It is very annoying for a viewer to wait when any web page takes hours to load. So, even if you write Quality content in your site, you’re all hard work may go waste if it takes long time to load and come up on screen.

You may even lose your visitor because of this. WordPress provides some really useful plugins which can help you to optimize your blog and make it load faster in no time. Here, I list you 5 most useful Plugins for faster loading of your blog.

1. WP Super Cache.

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. When a html File is generated your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress php scripts.

The static html files will be served to the vast majority of your users, but because a user’s details are displayed in the Comment form after they leave a comment those requests are handled by PHP. This plugin is found to be very useful for all the bloggers using them and is the largest downloaded plugins among all the plugins listed to lower down a bog’s loading time.

2. W3 Total Cache.

Trusted by many popular blogs like: mashable.com, pearsonified.com, webdesignerdepot.com, freelanceswitch.com, briansolis.com, css3.info, tutsplus.com, yoast.com, noupe.com and others.

W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your blog by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download time of your theme and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. It also provides up to 80% Bandwidth savings via Minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and RSS feeds.

3. WP Minify.

This plugin integrates the Minify engine into your WordPress blog. Once enabled, this plugin will combine and compress JS and CSS files to improve page load time. It grabs JS/CSS files in your generated WordPress page and passes that list to the Minify engine.

The Minify engine then returns a consolidated, minified, and compressed script or style for WP Minify to reference in the WordPress header. You can easily integrate Minify into your WordPress blog. The debug mode also enables you to combine files without minifying them.

4. Free CDN.

This plugins is found to be really helpful when you have static files like Images, JavaScript or CSS taking a long time to load and slowing your site down.

Using a CDN to transfer such kind of static content is highly recommended if you have a busy website as it reduces server load and bandwidth thus improves stability and availability. If you are paying bandwidth fee, this plugin hopefully helps with your bills. Even if you don’t, enabling it may save your site in peak times!

5. GZIP Output.

This plugin helps you to automatically compress CSS, JavaScript and HTML output of your web pages, allowing it to travel faster from your blog to a visitor’s browser.

According to Best practices On Yahoo! Developer Network: “Gzipping generally reduces the response size by about 70%. Approximately 90% of today’s Internet traffic travels through browsers that claim to support GZIP.” Installing this plugin will simply help your page to load faster in the viewer’s screen.

Try out the above plugins and let me know which one of these you find most useful to use and which one helps you to make your blog load faster.

Taken from: techzoomin.com (article, By techzoomin.com), Google (images).

Professional blogs are the kind of blogs that people will enjoy reading. If you have comfortable and professional design in your blog, people will be willing to spend lots of time with your blog. They will browse your blog happily and read any information that you offer to them.

With a good and professional looking blog design, you can keep your readers’ satisfaction high so that they will want to visit your blog again and again. Here are 7 tips to make your blog more professional looking and attractive:

1. Make it clean and comfortable to the eye.

Clean blog design will make it comfortable for your readers to read your content for a long time. Cluttered blog design will only repel your readers from reading your blog content. That’s why you need to make your design clean and comfortable for your readers. Provide lots of white spaces in your blog and adjust your blog layout for the best viewing.

2. Use premium blog template.

The easiest way to have a professional looking blog is to purchase a license for premium blog template. Although the license might be a bit expensive (from $47-$97), but you can give the best for your blog in this way. Premium blog templates usually have complete SEO feature that will help your blog to rank high in the search engines quickly.

3. Adjust the font and color to make it attractive.

Make sure that the font and color of your blog is beautifully adjusted for the best visual experience. For instance, you can use different font for each of your blog post title. You can also use bold, italic, or underline in different parts of your blog. With a simple modification in your blog’s font and color, you can produce the best visual experience for your readers.

4. Use professional design for your blog logo.

Your blog logo is your blog brand. It means that your blog logo will be considered as a representative of your blog. In order to make your blog look more professional, you will need to use professional design for your logo. You can’t just use a plain text. If you use only plain text, it will ruin your blog credibility.

5. Keep your banners and advertisements organized.

Do not clutter your blog with unnecessary pop ups and do not place banners everywhere. You need to have special spot within your blog where you put your banners and advertisements in place. It is better for you to keep your blog tidy. Remember that more ads don’t mean more earning for you.

6. Pretty up your header and footer.

Your blog header and footer are two important places where people will look often. Moreover, they represent 75% of your overall blog design. So, you should make them look attractive. For instance, instead of just putting copyright text in your footer, it is better for you to include some important modules such as about us, social media plugin, recent posts, and popular posts. It will make your footer look attractive.

7. Use professional images for your content.

Plain text content is not attractive to read. In your blog, you should always include images inside your content. It will make your content look more interesting to read. Also, images in your content will give positive impression for people who visit your blog for the first time.

Those are some tips to make your blog more professional looking and attractive. First impression is important in blogging. If you can’t give positive first impression to your blog visitors, they will not become your loyal readers.

Taken from: phpvalley.com (article, By phpvalley.com), Google (images).

Most bloggers will agree that blogging is a lot of hard work. You might have read that people are making thousands of dollars blogging from the comfort of their home. After reading such stories, some people may be lured to try their hand at blogging in order to earn full time income through it.

However, when they really start the journey, reality will hit them hard and they will soon realize how difficult it can be to earn stable income from blogging.

That does not mean that all those stories about blogging riches were false. There are many successful bloggers earning handsome money and you too can be among them. However, you need to be prepared to work hard and follow some principles if you want to succeed. Starting a blog is not a big deal; anyone can do it these days.

You don't even require any technical skills. However, the important thing is to grow your blog readership and traffic. Only then can you hope to start making sustainable income from it. In this article, let us discuss how to keep your blog growing so that within a few months it shall start generating some money for you.

The first thing you need to do is to drive out from your mind any fantasies of achieving overnight success. If you start blogging with that frame of mind, you are unlikely to progress much further. Instead, have a mindset of dedication and seriousness. Be willing to work hard and continue to provide value to your readers.

If you keep doing this, sooner or later, you shall find success. Most of the successful bloggers will tell you how much they have toiled for months, or even years, to reach where they are now. So, don't be sucked in by tales of overnight success.

Once you have corrected your mindset, the next step to grow your blog is to have a comprehensive and well laid-out plan. You should first understand the needs and problems of your target audience. You should plan out what kind of content you want to have on your blog.

You should also do a lot of reading and research about anything related to your niche. Most successful bloggers read blogs of other people in their niche. This way, they can keep themselves updated and get more ideas about what to write.

1. Focus On Content.

Blogging is all about content. If you want to keep your blog growing then it is important to contribute high quality content on regular and frequent basis. This way, people shall keep visiting your blog, referring it to their friends and sharing it on social media sites. If you want all this exposure for your blog, then your content should satisfy the following requirements:

a. It should be high-value.

The content should be informative and useful to the readers. It should help solve some of their pressing problems and provide them with workable solutions.

b. The content should be engaging and entertaining.

No one wants to read boring stuff. Most people on the Internet have short attention spans. So, even if your content is useful, it won't get read or shared if it comes across as boring. Try to make your content engaging with examples, illustrations, attractive graphics etc.

c. Have lots of content on your blog.

You should be adding content on frequent basis. If your blog hardly gets updated, then people will stop visiting it. If you cannot produce so much quality content on your own, then you can outsource it or accept guest posts to encourage others to contribute content.

2. Be Socially Active.

Besides publishing high quality content on frequent basis, another thing you need to do to grow your blog is to spend a lot of time on social media sites interacting with your target audience or with other bloggers in your niche. The more socially active you are, the more exposure your blog can receive. This will help in increasing traffic to your blog.

Being active on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Zinzz and forums can be very helpful. You can get ideas for your blog posts, you can form relationships with other bloggers and you can keep yourself updated with the latest happenings or news related to your niche. Set aside a couple of hours every day to spend on social sites and see how your blog grows.

Taken from: supportivehands.net (article, By Justin Hills), Google (images).

If you are building an intranet-style WordPress site or just want to have a private blog, the following plugins are a simple and easy solution that let you do just that.

1. Members Only.

Members Only is a WordPress plugin that allows you to make your blog only viewable to visitors that are logged in. If a visitor is not logged in, they will be redirected either to the WordPress login page or a page of your choice.

Once logged in they can be redirected back to the page that they originally requested. You can also protect your feeds whilst allowing registered user access to them by using Feed Keys.

Get Members Only.

2. Password Protected.

A very simple way to quickly password protect your WordPress site with a single password. Integrates seamlessly into your WordPress privacy settings.

Features include:

a. Password protect your WordPress site with a single password.
b. Integrates seamlessly into your WordPress privacy settings.
c. Works with Mark Jaquith’s Login Logo plugin.

Get Password Protected.

3. Absolute Privacy.

Absolute Privacy turns your WordPress blog into a fully private site where you control who has access. It’s perfect for family blogs, private communities, and personal websites. You canlockdown the entire site or create a members only area, moderate new registrations, force users to enter first/last name and choose their password during sign up, and more!

Get Absolute Privacy.

Taken from: wpmayor.com (article, By Jean Galea), Google (images).

Engaging your readers is nothing but how many pages a single user visits on your blog at a time. The more page views you get, the better will be your search engine rankings.

But unfortunately many bloggers fail to achieve this, which results in a higher bounce rate. In this post i will share some of the best tips that will help you to keep your readers engaged and kick you blog page views like a sky rocket.

1. Quality Content.

This is the most simple and important thing to remember if you want to increase your page views. If the reader likes your article, he will obviously stay on your blog for more than 5 minutes browsing digging your blog.

Useful, original and interesting will always leave your readers hungry for more. So it time that you should work out on your blog, writing quality content for your readers. Its simple, you give the readers, and the readers will give what you want.

2. Excerpts on Homepage.

You might have seen many blogs which shows full post on the homepage. I really don’t like these blogs because I have to scroll all way down to find whats more ahead. This will gradually decrease your page views. Showing excerpts are the best way to increase page views and manage post on the home page highlighting multiple posts.

3. Create Catchy Titles.

Make sure you create a catchy article which grabs your reader attention and force them to read the whole article. Its also important if you are showing excerpts on your homepage or front page. Eye grabbing titles are more viewed both on site and of site if shared them on twitter, facebook and others.

4. Create Series Posts.

Series posts is just like a list of articles related to a single topic. For example check this series post on how to build traffic to your site. The idea of series post is to keep your readers more engaged with your blog for a certain topic.

The reader might come back to your blog to complete the series where he left out or he might also subscribe to your blog for the series update. This is a great way to keep your reader engaged. But be careful to list all the post in the series.

5. Improve Load Time.

You might not wanna overlook this section. Because loading time plays an important role for page views. The less loading time your blog takes, the more page views you get. And the more load time it takes, the higher will be your bounce rate.

A reader will quickly bounce of the page if the page doesn’t loads in no more than 7 secs. So its important that should also work out on your blog HTML and CSS for more page views.

6. Interlinking.

Interlinking means to link you previous articles with the current one. Now there are two advantage of interlinking. First it would help you to rank your articles higher in search engines, as interlinking works like a vote to the article. And second one would keep your readers engaged with your blog.

If you are writing something that relates to the previously written article, just link to them. For example, you can see above how I linked to my previous article.

7. Easy Navigation.

Make sure your blog is easy to navigate. Don’t confused your readers with confused links all over the blog. Some of your readers might be interested to dig your blog and look for other interesting articles. Display your blog categories in the navbar, add tags cloud, display blog archives as hierarchy. Make sure you do create an optimized sitemap or a archive page where you show all your A-Z post.

8. Display Related Post.

You might have read this many times, but this is the most common practice to keep the reader engaged to your blog. If the reader reads your full post from start to end and finds your article more interesting, he/she will surely click on one of the related post below the post.

As you can see below I have added the related post widget which shows 4 related articles to this topic. Don’t display more than 5 articles, this might irritate the reader seeing a huge list of related links.

9. Categorize your Article.

This is the most important aspect if you are a blogger user and displaying related post below your article. As you know blogger allows you to categorize your post by using labels only. You would mess up your article and blog if you use more than 2 or 3 unrelated labels.

For instance if you have written an article on Health and Fitness and you have labelled it with “health” and “astrology“, this would display articles related to health and astrology too. Now why a reader would be interested to read an article on astrology if he wants to read more health related articles.

So its important that you categorize your post with a single label or a two at most, related to the first one. This might not be a problem with WordPress users. You can automatically generate related post with the plugin.

10. Featured Post.

Readers are most likely to visit those pages which are most popular or the most commented on a blog. You can show your popular articles or the most commented articles in your sidebar, or as a jquery slider on the homepage. Its also important that you should keep these post optimize for more page views.

11. Search Box.

This is an important element for any bloggers blog. The search box should be placed where its easily viewable to the readers like at the top navbar or at the sidebar. The Search box helps your readers to find and locate your previous articles on your blog in turn increasing your page views.

Taken from: iblognet.com (article, By Sahil Umatia), Google (images).

While it may steal income from writers like myself worldwide, I must state this truth: You don’t have to be a great writer to be a great blogger.

Wait a minute, you may be thinking.  Don’t blog posts have those strange things called sentences and words in them? And thus shouldn’t writing skill and blogging skill be inherently tied together?

Think again. While being a great writer is helpful, it’s not necessary to blogging success. If you’re a horrible writer, or even worse, you hate writing, you probably shouldn’t blog. But if you’re somewhere between unable to write a sentence and not quite Ernest Hemingway, there’s hope.

As a professional writer for the web, I live and breathe blogs. I write posts for myself. I write and edit posts for Right Source Marketing‘s clients. I devour dozens of blogs, ranging from Seth Godin’s to The Dieline to The Dry Cleaners Blog. While I enjoy reading blogs by talented writers, I’ve found that bloggers who aren’t great writers can use the following methods to succeed anyway:

1. Focus on your audience.

A blogger who knows his or her audience and how to engage it will be more successful than a talented writer who doesn’t understand their audience. Of course, part of being a talented writer is writing to your audience, but you can focus on your audience without being a classically talented writer.

2. Create how to’s and lists.

Lists and how to’s are both popular and easy to write. You don’t have to be able to organize a feature article in order to slap 5 points together and call it a blog post, yet that short and sweet post can attract a lot of hits.

3. Use catchy headlines.

It’s annoying to click a link because of a great headline and get a horrible blog post. But a fantastic title can do wonders for a mediocre post. In today’s world of fleeting attention, a catchy headline, even if it’s only substantiated by mediocre content, can be share-worthy, and thus, by at least one metric, successful. Of course, the best posts have both great headlines and meaningful content.

4. Use pictures and videos.

Not all blogs focus on words. If you’re a visual person, not a verbal person, post pictures, slides from presentations, videos, and info graphics on your blog. Frame them with a sentence or two to capture search engine traffic, and you’re good to go.

5. Write what you know.

If you have a niche area of expertise, write about it. Right Source works with a team of software and product developers who aren’t writers by profession, but have experienced significant blogging success. By writing what they know, they’ve created well-written content that’s gone viral in their niches.

6. Be persistent.

For blogging success, quantity and regularity is almost as important as quality. Even if a large audience loved that helpful blog post you wrote six months ago, they’re not going to care about you if you haven’t written anything since then. Writing talent is not a prerequisite for perseverance.

7. Get help from a great writer.

Do you know anyone who lives and breathes writing? Can you pay or bribe them to help you (if beer doesn’t work, try cookies)? Getting an extra set of eyes on your blog posts is a good idea regardless, and if you work with a writer who gives quality constructive feedback, you’ll soon become a better writer yourself.

What do you think, do you have to be a great writer to be a great blogger? Have any tips to add to the list? Comment, and join the conversation.

Taken from: socialmediatoday.com (article, By Tracy Gold), Google (images).

If you’re taking your blogging seriously, you need to think of yourself as a writer, not just a blogger.

We’ve already taken a look at why great content matters so much. In this post, I’m going to give you some simple tips for improving your writing skills.

1. Write Regularly.

The more you write, the easier writing will become. You don’t have to write every day – but writing regularly (at least a couple of times a week) will really help you improve.

If you’re struggling to find time to create blog posts, schedule your writing sessions in advance. You could even head out to a cafe for a few hours.
  
2. Ask for Feedback.

It’s a scary thing to do, but one of the best ways to improve is to ask for feedback on your posts. Buddy up with another blogger and ask them to tell you what’s working well and what isn’t. Make sure you return the favor when they need a hand.

If you belong to any private forums or membership sites, you could post a work-in-progress for other members to comment on.

3. Read Thoughtfully.

When you read a great blog post, don’t move straight on to the next. Stop and work out why the post was so good. You might even want to print it out so you can write in the margins.

Look at the structure – what subheadings were used? Look at the writing style – did the introduction have a compelling hook to draw you in? Find one thing that you could do in your own posts as a result of what you’ve discovered.

4. Edit Your Writing.

When you’ve finished a post, it’s tempting to hit “publish” straight away. But taking just a few minutes to edit will make a huge difference to your finished post.

If you can, leave your post alone for a day before you edit – that way, you’ll be able to spot mistakes more easily. Watch out for typos, but also pay attention to the bigger picture: you might need to spice up the introduction or swap a couple of paragraphs around in the middle.

5. Read About Writing.

There are hundreds of books and blogs about writing. Set aside some time each week for reading about writing – even if it’s just half an hour. Try to read something that you can put into practice straight away.

6. Take a Class.

If you want to improve your writing fast, take a class. That might be at your local college or online. Ideally, the syllabus should cover the sort of writing that you want to do (web writing, blogging, copywriting or similar) – but you can still learn a lot from a creative writing class.

Most classes or online courses will give you a chance to get direct feedback from the tutor: this will let you pinpoint areas for improvement in your work.

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Ali Luke), Google (images).

One of the things I’m most passionate about is creating truly great writing, and with every blog post I write, I dream of changing the world.

Most people think that involves writing great content, giving value to readers, and making your posts useful… but that’s only part of the equation.

Thing I’ve found in writing for a long time, and observing the kind of content that goes viral, and that makes people take notice, is that it’s more than just writing content or giving value; it’s an art form that involves storytelling, having a sense of vision, and captivating people’s imaginations.

Your goal as a blogger is to turn it from a piece of informative content, into a work of art that captivates your readers, and will have your readers wanting to share your content with others; good blogging is about creating a TOTAL EXPERIENCE.

In this post I want to take unique spin on blog posts, and give you some simple tips that will give you a new and powerful way to supercharge anything you write, and really leave a lasting and profound impact on your readers.

Blogging Is About Building Relationships.

When you’re blogging your goal isn’t just to focus on writing great content, although that is extremely important, but to also humanize your communication as much possible to build trust, loyalty, and a following who genuinely wants to share your vision, passions, and your dreams.

People aren’t just looking for content; they’re looking for relationships… especially in today’s day and age where so much of the content we see feels so impersonal.

Everything in our lives is about relationships, so wouldn’t it make sense to apply emotions and relationship building techniques to your writing?

As humans, we look for purpose, meaning, and motives behind things; we want to know the backstory, and we, as humans, crave that feeling of connecting with another human being who has similar interests to ours.

Humans want to laugh, cry, create memories, and creates experiences we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.

We learn, grow, and feel connected to the bigger picture by sharing our experiences with others, and learning from others.

When we feel really connected with someone, there’s something that goes much deeper than just reading a piece of content, to feeling that intimate, emotional, deep sense of connection with another person.

Inspire Others With Your Vision.

Whether it’s Disney, Edison, Jobs, Ford, or whoever, we always admire people with vision, passion, and the want to see the stories of people who follow their dreams.

For example, when Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh in 1984, he didn’t just talk about the features, or the product; he got people talking about it by talking about how it was going to change the way we lived our lives forever, how it would revolutionize education, and how it would make computers accessible to everyone on the planet.

A powerful vision not only has the power of getting people’s attention, but it also gets your readers to trust you, because they know you’re really passionate about what you do, and you’re not just doing things for promotional purposes or money.

His team would work for more hours, less money, and under a very demanding boss, all because they believed what they were doing with their time, energy, and brains, was something memorable that had meaning, and that was going to change the world; something they could do with their lives to make a difference.

I say that to emphasize how powerful vision and purpose are.

When writing posts, don’t just share what you’re doing; share the meaning and purpose behind why you’re doing it; share with others what you stand for, and what you believe in.

If you look at sports, you can see every team has a purpose and vision (and dream of winning their championship), and all the fans rally around this vision because they want to share in this story of overcoming the odds, the story of getting to the goal, and the vision of being the best.

People didn’t follow the dream of landing on the moon in the 60s because it was logical, or because there was a practical purpose to it; people followed this dream because it brought us together as a group, and allowed us to feel the fulfillment of a goal that expressed who we are, made our lives meaningful, and showed us what we could accomplish as humans.

People want to be inspired with a dream and a vision they can get behind; something that supports you, supports their beliefs, and is something they can represent, believe in, and bond with others over in search of a common goal.

Share Your Story.

The internet Is a crowded and noisy place today, and standing out can be hard, so you need to make sure you make an impact, leave an impression, and make a meaningful connection with people, or you’re going to be quickly forgotten.

If you really want to stand out, you want to make sure you do things to connect with your readers, get them passionate, and involved in what you’re doing, and the way to do that is to communicate your story behind your purpose.

For thousands of years humans have connected through stories; they’re used in our books, music, and television to keep our attention for hours on end, they’re what inspire us and motivate us, and they’re what connect us together.

You want to give people something to share in with you; whether it’s an email, a blog post, or any other interaction with your readers, give them something to tell others, and remember that how your readers feel about you and the connection they share with you, is just as important, if not more important, than your content alone.

It’s what’s going to set you apart from everyone else in your niche, and create loyal lifetime followers and readers, as well as build your blog and encourage others to share your message (and your vision) with the world, and leave a big impact that really touches lives.

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Chris Nosal), Google (images).

If you say it, some people may think it might be true, but if you write it people are far more likely to think it’s true – this is how newspapers work. The written word carries enhanced credibility, and by writing rather than speaking, your own credibility is increased.

Enter the blogger and the huge numbers of new blogs being created every day – suddenly it has become cool to blog (read: ‘write’) and now anyone can set up a blog and start spouting whatever garbage comes to mind.

So I’ll just say it: I think the vast majority of blogs out there are just crap.

I have to wade through masses of them to find something worthwhile. Occasionally, I find a real gem that makes the hunt worthwhile, but for the most part I surf on by and never return.

As part of that reader habit, I’m sure I skim through a ton of blogs which are in fact worthy. They just don’t grab me fast enough to stop that automated impulse to go to the next site or hit the back browser.

A big part of my attitude is my automatic assessment of the credibility, or lack thereof, of the blog itself.

Building Your Blogging Credibility.

As head of an online marketing company, if I catch Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts, Aaron Wall or a dozen others in the mix, it piques my attention more than if I see “Joe Schmuck” with the latest SEO tactic that makes him thousands of dollars each day.

Partially, it’s also about the subject matter, and what is being relayed over to me as the reader, but it is largely the association of the blogger with the people being quoted too.

If your intention is to become an authority figure on a topic, then both your online and offline credibility are important. The issue is what can you do to cultivate credibility and show yourself in a positive light?

Credibility by Association.

We’ve just touched on one thing you can do: become associated with others in your subject arena. If Daniel Scocco was to grace my blog’s presence with a guest post, or I was to grab a comment from Rand Fishkin, then my credibility is enhanced simply by association.

You know Daniel, you read and visit his site, so seeing what he has to say on my blog helps me a great deal in transferring the value in Daniel, that you have in your mind, to my blog and ultimately to me.

An alternative is to interview someone for a blog post, even grab a sound bite from them which can then be attributed. This is something which is easier to do than actually getting a busy person to sit down and write you three or four hundred words for a post.

Just prepare some questions and email them to them – you don’t even need to actually speak to them to interview someone.

I don’t need to have an online celebrity post to my blog – someone else will do, but make sure they produce the very best content for your blog as you are able. Be editorial in the exercise of your judgment, because if it is a great post, that’s fine, but if it simply regurgitated pulp, that is going to hurt you too if you are publishing it.

Translating Your Subject Matter Knowledge Into Reader Credibility.

Your credibility is affected by how you approach the topic you are looking to become an authority in. If your blog is on Mommy tips, your credibility is not helped if you are a 48 year guy who has never had a kid, unless you’re some sort of Dr, Spock character.

I can’t write a bunch on the movies if I don’t watch them, and I am not interested with angst-ridden philosophy from spotty teenagers who think they know all about life but haven’t left their hometown yet.

Your knowledge also needs to be current too, which will be reflected in the blogging posts you make. The nature of the media beast is that online users are living in the ‘now’, so the topicality of your blog should reflect what is happening in your niche too.

And you have to be able to make an intelligent stab at expressing what is happening too. It does no good to be light on factual support and heavy on personal opinion, at least that is, until you have established your credibility to begin with. In this respect, more evidence to back yourself up on any stands you take is a good thing, and you can’t have enough either.

Be Real.
When people get into a blog, they are really buying into the person behind it – what kind of character they are, where they are, how old, what sex and what do they look and sound like. For this reason, include your own bio and add photos of yourself too.

Be personable and let your readership and potential surfers like me know you are real and not some made-up corporate persona that doesn’t exist in the real world.

Work on Credibility Off Blog as Well as On It.

Finally, getting yourself referenced elsewhere will improve credibility quickly too, especially if the reference is from another recognized leader in the field.

This is probably the ultimate in getting endorsed, especially if someone like Rand Fishkin was to write about my SEO blog or Matt Cutts referenced me in one of his videos on Google.

Scaling my expectations down a notch, simple getting referenced by other bloggers who are in the same niche as me is good for my credibility too.

After all, if I say something, it isn’t as believable as if you say it about me, and the same applies if I write something, it is just going to be so much more credible if you write about me instead.

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Karl Hindle), Google (images).

As a blogger, there are more than a few mistakes which can and will make you waste valuable time and resources, so that identifying them in order to be able to take action is simply a must.

Let’s not waste another second and start with:

1. Neglecting the Comments Section.

The opportunity to interact with your readers is one of the most important things which makes blogging special in the first place. Never make the mistake of neglecting the community you can build around your blog through the comments section, or you will definitely end up regretting your attitude down the road.

2. Not Taking Feedback into Consideration.

You will certainly receive your share of emails with suggestions on how to improve your blog, and not taking them into consideration would simply be a shame. After all, if a reader has taken the time to write you an email and share his or her two cents, listening to what that person has to say is the least you could do.

3. Taking Breaks From Blogging.

You are obviously only human and will need to recharge your batteries every now and then, but that doesn’t mean that not publishing blog posts for several days in a row is the way to go. Take advantage of the time-stamp feature, write a few blog posts before you leave and there you have it.

4. Seeing Blogging as a Chore.

The “I’ll just write this post and get it over with” attitude is never recommended if you are serious about seeing long-term results. Pick a topic you are both passionate about and knowledgeable in, and make sure that your posts reflect the way you feel about blogging.

5. Not Respecting Your Readers.

When interacting with readers, always be polite and helpful. Don’t look down upon a person simply because the question he or she has asked seems like something obvious. It may be obvious to you, but it may just represent something extremely important to a person who is just starting out.

The same way, you should encourage the loyal members of your community to always be ready to help a fellow member out since, as I’ve previously stated, not taking advantage of the comments section would simply be a mistake.

Conclusion.

I am convinced that it’s more than clear which blogging traps you need to avoid and, now that you have identified the problem, taking things to the next level is a must. Time is not exactly something you can afford to waste and, as a blogger, maximizing results is the way to go if you are serious about standing out.

What about you? Are you guilty of any of these and, also, which other blogging traps have you identified? What advice would you give to a blogger who is just starting out when it comes to the mistakes he or she should steer clear of?

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Daniel Scocco), Google (images).

A primary goal of any website or blog should be to provide its visitors with a pleasant and fulfilling experience. Regardless of what market the website is targeting, the opinions of users will play a huge role in determining the site’s level of success.

Visitors that have positive experiences will be much more likely to come back later, refer friends, sign up for a newsletter, purchase a product, submit an inquiry about a service, etc.

When developing a website, the user’s wants and needs should always be in the forefront of the decision making process. It doesn’t matter what type of website you run, it needs to be user-focused.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the design and development process and create a site that satisfies the designer or the owner but doesn’t really provide visitors with much value.

What makes a website user-friendly? There are probably an endless number of factors, but let’s look at four of the major ones.

1. Page Load Speed.

Although high-speed internet connections are becoming more and more common, there is still a large number of internet users that are on slower dial-up connections. Even with high-speed connections some pages just don’t load very quickly.

Most of your visitors will be fairly impatient and pages that load slowly could chase them away. At the very least, slow loading times will reduce the number of pages that they’ll visit on your site.

Knowing your site’s audience can really help to know how your pages should be designed. A program like Google Analytics will show you the percentage of your visitors that are using different internet connections.

Based on the numbers you can get a good idea of what type of impact page load speed will have on your overall audience.

If your site attracts a high percentage of users with dial-up connections, you should be sure to keep pages loading as quickly as possible. If a very high percentage of visitors are using high-speed connections, you may be able to add a few extra elements to your pages.

Factors that influence the load times of pages include the number and size of images, extra items like flash, the amount of excess code (example, designing with a table-based layout instead of CSS), and the size of your pages.

2. Accessibility.

If someone can’t use or access your website it serves no purpose for that visitor. Accessibility of websites has become a bigger priority for designers and developers in recent years, but there is still a long way to go.

Even major corporations have struggled to achieve complete accessibility. Target was even sued over the accessibility of its website for handicapped individuals.

Some of the easiest things that you can do to improve the accessibility of your site include using alt tags for all images, use valid HTML and CSS coding, avoid frames, and allow text to be re-sized by visitors.

3. Navigation.

All users want to be able to move through the website to find what they want. A huge factor in being user-friendly is providing simple and intuitive navigation. Major areas of navigation should be located consistently on all pages.

Using common elements that users expect to find, like About pages and Contact pages will help as most internet users have come to expect them and will look for them at times.

A general rule of thumb is that any page on your site should be reachable with 2 clicks from your home page. For larger sites this probably isn’t realistic, but offering a sitemap and/or a sitewide search can really help.

Another important factor with navigation is that user’s shouldn’t have to guess where they will end up if they click on a link. Regardless of whether the link is part of a navigation menu, or if it is simply in the body of the text, visitors should understand where the link will lead them.

4. Information.

Visitors are coming to your site for a reason. Whatever that reason may be, you want to provide them with what they are seeking. Are they coming to find basic information on your business’ services?

Are they coming to read in-depth articles on a particular subject? Whatever the case may be, the information that your website provides needs to sufficiently meet the expectations of visitors.

A blog like this one will need to provide its readers with great, insightful articles in order satisfy its visitors. The website of a restaurant may need to provide hours of operation and a menu in order satisfy its visitors.

Obviously, each situation is different. In order to have a user-friendly website you need to anticipate what visitors will expect to find at your site, and then put it right in front of them.

I know this is just the tip of the iceberg on the subject of user-focused websites. What factors do you feel are important (either from the perspective of a visitor or a designer)?

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Steven Snell), Google (images).

The ones who do something first usually get the most credit. Be that in business, innovation, creative work. In some cases, it is due to satisfying the audience even before they realize they have the need. In other cases this can even translate into being the first who answers an already apparent need, something already missing. However, for the most part it’s mainly due to serving the curiosity which is ever growing.

The thing is, that answering this need, being the first who provides the content, is as good a place to start as any when wanting to establish yourself as an authority within your niche, as well as capture a bigger market by leveraging random affinities and going viral.

Don’t let me bother you with flowery prose, and let’s delve deeper into why is it that you should always stay on top of what is new in your niche.

1. New things to write about.

Even if sounding way too naive, this holds sense. You always have something new to write about, right? Think again. You will realize that on a second thought that’s almost a no. How come?

You see, even if the material you create is new in the sense of never repeating what you already have on your site, it’s probably talked about many times before, on sites that share the similar theme.

Now this is not that bad of a thing, don’t get me wrong. You definitely have contributed with presenting it in a slightly different fashion, from a different perspective, having it connected with other information, thus making it unique (have you?).

But it is still not something entirely new, you see.

By staying on top of what is happening in your niche, you can have something brand new to say to your readers. And not only them, but the whole audience interested in your niche- the potential audience, that is.

2. SEO candy.

Realizing that every day billions of searches constantly happen, and that one third of those has never been typed into the search query box before, you should already get the picture about what this means.

In short, it means that sometimes chasing the event keywords or trying to predict the search volume of new trends beats already popular keywords by a huge margin.

I recently wrote a huge review about the Insanity workout. The thing is that it became quite popular in the world of fitness. The workout, that is. So, targeting an audience that resembles the workout potential buyer, I figured that it’s a great thing for me to cover. However, I did this a little bit too later.

Granted, I rank well with the review, have some conversion and sales going on, tons of visitors on a monthly basis. But, had I decided to go for creating the review the moment this workout was out of the oven, things would have been entirely different. You get the picture, right? If I stayed on top of what is happening in the niche, I would have made a fortune by now. But alas, we learn, and that’s a good thing.

Sometimes try and even predict what will be going on in your niche. Take for example people who build sites around event keywords before they even happen. Like creating a site for, let’s say the Olympics. Sounding familiar? Darren Rowse did this once. Way back, with the games in Athens, 2004 was it?

Since then many others tried to duplicate this approach, creating sites around things that they predicted would be talked about. The epilogue? Some had huge success with it, that’s for sure.

Now here is the thing; Not only they made a site centering the main keyword, they also tried to predict things like lack of available hotel rooms, traffic jam, incidents… You know, things that happen constantly on such events. In short, the result was great. Whenever some of these happened for real, they already ranked pretty well. And that’s a lot of traffic if you ask me.

3. Link bait.

We slightly went off-course with the previous one. I hope you don’t mind. Let’s get specific again, shall we?

The reason why I’m not putting link bait in the same basket with the SEO aspect, is because I refer to it more in terms of Internet Marketing.

You see, being the first to create content about what is new and trendy in your niche, the content itself becomes what SEO’s know as link bait. In short, content that is very likely to be linked. And regardless the form, be that in text, video, podcast, it buys you a lot of links either way. The reason being, because it covers what’s new and trendy, and we already discussed that people have the intrinsic need for such things.

But creating the content would not suffice all by itself. It has to either be a valuable resource (like those huge articles that Glen from ViperChill makes), present things in a certain entertaining fashion, make connections with other niche related aspects – random affinities (this term is coined by Ian Laurie from the SEOmoz community, and basically means an existing connection between two topics only in terms of having a common audience).

Your content can cover one of these, and classify as link bait.

4. Becoming authority within the niche.

How long do you reckon before people start to notice you in the sense of always being the one who brings the new right on the table? News travel pretty fast on the Internet. Go viral with one story, and you already caught the attention of the biggest part of your potential audience.

It won’t be that much longer before people turn to your brand, and start looking for exclusive content that can rarely be found other places.

Of course you will have to stay innovative and create content that satisfies those needs. Creating random affinities is as good a place to start as any. But I digress.

The thing is, be the one sharing the new going on in your niche, and you will see that people see you in an entirely different light authority wise.

5. Making connections.

This one is very tightly connected with the one above. Mostly in the sense of big players noticing you. They will cite you, maybe even ask you for advice or interview. Even linking to your work, they will make an effort to contact you, since it’s clear that you are an up-and-coming player in their niche now.

If you bother to ask, many bloggers will tell you that they made most of their connections this way.

Knowing what is going on in your niche can give you the upper hand in captivating and wooing your audience as well as opening to a new one, earning those links and Search engines love, thus ranking for those keywords as well. You will also make countless of connections, build authority while at it, and even expand your area of interest niche wise by leveraging the random affinities in connection to what is new.

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Slavko Desik), Google (images).

Domain names are the real estate of the Internet. Just as a good location is vital for a bricks and mortar business, a good domain name will be the corner stone of your website’s success. But how to identify them? Below you will find the 7 characteristics of good domain names.

1. They are short.

Good domain names are short. It is not a coincidence that all the three-letter and four-letter .com domains are already gone, and that the five-letter ones are going fast as well.

There is no definite number of characters that you should aim for, just remember that the shorter the better. If you really need some guidance, try to go below 10 characters, and never exceed 20.

As for the number of words, one-word domains are gold, two-word ones are good, three-word domains are average, and above that it is usually a bad idea.

Example: Quotes.com is a superb domain and probably worth millions of dollars. ProQuotes.com is a good two-word domain worth thousands of dollars. ProQuotesNow.com is an average domain and could be used for a website. YourProQuotesNow.com is plain worthless.

2. They are easy to remember.

Many Internet users do not use bookmarks. They just memorize the domains of their favorite websites and type them whenever they wan to visit one. Guess what, if your domain is complex and not easy to remember you will lose these visitors along the way.

Example: Brcwr.com is a short domain name, but is not easy to remember at all, so it would be a bad idea to use it for your website (unless the initials represent the name of the website or a memorable message).

3. They are easy to spell.

The last thing you want is visitors misspelling your domain and ending up somewhere else.

Avoid unusual foreign words, words that have complex pronunciation, strange combinations of letters and anything else that might cause someone to misspell your address.

Example: CappuccinoBar.com might be problematic for English speaking visitors. Cappuccino is an Italian word, and not everyone is aware where the doubles are placed.

4. They have a .com extension.

Organizations might prefer to register a .org domain, and companies targeting very specific geographical regions might want to register a local domain (e.g. .it, .co.uk, .cn and so on). Apart from these cases, however, a .com domain is always the best way to go. This extension is the most popular around the around, and it is already stuck in people’s mind.

Visitors coming to your site via search engines or organic links will pay attention mostly to the name and not to the URL. The next time they want to visit your site it is very likely that they will just type its name followed by a .com. Guess what, if you are not there when they hit enter they will just go somewhere else.

Example: Darren Rowse created his popular blog on Problogger.net. Despite having a strong brand, some visitors were still going to Problogger.com. After a couple of years Darren decided to buy the .com version for $5,000 and redirect it to his site, so that no more visitors would leak.

5. They are descriptive.

Many visitors will come to your site through the search engines and via direct links on other websites. That is, they will come if the domain that they will see will be appealing.

Having a descriptive domain name will give visitors an idea of what your site is about even before they enter it. If related keywords are present in the domain it might also help your search engine rankings.

Example: You would be able to guess what TelevisionGuides.com is about even before visiting it right?

Put it in another way. Suppose you are searching for a movie review. You make a quick search in Google. The first result comes from MikesLair.com. The second result comes from MoviesCentral.com. Which one would you rather click?

6. Or brand-able.

A brand-able domain will have a nice pronunciation, an interesting combination of letters or simply an appealing visual effect. Sometimes they will not be descriptive, but they can be equally efficient.

Brand-able domains will make your visitors associate the name with your website and its content. (Notice that brand-able domains can be descriptive at the same time, but that is not always the case.)

Example: Kotaku.com is one of the most popular gaming blogs on the Internet. The domain is not descriptive at all, but the brand is so strong that gamers immediately recognize it across the web.

7. They don’t contain hyphens or numbers.

Domain names containing hyphens and numbers are cheaper for a reason. They suffer the same problem of domains not using a .com extension or with complex spelling.

Consider Tech-World.com. The names that will stick in people’s mind are “tech” and “world.” Many visitors will just forget the hyphen along the way. Eventually they will try to access your site by typing TechWorld.com, in vain.

Numbers, on the other hand, will confuse people with the spelling. Suppose you registered Tech5.com. Visitors might mix it with TechFive.com, if they manage to remember the number in the first place!

Example: Coolest-Gadgets.com is an extremely popular gadget blog, with over 70,000 RSS subscribers. With such a huge readership you get people often typing the domain directly on the address bar. Needless to say that many of them would just forget to add the hyphen. The owner of the site bought CoolestGadgets.com afterwards to fix the problem.

Final remark.

Do not get discouraged if your current domain doesn’t have all these characteristics; or if you can’t find one that does. These are just factors that you should consider when evaluating domain names.

There are plenty of examples of popular websites with domain names that lack in one or two points covered on the list. Just make sure that your domain has most of the characteristics and you should be fine.

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Daniel Scocco), Google (images).

Whether you’re blogging for profit, pleasure or promotion, your primary goal will always be to get as many eyeballs as possible on your posts. As the bigger kids on the blogging block – like Daily Blog Tips – have proven, it’s possible to start from scratch and attract a substantial, highly profitable following over time.

Some of the most popular niche sites such as Mashable began as hobby blogs and now serve up millions of page views per month. If you want to get to that level, there are a few things you should keep in mind when structuring your blog’s content and layout.

1. Niche It Up.

First and foremost, memorable blogs tend to zero in on a lower-level niche at a particular level of specificity. For instance, you won’t have much success by focusing a blog on “technology”, as it’s too broad a topic. Google, Bing and the like will favor the heavyweights when it comes to search engine rankings and visitors are more likely to drift towards a trusted source.

A more reasonable niche to pursue would be “creative industry technology”. It’s a lot easier to corner a smaller niche than it is to dominate a broad swath of the market, and you can deliver higher-quality content to your readers by narrowing your focus.

2. Avoid the Cliches and Find Your Voice.

One of the main problems with most bloggers is that they use a generic approach to crafting blog posts and entries. While such utilitarian writing styles have their place in standard reviews, tutorials and news items, they don’t really resonate with readers and are extremely forgettable.

When is the last time you saw a post on Yahoo News or even Mashable that really stood out to you? Bloggers like Seth Godin and James Altucher have a distinctive writing style that’s easily recognizable, which is something you should attempt to emulate in your own way.

3. Take Risks and Be Passionate.

When you take an unconventional stand, people respect your integrity and will debate you on your point of view. Don’t be controversial just for the sake of being edgy, but avoid vanilla-flavored boilerplate op-eds that are forgettable. In addition, you should blog about something that really lights your fire intellectually.

When you work on something you love, your passion shines through the underlying content and attracts a dedicated, die-hard core of readers that are extremely loyal. Furthermore, those fanatical readers often do your evangelizing for you and promote your blog in an organic manner through social media channels.

4. Build a Destination & a Reputation.

Probably the most brilliant thing Apple ever did with the iPhone was to create an all-inclusive platform for users. In other words, they crafted an entire ecosystem instead of just an operating system or a piece of hardware. Alongside iTunes, the iPhone forms a one-stop iOS destination for apps and media content.

Your blog should be a one-stop shop for information on your niche that your readers will immediately jump to when they need advice. Make sure your deep content is well-indexed and easy to find, and invest time in perfecting internal linking to increase time-on-site and boost page views.

5. Parting Words.

The most important thing to remember is that very few people strike gold on their first attempt on any given blog. If a successful, high-traffic blog is integral to your overall business plan, you’ll just have to tough it out and plug away until you discover the magic formula.

Finally, always remember that all the fancy software and SEO tactics in the world can’t replace quality content that delivers value. Craft relatable content that first and foremost helps your audience, and the traffic will follow sooner or later.

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Matt Beswick), Google (images).

Continually cranking out content for your blog that is consistently fresh, engaging, and audience-building can be challenging, to say the least. And unfortunately, blogger’s block doesn’t discriminate, and it can affect everyone from the greenest writer to the one pulling in six figures.

So, what does it too create a chain of content that grows your traffic and keeps audience enthusiasm high? Here are five tips to help you refocus your blog and succeed at creating quality, memorable posts:

1. It’s all about the reader.

You know what you like to read, now forget about it. What interests you specifically isn’t worth a hill of beans as compared to what interests your readership. They’re in the driver’s seat and you’re barely a back seat navigator. Every blog post you approach has to be taken from the perspective of your reader.

You have to instinctively know the questions that the reader will ask about the industry sector you cover and you must cater to those queries by providing in-depth, unique, and compelling information.

It is also extremely important, especially for bloggers in the technical field, to give industry buzzwords and other assorted jargon a wide berth. Sure you may know exactly what “you can’t get decent bogon suppression with AFJ filters at today’s net volumes” but what chance does your non-programmer reader have at deciphering that gobbledygook?

2. A picture sells a thousand blogs.

What is the reason behind the massive explosion in interest for Pinterest? The answer is fairly simple as it is that since Pinterest is essentially a blogging platform for people who don’t care to write and for readers who don’t care to read, it’s at the forefront of the new blogging world! By replacing long-winded gray blocks of type with pretty pictures, Pinterest is a vivid example of what bloggers should be striving for in building visual allure into their blogs.

Visual allure doesn’t mean changing the color of your header or background, it indicates a blog that has integrated both static and video imaging into its story telling process. There will likely never be an age when written blogging is completely extinct and only replaced by images, but all bloggers should strive to incorporate as much visual flair into their posts as they possibly can in order to further engage your readership.

3. Hawking your wares should be an ancillary, not primary focus.

We’ve all witnessed the disintegration of blogs that we once treasured but have since descended down into nothing more than thinly disguised shilldom. Many bloggers start out by offering phenomenal and insightful content and as their audiences grow, they shift their focus almost entirely to improving their monetization.

So a blog which was once chock-full of great information is now doing little more than pushing the blogger’s latest paid ebook, online paid course, or selling tickets to their national seminar tour. Although a certain level of ancillary marketing is expected from bloggers who have to pay the rent somehow, when the entire blog turns into a sales pitch, you can be certain your readers will pitch your blog, right into the trash.

4. 95.5% of the world’s population is not American.

Sure, you were born in Nebraska, went to college in Michigan, and raised a family in Texas, but that doesn’t mean that the perspective reflected in your blog should end at Portland, Maine on one side and Portland, Oregon on the other.

The vast majority of blogging topics are of equal interest to readers in Portland, Canada; Portland, England; Portland, Australia; and every other port on the high seas. With the rise in international blogging, your readers outside of the USA may be finding your Americancentrism disturbing and detracting from the value of your content. Either neutralize your geographical references or make a solid effort to cover events outside the USA.

5. Write well.

Far too many bloggers write like uneducated dolts. Set yourself aside from the lowbrow, inept, and artless by cultivating a high standard of spelling, grammar, and overall mastery of the English language. You can accomplish this by double-checking your writing, but you should also use the Internet to learn tricks to help you write cleaner and faster.

Efficient and effective blogging isn’t a fantasy, you can achieve it today by applying these top five key strategies. The rewards for succeeding are steady traffic, plenty of comments, and lots of incoming links.

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Hal Licino), Google (images).

There are three simple rules to follow when choosing a blog name:

1. It must describe your blog.

It is probable that lots of people will see a link to your blog before having the chance to actually read it (in search engines, for instance). Guess what, if just by looking at the name they can figure what the blog is about they will be more likely to visit it.

2. It must be easy to remember.

Suppose your blog talks about cycling, fitness and health advice in general. Naming it “The Cycling, Fitness and General Health Advice Blog” would offer quite an exhaustive description of the blog, but would it also be easy to remember? Stick with simple names.

3. It must be equal to the domain name.

This rule is often ignored by people, probably because finding a suitable domain that has not been registered yet is a difficult task. Still if your domain name does not match the blog name you will probably lose some readers along the way.

When people visit your blog through a link they will just read the name of the blog. Should they decide to revisit the site a couple of days later they will just type that name followed by a dot com. If they do not find your blog once they hit enter they will just go somewhere else.

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Daniel Scocco), Google (images).

The load time of websites is one of the most important factors affecting its usability; most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds. Below you will find the summary of the “Speed Up Your Site” series. Those are simple yet effective ways to make sure that your website is running fast. You can click on each point to read the article with comments from the readers.

1. Optimize Images.

Always use the “Save for the web” feature included on image editing software. Images represent the heavier load on virtually any website so make sure you are optimizing them. Alternatively you can also turn to an online image optimizer.

2. Image Formats.

Apart from optimizing images it is important that you choose the right format. JPEG format is suitable for photographs or true-color images. The GIF format should be used with flat-color images like logos or buttons. PNG works very similar to GIF but it supports more colors.

3. Optimize Your CSS.

Most websites are designed with CSS nowadays. Make sure to aggregate and clean your CSS. CleanCSS is an online tool that will merge similar selectors, remove useless properties and remove the whitespace from your code.

4. Use a Slash on Your Links.

When a user opens a link on the form “http://www.domain.com/about” the server will need to figure what kind of file or page is contained on that address. If you include a slash (/) at the end of the link the server will already know that this is a directory page, reducing the load time of the site.

5. Use the Height and Width Tags.

Many people forget to add the Height and Width tags on image codes. Those tags will make sure that the browser knows the size of the image before loading it. The result is that it will reserve a spot for the images while loading the rest of the page, speeding up the whole process.

6. Reduce the HTTP Requests.

When opening a web page every object (images, scripts and the line) will require a round trip to the server. This latency can add several seconds to the load time of your site. Make sure to reduce the number of objects and to combine CSS files and scripts together.

Taken from: dailyblogtips.com (article, By Daniel Scocco), Google (images).

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington was running a $10 million business that had over 9.2 Million visitors per month. How did Michael Arrington manage this you may ask? Well, we have some advice from the man himself on how to create and run a well known Multi Million dollar website in the blogosphere.

Success Advice From A Multi Millionaire Blogger.

1. Break stories. 

It will give you +1 point, and everyone else who links to it -1 point.

2. Sleep until 9 AM every day. 

Arrington says his sleep used to be out of whack and it messed up his life. He’s under doctor’s orders to start his day at 9:00 AM. He recommends others do this too to keep their sanity.

3. Follow up on rumors and respect your sources. 

Talk with reputable people to get a story straight, and then respect what they ask of you in return. If you need to hold a story to keep their trust, do it. People won’t tell you things if they don’t trust you.

4. Don’t develop relationships with people you don’t like. 

Entrepreneurs are Arrington’s rockstars. This makes developing relationships with them (and getting information from them) much easier. He never develops relationships with people he doesn’t actually like.

5. Get information via texts, phone calls and Skype. 

The video quality is great, he says, and it makes the source feel like they’re in the room with you.

6. PR people are lame. 

Usually, Arrington isn’t a fan of them. He’d rather chat directly with the CEO and save chit chat for people he actually knows and cares about.

7. Update your content/product frequently. 

Then read customer feedback. Arrington typically posts content several times per week and enjoys reading the comments. He uses reader feedback as his reward system. Commenters are like fans! And their opinions help develop your product.

8. Have parties. 

For Arrington, parties are how he meets sources, and they get people to interact with his brand.

9. You’re going to have enemies. 

This has been a difficult concept for Arrington to grasp. Having public enemies made him recluse for a while, which then made him seem arrogant. It escalated to where Arrington had a death threat and someone spit on him at a conference.

After taking a month long break from writing, Arrington learned an important lesson: he’s not as important as he thought he was. And neither are most CEOs. The teams they hire should be, and probably are, very capable with or without them.

10. It’s hard to be a coach and a player. 

Arrington says he’s not good at managing people. He’d rather be writing than coaching others about their stories. If you’re this type of person, hire people who are stronger managers to help wrangle your staff.

11. Work late at night. 

There aren’t as many interruptions. You can get a lot done, then fall asleep happy.

Taken from: addicted2success.com (article), Google (images).

Blogs, originally called Web Logs, are a form of website in which you write in like a journal. Writing in web logs, called "Blogging", is becoming more and more popular in circle relating to everything from abstracts to news to zeros. There aren't many articles on the net that will show you how to actually take advantage of this useful new media. Becoming a successful blogger and maybe even make money off it may be easier than you thought.

1. Think about what you want to blog about.

It could be anything; Reviews, Animals, Politics, Daily Life, there's a world of possibilities!

2. Try to come up with a name that relates to your subject.

And make it interesting. Like your personal web site, you want a title that will draw a readers attention and make them want to read more. There is much more than titling it My Blog. Don't be afraid to be creative with your turn of phrase. Avoid symbols and non-standard characters.

3. Use something like Microsoft's Word.

Or Sun Microsystem's OpenOffice Suite as a text editor to do word check and spell check before putting it into the host ftp.

4. Find a good blog host.

There are many free ones out there. BlogSpot, Blogger, and WordPress are good suggestions. A search will turn up many more. Sign up!

5. Pick a nice theme.

Don't make it too flaired up, it will make reading the text to hard. Try pYzam has some good options, and add some Clip Art to accentuate your theme.

6. Write, Write, Write!!!

That is the most important part. Make your posts interesting.

7. Advertise your blog.

Post about it on forums, send emails, make ads! Try to get as many people as possible to read your blog. There are even pages that allow you to make money by the number of hits on the ads on your page. Some of them are created to generate keywords that web searches look for.

8. Advertise others.

Once your blog gets popular, start letting people put ads on your site. You will get cash for clicks! There is a variety of ad generators such as recommend Google Adsense, that will generate the ads for your page. Some pay more than others, so look around.

9. Keep Blogging and keep readers interested!

The more you update your blog, and bring in fresh articles. That will keep people coming back for new articles.

Taken from: News Straits Times - 12 July 2012 (article), Google (images).

Even though your website has a beautiful design and high quality content, but if there are no visitors, your site is dead. If you are an online business and there is no one visiting your site, your business will be impacted.

To avoid this, you need to promote your website. Although website promotion may be challenging to accomplish initially, when you succeed, you will enjoy many benefits. Below are three effective strategies on how to promote your website.

1. Social Networking.

These days, there are many social networking sites to help you market your business. One of the most popular social media site is Facebook, which has millions of users. You can create a Facebook account and start adding friends. Many small online businesses have grown to become big businesses with the help of social media, with thousands of potential customers online. Twitter is another popular social networking site to help you promote your website, and best of all it is free.

2. Posting on Other Websites.

Guest posting is another of good method to boost your traffic. Look for other websites that are relevant to yours. The next step is to contact the website owner or administrator to find out whether you can publish your article there. After that, you need to write original and quality articles. These articles play a significant role in driving traffic to your site by adding a link at the bottom of each article.

3. E-mail Marketing.

E-mail marketing is still one of the most effective way to grow your internet business if done correctly. However you should not send out unsolicited e-mails, or you may be considered a spammer. What makes e-mail marketing great is you can use this platform to build personal relationship with your customers. When your customers trust you, there is a big opportunity they will buy your products and services. Always follow-up with them to maintain good relationship. Although there are more method you can use to promote your website, these are amongst the best.

Also read the tips monetising your website.

Taken from: News Straits Times - 8 August 2012 (article), Google (images).