The blog creation community, known these days as the blogosphere, is one spoilt for choice when it comes to blog hosts. Despite the abundance of these hosting websites though, one manages to stand out from the rest.

So, what is this blog hosting web site that has hosted more than-0000 blogs and growing as of today with more than 5000 people per day downloading it? It is a name that’s assisted bloggers since 5 years ago now, one which almost all bloggers particularly the more experienced ones are accustomed; WP.

WordPress offers Blog Writers use of its open source project as a method to blog without spending a cent on blog hosting. All you need to do is simply go through the registration procedure which is the usual username and email whatnot. In a few seconds, you can get your blog up and running and doing this requires hardly any technical understandings at all as WordPress makes it as simple as it can be. Only your own creativity is the limit of blog creation and with such convenient blog creation methods these days, everyone should at least give it a go.

From its humble beginnings as a single bit of code self-hosted blogging tool back in 2003, WordPress has become the leading one today. Before reaching the top, it had the likes of two big guns in blogging, Greymatter and Movable Type to compete with. However, as WordPress started offering features unavailable in other web hosts, the bloggers slowly converted and new ones were pulled in making it the biggest player in the massive blogging market. Being that, it is unsurprising that WordPress blogs are being viewed by the millions each day as it has become the web host used most widely.

Among the interesting features which helped WordPress become the success story it has become are: ? Quick start-up, easy customization and the fact that its services are free with the option of payable upgrades. ? A plethora of great themes to choose from which is always updated according to bloggers’ feedback. ? Posting is made easier with spell-check, auto-save, previews and photo features as well as the ability to stream videos. Statistics regarding visitors and their response towards certain posts are available in the advanced subscription. ? WordPress assures you zero worry for spam. ? Bloggers have the choice of either allowing anybody to view their blog or make that exclusive to members only. This is a nifty privacy feature especially to those who treat their blogs as online diaries. ? WordPress offers an easy to use ‘Import/Export’ function mainly for bloggers with blogs at other web hosts who wish to transfer their posts to WordPress. ? Any blogging problems can be solved with the help of their 24-hour support team. ? Page Management allows users to treat the blog as a website depending of how they choose to manage it, a flexible option made possible by WordPress.

By providing features like these, it is no wonder so many Blog Writers worldwide are embracing WordPress. It is truly one for the Blog Writers. So, when are you going to be part of the blogosphere?

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There are many success stories about businesses becoming successful on the internet. The troubling thing is, there are maybe a tenfold or even a hundredfold of stories going the other way. While many launch an internet based business enterprise, only a handful succeed.

To have a successful business online it takes good business sense, the eagerness to succeed, and the determination to learn. It also takes the willingness to invest in a lot of hard work and some money.

All successful businesses need traffic. Without traffic, all your effort is wasted. Every business needs customers. In the internet world traffic is the walk in customer. The more traffic you have, the better your chance of selling your service or product.

It is a simple and known fact that unlike any business, not everyone that goes in will buy. We do know the greater the number that visit your site and browse your merchandise, the greater number of people will buy your products.

The question is how do you get traffic. Traffic large enough to make a good profit. Many big companies generate traffic of tens of thousands a day and a measly ten to fifteen percent actually buys, but that small percentage is enough to provide them with good business.

There are ways to get free advertising, but they do not generate the same high volume of traffic. When you pay for your advertisements, it is like paying for your traffic. This may sound like not such a good idea, but the payoffs would tell a different story. When you pay for your traffic, you are guaranteed of a consistent traffic flow to your site.

You don’t have to spend a lot of cash to generate website traffic for your site. I have been using Unique Article Wizard and article marketing to promote my business and sites for some time. The Wizard is a very affordable way to get your business noticed.

Unique Article Wizard takes every article you write and turns it into hundreds of unique articles and spreads them all over the internet for you. When you write articles about your niche and include a link, people will read them and be eager to visit your site. These links also increase your search engine ranking.

Advertising is the key. The more people that know your site exists, the more traffic you get to your site. You sometimes have to spend money to make money.

Unique Article Wizard is the single most effective tool on the internet to rocket your site to the top of the search engines. Increase your credibility. Create genuine backlinks to your site. Maximize your website promotion. This one tactic alone can drive you to the number one position in Google in the most competitive of markets.

Bloggers have many potential platforms to choose from. WordPress is one of the most popular. Bloggers can choose to either download WordPress (WordPress.org) and host it themselves or have it hosted at WordPress.com. These sites have similar names but their value to affiliate marketers is completely different.

Over the last few years, I have toyed with many different blogs. I have used several different blog platforms. When I became serious, about earning an income with blogging, I settled on the WordPress platform. I created a hosted blog with WordPress.com. Little did I know that decision was going to come with frustration and unanswered questions.

WordPress.com shares the same creators as the WordPress blogging platform (WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org, n.d.). Several features of WordPress.com invited me to choose their hosting.

1. I already had experience with the WordPress software

2. Stated that they had over 70 templates available

3. Ability to add widgets and plug ins

4. Ease in tracking site visitors

5. Having an address of “xxxx.wordpress.com”

My experience started out wonderfully. I developed three different blogs. One was geared towards emergency management and the other two were geared towards making money online. I focused on one of the two making money blogs. I noticed two potential issues right away. Without paying, I only had access to about 12 templates. WordPress.com also does not allow you to upload outside templates.

I started adding widgets to my blog. WordPress.com did not allow me to upload my own template but WordPress.com could be personalized through the widgets, right? Not at all, WordPress.com offers a few widgets but is limited on the widgets that you can add. WordPress.com also does not allow any javascript in their widgets. WordPress.com’s rules about java script greatly reduced my ability to monetize. Java script is required to run ads from Google Adsense and Amazon.com.

WordPress.com does allow some monetization. Small banner ads can be utilized by placing HTML into widgets. There are some downsides. Changing the ads requires manually changing the code. Not a deal breaker for me. I loved the ease of WordPress that much.

Finally, I was able to produce a look and setup I was happy with. I looked forward to the day the blog would pay to add WordPress.com’s pay services. This would allow the blog to pay for itself. I started writing a post everyday and placing links to the site. I was quickly indexed in Google. I was feeling very good.

I began focusing on writing posts to assist readers in making money online. I wrote about making money blogs and resources that I found useful (i.e. ZacJohnson.com and e-books). I also wrote about products, courses, etc. that had helped me learn about internet marketing.

I was expanding my knowledge while providing information to assist reader’s in their own business. My next move was to register with blog directories. I found a website that listed 50 high profile blog directories. I spent many hours posting to these directories.

Doomsday soon came. I signed up with a internet marketing course called Blogging for Dollars. In my view, this course offered some very useful tips. I believed readers would find it helpful. I wrote a review post about my experience and posted it.

I woke up Thursday morning and checked my blog’s stats. The blog was gone. My screen now stated that “This blog has been archived or suspended for a violation of our Terms of Service”. I was still able to sign in to my account and view my emergencymgmgt.wordpress.com blog. I also could still view stats for my World’s Dumbest Criminals blog that was not hosted with WordPress.com but used their statistics widget.

I did not write anything bad. Every time I quoted someone else, I stated the author, site I quoted, and linked to the source. I reviewed WordPress.com’s Terms of Service. Of course, WordPress.com’s Terms of Service is a couple of pages long. I was looking for restrictions that could be relevant to the posts I had made. Here are the ones I found:

1. “the downloading, copying and use of the Content will not infringe the proprietary rights, including but not limited to the copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret rights, of any third party”

2. “you have fully complied with any third-party licenses relating to the Content, and have done all things necessary to successfully pass through to end users any required terms”

3. “the Content is not spam, is not machine- or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing)”

4. “your blog is not named in a manner that misleads your readers into thinking that you are another person or company. For example, your blogs URL or name is not the name of a person other than yourself or company other than your own”

The previous four bullet points are quotes from WordPress.com’s Terms of Service. The only potential issue I saw was my posting about products that people might find useful because I had included affiliate links, however, even this was a manner of point of view. I had recommended products but only because I had purchased them and found them useful. I had offered to provide proof that I used the product and had offered links to similar products that I was not an affiliate for.

Every story has two sides. I e-mailed Wodpress’s customer service. I wanted to hear their side of the story. I was hoping that it was a simple misunderstanding. A misunderstanding that could be worked out. I was very polite in the email. WordPress has the right to refuse service. It is their business. I waited for a response.

I went to my World’s Dumbest Criminals blog to check my statistics. The WordPress.com statistics widget now showed “account suspended”. I went back to WordPress.com and attempted to login. I could not even login now. I guess this was the answer to my support e-mail. Do not answer my e-mail just shut off the account.

For all budding affiliate marketers, be leery of hosting a blog at WordPress.com. If you do not want to make any money, only impart information to the internet then WordPress.com hosting is for you. Affiliate marketers, I would suggest sticking with downloading the WordPress blogging platform to your own web hosting. i am happy to discuss this situation with anyone. You can find me at Bruce’s Money Rants.

Learn how to make money for less than $2. Visit blogging for dollars to learn the tools necessary to explode your income.

categories: wordpress,affiliate marketing,business,make money,monetize,terms of service,marketing,money,blogs,blogging,advertising,article marketing,home based business

What is RSS and how can it help your marketing? The internet term, RSS is an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndiacation. It is a way send updates of headlines and content to large groups of people. Programmers can use RSS in order to organize materials the best way for them to be read.

If you have a number of websites that you follow, then you know how tedious it can be to continually check those pages to see if there is anything new being reported. RSS feeds will give you an update anytime that there has been a change.

There was a short period of history where owners of websites tried to notify followers of the changes through e-mail notifications. Unfortunately, today, such e-mails are often mistaken for span and deleted without being read.

RSS feed is now being used for affiliate marketing. It has been found that by using RSS feed; it is possible to drive traffic to your website. Of course, if you do not have traffic, you will not have any affiliate sales and will not make a profit. Many marketers that use RSS find that they have an immediate increase in their network traffic.

You can also use RSS feed to improve the ranking of your website with search engines. By setting up a blog on your site and giving a RSS feed, others can link to your page and increase your traffic flow.

Visitors can know immediately when you publish new material and do not have to give you an e-mail address. If they like your content, they will add your RSS feed to their reader. After reading what you have to say a few times, they can go ahead and subscribe to your site.

People used to give e-mail addresses out freely. Now they are much more careful. In addition any addresses you may get may go directly to a spam e-mail account and your messages may never be read. Other e-mails may be picked out by a spam filter and go to the junk box. RSS feeds allow your message to get out without having to rely on e-mail.

Another use for RSS feed is to update materials on your own website. By subscribing to the RSS feed of some bloggers that you are in agreement with, their content is updated to your website. One of the keys search engine optimization is to have new material appear on an almost daily basis. Add a disclaimer, have the RSS feed posted to your page and you get updates without constantly having to write for yourself.

RSS feeds allow you readers to read your post in many places, but then click to your page to see all that you have to say.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to fund your website and to make money. RSS feeds can help to direct the traffic that is needed to your site. It can increase your ranking on the search engines and direct traffic from other sites to yours. If you increase your traffic, you will automatically increase the number of sales that are made for your affiliates.

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Anyone can have a blog. It takes a lot of commitment and research to have a successful blog. You should learn the strategies that can get your blog higher in the rankings and hopefully will make you more money. It doesn’t happen overnight, though. It takes research and commitment. If you use the tools that are available to your advantage, then you should have a much more successful blog. You will make more money in the end, which is what you really want.

Blogging is actually a fantastic way to make money online if you know how to do it successfully. You first need to right content on your blog. That takes some research. You not only need to know the subject that you are writing about, you also need to know what people are interested in reading. If your content on your page is really worth reading, you will end up making more money in the end and getting a lot more traffic to your blog.

You can actually get more traffic on your blog just by advertising a little bit on the internet. You want to find visitors that really want to read your blog and are interested in it. This will help you to get more repeat customers rather than one time visitors.

One way to do this is to go to other blogs and leave comments. Your comments need to pertain to your niche and they should include a link back to your website. If people enjoy reading your comments then they will be more likely to want to visit your blog and read more about what you have to say.

Most blogs will want you to leave your blog address and even your email address. This is important if you want your readers to be able to get a hold of you. The comments that you leave should have valuable information that those individuals will want to read more about.

There are also many websites that offer services to help you get more traffic. You just need to pay them a few dollars a month and they guarantee you a certain amount of traffic. This can be very valuable and it can also be a great way to get more visitors with little work on your part.

You can also take advantage of article marketing. It is a great way to help you get more traffic to your blog. It is free and not too difficult to do. All you need to do is write article that pertain to your blog niche that are around 400-500 words and submit them to article directories. There are many online and they are free. Within the articles you can put a link back to your blog so you can get better page rank and also you can get more traffic.

Be sure to regularly post on your blog. Keep it very interesting. Keep the people coming back for more. If you use these basic strategies then you will see that there are many more people visiting your blog and you will also start making a lot more money.

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There is an interesting post by Gab Goldenberg on Search Engine Journal that looks at 101 tips for buying text link ads. I know many web owners have considered buying links as part of link building strategies but have steered away for fear of possible search penalties. It does raise a question as to whether they are worth the time and effort that goes into acquiring and managing these links.

The post calls them text link ads and they are – they are also simply paid links, a practice that Google frowns heavily upon. However, there is one statement that is worth thinking about:

One thing I tried to demonstrate in this article is that you can take virtually every organic link building technique and achieve the same thing with money.

It is a very true statement. I won’t go into the rights and wrongs of paid links, you can make your own mind up about that issue. Creating an organic link is not difficult. For the site creating the link, it’s a moment’s work. The difficult part is in finding those who have the pages that you need links from. In the past, link farms have worked on the basis of link quantity over quality – these days quality is more important than quantity although they both have their places.

Let’s look at one example of an organic link that could be bought. One of the best links you can obtain is through a quote. This is where a portion of text is reprinted with a link back to the originating site (as I have done above). The question now is how much are you willing to pay to have someone quote you? Twenty pounds, thirty, forty? Of course it depends on the site linking to you but even at “20 for a PR4 or PR5 site, are you getting value for money? The second question is how many of these links do you need – 30,40,50? If you were to buy 50 of these links the total cost is “1000. Could that money be better spent elsewhere?

I think it can. For “1000 you could probably buy 50-100 well written articles which could be submitted to article directories or used as guest posts. I am sure with that sort of strategy you could end up with far more than just 50 inbound links – and they are all legitimate links! What are your thoughts, are paid links value for money?

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