Blogging and the stone age internet speed

I have been using the internet for more than 10 years now and I remember the time when we can only access with a dial up modem with a speed of merely 14.4 Kps. It was a luxury to own an internet those days. Websites were simple, there was no java application blogs and sites used less graphics and photos. Then there was broadband came to our shore with a speed of up to 1 mbps and wow how lucky are we to have such a fast speed internet access.

Lucky? No way, we are paying for a speed of 1 mb but most of the time we get only 1/3 of what we are paying for. Why is that the case and nobody seem to really care about it. What kind of broadband we have, its more like a narrow band and sometimes no band at all.

Most countries who started internet at the same time as we do in Malaysia are already in the bandwidth of 100 mbps and that is what we call broadband. Here we want to go forward and show to the world that we can achieve as good as others but when we almost there we started to feel that we no longer need to go further and decided to take a short nap or most of the time a long nap without realizing that the world is passing through very fast and we no longer can catch up with them.

Seem so familiar right. Come on we are in bolehland, at least get the internet problem solved once and forever. People just across the sea are surfing at the speed 100 times faster than us and we are still thinking that we are ok.

WordPress Thesis Theme

It’s time to get a new theme for my blog and I have been searching all over the internet and found something new at the Thesis website. 

Photo Shooting on Chinese New Year Day 1

There was no red sky today but a nice blue sky in the morning and a nice day for an outdoor outing and some photo shooting.

The streets were basically empty and I had the whole street just for me. The day was just awesome and hopefully we will be continually bless with such beautiful day.

A boat sailing by the cruiser

Where the boat was docked

A town so empty

Aon Kevlin – Rug Ter Mai Mee One Yood

Happy New Year again. This is a very lovely Thai song by Aon Kevlin. Such a nice song

Future of Blogging in 2009

We are now at the tail end of 2008 and many of us will start to think what to expect in 2009. With recent economic crisis we start to wonder if blogging is going to be better than this year or is it going to get worse. Today is the day of the internet and many people has turned to the internet for businesses and career. There are many successful internet marketers and bloggers who are actually earning a very good living from the internet.

There are many bloggers coming up today who are making some good money. Making money from blogs are mostly from advertisement and there are reports that show some bloggers are earning enough for them to live through the month. It may sound very simple and takes a lot of hard work and patient. But if we have the passion for blogging and enjoy what we are doing we are going to be successful one day. 

I may start a new niche blog soon to have a good start in 2009 as I think that next year the worse is about to end and a new beginning is going to start. So to all those bloggers out there, may the best be with you.

Traffic for my blogs

As my blog is quite new, I am having some difficulties to get traffic coming to my blog. Well Now I will try some of the valuable tips suggested by some of the senior bloggers and we will see if some of those tips really works. Here are some of the tips I have and will try these on this blog

 

Top 10 Tips

 

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. 

A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

 

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. 

Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

 

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

 

8. Use a proper domain name. 

If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

 

7. Start commenting on other blogs. 

Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

 

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

 

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. 

A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

 

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

 

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. 

One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

 

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. 

A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

 

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

 

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. 

To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

 

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. 

This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

 

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

 

1. Write more pillar articles. 

Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

 

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

 

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

Blog Mastermind

The New Google Chrome Browser for Windows

The beta version is designed for Windows and was released early so that the Google team can start discussions and get feedback from Google Chrome users. You can download the beta version at 

http://www.google.com/chrome/?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-blog-asblog&utm_medium=blog&brand=CHMP&hl=en

Google Chrome Features

• Google Chrome makes browsing easier with its clean and simple interface but sophisticated and efficient technology.
• Google Chrome is more stable. It is suppose to minimize crashing.
• Google Chrome lets you browse web pages faster even with javascript on it.
• Google Chrome lets you browse the web safer as well.
• Google Chrome is fully an open-source browser.

Blogging Success

Blogging and Money Making by : Jeff Phelps

Today, there are many bloggers who maintains their blog website as a business. They spend the majority of their time blogging and making money. This is a trend widely accepted by online businesses. Capitalizing on blogs, popularity, corporate America has used the opportunity to get closer to their clients and potential customers.

There are many bloggers in the internet that makes a decent living by just blogging. If you want to make money out of blogging, it is important to remember that not every blog is right for making money.

First of all, you should ask yourself why you blog.

Many people have different reasons on why they blog. Some reasons for blogging include blogging for recreational purpose, promoting an online or offline business, as a personal diary, to help others, to make friends, for fun, to become known and finally to make money.

Again, why do you blog?

If you are blogging and making money, you should first understand the two types of earning methods in blogging: The Direct Income Method and; the Indirect Income Method.

In direct income method, you can earn money directly from blogs. In indirect income method, you can earn money because of your blog.

One great way to earn income from your blog is through affiliate programs. This program works by getting a commission for referring a visitor or reader from your blog website to buy a product or service from the company you signed up as an affiliate. To succeed in this type of method, you should choose an affiliate that is related to the topics discussed in your blog website. This is because visitors in your blog are targeted internet traffic; you don’t want to affiliate with a pet store if your site and blog is about guns.

Asking your readers for a tip may seem ridiculous, but it might work. If you already have a large number of loyal readers in your blog and actively participating in it, you can ask them to donate money for your blog. Remember that you should first create a large number of loyal readers before you ask for donations.

Another great way to make money out of your blogs is to sell stuff, like t-shirts, mugs and other small things that you can personalize. Create your own logo and post the designs on your blogs. This is great if your readers are loyal to your blog, they may want to buy something that would make them part of the group.

You can create a subscription based blog. Asking for payment to view your blog and participate in it would generate income. However, there are many blogs out there that may offer the same topic as yours for free. Since free is preferred more than fee, this type of method can rarely succeed. To make this work you may need to be a real expert on a specific topic.

Selling blogs is another way to make money out of blogs. For this, you may need to create a great website in order for it to sell. It should also have a large readership to make this work. You can successfully sell blogs in an auction sites, many buyers will take a look at your blog first and determine if there are a large number of readers and also take a look at the quality of the website.

Some readers will be someone who seeks writers to employ. If you write a good article about a specific topic in your blog, these people may probably hire you to write for them, either for their website or offline as a freelance writer for a newspaper or magazine. You and your skills are discovered through your blog. Your reputation is also important for this to work. Your blog should be able to attract large amount of readers and also remain loyal to you.

Another way to make money is through speaking opportunities. For this, you need to impress readers on what you write about in your blog. Readers can sometimes be a scout looking for someone to speak for their seminars or workshops. Some request might ask you to speak for a seminar for free and some might pay you. Do not reject requests on speaking for free; this is because it will be beneficial for your reputation. Be patient, more offers will come that will be offering payment for your speaking services.

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