaining a blog about dog training, you should not set up a PPC campaign based around the word “dog,” as this can bring in visitors who were looking for information about dog breeds, searching for dog food, trying to find instructions for building a dog house, or any other possible term associated with dogs. Rather, select keyword phrases that are more specific to dog training in order to bring in the right type of web traffic.

When searching through the various keywords you can select for your PPC campaign, you should look for phrases that are popular while still being within your budget. You should also place a bid on phrases that will allow you to be within the top 5 results. That way, they will be displayed on the first page of the search engine results and will be more likely to be seen by your target audience.

If you are looking for a quick way to boost traffic to your site and if there is room in your budget, PPC advertising is a good route to take. Otherwise, you may want to explore other methods of marketing that are not quite so costly.

For a free CD about nailed-on effective marketing, click here.

I know first hand that the stock market is in a mess right now. I have lost big time on some stocks I own. But I am in a situation where it is too late to dump everything. I am hoping it goes back up eventually or I will lose it all. I am seriously thinking about buying now since most stocks are way down. On the other hand I am wary of how far down they will go. If you are thinking of investing, here are some tips.

Online trading is another business opportunity that one can pursue from the comfort of one’s home. It utilizes the best of both worlds – the virtual world to do your trading in and the real to assess the performance of your stock. To begin with what are stocks and shares? Companies generally sell small parts to people which the buyer owns. These small parts are referred to as shares of the company. A buyer when buys a number of shares of the company, he/she is said to own a stock in the company.

Such shares are bought and sold online these days – away from the stock exchange floor where traditionally shares are still bought and sold. However online trading always has a ceiling for the minimum and maximum amount that is allowed to be invested in a day’s trading by a buyer.

The trick to online trading like conventional share market is the same – buy it at a lower price and sell it off when the stocks are higher so that you make a profit. However share trading is not as easy as it sounds – it requires meticulous research and understanding of the market to predict the share prices, when those would rise or fall and trade accordingly. If as a buyer or a seller you understand the functionalities of the market and can calculate with accuracy the probability of your stock’s success, then you have crossed the main hurdle. Since we are taking the conventional share market to the internet portal, some of the logistics change.

Before you start online trading seriously, following are the points to keep in mind:

• You will need to open an account with a bank from where you can transfer fund daily for your online trading. This is not possible through a conventional checking or savings account. Funds used for online trading has real-time interface with market rates and have special taxes levied on those.

• Next you will need to build up a portfolio of companies online with whom you would like to do your trading. These companies will have direct interface with your bank and help you in trading.

• Since it is online, always use proper firewall and security measures so that you are not at the receiving end of any internet fraud. The online world, as we all know, is not a secure place and there are regular reports of scams and frauds. You must ensure that your online trading environment is secure. Avoid doing online business from a public cyber café or using internet hot spots. These connections are generally not secure and fraudulent sources can duplicate your information and data.

As internet has revolutionized so many areas in our lives today, online trading is also a boon of the cyber world. It doesn’t matter if you are housewife, a student or a retired person – you can earn a handsome amount every day if you trade smartly and wisely and all from the comfort of your home through online trading!