This downloadable e-book is designed to help you jump-start your blog by giving you 31 tasks that will turn your blog into the powerhouse you’ve always dreamed of. The great thing about Darren’s e-book is that you can do it at your own pace and in your own way. Set a goal of reading a chapter a day and take notes. I usually dog ear and highlight the important pieces and come back to them later.

The workbook uses a great approach to teaching and is designed so that you come away from the challenge having not only learned how to build a dynamic blog but you’ll have actually done something with the knowledge. 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is for virtually bloggers at different stages of their blogging which includes:

• Those who have just started a blog but who don’t know what to do next
• Those who have had a blog for a while but it’s stalled in its growth
• Bloggers with bloggers block and lacking inspiration

I was actually in a Borders bookstore the other day and saw a published version on the shelf and couldn’t help but pick it up. I first started thumbing through the chapters but soon realized I was reading it word for word. The book was addicting and I learned some things which I apply to my blogging today.

The cost of this e-book is only $19.95 and there’s even a money back guarantee.  Darren is one of the best known bloggers in the world. All of his works are top notch and his latest offering is no exception. If you want a better blog, you can have it in the next 31 days. Buy it today and you’ll be able to start reading it in minutes. Trust me, it pays for itself!

Besides being a good communication tool, blogging is also a great way to make money. If you’re new to blogging and yet want to start quickly, there are several business models you can try for maximum results in a short time.

1) Get paid to blog - Using this method, you create your blog and add a few good articles to it. Then you signup with paid blogging networks like Pay Per Post or Review Me and see what “opportunities” are available. These networks are filled with advertisers looking for blogger who can help them spread the word, and they are willing to pay. Accept the opportunity, write about it on your blog, and you get paid.

2) Create AdSense WordPress blogs – This option requires a little more technical know-how. You need to build a WordPress blog on a specific niche topic, and start writing some good content on it. At the same time, try to get links from other blogs by leaving comment on the blogs or by doing a link exchange with the blogger. The objective is to get more traffic who will click on your AdSense ads and make you money.

3) Setup affiliate marketing on WordPress blogs – Again, you set-up a good WordPress blog but with this model the amount of content you publish is not as important as the “selling quality” of the content. Each post you write must pre-sell the web visitor and convince him to click on your affiliate links. When the visitor makes a purchase online after that, you get credited for the sale and earn commissions.

Ultimately, which model you choose depends on how much time and resources you can dedicate to creating and managing your blogs. Your best bet is to choose a low-investment option at first. When you get the hang of it, you can venture into other blogging models as well. Just find something you are passionate about and start writing. Sprinkle in some AdSense ads and then start writing about related affiliate marketing products. Using WordPress is the best platform to build your empire on and best of all, it’s free.

If you’re serious about learning WordPress and making money from your blog, I highly recommend checking out WordPress Wizard 2.0. It’s a great video tutorial series that walks you through everything from the basics of buying a domain, setting up web hosting, installing WordPress, and other great internet marketing strategies.

Hongkait.com has put together a nice list of 50 Excellent Blog Footer Designs which will give you some great ideas on how to style your existing footer. I personally enjoy scrolling down to the bottom of sites I visit just to see the type of footer they use. The current eBlog Templates footer layout was influenced from several different sites with a goal of providing our visitors quick popular information across all pages and a chance to see your own myBlogLog picture on our site!

If you want to read a good footer breakdown post on what they are good for, check out Smashing Magazine’s post.

My favorite ones include a clever design with 3-4 columns of functional information like these for example.

John Cow

Productive Dreams

I Love Mac Apps

Did you also know footers are a great place for SEO link building? You’ll find credits or other text links pointing back to sites with keyword phrases in the link anchor. That helps you rank higher in Google.

So what kind of blog footers do you like? Include some links so we can all check them out!

The motto posted on their website is,”You don’t have to spend big bucks anymore for designer, because this service is 100% free”. That’s something most of you can appreciate I’m sure!

For those of you who don’t know how to use Adobe Photoshop (or own it for that matter) then you can either download a free photo editor like Paint.net or Gimp (my personal favorite) to modify the logos. You’ll have to download, install, and spend a few hours getting ramped up before you’d be able to cusomize the logos. It’s not a quick easy thing to do but if you’ve got the time and are ready to learn a new useful skill, then it’s worth doing.

Blogging For Dummies (Amazon Book)

Talk about a great checklist of items to maximize your SEO…this is the best list I’ve come across yet. Some of his items like the “read more” SEO tip are pretty cool.

Check out the article and plan on spending some time optimizing your blog just like I’m about to do myself.

The first one is called Wet Floor Maker which has several options such as angle, camera height, brightness, reflectivity, and more. Just upload your image and adjust the options to your liking and voila….you’ve got a cool new wet floor effect image. Here’s the end result of one test image I created:

The second site is called Image Reflection Generator and it doesn’t have nearly as many options as Wet Floor Maker does. The final image did look a bit more professional, however but you have no control over the angle of the reflection which I don’t like. Here’s the same image but after converting it with Image Reflection Generator:

These are convenient and quick ways to create images with a wet floor effect without any photo editing experience. The one thing I don’t like about both of these sites is you can’t preview the image before you click the “create image” button. Several times the end result image wasn’t exactly what I wanted so I had to go back and start over again. Kind of a pain but since the service is free, I can live with it. Try both out and let me know which you like better!

So where does that leave us? If you haven’t heard of writing reviews on your blog to generate a decent stream of income then you might want to check it out.

How does writing reviews make me money?

It’s actually easier than you think. The first step is to sign up with a blog review network and submit your blog. Some of these companies have rules in place like the age of your blog (at least 6 months old, etc), where it’s hosted (blogspot, wordpress, etc), and page rank. They try to weed out spam blog sites which are usually not very old or of good quality. Make sure you read the fine print before you spend your time applying only to find out you don’t qualify.

Assuming your blog is approved, you can now browse the review marketplace looking for reviews to write about or another option is to wait for someone to approach you. I recommend you be the aggressor and sift through the marketplace so you can start making money asap.

Once you find a review you’d like to write about and meet the criteria to qualify, just take it and begin. You’ll create your blog post and follow the requirements of the reviewer, then submit it for approval. After it’s approved, you get paid. Pretty easy huh?

What blog review networks do you recommend?

There are several companies out there who pay you to write reviews on your blog but only two of them are worth talking about in my opinion. They are Sponsored Reviews and Pay Per Post.

Sponsored Reviews is great because they allow you to search for advertisers directly and bid on jobs. Their bidding system allows you to negotiate rates with advertisers in order to maximize your earnings. They also provide the largest payout of all review networks by only taking a 35% commission for their services. That means you can earn anything from $10 to 500+ for each review. Their user interface is one of the better ones out there and the only drawback to their service is the lack of advertisers. I’m sure it will continue to grow it’s advertising base so they are at least worth a look.

One other perk is their affiliate program. Earn up to $175 per Advertiser and $90 Per Blogger referred. Payouts are based on money spent by the advertiser and money earned by the blogger. See the chart below for payouts. Their average advertiser spends several hundred dollars so most referrals will be worth at least $25 (according to their website).

You’ll then want to put one of their ads on your site or a text link to start taking advantage of their referral bonuses. Can’t hurt to get an ad on your blog right? Get started with Sponsored Reviews now.

Next up we have PayPerPost which is another great pay for review site. They offer the largest sponsored blogging network with the greatest amount of offers along with a forum where bloggers can post questions, etc. They also pay you a $20 bonus after you complete your first review post. The review post is easy…you just need to write about PayPerPost and they give you $20. Pretty quick way to make a quick $20.

One bad thing I noticed while browsing their marketplace is the restrictions on a few of the reviews. For example, you couldn’t write a review and post it on blogspot.com, wordpress.com, or myspace.com and you must be located in North America, Asia, or Europe only. That doesn’t mean if you have a blogger blog or wordpress blog using your own domain or hosted on your own site you can’t write a review. All I’m saying is make sure you read the review details carefully so you don’t waste your time writing a post only to discover you won’t get credit for it.

They also have a scoring system which might be a barrier to you on some post reviews. It’s usually the higher payouts that are looking for nice reviews from established high ranking sites. They utilize Google Page Rank and Amazon’s Alexa rankings to factor in what your site’s “score” will be.

PayPerPost also offers a referral affiliate program with some pretty nice payouts as well. You will get paid $15 for each referral once the referees first blog posting is reviewed, approved and then finally accepted 30 days later. This means they need to go all the way through the process in order for it to be a legit referral. Again, not a bad payout for just putting a banner or link on your blog. It’s cool because you can see which referrals you currently have signed up and the total amount you potentially could earn (assuming they convert all the way mentioned above).

Summary

If I were you, I’d sign up for both Sponsored Reviews and PayPerPost and see which one works best for you. There is no rule preventing you from having two accounts and writing reviews from both sites and you can promote whichever you choose. That’s what I did and it also gives you a bigger selection of available reviews to write. After you sign up, make sure you get some affiliate banners on your blog so you have another avenue to make money. Just imagine if you write a dozen or so reviews a month and get a couple referrals. You could easily earn a few hundred extra bucks a month for some pretty minimal work!

I wish these sort of sites were available when I was in college because I had tons of free time and needed to make money. I could have easily earned $500+ a month writing a couple reviews a day!

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I’ll be frank – you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc… experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something – experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts – there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a “guru” (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry – the Internet marketing industry – not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche – Internet marketing – and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things – email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it – making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) – your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion – your stories – and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of…well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from “scratch”, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

This article was written 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.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else”s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that”s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

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 written by a guest blogger by the name of Yaro Starak who is 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.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

Google Friend Connect is a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors. any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Google Friend Connect boasts the following high-level features:

• Attract more visitors to your site – Visitors bring along friends from social networks like Facebook, orkut, and others to interact on your site.
• Enrich your site with social features – Choose engaging social features from a catalog of gadgets provided by Google and the OpenSocial developer community.
• No programming whatsoever – Just copy and paste snippets of code into your site, and Google Friend Connect does the rest.

There are a couple of demo sites already setup which you can test and interact with.

If you’re interested in being part of the beta testing group, you can apply directly on their site here. I just applied today so hopefully I will get accepted and can start using Google Friend Connect on eBlog Templates.