BlogBiz

How do you know if your blogging is a hobby or a business? Consider the following:

Are you behaving in a business minded manner when you blog?

Does your blog, even if silly or comical, have a purpose to draw readers or traffic with the intent of creating an income?

Are you putting in enough time and energy into blogging to make it profitable, or are you half heartedly approaching blogging as a side hobby?

As you increase your income, are you investing, reinvesting or utilizing the income for livelihood, or are you considering it 'mad money'.

There is a difference in how you perceive your income and how you will behave. If you feel it’s just extra money to have fun with, you may not be taking a serious business perspective of blogging that you need to take for profit long term.

As you increase your business, you need to be flexible and grow with the business. This means that what worked in phase one may need to be upgraded or changed in phase two, and phase three and so on and so on.

In the past, have you followed through with goals and activities? If the resounding answer is no – then beware, being self-employed, even a blogger business, may not be right for you. However, if you have a support system, a partner or a plan B, where if you start to fall downward you have a way upward, then blogging as a business is certainly a possibility.

Some real positives of having a blog as a business is that it is easy to start up, and easy to maintain, especially if you use a service to help you glean the most from your business as you can.

Another great thing, if you are not a people person, that is fine! If you are, good – communicate more with your fans! Having positive working relationships is very important and yet, with blogging, you can make money and not really have to develop super close relationships. Many people find close relationships, especially working relationships, to be very stressful. Again, if you have a service to help you, this is two-fold easier.

Blogs are great because as far as a business goes, there are minimal decisions in this line of career. Most business owners make decisions constantly, have a lot of overhead and are under pressure. However, with blogging you have minimal overhead if any, and your big decisions are often simply when to renew your service contract with your supplier/manager. Usually the partner/manager/supplier in blogging makes all the nuance decisions that can drive you crazy.

If planning and organizing are not your strong suits, never fear… you can certainly hire someone to do this for you; again there are organizations that take all of that nitty-gritty stuff away from you for a small fee. But you can also learn how to organize yourself but realize this can mean you may be working at your blog a few hours at a time when you’d normally be spending time with family or friends. Again, blogging will make you money if you go toward this goal as a business, not a hobby.

Make sure you survey family, friends on peers in what they may enjoy seeing or having in a blog. Maybe they will voice that they’d like to have a place to write in themselves about their experiences, or just read inspirational experiences or informative comments. Perhaps, they want an informative site where they can both interact with others and, purchase equipment or books. Figure out what you like, then start seeing how you can tie your interests in with other’s desires.

As you initially start your business you can add ideas or subtract things that don’t seem to be working, but in whole marketing research will give you a nice, firm foundation; if nothing else, it gives you a target starting point which is easier for you to focus on.

This actually takes you to the next subject of thought, which is a strategy to market. Once you know what your survey tells you, you can easily, as outlined above, develop a strategy. Again, it’s knowing how to take an interest of yours and make it marketable.

In your blog, don’t just write! Sell! Sell a product or service. Although some people can make money just from writing, through banners and such, you will have more success actually offering a bit more. However, if you have a service working with you, they can certainly help to promote you as well as place banners and other marketing tools in to help you get your business off the ground.

Think of unique promotion strategies. Though if you have a service, again, you will not have to worry as much – it still is a good idea to create promotions yourself that are highly unique to your specialty. Make sure your prices are competitive or at the least, considered well within your target market. The moment the Blog is up to the moment the client or consumer has what they want from you; and the entire process should be quite enjoyable!

About the Author:
Michelle Bery is a bona fide professional blogger. If you're aiming for six figure online profits then you NEED her fresh, upbeat advice! Read the full CRAZY version of this article here.
Article Submitted On: September 09, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Setting Up a Successful Business Blog

Whether you own an off-line or on-line business, you can not truly succeed until you have harnessed all the opportunities offered by the Internet. Nothing proves this fact as clearly as the power of business blogs to bring your products to the attention of millions of online users who can skyrocket your sales. A business blog is a cheap, user friendly and flexible marketing tool by means of which you can advertise your wares and gain a distinct advantage over your competitors.

Creating a business blog with an effective review of your products/services enables their almost instant promotion, as millions of bloggers spread the word to their readers about what is on offer. Nowhere else would you be able to get such a degree of free publicity with so little effort and expense. With brand recognition, comes brand loyalty as customers realise that here is a businessman/woman who wishes to communicate with them and to respond honestly to their concerns, queries and suggestions. This type of direct feedback from potential buyers would in turn help to improve the quality of your products/services as well as monitor their buying patterns. Incorporating this information into your marketing strategies will further increase your sales figures.

If you decide that your business will merit from having a blog, the first thing you should do is research the whole concept of blogging as it relates to consumer based enterprises, the do's and don'ts of blogging and a realistic evaluation of the expenditure in time, effort and money as well as the projected increase in sales and the time scale when this should occur. Try out the various blog hosting services available and test drive those that you think would best suit your enterprise. Once you understand exactly how blogs work and how you can optimize them for maximum profit, it is time to set out your official business blog.

But first there are certain steps to be taken if you want to maximize the benefit of your business blog to your enterprise, whether it be online or offline.

1) Blog Design - All free blog hosting services provide templates that can be customized. But if you want your blog to accurately reflect the nature and requirements of your business, you can opt for paid blog service and hire a design artist to create a layout that is compatible with your specifications. Have a few extra designs developed and rotate them so that you can experiment and see which one has the best pulling power in terms of increasing visitors to your blog.

2) Select Topics - While the overall theme of the blog reflects your business strategies, you should have a number of topics on related matters to post to your blog. This way your readers will get to understand you and your overall thinking on general and specific business practices. This will help them to decide how much trust to place on you, your recommendations and finally but most importantly on your products/services. Writing on matters other than your own enterprise prevents your blog from being too much of a marketing ploy, so your readers will not be put off when you do mention your own merchandise.

3) Formulate Blog Policies - Set policies in place that take into account any legal issues that maybe involved. Take legal advice on what to include under disclaimers and limitations of liabilities. Decide who gets to blog and what information is allowed to be made public. Since business blogging is a comparatively new phenomenon, perhaps the staff needs to be educated on how it can positively impact on your enterprise.

4) Follow Up - Once you start your business blog, you must have at least 20 - 25 posts before you launch your marketing campaign. Update the content at regular intervals, always making sure that it is original, relevant and emphasizes your company's core values. If you regularly track feedback from your readers, you will be able to fine tune your marketing and advertising campaigns to attract more dedicated customers. Finally, add your website URL to your business blog before you start submitting it to blog search sites and directories. In order to increase your ranking on search engines and get a regular flow of visitors, use keyword phrases that are most effective and relevant to your blog.

These simple and easy to follow tactics should help you in setting up a business blog that complements your other business practices and make your endeavors even more successful and financially rewarding.

About the Author:
Naresh Belliyappa
Do you want to know more about how Blogging can help you make money on the Internet? If you do, download the Free Report: Blogging For Profit and apply the info found in it to succeed in your business. For e-books and articles ranging from parenting to web designing, visit www.ebookmall4U.co.uk.
Added: 21 Jan 2007
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/48725.html

How To Eliminate Wordpress Blog Comment Spam

One of the most serious problems with any blogging system, including WordPress, is that the comments area is wide open to that scourge of the Internet, spammers. In this case, it's comment spam.

Comment spam is created by people seeking to boost their Google rankings by having lots of links pointing to their own websites. This causes a wide variety of problems:

• When Google detects content spam, they will often block the site it's coming from because it messes up their ranking system.

• It takes up your valuable time and bandwidth to eliminate these posts.

• If the onslaught of spam is heavy enough, it may result in a denial-of-service attack, intended or not, which is a situation in which the server tries so hard to post bad information and/or deliver notification emails to you that it denies service to the legitimate requests. In at least one case, a blogger received over two thousand email notifications of comments that needed approval; as he dealt with these, he continued getting more, ultimately crashing his mail server.

As you can see, even if you have your comments set to post only upon approval, this can be a serious problem. One solution is the Akismet plugin for WordPress.

Akismet Plugin and Other Plugin Options for WordPress

Akismet is designed to help you filter out those nasty spammers, and it's not hard to get it installed into your WordPress system. Download the plugin, and upload it to the blog directory on your server in the plugins subdirectory under wp-content. Activate from the WordPress plugins menu. If you have a notice that you need the Akismet API, go to the WordPress website and look or ask for one.

Here's the magic: the only instruction in Akismet is "forget that spam was ever a problem." You don't have to do anything else at all – the spam will simply be bounced. You will not receive a notification, nor will you have to go out and delete spam.

Another plugin for eliminating spam from bots is the "Did You Pass Math" plugin. This one makes the user perform a simple math problem before submitting a comment. As most humans can handle this and most spambots can't, it's pretty likely that a comment posted through this is a legitimate comment. You should add a note of caution that your comments will be deleted if you answer the math wrong, though; a wise commenter will use an offline composition tool, not post directly to the comments area.

If This Still Doesn't Work

If you still can't eliminate spammers with these plugins, you can eliminate them by denying them access to your comments area. This does not mean you have to disable your comments section, only that you need to set up a filter.

It's not usually as simple as just blocking their IPs. Serious spammers use random IPs, while blocking IPs may get rid of them for a short time, it will ultimately prevent legitimate comments from being posted. Spammers are also notorious for hijacking other people's IP addresses. But as a short-term emergency solution, you can try it. The IP address is included in the information packet for the comment; it's similar to a traceable phone number. Look for clear patterns in your IP numbers.

Use the .htaccess file to block unwanted IPs from even seeing your blog. For instance, these lines can be added:

order allow,deny
deny from 123.123.123.123
deny from 456.456.456.*
deny from 789.789.*.*
allow from all

IPs are four-part numbers, such as 192.168.0.1. Typically, if you see a pattern with the first two sections being identical, you can block all IPs of that type by simply listing them as 192.168.*.*, as you see above. This screens out all these IP numbers. Blocked IPs will get a 403 error page; customize yours so that your contact details are listed in case you're blocking out a legitimate user. Don't use your regular email; a spammer can harvest that too, for a whole new set of problems. Instead, encode your email so that it's not automatically readable.

When you think you have your problems addressed, you can remove the block from your .htaccess file. If it still doesn't work, or if you don't see an IP pattern, it's likely that spambots are hijacking someone else's machine to attack your site. In this case, do not use the IP block.

Again, if you don't have an IP pattern of attack, this may not be worth doing. Remember, too, that with IP addresses, the first numbers affect the largest number of computers, like a reverse address: USA, California, Sacramento, X Building, Ste. 101, Joe Schmo. An IP follows roughly the same pattern, with the last of the four sections referring to the specific computer it is attached to.

Google's Nofollow Attribute

Of course, if it's a waste of their time to spam you, spammers may just skip you altogether. For this reason, you can use the Google Nofollow attribute for links: . This attribute is embedded automatically by modern versions of WordPress.

It does not eliminate links, which is what spammers are working on adding to your site. Instead, it makes those links irrelevant to Google. The end result is that it doesn't hurt your rank in Google, and it doesn't help a spammer to send data to your site. It also marks you, for spambots looking for an easy target, as a waste of time.

This is not an immediate fix. But it is a way to make your blog resistant to spammers in the future. If you're already a target, you'll have to work with it slowly, incorporating all these fixes. If you aren't a target, the very least you should do is turn on the nofollow option in your WordPress system; this will deter any hungry spambots. Upgrade your version, or look for one of the plugins that provides this service for you.

About the Author:
Danny Wirken
www.chauy.com/2006/07/how-to-eliminate-wordpress-blog-comment-spam/
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com