Thursday, April 28, 2011

How to Blog-Easy Step by Step Guide

Guide to help you blog & make money blogging online. Find how to choose Blog platform, domain name, money making ideas, content, marketing, social media etc.

I decided to simplify things about making money online blogging and offer practical tips to implement on blogs. Since there’s so much of hype and overload about making money blogging, I decided to cut through the clutter and write from my own experience.

Is it true that people are making money publishing blogs?
Yes, there are many fulltime bloggers earning big dollars like Dareen Rose of Problogger.com. And there are millions of not so serious blogs that make a fair bit of money. This gives you hope and confidence.

How should I start a blog?
Common sense tells that the first step to publishing a blog is to analyze a few things about yourself.

What are your aims in publishing a blog?
Anything we do must have a clear goal. Do you want to begin a new hobby. Want to make dollars to add to your regular earnings. Are you keen to share your knowledge in something or expertise in some area. Are you exploring a money making opportunity to quit your daytime job a few years from now. Want to build authority on a subject as a subject matter expert.

How much time do you have for blogging?
This is a very important question to answer. A few minutes a day or an hour a day. Since there’s going to be a fair bit of hard work.

Are you willing to learn?
If you’re keen to set up a blog and make money online, then you must be prepared to learn quite a bit – how to choose a theme to blog, promoting your blog, posting regularly, which platform to use – blogger, wordpress, type pad etc; use of social media, understanding what your readers want, researching, using analytics, choosing revenue programs like adsense, kontera, chitika, affiliate programs; and more.

How to select a topic for your blog?
This is very important, friends. Are you a gardening enthusiast, a stamp collector, a techie, an astrology buff, a basketball player, a person interested in helping others, an environmentalist, someone who has a lot of stories to say, a bike and car crazy guy? Then you have a chance of converting your passion into a blog. And of course make money through blogs.


Do some research to find what your audience wants?
Many bloggers jump into a theme only to find results not coming in fast, or run out of themes very soon, besides running out of steam. To avoid that, after you have chosen a theme – say hybrid cars, find out what’s there on the net on the subject. Use some of Google’s cool tools for webmasters like Insights. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#

This useful keyword trend tool provides a glimpse of what people might be searching for on your topic. This gives a trend by region, time frame and content category.

The Google Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal allows you to find out alternate keyword phrases for your topic and the amount of advertising competition for the same. Find out more about your topic’s need in the market.

Search on major engines like Google, yahoo or MSN for latest reports on your topic. You’ll discover the potential of the market.

Can you make money out of your theme?
You need to be very careful here. Explore the revenue potential of your theme before setting up the blog. The Google Keyword Tool gives an indication of advertiser interest and prospective services around your are of interest. Search your topic on Google, Yahoo and MSN and see if there are many sponsored results and ads on the search results page.

Alternatively, you could check 10 to 20 sites that come up while searching for information on your blog theme. Browse through and find out what the sites offer – ads of various services and products; affiliate programs, ebooks, products etc. This will give you the hope and confidence to make money blogging on that subject.

How to Choose a name for your blog?
This is very important, as important as choosing a name for your child. Smart internet marketing is about choosing a name that’s familiar with people (I mean a word already top of mind). Keep it small. The best keyword for your blog should form part of your domain name. Example: shopping.com. gadgetgifts.com. horoscopes.com, technews.com, guitarlessons.com etc.

Note: I suggest you get your own domain name (costs about $10 a year), rather than have a .wordpress or .blogspot.com.

What domain extensions to select?
.com; .net; .org; or .us (or whichever country you target the blog for)

Which blogging platform should I chose?
Wordpress, blogger, typepad, moveabletype are popular blogging platforms. Blogger’s drag and drop is easier for those who don’t know even a bit of html or don’t want to learn basic code. The rest need a little bit of learning. But, believe me it can be learnt in a few weeks.

Ready with blogging platform! What next?
Use the two tools suggested above, research what people want on the net and begin to write. You must write atleast 300 words per blog post. The odd one if it’s a recommendation of another site, product or service can be 100 words too. But your regular posts must be of good quality and about 300 words.

Write atleast 10 posts before you publish your blog. And then keep writing regularly. Initially, one post a week is fine. And you can build on it later.

How to write an SEO-friendly title for your blog?
Choose the most important keyword phrases for your blog and write the title. The title is very important as it informs readers and search engines what the blog is about. So it must be your key element.

For example: CNN’s title: CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment ...

Gifts.com’s title: Gift Ideas: Christmas Gifts, Gift Baskets, Gift Cards, Wedding Gifts

See how clearly they indicate what the site is about.

How to write a Search Engine Friendly Description while blogging?
When you type a search, the first line you see for any site is the title. The next two lines are its description. Readers tend to read the title and description, while deciding whether to open the site or not? So writing a description that fits the blog is very important. Infact, you must spend as much quality time as possible to write titles and descriptions that attract. Using keywords that people tend to search with for information on your site is critical from the search engine point of view.

Here are some examples of titles and descriptions that fit the content of the site.

Description for Walmart.: Shop Walmart Online for Low Prices on Top Brands in Computers, TVs, Toys, GPS, Video Games, DVDs, Music, Apparel, Housewares, iPod, Photo, Grocery, ...

Description for Amazon.com: +Description: Online retailer of books, video games, toys, music, and video recordings. Region 1 DVDs and prices in US dollars.

Description for JC Penney: Provides a variety of apparel for the whole family, jewelry, housewares and home decor, and shoes. Includes a gift registry, employment and credit card ...

Now, just go ahead and set up your blog. Publish posts regularly. Link up to bloggers you know. Submit your site to the search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and ASK. And slowly you’ll see traffic picking up. Good Luck.

Stumbleupon Button with Counter for Blogger Blog Posts

A simple step by step guide with pictures on adding the Stumbleupon button code with counter to every blogger post, right at the top of every post. The code will display the number of people who have shared the page on Stumbleupon, indicating of the usefulness of the content.



Here’s the Stumbleupon code for blogger blogs:





10 step tutorial to add Stumbleupon Button Code for Blogger Blog Posts



Step 1: Now log into your blogger account and you will see a dashboard.



Step 2: Click the “Design” tab (see picture below)







Step 3: Now you’ll see three tabs below. Click the “Edit HTML” tab

Step 4: Click the check in box “Expand Widget Templates”

Step 5: After clicking inside the text box, use “cnrtl F” buttons (control find) and type /body

Step 6: You will arrive at

Step 7: Now paste the Stumble Upon code (from the box at the tops of post) just above this line (see picture below)







Step 8: Hit the “Preview” button at the bottom of text box

Step 9: You’ll see a new page popping up. Check out if the button appears as show in the picture below.







Step 10: If it’s all correct, then hit the “Save Template” and you’re done.



Now it’s easier for your blogger blog readers to submit your page to StumbleUpon. And that should earn you a lot of traffic. Add every page of your blog to your stumbleupon, but do it at one page a week. And share relevant, useful content from other blogs and sites (here you can share as many links). That’s the way to make yourself useful to the StumbleUpon community.



Now, don’t forget to add my page to your StumbleUpon. Thanks!

To your blogging success,



Rajasekar Raju KS



Yuo may also like How to Add facebook Like Counter Button to Blogger

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Only Love Keeps You Going

People need to have a passion for something in order to excel at that, be it sport or business.

How often do we read stories about a burning childhood passion that results in doing impossible, incredible and hugely successful things. And I begin to wonder whether we have lost the love for things we like. The trainers often tell you that dreaming is the predecessor to success. That unless one dreams one never achieves. And we always dream about things we love and are crazy about.
Yes, LOVE, that’s the magic word. Love for pursuing things despite odds, love for execution even when faced with failure, love for going on without knowing the boundaries, love for the love of it. Not for money, fame or recognition.

This brings success – not the success that the world thinks of as money, progress in life, change in status, new cars… but the sheer joy of the journey of doing what you love.

The investment guru Warren Buffet famously said how he chooses to invest in a company: “I look into their eyes (company owners) and try to figure out whether they love the money, or if they love the business…if they don’t love the business, I can’t put that [money] into it.

“[Then] my job is to make sure that I don’t do anything that kills that love of the business.”

Now you know why Buffet picked great winners. He saw the love in their eyes.

Monday, April 25, 2011

The Blind Men and the Elephant Short Story

This is part of a long series of short Zen and Buddha stories that I'm writing. They offer simple solutions to complex problems in Life. Full of insight these ancient stories are a real treasure.

Some of Buddha’s disciples discussed God one day. The arguments went on till evening and there was no consensus. So they went to Buddha.

“What is God?” they asked Buddha.

The Buddha asked for an elephant and four blind men to be brought before him.
He then asked the Blind men to feel it and say what it was.

The blind men did as instructed.

“It looks like a pillar,” said one who felt its huge leg.

The second who ran his hand over the elephant’s belly replied, “That can’t be so, it’s actually a wall.”

“It’s certainly a thick rope,” said the third.

“I think it’s a piece of cloth,” said the fourth that held its ears.

The Buddha then asked his followers, “Each of these people seem to say different things about the same elephant. Which one is right?”

Notes: The world is not the same to all. Each person’s experience shapes the way one sees the world. The truth can be experienced in many ways. There is no single way. Each one must explore and discover the truth.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

How a Blogger lost domain name and 12K visitors?

I learnt a very hard lesson recently after my domain name selfimprovementpath.com was “grabbed” by someone. The renewal mails went to a mail id I don’t use currently and it led to the expiry of the name. Currently, the guy who purchased it has parked it on Godaddy for cash, obviously trying to make some money from the 12K visitors who’ll land up there.

Having built it over the past couple of years it was painful. But I needed a kick in my butt for not updating my email id on my Godaddy account.

But what I did after I realized the loss was to quickly get another domain name (www.Selfgrowthtips.com) mapped to my content hosted on blogger.com. And then went through the following steps:

1. Updated the new blog url on my Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, About.me, Slideshare and directories where my blog was listed
2. Wrote to all those linking in to my old blog, seeking help in updating my new domain url (Some obliged rightaway while I’m yet to hear from others)
3. Update my current email id on my godaddy account
4. Set up my domain name for “Auto Renew”
5. Did a brief post on blogger to tell search engines and visitors about the domain name change
6. Updated Google analytics and Adsense

Has anyone else faced this before? And what do you suggest.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Moved to new domain

Dear Friends,

I lost my domain name www.selfimprovementpath.com as the domain renewal mails went to a mail id I seldom use. And someone grabbed the name before I realised it.

So I just moved to a new domain name www.selfgrowthtips.com. Hope to see all of you soon.

Rajasekar Raju KS