10 Benefits of Hosting your Own Blog

If you want to create an edge over many of the other bloggers on the web, then one of the best things that you can do is host your own blog. There are a number of benefits of hosting your own blog over having some other service host your blog. Here are ten of the most prevalent benefits.

1 – Professional Appearance –

Hosting your own blog gives your blog a professional appearance, because you can use your own domain name or website name and can host your blog on your own website. If you do not host your own blog, you will have a lengthy blog URL which will make it appear less professional and will make it more difficult for readers to recall the name and website for your blog.

2 – Design –

Another benefit of hosting your own blog is the fact that you have a lot more freedom regarding the design. When you host your own blog, you do not have to follow a pre set design but can design your own blog layout instead.

3 – Recall Ability –

By hosting your own blog, you can make your blog easier to recall among readers. What address do you think is easier to recall, http://www.blogsite.com or http://blogsite.blogger.com/~blogname? The easier your domain name is, the easier it will be for readers to recall it, and this is one of the greatest benefits for hosting your own blog.

4 – Content Control –

While there are not normally really strict guidelines regarding content, when you have your blog hosted by a blogging network, your choices in content can be restricted. By hosting your own blog, you can have much larger control over your content.

5 – Security –

By hosting your own blog on your own website, you can have more control over your security, and will be better able to protect your own blog rather relying on someone else to do it.

6 – Brand Promotion –

By hosting your own blog, it will be easier to develop and promote your own brand. Even if you are not selling something, hosting your own blog will provide greater individuality than what shared hosting can offer.

7 – Revenue Generation –

When you host your blog with someone else, you have less control over generating revenue. When you host your own blog, however, you have much greater control over how you generate revenue online.

8 – Growth –

While starting on a blogging network makes sense, if you want to grow your blog, you need to go independent. By hosting your own blog, you can create a much larger level of growth over time.

9 – Site Integration –

By hosting your own blog, you can integrate your blog with your website, rather than having to create a completely separate website from your blog.

10 – More Traffic –

Hosting your own blog will also allow you to generate more traffic, because your posts will be easier to find in search engines.

What is an RSS Feed and Why Syndicate Your Blog?

Blog feeds or RSS feeds allow for feed readers to access a site that automatically looks for new content from all of their favorite blogs. By syndicating your blog through an RSS feed you can allow your readership to access all of your new blog posts without requiring them to actually visit your blog. They can still click through to visit your blog, especially for the purpose of leaving comments or participating in the conversation, but not having to visit your site every day in search of new content is a great way to improve your readership. Most people who are reading blogs online in this day and age are using RSS feed readers to allow them to keep up with syndicated content from all of their favorite websites and blogs, so if you are not already syndicating your blog through an RSS feed, then you are probably depriving yourself of a large proportion of readers that you were completely unaware of.

So what is an RSS Feed?

Simply put, an RSS feed allows for easy online content distribution. RSS feeds can be read as plain text files, but they are actually designed to be read through RSS feed readers, and there are a wide variety of different RSS feed readers to choose from. Readers can vary from being standalone applications, to being completely online based web applications.

How can you publish a blog feed?

If you are using a blogging platform like WordPress, then you are actually in luck because WordPress has a built in RSS feed functionality that allows you to syndicate your blog posts without even knowing it in certain circumstances. If you are using any other blogging platform, however, you are going to have to look into whether or not the RSS syndicating is being done for you or not. You may have to look for an appropriate plugin to make sure that you can automatically syndicate your blog posts to an RSS feed. To view your WordPress blog RSS feed, you simply need to navigate to http://www.yourdomainname.com/blog/feed or http://www.yourdomainname.com/feed depending on how you have your blog location set up. (For example:http://www.blogtrafficexchange.com/feed)

Okay, but what is a feedburner?

Feedburner provide services allowing RSS publishers to expand on the features that are already being provided by their basic feed by burning their feed, which allows for the following benefits:

- Feed burning allows you to view detailed stats about your blog feed readership,
- Feed burning allows your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed easily no matter what feed reader they happen to be using,
- Feed burning allows you to better format your RSS feeds for different directories and readers,
- Feed burning allows you to display your feed burner stats easily.

There are numerous different types of feed burners that you can find and utilize online, as long as you are willing to do a little bit of internet research to find the best feed burner for your needs.

6 + 1 Steps for How to Increase Blog Traffic

Having access to the right tips and hints for how to increase blog traffic can really come in handy. The more tips and tools that you have in your arsenal for learning how to increase blog traffic; the better off you will be when it comes to building up a steady readership. There are twenty tips in all that you need to keep in mind when it comes to learning how to increase blog traffic. Here we are going to touch on the first seven.

1 – Use keyword rich text based links in your blog entries and articles in order to link to other blog entries and articles. Creating more links to your content increases your exposure. If you are posting article content elsewhere on the internet, make sure that you are including links back to your blog posts because links from high page rank websites will benefit your blog significantly.

2 – Mix your blogging endeavor with social networking. Use websites like LinkedIn and Facebook with blog widgets. Post highlights of your favorite blog articles on websites like StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicious. Answer questions on websites like LinkedIn, Yahoo Answers, in newsgroups and in forums by linking to blog posts that you have written.

3 – Treat your blog as if it were a publication. You should be writing titles that are compelling, as well as introductions and conclusions that are compelling. You should be offering useful content, and you should make sure to check spelling and grammar in everything that you write.

4 – Keep track of relevant information and news that relates to your profession or industry so that you can report on it as it becomes newsworthy. You can achieve this by subscribing to RSS feeds, Google news alerts and other similar services to gain access to key sources of news that relate to the industry that you are writing about in your blog.

5 – Participate in the blog community. Visit blogs that follow a similar nature as your own and offer useful information in the comments. You should be talking about relevant subjects and topics, and you should always provide a link back to your blog, especially if you have something relevant posted in your own blog that you can share with other bloggers and readers.

6 – Submit your blog and your blog posts to as many blog directories, blog carnivals and blog aggregators as you can. The more time that you take to submit your blog to different places online, the more exposure you will create for your blog over time.

+1 – Now, it’s your turn! What other steps can you think of to do for your blog to increase traffic? Share them in the comments below!

The Key to a Strong Blog

Analyze what brings readers to your blog, and then find a way to build upon that.

When I speak with owners of medium sized blogs, the first thing I recommend highly to them is to put aside time to analyze their blogs current performance, with focus on the blogs successes and strengths. While there is plenty to say in favor of identifying a blogs weakness so that it can be improved, I feel that bloggers waste too much of their time working on fixing the negatives that they end up not building on what success they have. Here is a success secret that I have seen in a good number of successful bloggers.

They do not do absolutely everything well, but the things that they are able to do well are the things that they continue to do over and over again, and this is one of the biggest keys to a strong blog.
There are a lot of blogs that exemplify this concept, ranging from I Can Has Cheezburger to Cake Wrecks and back again. These bloggers found their niche, settled down into it comfortably, and now they are reaping the benefits of focusing on the things that they do well rather than trying to over extend them selves and their blogs.

It is easy to go on and on when it comes to the most successful blogs and what allows them to become that way. They manage to identify something that is working for them, and they repeat it again and again for great success. This does not necessarily mean that they are repeating or regurgitating the same content over and over – They simply take the same formula and they apply it over and over as a key to their success.

So what have you found capable of working on your blog? How can you take that success formula and do it again, or how can you find ways to improve upon it?

Let us do a little bit of analysis to see where you’re at. Here are a few questions that you are going to want to ponder so that you can identify the points of energy within your blog that could potentially be worth expanding on:

The Key to a Successful Blog

In the last post, regarding keys to a strong blog, we talked about some of the keys to successful blogging. This is part two in the series about finding your niche and repeating the formula to create successful blogging.

We last left you with a list of your best blog posts, the ones that out performed the others. Now let us figure out why. Here are some questions that you can ask yourself in order to analyze what allowed a specific blog post to out perform the others.

• Could it have been the topic?
• Could it have been the style of the post?
• Could it have been the title?
• Could it have been an image?
• Could it have been the length of the post?
• Could it have been the use of controversy, or humor?

There can really be a wide variety of different factors that are capable of contributing to the success of a post, but it is typically just one or two specific things that stand out above all of the rest. You should conduct this basic analysis on a bunch of your most successful posts, and what you may end up finding out is that some of the same things are coming into play with each of the posts. You are going to want to identify what these factors are, and then you will find yourself in an excellent position to continue developing more of this excellent content.

The next thing that you are going to want to do is to ask some questions about traffic. This is another type of analysis that you can do, trying to find out the source of your current traffic and visitors.

• Where are the top sources bringing traffic to your blog?
• What other websites or blogs are creating links to your content?
• Which social media and social networking sites seem to be appreciating your blog content?
• Which search engines are sending traffic to your blog?
• Which keywords to people seem to be using in order to find your website as a result of using search engines?

When you look at all of the sources of traffic that are coming to your blog, this is going to be a truly powerful technique that will help you be able to extend your blog further because it will give you insight into what is and what is not working for you.

It has been found that when you are looking at a significant source for traffic to your blog, that there are always still going to be a number of ways to build upon that traffic even further. In the final part of this series we are going to look at how you can take a significant source of traffic and evolve it into something even greater.

10 Steps to Start a Blog

Is this your first time starting a blog? Here is a ten step checklist for starting your own blog.

1 – Choose a subject –

Determine what it is that you want to blog about. You need to have a concept before you can start writing about, so that you can appeal to the right niche. Your blog will die if you do not take the time to come up with a good subject that you can blog about.

2 – Title –

Come up with a title that is catchy, entertaining and easy for people to remember. Make your blog title catchy and interesting if you want it to attract readers.

3 – Buy a Domain Name –

Now you need to buy a domain name that is both easy to remember and related to your title. Domain names really matter in this day and age because they let potential readers know what your site is all about. Once you have a title and a subject, you need to create a domain name that will help readers find your site.

4 – Choose a blogging platform –

Try considering both your needs and your budget when you consider blogging platforms. Some blogging platforms like blogger are free or inexpensive, while others cost a little more but offer greater benefits. Another excellent blogging platform is WordPress, which is free and easy to use.

5 – Find a Web Host –

Unless you are hosting your blog on someone else’s server, the next step is to find an adequate website host. You need to find a web host that is reliable and offers the benefits and level of service that you need in order to get the most out of your blog.

6 – Find a flexible theme –

Not only do you need to find a flexible design theme, but you need to find one that you can easily edit to make your own. The design of your blog is part of your brand and concept. With a little CSS and HTML know how you can take a nice theme and really make it your own.

7 – Sign Up for Web Analytics –

With web analytics, you can figure out if you are doing the right thing, and if you are attracting the right people to your blog. Web analytics give you the stats that you need to determine what’s hot on your blog, what’s not hot, what most people are coming for, and which posts are more useful than others.

8 – Make your first post –

Let readers know what your blog is going to be all about.

9 – Start putting together real content –

The real challenge is creating real content on a long term basis. Research your facts, be sure about your information, and share your opinions, giving real content to your readers.

10 – Socialize, build relationships and readership –

Now that you have content, start socializing, meeting people, building readership and really getting your name out there. This is the fun part! Have fun, make friends, share information and build readers in the process and you will be good to go!

11 – Join the Blog Traffic Exchange

Once you have 30 or so posts the Blog Traffic Exchange will help grow your blog. How?

How to get 150,000 people to read your blog post in 1 week (and how I did it)

When I started blogging in 2004, I took a good look around at other blogs, calmly chewed a cookie in my dorm room, and then vomited. There were only about 12 big personal-finance blogs back then, and yet even in 2004, I noticed the trend of new bloggers complaining about why they couldn’t get covered by the Big Blogs.

Today, I’m going to share a strategy I’ve used to get regularly featured in The Wall Street Journal and extremely high-traffic blogs like Lifehacker.

You can skip right to the detailed writeup (includes examples & screenshots), but I hope the story below is useful.

This advice can be useful for getting thousands of new readers to your blog, customers to your new startup, or to get your dream freelance job. And you can start using it tomorrow morning.

So, back to the question: Why do some bloggers get the lion’s share of attention, while others toil endlessly to write posts that virtually nobody will ever read?

On a recent forum where both new and experienced bloggers share tips for getting traffic, SEO, etc, most of the discussions were debating minutiae about meaningless changes they could make to their blog to get more readers. “What SEO plugin should I use?” one asked. “Does anyone think I should change my blog’s name???” another wondered. After 20 minutes of reading, I had to close the window because I was getting so frustrated.

Look, here’s a simple chart of what matters for getting traffic for your site.

 

The Guest Post Strategy

Besides writing really good content, the easiest way to get traffic to your blog is to write something interesting for another blogger who has more traffic than you.

It’s funny — when you point this out to many new bloggers by saying, “Hey, why don’t you write up something really good and send it to a bigger blogger as a guest post?” — many of them quickly make up a bunch of excuses. “Well, uh…I am really busy this weekend” or “I’m in the middle of this really interesting post on how HSBC interest rates changed!” Yes, okay.

But it’s not just as simple as deciding to write a guest post. When it comes to high-traffic bloggers, there are very specific ways to approach them so they’ll accept your pitch.

Before we get to the tactics…

Who could apply this strategy? 3 examples

Like I said, this works for bloggers and many other areas of business:

1. You’re a new blogger who wants more traffic: If you’re a blogger and you’re looking to grow traffic, put yourself in the mind of bloggers with large readerships: They’re busy, they have huge egos, and they need to constantly post new, interesting stuff to satisfy their readers’ voracious appetites for content. Could you write one piece of excellent content for them? 
   As an example, here were the results of Nora Dunn’s travel post earlier this week, which drove nearly 100,000 pageviews in 72 hours. I’ve already invited her to have a regular guest spot on I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
   
   
   
2. You want to break into the fashion industry: Or let’s say you read fashion magazines and really want to break into the industry. The magazine needs fresh perspectives, especially things that haven’t been done (think Money Diaries for a magazine, for example). How could you help them?
3. You just started a new company and need customers: How about if you’re starting a business on Christmas ornaments, and you aren’t sure how to get traffic to your website. The first thing I would do is record some interesting videos for other Christmas sites and give them away for free.

How to get hundreds of thousands of new visitors using the Guest Post strategy

I’ve written up a detailed post with the tactics for writing successful guest posts for high-traffic bloggers. This post and the writeup took me over 9 hours to write, which gives you a sense of how much time these take. But when you do it, you can get hundreds of thousands of new readers and many thousands of new customers for your business.

1. Read how: Tactics for writing winning guest posts for high-traffic bloggers(includes examples & screenshots)
2. Save money: If you like the kind of tactical tips I’m giving you, check out Scrooge Strategy, where I send out one highly tactical savings tip per week. You’ll get super-detailed tips on big wins for saving money that really work (not stupid tips on saving money on $3 lattes). Many of my customers save hundreds of dollars within the first 30 days, and there’s a 100% money-back guarantee.
   * Kristin Stromberg, Total savings: $2,500
   * Stacy Miller, Total savings: $660.60 by making only two changes
   * Matthew Earle: “It’s like having a smart, articulate, and inexpensive financial advisor that calls you all the time to check in.”
   See how you can save hundreds at http://www.scroogestrategy.com

How to create a workable budget that gives you money and life?

"Modern man drives a mortgaged car over a bond-financed highway on credit-card petrol."

Taking control of your cash inflow and outflow is the base for financial planning. Budgeting is important to gain control over your financial life, be prepared and avoid surprises, save for a major purchase, get out of debt and stay out of debt, expand your lifestyle, and to retire early.

Thiruvalluvar, a much celebrated Tamil poet emphasizes budgeting through his following lines:

Incomings may be scant; but yet, no failure there, 
If in expenditure you rightly learn to spare. (Kural: 478)

Who prosperous lives and of enjoyment knows no bound, 
His seeming wealth, departing, nowhere shall be found. (Kural: 479)

Most of us hesitate to make a budget because we think it is about cutting all the fun in life. Budgeting is not about cutting all the fun; it is about conscious allocation of funds. Once we start spending consciously, our mind will find out a whole new way of having fun within the budget.

Making Budget: A step by step guide

There is a saying, “God is in the details”. Detail every bit of your financials while creating a budget.

1) Check your financial statements:

It could be your utility bills, d’mat account statement, other investment receipts, ITR, Form 16A, Form 16, bank statement, credit card statement etc. The idea is to make out the monthly average of income and expenses. Therefore the more details you can get the more relevant and accurate will the budget be.

2) Listing out income from all sources:

It is very easy for us to list down the income from employment or self employment. Normally we will lose track of income from investments, rental income and other miscellaneous income. Also check is there any annual income. Don’t forget to record the incomes received by way of cash equivalents like meal voucher and credit card reward points.

3) Finding out your total expenses:

We can easily list down the major expenses. But listing out the miscellaneous and petty expenses would be difficult. This is where the collected financial statements would help. Don’t forget the annual expenses like car insurance and property tax. Once you have recorded all the expenses then split them into fixed expenses and variable expenses. This classification will provide much more clarity.

Most people are surprised to learn that it may go for things that we do not need at all. Writing your expenditures down provides us with the unique opportunity to visualize and find out if any money goes for things that we do not need or want.

4) Are you saving or over spending?

Now you have your total income as well as total expenses. Deduct the total expenses from the total income. You will know whether you are saving some money or doing over spending. If you are saving some money channelize that money into the priority areas such as clearing your credit card outstanding or any other loan to become debt free or retirement savings or children’s future plan. If you are on over spending, then you need to make some adjustments to expenses.

5) Review your spending pattern:

On your expenses list, pay close attention to the variable expenses. This is where you can cut short a few expenses.

Every month we need to keep aside appropriate amount for the proportionate annual expenses.

You can find out the reasons for over spending. Most of the cases it would be emotional buying or unplanned shopping. Once you have pointed out the reasons for overspending, then find out the steps or precautions to be taken to rectify the same.

6) Are you on the track? Check monthly:

Every month set aside an hour to compare the actual expenses with the budgeted expenses. If there is a negative deviation, find out the measures to control them.

Why your earlier budgeting attempts failed?

Budgeting is not a onetime activity. It is a continuous process. Normally we start budgeting with a genuine motive. But after a few months it may get off-tracked like our attempts on dieting or exercising. Therefore one needs to understand the behavioral aspects of budgeting.

1) Positive Approach:

Never focus on the negative aspects. Focus on the benefits of successful budgeting. What will you accomplish by creating a budget? It could be becoming debt free, some money for vacation, planning for retirement or children’s future.

1) Keep your enthusiasm alive:

Budgeting may over a period of time become routine and hence boring. Set a few short term goals like trying to repay the personal loan in 18 months instead of 36 months. If you achieve it reward yourself. Recognition could be a good motivating factor. Inform all your family members, friends and well wishers about your progress on budgeting. You can also join in some of the forums related to money management.

1) Have a realistic expectation:

One needs to keep realistic expectation on the outcome of the budget. Over expectation may demotivate you. Budgeting is not a magic. It is an art like singing and dancing. You will be able to progress it only over a period of time with constant practice.

If you have not done budgeting for yourself and family so far, then now is the right time to take action. The fact that you are reading this article shows you have decided to stop procrastinating, and have answered the ancient question, “If not now, when?” with “NOW!”.

30 Habits that Will Change your Life

Developing good habits is the basic of personal development and growth. Everything we do is the result of a habit that was previously taught to us. Unfortunately, not all the habits that we have are good, that’s why we are constantly trying to improve.

The following is a list of 30 practical habits that can make a huge difference in your life.

You should treat this list as a reference, and implement just one habit per month. This way you will have the time to fully absorb each of them, while still seeing significant improvements each month.

Health habits

1. Exercise 30 minutes every day. Especially if you don’t do much movement while working, it’s essential that you get some daily exercise. 30 minutes every day are the minimum recommended for optimal health.
2. Eat breakfast every day. Breakfast is the more important meal of the day, yet so many people skip it. Personally, I like to eat a couple of toasts in the morning along with a fruit beverage.
3. Sleep 8 hours. Sleep deprivation is never a good idea. You may think that you are gaining time by sleeping less, when in reality you are only gaining stress and tiredness. 8 hours are a good number of hours for most people, along with an optional 20 minutes nap after lunch.
4. Avoid snacking between meals. Snacking between meals is the best way to gain weight. If you are hungry, eat something concrete. Otherwise don’t. Update: for clarification, I mean don’t eat junk food between meals, but eating real food it’s ok.
5. Eat five portions of fruits and vegetables every day. Our body and brain loves getting vegetables and fruit, so I highly recommend eating as much of them as possible. Five portions is the dose that’s usually recommended by many health associations.
6. Eat fish. Fish is rich of omega 3 and other healthy elements. At least one meal per week of fish should be enough for getting all these nutrients.
7. Drink one glass of water when you wake up. When you wake up, your body is dehydrated and needs liquid. Make the habit of drinking one glass of water after you wake up in the morning. Also, drink more during the day.
8. Avoid soda. Soda is often one of the most unhealthy beverage you can find. Limit your consumption of soda as much as possible and you’re body will be grateful for that.
9. Keep your body clean. I don’t advise spending your day in front of the mirror, but a minimum of personal care does never hurt.
10. If you smoke, stop it. There’s no reason to smoke anymore, and quitting is possible.
11. If you drink, stop it. Same as above. Don’t think that alcohol will solve your problems. It never does. The only exception is one glass of wine per day during meals.
12. Take the stairs. This is just a hack that forces you to do a minimum of exercise. Instead of taking the elevator, take the stairs.

Productivity habits

1. Use an inbox system. Make the habit of keeping track of all the ideas and things that comes to mind. You can use a notebook to do this, and then sync everything on your computer.
2. Prioritize. If you have a list of things to do, where do you start? One way is to prioritize your list. If you are in doubt, ask yourself: “If I could only accomplish one thing today, what would it be?”
3. Plan, but not too much. Planning is important, and you should decide in advance what you are going to do today or this week. However, planning for more than a few weeks is usually inefficient, so I would not worry too much about that.
4. Wake up early. Waking up early in the morning is a great way to gain extra time. I personally like to wake up at 5 am, so that by 9 am I have already accomplished what otherwise would have taken me many days..
5. Check your email only twice per day. Email can easily become an addiction, but it’s usually unnecessary to check it every 10 minutes. Make an effort and check your email only once or twice per day, see if the world will still rotate as before after you try this.
6. Eliminate unimportant tasks. Being busy all day does not mean you are doing important stuff. Eliminate every activity that’s not important, and focus on what really matters.
7. Clean off your desk and room. Having a clear room and desk is important to maintain focus and creativity.
8. Automate. There are a lot of tasks that you need to perform every day or every week. Try to automate them as much as possible.
9. Set strict deadlines. When you do something, decide in advance when you’re going to stop. There’s a rule that states that you will fulfill all the time you have available for completing a task, so make an habit of setting strict deadlines for maximizing your productivity.
10. Take one day off per week. Instead of working every day, take one day off per week (for example sunday) where you are not going to turn on your computer. Use that time for doing recreational activities like going for a walk.

Personal Development habits

1. Read 1 book per week. Reading is a good way to keep your brain active. With just 30 minutes per day you should be able to read one book per week, or more than 50 books per year.
2. Solve puzzles. Quizzes, word games, etc. are all good ways to exercise your brain.
3. Think positively. You are what you think, all the time.
4. Make fast decisions. Instead of thinking for one hour wherever you are going to do something, make your decisions as fast as possible (usually less than 1 minute).
5. Wait before buying. Waiting 48 hours before buying anything is a tremendous money saver, try it.
6. Meditate 30 minutes per day. A great way to gain clearness and peace is through meditation. 30 minutes are not a lot, but enough to get you started with meditation.

Career habits

1. Start a blog. Blogging is one of the best way to put your word out. It doesn’t have to be around a specific topic, even a personal blog will do.
2. Build a portfolio. If your job is creating stuff, building a portfolio is a great way to show what you are capable of. You can also contribute stuff for free if that applies to your work.

What do you think? What are the habits that changed your life?