And right here, we’ll take a look at both of them – their strengths, their weaknesses, and which one should you use. Let’s go!

Blogger From Google

If you don’t have even a dime to invest for blogging, by all means go for Blogger – the free blogging platform designed by Google. It’s beginner friendly and it’s very easy to use. True, you need to know a couple of HTML codes if you want to add more features to your Blogger blog…BUT trust me, you could master them like the back of your hand within a day or two.

However, Blogger is not without its weaknesses or setbacks. And I think you deserve to know them before you dive in. Here are some of them –

- First and foremost, you’re blog is never yours! It’s still Google’s. That means if you want to sell your blog, you’re out of luck. Not to mention Google can delete your blog when they want it and how they want it. Believe me, I’ve seen many great Blogger blogs go down into flames in this fashion.

- As for the functions and options, they’re very limited. The amount of templates is very limited as well. If you’re going to use Blogger, expect that you’re bound to come across a blog that a design and template that looks just like yours.

And that’s just to name a few!

Here’s the bottom line – if you’re a total blogging beginner and if you don’t have anything to invest in your online ventures, Blogger is the best way to go to get your hands dirty and your feet wet…prepping you for a paid and more advanced platform, which is…

WordPress

If you’re an advanced blogger looking for a platform that gives you flexibility when it comes to options and functions, then WordPress is for you. You can also take advantage of WordPress for free…BUT bloggers who are using it buy hosting and a domain name…for good reason!

- Plugins – they’re your best buddy (the good ones) and your worst enemy (the ones that suck BIG time) when it comes to adding functionality and options to your WordPress Blog.

- You get to own your blog…IF you buy a domain name.

- A look around the net will reveal tons of themes and templates that you can use. Some are paid and some are free. Not to mention many of them looks really professional.

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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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There would be confusion among bloggers whether to blog for money or fun. I have discussed in earlier post that just concentrate on developing content and traffic then dollars flow in automatically. There are various methods through which bloggers can make money.

Contexual Advertising:-

These are most common methods to make money online. This method is utilized by many bloggers online because they are natural money makers. This methods include Adsense , MSN Adcenter and YPN ( Yahoo Publisher Network) which are very popular among bloggers .Adsense is open to people all over the world but where as YPN ( Yahoo Publisher network) is open to US residents only. Bloggers can make money by just embedding a piece of ad-code on their blog. We will make money on click basis. They don’t work better with general/politics blogs. It is advisable to follow their terms and conditions strictly or else there is chance of getting banned. We will discuss later about adsense in detail.

There is also other CPC advertising like chitika eminimalls is also good for making money. It can be used along with adsense. They produce good results in combination with adsense.

Impressions Based Ads:-

We can make money by displaying impressions based ads. The pay varies from program to program. But most of the programs pay per thousand impressions. I did not use the impression based till now. It only works for the blogs which have millions of visitors every day.

Text link ads:-

This is beautiful and quite easy way to make money by selling text links on our blog. The examples are adbrite, Text link ads. We can control our ad space. They have big network of advertisers so we need not look for advertisers. The system is totally automated. The advertiser’s offers ad after that it is in our hand to accept it or not.Having page rank is the eligibility to get in to making money by this method.

Sponsorship:-

This is latest money making system that has been launched for small bloggers in 2006. It has opened gates for small bloggers to make something out of blogging. Bloggers charge $5 at least per sponsorship. The rate depends on the traffic and page rank they have. The sponsorships include Payperpost, Reviewme, Sponsored Reviews and Smorty. These are biggest sponsorship programs through which bloggers get sponsorship assignments. Bloggers also get private sponsorships. I use to get sponsorships on my free blogs from advertisers. Every niche blog can get sponsorships from this sponsorship programs. If a blog have page rank and traffic then he can make quick buck with sponsorship whether the visitors buys the product or not.

Affiliate Programs:-

Every body asks what is affiliate programs? The affiliate programs are a huge collection of advertisers or merchants whose product can be promoted by us through blogs or websites. We make money when some one buys a service or product for the company. Some of the popular affiliate programs today are Commission Junction (popularly known as CJ ), Never Blue Ads(NBA), Market Leverage(ML) and Hydra Network.

It takes lot of time and research to make money with affiliate programs. But if you come to know the key then you will make good decent income from them.

Selling Flipping Blogs:-

I did not sell any of my blog , as you know this is first self hosted blog. But selling flipping blog is done by most of bloggers. It is the bloggers wish that he want to sell his blog or not. In this great financial crisis bloggers realized that every time is not same. I use selling flipping blog only when I need money. Most of the bloggers sell their blogs at sitepoint. But blogging experiment makes most of the money by selling flipping blogs. Blogging Experiment shows how to make money online by selling/flipping blogs.

Donations:-

This is been used by most of the bloggers last year. It will work only if we have large readership.

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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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Starting a blog and keeping at aside its waste of time. If you have started a blog and want to grow the blog audience then we should minimum effort for its growth. Bringing traffic to the blog helps in growth of blog. Some of things should be done on daily basis so that we get huge traffic and built good reader base.

Write ,Write, Write:-

Whether its sunrise or sunset write at least one post per day so that the visitors come visiting to find some thing new on our blog. If there is new post every day users will visit every day. This can make then subscribe to blog feed or book mark our site. If we fail tow rite at least one post then users will get turned off.

It is very needful thing to do when our blog is new. It is solid good basement for our blog. If the basement is good then our blog will stand long.

Write Pillar articles:-

It is recommend writing pillar articles all the time but trying to write at least 4-5 pillar articles which are major ones per two or three months. Pillar articles will get noticed by users easily because they teach some thing to users. Pillar articles mostly start with the heading “how to”. Pillar articles are more interesting to read and give some thing to user to take some thing with them. They are more than

Submit article to blog directories:-

Submit your blog to major blog directories like topblogsites, blogcatalog and topblogging.It will send visitors to our blog if we really write well. It will not send more than 5-10 visitors per day. But it depends on ranking if our blog rank well then we get more exposure and more traffic. Submitting our blog to most of blog directories is free but some sites charge for listing on their site.

Submit Articles to Ezine Articles:-

It is important to submit our article to major article directories like ezinearticles, idea marketers, goarticles, articledashboard and search warp regularly. It will bring some sort of traffic to our blog. Google loves ezine articles so they list some of the good picked articles in search engine. If we write well and submit our article can be picked and listed in search engine. Ezine articles have millions of visitors every day and they list the well known author on their home page. It will give good exposure not only for our profile but also for our blog.I have earned expert author status recently.

Look For good domain name:-

Always pick the small domain name which should be easy for members to remember. If the domain is short and simple then it will remembered easily by members to spread it. .com is universal one so try to get the domain with that . Don’t worry about including keywords in domain name. Having small and keyword domain name is good for SE.

Comment:-

Regularly visit other blogs and comment on other blogs which belongs to your blog niche. It is best way to get new visitors to your site . Most of the blog commenting systems allow to link back with blog name when you comment. If you want some exposure for your blog then commenting is best way. The comment should be meaningful and related so that it can read by users.

Trackbacks and link other blogs in your post:-

Trackbacks is feature that you will let others blogs know that you have linked to them in your post. When we comment on that blog a short summary of post will be left on the comment. It does an important work because it will allow readers to follow and mainly the blogger to whom you have linked. The bloggers will visit the blog to know what you have wrote about them. If he likes it then he will try to link back in future.

Encourage comments:-

Encourage readers to comment on your blog by asking them questions. They are loyal readers so do reply to their comments so that the conversations keeps going. Comments know how people are feeling about our blog.I use comment kahuna for easy commenting

Submit articles:-

Recently I started submitting my articles to blog carnival to get some exposure for my blog and some traffic. It is simple to do. Pick one of the carnival belonging to your blog niche and submit your blog latest article to it. At starting I was confused how it works ,later I understood how it works. A carnival is collection of good content related to same niche blogs on specific topic.

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