Monday, June 16, 2008

Advice To Adsense Newbies: Slow Down!

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The Washington Post recently published an article featuring many ordinary people who’ve become financially successful due to displaying Google Adsense ads on their web site. These folks are pulling in $10,000 to $40,000 a month. They are definitely stars in the world of Adsense publishers.

Web publishing newbies read stories like this and start salivating over the possibility of pulling in big bucks. If those people can do it, why not me? Is their reasoning. And, there’s nothing wrong with that kind of thinking. Everyone’s looking for a way to make money from the Internet. These types of stories are great motivators.

But let’s look a little deeper into what it takes to make $10,000 a month or more this way.







Each one of the people featured in the article has a niche they are working in, and not just any niche, but a great niche that brings in lots of traffic. Andrew Leyden has a podcasting directory. David Miles Jr. and Kato Leonard give away MySpace design pages. Jock Friedly specializes in free public documents. Matther Daimler researches the best airline seats.

Funny. No MFA scraper sites were featured. Maybe because these people are all focused on long-term success, not short-term gains. Please resist clogging up the Internet with thousands of auto-generated sites with contextual ads thrown on a few pages to make a quick buck. Search engines are cracking down on these so you’ll find it hard to get rich this way.

The big earners found a niche that interested them and put a lot of long hours and work into making their sites user friendly and informative. Some may even have spent good money bringing in traffic as well. What you’re reading in the WAPO story is the end result of much dreaming, planning, and slaving over a computer for hours at a time.

Unless you have a gazillion dollars to spend on buying technical resources and hiring people to create content, there is no quick and easy way to make big bucks with your web site, especially if it’s brand new.

If your goal is to build an online empire, plan to spend at least two years doing research, writing, SEO, publicity, tweaking, and learning how to make the best web site possible. That’s right. Two years. It took all of those ordinary folks TIME to get their sites to the point where they created buzz and traffic, and yes, earning great money.

It will take you time too, just like the rest of us. If you want to make the big bucks faster, then work longer and harder. Now, that’s the real story behind those success stories. So, slow down and don’t get discouraged if you’re not an overnight sensation - nobody is. Remember that old saying:

Slow and Steady Wins the Race.
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Why and Where to Place Google Adsense Ads on Your Web Pages




Deciding Where to Place Your Google Ads on Your Web Pages so That They Will Be Most Profitable

This is one of the best parts of the whole Google Adsense experience. No one else gets to make this decision except you. It’s your page. You get to decide how many ( up to 3 ads per page), what colors and shapes you will use and on what part of the page the ad will be placed. Should you place your ads at the top or bottom? In the middle of the text? To the left or right?

The most important decision should be based on the needs of the visitors to your site? What are they looking for? Are they there to read or merely to browse. If they are there to read an entire article, say, you might try placing your ads at the bottom of the page so they will have something to do next. Some publishers swear by placing the ads at the top left of the page because they think customers look there first.

The fun thing is experimenting with all the possibilities. Try different ad locations and different colors for a week and note the differences in your reports. When you hit on something successful, you’ll see the difference.

Profile of Bloggerparty.com For Those Who May Want To Use it For Google Ads

Blogger Party is another blog hosting website where you can make money with Google Adsense. You create an account and use the publisher id you got when you created your Google Adsense account. If you have not done that yet, that is the first step to making money with your blogs.

At bloggerparty.com, targeted Google Adsense ads will be displayed on your blog pages. Fifty percent of that time, the ads will have your Google Adsense publishers ID and the other fifty percent of the time they will have Blogger Party’s Adsense ID or split between them and the person who referred you. That’s right, referrals get 25% of the ad time, which comes out of Blogger Party’s share and not the original blogger’s or the referral’s.

Blogger Party promises “party points” any time you write something or comment on someone else’s blog. They don’t do anything as yet, but later you will be able to trade them in for prizes according to Blogger Party’s admin.

The Pros And Cons Of Choosing Adsense As And Affiliate Marketer

You have that site on-line for quite a while, its generating a good number of hits every day and you're thinking whether or not to use AdSense advertising on it to make it generate some form of income.

Well this is a description of the pros and cons of this approach to Internet advertising. AdSense has definitely hit the Internet like something from another planet and people are very excited about it everywhere. There are negative aspects to Adsense and alternatives to consider.

AdSense is generally a great tool for webmasters. Whereas, they would use to worry about how to raise enough money to keep their sites profitable, or at least keep them on-line those worries are gone.

AdSense allows webmasters to forget about those worries and concentrate on creating good content for their sites. In fact, the emphasis is now on creating quality content (often associated with the top-paying words) which will bring you many visitors.

AdSense can also very well integrated with your website, it's easily customizable in terms of colors, size and position which means you can experiment with it in any way you like to maximize your income.

AdSense is a very good means of generating a constant revenue on your site. All you need to do is create some quality content and keep it updated constantly and you can literally live off your website. A lot of people are doing just that nowadays with AdSense, so it's become sort of a business in itself.

It's also a great program because you can have the same account advertising on all your pages. This is great for webmasters wit a lot of content because it means they don't have to create many accounts unnecessarily.

But as stated, above, there are some negative aspects to advertising with AdSense and here's a small list of such cons.

Clearly the largest negative impact the AdSense program can have on you is through Google closing your accounts. Most of the time this happens because of so called 'click fraud', which means somebody would be producing artificial clicks on your page.

There's one really nasty side to that. It doesn't have to be you making those artificial clicks. It could very well be your competition doing this in order to shut you down, or the competitor of whoever is advertising on your page, looking to drive their marketing costs up.

The earning AdSense brings you are by no means constant. In fact, they're not even close to that. Anything you do to your site could end up being a big mistake costing you a great deal of money. It's that kind of pressure that has a negative impact on you.

First of all, you constantly need to make sure your site is in the spotlight of search engines when people are searching for whatever it is your site is about.

If you fail to do that you won't have any visitors, and that of course means you won't have any AdSense revenue. In a way this is nothing new, as any form of generating revenue on the Internet with advertising has such a drawback.

And finally, another major problem is that you constantly have to feed your site with better and better content. Now, of course, certain sites are very well geared towards doing this but with some types of content this is rather hard to achieve. This is often why the services of a copywriter are employed to generate more and more content.

When writing original content, the best thing a website owner can do is research a topic thoroughly and then return to writing with lots of information they can out in their own words, and show their own opinion on.

So there are the pros and cons of using the AdSense network for generating profits through advertising. Now the choice of whether or not these work for you is yours.

You need to have optimized niche website templates for best results. You may find the best adsense templates and blog templates at www.AdsenseTemplates.com (http://www.adsensetemplates.com). They are offering 100 fresh new templates every month.

How To Achieve Higher CTR on Adwords/Adsense

If you hear about people achieving high payments per click with AdSense, remember that's only part of the story. You also need lots of page views and a high click-through rate.

Here are some ideas on how to achieve those three things:

* If you're starting afresh designing a site specifically for AdSense revenue, you'll want a simple design that makes it easy to paste Google's code into a horizontal or vertical space on the site. For experienced webmasters, that's easy.

* To increase your click-throughs, design a simple, uncluttered page with the AdSense ads displayed prominently.

* Use white space, so that the AdSense panel catches the eye.

* Stick to only one topic per page – that should make it easier for Google to serve up highly relevant ads on your pages.

* Plain, bland pages with few competing hyperlinks should result in higher click-through rates on the AdSense ads.

* If you want to target certain high-priced keywords, use them in the file name, in the heading on the page, and in the first paragraph – in other words, use search engine optimization techniques.

* If you change those keywords, Google will change the ads that appear on your page.

* Watch out for cases where Google has guessed wrong, and is displaying ads that won't interest your visitors. Figure out which words are involved, and rewrite those words. Help Google by sticking closely to the topic.

* Don't worry about losing traffic via those clicks. If you can earn maybe 30 or 50 cents or more per click, you WANT to lose visitors!

* You'll also want keyword-rich pages, optimized to rank highly in search engines, so you can serve lots of pages.

* Where possible, use skyscraper ads, high on the page. They catch visitors' attention more than horizontal banner ads.

* One of the beautiful things about AdSense is that you can now generate revenue from informational sites even if there are no obvious related affiliate programs. With 100,000 advertisers, there's a good chance that Google will find ads that match your pages, better than the big ad networks can.

* Don't be tempted into trying to create thousands of spammy computer-generated articles. Human beings review sites for AdSense. Build useful, interesting sites. Google likes them.

Even More Tips

1. Have a look at the top 100 keywords on 7search. This will give you a quick idea of keywords that people are willing to pay big money for. You can also type phrases into the 7Search Keyword Suggestion Tool. This is just step one of your keyword research. You'll want to dig deeper.

2. At FindWhat pay-per-click search engine you can do a search for any phrase and quickly see how much advertisers are paying per click.

3. If you have a Google AdWords account, you can experiment. Pretend you are planning to advertise using different keywords, and see how much you'd have to pay. That will give you a good indication of the popularity of the keywords.

4. You can also experiment typing words into Overture's View Bids Tool. Let's say you type in "asbestos cancer . The top three advertisers often pay about $12 per click. So that would be an good choice for a topic – provided you're a specialist on mesothelioma.

For "debt consolidation", the top two advertisers often pay more than $9 per click.

5. The Overture Keyword Bid Amounts Lookup Tool speeds up your research at Overture. Type in a keyword and learn how much advertisers are paying per click at Overture and also find out how many searches were done on that keyword last month.

For "debt consolidation", the top two advertisers often pay more than $9 per click.

6. KeywordSleuth is a wonderful tool for very fast keyword research. You can find hundreds or even thousands of keywords – or key phrases – with just one click. It's fabulous to use if all you want is to find an enormous number of related key phrases with one click – much better than messing around with Overture. Try the free trial.

7. You can use Wordtracker to look for the 1,000 most popular keywords. You can also use it to compile a useful list of keywords relating to one topic. If you buy it for a day or a week, you can do a lot of research in that time. There's a free trial, too.

8. The brainstorming and research tools in Site Build It! are my favorite way to do research for keywords that are in high demand and low supply.. SBI is a superb tool – actually, a suite of tools. It's an all-in-one web hosting, site-building and web marketing tool. Type in a keyword and SBI Manager will present you with dozens of profitable keywords – ones with high demand and low supply. It can present them in order of profitability. Drill down, and you'll get dozens more profitable keywords.

It also has an "Analyze it" tool that helps you build keyword-rich pages that rank highly in search engines. It's simply superb. I use it and love it. Site Build It! is an excellent choice for quickly building large, simple sites designed to rank highly in search engines – which makes it perfect for generating lots of AdSense revenue. Check it out.

My Site is Rejected From Adsense

Of course, if your site is rejected, it doesn't mean it is poorly developed. There may be other reasons. See below:

1. Is your site an "About Me" page? Google does not accept these kinds of personal sites because most of them do not have a specific topic. They are usually just random facts about the web site owner. It would be difficult for Google's technology to display targeted ads on these kinds of pages.

They are looking for sites that contain a generous amount of information on a certain topic. It could be anything from golfing tips to hair care techniques. Just make sure there is an obvious theme with original content.

2. Is your site organized? Be sure your site has a neat and clean navigation that's easy to follow. Also ensure all the links work and that there are no typos. Keep the colors to a minimum and make sure each page has a consistent layout.

3. How many pages are on your site? Even though Google doesn't specify a page number requirement, they are obviously looking for web sites with a decent amount of content. Again, it's not likely a two-page site will get accepted. Try to strive for at least 20 pages.

4. Is your content solid? Don't just submit a web site with a bunch of links to other sites. Be sure you have enough original content of your own to make your site unique.

5. Be sure to read the program policy and procedures carefully and make sure your site hasn't violated any of the terms.

Adsense Keywords for 22 Hot Niches

The most common problem people have is finding the right niche to work with. I’m pleased to offer the following adsense keywords that target 22 hot niches and potentially paying out high to very high average Earnings Per Click (EPC). The key word here is “average” EPC. Don’t be fooled by keyword lists that show very high 1st Bidder rates as Google only sets the rate at 1 cent higher than the 2nd Bidder, which could be significantly lower.

For example, the 1st Bidder for an Adsense Keyword could be $4.74 but the 2nd Bidder is only 86 cents resulting in the highest Bidder being only 87 cents. Additionally, Bidders in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th Bidders could all be under 50 cents which consequently result in the “average” Bid amount being 28 cents… a far cry from the $4.74 1st Bidder amount. So if you didn’t know before, I hope you know now. It’s important to be focused on the “average” not the highest bid. Of course, market size is the next consideration to determine potential traffic and income.

For more in-depth analysis on these keywords, visit my blog on adsense keywords and discover why they are recommended as good potential adsense keywords.

1. Cosmetic Surgery - $3.75 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $1.60

2. Document Management - $21.92 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $11.72

3. Mortgage Refinance Calculator - $17.15 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $8.67

4. Accounting Software - $25.22 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $10.90

5. Colon Cleanse - $4.55 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $1.93

6. Medical Alarms - $14.35 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $6.97

7. Sales Force Automation - $17.71 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $9.20

8. Accident and Sickness Insurance - $7.09 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $2.58

9. Search Engine Optimization - $17.68 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $8.04

10. Call Center Outsourcing - $8.08 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $3.32

11. Workers Compensation - $14.35 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $6.97

12. Business Degree Online - $20.90 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $11.24

13. Asbestos Lung Cancer - $11.52 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $3.74

14. Postcard Printing - $15.98 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $7.68

15. Free Business Cards - $4.64 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $1.84

16. Chicago Condos - $3.71 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $1.77

17. 2nd Mortgage - $32.15 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $16.19

18. Auto Rentals - $3.65 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $1.92

19. Business Phone Systems - $20.24 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $10.06

20. Discount Airfare - $2.00 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $1.10

21. Auto Insurance Quotes - $2.00 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $1.10

22. Domain Name - $13.41 with an Average Bid for the Top 10 Advertisers of $5.36

Document Management is a shining star with a huge average bid of $11.72, as does 2nd Mortgage with an even bigger average bid amount of $16.19 As you can see from the above list, their are several excellent opportunities and I encourage you to investigate them further with the case studies I have published, by visiting my Blog and seeing all the details. So there you have it. Adsense Keywords for 22 Hot Niches that are recommended due to their highest, but more importantly their average bids, as well as traffic expected for these keyword searches, and finally, for the level of competition with these adsense keywords.

Improve your AdSense Earning

Google AdSense is a powerful program, but it is important to plan carefully when implementing an online advertising strategy. This article tells you “How To Increase Your Google AdSense Earnings”.

To many beginning website owners, the Google AdSense program can seem like a program for free money, but in fact earning money from hosting ads take planning, patience, and lots of hard work. While it is possible to earn a very good living from hosting AdSense ads, the truth is that most people do not use the program to its maximum potential. What separates those few top earners from all the rest is knowledge, and it is important to gather plenty of information to improve your Google Adsense earnings.

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Google Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Google Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.

The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Google Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Google Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format has the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Google Adsense ads but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your Google Adsense ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, this will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Google Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Google Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Google Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Google Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Google Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Google Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Google Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every click through that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Google Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.

Click fraud -------- Avoid it

Many web site owners are getting their Google Adsense account terminated when they have done nothing wrong to deserve the punishment. Considering the money that they are getting from Adsense, they would certainly want to get back into it.

Considering the money to be made with Adsense, it is no wonder that they would want to get back into it.

It is that same consideration why the Google Adsense click fraud is thought of and why many people are getting into it.

Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Many people website owners are aware of this fraud and are sharing the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that Adsense is facing.

How do you prevent being involved in this fraud?

Majority of web hosts are offering access logs. Once this is offered to you, it is necessary that you hand it over to Google as well. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is saying that you would want to help them in any way you can in solving the problem.

It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. If you do not have one yet, you should try and get one. There is absolutely no major factor preventing you from having one because most of this software is free.

As usual, all the information you have received should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and is in no way a part of it.

Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious. Report anything that you may find odd, may it big or small thing.

You may want to consider disabling ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This will certainly prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. You can do through a htaccess file. This will avoid Google mistaking as clicking on your own ads and be kicked out because of it.

Keep your Adsense off on pop ups and pop unders. Your ads should not be displayed on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people or business. Included in this are the content that is considered adult and gambling ones. If you think that you may be breaking this rule, immediately remove your content or Adsense from the web page.

Be truthful and confess up to Google about times when you might have clicked on your own as, whether accidentally or intentionally. Or the times when you have done something that is against the Terms of Service that they are implementing. Be honest about anything that you may have done that is wrong. Confessing is way better than Google learning about it eventually. It would mean eventual termination and no getting back what you have worked so hard for.

Do not tell your family or friends about Adsense on your website. Chances are they may start clicking on them to help you make money without you knowing it. They may be doing more harm to you than help by trying it in the first place.

If ever someone you know chanced upon your Adsense, make sure they understand that they cannot click on your ads under any circumstances. It would be wise to brief them on important things about Adsense and what not to do with them.

Most pay per click networks have different measures in hand to protect website owners against click frauds. Other search engines can track more than 50 data points, IP address, browser’s information, user’s session info and pattern recognition. They also have “systems” available that detects fraud. Not to mention the specialized teams monitoring how things are going and helping advertisers stop click frauds.

Google offers suggestion on how to avoid click fraud. Using “negative keywords” can be used to keep your Adsense showing on products and services that are in no way related to yours. Adding tracking URLs to your links so you can track the traffic coming from Google.

Tips to Get a Google Adsense Account

To whom it may not familiar with Adsense, It is a Google’s marketing program which allows website/blog owners to generate income from displaying relevant Google ads on their websites. AdSense matches the content of the website to ads within their AdWords program and displays the relevant ads on the website. The website owners will get income from their website visitors clicking the ads. And there are some success stories from people who profiting and earning thousand dollars from Google Adsense

So how you can get those kinds of ads displayed in your website? Basically you have to register you website/blog and get Google’s approval. But unfortunately not every request will get approved. I have a tip for you based on my experience obtaining approval from Google in my first try, here are the steps:

1. Set up your blog with www.blogspot.com. Blogspot is a Google own blogging service. Make a certain theme for your blog and make sure that the theme is a marketable theme.

2. Put several relevant contents to your blog. Google loves contents! If you choose “health” as your theme, then you can write anything about health. But let me remind you, you have to write them in English. If you think you can’t write and not really confident with your English, don’t worry about that. You can find relevant contents in free articles directory such GoArticles.com and Ezinearticles.com but don’t delete the author names and their links (usually available at the bottom of the articles). Don’t take credit on their works.

3. If you have put some relevant contents, wait about two or three days. When you edit the layout or format of your blog, it will appear an offer from Google to apply for Google Adsense account. If the offer does not appear, just visit www.google.com/adsense and register there.

Believe me, your Adsense account approval will send to your email address in several days and start make money with Google Adsense.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Ten Methods to Write Great Blog Posts That Get Attention


 

Millions of blogs fight for readership online (over 75 million by some counts), with thousands more being created every day. Making yours stand above the rest may seem like a daunting task, but here are ten suggestions for making your blog posts stand out from the crowd.

1. Write each post title so it grabs the reader's attention. It is the first thing someone reads, and it should get your reader's attention right away. Your title should both pique the reader's interest and be informative. Do not write "Business Writing Advice"; instead, say "The Best-Kept Secret to Reducing Your Business Writing Worries." Longer titles have the advantage of describing in detail what your post is about; 8-12 words are a good range.

2. Keep sentences short and clear. A little goes a long way. Readers are busy people and they will not spend hours detangling complex syntax or sifting through blocks of text. Also, use strong language. Start a new paragraph every few sentences, and limit each post to 250 words, if possible. If you cannot write it in under 250 words, split it into two entries.

3. Break up the text. Use numbered lists, bullet points, and subheadings to make your posts easy to scan. Lots of white space on the page is a good thing-it allows your reader to take mental breaks and let the knowledge soak in. In addition, with the inevitable clutter of banner ads and side text, this technique puts some distance between your writing and all those distractions.

4. Keep current. No one wants to read old news. Your job is to stay up-to-date so your readers do not have to themselves. Read newspapers. Scour the web for references. For example, if you write a blog about business communication, subscribe to Google News Alerts using keywords related to the field, such as blogs, podcasting, instant messaging, business letters, memos, and business reports, so you will always be well informed. Posting items from last month or last year will lose your reader's interest faster than you can say "Enron."

5. Be bold. Timidity is an easy path to anonymity. Do not be afraid to create and state your opinions. Of course, there are some situations in which objectivity rules-but you have to give people a reason to read this blog by you and not by the person next door.

6. Be accurate. If you make a statement, be prepared to back it up. Know what your sources are and quote them accurately. Misinformation spreads like wildfire online; do not be the spark that sets it off or the wind that fans it.

7. Contribute to the conversation. Links are great-but then what? Do not just post links to the same tired sites, offer your reader something new. Contribute to the conversation. Your goal is to be the site to which everyone else is linking-so you had better have something worth writing about.

8. Stay focused. Once you have defined the theme of your blog, stick to it. A blog about piggy banks has no business posting about the latest innovation in alternative energy. Such a deviance will only confuse your reader and chip away at your virtual authority.

9. Use key words liberally. Keywords are, well, key. Harness your blog's search engine potential by dousing your title and post with effective keywords that will help interested parties find your page in the vast, muddled blogosphere. This is one of the most important elements of getting your blog read-go at it with gusto.

10. Be consistent. Keep a schedule and stick to it. Post frequently-at least several times per week if you want to increase your potential of attracting new readers. Let your blog languish for weeks without updates and your audience will move on to fresher ground.

Maintaining an informative blog that people want to read takes hard work and good writing skills. Find what makes your writing unique-and flaunt it for all it is worth.