There has been some discussion lately concerning the most popular blogs on the Internet. Someone noticed that the most popular blogs are usually those that have started the earliest as this way they had a big advantage. For example, problogger.net was one of the first, if not the first blog dedicated to the subject of blogging, and his blog still strives as one of the most popular. I think this can be explained quite easily when you look at the facts. When problogger was starting there was not a lot of competition, so even if he was making some small mistakes there were no other blogs to pose a serious threat to him. You took advantage of this time when there was less competition to learn from his own mistakes. On the other hand, if you are starting a new blog these days, then be prepared for a lot of competition and even if you do not make mistakes you will have a harder time attracting readers. On the bright side, there are already many successful blogs out there from which you may want to learn on how to achieve success. Read other blogs for at least a few days before starting your own.

If you are a blogger, then there are a lot of things that you can learn from newspapers. When it comes to newspapers, usually space is premium. This means that an 100 word article with the same information as an article with 500 words is a lot more preferable. Too often bloggers forget about this important rule, and try to write posts which are simply too long. We live in times when people value their time, because there are hundred things to do that you can choose from. When you write articles, make sure that they are short and concise. In my case, I always try to present some advice or information in my posts, and I make them short enough so that people can read them within a minute or two. Personally, I am really bored by blogs where posts are too long, because I am usually visiting blogs to acquire some information, not to fill up my time. One the other hand, all those who read blogs for fun will appreciate if your posts are long, especially if your readers are your friends that enjoy reading things that you write. Be sure to check who your readers are before starting blogging and make sure that your posts are not too short and not too long.

Some time ago there was a blogger who asked an interesting question to the top bloggers:
“If you had 2-hours a day to devote to no-cost, off-blog (even off-line) marketing for your blog, what would you do?”
I read his article, and I selected some interesting responses, so here I present them to you in a concise manner:

-Leo Babuata from ZenHabits in also in favor of writing guest posts. He says that there is no better form of advertising, free or otherwise.
-Darren Rowse, author of ProBlogger claims that guest posting in the same niche is the best way to market your blog. He said that he would interact with other bloggers and their readers.
-Penelope Trunk from Brazen Careerist says that there are two offline things that are great for promoting his blog. This includes talking to people at parties and while speaking in public.
-Anita Campbell from SmallBizTrends would engage in social media marketing while using content sharing sites, social networking, and even community based sites.
-Muhammad Saleem from MuhammadSaleem would socialize with other bloggers in different ways including guest writing and commenting.
-Liz Strauss from Successful-Blog gave in my opinion the most elaborate response as she said that she would use StumpleUpon, comment on blogs, talk on the telephone with bloggers, speak at a local rotary and conference, or even buy a weekly hour of live radio time among other things.

I hope this article gave you some ideas, but remember that content is king, so it is good to first work on the content before you get heavily involved in promoting your site. If you have any additional ideas for building traffic for free, let me know.

It seems that many business owners quit blogging. Are you interested what the reasons are? Are we really that different from business bloggers? We also try to “sell a product”, but in our case it is our blog itself. Here are the reasons why many business people give up on blogging:

1. They are not happy with the amount of comments left by visitors.
2. According to them, they do not have enough subscribers.
3. They do not observe an increase in traffic coming to their main website.
4. They find it difficult to come up with fresh new content for the blog every day or week. Blogs that are not being updated often might not serve their purpose.
5. They cannot work out how to promote products and services via their blog. It is not that easy to promote different products from various industries on a blog.

Maintaining a blog costs money. That is why if there are going to be negligible benefits, then it is a wise choice for a business to delete such a blog. Regular bloggers are in a different position, as they are not oriented on increasing their income. They are rather focused on having influence over other people and interacting with users all over the world. That is why there are some blogs that have been out for years, and they are still performing very well.

In the past, I have written about the importance of including your website/blog in directories to improve your Page Rank ranking and increase search engine results. Submitting your website to directories is important because directories usually have high PR themselves, and being linked from such sites will boost your overall website ranking.

Personally, I also believe that including your website in directories might be a lot more efficient than manually exchanging links with other websites, as from experience I can say that many people do not respond at all to link exchange requests. They do not respond for many reasons, including lack of willingness to exchange links with anybody at the moment, or they might simply not like something about your website. On the other hand, directories are overall more professional, as they are always ready to link to other sites. Additionally, they usually they have very specific requirements when it comes to the inclusion of your website. Even if you have a lot of link exchanges you are still going to benefit from listing your site with directories.

It is important to understand that the importance and prestige of directories differs a lot, so make sure that you focus on adding your website to the more important ones. If you put a little bit of effort into being listed, I am sure it will pay off later. Of course, submitting your website to lesser known directories might not be as beneficial.

You do not have to be an expert on the subject of the Internet to know what Wikipedia is. Wikipedia is a very popular website where you can obtain information about virtually any topic. In fact, this might be even the most popular online website where many people turn to find the information that they seek. The main idea behind Wikipedia is the fact that its entries are created by regular Internet users. Anyone can be a writer, and contribute to this famous online encyclopedia. However, if anyone can edit entries, can Wikipedia be really trusted as a reliable source of information? I think that many Internet users would say no. Personally, I benefited from Wikipedia many times before, and I am very grateful for that. However, I encountered situations when I was reading an article, and found it to be biased and one-sided. I think that it is very important to know who wrote an article before you start reading any portion of it. This can be especially true if the article is written about a controversial topic, or a controversial person. Of course, it might not be that easy to discover who wrote a particular entry. Controversial entries are one of the things that very often are not accurate. Take that into account and do not believe everything you read on this popular website.

Wikipedia entries might also sometimes not be very accurate. However, very often if the content of an article is questionable, there is a small paragraph saying that the content needs reviewing and cannot be completely trusted. It is good to know that the overall quality of articles is getting higher, and there are less unreliable or not complete entries.

Whether we like Wikipedia or not, we have to admit that it is the most popular online encyclopedia, and that is not going to change anytime soon. What is your opinion about the subject? Do you think that we should trust everything that can be found on Wikipedia?

I have discussed the topic of attracting visitors in the past; however, this time I have an additional idea for attracting new visitors to your blog, namely organizing giveaways. Giving away things is a certain way to attract visitors to your site. Who does not like to receive things for free? Obviously, people love things for free, but most bloggers are not willing to give for free unless they benefit from it. It may be a link or review, but the truth is that giving away things for free from time to time will increase the number of visitors to your site, and some of those visitors might be really grateful. Additionally, if you do not ask for anything in return, sometimes you will receive it anyway. That is because people will appreciate your good will. You might receive a lot of links to a post where you mentions giveaways, so you will also benefit when it comes to your Page Rank.

There are some bloggers who do not like this method, because they argue that it is not cost-effective. They claim that, for example, giving away 10 books might attract visitors, but the cost of those 10 books might be higher than the possible gain. My response would be that you can also give away things that do not cost anything at all. This includes link backs and any services you can provide.

Like every other serious profession, blogging has its own code of conduct. It might be unofficial, but it is still valid and should be observed to maintain order in blogosphere. By observing this code on conduct we can make sure that nobody is offended by what we are doing. There are many do’s and dont’s, some of them are more obvious than others. Let me list a few rules that I find interesting and worth applying.

1. If you provided your email address as a way to contact you, respond to emails that come to your inbox. If you receive some unpleasant ones, try responding to them as well. Obviously, you do not have to answer spam messages.
2. Check your spam folder on a regular basis. Your spam filter might have classified some of the valuable comments as trash for some reason. Do not let any valuable comment unnoticed.
3. Approve the comments if you use a comment moderation feature. There is nothing more disappointing for somebody who left a comment to see his feedback unapproved for many days.

Even such small things can make a difference, and you will definitely have a better reputation if you stick to these guidelines. After all, blogging has a lot to do with interaction with other people.

This time I would like to discuss guest bloggers and content stealing. A well-written guest post might be considered valuable content according to readers. This is especially true if the topic of the post relates closely to the main topic of the blog. So in this case, I would like to discuss a situation where a guest blogger copies posts written by somebody else, and claims that he wrote them. Not only if somebody finds out about this, all of his guest posts might be removed from different blogs, but it would also be a huge blow to the reputation of the blogger himself.

Reading other bloggers guest posts and writing similar ones is not content stealing in my opinion. However, if one clearly copies and pastes another person’s posts, then this is definitely content stealing. He should worry about somebody finding out about this. It might be a good idea to list all resources that you use to write a post. Did you get inspired after reading a newspaper article? Feel free to indicate that in your post. This way everyone will know that you write your own articles and your articles are also going to look more professional. After all, all of the dissertations being written in universities often indicate various sources where that particular information.

Managing a successful website takes a lot of time and money. That is why many webmasters decide to monetize their site. For webmasters looking for ways to monetize their site, there are different options to choose from, including CPM networks. Those networks operate on the basis of number of impressions, contrary to PPC networks. For a blogger this means that you get paid per each thousand impressions. Sometimes the amount you can earn is not high and it might be $0.10. However, in other cases it can be equal to even greater than $10. In any case, you need a lot of traffic if you want to monetize your site this way. It is important that your site should have dozens or even hundreds of visitors per day. The advantage of this system is that you do not have to place ads in intrusive areas, as from your point of view it does not matter if your visitors click on the links. Even if none of your visitors click on links you will still get paid. This way you can rather attract people to click on links that point to different pages on your website.

This type of advertising is especially attractive for those bloggers who have many visitors, but for some reason the click-through-rate is rather low. If a webmaster having a low CTR website would use the services of PPC networks, he would hardly earn any money. On the other hand, CPM networks look like a great way to monetize many sites. If you are in a similar position, then perhaps you should consider trying them out.