How to write a blog effectively?

Most often we are bemused with thoughts like ... What topic do I blog about, how do I write my posts that I have dedicated readers coming back for more...
I have listed some points below that I think would help you when blogging.
You would have chosen a general topic for your blog and select a title for your blog that best suites the blog's central idea. So your posts should revolve around this general topic in a manner that is useful for the readers.

Ground work for your blog topic:
First and foremost, I hope most of you would have chosen a blog topic of your interest..something that you have experience in or are good at, or something that you would love to talk about.
A ground work of the topic, you choose to write, is very important. Let's say, you choose to have a blog on "Pets". The categories that you can blog about could include:
1. Different kinds of pets and their food habits.
2. Keeping your pets clean.
3. Tips on how to bond well with your pets.
4. Common pet diseases and how would you deal with it.
5. Some uncommon diseases and some proven effective remedies.
6. Pet accessories ...etc to list a few

You can then pick one topic to blog on.
Now that you have a topic, you can then search the net for some useful information and do a comprehensive reading on your blog topic, to enhance your knowledge. You might even want to note down the new facts while reading, so that you can incorporate them when you blog.
You can visit some discussion forums and try finding out some concerns that are in the discussion thread - this could provide you with valuable information.

Now that you have the material about you topic, you can write your blog post with these ideas combined with the knowledge that you already have. When writing a blog, keep asking yourself... Have my readers already read this stuff before? Will it be useful? Am I offering soemthing new to read?

Original content
Hence it is very important that you have original content in your posts. Please do not copy and paste contents from other sources. Because most search engines crawl the web and list them in search results, based on originality and genuine content.
If you have read some piece of information somewhere on the net and copied it to your post, then its very obvious that, like you, some one else also might have read the same article... Imagine how many redundant copies of the same material would then be circulating in the net!!! One such redundant blog post is enough to scare your readers away!

Coming back to your "Pets" blog, once you have written the blog post yourself, with all the ground work and ideas that you have gained, the next step is to further amend it. How?
You search the discussion forums for your current topic. You would definitely get an idea of what is being discussed in there and what people are looking forward to read. Say, you are blogging about "Common dog diseases and remedies", then you search the discussion forums for similar thread posts. Suppose you find one concern on "fleas" and you do not find any useful information on "fleas" either in the forum or related forums...there now, you have another strong topic to add to your blog! :)
You search the net on "flea control" and add it to your post. You continue this strategy until you are satisfied that you have a good number of "dog diseases and their suggested remedies" to post. You can garnish this further by adding what you have learnt from your practical experience with your pets.
Once your blog post is ready, you must do a spell check. :)
After publishing the post, you can then join the same discussion forum where you identified the concern on fleas posted by a member, and join the forum with your suggestion of a solution... mention your blog link for others to see! This way you even get targeted readers to your blog posts!

Please note, that your blog readers might be from any age group, hence you might want to maintain a friendly tone and approach when you blog.
Happy blogging!

Make money blogging - part1

Earn money from your blogs

Find below, the points that I have summarized to get the maximum profits out of your blog. When you love writing about what you feel, expressing yourself , then no harm in earning a few scoring rewarding points for yourself. Here's how:

1. Sites that pay you to blog:
I recently stumbled upon this fantastic resouce that lists out 28 sites, that pay you to blog.
The list includes 451 Press, About.com, Blog burner, Blog feast, Blogger wave, Blogsvertize, Pay Per Post, Shvoong, Review Me and many more. You can publish your posts and if you have good content, then your blog posts get published and you get paid. How cool is that?
I have provided a link to their post which I think you will love to explore.
Click here to check out those sites

Out of these, Blogger wave and Blogsvertise are relatively easy to join in.


2. Google Adsense
Fetching money from your blog would not be an easy start of course, but its not unachievable as well.
If you notice my blog, you will find google ads. Thats how your ads will look like when you paste a google adsense code in your blog. Getting these ads are very easy and it costs you nothing. All you have to do is log into https://www.google.com/adsense/ and follow the simple instructions to get yourself registered.

Upon registration and accepting the google terms and conditions, you will be led to a page where you can choose from three categories of adsense gadgets:

a) Adsense for content: Content adsense is the most common form of textual ads placed by google.

b) Google search: Just like google adsense, you can also incorporate google search box (just like the I have used in my blog. Getting this search box is again very easy and is similar to the step 2 of google"Adsense for content" above. You get an HTML code for this as well and all you need to do is paste this code into your weblog.

c) Google referral boxes: Close to google adsense and search boxes, are yet another money fetching blog ingredient - referrals. You get an HTML code by following a similar process as listed above and get commission for referring some products on your weblog. Whats more, you get to choose which products you want to refer or promote and earn revenues.

You can customize what kind of ads you want google to place in your blog, the color customization of the ad and what size would you want to allocate for that ad in your blog. Upon confirmation of the ad customization,you will receive an HTML code that you need to paste in your website or blog.

How to place google adsense ads in your blog?
You need to log into your blog/site, and paste this HTML code into the webpage (If you are using blogger for your blogs, then you can navigate to Dashboard->Layout->Add an element->Add an HTML/Javascript,and then paste your HTML code right here). Make sure to save your changes.



(Click image to enlarge)

That's it....all done! Oh and by the way, these are called "Pay-per-click " ads or PPC ads.

Traffic: The next tiring and the most challenging step is to get traffic to your blog, else if you do not have visitors, then you have no one reading your blog, no one clicking those ads you have placed there and hence no money! AWeber is an excellent way to make use of an autoresponder. An autoresponder is that which sends you mail in your inbox without fail, if you have provided your email address on any of the sites that you were interested in. You get reminders and mails from these autoresponders and this is an effective way to drive visitors to your blogs. You could also use Get-Visitors-Now to get instant traffic to your website, though all these traffic providers will charge you some fee. Get visitors would charge you a one time fee of $49.95 but its worth it anyways.