The Alternative Broadcasting Online News Station

Many bloggers rely upon revenue created by Google’s popular contextual advertising program, Adsense. In all honesty, Adsense has probably been the driving force behind the increased level of interest in using blogs as a revenue producing tool. However, not all bloggers are able to use Adsense and it may not meet the specific needs of some other users.

If you have a blog that produces a nice stream of traffic and are looking for alternatives to Adsense, you may want to consider some of these options:

Adgenta. Adgenta is a keyword based advertising program that allows users to insert ads into their blog. Every time an ad is clicked, the blogger is paid a flat rate of $.015US. Adsense determines which ads to display based on its own assessment of your page’s content. Adgenta, on the other hand, allows you to choose which keywords you would like it to use in choosing advertisements. This can be a great solution for those who have pages that fail to serve up relevant Adsense ads or for those who tend to get only very low paying ads and feel there are related subjects that would induce clicks from users. Adgenta’s interface is simple and sign up is free. The ads are actually inserted into your site using simple HTML blocks and the ads are actually linked graphics, unlike the more complicated script used by Adsense.

Yahoo. Yahoo has launched YPN, its version of Adsense and preliminary reports indicate that it may be a profitable solution for those unable to use Adsense. The Yahoo system works in a manner various similar to Adsense, and Adsense users should be able to utilize the program easily. Although still in its infancy, the program is backed by a major player, which lends it a greater degree of long-term reliability. Unfortunately, the YPN project is still in beta and one must apply for or receive an invitation to participate.

Ad Networks. Instead of relying on a pay-per-click model, many bloggers have decided to sell space on their blogs for advertising. This can be accomplished by the blogger directly or through the use of an ad brokerage. Those who feel your blog will attract the type of audience likely to find their product appealing may rent space for an advertisement on your site. If you have a blog that receives a significant number of well-targeted visitors, selling advertising space can be a great alternative to the Adsense PPC model.

Other options abound. Chikita mini-malls, using your blog as a way to launch affiliate sales, text link programs, the new MSN contextual advertising program and a host of alternatives are available. If Adsense doesn’t work for your blog, or you cannot use Adsense, there are some other credible ways to make your blog a financial winner. Adsense may be the biggest game in town, but it certainly is not the only one!

Learn more about blogging at http://www.blogging.internetdiscussionforum.com

Kind regrads
David hobson

The term blog comes from the word iweblog. Blogs have been around for approximately 6 years in their current form - as a digital journal maintained by one or more authors. The blogosphere is the portion of the Internet where the websites are blogs. Anyone who blogs (writes blog entries) is referred to as a blogger.

Part of the charm of a blog is that the writing voice is very personal, one-on-one. This is much more palatable to readers, making it easier for them to trust the writer. Research shows that the most popular blogs also have a photo of the writer, even if the blog ultimately exists for promoting the services or products of a business. This also builds trust, and would seem out of place on a regular website, unless it was a regular column - and thus similar to a blog anyway.

Another advantage that a blog has over a regular website is that Search Engines currently love indexing them, since the content is typically updated very regularly. In fact, successful bloggers say that you must write and post blog entries at least daily, if not multiple times daily, if you want your blog to rank high in the Search Engines and blog directories for relevant keywords.

An ongoing experiment of mine shows that my blogs get indexed by the Search Engines more frequently than my regular websites. If you have both a website and a blog, you can then use the relative popularity of your blog to advertise your website, thus drawing traffic.

Another use for a blog is to develop Google PR (Page Rank) for your main site. If you write and post quality content to your blog frequently, you will eventually draw links from other arwebsites and blogs. This in turn helps increase your blog’s PR - a relative measure of popularity - which helps your visibility in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Similarly, if your blog links back to your main site, the site’s PR will eventually increase as well.

On the issue of using a blog to promote your business, you have to tread carefully. Your blog has to offer informative content without hard-selling your products and services. (But there is one blog, Woot.com, which exists solely to sell a new product every day.)

If you do publish a “business” blog, offer tips relevant to your business and its industry. Build trusting relationships. For example, if you selling antique furniture to consumers, offer useful do-it-yourself tips on refinishing, hints on how to save money by bargaining, materials to use for fix-it projects, and so on. Show the reader that you are interested in their well-being and finances, not just your bottom-line sales.

On the other hand, if your business caters to wholesale furniture buyers for chain or department stores, your blog content will have to be different. Such buyers are not interested in the same information as the average antique buyer. Target your blog content appropriately.

You can also add advertising to your site, which should be relevant to your blogging topics. Many of the ad networks provide “contextual” ads by scanning your blog (or website) and checking for keywords. The delivered ads will be thus be relevant.

While some people view ads as an annoyance, there are others who are searching for information. They may find your website via a Search Engine, but they may still be looking for additional information, or even product-specific information. The intent of contextual advertising is to provide links to sites with such information. And you get rewarded for (legitimate) clicks on ad links.

The truth is, there are millions of blogs out there, and blogging services report that number is growing rapidly on a daily basis. Carve out a niche relevant to your business. Exercise the leverage that Search Engines give to blogs. Post surveys and comment boxes so that readers can interact with you. In other words, build a relationship with readers. It takes time and effort to develop regular traffic to your blog, and quality content and frequency is the key.

(c) Copyright: 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, Chameleon Integration Systems

Raj Kumar Dash is a writer, author, and Internet consultant. Visit his hubsite at http://www.chameleonintegration.com/ to find the full introduction to blogging. (A free ebook on blogging is in the works.) Newbie bloggers can also visit Raj’s BlogSpinner blog at http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/ for a “how-to guide to blogging”.

There are a few metrics that give us a sense of where New Orleans stands relative to a half-year ago before Katrina. The Times-Picayune tells us that population is at 41% in the City, then gives other measures for the metro area: the labor force is at 68%; 91% of hotels are open, though many rooms are occupied by locals at FEMA’s expense. Restaurants are estimated at 37%, while hospital beds are at 50%.

Would it be useful to have one number that represents a composite of the measurables, with a lot of informed subjectivity? John Vinturella calls that number the Hospitality Index (HI), and suggests that it represents how N.O. is faring in terms of its “hospitality” toward people who live in the City, those that expect to return, and other visitors.

Dr. Vinturella lost two houses and a car in the storm, but assures us that his loved ones are well, and that he was adequately insured (assuming that the insurers will eventually pay reasonable claims). With all the misery inflicted by the storm, John feels personally lucky, a victim of only “massive inconvenience.”

The informed subjectivity comes from his experiences as an “urban warrior,” fighting his way through packed streets looking for a grocery, a gym, a dry cleaner, a barber shop, and a restaurant where wait time is less than an hour. All the while he is living in an unfamiliar part of town and paying exorbitant rent.

HI may be thought of as a measure of how inviting and supportive the City feels to its constituents relative to some norm representing New Orleans before the storm. We hope that, on some characteristics, the Index can exceed 100%, that is, where performance in some category is better than before the storm. Ethics in government and effectiveness of the public school system come immediately to mind.

The Index will be maintained by John on his blog nobulletin.blogspot.com, nicknamed “NOBull.” He has enlisted several friends as data gatherers, and welcomes input from his readers, on such things as businesses closed and open, the rental and purchase housing markets, and services weak and strong, particularly in the public sector.

“The impact of Katrina can be better understood ‘on the ground.’ Imagine, after six months, that related stories totally dominate the news. Mail delivery is not yet daily, and only first-class mail is being delivered in the City. ‘How did you do in the storm?’ is still the City’s most frequently asked question.”

John B. Vinturella, Ph.D. has almost 40 years experience as a management and strategic consultant, entrepreneur, author, and college professor. For 20 of those years, Dr. Vinturella was owner/president of a distribution company that he founded. He is a principal in business opportunity sites jbv.com and muddledconcept.com, and maintains business and political blogs.

Blogging is taking the online world by storm. It is the fastest rising new activity on the internet. It is allowing people to post their thoughts not only about personal things but also about the world at large.

Blogs, otherwise known as web logs, is both an online diary and a guestbook. Anyone can set a blog account or function on their website and then post entries on it. As part of the blogging function, it can either be set up as a private journal where people can just read what is posted or it can be set up in such a way where readers can get together and then place their own comments on your entry or to each other.

Blogs can be considered as opinion pieces on a particular topic or field. There are topic specific blogs where entries are limited to the topic set by the blogger. There is also an area specific blog which can be a resource on particular place. There are also blogs that are set up as a source for news on a highly specialized topic of field that would otherwise be ignored by the general media. Blogs can be used by internet marketers and business owners to promote a website or use the internet traffic generated by the blog to promote a product, service or an affiliate program (as a separate source of income).

Internet marketing professionals highly encourage website and business owners to start their own blogs because they acknowledge that it is a powerful tool for internet marketing.

Here are some reasons why starting a blog is a great business move:

Blogs allow you to stay in touch with the subscribers and clients. A blog allows you to keep communication lines open with so that you can always interact with subscribers or readers. It also helps nurture trust in you as an individual and owner of a business owner.

It’s a great way to get regular feedback. A blog’s feature that enables readers to post comments is a great way of getting feedback from your clients. Clients and readers can comment on what you have posted and these replies can help you determine what they need.

A blog is not labour intensive. You don’t need a knowledge of HTML or other web designing skills to make and post blogs. Most bloggers use WYSIWYG HTML editors to help in the blogging function. These very easy to use and require very little technical skills, if at all.

A wonderful way to disseminate information. The biggest benefit of blogging is that you can post articles in the form of articles or reviews. These articles can help lift your reputation as an expert in your field.

It is a big help to your page ranking. Blogs are so rich in content that search engines can’t get enough of them. The fact that blogs also offer new content makes it attractive to search engines.

It is a great vehicle for advertising. Blogs can be a great venue for advertising because of the potential for the community to achieve a massive number of participants. It is also a cost effective advertising platform.

Mark Saunders owns and runs www.BloggyAward.com, one of the most prestigious blog review sites on the internet. Submit your blog today for a free review!

Blogs are currently very hot property online. It is not
therefore surprising to note that the sites with a high number
of regular traffic tend to be blogs.

But before you even go into the process of creating your blog,
you will need to know for what purpose you are going to use your
blog. Many online entrepreneurs usually use them to quickly
create a huge traffic that they then re-direct to their
websites. If this is your objective then the idea would be to
create blogs with popular themes that are related to your
websites.

Other successful online entrepreneurs use blogs just the way one
would use a website, only that blogs seem to be a hybrid version
of ordinary websites. This is mainly because of the popular
features that hardly exist in most websites. One of the most
prominent is that of readers having an opportunity to leave
comments and the fact that they usually almost effortless are
able to build up links and ultimately traffic to phenomenal
levels.

You could of course go ahead and hire a top-notch web designer
to design your blog for you. But it would make much more sense
to avoid spending money to start with and still get a great
looking professional site for free. You can then always upgrade
your blog later to pay status, when you have already started
enjoying some good revenue from it.

Admittedly, the problem with most free sites is that you may not
be able to get a great looking professional blog without moving
to a pay service immediately. However there are exceptions here.
If for instance you opt for SiteKreator then this will not be a
problem. This remarkable site has a wide array of features and
facilities that should make a great difference to how your blog
looks and with what ease you are still able to run and
administrate it.

Writing a blog for a website is much easier than making it noticed and making it a hit. Until and unless your posting is not ranked, your worth of writing is not prized. Your blog is your trump card to win you business and much much more. For your blogs to be successful make sure that you set your area of interest and then start focusing on it.

Your blogs should have an optimum keyword density that catches the eye of a search engine to get it noticed. Besides, they should have a visual appeal, latest and burning topics. Make your blog interesting and appealing for the visitors so that they can keep coming back to you for more.

Blogs: So Different To Win
Listed below are the factors that make blogs as the most wanted elements on the web:

1.Interactive, Dynamic and Worthy - Blogs are very dynamic masterpieces and interactive too. You can see your blog immediately as you post it. Unlike ezines, newsletters and forums, blogs present a meticulous picture on any issue. Moreover, a blogger has freedom to express on sundry topics as well.

2.Flexibility - Blogs can be started and published by anybody with the basic information. This is because of freely available blogging softwares and services like RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds at your behest. All you need is to choose the subject for your blog and get going.

3.Search engine Friendly - You can use keywords at appropriate locations to make your blog search engine friendly. This way, you can make your blog popular with the search engines and attract more traffic to the blog and your website.

4.Maintenance Free, Spam free and Economical - With so many viruses on the run emails, ezines are filtered out with Spam filters. This is not the case with the blogs, because they are not delivered to the people. Blogs are written and published via downsized blog softwares, which are also very easy to use and maintain. What’s more, you do not have to list your blogs unlike ezines or newsletters on the server, and thereby you can save money on running and maintaining a blog.

5.Information Rich: Almost all the blogs give huge information on every subject and field of study. You come to know the psyche of various bloggers and their point of views. Besides, information in the blogs serve as a catalyst to write your own blog, just as an answer or a retort to the one you read.
Thus, by adhering to the above information you can make your blogs win dollars day by day. What’s more, your blogs will establish a brand image for you and make you popular on Internet in just no time.

Learn more about blogging and computer software/hardware at our new computer reservoir: Articles About Computers

Jesse S. Somer
M6.Net
http://www.m6.net
Jesse S. Somer is a ‘grasshopper’ writer attempting to inform other beginner writers on how they might one day become masters or ‘sensei’s’.

That’s the question lots of people are asking – and the answers are as varied as all the blogs out there in cyberspace.
Oh, and in case you don’t know what blogs are, they’re web logs that are updated regularly, sometimes daily, kind of like an online diary. Even if you’re aware of blogs, you may have thought they were reserved for your teenage daughter…but think again!

Millions and millions

Blogs are growing like … well … blogs. Literally hundreds of corporations now have their own blogs. If you’re thinking names like Microsoft, Cisco, Sun Microsystems and IBM, you’re right. But add to that some surprising bloggers, including Boeing, P.R. firms Hill & Knowlton and Burson-Marsteller, Stone Creek Coffee Roasters and even a Savile Row Tailor, Thomas Mahon, and you’ll get an idea of just how big the idea of creating on-line logs has become.

In fact, there are more than 9 million blogs out there, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day. Admittedly, some are just plain silly (and not just those teenage girls). But even assuming that 99.9% aren’t worth reading, that leaves at least 40 new ones – every single day – that could be talking to your customers or engaging your employees.

So, what does it all mean for business?

Blogs have evolved into the latest approach to web content. Whether blogging is a here-today, gone-tomorrow fad or proves to be a new way to communicate with customers – either existing or potential – remains to be seen, but it deserves at least a closer examination.

Many companies under pressure to keep website content fresh and attractive think blogs are the answer. Innovative content is becoming a must for online businesses, both to be found by search engines and to give visitors a reason to return (and to buy).

Business blogs let companies give customers industry news and tell them how their products can be beneficial. And the fact that copy is updated daily increases the chances that search engines will find your site.

Ready to jump on the bandwagon?

If you decide to use a blog for your business, you must set a schedule and stick to it. Tell your readers what to expect and when to expect it. Blogs can direct attention to areas of your business that you want to showcase. You manage the content, but let your readers and customers guide you.

Blogs may or may not be for you, but you can’t afford to ignore them, because they’re changing how businesses communicate. Deciding to blog or not to blog is undoubtedly your decision, but keep in mind that ideas circulate at warp speed and customers are always out there, sniffing around for deals. And thousands of companies are looking at ways to collect ideas from blogs, dust ads into them, and even determine what their competitors are up to.

Whatever you do, have fun and good luck!

Allison Nazarian is president and chief copywriter of Get It In Writing, a Florida-based company that helps businesses nationwide harness the power of words to sell, inform and publicize. Allison can be reached at 561.487.3917 or anazarian@getitinwriting.biz.

Copyright© Get It In Writing, Inc. May be reprinted without permission of Get It In Writing, Inc and Allison Nazarian if in full, unchanged format and with complete attribution to author.

You may have been putting off the idea of writing articles but why? You may be thinking that you’ve got nothing to say or nobody would listen to what you want to say but if that was true how come blog’s have become so popular with the search engines? All the experts out there are doing it so they must be onto something. Blog’s are a great thing because they give your business a bit of personality and move your business away from just a cold emotionless website. Why do you think audio on websites have improved conversion rates, people can connect the sales letter with a person and if you put a picture up there and now they have a face to go with the voice and you improve your conversion even better!

Can you see where we’re going here?

So maybe now your thinking “I need a blog” But do you here’s a couple of reasons against it, you have to remember there’s no point starting a blog if you don’t have the time to add to it on a regular basis or if you don’t have enough to knowledge about your subject to write about it every day, there really is no point just starting a blog and writing any old thing. You’ll find that people will just stop reading it that’s even if they find it in the first place (that’s another day’s article.)

When you think about by looking from the surfer’s perspective would you really want to read the ranting and ravings of someone (o.k. maybe if it was entertaining) but if you didn’t learn from it you’d just move on, this is the “McDonalds” generation people want things and they want them now they haven’t the patience to hang around and they just move on!

After thinking this over maybe a blog isn’t for you, but don’t think that people won’t be interested in what you have to say. If you don’t have the time or the knowledge to write about your subject daily why you don’t put your thoughts in the form of a series of articles. This way you can plod along at your own pace and give some quality information rather that just fluff (nobody likes to read fluff.) You’ll find that your quality article will get passed around and who knows where it could end up. Another benefit of article writing is that people will start to link your name with your product or service, so you come across as being an expert in your field. So when they think of “Product X” your name comes up and where do you think they go to buy it??

So don’t put it off another day, sit down now and put an article together you don’t have to have a degree in English, just put your personality into it and give some great advice or knowledge and you’ll go a long way. And if you first article bombs, don’t give up, some of mine have and some have really taken off for me, you won’t know until you send it out and who knows what might happen?

Best of luck!

Got the article bug yet, if you do send a copy of your article to http://www.barryjmcdonald.com

As avian (or bird) flu makes it’s way into North Africa and the
Middle East, we should consider the dangers posed by American
activities in Iraq, the wider Middle East and other theatres of
conflict (Central and South Asia, South America). And Cuba of
course.

Of course, historically armies have always carried disease in
their wake, and the ongoing transfer and rotation of personnel
and materiel is worrying enough, especially with the criminal
penumbra that always accompanies such activity.

But now US, UK and Israeli spooks and torturers are secretly
transferring prisoners around the world, under no effective
control at all. Special forces are running terror campaigns
throughout much of Iran, Iraq and Syria. And that’s just the
headlines.

Even the most pro-US opinion must see the danger posed by the
secret transfer of prisoners across a secret network of jails in
multiple countries - surely you don’t imagine they are subject
to proper quaratine practise. Let alone that as far as we can
tell the boys spend a lot of the time travelling from one
overpriced hotel to another, taking time out to run up huge
bills in posh restaurants.

And if a major outbreak is caused by such activities, even a
worst case scenario pandemic with millions dying, who will be
held accountable? And will we ever know it happened like that?
Who would tell us - US or UK authorities, the corporate media?
Not hugely likely.

Then there’s those among the neo-cons and religious right who
will welcome such events. Can we trust them to take the
necessary precautions, or will they leave it to the will of God?

Feeling secure yet?