You have spent a lot of money on domain and web hosting and build a great blog for the people. You don’t want to loose it any time if there is problem from hosting provider or else from your side. To be safe from such problems back up of your blog is important. It makes us our blog survive. I have come across such situations so I experienced the importance of having back up of your blog. Having back up of your blog simple and if you loose important data of your blog anytime you can upload the blogs database, theme files and customizations. Saving and uploading these things will replace our blog completely.

They are basic things we need to have to have proper backup.

1) WordPress back up plugin

2) FTP client ( To save imp files when you want)

WordPress Back up Plugin :-

This plugin can be downloaded for free. It is must have plugin for any wordpress blog. This is the advantage of having wordpress blog. You can download one from here . If you want you can back up just for now then you can download it to your computer, server or email database to your email address. You can choose which should be downloaded. Select the options and download it.

If you want to skip the above step and do the database back up automatically for you then you can enter your email to which you want back up. You can choose for how many days the back up have to be done. It is better to choose daily option, so that you can have back up of database on daily basis. I have chosen to have back up on daily basis. When ever if some damage happens to your blog then you can replace the blog just by uploading the database. You can upload the database by going to your hosting account in MySql section.

Downloading Theme files Through FTP:-

If you have did not change anything in theme files then you can leave it. You don’t need to download theme files. But if you have made any customizations to your theme files then you can download the theme files via FTP client like FileZilla. When you upload the downloaded theme files it will replace all the customizations you have before the damage of your blog. For example now I have installed free UBD money maker theme, I need not download it if I did not make any changes to it, but here I have made some customizations so I will download it.

Besides downloading all these files you must also download the sub-url’s or sub-domains by going to .htaccess located in your hosting account.By downloading the sub-url’s you can replace the archives of your blog or else you will loose it.So start back up of your blog to avoid things in future.

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In the last post I have mentioned few ideas, but besides that they are few more ideas that should be considered so I thought I would make another post covering them. These things can not be ignored because this is equally important as previous post.

Have patience:-

It takes some time to make your blog grow and increase its readership. If you sow a seed then it will not become tree in one day. It takes time like consuming sun light, nutrients and water. It takes some time to grow and give us fruits. The same applies to blogging. If there is traffic then we can make good money. Don’t worry about making money just concentrate bringing traffic then automatically dollars flow in.

Submit articles to social networking sites:-

When you finish writing new articles don’t forget to submit to popular social networking sites like Digg, Propeller,Reddit etc. Be an active commenter on this sites you can some sort of traffic from this one. The social networking sites have large number of million visitors per day.

Link to Other Blogs:-

Be sure to link to other blogs where ever necessary in the post. This makes

the others blogs that you are helping them readers find their content. This could establish good relation between both bloggers. And later you can find the bloggers linking to you. This will help us increase search rankings and traffic.

Get Links from Other Blogs:-

Commenting on other blogs is best way to get link backs even from popular blog with out too much effort. It will help us gain back links even with greater ranked blogs. It is smart, easy, quick way of getting back links.

Participate In forums:-

Participate in big forums like Digitalpoint, Sitepoint and other ones. Be an active user of the forum. Given an advice on particular topic and leave your url in signature. If the thread starter find your answer useful then I am sure he will be visiting your blog also. But give advice when you only know what is it ? Don’t give any thing which doesn’t make any sense. It will backfire you on the go.

Don’t use the email:-

Don’t use the email especially for promoting your blog. If some one asks some thing to you then you can answer them by leaving your url in signature. Be careful of automatic signatures that most email programs will allow.

Offline techniques:-

Offline promoting techniques cannot be ignored. It can bring some new readers to the blog. It might be few visitors but if they contribute for the growth of your blog then why would you ignore it. Offline techniques include advertising on business cards, classifieds, and press releases.

Doing some SEO:-

When I started this blog I ignored seo which most of the bloggers do. Knowing basic things of SEO is important which can help get traffic from search engine. Knowing SEO can bring quick good positions in search engines.

Adding Bookmarking buttons:-

Today they are many bookmarking items available for bloggers. The readers can subscribe to our blog using these bookmarking items. It will help spread a word about our blog in simple way. This things help in book marking items in Del.icio.us,Technorati or Sharethis . Some people are using email a friends so that it can be shared with friends. Some people can subscribe or threads via email.

Advertise:-

If you want more exposure to your blog then we can advertise our blog using adwords or bidvertiser. They are many advertising options available online. But considering adwords is best thing to do. Most of bloggers drive traffic to their blogs using adwords. To give power start to their most of the bloggers start advertising their blog using adwords when their blog is new.

Link baiting:-

Link baiting is adopted by many bloggers last year. Write good and useful content and people will link to your blog if they find the post interesting. They are many techniques in link bait which I will discuss later. I did not use link bait methods till now but I would like to experiment it on my blog.

I am sure following the above things will make your blog grow at maximum extent. Don’t take any tension just be cool and do the things regularly.

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As the generation moves on every day a new blog tool is launched to add to our blog. It helps us monitoring the blog activities better.

Some of blog tools I use are mentioned below. These tools I use daily for my blog.

Traffic Statistics:-

I use statcounter (free one) and google analytics. Google analytics is better one than any other traffic monitoring tool. It even has the ability to track down google adsense clicks.Previously I use to use mybloglog which also tracks adsense clicks. It tracks only few clicks in free version, to track all the adsense clicks we have to upgrade.

Blog editors:-

I don’t use blog editors but I am planning to use scribefire which is free to use. It is simple to understand and use. They are many blog editors like ecto, blogjet which we have to buy to use them. Qumana is free to use.

Plugins:-

This is big list of plugins. I will list my plugins in separate post.

I would like to know what blog tools you use.It would be interesting to know what blog tools others use.

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Some of the key factors should be kept in mind before choosing the domain name. By keeping the factors in mind we can avoid confusion and get clear idea about choosing domain name.

Why you want your own domain name?

We have been successful in making money online using free blogs. If I am not successful then wouldn’t have started this blog. We are blogging since two years through free blogs. We need to establish our own identity, branding and maintain professionalism. Having own domain increases the branding of product, business, person etc. We need to start to our own domain because we got to reach more and more readers to show how we make money online which is not possible through free blogs.

Goals and Objectives:-

What is the goal of your blog? Are you going to achieve some thing through this blog?Are you starting the blog for professionals, young people or for anything else?Do you want to achieve financial freedom and show how it can be possible? Just be clear in front of your audience.

Did the Domain name match with your content?

If you choose the domain name as blogging experiment and you write about any other thing, it would be great turn off for the readers. The content should reflect the domain of the blog. Most of the domain names reflect the content in the blog. It would help the readers to recognize it very well.

Length Of Domain name:-

Readers will find the short domain very easy to remind. If the domain name is too long then it would be difficult to remember. It is very difficult to find shorter ones today. The risk of choosing bigger domain name is if we mistype then it would return any other blog. Internet is much bigger and so many blogs are live we are not alone. Choosing keyword domain name is good for SE .

Dot com domain or any other domain?

Most people like to choose the domain .com and they are powerful, universal. In the sense it is not true, on internet everything has some place to reside. .Com has been used regularly so most people use it because it is universal one. We are not going to discuss this issue in depth further. We can also use the .net, .org or .info as domain name.

Collect The Opinion Of others:-

If you are too much confused about the domain name you want to choose then first ask your friend about what domain name to choose? It would help us choose the right domain name easily because they can give you some sort of idea and suggestions. Opinion of others is important and it counts. We have to check how our domain name looks for other people as it can look good for us and bad to other people. Different regions, different cultures and different people have different opinion on the domain name. It helps us choose the better one than an unsuitable one.

Extension of Domains:-

If we don’t get the domain name you are looking for then it is better to choose another one but don’t choose any extension for the one you looked for like numbers, The power of the domain will be lost if we get any extension of domain.

Already Used Domain Names:-

Some people don’t use the domain names but they just register it so that it might be useful for them in future. They don’t use the domain but we can get them by interacting with them, with the help of an agent you buy your favorite domain by paying little more money. I tried this one before but later I found the one I want. Here we want www.bloggingstreet.com is not used by anyone but it re-directs to http://www.relationstreet.com/ . So nobody is using the domain name.

And some spammers use some domain names and sell them after using it. The domain names might be slapped by google. So it is better to check the history of domain before buying it.

Don’t get domain and hosting only at one place. If you bought domain at www.namecheap.com then bring hosting at www.bluehost.com or www.hostgator.com It is recommended to get our domain at www.namecheap.com or any other registrar because if we register at domain registrar then we will be the only owner of the domain. If we bring domain and hosting at same place then we are not the owner of the domain instead the hosting company. We can transfer the domain only after three months, this has happened with me. So it is better to get your domain at domain registrar directly.

Secure Multiple Domains:-

Suppose if we don’t get www.bloggingstreet.com then we can try www.bloggingstreet.net .Who knows the .net will also be not available in future. It is better to secure wanted multiple domains at once.

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It is difficult to decide which one is best because it depends on the needs of the blogger and both of them have one of more advantages.

Don’t be in hurry decide yourself

If  we are serious about blogging and want to blog for certain period of time the I suggest you go to with the self hosted blog. It is difficult to decide for first timer who doesn’t know the future of blogging. We cannot go with self hosted blog because we don’t have any knowledge and we cannot afford that much money. They might struggle but don’t confuse. There are separate blog platforms for hobby blogger, or for professional bloggers. The questions should be asked for your self before choosing the blog platform.

Your goal ?

Do I am going to blog for long time?

The purpose of the blog.

Do I blog for fun or for professional use?

Do some research online and collect the people’s opinion in forums. It might be helpful in choosing the blog platform. Even if we don’t have any knowledge about self hosted blog (as it requires the knowledge of html) then no need to worry there are lot of skilled workers online who can complete your work. They charge you little money for doing the work or else if we have any friend then we can ask them for help.

What is your budget ?

If we have good budget then we can go with self hosted blog . They are many services online where we can buy domain and hosting. We should consider budget for the below things.

Blog platform

Domain

Hosting

We need not worry about blog platform. In free blog we get everything free like domain, hosting and blog platform. Examples of it are www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com Remember www.wordpress.com doesn’t allow you to advertise. If you want to make money then we can go with other just like I made money with blogger. They allow only bigger blogs to advertise. But in self hosted blog we are only provide blog software free , we need to take care of the domain and hosting. It doesn’t cost too much. Today there are lot of hosting services online and they are running special offers to grab the customers, we can take advantage of such offers.

Design:-

Now we need to take care of design which is important in dragging visitors. If our design and look is dull then readers get turned off. For example today many bloggers are using the theme designed by unique blog designs. This is only because they are good at designing.

Blog Tools :-

The blog tools are available online to track the stats of our blog. This is basic need for a blog or website. If we  don’t have one then how do you measure traffic and know the visitors. We can get one at statcounter and gostats or use the google analytics.

Options offered By Blog platforms :-

This thing we should consider while choosing blog platform because it helps us use the blog platform in easier way. When the free blog is offering many options then think how many options the paid one will offer?

Pros and cons of Hosted Blog Platforms :-

Pros :-

It is free and cheap to use.

We don’t loose any money because we did not invest anything in it, except time. But if we work honestly and sincerely then it would produce great results.

We need not hire anyone to design it. They are already ready basic themes set up in it. Besides basic there will be other themes, we have to choose it.

The free ones is easy to understand. So we can write the post and publish just by one push. A little html knowledge is necessary if we want some editing

No need to upgrade the software just like we do it on regular basis in self hosted one.

This blogs will get indexed quickly by search engines. No need to any seo.

Cons :-

The money making streams for free blog are very less. Some of the sponsorships and affiliate networks don’t accept free blogs.

We don’t have full control over the blog. Recently my blog was locked for spam check. I have sponsorships on the blog, I could not publish the sponsorships because my blog was locked.So we have to encounter such problems if we are going through free ones.

We don’t have unique url the blog url will be extension one. Having our own url shows some professionalism. Having own url shows we are on our own road. Suppose if we are person in a gang, then it is difficult to recognize us. And if we alone then we are recognized by our own name. The same applies here.

We cannot make too much customization to the free blogs just like self hosted one. Sometimes after making customization it will give troubles.

If you don’t believe in making money online but you want to make money online then we can go with the free one. If you are not too much concerned about having unique domain then go with the free one. They are also some famous bloggers online who are making big money using free blogs. Mike from http://mikesmoneymakingmission.blogspot.com/ brings most of income from free blogs.

Pros And Cons of Self-Hosted Blogs :-

The income streams for self hosted blog platforms are vast.

We will have full control over the design and we can design the blog the way we want it. Each Self hosted blogs have their own unique design.

Self hosted blogs have many applications like plugins by which we can use the blog platform with out much difficulty.

We will have  own unique domain name which shows professionalism and it can be remembered easily.

Cons :-

It is complicated and not easy to understand. We need some one who is expert in installing the blog software. We when started the blog don’t have knowledge about installing wordpress. So we hired remote worker at digital point forums to do it.

Whether we are one hosted or self hosted both have their own problems. In self hosted platform the server will be up and down, so it is important to back up all the necessary files and database.

Updates :-

In self hosted blog we need to take the updates ourselves. They will not be done any one. Since we are the owner of domain, only we have the access to do all changes in blog platform.

Cost :-

Most of the people cannot afford to buy a domain and hosting. It costs at least $4 to $9 per month hosting. Domain registration is one time charge. You got to invest at least $1 to make $10.That is the trick which works here.

The self hosted blog platform is used by professionals and to establish their own identity online. Self hosted blog platforms are started by bloggers who are serious in blogging and want to reap full benefits of it.

Some of the blog platforms like blogger.com allow you to host your domain but allowing to publish through their system. This thing many people are doing to avoid hosting costs.

At last I recommend you to go with the self hosted blog because the benefits in it are enormous. Off course we made money with free blogs but it is not for life time. If free blogs gives me what I want then why I would bring self hosted one? Many of the pros also recommend you go with the self hosted one. It is worth spending money for self hosted blogs. Even it is complicated, they have features that fits every one. Just jump and you will automatically learn how to do it as it goes on.

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