Full disclosure
I have been involved in the “paid to blog industry” for some time now, and one important thing that has been heavily debated from the start is if the bloggers disclose that they get paid to write the reviews they publish. From the start leading companies like PayPerPost did not require this, but after being criticized from a lot of different people involved in the blogosphere they now seem to have adapted this as a requirement, which is the only right thing to do.
In my opinion this is a must, and I personally disclose on a per-post level that a post is sponsored by adding “This blog post is sponsored”. By this I fully disclose that I have been paid to write the review and my readers are not tricked in any way.
Matt Cutts discuss this from time to time on his blog and you can read more about it in his article about, Hidden links.
What is your opinion? Is a line of text enough disclosure? Please add a comment to this.
The blogosphere is growing
I was reading the newspaper Metro a couple of days ago and it presented some interesting stats on how the blogsphere has been growing the last 320 days.
It showed that the number of blogs had be en doubled from 35 to 70 million.
The stats also showed that 33% of the blogs are in english, 37% are in Japanese and that the rest is at 20%.
I do not know how accurate these stats are but it does show that the blogger community is growing, and that is rapidly.
Be personal when blogging
Your blog is nothing without your personal opinion in your posts. If you are not a professional journalist for some big news site, do not act as you are one.
Of course your content must be highly professional in all ways, but your readers also visit your blog to get your personal view on the subjects you write about. That is one vital thing that seperates you from other blogs and news sites.
I also think it is important to have a mixed blog with both personal and business/work updates. If you just show yourself as a “stiff” entrepreneur I am sure you will lose out on a lot of returning readers. But there is a fine line here of what you should include on your blog and not, and how often you should squeeze in a personal post on your business blog. I would say not to often, but often enough. Like twice a month or so on a frequently updated blog.
The results of the Technorati Link Train
The Technorati Link Train that I joined the a couple of days ago have had quite amazing results. In only 4 days my rankings have dropped from about 150 000 to 120 000 and this is from only 9 people that have added me to their favorites list and the backlink gained from others joining the train. I hope this will continue, since a lot of advertising networks these days use your technorati ranking to measure your blogs quality.
If you want to add me to your favorites and help me improve my ranking even more please click the link below:¨
Add me to your Technorati Favorites
I am planning my own link train now and I will post about it soon.
I am a blogger
Readers and fellow entrepreneurs, I think I have finally decided what I want do and where I want to take my business. In other words, I have found something to focus on, something you might have noticed I have had a hard time to do.
How did I discover this? Well, I love to write and I am a blogger and I would love to focus more on my blogs.
Until now I have not had the time to do this, and that has made my blogs suffer but now I feel it is time to take care of these valuable resources and get things going and do what I love to do.
I have decided to sell off most of my digital properties and only focus on 8 blogs (5 english and 3 swedish) I have set up a blog posting schedule for these and some of the blogs will be updated daily and some 3 times a week. I really feel I can do this, and I am really longing to get started.
My Journey to Freedom (this blog) will be my main focus and except from the normal stuff I write here you will be able to read about my blogging and the money I make from it, I will report once a month how my network of blogs are doing.
How are you going to make money you might ask? As you might have seen I have recently posted some paid reviews and som sponsored posts. These are two ways I have monetized this blog, a third will be added today and that is Google Adsense. I will do my best to make it all blend in so it will not distube you guys.
As for this blog you will see some interesting changes in the near future, I have already done some improvments to the design and I am planning some contests and other fun stuff to give back to my reader community. I will get back to you soon again with some updates on this project, and now I have to go write some posts so i can get started.
If you like this blog, please do add it to your Technorati Favourties or why not subscribe to AndreasBard.com via FeedBurner
Post more frequently and gain more visitors
If you are a returning reader of AndreasBard.com you might have noticed that I update this blog more frequently now. Although the amount of posts have increased I can not say that I am 100% happy with it yet. I would like to get to post at least 1 post a day to really add value to this blog, but the problem is I do not have time do it.
Now to the important part of this discussion! I have noticed a significant growth in visitors from this, both unqiue and returning. So the conclusion is that you should update your blog quite often. Quality content on your blog that is updated a couple of times per week will certainly increase your traffic and get your blog returning readers.
My goal the past months has been to post at least 3 posts per week, I have not fullfilled this every week but I have done my best to satisfy both myself and you as the reader of this blog. My next goal is to manage to post at least one post a day, and I think I will be at this level soon since I have decided to focus more on this blog since I more and more start to see the potential it has. You will probably see some changes since I will monetize the blog but I will do my best to make it as clean as possible.
A look at PayPerPost.com
A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a blogger account at PayPerPost.com to check it out since the concept had interested me for a while.
So now I have been a member for some time and thought I would share my thoughts about it.
As a blogger, PayPerPost offers you an alternative way to earn money from your blogging, and my opinion is that it is an excellent add to other revenue streams like Adsense or something similar but you got to be careful what you blog about on your blogs to not loose the quality of your blog and the interest of your readers.
So far I have written 2 reviews from opportunities offered on PayPerPost and I have choosen them carefully from about 50 opportunities available for my blog, all to make it fit the subject of this blog and my readers and my own interests.
From these 2 reviews I have earned only $20, but I feel it is totally worth it and that it really brings value to this blogs community. I will wait and see how this develop before I give a more detailed review and guide of their service but I do think PayPerPost has a great future in front of them. Hopefully their success involves me in some way!
Of course I hope I soon can get better pay from my reviews but for now I will just let my money from PayPerPost grow and see if I can build up a steady income from it through my network of blogs.
Why comment?
This blog post is sponsored by:
Start a Business
At the rate that blogs are being put up, one cannot help but notice that the important aspect of enhancing a blog site is to make it as interactive as possible. This is a good way as well to assess on how much traffic and continued patronization of readers and co-bloggers would endorse and visit the site. Comments are a good way of being able to identify the rate of its effectiveness and become points of reference as well for knowing errors and commendations with regards to how such blog posts are actually put up.
Comments may either be favorable and forgettable. Favorable ones are of course the usual kudos and praise that blog entries would usually solicit. Such blog entries are considered as informative and useful for people or in short making sense. They are tagged as quality entries that any person would love to go back or refer to once the need arises.
Forgettable ones would usually stem from a useless composition or simply for people to belittle in a sense that they feel they know more about the area being discussed over the blogger. While such occurrences may only be natural, it is also something that many would seem as irritating especially if the comment posted is aimed at only creating misery to the time of the blogger who maintains the site. Such is only a normal practice and blog administrators should be open to such a thing from happening, regardless of the genre that they are catering too.
There will also be the spam comments where people are only in it for driving traffic and spreading discomfort on the comments portion of blogs. Such can be expected from automated scripts that encode sweet nothings. This is one reason that comment spam blocker scripts have been installed in such blog software sites such as WordPress. Known as Akismet, it screens the comments to be posted and can only be seen if the administrator would approve the comment to be put on the site.
Comments play an integral role and making a blog site as interactive as possible is something that would benefit the blog as a whole. For one, aside from being assured that there are actual readers and visitors who patronize the site. But classifying them and determining on whether they are sane visitors simply scouting for information and quality content is another aspect of determining their credibility and intentions as a whole.
Blogs need all the traffic they can get so that they can be considered among the group of sensible blogs to which people can refer and track backs to. Such has been the call of most people that of which is for quality blogs and content. Blogs are the new wave of marketing practice and spreading information properly. With this in mind, it is no secret that people are starting to take up blogging and study the go around behind it. The best way to stay with the times is be with the times and it just so happens that blogging is the rave of the Internet at the moment.
Setting Up Your Own Wordpress Blog
This blog post is sponsored by:
Internship Blog
WordPress is becoming a popular blogging platform for many people because of its many user-friendly features. One feature of WordPress that I really like is the search feature which I believe is very useful. If you already have many posts in you blog for example, and you need to search for one post, you can use the search feature and the result can be quite accurate and fast.
But, what is WordPress and how can we set it up for our blogs? WordPress is a PHP-written blog system backed by a MySQL database. Most of us would love to set up our own WordPress blog, but are quite wary on how to go about doing it. WordPress actually has one of the easiest setting-up methods, but then you must have some knowledge with the computer to be able to go through the installing process the first time. In installing WordPress, you will have to interact with a system database and make an edit of the configuration file. In uploading the software, you must utilize an FTP client and run through the online installing process. After all this, you can now modify WordPress according to your blogging needs.
First of all you must have a web hosting account that will allow you to add a database and a user for it easily in order for WordPress to properly run. WordPress basically stores all its data and information, and since with your blog you post in the database, WordPress has to have full permission to be able connect to the database.
You can instruct WordPress on what database to utilize by editing a file that you can find in WordPress. The wp-config-sample.php that you are given will have to be renamed to wp-config.php. Few lines on the file will also have to be altered by using any text editor, although a good one would be the Crimson Editor.
There are many themes, plug-ins, themes and other changes that you might want to do with your WordPress blog. And as you go along with the process of installing and making WordPress work to your blogging advantage, the rest of the other processes are rather very easy. You upload such themes and other added features in the correct position, enable all of them, and make some more necessary changes, perhaps some more additional details that will consequently make these additions as well as WordPress run correctly and smoothly on your blog. Once you are able to make WordPress installation more than once, you will realize that your very own workflow is being created; this will allow you to make more installations, put additional plug-ins, and have your very own personalized WordPress for will satisfy your blogging requirements in a suitable manner.
For many of us bloggers who might already possess a workflow necessary for installing the WordPress, the installation proper should be the immediate concern. The installation process can be varied depending on the blogger’s skills. But overall, not only is such process interesting and fun, but so are the updating and modifying on WordPress.
-
-
About Andreas Bard
My name is Andreas Bard and I am a web entrepreneur, writer and blogger. On this blog I write motivational articles and aim to help you on your way to success with your business venture.
-
My Network
-
Blog Network
-
Recent Readers
-
Fellow Entrepreneurs
Subscribe in a reader