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Blogging - What is a blog?The word has become more and more common the last few years, though many of us still don't know what it means or what it is. What is a blog? The word itself is a shortened contraction of the words "web log" - cram 'em together, shorten it, and you get "blog", short for web log. You can use it as a verb -- blogging, to blog -- or as a noun -- go read my blog. So what is a web log? A web log is sort of an electronic online version of a journal or diary, usually listing entries in a reverse chronological order (most recent first). At its most fundamental, a blog is simply a website. But instead of a website selling books or having company information, it usually is in the form of a commentary, news, reviews, or personal rant. A single entry in a blog is called a post. Some people post things once a day, many times a day, or only every several days -- it is a matter of personal style. Anyone can have a blog - there are many free sites that let you start your own blog - just login and start typing, and everything else is done for your automatically (archiving your posts, allowing people to add comments, etc.).
Free Blog sitesHow can you start a blog? There are many sites that allow you to set up a free account and then start adding posts to your blog. What are the best blog sites? Blogger.com became part of the Google business in 2003. They make it easy to set up a free account and then start blogging. They have built in tools for moderating comments and for integrating AdSense ads (see below), and they make it easy to add pictures and text, complete with a large variety of pre-made design templates to choose from. Once you pick a template, you customize it with your own content, like what kind of links you want to appear on the sidebar, how many postings you want to appear on the main page, etc. WordPress.com hosts nearly 400,000 blogs. Your blog will have a name like "Myblog.wordpress.com". WordPress blog accounts are also free. LiveJournal.com is another free blogging site. They also offer more advanced blog account if you permit their ad to show up on your site, or you can pay for more advanced features and then display your own ads. Check out any of these sites if you want to play around with a free blog and see what everyone is talking about. Once you set up an account with these companies, working on your blog is easy. You just login to their site, click on the NEW POST link, and start typing. When you finish, your blog is updated automatically, and the world sees your work. You don't really need to know anything about servers, transfering files, updating linked archives, or anything else. That is the beauty of these self-contained blog sites - you just type and add pictures, it does the rest.TypePad.com is another popular blog site, though it is NOT free. They have a 30 day free trial, but then you have to pay for your account, from $5 to $15 per month. The base level gives you only 1 blog and 100MB of storage, while the $15 Pro level gives you unlimited blogs and 1GB of storage. They have professionally designed blog templates, and they support RSS feeds, podcasting, and they are hosted on a Tier-1 data center for speed and reliability. We recommend TypePad only for those that are looking for a bigger, more professional blog that they want more control over. With all the free blog hosting, available, you may well be better off starting there to get your feet wet, and then moving to a paid service once you have a real plan and feel for the blogging life. Making money blogging - how to make money from your blog?On the Internet, there are a few different ways to make money on your website or blog -- this is called monetizing your traffic. And traffic is the first key - if you have no visitors, you can't make any money -- advertisers pay to reach PEOPLE! So how can you make money from your blog? A few ways.. The first is with standard display advertising. You can sign up with one of various online ad networks (Casale, FastClick, Interclick, etc.) and insert special ad code on your pages that will display graphical banner ads on your site. These ads pay on a CPM basis, or cost per thousand, usually in the neighborhood of 50 cents per thousand, sometimes alittle more, sometimes less. What that means to you is 50 cents everytime 1000 people see an ad. Now keep in mind that is tough to get thousands of people to visit your site, and you can quickly see you probably won't get rich this way. Another option is context-sensitive ads from Yahoo Publisher Network or Google AdSense. These systems display ads on your site based upon the content. If you have a blog about big screen TVs, you will see ads come up for big screen TVs, which will hopefully interest your visitors. With these ads, you only get paid when someone CLICKS on the ad, not just when they see it. Depending on your topic and your content, these kind of ads might earn you the equivalent of $1-$25 CPM -- many times what ad networks would pay. You can also join affiliate marketing programs like Commission Junction, where you choose what to promote on your site. If your blog is about kids videos, maybe you put up affiliate ads for Blockbuster, Netflix, and Amazon. Everytime someone clicks on one and buys something or signs up, you get paid - these are called Cost Per Action ads. Truth be told, most people who blog do it for fun or as a personal hobby. Sure, if they can make $5 a day from it, so much the better. But VERY FEW bloggers can earn a full time or even part time income from blogging -- do it because you love the topic, not because you love money.Blog searchUnlike most static content on the web, blog tends to get updated frequently with current information. For example, if you want news and commentary on some breaking event, a normal search engine probably won't find any mention of it when it queries its index, even though 500 blogs might have written about it in the last hour (for example, you are sitting on the West Coast, want to know who won American Idol that aired 3 hours ago on the East Coast). To search through recent blog postings, you need to use a blog search engine. Start with Search.Blogger.com, powered by Google. Next, try Technorati.com - their motto is "Who is saying what, right now" - they track over 50 million blogs. Feedster.com is another blog search engine, promising timely information from millions of news and blog sources. Feedster indexes more than 48 million feeds. Both of these engines use RSS feeds so new postings to the millions of blogs they cover are instantly sent to them and indexed, meaning you find the most recent posts regarding the topic you are searching for. Finally, if you still can't find what you are looking for, stop by IceRocket.com. To be honest, we've seen mixed results from all these - there is a lot of spam blogs out there that fool engines to bring them visitors, and it gets in the way when you are looking for real information. I'd say try them all - pick a topic, search across all 4 engines, and see which one you like best.Blog Tools - Blog Software
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