Weekend Reading: October 20, 2007

Here are a few articles from around the blog sphere (and my RSS reader) that I found interesting and that may be of interest to you as well.

Technorati Incoming Links
Daily Moolah has just released the Google Blog Search Bypass Plugin, their first ever WordPress plugin, which adds Technorati Incoming Links back to your WordPress admin.

Retain More of What You Read Online
Steve from Vandelay Website Design gives us 10 useful tips to retain more of what we read online.

Selling Your Own Ad Space
Tay from Supper Blogging discusses how you can start making money, no matter much traffic, by selling your own ads.

The 125 x 125 Ad Block
Darren from Pro Blogger talks about the recent popularity of the 125 x 125 ad block and whether you should consider using them on your blog.

Evaluating Offers for Affiliate Marketing
Derek Beau discusses how to pick and evaluate affiliate marketing offers for your blog.

The New King
Skellie from Daily Blog Tips discusses viral content and gives us 5 Reasons Why Viral Content is the New King.

Steps for Beginning Bloggers
Chris Garrett at Blogging Tips gives 10 steps that every beginning blogger should take.

Blogging Lessons from the Sopranos
As a follow up to Heros Lessons, Ben Cook from Blogging Experiment gives us blogging lessons from the Sopranos.

Should You Advertise on Your Blog?

This guest post has been written by Steven Snell, a web designer and blogger at Vandelay Website Design.

Blogging is an income producing activity for a lot of people. Of course, one of the most common ways to monetize your blog is by including paid advertisements. New bloggers face the dilemma of knowing when to start advertising. While I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong answer, we’ll take a look at some of the pros and cons.

There are basically 3 different approaches to making money through advertisers:

1. Sell ad space right away.
2. Build traffic to your blog without ads, then start selling ads when traffic is significant.
3. Don’t use ads at all (make money from some other method).

Some of the pros of selling ad space on your blog:

1. Revenue. Obviously, the most important reason to include ads is to recoup your expenses and hopefully turn a profit.

2. Ads are increasingly more accepted than they were a few years ago, especially on blogs. Most blog readers understand that bloggers need to offset their expense and get something monetarily for the time they spend on the blog.

3. Selling ads may be more stable than other ways of monetizing a blog. For example, affiliate revenues may be up and down, but if you can keep your ad spots occupied it will be steady income each month.

4. Easy money. Once you’ve built traffic that is. Advertisers aren’t hard to find for high-traffic blogs, and once you’ve built the traffic the advertising shouldn’t require a lot of work on your part.

Continue reading “Should You Advertise on Your Blog?”

What Makes a Good Blogger?

This guest post has been written by Chris Jacobson from Money Making Scoop.

I’ve been blogging for a while now and one thing I noticed while reading other blogs is that some of them suck. There – I said it!

It’s not hard to find a blog that has either died (that is, the author doesn’t update it anymore), provides the wrong information, has spelling and grammar mistakes or the theme itself makes you sick.

I’ve compiled a list of 5 traits that a good blogger should have.

Be Personal

A good blogger should provide insight and a touch of their personal side while writing. The information offered should not be recycled, but fresh and informative (especially on a marketing blog). A blogger should be responsive to their audience, be easily accessible, respond to comments and provide dialog that’s easy to make sense of.

Have a Personality

The blogger personality is a huge key when it comes to having your audience like you or hate you. This is where it gets tricky – you want to be somewhere between ‘liked’ and ‘hated’. You want to be hated enough to cause a little controversy and discussion amongst your readers, but likable enough that even those that hate you will come back to read more. Make sense?

Be Passionate

If you’re not passionate about what you’re writing about, it shows and your readers will know it. You shouldn’t have to struggle when writing a post – it should come naturally. If this isn’t the case, you’re writing on the wrong subject. Have fun while writing and don’t force yourself too much.

Continue reading “What Makes a Good Blogger?”

Weekend Reading: October 13, 2007

Here are a few articles from around the blog sphere (and my RSS reader) that I found interesting and that may be of interest to you as well.

Profit from Google’s War on Paid Links
Ben Cook from Blogging Experiment discusses how to profit from Google’s recent war on paid links.

Grammar Rules You Need to Know
Sara Christensen of Blogging Tips talks about the 9 grammar rules every blogger (and non-blogger) needs to know.

Search Engine Optimization vs. Social Media Optimization
Steve from Vandelay Website Design give some comparisons between search engine optimization (SEO) and social media optimization (SMO).

How to Value a Blog
Chris Garrett give some ideas and areas to consider when trying to place a value on a blog.

Beginner Mistakes from 10 Great Bloggers
Tay from Supper Blogging contacted ten great bloggers and asked them about the biggest mistakes they made with their blogs as beginners and for any advice they had to offer.

Should You Worry About Page Rank?
Dev Basu from Daily Moolah dot Com gives 5 reasons why it isn’t worth losing sleep over Google Page Rank.

Stress Free Blogging
Skellie from Daily Blog Tips outlines six steps to a blogging habit that will have you churning out posts consistently and stress-free.

Can Too Many Digg Users be a Bad Thing?
Darren Rowse from ProBlogger asks if having too many Digg using readers be a bad thing for a site?

Sun, Sand and a Bit of Relaxation

As you read this I am currently taking some time for a little R&R, family vacation style. We’ll be heading to New Orleans for a few days and then over to Panama City for about a week. All told we’ll be gone for about 10 days.

In an attempt to keep things moving along and active, I’ve decided to open Average Joe Blogger up to few a guest bloggers who have graciously agreed to fill in.

I will be taking my laptop with me so I won’t completely be off the grid. I’ll be checking email, moderating comments and other general upkeep. I might even write a post of two if I can’t stay away.

For those of you who showed an interest in guest blogging, but haven’t submitted a post yet, it’s not to late. I’ll have my laptop with me so I can post them on the fly where there is an opening. Just email them to me at: nate@avgjoeblogger.com.