I Wish I Knew What a Blog Was

By: Pat Marcello

When you're new online, especially when you're an Internet marketing enthusiast, you have undoubtedly heard the term "blog." But you may be wondering, What are they? Well, they're rather like a journal, where you can write anything you wish. If you have a personal blog, it can be private, but if you're interested in sharing with the world, then a blog is an incredibly effective tool. You can write anything you want to write, add video and sound, or add pictures. The cool thing is that you don't have to please editors or censors (unless your blog is on a hosted server, and not your own). You can write about anything from aardvarks to zenophobia and join in the fun.

Blogs can be hosted on someone else's server or on your own server. Hosted blogs are like those you find at Blogger.com or WordPress.com, but it's always better to have your blog on your own server. That way, you can customize it any way you want to, and if you're in the Internet marketing business, you can then link back to your own and other commercial sites. A one-way link pointing to your website from your blog is great for SEO (search engine optimization), and you can put up advertising like Google AdSense, banners, or whatever you like. Just don't make things too full of junk or people won't appreciate it. Keep your blog tasteful while providing great content that leads to the products you want people to buy.

The most popular blog platform is undoubtedly WordPress, which you can download free from WordPress.org. Or, if you have hosting that uses a cPanel control panel, you'll proably have Fantastico, which will install a WordPress blog with just a few mouse clicks. Just be sure to do a little planning before starting a blog. Decide what your theme will be and then, find a great tempate to suit it. Templates give blogs a new face, other than the standard WordPress theme. Some will work better for your individual purposes than others. Be sure that the template you select works in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, too. Sometimes Internet Explorer does strange things after you customize your blog.

Once your style is set, you'll want to apply for a Google AdSense account, and when approved, put up some ads. You can find WordPress templates that already have the codes installed. You just have to change the User ID number to make them specific to your AdSense account. So, if you intend to use AdSense, keep this in mind when choosing your template. Don't expect to make a fortune overnight, but you will start to see AdSense revenue as the traffic to your blog increases.

But the thing to remember is to have fun with your blog. It's best to stick to a central theme and write all your posts around it. So, if you're writing about dogs in your blog, don't go off on a "What I ate for breakfast" rant or people won't appreciate it. Those kinds of whiny blogs are not heavily trafficked, anyway. If you want to have that kind of a blog, separate it from the dogs and let them make money.

You can really drive traffic back to your website with a blog, though--in several different ways. In my next article, I'll show you how.

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