In this article your will learn what blogging really is and why you should start blogging. Unless you've been completely Internet free for the past several months to a year, you have probably heard about these "blog" sites but you may not know what a blog is. Or perhaps you know what a blog is but you want to learn more about how blogs are being used and if blogging is something you could benefit from.

In this article you will learn exactly what blogging is and what blogging is not and why you should or should not start blogging. I will attempt to demystify the definition of blogging if you absolutely aren't quite sure what a blog really is.

A blog is generally defined as an online journal that is updated frequently and where your articles are listed in reverse chronological order when they are published. That means your articles are published with the most recent article listed first in date and time order.

What Is A Blog?

The term "blog" is derived from the term "Weblog" or web log. In the early days of blogging circa mid to late 1990's, web logs were used to track updates and references to other resources on the Internet.

Weblogs, as journals were also used as a stream of consciousness publishing tool where you could share and comment on anything and everything under the sun. As a results and to this day, there are lots of blogs that publish opinionated commentary as diverse in tone as there are a diversity of topics to talk about.

A blog is technically a content management system (CMS) albeit a more simplified version of one. A CMS allows you to easily publish to a web site and manage content without having to deal with having to know how to program code.

Blog publishing software provides you with a graphical user interface (GUI) for point and click publishing of your content. Your blog software will require you to perform initial easy-to-do setup and configuration so that it will know how to automatically organize your published content in the future. After that, you can publish quickly and instantly using your blog software editor that is built into your blog publishing software.

Publishing A Blog Is Easy To Do!

You can also publish content to your blog by using blog publishing tools call bookmarklets or with blog editing and publishing software like WB Editor 2. Again, publishing with a blog can be done easily and instantly. You simply type something into a web-based texted editor and push a button and you published!

Some of these setup and configuration tasks include providing the name of your blog, providing archival intervals, providing the names for categories of content and provide names of other publishers.

There are other settings also such as deciding to allow track backs, how to handle commenting in your blog, security settings, RSS syndication settings, site layout and more. Once these simple tasks are completed blogging becomes fun, fast and flexible and even profitable.

There Are Many Types of Blogs

Bloggers of all types whether for business or personal publishing, normally publish content around niche topics and subjects that they are passionate about. Examples of niche information topics would be politics, how to build pc's or pet care.

Business oriented blogs will always be more niche oriented in their information content because they need to be tightly focused on their product or services and getting connected with the audiences they serve.

Business blog content will cover a topics that promotes their subject matter expertise, educates consumers on their products or services, communicate announcements or provides customer support for example.

Personal blogs may cover a wider range of related or unrelated topics within the same blog because personal blogs lend themselves to more stream of consciousness publishing on a whim and according to mood. This style works well for personal blogs.

There is an ever increase number of the "types" of blogs out there or rather the "way" in which blogs are being used to communicate. A few examples would be public relations blogs, affiliate marketing blogs, health care blogs, law blogs, car blogs and of course yet another blog about blogging...mine, the one reading right now! :)

Blogging is HOT! I strongly believe it is more than a trend as well.

With that said lets talk about what a blog is not. A blog is not just a web site. It is a type of web site but your typical web site content takes much longer to update, publish, share and distribute. A blog is no longer just a online journal.

While "online journal" provides an easy to understand point of reference for how a blog is used and how it works, bloggers have extended the use of blogs far beyond the personal pundit type of posting. As outlined above blogs lend themselves to many audiences for communication and publishing.

Why Should You Blog?

So why should you blog? Well, you shouldn't blog before you understand how a blog can best support your online communications. You will have the most success with your blog if you understand before you start what outcome you desire. At the end of the day your blog should be fun or profitable to you or both!

If you aren't blogging that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be blogging. If you are in business and especially if you do business on the Internet then you absolutely must determine if blogging works for your business model.

Without going into a very long article on this topic I will say that if you are doing business online there is a good chance your competitors are blogging or preparing to blog.

Blogs are expanding on what are called "market conversations" and your markets are talking to each other about your products and services in your industry and niche and they want to talk to authoritative sources in those niches.

Those businesses bold enough to open up an honest dialogue will capture more audience which can result in prospects becoming customers. Right now blogs have taken center stage as the premier communications and publishing tool for businesses to communicate authoritatively and demonstrate subject matter expertise in their market niches.

If you aren't talking to your market your competition is and your markets are definitely talking back. That alone is powerful motivation to at least investigate how a business blog can enhance and drive new business for you online.

A Business Blog Is Especially Worth Considering

The last point I'll make on the case for a business blog is the SEO advantage. Search Engine Optimization is a big benefit to blogging. If you have a web site promoting any product or service and any type of content that you use to drive any level of business and commerce then you require a blog.

Blogs are very light weight and text-based compared to traditional web site content. This cuts down on the crawl time by search engine spiders and allows them to take back more of your pages to the search directories much quicker. Blogs are dynamic in that they are frequently updated. This makes blogs relevant and popular and causes the searches engines to crawl blogs more often.

The result is that your blog will have more pages going back to the search engines much quicker and more frequently than your competitor who is using a static and standard web site. This is not good however if YOU are the competitor with the static web site.

If your blog content is targeted and link density for your keywords is healthy you will burn your competition in the content war if he doesn't switch to a blog. Ultimately a blog alone isn't the holy grail for publishing content online for top search engine rankings. You will need to other things like write good and relevant high-value content for your audience.

You will need to target the keywords that target your markets and you'll need to build link partnerships to help with your Google popularity.

Personal Blogs Are Fun, Interesting and Exciting. For personal publishing you could blog as a means to keep family and friends updated about your life and times. There is lots of fun to be had with personal blogs. You can share many interests online with other people.

You can share and publish photos online from your mobile phone or digital camera with a service like TextAmerica. You could share humor. You could share gossip. You could collaborate on homework and research projects.

You can setup a personal blog about anything you are passionate about. A business would create a blog around their industry and niche and a personal blog could do the same thing from a customer point of view.

Blog about your favorite products and services if it lends itself to that kind of passion and fanfare. You could do a resume blog that highlights your skills and experience and you can demonstrate your knowledge and expertise as well and network by writing about what you know which would be of interest to potential employers.

The sky is really the limit here. What's your passion? What do you want to say about your passion? Do you want to network your passion and teach the world something new? Do you want to finally show the kwow-it-alls how smart you really are?

Blogs are really easy to use content management systems or web sites that allow you to publish instantly and in real- time. Blogs can open up new opportunities to connect and communicate with others both personally and professionally.

If you want to discover how to blog for fun and profits, use this link!

Every so often, I like to use an issue of this newsletter to share the online success stories of some of my students and fellow Internet entrepreneurs. It's a great opportunity for all of us (myself included) to see how some of you are using the kinds of strategies I teach for growing your business and boosting your profits!

All too often, I see entrepreneurs trying to market their businesses a dozen different ways all at once... and not really succeeding at any of them! If you have many different marketing strategies in place, and you find that none of them are really getting you�re the results you need, try focusing on just one and giving it all you've got. I think the results might surprise you!

As you read the case studies below, remember that these are "real people" just like you and me. Each one of these entrepreneurs focuses on the key marketing strategy they think will benefit their business, does it well, maximizes profits, and then moves on to developing their business further.

PLEASE NOTE: The three profiles I've included for you here have been heavily edited and condensed. The success stories that are posted at the Secrets To Their Success Private Site are typically 15 to 20 pages each, so there is no way I could reprint them in full in this newsletter.

Secrets To Their Success Case Study #1: GreetingsFromSanta.com

Mark Bulleit not only hit upon the winning idea of selling a seasonal information product based on the name of the town he lived in, but he also chose just the right strategy to make it a roaring success!

Mark's town is Santa Claus, Indiana, and his site GreetingsFromSanta.com offers people the chance to send children personal greetings from Santa Claus himself... complete with the Santa Claus postmark!

And, with all of the Christmas-related web sites out there, an affiliate program was the obvious strategy to focus on. The result is that Mark pulled in over $100,000 in revenues last year in only seven weeks -- and how he's planning to double that figure this year!

Critical to that success is his affiliate program that accounts for over 40% of traffic to his site, and up to 30% of his total revenues. "For me, starting up an affiliate program was a no-brainer," says Mark. "There are just so many non-competing Christmas-related web sites out there that can benefit from offering my product. In my experience, a strong affiliate program can be the key to your success."

Mark's approach is to actively look for potential affiliate sites, and then take the time to study the site and contact the owner personally to ask them to join his program. He has the following tips for those of you thinking of starting up your own affiliate program:

• use affiliate management software that has good tracking and reporting features -- this helps encourage potential affiliates to sign up
  
  
• offer generous commissions to "super affiliates" -- as they are the highly motivated sellers who will generate the most sales
  
  
• look after your affiliates and do everything you can to make their job easier -- this way you both benefit and you build good, profitable long-term partnerships with your affiliates

This is all great advice, and well worth following. As Mark himself says, "You'll save yourself a lot of wasted time and money if you follow the example of other entrepreneurs whose online businesses are successful."

Now that Mark has a successful affiliate program up and running, he can focus on developing NEW ideas to build his business. "Every year, I come up with a new volume of ideas to help me solidly establish myself on the Web as the dominant site in my industry," he says.

And he's helped in doing this by the fact that he first identified and focused on one KEY strategy to help establish his business -- an affiliate program that, according to Mark, "opens so many doors that would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to open otherwise."

Secrets To Their Success Case Study #2: VGSportsInc.com

How would you like to play video games for a living? Well, Bert Ingley turned his love of sports video games into an $187,000 a year online business, producing and selling sports video game strategy eBooks!

And, key to his success was his early decision to focus on using effective search engine optimization strategies to drive visitors -- and lots of them -- to his web sites. "Search engines have been the core building block of our marketing plan," says Bert. "In the early days of our business, we spent huge amounts of time working on our search engine placement."

And it worked... Bert was able to establish a real presence on the Internet -- consistently listed in the top five in Google for his main keywords. He recommends the following as crucial to search engine success:

• make sure that you have relevant keywords in your web site copy
  
  
• buy domain names that contain relevant keywords and use them as your main URL or direct them to your main web site (Bert does this with http://www.maddentips.com/).
  
  
• many search engines re-rank sites on a weekly basis, so spend some time seeing where you stand and make necessary adjustments
  
  
• keep up to date with the latest search engine news through Search Engine News for example, and update your sites accordingly
  
  
• link to other popular sites in the same subject area and get them to link to you, as linking to other relevant sites helps boost your search engine results ranking
  
  
• use Wordtracker to find the right keywords for your web site

All this early hard work really paid off for Bert, and saved him time later on: "Now that all our sites have high rankings," he says, "we spend just a moderate amount of time maintaining them." And the time he now saves on dealing with these day-to-day tasks leaves Bert free to concentrate on building his business (seven web sites and counting!) and, of course, to play video games!

Secrets To Their Success Case Study #3: Decorate-Redecorate.com

After becoming increasingly fed up with her consulting job, Barbara Jennings finally decided to take the plunge and start an Internet business doing what she REALLY loves -- giving home decorating tips! Now, the 59-year-old grandmother's web site Decorate-Redecorate.com brings in $102,000 a year, and she only has to spend 30 to 60 minutes a day on the day-to-day management chores!

Barbara spends such little time actually managing her business because she has focused on automating her business, allowing her to spend more time on developing new products and providing good customer service. The areas of your business Barbara suggests automating include:

• e-mail communications using autoresponders
  
  
• stock control and ordering processes
  
  
• an affiliate program

One example of this automation is e-mail -- vital for delivering her eBooks to customers. "I use Mailloop 24/7. It handles the purchases and usercodes and autoresponders for all my products," says Barbara. "I just returned from a 10-day trip to Japan, and was able to track and administrate my business overseas with my laptop and a little help from a family member in the USA."

That kind of automation is worth its weight in gold. Not just in allowing Internet business owners like Barbara to take vacations AND check up on their business at the same time, but in creating invaluable business development time.

"I only spend about 30 to 60 minutes a day managing my business," she says. "The rest of my time is spent marketing it, developing more exclusive products, and expanding the web sites." And, in Barbara's case this automation has freed up enough time for her to create SEVEN eBooks in just over a year!

Final thoughts

These three entrepreneurs all had a great idea for an Internet business, and they got their web sites going by focusing on selected strategies, including:

• Starting an affiliate program
  
  
• Effective search engine optimization
  
  
• Automation

Of course, there are hundreds more techniques you can use to build a successful online business. But if you try to implement them all at once, you're going to be scattered and unfocussed -- and none of your strategies will work as well as they could.

It's better to focus on just one or two strategies early on, and learn them as well as you possibly can. Then you'll be in a position to move onto other strategies as your business grows and develops.

Now for the fun part! If any of you think you've got a success story that my "Secrets To Their Success" subscribers would like to read about, please do not hesitate to visit http://www.internetmarketingprofitscenter.com/secrets/ and tell me all about it. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you! We may even feature some of the stories in a later issue of this newsletter, so get writing!

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4) "Tell Us What You Think!"

Dear friend, I would love to hear what you think of this issue of The Internet Marketing Profits^™ newsletter. And of course, if you have any suggestions for upcoming issues that you'd like to share with me, please send those, too -- just email me right away! And don't forget to check out the previous issues at the Internet Marketing Profits Newsletter Archive.

Warmest Regards,

Valeriu S. Popescu, Editor and Publisher
The Internet Marketing Profits^™ Newsletter

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DISCLAIMER: I urge you to exercise due diligence in responding to any advertisement or article posted here or in any other future issue. I do not give business or professional advice in this newsletter and therefore cannot be held responsible for results you get from responding to ads or articles in this newsletter. I urge you to exercise due diligence in all of your online dealings.