Blogging has been a favorite pastime among Internet enthusiasts. However, for someone who has a home based business online, you’ll know that having your own blog can enable you to earn money writing blogs. Once you keep your blog updated regularly with useful and interesting content based on your niche market it won’t be long before you start earning more than you’ve expected and gain more followers at the same time.

So how do you earn money writing blogs and make your blog more popular and profitable online? Here are 5 easy steps you can do turn it into the next big thing:

1. One of the biggest mistakes bloggers commit is taking their readers and followers for granted. Just because they’re here today doesn’t mean they’ll stay forever especially if you’re no longer sensitive towards their needs. You should come up with a tactic that will encourage your members and other online users to visit your blog regularly. For instance, you can ask for their suggestions or create a questionnaire. Those who’ve shared their ideas or answered the questionnaire can win a free gift through a raffle.

Getting your readers involved is one way to keep them coming back for more. Doing so makes them feel important and appreciated by you. Always think out of the box when coming up with ideas that are sure to help you gain followers in your blog.

2. Always have a catchy headline or title for your blog. Use strong words that can entice the readers to read what you’ve written. Remember that many readers are very impatient and they won’t even take time to read a whole article just to know whether or not it’s something worthy of their time. Instead, they read headlines or titles first. So if you can use one that is eye catching or thought provoking; it won’t be hard to get them reading.

Review of Event Leadership Institute Class:
“Invitations 101″

When planning a wedding or party, it is easy to get preoccupied with the visible aspects of an event: food, music, venue, decorations. Yet none of these elements will be enjoyed by guests or clients if invitations aren’t designed well or delivered on time.

That is the message of a just-released online class from the Event Leadership Institute titled “Invitations 101: Folds, Papers, Printing Techniques & More” which offers some outstanding advice for professional and first-time event planners on how to get the most out of your invitations and make a great impression for your event.

Knowing all the options for successful invitation design, production and fulfillment is often the first step in successful event planning, according to class instructor and graphic design expert Steve Paster, president of Alpine Creative Group. The 30-minute video course covers the multitude of invitation options the event planner has at his or her disposal, as well as the financial and aesthetic factors the professional must consider.

Paster, who has worked on birthday invitations for LeBron James and Sean Diddy Combs, wedding announcements for Billy Joel and other entertainers, and event invitations for Hollywood events including Queen Latifah’s VIBE Gala, says that the most expensive invitation is the one that’s never opened. Also, if scheduling, budgeting or even legal problems get in the way, you might as well say goodbye to future assignments.

Paster has some advice for event planners that can make the difference between a smooth job and a nightmare:

• If your client changes his or her mind on an invitation design after the project has begun, make sure those changes are documented in writing.

• Custom stamps add approximately 40% to the price but definitely add flair to the project.

Building a blog is probably going to be the easiest part of starting your online business, but marketing your blog is going to be considerably more difficult.

In order to be successful in internet marketing, you should do everything with both your reader and the search engines in mind. Everybody’s aim is to be on page one of the search engine results pages (SERPs) because theoretically that’s where you’ll make the most money. One of the many important things you will have to do to get your blog onto the first page of the Google SERPs is obtain backlinks.

The easiest way to get backlinks is by leaving comments on other people’s blogs. These blogs should be “Do Follow” blogs, which basically means that along with your name and an e-mail address you can leave a link to your site.

Below are our three main tips for better blog commenting:

1. You should leave useful and knowledgeable comments on other people’s blogs. The blogmaster is offering you something of value, i.e. the chance to gain a backlink, so you must leave a comment that adds value to his site in return. Leaving comments such as “great site dude” is of little value to the blog owner and will probably be deleted.

2. Make sure the blog where you leave your comment is relevant to your own website or blog. Google and the major search engines take this into consideration, and you will improve your ranking only if the blog is relevant. For example, if you have a site about dog training, its pointless leaving a comment on a site about flower arranging.

A few years ago many website designers used to incorporate as many bells and whistles onto sites they were designing as they possibly could. Unfortunately back in those days many people had dial-up and they could not enjoy these features. Adding flash to a site may look fabulous but these days it really only works for music sites and perhaps Disney. You will find very few sites at the top of the Google SERPs that contain flash these days. This is what Google says about the use of Flash:

“Googlebot can typically read Flash files and extract the text and links in them, but the structure and context are missing.”

Some studies have shown that human beings don’t actually like sites built with Flash anyway. Their first impression is the only reason your site exists is to sell them something, consequently even if you have written the most interesting and useful articles, the reader will leave quickly.

The term “less is more” applies. Some people who were getting poor results from their blogs have experimented by removing a lot of the advertising, and have found that their bounce rate has improved and click-through rates have increased dramatically.

One thing you can do before designing your blog is to go and look objectively at other people’s designs. That is not to say you should copy them, simply find blogs that you find pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate.

Ease of navigation is extremely important to the reader. If they cannot find their way around your site easily, then guess what – they’ll leave. Navigation buttons should be obvious, and the titles of categories should be written not only with SEO in mind, but with your reader in mind also.

So you want to launch a blog for your business… what are you planning to post? What’s the purpose? 9 times out of 10, business owners jump headlong into business blogging with the idea that it’s going to generate business. That’s true in many cases but it’s not like unlocking your front door and letting customers in. Business blogging, like any part of content marketing, requires a sound strategy in order to generate a return. Understanding the 5 W’s of content marketing (and especially blogging) will help you focus your efforts and avoid some of the most common pitfalls.

• Why: Why are you creating content and going after business blogging in the first place?
• Who: Who are you writing content for? More importantly, who are you?
• What: What is it you want to achieve by writing and posting content online?
• When and How: When and how will you be creating the content?
• Where: Where are you going to post and share the content online?

These are all extremely important to refining and developing your business blogging strategy. Let’s take a look at each individual question.

1) Why are you creating content?

You need to understand your goals – not just in content marketing but overall. You should have existing goals in place in your business such as growth, new customer acquisition, improved brand visibility, etc. Are you creating content to work toward existing goals, to work toward new goals or are you just playing follow the leader because your competitors started business blogging campaigns.

2) Who are you writing content for?

So, you want to create your own online space but don’t know how to start blogging? With all the scripts and technology today, it’s easier than you think! Here are 7 steps to starting a blog that will get you going:

1. Decide What You Want Your Blog To Be About

The first thing you need to decide is what you will blog about. Do you want a general blog about your rants and raves? A blog about training your dog? A blog about your self-sustaining garden? Deciding on your topic is key because you will need to do some keyword research in order to find some good phrases to target as well as a good domain name.

2. To Host Or Not To Host

If you don’t have any money for starting a blog, then you can use free services like Blogger, free WordPress, Tumblr, Weebly or many of the other free platform. I don’t recommend this, however because at any time these services can remove your blog and all your hard work will be for nothing. The best route to take, especially if you plan to make money from your blog someday is to buy your own domain name and get your own hosting.

3. Get Your Domain Name

You want to choose a domain name that is relevant to your topic. Yes, I know that you’ve probably heard to get an “exact match” domain name based on a keyword phrase that you’ve decided is worthy of such, but they really aren’t as advantageous as they used to be so I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s much more important to find one that describes the general topic of your blog.

If you already know how to write a successful blog then you I don’t need to tell you how hard it can be if not then believe me when I say to you keeping your blog updated regularly isn’t easy. It’ll suck away your time like a 3 year old sucks an ice pop.

Before we move on to a few tips on how you can keep it up to date there is a pre requisite. You need to set a schedule on how often you’re going to post and you need to stick to it, it’ll be expected by your readers.

Now I know of a very successful blogger who completely goes against this but he’s an exception to the rule, he provides content far superior to most bloggers and states often that due to the nature of his posts it’s difficult to set a schedule.

So unless you’re intending on writing 3,000 plus word blog posts filled with pure content you need to set schedule. Your readers will expect it. When you move away from the normal routine and don’t post as often, you’ll lose readership.

If you start posting more often, your readership will take this as the norm and when you go back you’ll lose readers. So, I’ll say it again, stick to a schedule!

Now let’s get down to business. How to write a successful blog.

Finding The Time To Write.

Set yourself daily time to update your blog, or if you only update 3 time per week set specific days when you’re going to write your blog posts. If for some reason you know you can’t do it on that day do it earlier and put a time delay on your blog post to be released when it normally is.

WordPress as your main content management system is a very popular choice. Started as just a simple blogging Software, WordPress turned into one of the most powerful pieces of software for general use. Nowadays you see eCommerce, portfolio, business and even marketplace Sites running WordPress.

WordPress templates and in particular premium WordPress themes have become very popular, but most of the people are confused by the amount of themes available. To give you a little insight on what you should consider when buying a web-template, here are some tips you should consider before buying one.

1) Beside the fact that the theme should look appealing there are lots of things to watch out for. First of all, you should check if the code is search engine optimized. This means the author of the template should have used all the important tags for example (h1, h2, h3, strong,..) in order to make sure that your on-page optimization is done correctly.

2) Another important thing is that the site is W3C validated. Although W3C validation has no impact on your search engine ranking, it is very important for business sites or any other site that is accessed by a broad range of users. If a site is W3C optimized you can be sure that the author of the homepage provides quality code and people with older computers can view it properly.

3) The theme panel of every WordPress theme is it’s backbone. Some authors use frameworks, but most of the developers create their own theme option panel. Most of the time there will be screenshots or even a demo page to see the panel in action. Make sure that all the features that you will need for your homepage are supported.

Many people start blogging without no idea as to what blogging topics they want to write about. That’s perfectly alright. As the saying goes, spontaneity is the spice of life? Or was that variety? Something like that.

Inevitably when that first rush of creativity ebbs away, bloggers find their muses abandoning them on a dry but surprisingly crowded island called Writer’s Blocktopia. Here are a few ways to flag down the rescue ship of inspiration and come up with some great blogging topics:

* Look over the blogging topics you have already covered and approach them from a different angle. This is what professional writers do. They take a topic that has been flogged within an inch of its life and look for a new whip to beat it with. So if you have been writing about how politicians are driving their constituents crazy with their antics on Capitol Hill, you could flip it around and talk about how the people are driving the politicians crazy.

* Sign up for social media sites like Twitter, Digg, and Facebook. People post links to all types of content they find on the web which provide an almost bottomless well of hot blogging topics. Another option is to visit meme and quiz sites like BlogThings and Know Your Meme that provide databases of quizzes and memes you can participate in.

* Although forums are not as popular as they used to be, they are still a great place to find great blogging topics, particularly if you are writing on a niche subject. The trick is to find an active forum in your niche with lots of diversity. With all of the opinions flying around, you will certainly find something to blog about.

The word blog is an acronym or an abbreviation for the phrase web log. Blogs are another imaginative means of information sharing on the internet. Blogs have become the average person’s approach to providing their own individual viewpoint to everyone as well as become a worldwide classroom from which the writer can instruct and impart wisdom and experience to their readers. It is a way of making your experience available to anybody who has an interest in looking at it.

Auto-blogging saves the blog writer time and continues to permit them to deliver articles for their blog regularly. By installing plug-ins on your blog it is refreshed automatically with content from other sources. A plug-in is a set of software components that adds specific competencies to a more robust software application. As an example, plug-ins are used in internet browsers to play videos or scan for ‘trojans’ – destructive programs that can steal information or harm a computer system.

In auto-blogging, a plug-in is set up that snags information from a variety of sources and puts it on a blog. The blog owner provides fresh articles, according to the boundaries in place, and saves time from actually undertaking any work.

Auto-blogging has started the dialogue concerning the legitimacy of this use of auto-blogs. The information produced by an auto-blog is reused content material. It takes another person’s work and puts it on a blog. Unless the original author is credited with producing the information, the information is technically ripped off. If the information is protected by copyright or not, is not the problem. The situation and complaint of individuals who have had their work appear on some other site or blog devoid of credit is the genuine dilemma. This gets to be especially important if the writer is using their blog to earn money.