This time I would like to talk about how you can get some help writing guest posts if you are totally lost, and do not know where to start. Usually, the webmaster who requested us to write a post for him might explain pretty well what his expectations are. This might include details such as minimum number of words, any required images, or other media. However, in many cases they do not state what the requirements are. If this is your first guest post you will want to make a good first impression.
My recommendation is to check how other bloggers wrote a similar post. But how can you find bloggers who wrote a similar type of guest post as you are supposed to write? It is usually quite simple. There are actually a few ways to do it:
-Use Google to search for the topic you wish to write about, and add ‘blog’ or ‘guest post’. This should show up the blogs which had posts about the topic. If you are not an expert on the topic you are going to write, then I suggest you read some posts about it.
-Use Blog Catalog (blogcatalog.com/post-tag/) to search for posts tagged as the name of the topic you wish to write about. This will often lead you to blogs which also discuss the topics you want to write about.
-You can read my blog regularly, or use the search function to look for posts that I wrote to get an idea how to do it. Maybe you will get inspired by something.
Please note that I am not advocating stealing content from other websites, just merely looking for some help in writing posts. If you want to know my opinion about stealing content, let me tell you that I am totally against it.
As I might have mentioned before, submitting your website to different blog directories is an excellent way to increase your website�s Page Rank and attract new visitors. You will have more links pointing to your website, which will help your blog in the long run. I am only going to list directories to which I did not have problems submitting my blog, and did not have to pay anything. I got the idea of posting a list of directories after unsuccessfully trying to register to a lot of them myself. Most of them were either no longer existing, not accepting registrations, or you had to pay a hefty fee to be included there. As I said, I would like to list some recent directories where I included my blog. Some of them are blog directories, and some of them are RSS directories. I am sure being listed in both blog and RSS directories is beneficial to bloggers. Here is the list of blog directories: http://www.sarthak.net/blogz/add.php, http://www.fybersearch.com/add-url.php, http://www.daypop.com/info/submit.htm, http://www.blogrankings.com/addblog.php, http://www.blogpulse.com/submit.html, http://www.bloglines.com, http://www.blogdir.com/dir/formreg.php.
Here is the list of RSS directories, where you can submit your feed: http://www.feedsee.com/submit.html, http://www.weblogalot.com/Ping/, http://www.search4rss.com/?add=default, http://www.feed-directory.com/addfeed, http://www.anse.de/rdfticker/addchannel.php, http://reader.rocketinfo.com/desktop/AddRSSFeed.jsp, http://chordata.info/suggest.php.
Submitting to directories can be time consuming, but those who have taken the time to do it will tell you that it is worth it. This way you will obtain a lot of backlinks and get a lot of new visitors.
In the past I briefly wrote about AdSense. This time I would like to indicate for whom this might be a good opportunity, because I do not believe that everyone will reap the same benefits using this program:
-Only popular websites with a lot of traffic will really benefit. That is because the probability of a visitor clicking on an ad is small and is often 0.5-2%. You will need huge traffic to have a lot of clicks on your ads.
-Websites about FOREX, curing cancer, or other topics which involve a lot of money, will have a lot higher earnings per click compared to an average website. That is because ads are displayed based on the content of your website, and the earnings for each click might range from 1 cent to $3. The price depends on the category of an ad.
-Sites which already have a lot of ads displayed on their websites might discourage their readers from visiting their site by adding even more ads.
-Ads are served based on the website content. Websites about a very specific topic like, for example, computer monitors, will benefit far more from AdSense than websites which do not put emphasis on one topic like, for example, directory type websites. The reason for this is that visitors might actually appreciate ads which pertain to their interests.
-Webmasters that host their website on their own domain will reap greater profits, because they will be able to keep 100% of their income, unlike Blogger blogs, which will have to share their earnings with Blogger.
Do you have a blog hosted on blogger? Maybe you are thinking about spending some time to organize your blog in order to make it look nicer and be more user-friendly? One of the features of the Blogger is that it enables grouping posts by categories. When somebody visits your website, they can quickly view the list of topics you are writing about, and choose a topic that they are interested in. This is a very neat feature that you should consider implementing on your blog if you have not done so already. It can also help you to decide what you can write about. Whenever you will not be decided what you want to choose as the topic of your post, you can check out all of the categories in order to choose something that you feel like writing about.
Last year Google changed its policy concerning the way bloggers can comment on blogs hosted by Blogspot. To leave a comment, a person who does not have a Google account will be able to use an OpenID login for that purpose. This will be the same login used for popular services like WordPress.com, LiveJournal, and AOL Journals. What does it mean for bloggers who have their blogs hosted on Blogspot? The benefits include the reduction of the amount of spammers that flooded our blogs. It also saved us precious time that otherwise we would have to spend deleting worthless comments. I think that unfortunately these changes also reduced the number of comments in general. However, in the end it was probably worth it.
Some of you might have heard that John Chow was blacklisted by Google. John ranked as one of the top results when it comes to keywords like ‘make money online’, but even though he got blacklisted long time ago, he still did not get ranked high for phrases like ‘make money online’. Additionally, he still does not appear on the first 3-4 pages after you type ‘John Chow’ in Google. Google was for a long time redirecting anyone typing ‘John Chow’ in their search engine to pages that explain why he got punished. Google claims that John got punished for his questionable link building tactics that the company obviously dislikes. It seems that not ignoring Google’s requirements and preferences might be a good idea. My advice is that your website does not contain anything controversial that Google might dislike. As you see from the above example, it is better not to mess with Google.
You might have noticed that many websites have the �Email this article� link on many of their pages. There are also many popular blogs which are doing the same. The main reason for integrating such a feature is the hope of acquiring new visitors. If an article contains very valuable content, then the news of it is going to spread very quickly. It wouldn’t be possible without such a link.
The best way to add this feature to your blog is to use a plugin. All you will have to do is upload the chosen plugin to your plugins directory and enable it. There are several plugins for this purpose, but one of my favorites is WP-Email and email2friend.
Once your readers realize that you added this new feature, you might start noticing new visitors flocking to your site. Those might be people who otherwise would have never heard of your site.
Did you know that you can learn some valuable lessons from blogging? While there are a lot of things which you can learn, I would like to share with you a few of them:
-Work hard if you want to be successful. To ensure that your blog will be successful, you will need to put a lot of work into it. It might be difficult, but if you stick with it long enough, you will see the results.
-It’s not what you know, but who you know. Relationships are very important, and networking can be beneficial to all parties involved. This is especially true when it comes to blogging.
-You need to invest before you see the results. Providing valuable content to your readers is the most important aspect of having a blog. If you are able to do so on a consistent basis, eventually you are going to get noticed.
Most people do not swear on their blogs. How about you? There was a poll done on a popular site, which revealed that 40% of people swear on their blogs. To begin with, we have to understand that this poll is not sufficient proof to ultimately state that exactly 40% of people swear on their blogs. For such a poll to really work, it would have to include a lot more people. It would also have to contain a mix of different types of bloggers. Such a poll would be quite hard to organize. Nonetheless, these are interesting results, so let�s look at them more closely. Do our blogs benefit from crude language? I think that in many cases they do, especially if the readers swear a lot in their own lives. This might include a large number of websites from different niche blogs, including personal sites. After all, many people like to visit blogs which can reinforce their belief that their style of living is the right one. By visiting blogs which contain a lot of profanity, such visitors feel less guilty about their own language.
On the other hand, business blogs, blogs striving to be more serious, or blogs trying to appeal to slightly different type of visitors are going to refrain from crude language. English has a large vocabulary which is worth exploring. Ultimately, bloggers will have to make a decision themselves.
It seems that I started my blog just yesterday. It is incredible how fast the time flows. Anyway, this blog is now over 2 months old, and I don�t have any plans to stop blogging in the future. I checked how many posts I wrote so far, and it seems that on average I am posting around 2 blog entries per week. When it comes to the topics I wrote about, there are more and more things I want to discuss. It is quite a challenge to monitor all interesting news and information. So far I did not receive any negative feedback about my blog, but received some positive ones which are quite encouraging.
When it comes to traffic and readers, I believe this blog is getting more popular, which is always a good thing. I also submitted this website to some directories, and joined different sites to promote my blog. Recently, I am more involved in reading and commenting on different blogs and forums with similar topics.
In the upcoming months, I will stay focused on increasing the quality of my posts, providing useful information, and further increasing the incoming traffic and amount of readers. If you have any advice how I could improve the overall quality of my blog, please free to share your opinion! I am always interested in hearing from my visitors.