The Blog
The Blog
By Brad Schneider www.blog-hints.com
The Blog, or Weblog first emerged in the 1990's as an avenue
for regular people to express themselves online. Blogs are
popular because reading can read another's writing without input
from editors, managers, or anyone else.
Getting Started
Getting started is very easy to do. Probably the hardest thing
about getting a blog started is trying to figure out what to
blog about. Once you have that down, choose a host. There are
many different blog hosts out there, and most are free. I use
Blogger.com. I like it, because it is free and very user
friendly. You don't need to know any HTML or other programming
to get going. Of course, Blogger is not the only one there is,
just the only one that I use.
Taking it to the next level
If your blog is getting a bit stale, you can spice it up a bit
with some HTML programming. I learned most of my programming
skills while customizing my own blog. If you need a little
tutoring on some minor programming of you blog, just do a google
search for "html tutor", and you will find many very helpful
sites. Most improvements you can make to your blog are fairly
simple, and most beginners can pull it off. If you are browsing
around and see something on someone else's blog that you "gotta
have", this is how you get it.... If you are using Microsoft
Explorer, open the view menu and select "source". Then just
scroll down until you find the part that you want, then select
the "area", and copy it. Then simply drop it into your own blog
and make any changes to make it more like your own!
Please keep in mind:
I have seen a lot of blogs that are packed so full of "neat
stuff", it makes me not want to read the blog. Just remember,
that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you
should. If you want people to read your blogs, make it appealing
to them. I have seen many blogs that contain so much code, it
takes an enormous amount of time for the page to load. It's best
to keep it kind of simple.
Making Money on Your Blog
Did you now you can actually make money from your blog? Well, if
people read your blog, then you can make money from it. Now hold
on, you're probably not going to get rich off it, but a little
bit certainly won't hurt! Probably the most popular means of
making your blog work for you is Adsense. You have probably
noticed these ads by Google on many pages you visit. If you ever
clicked on one of these ads, you helped somebody get paid. These
ads are very easy to set up. You will need to register, then you
will be able to pick the style of advertisement for your blog.
Do you want some discrete text boxes? Or do you want to go with
the big skyscraper in your sidebar with the graphics in them?
This is all customizable to your preferences. It is recommended
that you try to make the ad colors match the rest of your blog.
The easiest way to do this is from the Google Adsense Adsense
site. If you know the 6 digit RGB color code you can make an
exact match. You should also keep in mind that these ads are
generated from page content, so if you have a blog devoted to,
let's say, bridal goods, then your ads may be a bit more
relevant than someone whos blogs are their own daily ranting and
have no particular subject. Yahoo! is now beta testing their
version of this program, and they are taking sign-ups. MSN has
indicated that they also are looking into starting an online ads
program. Another way to earn money from your blog are
affiliates. Affiliates are companies that pay allow you to place
ads on your blog, and when a sale is made due to a link from
your site, you get paid. There are many companies out there that
offer this partnership, just go out and look. I highly recommend
against paying any money for directories of these companies. It
just doesn't make sense! You can normally find several simply by
using your search engine and searching for them.
Blog Etiquette
I have never seen an instruction manual on what to say in a
blog, and that is because anything goes here. You should,
however, keep in mind that there is a common courtesy with
blogs. If a blogger is allowing the general public to comment on
their blog, then you should follow the same guidelines that the
blogger goes by. For example, if this blog appears to be family
oriented, then I would assume that the blogger would not like
foul language in the comments area. However, if the blog is
carries an adult oriented tone, then I would say anything goes.
Another thing I would like to put out is a little practice I
call "Blog-Spamming". Yes, you have a nice new blog, and you
want everyone to read it, but please don't go from blog to blog
pasting a ready made line of code in bloggers comment area,
linking back to your blog. This tends to aggravate the blogger.
If you are going to do so, you should make sure it is ok with
the blog owner first. If your blog is good enough then the
traffic will come to you.
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