So if you are into online buying and selling of goods, search engine marketing is what you should be doing and search engine marketing tips are the guide that you can use for this. Search engine tips can guide you in the proper direction for the marketing of your product in major search engines on the web. So all you need to do is identify what search engine marketing strategies will best suit your market.

More than 95% of online visitors seek the help of search engines to find out anything on the web. Well I am not saying this, but a research by a major institution says it and you need to take special notice of this, if you want to succeed in your online business. All your business and marketing strategies must be aimed at bombarding your target audience with lots of information about your product. So search engines become your automatic choice for advertising your product on the web.

To advertise about your product on the web, it is very important for you to find out the appropriate keywords using which you want customers to buy goods from your online site. To search for anything on search engines, you need to type in a phrase and based on this the results will be displayed to you. To succeed on the web, you need to find out what words visitors make use of to find your products and services.

Keyword research is an integral part of search engine marketing strategy. You can have the best strategies, the most innovative ideas, but this will come to a naught if you do not find out the right keywords to advertise your products. It may happen that you advertise your site using a particular word and the visitor actually uses different words to search for your products. So, it is crucial to find out visitor activity to know exactly what visitors look on the web.

If you feel that you will not be able to handle the search engine marketing of your business despite knowing all the search engine marketing tips, your best bet is to hire the services of a professional to do the work for you. There are several search engines marketing firm that will do the work for you flawlessly. You can sit back and enjoy the benefits of such search engine marketing firms.

Website Purpose

If the purpose of your website is to act as a guide then using a word like “guide” in the domain is relevant. It is important to determine what your site is trying to achieve before the domain name registration. If you want your site to be brandable, then a made up word that is pronounceable is a good idea – that is what Google did!

TLD

Should you get a .com, .net, or something else? If you are serious about your business, I would strongly suggest going with a .com. It seems to carry the most credibility on the net.

Keywords

You will want to make sure that your domain is keyword rich and a good representation of what your website is about. If your name is “pants incorporated” and you sell chocolate, you are going to confuse a lot of people!

Where do I Buy My Name?

There are many domain registrars, but there are only a few that you should consider registering at. You should ignore price when buying a .com domain because the difference between registrars is minimal.

What you should be looking for is a secure, reputable registrar. Some of the top domain registrars are Moniker, Name.com, Dynadot, Namecheap and GoDaddy. These registrars sell .com domains from $7.50 up to $10 per year.

Registering a domain really isn’t that hard, you just need to know a bit about it. So get out there and get one for yourself today.

“Building quality traffic is a process that takes time and in order to get loads of traffic you need to work hard every day.”

To tell the honest truth, patience and working hard is really the only way to build traffic online and I know it’s not what you want to hear but it’s the truth.

There really aren’t any shortcuts when it comes to building a successful business and if there were, I would probably be the first person to do it.

I know it’s confusing to see ads online that read:

- Get millions of hits for only $100
- Buy this traffic building program for $70 and what your business soar to new heights

I don’t know if you tried it or not but I recommend that you do not buy into the hype because you do not need a traffic building program and you do not need to spend your money on buying leads.

The key to building traffic is your mindset and your determination.
If you actually take the time to do some research and apply what you’ve learned then without a doubt you will drive loads of traffic to your page in no time.

What are some traffic building methods?

There are various ways of building traffic:

- PPC programs like Google AdSense and Yahoo Overture.
- You can Advertize on ezines
- And you can also write articles like this one, which by the way brings me A LOT of traffic to my site.
- You can use Joint Venture email swaps where you can send you an email to someone else’s list and vice versa.

Although since 1990s, utilization of internet, many social networks and internet tools had emerged, it was not popular. Recently, through the development of social network in friendly atmosphere and with less complexity in terms of functioning for individuals, this service (social network service) has become part of people’s lives.

In terms of clarification of analysis on customer satisfaction, customer retention, and customer relationship management and customer feedbacks, social networks play a pivotal role. As a result companies have tried to utilize Social network services in order to better serve customers and obtain other various objectives. Most companies recognized that social network sites (SNSs) like Napster, Facebook, and Twitter and so on are the best places to them in order to highlight their brand image through which they can increase their market share, and sustainability.

What is a Social Network?
It is considered as a platform through which social relations will be built among people and information sharing will be facilitated. Through social networks sites personal information and relationships can be shared and users can stay in touch.

Most of SNSs provide a personal page for posting, ability to search for friends and other issues like updating profile and personal data and have the ability to restrict and/or conceal the mentioned information by page owner from the eyes of public or specific people.

These Online facilities (SNSs) have improved the movements of individuals on online tasks, especially in the mentioned social networks for the purpose of maintaining friendships regardless of distance (geographical limitation). Not only that but also it enables people to find better jobs and partners.

Regarding the acceptance of these sites by people, companies have become interested to get involved in this process through which they can sell their products and services and better serve customer ‘s needs and wants and through analysis of consumer buying patterns and their feedbacks they can fine tune their decision making process as well as their strategies.

Below information reveals the fact that how rapidly number of social networks increase since 1997.

1997: SixDegrees.com

1998: —

1999: Asian Avenue, Live Journal, Black Planet

2000: LunarStorm (SNS relaunch), Migente

2001: Cyworld, Ryze

2002: Fotolog, Friendster, SkyBlog

2003: CouchSurfing, LinkedIn, MySpace, HI5, Tribe.net,

2004: Orkut, Dogster, Flicker, Facebook (Harward only), Mixi, Piczo, Hyves, Catster

2005: YouTube, Zanga, Yahoo.360, Facebook (Highschool networks), Bebo, Ning, Asian Avenue & BlackPlanet (relaunched)

2006 till now: QQ, Windows Live Space, Facebook (Corporate Networks), Twitter, MyChurch, and then Facebook (Everyone)

Many companies during previous decade as a result of increasing the use of these networks have decided to penetrate into SNSs in order to find the relevant information of people, elicit information and analyze them in order to make appropriate decision based on market moves; not only in terms of customers but also in terms of competitors and rules and regulations. They aim at finding useful information in order to do external (Scanning, monitoring, forecasting, assessing), and industry analysis (5 forces of porter) as well as competitor analysis.

Usefulness of Social Networks:

• Considering SNSs as a marketing tool, they help companies to interact with customers and create online communities and pages,
• Updating latest activity of companies, advertisements and providing customers with applications necessary or useful in order to increase the traffic of their page, blog or community,
• Facilitate the process of being aware of the company, and promote ideas, products and services,
• Skipping search engine optimizations rankings,
• It helps to get feedback from customers and to better implement the concept o electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) and to classify valuable customers in order to serve them with value creating activities,
• Focus on market, global reach, limitless number of customers who can be served, to better segment the market and customers,
• Enables different model of advertising such word of mouth, suggestions for specific group or niche and so on.
• Fastest way to get information and finding opportunities,

Social Networking Sites and E-commerce Businesses:
Although other methods of communication exist, they are to some extent different comparing to SNSs. Social network is a place in which individuals become fan of a page, they see each other and based on their mutual interest they become capable of interacting with each other and make a community on their own.

The mentioned issue is the result of shifting the power through utilization of SNSs from company to consumers. More social networks get popular, the tougher is the implementation of business based on traditional procedures therefore; companies must consider market moves in this case. Besides, by digging up the information available on these networks identification of valuable customers would be easier and a business can serve its valuable customers much better in this regard.

Regarding the accessibility of individuals to internet, companies moved from Brick and Mortar to Click and Mortar or to virtual one which resulted in operational efficiency improvement as well as generating revenue.

As companies are moving toward the above mentioned issue (adaptation of EC), they utilize several strategies to achieve success. They used various strategies in business and corporate level to reduce costs of transaction, reducing delivery time, to better serve the customers and to better manage them, and to better inform them about the current activities performing by the business especially for service companies. Accordingly, due to massive passion of individuals in case of using social networks like Facebook, twitter and so on, companies decided to reduce the gap between themselves and consumers by following consumers passion therefore, they started to make use of social networks and possibly other web 2.0 applications on extend their businesses.

In this era, almost all companies have websites and among them, some have social network to better communicate with customers which is linked to a website by the use of social plugins. Consequently, it is highly suggested to businesses that if they are not being first mover in Social networks, at least do never miss the chance of being late mover.

Impact of Social Networks on Marketing:
As it is mentioned above, individuals will be attracted to join famous social networks in order to create a profile and connect with existing members or pages or businesses. Once a profile created, users can interact with each other; send invitation for others to join. By the time a link shaped, communication to a friend, group members become easy because users tend to organize themselves by affinity, life stage, and psychographics which would be an excellent chance for targeted marketing.

Impact of Social Networks on Purchase Intention:
Through the use of social network as mentioned before members share their ideas, they may talk about different thing even including the recent product they bought or a particular type of service given to them or offered by a company. Many people around the world believe in talking to other consumers in order to get the required information before purchasing for a good or service (a matter of trust factor-word of mouth). And nowadays consumers due to availability of information on the internet they prefer to search online and when going online they more like to go to social networks in order to find more information from other customers, and what have been shared on social network pages of a particular company about certain type of good or service.

Form the eyes of marketers the information shared is vital for companies regarding the fact that information shared are the real facts mentioning by customers/consumers, and friends or fans of a particular group may rely or trust on other people (or fans) when saying facts.

In terms of marketing, in social networks various marketing aspects can be covered.

• Word of mouth,
• Market research,
• Market segmentation,
• General marketing,
• Communication between customers as well as employees,
• Public relations,
• Customer service
• Management of reputation and brand positioning,

Marketers use network marketing because of its various benefits which some of them are:

• Product increase and brand awareness,

Being online helps companies to increase the awareness of their products and services especially through social networks sites.

By every interaction, marketers try to indirectly lead members or fans to follow the news of companies and everything and remember the brand and website.

• Increase the traffic,

All companies try to increase the traffic of their websites by using various methods like communicating, recommending and postings on SNSs followed by a link in order to guide a fan or member to the official website and let them know their available products and services.

• Improve search engine optimization (SEO),

In order to increase the popularity of a website companies need to share more links everywhere so that search engines find the contents follows by link easily. In this case people will read more of the content a company shared. Social media must be part of search engine optimization strategy.

It is worth mentioning that the value of finding content on SNSs is very much because they appear natural to search engines.

• Increase loyalty of customers,

Brand loyalty will be achieved when a company can promote its services or products via social networks. By releasing true valuable content, trust go up and reputation of company increases.

In the process of using social media customers feel that they are participants rather than being only a user. If they feel they are participant they will be more involved and as a result of customer involvement and value creating activities of company customer loyalty increases.

• Increase the success rate of lunching new good,

Regarding the fact that flow of information is very high in SNSs, understanding customer needs and want become easier which can be considered as a unique opportunity of social networks. Accordingly, companies can serve customers better by lunching goods appropriate to the tastes of consumers and manage product development process in order to increase customer loyalty and retention.

Impact of Social Networks on Sales:
SNSs are helpful in case of acquiring more benefit and possibly increase market share in competitive market. Through the utilization of social networks companies will find new method to serve customers better based on their expectations and their needs, to find customers, communicate with them and understand them in order to acquire new customers and also to retain the existing one.

Although it is a good opportunity, in some organization still a vague attitude toward utilization of social networks exists. Through social networks a salesperson can achieve benefit of having access to profiles before the commencement of communication.

SNSs and e-commerce businesses have made the world very small because they have eliminated the geographical limitations as a barrier for marketing and sales and by going online, they reduced the number of intermediaries therefore; firms may sell more and achieve more profit.

To exemplify, Facebook has millions users and many of them are over 18years old and its traffic is high. Therefore Facebook can be a very good place to do promotional, customer centric activities in order to increase sales. Also lots of pages exists that users are involved in. Sales persons and marketers can analyze the insights of the pages. Every page reveals information about daily, weekly and monthly active users, demographic information, daily feedbacks and so on which can be used to analyze the customer behavior pattern and customer relationship management which ultimately results in increase in sales.

Consequently, through penetrating into social networks, businesses have an access to vast majority of consumers. So creating account in social networks and joining groups leads to expand contacts and increase sales.

Impact of Social Networks on Services:
Individuals using social networks are increasing day by day. So the rate of communication among them increases. These communications can be about social stuff or about a product or service they purchased. These communications among individuals can be considered as an opportunity and also a challenge for customer service departments. Customers mainly like to receive a service based on their preferred channels. Because customers reveal their opinion widely if they are not pleased which result in detrimental impact on a firm’s product or service.

Through social networks companies receive feedbacks from customers which lead them to improve the quality of services/products as well as finding the best opportunity based on customer’s needs and wants. Therefore customer service channels like Facebook, twitter and alike can be used as a tool for performing value creating activities.

It is worth mentioning that through SNSs many problems between customers and company can be solved on the spot and it would be easier to reduce cost of services.

In this case some social networking accelerator tools exist like (Microsoft Dynamics CRM) to better manage, handle and monitor customers. These tools perform activities like:

• Monitoring SNSs for branding issues and keywords,
• Tracking customers,

SNSs also provide efficient multi-channel service which leads to reduce customer service calls and direct contacts and costs related issues.

Some social network accelerators help to better analyze customer’s feedback and to track the feedbacks easily. Not only that but also to monitor their activities and participating in communities to identify customers service pattern and trend.

Conclusion:
Regarding all the above mentioned issues and facts, social networks can be an excellent driver for a business in so many terms whether the company is click and mortar or virtual. By having access to social networks communication with customers will be easier, companies can focus on marketing aspects as well as sales improvement by utilization of customer relationship management and public relation management. Due to intense rivalry in existing global market, it can be considered as a core competency in order to achieve competitive advantage against rivals which leads to increase in sustainability, profitability and maintaining market share.

If you would like to put forth the effort to learn about search
engine marketing, to devise your own marketing campaign and to
manage the marketing process yourself rather than obtaining the
assistance of a professional service, then I certainly wish you
the best in your pursuit.

I strongly believe that internet business operators, or any
business owners for that matter, should take advantage of the
opportunity to save money any time they can.

However, we should all also be conscious of the time and effort
that we put into our businesses and consider the cost savings and
other benefits that might be realized if we were to outsource
some activities that don’t necessarily utilize our expertise.

Professional search engine marketing is one of those outsource
services to be contemplated.

The obvious advantage of doing your own search engine marketing
is cost savings.

On the flip-side is the disadvantage of time spent learning about
search engine marketing and actually designing, implementing and
managing the search engine marketing campaign.

Another advantage of doing it yourself is, you will learn more
about your industry and the use of data from website logs and
pay-per-click programs that will be useful to you in developing
your business strategy now and in the future.

You may even come up with some superb ideas for expansions or for
marketing your company that you otherwise would not have thought
of.

Professional search engine marketing services that you might
consider include market research, keyword research, search engine
optimization, development of keyword copy, development of
strategic coding on your website, and the design and
implementation of linking campaigns.

Pay-per-click planning and implementation which consists of
research, strategizing, budgeting, bidding, development of
advertising copy, and campaign management or additional services
that are offered by professional search engine marketing
providers.

In making the “do-it-yourself versus outsourcing” decision, you
may consider outsourcing some of the tasks while taking personal
responsibility for others, or delegating some of the duties to
members of your staff or marketing team.

The main benefits of contracting a professional search engine
marketing company or specialist are access to individuals who are
experienced and have expertise in the field of search engine
marketing and time savings.

Search engine marketing is not an easy task and it certainly has
the potential of taking time away from other business development
activities that could use your attention.

There is a definite learning curve to be considered if you intend
to do your own search engine marketing, especially in regard to
search engine optimization.

Pay-per-click campaign development and management isn’t too hard
to learn and manage; however, search engine optimization which
enables you to improve your website’s rank in the search engines
without spending precious advertising dollars is a bit more
difficult to grasp.

You see, the search engines’ main function is to provide users of
the search services with the best possible results that relate to
the keyword terms used.

Thus, the search engines frequently change their rules regarding
how they rank websites, probably to weed out the websites that
spam the search engines in attempt to get a good search engine
rank when they really aren’t offering high quality information in
regard to what the search engine users are looking for.

If search engine optimization is not your profession, you’ll
likely have a hard time keeping up with search engine
optimization techniques that are effective while a professional
provider of search engine optimization services would be more apt to keep up with effective strategies.

Tapping social networks is a no-brainer in traffic building. Facebook alone has 400 million registered users; Twitter, on the other hand, has 100 million. If you can develop a solid fan base on Facebook and get people to follow you on Twitter, you get the surge of traffic that your website needs. And while Facebook and Twitter are the biggest social networks online, there are many others that you can tap, such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious. Just submit your newest content to these sites and you can build the website traffic that you need.

Exchanging links is a good way to connect with other webmasters whose websites are relevant to your own. Although they will not increase your website’s search engine ranking, they can give you the chance to tap the traffic that goes through the websites you have connected with. It also opens the possibility of joint ventures with other webmasters in the future.

Creating a mailing list, on the other hand, allows you to build relationships directly with your target audience. With the use of a landing page or an opt-in page, you invite your prospects to give you their email addresses where you can regularly send them information about your products and services. With a mailing list, you are always in touch with your prospects. Feed them useful information and let them know how your products will benefit them. Eventually, you will convince them to buy from you.

Building an online community – building relationships, if you will – is an essential step to traffic building. When you establish this online community, you get to drive traffic steadily to your site and potentially convert this traffic into sales.

I built this alphabet to showcase what I think are the benefits and best practices of corporate blogging. Not all of these entries will apply to every individual blogging scenario, but they all apply to corporate blogging in general. So here you have them, corporate blogging benefits and best practices … from A to Z.

Accountable

Accountability applies to corporate blogging in two primary ways. With single-author blogs (such as CEO blogs), the author can inspire trust among readers by “owning” his or her commentary. But companies also assume a certain level of accountability for all blogs under their umbrella, regardless of disclosures to to the contrary. So blogging accountability must be carefully considered at both the individual and corporate level.

Believable

Used properly, a corporate blog or CEO blog can make a company more believable. And in the low-trust, post-Enron world of corporate skepticism, a little believability goes a long way. Use your blog to tell an honest story in a passionate way.

Candid

A common mistake in corporate blogging is when organizations use the blog as “website, part two,” shoveling press releases and other corporate literature onto the blog. To achieve the believability mentioned above, a corporate blog must take on the candid, heartfelt voice of the author. Sure, it takes courage to do this (and probably a set of corporate blogging guidelines), but your readers will reward you by becoming advocates.

Direct

Corporate blogs are direct. You write your message, click the “Publish” button, and your words are directly viewable across the Internet. This removes intermediaries from the corporate communication chain. There are no journalists or editors to put their own spin on things. The message goes from the author directly to the audience. Never again will your message be diluted or mis-aligned (unless you do that yourself).

Enthusiastic

In my opinion, only enthusiastic bloggers should be allowed to represent the company. Half-hearted commentary stands out like a purple elephant in the corporate blogosphere. This kind of commentary does more harm than good, whether it comes from the CEO, the communications chief, or Joe Employee. Enthusiasm comes across in blog posts — and it’s contagious.

Flexible

One of the great things about blogs is the versatility with which they can be used. A corporate blog, for example, can be used internally or externally. It can be a news channel, a customer-feedback forum, an educational tool, or a combination of these things.

Google-friendly

And Yahoo-friendly, and MSN-friendly, etc. A corporate blog can help you increase your search engine visibility in a number of ways. For one thing, a blog gives you an easy way to expand your website with new content. If you blog daily for a year, you’ve got 365 new pages of topical content (and 365 new items for people to find through search engines). Blogs are also more “social” than websites, so in time a well-written blog will acquire links from other blogs. This kind of link popularity does wonders for your search engine ranking.

Happening

Nine times out of ten, a corporate blog is more “happening” than its website counterpart. Blogs are easier to update than a regular website. And when you update a blog often with quality content, it becomes an active resource that people are more inclined to revisit.

Informative

When you keep your customers well informed on new products, services or “behind the scenes” company happenings, you increase the likelihood of future business from those customers. Corporate blogging is a simple but effective way to keep people informed.

Jargon-free

Generally, corporate blogs are not the place for corporate speak. At least, not a customer-facing corporate blog. Save that language for your annual report. Business blogs evolved from online diaries, single-author sources of information and insight. Much of this plain-speak expectation carries over to corporate blogs, so the potential power of blogging for business purposes lies within the blog’s frankness, not its jargon.

Knowledgeable

Use your corporate blog to show readers how knowledgeable you are on your subject. When your readers see how much information you have to share on a subject, they’ll recommend your blog to others who are interested in the subject. These are the kinds of readers you want. Just remember, some of your readers will know as much about the subject as you do. So check your facts before posting.

Limitless

Corporate blogs can be configured in endless ways to serve endless roles. They can stand alone, be part of a website, or be part of a larger network of blogs. Because the technical aspects of a corporate blog are limitless, so too are the uses for the blog.

Manageable

Blogs reduce the technical side of web publishing to such a degree that anyone can blog, regardless of their web experience. Blogs are so manageable, in fact, that even a large web presence built on blogging technology can be managed by a single individual. In this way, blogs are only an initial burden on the IT department. Once a blog is setup, it can be managed by the author alone.

Non-invasive

Corporate blogs “pull” readers to the message, rather than “push” the message to the reader. People can sign up for a blog in total privacy, simply by pulling the blog’s RSS feed into their feed reader. In this way, corporate blogs are non-invasive for readers. The readers come to the blog — the blog is not thrust upon them, like other forms of corporate communication. As long as blogs adhere to this non-invasive, respectful approach, they will be held in higher esteem than other communication channels like email.

Operational

Corporate blogs are more than simple communications tools. With their versatility and ease of use, a corporate blog can server operational roles. This might include internal collaboration (like an intranet) or outward instruction (like an interactive Q&A forum). Blogs can be an active part of your organization’s daily operations.

Purposeful

The key to a good blogging experience is to have a purpose. Sure, you can plunge right into corporate blogging and figure out your purpose as you go. That’s part of the appeal. But your blog will be more effective (and easier to produce) if you have a blogging plan and purpose. Maybe your blogging purpose is to educate readers on what goes on behind the scenes at your company. Maybe you want to increase your visibility on the Web. Or maybe the CEO wants to share his ideas on the business to foster interaction. Fill in the blanks as needed, just be sure you have a purpose behind your blogging efforts.

Qualitative and Quantitative

When corporate blogging is done well, it has both a quantitative and qualitative affect. Because blogs are easy to publish, they help you increase the quantity of content on your website. This increases your blog’s value to readers, as well as its visibility to search engines. If the content is also useful and informative to your key audience, the blog adds quality. A well-managed corporate blog can enhance your web presence by adding both quantity and quality.

Reusable

Blog content can be reused for a variety of purposes. For example, if you expand on a blog post (or compile several blog posts), you can create articles that you can syndicate online. This will help you grow your web presence and even more. This is one of the strategies I teach through my blogging guide mentioned at the end of this article. Another example of reusing blog content — Seth Godin’s book Small Is the New Big is simply a compilation of his blog posts over the last few years.

Straightforward

Okay, so this is somewhat repetitive of ‘C’ for candid. But it’s worth repeating. The most popular of the corporate and CEO blogs reached their level of popularity by being straightforward. And here, I’m referring to both the design and the content of the corporate blog. Blogs that are “overly designed” don’t really look like blogs at all. They look like corporate websites, which (I believe) takes away some of their candidness and authenticity. The same is true of blog content. Blog postings that are straightforward and candid will generate more trust, interaction and “buzz” among the blog’s readers than thinly-veiled corporate speak.

Thoughtful

The best corporate blogs are thoughtful. I don’t mean thoughtful in the sense of “kind,” although kindness goes a long way on the Web. I mean thoughtful as in “full of thought.” Blogs with a lot of “fluff” don’t fare well in the corporate blogosphere. So be sure you put some thought into your blog’s content.

Usable

Your corporate blog should be easy to navigate and read. In fact, any blog should be easy to use, or any website for that matter. Web readers and researches are skilled at hopping from site to site. They don’t need much of a reason to bail out on you, and they’ll do just that if your blog is hard to navigate. Review a list of the most widely read blogs on the Internet, and you’ll find they have something in common — they all have simple designs with high levels of usability.

Voluntary

You should blog because you want to, not because you think you have to. If you start a corporate blog just because people say you should, it will lack the heartfelt enthusiasm that’s a hallmark of great blogs. (See ‘E’ for enthusiasm above.)

Wise

Your corporate blog is the ideal place to share your wisdom about your industry. This will help you position yourself as an authority in your field, and will also help foster the trust that’s mentioned under the letter ‘T’ above. Show people what you know about your industry, but do it in a conversational way. A “tip of the day” series is a prime example of this. It’s a great way to share your wisdom, and it’s the kind of thing others will link to if it’s full of useful content or advice.

Xstensible

Okay, so I cheated with this letter. But blogs are certainly extensible (and you try to come up with a good adjective starting with ‘X’). Corporate blogs, business blogs, CEO blogs — any blog — can grow as the company grows. You can add additional authors, additional sections, whatever you need. And it doesn’t require and act of the I.T. gods to get it done. By design, blogging programs are meant to be extensible.

Yours

If you ask me, anonymous blogs are not blogs at all … just plain old websites. A corporate blog can have one author or several authors, but it should be somebody’s blog. It should be yours, or his and hers, or all of yours. Somebody needs to own it. Otherwise, nobody will trust what it has to say.

Zippy

The definition of zippy is “lively and full of energy.” These are great traits for a corporate blogs. Some people equate the word “corporate” with “dull.” Show them otherwise. Inject your personality. Show them the passion you have for your industry. That’s the only thing that will keep them coming back.

* You may republish this article online if you retain the author’s byline and the active hyperlinks below.

1. An overview on paid blogging
There are 3 main flavours of paid blogging – your own blog on your own domain and webhost, using a blog on a free blog service such as Blogger and creating a blog on a blog network. The work is the same. You get paid to write or blog about a product, service or anything required by a customer.

The amount paid varies greatly from US$1 to US$200 or more for about 50 to 200 words depending on advertiser requirement. The more popular or higher traffic your blog has, the greater your reach and therefore the higher you are paid. Terms vary in that you may be asked to write a single post from time to time or you may be contracted to blog a minimum of 1 post a day for a few weeks for a specified sum.

2. Blog requirements
Usually, there are certain requirements that your blog will have to meet before being accepted for assignments. Requirements vary with each paid-to-blog network. Generally though, paid-to-blog networks do not accept new blogs with little content and no readership base, so you will need to spend the first few weeks or months writing posts regularly to build up a sizeable amount of content.

You could buy articles or use free articles from various sources of course, but ultimately you will have to write your own unique content to keep readers coming back. It’s a lot of hard work.

Other requirements could be that your blog has to be several months old, be indexed by Google, be of a certain pagerank or have a certain amount of traffic. Blog content and writing standard also affect approval. If you do not own a blog, you may be asked to provide some writing samples for evaluation.

3. Using a free blog on a blogging service
Creating a free blog on Blogger, Live Journal, WordPress and other free blogging services is how most bloggers will start off. These sites are fine for personal blogs but if you have plans to monetize your blog and use it as a means to provide some form of viable revenue, it is best to register your own domain and host your own blog on a web host.

This is because you will have complete control over how you want to monetize your blog and have your own entity and identity eg. yourblog.com instead of yourblog.blogspot.com. Also, some paid-to-blog networks do not accept blogs created on a free blogging service.

4. Creating a blog on a blog network
If you do not own a blog, you can still earn from blogging. Some blog networks require you to create a blog hosted on their network with their revenue earned directly from advertisers, syndication or other means. Sites: Blogchex, Gather, DigitalJournal.

Other blog networks engage you as their freelance professional blogger where you have to commit to making regular posts. In such cases, the content you create could belong to the blog network and you will not be able to use your content anywhere else. These have very high journalistic standards and are difficult to get accepted. Sites: 451press, Blog Republic, Weblogsinc.

5. Posting on Google AdSense blog networks
Other blog networks who use Google’s AdSense programme to generate revenue are less restrictive in terms of topics to write about and tend to be less demanding when it comes to content quality and the reuse of content at other sites.

Bloggers are paid by Google AdSense from the number of clicks received on ads embedded in their posts. Therefore you must first sign up for Google’s AdSense programme before joining these blog networks. You also get paid for referrals. Payouts may seem too little to bother with but if you are active in many networks, the amounts add up. Sites: WriteNiche, WritingUp, Hubpages, Squidoo, Xoomba.

6. Setting up your own blog on your own domain
Buying your own domain costs about US$8 a year while buying a basic hosting plan costs from about US$5 a month. Choose a reliable web host which has a good uptime track record and customer service is important. You may have to be prepared to spend a little more to ensure some reasonable level of quality hosting.

Visiting a web host’s forum where members discuss the web host’s service will give you a good idea of its reliability but since most have a 30-day money-back guarantee, signing up to try would probably be the best way to go.

After building up a fair amount of quality content, you can apply to join professional blog networks if your blog meets the high standards of these sites: Blogburst, B5media, Orble, Webbleyou.net

7. Paid reviews
Some blog networks will assign offers to you from time to time and all you have to do is blog about the product or service and provide links as required on your blog. Other options of monetizing your blog may also be given such as placing banners and buttons or text links on your blog. Sites: PayPerPost, Blogsvertise, LoudLaunch, CreamAid.

Other blog networks provide a common platform to let advertisers select the blog they want to buy advertising space, links or pay for a review from the list of registered blogs. Sites: ReviewMe, ReverseLinks, Buzzbyblog, InBlogads, SponsoredReviews.

8. Variations of paid blogging
There are several offshoots of paid blogging which instead of writing about a product or service, you get paid for your knowledge on certain topics and for providing answers to questions asked by other members in the community. Topics range from business to automobiles to health. You will be evaluated by a test before being accepted but earnings could be substantially higher than regular blogging. Site: JustAnswer.

You can also earn by providing a writing service such as academic papers and resumes, or writing content for end users such as websites, magazines and newsletters. These pay more than the usual paid blogging and is the the way to go if you have the skills. Sites: Constant-Content, CyberEdit, Academia-Research, Manuscriptservices.co.uk, AssociatedContent only accepts US residents.

9. Blogging for companies
Businesses recognise the blog revolution and even large corporations have set up blogs. Many look to freelance professional bloggers for their blog. Software development companies may require bloggers for gadgets and tech-related topics. A lifestyle magazine may require bloggers to write about the night scene in their city or updates on celebrity gossip. The scope is restricted only by your ability and time. Sites: Bloggerjobs.biz, Jobs.problogger.net, Elance.com

10. Blogging for individuals
There are people who need help blogging or who want to build up unique content the fastest way possible and so recruit a few people to contribute posts. The amount to be paid is entirely by mutual agreement and you possibly run a certain risk of not getting paid for your work. Sites: Bloggerforum.com, Earnersforum.com, Goldage.net, Forums.digitalpoint.com.

When I talk about buying a website, I was referring more to purchasing a domain from a webmaster who is looking to sell. In this article I’ll talk about dropped domains and how you can find and make money off of them.

First off, let’s identify what are dropped domains?

Dropped domains are domains which are not sold off by their owners but instead are just dropped, meaning they don’t pay to renew that domain and oftentimes there has been little interaction with that domain for some time from its original owner.

There are a few major reasons for why a domain gets dropped:

• The webmaster didn’t set that domain to auto renew once their contract period was set to expire
• The webmaster has had little to no contact with that site in quite a long time and it gets dropped at the end of its contract period.
• The webmaster changed their credit card or payment method and that domain accidentally gets dropped, perhaps without their knowledge (the best time to jump on one).

There are a number of services which can detect and identify a domain as soon as it gets dropped so that you can pounce on it if you think it’s for you.

I’ve heard some webmasters complain about dropped domains being risky if for no other reason than you can see all of the links pointing to that domain disappear after you pick it up.

The truth of the matter is actually that dropped domains are MORE reliable if anything because you’re not dealing with a webmaster typically who is still in control of that domain and is likely to notify anyone linking to that site after you retain ownership to pull out their links. The webmaster isn’t the one standing to see any financial gain through a dropped domain purchase, so any links pointing to that domain when you purchase it are more likely to remain intact.

This is a good time to remind you that you should exercise your due diligence when picking up a dropped domain. Take the opportunity to manually review all links pointing to the domain, get access to its Google analytics report (if possible), check out the site’s history at Archive.org to see how that site has been used and has looked in the past, and do everything else I detail in my guide to buying and sell sites.

After you’ve acquired a dropped domain, you can use it to develop one of your private blog networks or you can flip it (if necessary) and sell it to an interested party which you’ll likely have little difficulty doing.

You should use specific keywords in your domain name to help with positioning your site better with the search engines. With this in mind, you soon will discover that the-company-name.com is not the best option because of the hyphens. If you have a well established business, it can work, but if you’re just starting out and no one knows you, then choosing such a domain will make your online business not to grow because of lack of traffic.

Your domain name is vital tool that will help your online business to grow, therefore, do not miss out some of the good qualities. Spend well your time in getting the best possible name. Think about both the good and the bad aspects of the name. If you can’t come up with your own, then try to check the list of expired domain names. You might be lucky to find the exact name you want for your online business on that list.

Make sure you have a couple of domains that direct customers to your primary domain (website). That way if people type those domains they’ll be led to your site. This will help your online business to grow with the domains that you register and the keywords used in them.

Another great idea is to register various spelling of your domain and have them pointing to your site. For instance, if you register, “mydog.com” you can also have “my-dog.com” and “mydogs.com.”

Remember, your domain name is what makes the web address to your website unique and having one that is not only easy to remember but easy to type. This is crucial to the theme of the website you have already chosen. This means that your domain needs to be effective, and to help you with choosing the best domain, search for various domain blogs in order to learn some tips that will help you.

As soon as you have your domain name that you wish to use, then you must register it promptly. Do you know how to register a name? If your answer is a clear “No,” then relax. It is a very easy process if you go through the free domain name guide below.