Gary Pettit asked:


If you have a blog,then you among the millions of other people on this planet who have a blog,who can market their items and services online,and who find ways to connect through friends,past classmates,family,even acquaintances,in order to produce online cash.There are millions upon millions of blogs on the web right now,and you will need to sparkle through the muddle of language,or,at the very least,become known to a few in whatever niche you pursue.

One way for you to establish your audience is to actually have a niche that you proclaim yourself to be in, and one way for you to do this is to place your blog address in a blog directory. You also have any choice up to you: you are not limited to placing your blog in a single directory, which is advantageous if you consider how these blog directories have their own audiences whom you might lose if you aren’t meticulous enough.

If you would like to submit your blog to a blog directory,make sure that your blog is ready to be viewed by others. Do not simply place your blog address and then expect people to read half-baked essays, poor stories, or no entries at all. Have a lot of good content to welcome your new and current readers. Moreover, be aware of exactly what keywords your blog will have.

This means that you will have to go through your content, and then evaluate what keywords to use, so that you can properly categorize your blog and then provide the right keywords if the blog directory service asks for it.

Here are some blog directories that you may want to consider when you are finally ready to sign your blog up.

1. Blog Catalog (http://www.blogcatalog.com) allows you to not only place your blog into a category. It also shows which categories are most popular,so then you can have a better understanding as to what market has the majority of readers. Through blog catalog, you can join discussions and form or join groups.

2. At Blog Hub (http://www.bloghub.com), you can add your blog and chat at a forum, chat with your fellow bloggers, and get news on affordable web hosting services, as well as other articles that might be of interest to you. Blog hub also offers information on how to use services to monetize your blog.

3. You can also add your blog to the directory at Blog Hint (http://www.bloghints.com), where you can view the latest blogs added, the most popular, and the highest rated. Blog Hints will even suggest a category for your blog, and you can access some Wordpress themes if you are using that service. There are many different blogs in this directory that you can search through. The blogs are also organized in folders that are easily visible on the front page of the website.

4. At Blogging Fusion (http://www.bloggingfusion.com) you can also readily view the available categories, and you can even get your blog featured. There are also available blog ratings systems and popular blogs lists for you to browse.

5. Another directory is Blog Flux (http://dir.blogflux.com) where you can look through an alphabetical directory, see featured blogs, and see the latest updates to blogs listed in the directory.

Royce Tivel asked:


WordPress has never been easier to install than the latest version. In this article, I will describe how to install WordPress 2.5.

INSTALL WORDPRESS IN FIVE EASY STEPS

(1) Download WordPress

The first installation step is to Download WordPress from http://wordpress.org/download/. I created a directory on my PC called “wordpress” in which to collect the files and images I will use for my WordPress installation and customization. Once the download competed, I saved the .zip file.

(2) Unzip WordPress

After saving the file, I opened it with the zip/unzip program I use, and selected all of the files. Since I will be testing and modifying Wordpress locally to begin with, I “extracted” the files to the root directory of the Apache server I use for my PC test bed.

If I were going to install WordPress “for real” on a live web site, I would have used an FTP client to upload the .zip file to the desired directory at my hosting service and unziped the file there. Firefox has a terrific and *free* FTP client, FireFTP, that can be used for the upload.

(3) Create the Database

At this point, the WordPress database needs to be created. WordPress requires a database to store the site content and other information. I use MySQL for my database server both on my PC test bed and on my live sites. I use phpMyAdmin as an interface to MySQL.

Creating the database is really simple using phpMyAdmin. I simply start phpMyAdmin, enter the database name, and hit the “Create” button. WordPress will create the tables it needs in the database.

(4) Create wp-config.php

WordPress needs to know how to access the database once it has been created. That’s what the wp-config.php file is for. WordPress includes a file called “wp-config-sample.php.” This file needs to be modified with the database access information and renamed to “wp-config.php.”

Open the config file with any text editor. The critical entries are DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_HOST.

As an enhanced security measure, I obtained a unique SECRET_KEY and pasted this into the file. I then saved the edited file as wp-config.php. The text below shows the code I changed:

// ** MySQL settings ** //

define(’DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress’); // The name of the database

define(’DB_USER’, ‘rtivel’); // Your MySQL username

define(’DB_PASSWORD’, ‘MyPassword’); // …and password

define(’DB_HOST’, ‘localhost’); // 99% chance you won’t need to change this value

// Change SECRET_KEY to a unique phrase. You won’t have to remember it later,

// so make it long and complicated. You can visit http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.0/

// to get a secret key generated for you, or just make something up.

define(’SECRET_KEY’, ‘diq`~@|CH6)l@u>x;hA>1ew1maZ/)ToE!y%}}ZYAI!=V^L()eooB!0V+k8LJa!Eh’); // Change this to a unique phrase.

(5) Run the WordPress Installer

After completing the edit of the wp-config.php file, I started the installation script by entering this URL to my Apache server into my browser:

localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

For a live site, the URL might be something like this:

yourdomain.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

The first installation screen asks for the blog name and contact email address.

The next screen announces a successful installation and provides a username and password for the administrator. Be sure to save this password!

The installation is now complete. I can now log into Wordpress and begin managing the blog, customizing the theme, or adding content.

Or, I can click the link at the top of the log-in screen and go to the blog’s home page.

If you don’t manually create a wp-config.php file, WordPress will prompt for the information it needs and try to complete the installation.

That’s it! WordPress should now be installed.

Yours for a more successful blog,

Royce Tivel

Richard Adams asked:


Posts” area is increasing in popularity all the time on the most well-known and popular blogs and for good reason. If you don’t yet have such a feature running on your blog, I’m here to spend just a minute to tell you exactly why you need to implement this powerful strategy as quickly as possible.

The first factor to remember is just how many blogs there are these days. This means you need to stand out from the crowd and offer something new and interesting.

Secondly, most internet users are time-poor – in other words you need to grab their attention as soon as they arrive at your blog and show them enough interesting, relevant content that they stick around and have a read. Also, you hope, they will keep coming back for more.

Finally is the factor of “link bait” to consider. In the blogosphere, a particularly interesting or note worthy blog post will quickly attract links from other bloggers as well as the social bookmarkeing networks like Digg and Reddit.

So let’s look at these three factors in combination. You want to stand otu from the crowd, you want to make it easy for first-time visitors to your blog to find your very best posts and you also want to maximize the chances of these posts receiving links from other websites.

In short, this means you need to be ruthless. You need to work hard on creating a small number of posts that are so good you could charge money for them. These are your link bait pieces, and the posts that really can make your name.

Because let’s be honest, on *any* blog there are posts that only fall into the “acceptable” category. Not everything you write is genious. Infactm quite the reverse is true in my experience. Most blogs consist of 90% average posts, with maybe 5% rubbish and 5% gems.

It’s those gems you want people to be able to find as quickly and easily as is humanly possible, and the way to do this, of course, is by providing a list of your best posts nice and clearly at the top fo your blog.

Sometimes these are posts that you specify, other bloggers let their readers decide on what the top posts are but either way you’ve got to have this feature enabled on your blog.

So how to implement the Top Posts area?

Well you could of course just manually add them to your navigation bar. Just stick them near the top and manually hyperlink them to the individual posts.

If you’re using Wordpress, the most popular blogging software at present, you could add a new category to your links and call it “Top Posts” then add in your top 5-10 posts.

Or arguably the best, shiniest and most impressive solution is to use one of the top posts Wordpress plugins currently available free of charge.

Popularity Contest – this plug in allows your visitors to vote on your content showing which are the most popular on your site. You can then just add a few lines of code to whatever Wordpress theme you’re using and those posts voted as most popular by your visitors will be shown.

Top Posts By Category – very similar to the above plugin except this one looks at the category level.

Daily Top 10 Posts – tracks which posts on your blog have received the most readers in the last 24 hours and displays a list of these.

Adhesive – lets you tag your top posts so they will always appear at the top of your Wordpress blog.

These are of course just a tiny selection of the options available so feel free to take a look around, try a few on your blog and see which you like best. And I hope you enjoy the new visitors you’ll be generating as a result of implementing your Top Posts feature!

Peter Nisbet asked:


is a great way to get traffic to your website, and if you create a blog for no other reason than that, you are practically certain to get positive results. Blogging and traffic are made for each other, and there are several ways of using blogs to promote products on your site.

The first question is what kind of blog? Wordpress and Blogger (owned by Google)are the most popular blogging packkages on the planet. This offers you four blogging options, and three ways of creating a blog to get traffic to your website.

Why four from just the two blogging packages? Here is the answer to that question, and how if you create a blog using each, you will maximize your earning potential from your products:

Blogger

Blogger is blogging software owned by Google. Most people run their blog from BlogSpot, Bloggers blogging host. When you do that you have less control over your blog than if you operate it from your own IP address. Blogger is very easy to use, and very easy to get started with, and is popular with those who don’t want to worry about templates, plugins and designing their own blogs.

Wordpress

Wordpress can also be run from the Wordpress hosting site. However, where Wordpress scores over Blogger is in the fact that the software can be uploaded to your website, and can be run from there. This enables you to use any of the thousands of Wordpress plugins and templates that provide an almost unlimited degree of functionality in your blogging that will help to drive traffic to your website.

When you create a blog with any of these two different packages, whether run from your own computer or from the blog host, you are able to provide fresh content daily to your virtual website. Because that is what a blog is: it is in effect a web page, in the same way that a Squidoo lens and a page on a website is a web page.

Blogging and Search Engines

Blogging allows you a presence on search engines such as Google and Yahoo, and allows those with little idea of SEO or even of web design, to sell products online. There was a time when blogs were a rarity and something new, but blogging is now a way for anybody that knows how to create a blog can drive traffic to their website or to their blog page and help them make money through free advertising.

Whatever you use it for, howver, a blog has to be advertised to get readers. No readers and there’s not much point in the blog. Blogging is not advertising: it is a means of expressing yoruself and your thoughts. However, you can aslo use it to advertise, not only your feelings, but also your products and your websites if you have any. Now, you might think I am being a bit duplicitous here, stating that blogging is not a means of advertising yet can be used to advertise! Yet both statements are true. Let me explain why.

Is Blogging an Advertising Technique?

Yes and no. You can create a blog in order to get traffic to your website, and in that respect you are using your blog for advertising. You can place a link to your website: your squeeze page, sales page or just a content page. The problem you have, and it is not a diffcult one, is how you are going to get people, not only to read your blog, but also to click on one of the links? The link could be placed at the bottom of every post, and on a permanent page on your blog, but how do yet get traffic to your blog: you have the same problem now as getting traffic to your website!

What you have here is that blogging can be use to promote another site, whether it be a website, another blog or a social networking site such as Facebook, MySpace or YouTube. You can use all of these to promote and sell products. However, how do you get people, to find your blog? Creating a blog is fine, but that is only the start.

Use Article Marketing in Blogging

There is one way, and that is article marketing. By writing articles about your niche or product, and then including a link to your blog in the article, you can use the article to advertise your blog. If you can persuade a reader to click on your link, they will reach your blog on which you provide them with links to your website, your other blogs and your Facebook and MySpace home pages.

Perhaps you can’t write, and maybe don’t know how to use articles properly, or even where to get them. Well don’t worry. If you want to make the best use of the internet than create a blog, get blogging and then use the help provide online to make best use of your blog make money.

Blogging and traffic go together, and it is easy to create a blog to drive traffic to your website or any other online web page (such as another blog). You only need to know how.