In order to attract more visitors, you can employ some of the tips below to drive more traffic to your blog. You may choose to employ some of these tips or all of them but for best results, you have to test and track which tip or tips work best for your blog.

Article marketing
Articles are very useful in driving targeted traffic to your blog. It is also a good way to establish yourself as an authority in your niche if you can provide articles that are well written and well research.

Comment on other blogs in your niche
Take stock of all the major blogs in your niche and follow them closely. Whenever possible, try to post intelligent and helpful comments whenever a post is publish. In this way, you can leverage on these high traffic blogs to attract more readers to your blog.

Guest blogging
Guest blogging is another good way to establish authority and drive traffic to your blog. Many bloggers especially those who have well established blogs are always on the lookout for more content to add on to their blogs. Contact them and offer to guest blog for them, most of them will not reject you if you are able to provide well written and informative content.

Join forums in your niche and participate
Forums are another great channel to get more visitors to your blog. Join and participate actively in well established forums in your niche. You can add a link back to your blog in your signature and profile and if you are well regard in these forums, you will find a lot of targeted traffic coming your way through your postings.

Offline promotion
Besides promoting your blog online, you can also take your blog promotion offline. For example, you can add in your blog URL to your business cards and whenever you distribute them, it is another channel to get more visitors to your blog.

Optimize your blog for the search engines
Learn how to optimize your blog properly for the search engines. You need to understand and learn about on page and off factors which can directly affect your rankings in the search engines. It pays to master some basic SEO skills.

Proactive in networking with fellow bloggers
Build rapport and long term relationships with fellow bloggers in your niche.

Quality Content
Nothing beats quality content when it comes to getting more traffic. Provide more useful and quality content to your visitors and you will find them coming back for more.

Reply to comments
Whenever you receive any comments that are not consider spam, make sure you reply back. Nothing hurts a blog more than having a unresponsive blog owner who do not reply to their readers’ comments.

Submit your blog to blog directories, site directories, RSS feed directories and search engines
Submitting your blogs to these directories and search engines will get the search engines to crawl, index and list your blog quicker and at the same time give you some decent traffic and build some backlinks back to your blog.

Tag your posts
Tags are very useful in getting your blog notice by the search engines. It is also a good way for your site visitors to find your blog easily especially in blog search engines such as Technorati where readers perform searches on blogs based on tags.

While there are many ways to attract visitors and boost your blog’s traffic levels, getting them to return is an entirely different matter. This is something you have to work on if you have trouble getting repeated visitors back to your blog. Other than that, the tips listed above are good ways to drive more traffic to your blog.

Personally for me, I started off participating in forums and gradually moving on to reading posts on blogs. It is from these blogs that I visit which gave me the idea to set up my own family blog. While the initial idea is not to monetize my blog, I gradually discover a whole new world of monetization opportunities with blogs. Well, that is another post for another day. As for why blogs are so popular, I can only speculate on a few possible reasons.

Comment Feature
The ability to leave comments is a big plus. In a way, it sort of becomes a two way communication channel allowing readers to bond with the blog owner.

Content Is Update Regularly
Due to the nature of blogs and the ease in which content can be added just like a personal diary, bloggers tend to post content regularly, giving readers more content and materials to chew on. This in turn drives up readership for blogs, especially certain niches which generate interest and has a huge following.

Conversional nature of posts
Blog posts or content are generally more conversational in nature as compare to content in conventional websites. As most bloggers are not professional writers, bloggers tend to write in their own personal style which many people may find it refreshing and interesting and easy to endear to.

Easy To Add In Content
The way blogging platforms are build is to allow initial non techies like you and me to easily add in content and publish them. Unlike conventional websites, blogging platforms are relatively easy to learn and understand how to use. No longer does one need to understand HTML or other content management systems in order to add or even update content.

Format of content
Blogs entries (posts or content) are pretty easy to read. They are arrange in chronological with the latest entries at the very top of the blog. This formatting style allows people to read the most updated information at first hand instead of having to browse though pages and pages of content as with conventional websites. It is this formatting style which is journalistic in nature that appeals to many people.

Blogs are popular and they are only going to get more and more popular not only as an avenue for people to express themselves and voice out their opinions, blogs are also fast becoming the choice medium for businesses to market their products and services. If you have not start blogging, isn’t it time for you to at the very least experiment and play around with one.

First of all, you must understand there is no best or assure way to market and promote a blog. The degree of success for each method depends on a number of factors such as the niche your blog is in, the quality of your blog and so on. That is why it is important for you to get a good web analytic program to track your traffic sources.

Google provide a good web analytic service called Google Analytics which is free to use and you should really take advantage of it. With Google Analytics, you can track where your traffic is coming from and know which marketing method is bringing in the traffic for you. Discard the ones that bring in the least traffic and focus on the ones that are bringing in the most traffic.

With a good tracking program in place, you can then move on to the various free methods to market your blog. I have listed below some free methods which you can go about marketing your blog:

Article Directories
Submit your best articles to the top few article directories to gain more exposure and traffic and at the same time build some links back to your blog. It is also a good chance for you to establish yourself in a particular niche.

Blog Carnivals
Taking part in blog carnivals is one good way to market and expand you blog’s visibility. Basically a blog carnival is some sort of event in which a number of bloggers will write about a specific topic and then cross promote each other links. This is a very simple and effective way to getting more links and exposure.

Blog Directories
Submitting your blog to blog directories is a good way for people to notice and find your blog. It is also a good way to get your blog indexed quickly.

Comments
Commenting on other people’s blogs is a good way to drive targeted traffic. Just take care to provide quality comments rather than just spam other people’s blogs.

Forums
It actually pays to be active in forums that are related to your blog. By posting quality posts and building up your reputation in these forums, you are establishing yourself as an authority. You also get lots of targeted traffic and you can build a decent list quickly.

Freebies
Create a short report or product and distribute it for free. For example, if you can code and design a wordpress theme, you can offer it for free and let others download and use it in return for a backlink in the footer. Many webmasters and internet marketers are using it to great effect.

Link Requests
Link exchanges are a good way to get quality incoming links for free. However, the success rate is quite low unless your blog is already established and carry some page rank.

Networking
Networking with fellow bloggers in the same niche is another effective way to market and promote your blog, especially when your blog is fairly new. Once you are on friendly terms with them, you can start asking for links exchanges and even blog posts to market and promote your blog.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Traffic from search engines is the best traffic source, basically because it is free. However, to get there, you need to understand on page and off page SEO factors. It takes s a certain level of experiences and expertise before you can understand and master the fundamentals to get free organic traffic from the search engines.

Social Bookmarking
Bookmarking your blog’s content is one good way to drive traffic and build links at the same time. To fully take advantage of social bookmarking, you need to create quality content and make large number friends at social bookmarking sites.

Social Networking
This is a very powerful way to gain truckloads of traffic to your blog if you do it right. Build up a solid network of friends in social networking sites such as FaceBook, Friendster and MySpace and leverage on these networks to market and promote your blog. If you do it right, expect a steady stream of repeat traffic.

As you can see, if you applied some of these free methods to market and promote your blog, you can probably see some good results soon. As mentioned before, you have to test and track to see which method is bringing in the best results for you and keep them while discarding the ones that are not working or bringing in the least results. However at the end of the day, you still need to provide quality content in order to make your blog sticky and make people keep coming back again. If you have some other great free methods to market a blog, feel free to share it with us.

Personally for me, I make money online through affiliate marketing, Google Adsense, paid reviews and selling of text links on my blogs initially. Nowadays, I am focusing my efforts on affiliate marketing, selling of products and services instead. As you can see, there are many ways to monetize a blog such as:

• Affiliate marketing
• Google Adsense
• Membership programs
• Other contextual ad programs such as Kontera, Yahoo! Publisher Network etc.
• Paid reviews
• Selling advertisement spaces
• Selling of text links
• Selling products
• Selling services
• Many more

While there is no certainty that you can replace your full time income though blogging, if you put in a reasonable amount of time and effort will at the very minimum be able to make a few hundred dollars a month from blogging at the comfort of your own home. This is a very important source of income generating opportunity for those people who are looking for an alternative source of income or for those who are not able to work full time in a job like housewives and students.

However, if you are looking to replace your full time income through blogging, that is an entirely different question. While there are plenty of 6 figure bloggers and full time bloggers online, the sad reality is that majority of bloggers will never be able to replace their full time income through blogging. It takes more than just simply blogging to make a full time income online. You need dedication, a strong desire to succeed and learn continuously and also to treat your blogging activities as a business in order to achieve the income level that you desired.

In a nutshell, RSS is a web format which allows web publishers to publish their content for readers to read in a RSS reader also known as a feed reader or aggregator. This allows your readers to read your latest updated content without having to visit your blog or website. The idea behind RSS is to allow a reader to consolidate all his favorite sites in one place without having to visit all the sites one by one. This makes it convenient and efficient for people like me who simply do not have the time to visit sites one by one.

The formatting language behind RSS is XML. XML is the language used by software and websites to distribute the content to an RSS reader. Unless you are into the technical aspects of the internet, there is no reason for you to delve into XML. Just understand that XML is the language that is powering the technology behind RSS.

There are many types of feed reading software and they are mainly classified into 2 main types, web based and desktop base. For desktop based feed reading software, you need to install them into your computer in order to access your feeds and your feeds can only be access from the computer you have install the software on. Which is why more people prefer to go for web based feed reading software such as Google Reader. I have put down a list of web based and desktop based feed reading software below. The list is by no means comprehensive but these are some of the more popular ones around so I figure they will be useful to you at some stage.

Desktop Based Feed Readers
• Awasu
• FeedDemon
• Newzie
• RSS Bandit

Web Based Readers
• BlogLines
• Google Reader

To subscribe to a feed, you simply have to look for the RSS icon. If you cannot see any RSS icon, just look for the word RSS, Atom or Syndicate. It all refers to the same thing which is a RSS feed. RSS is going to be at the forte of online technologies for years to come, so it is important for you to keep abreast of any new developments in RSS technology.

While starting a blog is relatively easy (you can get tons of information online on starting a blog), you should consider carefully certain points so that you can integrate your personal plans and goals into building a business plan for your blog that is assuming you are going to monetize your blog in the future. Otherwise if you are starting a blog not for commercial reasons, then you can forget about reading the rest of this post.

The first thing you should ask your self is the intention you have for the blog. Are you using your blog to reach out to your audience, to foster relationships or just as an avenue to express your thoughts and feelings? Or are you trying to create a community of like-minded individuals. In other words, what plans do you have for your blog? It is important for you to map out the direction that you want your blog to move towards. Having clear defined goals for your blog will goes a long way to achieving the success that you craved.

Another point that you should consider is that a blog is predominantly a medium for people to express themselves in the written word. So it is vital for you to understand that writing is part and parcel of a starting blog and you should enjoy it. Otherwise, in the long run, you may find it hard to sustain the frequency and quality of your writings.

Also, bear in mind blogging is just like any other online business models, you need to be very self disciplined and focus in your daily blogging activities. Set aside a schedule each day and stick to them no matter what happens. Chances are if you can be self disciplined and focus, you will reach your goals sooner than you have plan.

You also need to understand the importance of continuous learning and reading. Web and blogging technologies are always changing all the time. You need to be on the constant lookout for any new changes that may impact the process of your blog. Which is why, you should never ever stop learning and reading about web and blogging related stuff. The day you stop upgrading your knowledge is the day your online business stops processing.

Now, before you go out and start that blog, you should seriously ask yourself these questions. This is vital as you can see starting a blog can be a very easy thing, however sustaining and ensuring your blog is a success is dependent on a lot of factors that you should seriously consider in the first place. Otherwise, you may as well work on other online business models. Even then, you still need to put in hard work to ensure success just like blogging.

If you intend to monetize your blog with Adsense ads, it would be advisable to keep your blog post to a minimum length of 250 words. One of the most profitable locations for Adsense ads is inside the content of a blog post. If you are going to place Adsense ads inside your blog post, 250 words is the minimum to ensure that your words can wrap around the Google ads.

Another point you should also take note is that an average reader’s attention span is rather short and that is why blogs with short posts tend to do better than blogs with longer blog posts. However, that is not to say that this point applies to all blogs. It all depends on your niche and target audience. For example, a review type post tends to be longer than a news type post.

Personally, I find having a mixture of long and short posts is the most ideal formula. You can probably set aside a day each week when you will post a long featured post of your choosing or to address your reader’s questions. As for the rest of the week, you can write shorter posts on the latest news and happenings. However, a lot depends on the nature of your blog and the niche it is in.

There is no standard thumb of rule on how long a blog post should be, you should do your own testing to see what is the best mix for your blog. At the end of the day, it is your readers that count so it pays to cater to their needs.

I meant these are friends with a certain degree of knowledge in using the net for traditional surfing and looking for information and not those who have not touch a computer in their lives. Anyway, for the benefit of those who have been living under a rock for the past few years, I will try to explain in simple terms what is a blog and what it does.

A blog also known as weblog is basically a website that is an online version of a personal diary. In other words, a blog is used to documents the events and happenings of an individual or in some cases an organization. Entries or posts as they are known are in reverse chronological order meaning the latest entries are usually at the very front of the first page of the blog, allowing readers to get the latest updates on the blog.

A person who maintains a blog is known as a blogger. A blog is normally updated on a regular basis by the blogger. Initially blog entries are in the form of writing. Nowadays, it is more common to see in pictures or videos or a combination of writing, pictures and videos. There are blogs with entries in pictures or videos and no words or content whatsoever.

What makes blogs popular in the first place is really an unknown question. Researchers have tried to decipher the reasons behind the rise of blogs but they are unable to pinpoint exactly on the factors that makes blogs popular in the first place. Personally, I guess why blogs are popular is that that bloggers find blogs a very convenient way to express their innermost feelings and thoughts without exposing their real identities in the first place. Another plus fact is the ability for people to make comments on the entries, allowing blogs to become a platform for people to communicate.

As the blogshere evolves and more people start to blog, blogging tools and software become more and more sophisticated and powerful. No longer is a blog considered just an online personal dairy, a blog has actually become a platform for people to conduct commercial activities and make good money in the process. Many tools and services are been created to cater to this growing segment of bloggers.

Well, I hope I’m able to let you have a better understanding of what a blog is and what it does. If you are keen to try out blogging for a change, remember to check out my other posts on blogging.

* You can check out Wikipedia for a more detailed explanation of what a blog is.

The first way to make money with a blog is through reviews of products or services in which you are an affiliate of. Normally, when you promote other people’s products and service, you will get a commission in the region of around 50% to 70% of the selling price. What you need to do is just to write a review of the products or services offered and if your readers valued your opinion, they will be more likely to buy from you than anyone else.

The other way to make money from your blog is through paid posting opportunities. Basically, you are being paid to review other people’s products, services or websites. This is a great way to make money from your blog if your blog is in a niche whereby opinions or reviews of related products or services are highly complementary. Please take note that your reviews do not need to be positive, if you feel that the products, services or websites are crappy, just state so. It’s more important to retain the loyalty and trust of your readers than a few advertisers. It is simply not worth the while if you spent so much time and effort to build up a profitable blog only to see your efforts went down the drain.

Last but not least, selling your own products or services in my opinion is clearly one of the best ways to make money from your blog. By selling your own products or services through your blog which has an established readership not only increase your sales but also offer your regular readers something to look forward and return. Also, selling your own products or services, provided your stuff is good is another good way to attract more traffic. This is turn create more awareness and branding for your blog which is a good marketing strategy for you in the long run.

For good resources on blogging, please check out my “Recommended Resources” section.

Now you can clearly understand why a blog is a good platform to make money online, but only if you go about it properly. Just make sure you learn and understand the fundamentals of building a blog from scratch. There are many blogs that make thousands of dollars every month for their owners and it happens to you too. But please note that it will not happen overnight and you need to plough in your time and efforts to make it happen. Remember Rome is not built in a day!

Blogs are used by savvy marketers as a means to connect with their customers. A blog is great for new product or service launches without great costs to you. Reviews and feedbacks can then be gathered and these responses can be used to better your product or service before the main launch. Surveys can also be put up on your blog to judge how your business is progressing or what your customers may think of it.

One of the main reasons why people visit blogs is for information. A frequently updated blog will always have readers coming back time and time again for information. Once your blog is up and running well, it’s like a traffic generator. People can’t stop coming back for the information that you provide.

A blog can also be a great way to build up a mailing list for your business. Signup forms for information updates or newsletters can be placed on your blog to attract people to sign up to your mailing list. This is an invaluable resource to you and even the people signing up for the newsletters.

Blogs are built for the search engines and this is another strong reason for you to start a blog. Getting good search engine rankings mean more people can find your site and see what you are offering and in turn this could mean more money to you in the long run.

Blogs offer many different benefits to you from relationships to product awareness. As more people blog, eventually they run into blogs they like and bookmark them. This means if you have a good blog, you will get a following that will be loyal to your brand. Many people don’t realize this and blog just for fun. There is nothing wrong with that, but imagine how businesses that really put an effort into blogging can benefit greatly from just having a blog to complement their business.

So can you really afford to miss out having a blog? I don’t think so if you are serious about building a brand for your online business. The earlier you get started in building up a good and recognized blog, the more profit you are going to make in the future. Just make sure you don’t get left behind.

For a list of good resources on blogging, check out my “Recommended Resources” section.