Advantages of a Blog

I might be mentioning only a few of blog advantages we can get when we start to make a blog. I’m really sure there must be any other else, including the tools and plug-in available which can be easily installed into a blog.

One important blog’s characteristic is that blog, like discussion board, can have a good 2-way communication between publisher and visitors. Visitors’ comments in your blog and your responses are like an online dialogue. It is possible to become a more-friendly relationship, with just answering visitor’s question with the information they want. And this is a characteristic static sites don’t have.

If you manage your blog well and build the relationship better and better, you can create an audience community who will be pleased to visit your blog over and over again. We call this community as loyal visitor. Once this community built, then you can start to think doing business.

Doing business?

Well... if you want to make money online, you can do e-commerce with your blog. Just remember, loyal visitor is the important thing. They are actually your business partner. You won’t be successful without them!!

By always providing unique and useful information in your blog, your loyal visitor will become bigger and bigger and they will also put more trust in you. You can then start offering them your own products or services, or recommending someone else’s product that you thing your visitor must have. The bigger your loyal visitor and the more trust they give to you, the bigger the chance you can grow your business. Yes… of course it needs a hard work first!!

Blog also tends to work well in search engine ranking. This because of blog’s content is more informative and updated more frequently than the static site is. We all know, search engine like sites with unique, useful information and more updates. And blog is a way to provide this kind of information.

Last but not least. One more thing you’ll absolutely love from a blog is… you can make it for FREE! Just like my blog. Go to blogger or wordpress, and get your blog for free there...

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Do you want to add my list of blog’s advantage? Please, share it with all of us…

Weblogs, Inc. : $200 - $3000 a day with Google AdSense.

Here is a story which proves us that blogging with Google Adsense can make money.

Weblogs, Inc. is a publishing consortium of 100 independent bloggers who produce more than 1,000 blog posts a week across over 75 industry-leading blogs, including the popular consumer technology blog Engadget, luxury goods blog Luxist, and car-focused Autoblog. Written by experts and enthusiasts, each one has a distinctive following in its subject area. Readers are able to sort and search stories by topic, can engage in discussion via comments, and rank stories of interest to them. Collectively, Weblogs Inc. blogs get over 60 million pageviews a month. Bloggers are paid a stipend and also receive a portion of advertising earnings related to their blog(s).

Veteran publisher Jason Calacanis thought long and hard about how to support bloggers – and how to make this online business model work. "I was interested in making great content sustainable," recalls Calacanis. "Unfiltered content like blogs can be scary to some advertisers. But people who like unfiltered content are a special audience of early adopters, connectors, information junkies – they are keenly interested in everything they're reading – including the ads."
In September 2004, the fledgling site signed up for AdSense for content sites. The program appealed to him because the ads were contextual, boosting the value of the page content to his enthusiast audience of readers.

Challenge

After implementing AdSense, Weblogs blogs were earning only a couple hundred dollars a day from the program. "At first we didn’t really understand how to use it," Calacanis says, noting that "we thought of it as helping to pay some bills." But when over about six months' time AdSense revenues reached more than $1,000 a day, he says he realized that there was a significant opportunity in AdSense – if his team would invest the time in making it work even better.

Results

Calacanis and team began using AdSense channels to track performance. They increased the number of ads across pages, tried different ad unit sizes, creatives, colors, and placement locations. They tracked each of the changes by channel to determine if these adjustments resulted in increased revenues. "It is key to keep experimenting, and to study the results," he says.

"AdSense provides ads that are more like content than advertising," Calacanis comments. "They inform people." His team also witnessed a 10 to 20 percent jump in ad performance when they matched the ad colors to the site, recognizing the sophistication of the blog audience. "The ads are respectful of the user," he says.

"In the beginning, probably 1 percent of our revenue came from AdSense revenue," Calacanis recalls. But over time, and after testing and optimizing AdSense features, this revenue grew more - from $1,000 to $3,000 a day – a 200 percent increase. While he used to view AdSense as a way to use unsold ad space, today he considers it to be a primary source of revenue for his business.

He advises other publishers to be methodical about testing, experiment, and try one or two new things at a time: "Set goals for yourselves around traffic, number of ads shown, ads per page, number of clicks and as you optimize AdSense, the revenue will follow."

How To Write A Good Content?

If you have your own blog, designing it in an interesting style is definitely a must. Your blog should be so attractive and professional-looking in order to make people enjoy their visit and feel homey there.

… but that’s not the main thing!!

You’ll never get loyal visitors until people find what they’re looking for in your blog. INFORMATION. And in fact, the information content is the main key to attract visitors. When useful information can answer visitor’s questions and are well-written in your site, then you have a chance to keep them there long enough and coming back the next day.

So how can you write your content well? Nancy Jackson shares her tips about this question.

Good web content can always be described by these four adjectives.

1. Consistent. There’s nothing like inconsistency to make your Web site appear amateurish. Some businesses spell their own company names two or three different ways right on the home page. If your company name is written in all lower-case letters or with unique spacing, be sure you write it the same way every time. But don’t stop there; strive for consistency in all your content — from the use of abbreviations, fonts and numerals to the tone, style and voice of your copy. Having one person write all the content helps keep it consistent, but when this isn’t possible, at least try to have one person serve as editor. If several people are contributing to your site, develop a style guide to inform them of your rules for consistent content.

2. Clear. As in all writing, the goal of Web content is to communicate with an audience, and clarity is essential. Try reading your copy aloud before posting; hearing it out loud can help you determine whether it all makes sense. If possible, have one or two others read copy before posting it to the Web — and if your subject matter is technical or complicated, consider using an outside editor to help eliminate techno-speak.

3. Casual. The nature of the Web is more informal than many other marketing venues, so make sure your copy fits the medium. Your Web content should probably be more conversational than your traditional brochure or company presentation, and because many readers scan Web copy rather than reading it word for word, subheadings and bullets are helpful. In most cases, Web content should also be brief, making your points quickly without losing readers’ attention. However, many effective sites contain brief copy on the front pages with more detailed information available through additional links, which works to keep the attention of the general readership while offering more for those who want it.

4. Correct. Don’t confuse “casual” with “sloppy,” however. Correctness is still important, even on the Web, and errors in spelling, grammar, or facts will give most readers a negative impression of your company. Don’t just use spell check; read and re-read your copy before posting it, and if possible, get second opinions from those who know what they’re doing. There’s nothing wrong with being a bad speller, but there’s no excuse for refusing to double-check your work.

What Is A Blog?

Blog is standing for “Web log”. Log, in its simplest meaning, is a record of events which is written chronologically. Think about a diary. If you have it, you’ll write down some notes about events you experienced on a certain day, headed with date and/or time on top of it. This note can also be about a continuation of events happened the time before. This writing activity will then continue to the next days. Diary is sample of a log.


So, blog or web log is a chronological record about a certain subject, which is kept, saved and shared in World Wide Web. A blog is usually designed with the latest entry on top and the previous entry underneath.


Blog is personal oriented.


What I mean is that the articles, or writings, on a blog are dependent upon how the blogger, people who owns or writes the blog, think about its subject. Thus, you can understand the blogger’s character by simply reading his/her articles and understanding the impression shown in his/her blog.


Subject of a blog could be very various. They range from a light topic, such as celebrity’s gossip, comics, or hobbies, to the more serious one like politic or military stuff. They’re too vast to mention. The other thing is that we can find blogs talking about very similar subject, but seeing the subject from a very different point of view. So it’s not strange if one blog really adores the president of USA, while another blog expresses to hate him very much. Just like I told you before, it depends on the mind of the blogger. You, as a visitor, are free to choose whichever you like.


The blogger would be online or offline very often to search updates of the subject in his/her blog from many resources. He/she then summarizes the information collected in his/her own opinion and write it down in his/her blog as a new entry / posting. This kind of “combining and summarizing” method causes the information in a (good) blog always has a deeper understanding and have a new vision.


There’re also bloggers who blog with their original content. These bloggers are either experts, well-experienced, or knowledgeable person, and therefore being considered as seniors by a blogger community. Or else, they might be so rich by making their blogs as a powerful money machine. You can find in the internet many rich bloggers in the world.


Blog can make money???


Yes, it can. Much… if you want, and work it hard. Many bloggers join Google Adsense and make good money through it. Please, refer to my article about Google Adsense.