Blogs in the News

First BlogWorld & New Media Expo to Be World's Largest Gathering of Bloggers
BlogWorld & New Media Expo!

Web Service To Measure Campaign Buzz on Blogs
Political blogs and Presidential Campaign 2008

Yahoo!, MSN Affiliates Agree to Blogging Controls in China
"self-discipline code for blog services,"

Of Journalism and Blogging 2.0
Are bloggers really journalists? Are journalists really journalists?

Golden Spiders to Celebrate Blogging, Social Networking
Internet and Digital Media Awards

Blogs Track Man Who Calls Self Pedophile
National bloggers or "watch blogs" try to track self proclaimed pedophiles whereabouts.

Blogs Track Man Who Calls Self a Pedophile
Internet "watch blogs" blog about mans intentions and whereabouts. - Seattle PI

Blog Marketing Tools

See the Blogs That Make Money site for an updated list of marketing tools and sites listed by page rank!

Blog Marketing Tools

100% Free Classifieds

What a great site I found today. Web Cosmo is 100% Free Classifieds!

It's very similar to Craigslist but has different rules than the mother of all lists!

Copywriting

Urban Writ - Official site for Jordan Pearce

Urban Writ by Jordan Pearce

Urban Writ is the official site for Jordan Pearce.

See her bio and see some of the crazy stuff shes into or read some of her articles on blogging and macrobiotics.

Please contact Jordan for ad copy, back links, SEO, blog consulting, stunts, fire eating or writing in general.

jordan@urbanwrit.com

Create a Blog Mash Up

A great SEO tool is to create a blog mash up.

What is a blog. It is a mash up of the phrase web log.

Creating a blog mash up is simply putting together two or more ideas that have no relation whatsoever and reaching a wider audience.

Two or more ideas that are closely related can also widen your reader audience by turning them on to a concept that is relatively new to them.

Almost all of my blogs are variants of a mash up.

One of my sites has to do with personal finance investing and feng shui tips. Another site has to do with a macrobiotic diet, spirituality articles, self help, health and wellness and general physics. Blogs, marketing, article marketing, affilitate programs and ebooks make up another.

The second two seem like a natural way to go, but those who are into marketing may not be into blogging quite yet. Or there may be a self help addict who gained an interest in the correlation of quantum physics and spirituality.

The idea here now is to create blogs that have to do with those topics seperately and maybe create a blog that is another mash up.

Link all your sites together and automatically those sites are related somehow!

Creating a blog mash up is a good idea for creating a market perhaps where there was none before.

Change the world through blogging by creating a blog mash up!

There needs to be an online degree you can get for blogging. Or a marketing your blog type of blog. Oh wait there are tons of those!

What bloggers really need to do if they are serious is research and test what is myth and what works.

Do you have creative imagination where you are a pioneer and pluck ideas out of thin air? Are you the type that comes up with amazing new concepts from existing ideas?

Me I'm the second type (okay maybe not amazing ideas) and couldn't come up with an original idea if you offered me millions. It's not gonna happen folks.

Along my blogging career here is what I have found through extensive research and testing what works for me.

Keywords - You don't say! According to Word Tracker, there are 48 searches for "mature women blogging naked" per day. That is just 4 less searches than "make money blogging".

Can you incorporate valuable keywords, and I say valuable because I am tired of seeing the term r*** rhymes with b**** keywords scattered all over the Internet.

One way that I find important keyword searches is to do a Google search for blogs with keywords. Lots of bloggers have already done the work for me providing useful, free content to their own blogs.

They post elaborate lists of expensive keywords, marketing keywords, all types of keyword lists and keyword services to see if you come back to the same post. Well I do and I use them as a reference point and thank them by giving them traffic. :)

Just a reminder, because I know some of you still don't do a lot of things you are supposed to do to make money blogging, keywords go in the title, beginning, middle and the end of your posts.

Short Posts - Make em short but make many of them in a day.

Drafts - If your not using the drafts portion in your blog platform you are letting a valuable tool waste away.

Like I said I am not much of a creative thinker so my unfocused and scatter-brained thinking leaves me with many ideas that start out big and kind of whither off into nowhere. I think to myself, I had a great idea but forgot the key points. What the hell was I thinking again...? Then another idea comes along. Repeat.

When you start drafting, tweaking and editing you don't lose those ideas you were excited about and you have content to post on days you don't feel like posting.

You can use free website content but it is still better to write as much of your blog as you can.

Drafts. A total lifesaver.

Lists - Remember those search keyword lists I was telling you about? All good blogs and info websites have lists! They have Top 10 lists lists, they have strongest directory lists, they have lists about lists and there is even a list by a guy named Craig!

Do your reasearch and come up with a good list!

How To - Is this post considered a How To? I'm not sure because as I always tell readers I'm a big picture person and not very detail oriented. Which means...lists, giving directions, or writing out a plan of action are beyond me. I'm a big time delegator. It doesn't mean I'm lazy, I'd rather give someone else the opportunity to shine if it is important to them. To me it's not that important.

So...How To. Anthony Robbins has a simple plan that he laid out in extreme detail on how to suceed at just about anything.

Reading his book Awaken the Giant from Within, after reading all the details I broke it down to the short version which was: Have a vision, take the first action step, make adjustments and a dynamic plan of action, be willing to make sacrifices to reach your goal.

The shorter list is written in my little notebook and is permanently in my thoughts:

Vision
Action
Tweak
Whatever it takes

Here is a quick How To on blogging for you:

Content. Content. Content.
Ad placement.
Backlinks.

Can you write a "how to" or are you like me who talks about what works. You decide but make sure you have a basis of posts that instruct and or inform.

Pillar, Flagship or What I like to call Golden Posts - Those are those crazy long posts that you know, JUST KNOW are going to be the selling point for your expertise and for your blog.

You're going to have that one golden post that everyone in the blogsphere absolutely, positively has to read.

Some of my golden posts have turned into ebooks! One of my golden posts I fragment and alter so I have extra posting material that I save in my drafts. One of my golden posts is a how to school on blogging.

Too bad it cannot be an acredited online degree for blogging. The only online degree that any blogger needs is to do the research, do the work and your diploma are the checks in the mail or funds in your Paypal account!

The Roller Coaster of Link Popularity

Most webmasters are in a constant state of confusion about how to
create link popularity and how to rank well in the search engine
results. Three of the top four search engines, Google, Yahoo and
MSN calculate link popularity as one part of their search
algorithms. So, for all intent purposes, building link popularity
will be an important part of getting recognition and strong
placement in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Link popularity, in essence, is a count of how many web pages
point to one of your web pages.

The Google PageRank Version of Link Popularity

PageRank (PR) is a Google tool that expands on the simplest link
popularity calculation. PageRank is a value given to every web
page on the Internet, with 12 possible rankings.

* The Gray Bar in the PageRank tool indicates that a web page
has not been added to the Google PageRank database, or Google has
banned the website. (If any page on a particular domain has its
own PageRank, or if any pages are shown in the Google search
results when someone searches "site:www.yourdomainurl.com", then
the website in question has not been banned by Google.)

* PR0 to PR10. PR0 indicates that the web page has been added to
the Google database, but it does not yet have any PageRank
assigned to it, generally because there is not any PR value pages
that link to it at this time.

If one is tracking PageRank from the Google toolbar
(http://toolbar.google.com/), then it needs to be understood that
the database that stores PageRank values is only updated about
once every 3-4 months.

While Google does use links to a web page to determine the web
page's PR value, it is impossible these days to utilize Google
to find what links are directed to your pages. Even the Google
webmaster tools (http://google.com/webmasters/) interface
will not show you all of the links Google is counting towards
your own Link Popularity or PR value.

Playing Follow-The-Leader

In earlier years, Yahoo and MSN did not employ a link popularity
calculation in their search algorithms. But, when one competitor
is thoroughly kicking their competition, then the underdog
competitor must respond, if they have any desire to remain
relevant.

So, after years of lagging behind the Google powerhouse, Yahoo
and MSN decided it was time to work a link popularity calculation
into their search algorithms.

Both Yahoo and MSN are still struggling to find a way to retake
some market share from Google. Even with Yahoo's Project Panama
rollout and MSN's Live Search rollout, both are still finding
Google to be a difficult 800-pound gorilla to conquer.

Building Link Popularity

In essence, even if search engines did not include link
popularity as a portion of their ranking procedures, one would
still want to develop links to his or her websites.

Links are the roadways that keep Internet users moving from one
website to another. Before the search engines became the
all-powerful providers of Internet traffic, the role of Internet
promotion was to establish links on pages where a website's
target audience is already going.

The goal of course is to get the person reading the page to click
the link to the target website. With every visitor to a website
being a potential customer, it makes good sense to get as many
visitors to the website as possible, and that requires getting as
many links as possible pointing to a website.

Google PageRank 101

Since Google drives the largest portion of search traffic on the
Internet, I am only going to focus on their link popularity
system.

All web pages on the Internet have been assigned a PageRank value
by Google, according to the value of the web pages that link to
them. This number is always in flex as links are made, lost or
change value.

In short, the pages linking to your pages have their own Google
PageRank value, according to who links to them, and the value of
the pages that are linking to their web page. As the web pages
linking to your web pages gain value, then your pages will also
gain value in the Google PageRank algorithms.

As a Webmaster, it should be your goal to create as many links to
your website, as you can muster. Eventually, most of the web
pages with real value will gain their own PageRank, and they will
pass some of their PR value to your web pages.

But, I Tried That Once...

Whatever link building strategy one might recommend, there will
be someone else saying, "But, I tried that once and it did not
work." Some may go a bit further and say that they tried it once
and received initial good results in Google's SERP's, but then
those results shortly dissipated and the previous high placement
in Google evaporated.

A common story I hear is that "we tried" a specific link building
process. Shortly after doing so, our website went from result 300
in Google's results to page two or three of the search results.
Then a month later, our website dropped to around 100 in the
search results as the link page slipped into Google's
Supplemental results. These people often conclude that the link
building process used was not effective.

They make this statement because they do not understand the
inner-workings of what is happening to their link popularity and
search engine placements.

Several Factors Drive the Roller Coaster

With press releases, it is easy to comprehend the how and why of
the climb and fall. Press Releases are treated as news stories,
and as such, they are more important in real time than they will
be in a month or so. That is why press releases can generate big
results quickly, and it also explains why those results quickly
fade away.

With article marketing, it is common for a new article placement
to help any website mentioned within the article and its
accompanying resource box (about the author information) to rise
in the search rankings early, then to drop away for a time, and
perhaps rise in value again later.

Let me explain how this process works, and it will make more
sense to you.

Google's Main Index and Supplemental Listings

In order for the referenced website to get the PageRank it needs
to climb in the search results, the web pages linking to it must
have their own PageRank. As a single web page gains in link
popularity and PageRank, the web page will also improve in the
search results.

When a new article is placed for the first time, it is always
placed on a "brand new" page on the Internet. New pages on the
Internet, by their very nature, do not have any external links
pointing to them and therefore, they do not have any established
PageRank.

In recognition of this "brand new" status, Google is giving a
pass to those new web pages. As far as the Google algorithm is
concerned, these "brand new" pages might have value, but that
value cannot yet be determined based on the number of links
pointing to the page.

At the end of Google's "pass window", Google checks to see if
this new page has developed any of its own inbound links and
PageRank value. If the new web page has not developed any value
of its own after a window of 30-45 days, then the new page will
be moved from Google's main index to Google's Supplemental
listings. If the new page has developed PageRank, then the page
will remain in Google's main index.

According to Matt Cutts, the Google Guy, "Having urls in the
supplemental results doesn't mean that you have some sort of
penalty at all; the main determinant of whether a url is in our
main web index or in the supplemental index is PageRank."
(http://mattcutts.com/blog/infrastructure-status-january-2007
)

Many web pages that have slipped into the Supplement listings
will gain their own PageRank over the long term, and as such,
those pages may return to Google's main index in the future. If
articles are valuable resources to their readers, then many
placements of those articles will be given their own inbound
links and therefore PageRank, but it takes time.

As a general rule, it appears that the average web page will gain
a measure of PageRank somewhere in the range of 90 to 180 days
from the day the web page was created. While not all pages will
receive inbound links and PageRank, enough of them do to make the
whole process worthwhile.

You Cannot Win If You Do Not Play

As a Webmaster, your website will never gain link popularity if
you do not take actions to increase the number of links pointing
to your website. If the web page never accrues any link
popularity, it will not gain PageRank, and it will not rise in
the search engine rankings.

You are in the driver's seat, so if you fail to accomplish link
popularity and search placement, then it will have been the fault
of your inaction.

Do you remember my sample scenario above, "Shortly after
(completing a link building campaign), our website went from
result 300 in Google's results to page two or three of the
search results. Then a month later, our website dropped to around
100 in the search results as the link page slipped into Google's
Supplemental results."

These people frequently conclude that a specific link building
activity produced no results, because they did not stay on page
two or three of the results. Surprisingly, these people tell us
that they started out at #300 and ended up at #100, and yet they
claim that the process did not work in their case. How so? They
climbed 200 places in the search results. How is that an
ineffective link building campaign?

So, the next time you hear someone crying about the link
popularity roller coaster, think back on this article, and you
might be able to help him or her to clear the fog of confusion.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Platt has offered article marketing services
through http://thephantomwriters.com since 2001.
If you are interested in guaranteed link building
(http://linksandtraffic.com) services,
utilizing articles as the foundation for the links,
then Bill's team can help you with that as well.
If you have questions that only Bill can answer,
give him a call at (405) 780-7745, between
9am-6pm CST, Monday through Friday.

Directories

Blog Directories

Official Blog Search - Need we say more.

Web Directories

62-151 Media Group - Web Directory

Blog Internet Marketing Online - 7 Secrets of How to Maximize Your Blog Marketing Profit!

To maximize your blog marketing profit online, you have to learn the right strategies for your blog internet marketing. With the right strategies, you will earn extra money on the internet and boost your blog marketing profit. You will learn top 7 secrets of how to maximize your profits with your blogs in this article.

In general, marketing your blog online is not all that hard to do. You have to be consistency, persistent and want to success, however, if you want your blog to do well. You can not just make a post and forget about it. You have to update continuously your blog and market consistency it so that it will become popular and one that everyone wants to read.

There are many blog internet marketing online techniques to promote your blogs and earn money on the internet. In this article, you will learn top 7 secrets of how to advertise your blog online. You will discover workable and proven success blog internet marketing techniques.

1. Conduct the interview session with other targeted people in your blog market. Interviewing other people and posting the interview results on your blog is an excellent technique to market your blog online. To maximize the effective interview and your blog internet marketing online, you have to ensure that those people that you interview pertain to the market of your blog. You want all of your posts to be quality, useful, relevant, including any interviews that you might do. For example, if your blog internet online market was vacuum cleaners, and you did an interview with the owner of Hoover vacuum cleaner; that would definitely pertain to your market.

2. Update and post hot news, breaking news and up-to-date news on your blog. If you hear any news on the market of your blog, you have to make sure that you post it on your blog. This technique is one of the most powerful blog internet marketing online techniques. Everyone loves news, and event. The readers of your blog will appreciate your blogs about the current events in the market. However, there is something to keep in mind when blogging about the news is the more current the news, the better. No one wants to re-read old news, so it is a great idea to try and stay as current as possible when you are blogging about the news.

3. Setup the contest in your blog and market. Contests are another blog marketing technique that you effectively market your blog. Having contests on various things would be a lot of fun, and something that will keep your readers coming back. Everyone loves to win things, and you can also make the prize that you are giving away relevant to the market you are promoting on your blog.

4. Write your own original content with high quality standard. While great content is something that you will need for your blog, you also want to ensure that it is original content. You can market a blog with something that is copied and that you do not own the rights. Importantly, the plagiarism will get you in trouble with Google as well as the person that originally wrote the content. Obviously, it appears that you have to ensure that you own the right when you post anything on your blogs. This is a great thing to know and do when you are marketing your blog.

5. Write the press releases. There is no doubt that press releases are also an excellent way to market your blog online. Writing the press release about your blog is the most powerful blog internet marketing technique to promote your blogs to the world and maximize your blog marketing profit. This technique has been proven that your blogs will be visible to the world quickly and as long as it is on the internet.

6. Try to give your comments on other related blogs. Giving your comments on other blogs is also a very important aspect of blog internet marketing online. You will want to be sure that you always answer and acknowledge the comments that are made to your blog as well as others. When you show that you are an actual person that can hold a conversation, you are showing others that you are real and that you really and truly have the best intentions for your blog. There is one thing you have to remember when you use this blog marketing technique. It is to make sure that no comment goes unanswered.

7. Exchange your blog links with others. Marketing a blog comes naturally for some and can be a little harder to focus on for others. Another important thing that you will want to do for your blog is to be sure that you find links. Exchange links, get one way links, and ask for more and more links. You will never have enough links to your blog. The more links the better in this blog internet marketing online.

Final thoughts, it obviously appears that the blog internet marketing online is not hard to do with the right strategies. To make sure that you can earn extra money on the internet with your blogs and maximize your blog marketing profit, you have to make sure that you follow all above of the proven and tried techniques. The last suggestion could be that you do not give up and keep on consistency marketing your blogs online. It will definitely pay off sooner or later in the future.

Learn more about how to earn extra money online with blog through #1 best free advertising strategy online – with zero or no cost. You’ll discover proven great tips on internet marketing of how to earn extra money online with blog, drive laser-targeted traffic to your blog and much more. Also, you’ll save your time and money for trial & error with your blogs.

Get a report now to discover great tips on internet marketing, internet marketing techniques and secrets of how to make money at home easy through your online home based internet marketing business with multiple marketing strategies (e.g. email promotion internet marketing, affiliate marketing business, and blogging). There are many easy ways to make money online there. You’ll learn a lot of easy ways to make money online at home. Also, you’ll save your time & money for your online home based internet marketing business!

Read more articles about online home based internet marketing business and how to earn extra money at:
http://zMakeMoney.com/blog

About The Author

Siripong R. or zMillionDollars is a recognized authority on the subject of making money online from home through highly profitable & successful home based business. His websites, http://zmakemoney.com/ and http://zmilliondollars.com/, provide a wealth of informative articles and resources on everything you'll ever need to know about earning money online.

*Reprint Policy: Reprint in full with writer's name, contact information, active links and brief bio.

This article is free for republishing
Source: http://articlealley.com/article_170207_13.html

Word Press

Cyber Learning Hub

How to Eat Your Competition Alive!

One of the questions I get often is, “How do I deal with competition.” Most people want to know how they can prevent competition or what steps they can take to overcome competition successfully.

These days, on the Internet, there are two sides of a coin.

It is so easy for a person to get into a market because it is simple to start a business in just about any niche.

There are low barriers to entry to most businesses, so competition is rampant. You may realize an opportunity and start making good money.

The chances are high someone else will see your success and try to mimic it.

So how do you deal with this? How do you protect yourself from copycats?

It’s easy to have competitors.

In fact the more money you make the more competitors you will have.

You have to think faster than people can copy you, and you must develop what I call hidden advantages to dominate your niche.

Copycat “syndrome” as I like to call it is common.

You may be in a good niche, and some guy sees you are making good money, so he decides to copy your ideas. He comes up with a new product to compete with you.

People want to prevent this, but you can’t prevent competitors.

You will always have competitors regardless of what you do. The more money you make the more competitors you’ll have. It’s just the way things work.

You can however, overcome any threats associated with competition. How?

Innovate faster than they others can copy your material. Develop hidden advantages.

That’s the key to overcoming competition.

If you want to dominate your niche, you must have some hidden advantages that are hard to copy. Your competitors should not even know you have these advantages.

They may copy what you are doing, but they won’t be able to copy your hidden advantages.

Many competitors will then fail because they are confused about what you are doing. Why? They won’t understand the reasons behind what you are doing. They won’t realize you have hidden advantages.

How can you make hidden advantages work for you? Let me give you some examples.

Let’s take the internet guru business. I have many competitors, many new people coming in trying to be marketing gurus.

My secret? I’m not an internet guru. My specialty is website conversion. I teach people how to convert more visitors into paying customers. I niche. I don’t claim to be the number one “internet marketing” guru. But I am the world’s number one website conversion expert. That is a hidden expertise, a hidden advantage.

I was there first, found this niche first, so that gives me an advantage. When people come into my niche, when they want to compete, they are only reminding people of my success and experience.

People see my name everywhere that is a hidden advantage.

High name investors and entrepreneurs also endorse me. That is a hidden advantage. I have testimonials from high people in high places. Best-selling authors and multi-millionaires. That is a difficult hidden advantage to duplicate.

I give out free CD’s, I combine online and off-line marketing techniques. These hidden techniques are hard to copy. Competitors won’t see this, they won’t know whether these techniques are working or not. I do things to confuse my competitors. This is also a hidden advantage.

My personality is also an advantage, a hidden advantage. My personality is impossible to duplicate. My experience and my ten years of experience in marketing aren’t easy to copy.

Most newbies also don’t have all the products I do. I have much more than an e-book for example. By the end of the year I’ll also have 4 published books, and other offers worth $3,000 and more. I am established, and it is hard to compete with this.

My question is this… What are your hidden advantages? If you don’t have hidden advantages you better come up with one or two very quickly. There must be something you have, something you posses, something difficult for your competitors to duplicate.

Once you have those hidden advantages, you don’t have to worry about people coming into your niche and competing.

They say, “He is so established, so well-known I can’t compete.” So they move on. That is the barrier you want to create to discourage them. You want to make it difficult for them to complete.

Sit down and write down what your hidden advantages are, then work on building them. That is what you can do to crush your competition and discourage people from competing against you.

A former college dropout, Dan Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to a multi-millionaire. Dan came to North America with little knowledge of the English language and few contacts. Today, Dan is one of the most sought-after business mentors on the Web, as well as a best-selling author. His reputation includes his title as the World's #1 Website Conversion Expert. To find out what Dan is up to now, visit him at: http://www.WebsiteConversionExpert.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Lok

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Flanture

Flanture is short for Flash Adventure. This is actually combination of two different but complementary blogs.

First Flanture I is mostly about Flash games, flash mobile games and programming in flash lite for mobile devices.

Second Flanture II includes more RIA stuff like Flex, ActionScript3.0 and new Adobe Integrated Runtime, known as AIR.

Choice is yours.

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