Internet Marketing Strategies, Effective Search Engine Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Proven Website Marketing Techniques

Zero Cost Blogging and Other Secret Weapons

Posted by J.D. Reilly in October 30th, 2008

In conversation with my friend Stu led to discussion about the number of new
people starting an online business. The discussion turned toward the numerous
Ways that one can and should begin with little or no money to make money online.

It’s surprising how many people out there wanting to make money still don’t have a website.

The first thing I did when I started online was begin with a free blog. I went to www.blogger.com and set up a free blog showcasing and branding me
and my (limited at that time) knowledge about internet marketing.

Blogs are very effective for the following reasons:

• You can establish yourself as an expert
• To promote affiliate offers or your own products
• To Build a following (or you may know it as building a list)
• To make money through recommendations and/or advertising
• Easy to add fresh content easily
• Get high rankings in the search engines that you need for exposure
• Blog about a topic you enjoy

These are just a few reasons why blogs are becoming so popular.

Here are some common MISTAKES that bloggers make that can lead to failure:

• You don’t have a targeted theme, in other words, choose a specific topic
To blog about and stay with that theme. Don’t blog about golf if your blog’s
Theme is about tennis.

• You don’t update your blog often. We, as humans, love fresh and relevant content…
So do the search engines!

• Your blog is “messy.” If you have edited the layout of your blog by adding banners,
Widgets, etc, it can start to look “spammy.” This is not good for making profit as
Many will get “turned off” as being your obvious intent. Remember, people (and search
engines) want information, not a sales pitch.

• You’re not building backlinks. If you are seeking to rank in the search engines then you need to get backlinks from other sites to boost your ranking!

An effective way to maximize your blog is to build multiple sites in related topics and linking them all together from within the content and blogrolls. For example, if your blog is about internet marketing then consider having a minisite on affiliate marketing, another site on search engine optimization, another site on list building, etc.

What should you post on your blog?

Always having to write and post a new article or story on your blog can become stressful. Remember, you don’t always have to write a fresh 300-500 word article for your blog. An example is this post, through conversation you can come up with some easy, interesting and relevant information that you can make as a post. However, here are some other ideas for your consideration:

• Find a video on YouTube and write a small post or “blurb” about it.
• Consider writing a “Top 10” article. “The 10 Easiest Guitar Songs.”
• Post up an article that you came across and just comment on it.

Just keep in mind that even a small post will get the search engines crawling back to your site. To understand more about robots, spiders and crawlers used by search engines read my post:
Robots, Spiders and Crawlers Oh My!

Here are some helpful and FREE Resources:

http://wordpress.com (My recommendation over blogger.com)
http://blogger.com
http://squidoo.com
http://hubpages.com (like squidoo)
http://gather.com (like Squidoo and Hubpages)
http://feedburner.com (RSS feed publisher)
http://pingomatic.com (ping after you post)

I hope that you find these recommendations helpful and that they will help your business grow.

To Your Success,
JD Reilly