Work From Home

Quote

A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.

Source: Blogger

Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules to what a blog is or is not. Free blogs used to attract surfers to whatever your selling can be set up at many places, I prefer Blogger.com myself (Google now owns it) I have tried a few free services and have found that mysteriously, these blogger blogs, get spidered more frequently by google and achieve higher page rank quicker than othersJ in my personal experience, this is also achieve faster on blogs than on most websites, Search engines seem to like them a lot.

In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff adding pictures and banners on an ongoing basis. Publish it without the need for ftp and add banners adds and google addwords and whatever you like on the blog, and/or to every post. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what the latest post from you is. Visitors can read previous posts at any time and search engines continue to spider them. Older posts can be set to be archived each and every month or week, it is up to you. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Blogs at Blogger can be set up in seconds also. They are Completely free too! The only rules are, no hatred, no scams, no explicit adult content

To start.

Get your theme sorted out. Lets use Baby Products as an example. Look up a few relevant key words (Check out the google addsense tutorial on this forums, awesome help for finding high paying keywords)

Now, Say you would like your site to be called Best for Baby.

Go to Blogger, click: add new account. Fill in a few details eg, preferred user name etc. You then get the option to choose what you would like your site url to be. (It will look like this. http://sitename.blogspot.com)

Have a few options ready as many url's will already have been taken. There are still some gems available however, so go look. You will then be taken to a page to choose your blogs template. It is simple, click on a good template-that's it!

Advise. If you want a blog to make money from, choose a template with a nice wide side bar. It is easier to add banners and lots of add in. A few of the templates are far to thin for this, so play around.

All these templates are easy to modify. If you simply don't like any of the designs they offer, you can add your own, or do a google search for free blogger templates, there are loads to choose from.

Now, once you have got your blog url, blogger takes you too a place that allows you to post. You can simply add test, or a list of your keywords for now, (you can delete this post later) and hit the publish button. You will then see a page that says "your blog is being created". Once this completed, you will get a page that says Blog published, click to view your. You will then see your new blog online. You have now made your first blog!

Dash Board

Now go close your blog preview, and you will see an option to go to dash board.

In the dashboard, you can choose and implement all your settings, Time zone to display, when to archive posts etc. There is also an option that offers, "Alert blogger when you have created a new post" tick yes, this tells them you have published news, and alerts the search engines to spider you! Also choose the option to make your blog public, or add to listings. At the top of blogger blogs, there is a button that says "next blog" if you hit it will display at random other public blogger blogs (And sometimes, this will be your blog) Some people click this again and again to view random blogs until they find one that interests them, so it may be your blog that catches their eyeJ and their pennies too!

You can also find something in the dashboard, under setting called, your blogs RSS feed. Make a not of this, you will need it later...

The dashboard is really easy to use, you can create a profile, and... you can make unlimited further new blogs from your control panel too! You can delete/and/or edit any post in here also.

How about you make further blogs like:

Baby.blogspot.com

Baby-goods.blogspot.com

Best-baby.blogspot.com

Baby-toys.blogspot.com etc.

Then of course-make hard links from each of these pointing at your main blog (I will explain why in a further tutorial)

There is an option in blogs to allow users to post comments on your posts.

Many will do this and add their url also! This is called a track back. I allowed this, and got spammed by everything from Viagra sellers to weight loss products. These "trackback" were once portrayed as a good thing. Personally, I never found them to do my blog any good whatsoever in search engines! There are programmes people can buy that will auto spam blogger blogs comments sections and fill your comments on posts with 1000's of urls and message you will then have to police.

I chose to set my comments to registered users only, so no one can post them.

It can take a lot of time going through and deleting offers of free porn and I chose not to have this hassle.lol

Now, click on post, and at the top you will see an option that says template.

Copy and paste this in to a notepad. (You can find notepad in your accessories on your computer) Save a copy as it will have all your settings in. Now do it again, save this one as "Blog Test".

Now you have a copy to play with modify, and practice on till your hearts content. When you want to see how it looks, add it back in to template on your blog and hit publish, you will then see all your changes instantly online.

You can do this over and over. (You have an original copy on a notepad text that you can add back in should you need to at any time) When I first got a blog, I knew no html at all. I played around with these templates and taught myself a lot. In these templates they helpful place a link to google news.lol

This is a great template guide, as you can see where you can safely add links in your design, if you are a complete newbie you can see how a link is made also.

Helpfully in the template there are some great helps that will say things like, Add the text for your footer here!! They are very easy for a beginner to master.

Have fun play around, change the header, add a few links etc.

Don't forget to add meta info! If you want an easy way to do this or don't have a clue what im talking about, go to www.submitcorner.com they have an easy generator for your meta online and free.

Posting.

Log in, in the dashboard, click post. A page will appear for you to make a post.

Want to add a picture to your post or a small banner? Click on the icon with a picture, insert the items url and upload it to google. You have the option to align left right or centre. Hit publish, your picture will appear in your post.

Now type some text, use the spell checker and publish. You're on your way!

If you would like to cue a few posts in advance, write your post and instead of hitting post, hit save as draft.

When you want to publish your saved post, log back in to blogger, find it in edit posts, scroll to the bottom and make sure you change the time and date to the current and hit publish. NB. If you do not change the date and time it will go straight to archives and may not appear on the front page.

Tip. I have found it helpful to, post a really long keyword rich post first time, (Helps with se's) and for two weeks posting twice a day, morning and night. Any more than this may get you penalized for search engine spamming. YOU WILL GET INDEXED QUICKER IF YOU PST TWICE A DAY INITIALLY. After two weeks, posting 3 times a week is fine. I have experimented with this posting twice a day for longer than this-but found it did not help in Se's.

Stats.

Free blogger blogs don't give you any visitors stats or info

You can however add a free counter so you can see how your blog is performing.

http://www.statcounter.com/ this a place you can get them from and it will give you instructions on how to add it in your template also.

Easy Google addword.

Look in your dashboard, there is a section that says "get google addsense on your blog" If you hit click here, they give really easy instructions on hoe to add google add words to the various blog templates, they explain it really well so Im not going to waste time doing so here.lol

Ok that was a blogging basic. I am no expert on making money with them (That advise WE will all get in this forum) But I have researched and found out a lot about blogging, got a few pr5 blogs etc and have worked out much about it and it was like pulling teeth, so I am happy to pass on anything that I have learnt to save other newbies the effort and hassle. If anyone found this helpful, I can go in to more depth on social bookmarking, blog subscribers, RSS feeds, Ping, Link Strategy etc. Or if anyone didn't understand anything and would like to ask a question, please post it here.

Wow! I wanted to know what the blog was alll about. Thank you for posting! Now, if I only had something to blog about! I will have to think about that one! Do people make alot off of a blog? I guess it does depend on the items sold right?

Hello Countrymom and welcome
Well there are lots of ways to make money on a blog, google adsense, ebay feeds, and of course sponsors. As for an idea for your blog-do you have a hobby, or a good knowledge of anything that you think you may enjoy blogging about? Yes- how much you make varies enormously. It is however not unheared off to make anything from $100- 800+ a months of a good, updated, mature popular blog. Let me know if you have any questions and I or Grumpy will do our best to supply you with the info

Wish I had read this before I asked how does a blog make you money. Grumpy that is a fine article better still it is in plain English and not plain Gibberish.
It really has made me think of doing a blog not to make huge amounts but even to add a few pounds to the internet provider charges for example.
Many Thanks Wayne

Wow! This is very helpful. I read Wayne's post before I read this one, which answers a lot of my questions. I already have a personal blog and would be really interested in setting one up about baby products ... How do you get involved with google adsense/ebay, etc in order to make money?

Hi,
That was a lovely long post. I do have two blogs - one with just photographs of my family. This one is just so that all of us who live in various parts of the world can share the latest pictures.
But the one I love is http://glorious-sixty-year-olds.blogspot.com/
This one was done so that I could proclaim loud and clear that I was now a senior citizen, and was loving it !!
I do have Google adsense on it - but since it is a very niche site, I do not know how to advertise it or get visitors to it.
Any suggestions about this, please? There is lots that I want to write on it, and will be doing that soon, but making money through it - I am not too sure . I think I will put a statcounter on it as you have suggested, but any more suggestions would be very welcome.

HEY GRUMPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just to show you how impressed I was with your article take a look at thishttp://smallholdingadventures.blogspot.com/
You had me up until late last night doing this but I have to say your post made it very easy indeed. Have applied for adsense to hopefully make a few pound to go towards ISP charges.
Just wanted to say a big thank you!
Wayne

Blog is now becoming more and more similar to a webpage. Everything that a our website capable (mostly) is made available in a blog, many people also turn to blog for publishing.

You can post everything, tect, picture and the functionality is getting more and more POWERFUL

Wow, thank you for this valuable information. I always wondered the in's and out's of blogging. I always thought it would be extremely complicated, but you have explained it very, very well and make it seem like an easier process than I imagined. You really gave me a good look into things. I am going to do some research on all of the things that you have written and maybe get myself into something like this! I have some personal blogs on myself/family that I work on just for fun, but I would be really interested in blogging to make some money.