The situation with digital data parallels earlier changes in music technology. Think of the progression from cylinders to flat vinyl albums to cassette and 8-track tapes to CDs, not to mention mp3s. Who can play those music cylinders now? Similarly, a person’s digital diary on a 5 ¼” floppy disk would now be almost unreadable, as technology has progressed through 3 1/2″ disks to CD-ROM to flash drives. All that music and all that data is simple gone. If a person writes data about their whole life on blog entries, and the hosting company goes out of business, then where are that person’s thoughts and reflections?

Ironically, ancient records in archaic formats may be longer-lasting than digital data that can easily be lost. Historians can reconstruct Babylonian history from cuneiform tablets, and Egyptian history from hieroglyphs on monuments. Even America’s early history will remain known because it was written on paper, in letters, personal accounts and other documents. But if the software for blogging changes drastically in the next few decades, millions of blogs containing accounts and analysis of today’s history could become unreadable. Blogs are less easily preserved than a clay tablet or even a paper book.

On a smaller scale, blogs themselves are constantly vanishing, as people move them to new servers, start new ones, or simply stop updating altogether. Members of a blogging community, having no other way of knowing the person, lose touch and may never discover what happened to their friend. The blog posts sit there until the host site archives them or deletes them for inactivity, and the person is gone from online history.

As people continue to embrace new technologies and recognize the expense of constantly upgrading their data into the new formats, many resign themselves to lost records. Both the ordinary person as well as news makers and analysts who publish weblogs may eventually vanish from the digital record. Even just deleting one’s own email could erase documents that might have helped future historians understand the events of this time period. This could be a devastating loss.

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It’s likely that these news blogs, perhaps better described as gossip blogs, came first, and that part of the reason celebrity blogs began to appear was in response to these, so the stars could take back some control of their image. But for a few years, blogs that gossiped about celebrities reigned supreme. This was no surprise, of course, since wildly popular newspaper tabloids like the National Enquirer and magazines like People had been serving a similar purpose for decades. The public has always had a high interest in juicy tidbits about the rich and famous.

Yet with the advent of these particular celebrity blogs, that interest has mushroomed into outright mania. Blogs are visible to millions of people, reaching a viewer-ship that tabloids and magazines have only dreamed of acquiring; the hunger for information extending far beyond previous topics such as marriages, affairs and divorces. While celebrities once had to work diligently to avoid newspaper reporters and camera crews, now even their fans might be busy with digital cameras, and making public photos that everyone can see.

Sports figures, of course, are not immune either, with sports blogs following the gossip trend, running items about players’ love lives or speculation about drugs or illegal activity. And politicians are now major targets as well, having achieved a greater level of celebrity than ever before. However squeaky clean they might portray themselves, if they’ve got a skeleton in their closet, or even just an old finger bone, then someone is going to find them out and make a blog post about it.

It’s no surprise, then, that stars also began their own weblogs, maybe to counteract the rising cacophony of unrelenting gossip. The phenomenon of blogging has been a boon to both sides of the relationship, in fact, since famous people can also get their preferred message out to millions of people. While you have gossip blogs like www.perezhilton.com or www.tmz.com on one side, on the other you have famous bloggers like Bruce Willis, Barbra Streisand, the very popular and prolific comedian Margaret Cho, soccer star David Beckham, famous chef Jamie Oliver, home style diva Martha Stewart, writer Neil Gaiman, and on and on. The blogosphere is crowded with celebrities of every description.

Bloggers who gossip about the stars may in fact have altered the public news landscape, and not for the good. Noting the obvious popularity of celebrity blogs, even more traditional news organizations have begun including this sort of gossip in their own publications or broadcasts. If responsible, well-researched journalism is fading and the prying gossip of millions of peeping toms is what “journalism” has become, then this could perhaps sound the death knell for reliable news.

Sarah Lomas is a foremost expert in finding natural cure yeast infection field. Her work has been extensively published in various online publications in the areas of medications for yeast infections. For more information on the treatment for yeast infections, visit Remedyforyeastinfection.com.

On October 5^th, 2009 the FTC published and released to the public its final revisions on guides governing endorsements and testimonials.

What does this means for the Bloggers of the world that have affiliate links on their sites?

You will have to announce that you get paid a commission if someone buys from your affiliate link. quite simply, the viewers on your site will now see that you are affiliated with the products you are promoting because you will now have to state it were they can see it. I will more than likely give it like this, “Thaks for checking this out, just an FYI, if you buy from my link here, I will get a little commission so I’ll just say Thanks in advance. You may want to seek legal counsil on this subject. I am absuletly not a lawer and have no expertise in law. “Um, yes this is a disclaimer.”

This new ruling goes into effect on Dec. 1^st, 2009. It is really not bad for the honest bloggers that have the consumers best interest at heart. What may be bad for you is if you do not follow the new guidelines.

David Goldman, staff writer for CNN Money notes in his article released on October 6^th, that the existing rules carry a fine as high as $11,000 if product endorsers and reviewers don’t comply.

Frank Kern really rocked out an awesome article on this subject. you can do a search for him if you have not read his stuff already. In his post he reveals some pretty in depth content from pal that is a lawyer.

So, do yourself a favor and go to the Federal Trade Commission site and read the entire article.

Personally, I think it is great for bloggers that are truthful and want to give great content to help consumers make informed decision on a purchase. I also believe that this will help in the fight against the guys that are not being honest and will assist in getting consumer trust back.

Take Care!

The Bloggomaniac

The community side of blogging is when it gets really interesting. What is just a site about your own health woes becomes much more when others with similar health issues gather to it and begin sharing advice and information. Your blog could connect you with others who love cats like you do, or read interesting books. Blogging in connection with a social media site could put you in touch with whole groups pursuing similar interests to you. And this could lead you to communities that are decidedly activist, with regard to politics or other good causes.

A political blog where all the writer does is attack opponents on the “other side” might be what is generally considered to be a mere vanity site, and a loud one at that. Yet political blogs serve as rallying points where information is logged and where strategy is formulated for ousting unethical representatives. People living under repressive regimes have made invaluable blog entries that bypassed government propaganda and revealed the oppressed lives or real people. Blogs have also been used as information and gathering sites for everything from the environmental movement to healthcare and education reform.

What’s blogged under the rubric of “community” can involve these banners under which people rally who are otherwise strangers. Or some might form a literal blog community where several people write on a single blog, or all have linked weblogs hosted on one site. Those involved in this type of community are more likely to know each other in person and be actual friends.

All of these things can encompass what is the use of blogging. Whether you need a more solitary online venue for recording your thoughts and reflections, or look to a gossip site for news about the rich and famous, or want to become active in a blog community, the avenues are all open. Private or more public, every blog is much more than merely a place to save text, graphics, videos and photos.

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With a video blog entry, the primary means of communication is the video itself rather than the written word, although text will label or augment what the viewer sees, and can certainly be used within the video itself. But in many respects, this type of blog works the same as one that is mainly text-based. It is viewable on a regular blog page, will be updated regularly, and still involves the creator choosing what information or opinions to convey. Much of the structure on the website is also the same, with viewers given space for comments and interaction.

If people are wary of trying video blogging themselves because they lack experience, then they need not worry. In the same way that hosting sites created software for text-based blogs, there is now blogging software designed explicitly to show you how to make video blogs as well. A blogger can take the raw footage they’ve captured with their cameras or other equipment, and the software helps them edit it down to a useful length, which is usually 1-3 minutes, plus add sound, music, text and titles. Then the edited clip can easily be uploaded.

Creating a video blog still isn’t as easy as a text-based blog however, so people also need to be aware of some potential downsides to setting up a blog for this type of medium. Just capturing and storing the clips requires many resources. The camera equipment needs to be good enough to create video that won’t embarrass the creator (or, for that matter, the viewers). Presumably the blogger will want to retain a copy of anything that is uploaded to the blog, and that will require storage space.

And since video files are not small, they may create a conflict between the blogger and their internet service provider. Just uploading these clips takes a lot of bandwidth, and some ISPs object to this high demand on their networks and subsequently put limits on people’s bandwidth usage. A blogger may be restricted, therefore, by what broadband connections are available and affordable.

But this is unlikely to deter those intent on video blogging. Already it has infiltrated classrooms, where teachers encourage students to create projects using a blog with video clips, or educators use such blogs in their own teaching. Individuals who dislike the flat, two-dimensional medium of text for resumes or reports have begun creating personal portfolios with video blogs. Bloggers and viewers are discovering that this kind of blog enriches and expands the ways they communicate with the world.

Matthew McMillan is a leading expert in treating genital warts. His works are regularly featured in online health publications on matters relating medications of genital warts. For more information on how to get rid of genital wart, visit TreatmentForGenitalWarts.com.

Online blogging sites such as WordPress and Blogger are now a major tool for savvy Internet entrepreneurs to make money quickly. Even though the “blogosphere” – as many people often call it – has received a fair degree of criticism for being a stage for a whole planet of moaning and groaning teenagers, the simple truth of the matter is that not only are many online blogs a more informative and enlightening news source than the more traditional mass media sources, they also enable the online businessperson with the means to earn an income from their online activities reasonably quickly. The over-riding requirements to make this online dream happen is some thought and imagination, an idea and the exuberance and motivation to drive you along.

In brief, you will be able to run it one of two ways. You can make your blog a pure information/entertainment site that people will read for the enjoyment of it and for the free information value that it provides. An informative blog with a good reputation can be an attractive option for potential advertisers, in the very same way as any newspaper or magazine can be. If your blog earns a reputation for being something that many people read, advertisers may well approach you, or you can approach them offering a not-to-be-missed opportunity to get their product advertising space somewhere people are likely to look. You may find that it is posiible for a person to live on, however, it is unlikely that this will occur immediately. 

As an alternative you can use the blog as a way of promoting a more conventional business. Blogs are very easy to navigate around and are relatively easy enough to update whenever you see fit to do so. Therefore it is not vital to have a great deal of technical internet knowledge to keep a blog up and running, and also to use it as a way of bringing customers through the door. Then all you need to do is have something they are prepared to pay for – and that can be almost virtually anything. Researching what you feel will be an ideal product to promote will be simple enough for you to do – with the internet again providing a wide range of available opportunities. As an idea as to how you can start your online business, you could consider promoting some of the many affiliate program products that re out there – for instance products that may be of interest like sports products, information products, self-help products and so on.

If you want to discover more about blogs and blogging then you should really visit this site. It will be worth you taking a look around the site as it will provide you with a wide variety of information and ideas to consider for your online blogging activities. Enjoy Your Blogging!!

You often find that the more experienced you become in a subject that it actually gets more difficult to write helpful articles for people that are new to it.

This is my first article to be aimed at people new to blogging and concentrates around the most popular methods in which one can make an income from their blog.

I’m sure you know that the web is crawling with advertisements but if you are relatively new to blogging or Internet marketing in general you may not know that the advertisement industry is a market that literally anyone can tap into and take a share of the profits.

Due to the sheer size of the web and the opportunities available a blogger is able to make money from his or her blog in many, many different ways no matter their skill or experience level. I am now going to introduce you to the most common means by which bloggers are currently making the most money….

Pay Per Click Ads

Pay Per Click ads are literally everywhere you look on the Internet and are probably the most popular and most effective way in which a blogger can cash in from their blog. As a PPC publisher by publishing the ads on your pages you gain the opportunity of earning revenue every time someone clicks one of your ads.

Google currently offers the largest, most successful Pay Per Click ad service. Unless this is the first time you have used the Internet I can say that you have at least came across an AdSense ad if not even clicked on one before. These are the self and same ads that you can publish on your own website or blog in order to make money.

There is one major factor in making money from PPC and that is targeted traffic. The big thing with current Pay Per Click ad programs is that the ads are contextually relevant to your websites content. Contextual ads are ads that are served to you website or page based upon its actual content. Since the ads are relative to the content this increases the chances of someone visiting your site actually clicking the ad since it is more likely to be displaying something interesting to them. For example if you have a blog about football and you are running context based ads on your site then the ads will be related to football While this works most of the time there are some situations in which the ads served on your page may not seem relevant to the content. This can be caused by a few things but two of the main causes are poor use of keywords in your content and the lack of advertisers in your niche if it is a very small one.

Widgets

Widgets are extremely popular and usually reside in a bloggers sidebar. There are constantly new services popping out from the virtual woodwork and throwing new widgets at people. Quite a new entry to the advertising widgets playing field is Widgetbucks. They are called Widgetbucks simply because they serve their ads in a widget. Other than this they are essentially the same thing as most other PPC programs. If you search around for other widgets you can use to monetize your blog you should have no problems finding some interesting ones.

Selling Services

If you can offer any form of service online then this can potentially hold massive profits. Maybe you are a professional writer or designer. Services like these can be incredibly profitable and your blog is a great place to advertise and sell them.

Selling Digital Products

Anything that you can offer through online distribution methods can be sold as a digital product. Fewer people are buying music, video games and software and are now opting to purchase them digitally. If you have the ability to create any form of digital product be it a video game, music track, sound effects, screen savers then you have the opportunity to market them through your blog or website.

When it comes to selling digital products, one place I highly recommend is Clickbank. If you have a digital product you would like to sell you can allow Clickbank to handle it all for you for a small commission. Clickbank not only allows you to sell your own products but you can also sell other peoples products too. They allow you to sell other peoples products via a specially formatted link on your website or blog and you will receive commission on every sale you generate.

Merchandise

With so much competition online for sales of physical products this is probably the hardest revenue stream to break into. However, selling physical products can still make you a lot of money if you do it properly.

By merchandise I don’t mean wide screen TVs, furniture, video games, movies or anything like that. Recently a family member mentioned to me how she likes to write poetry and she showed me some that she had already written. After looking through the 3 inch thick folder and reading a few poems it dawned on my that this could be a valuable skill to her. The cherry on the cake was when she said that she had previously had two of her poems published in a poetry book so I suggested selling them online as framed pictures with the poems as an overlay and seeing as how she can roll poetry off her tongue like….something that rolls a lot i also suggested writing custom verses for people for special occasions. We are now discussing various ways in which her poetry could be integrated into different products and have plans to build a blog where she can market them.

For those who you who do not have the means to create a physical product you can always use a service such as Cafepress. Cafepress allows you to run a store full of products with your own designs such as mugs and shirts and will even print books with your own content which you can then sell for a profit. All you need to do is create a design and you can upload it to the website and preview it on your products. The products that Cafepress offer are sold at a standard price which you can then add to. Whatever the difference in price after adding to it will be your profit.

Paid Reviews

A paid review is where you may get contacted by another blogger or website owner with a request for you to write a review and post it on your blog for a one time payment. This income stream relies quite a lot on the status of the blogger. If you are a new blogger then you shouldn’t expect to get results like this until further down the line when you have established yourself better.

Paid Writing

This wouldn’t be a direct revenue stream from your blog but it would more than likely be your blog that would get you noticed for your writing skills. A skilled writer may find the content on their blog enticing other bloggers to request a paid post for their own blog.

Affiliate Marketing

It is difficult to succeed in affiliate marketing as it requires quite a bit of knowledge in general marketing in order to do well. Affiliate marketing is the closest thing to selling your own products and is very different to other ways of making money online which makes it quite a difficult task. While being one of hardest ways to generate a return if you keep at it and become successful the rewards can be huge. Running affiliate ads on your blog is easy and you could probably expect to make a few dollars here and there but to make the big money will take quite a bit of time, research and experience. As an affiliate you will be promoting another persons product. When you generate a sale you will receive a commission for it. The biggest affiliate program to date is probably the one which Amazon run but there are so many companies now that offer affiliate programs that you can be sure to find a product that you can promote through your blog. Amazon currently offers commission of around 4% on most products but the more expensive products such as electronics tend to have a set commission. If your main purpose of blogging is to generate an income then be sure to look into affiliate marketing. You should however be prepared for some hard work if you want to make a decent reliable profit from it.

Donations

One of my favorites. I haven’t placed a donation link on my primary blog just yet but i will be doing so in the near future as soon as i start to offer free wordpress plugins and templates. Donations tend to bring in more on blogs and sites that offer free services such as website templates, blog themes, Wordpress plugins, scripts, free graphics, sounds – anything that you would expect to cost a fair amount of money that is offered for free has a greater chance of generating a donation from a happy customer. The reason why free services tend to work the best is that a lot of the time someone may be looking for a plugin or a script to gain certain functionality from their own website but can’t afford to hire a professional to do it for them. If they find what they are looking for for free on your website they may feel inclined to send you a donation as a thank you!

Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket and NEVER give up if something isn’t working out as you’d hoped it would. A lot of blogs fail simply because of the fact that the blogger has become disheartened by their results.

I urge you to experiment with any form of potential income stream you can lay your hands on. If something doesn’t perform well then you can always take it down and try out something else in its place. Experimenting with different ways to monetize your blog can be quite fun and it is interesting to see the different results from each method.

Fraser Munro is an Internet Entrepreneur focusing primarily on article marketing, blogging and freelance services.

If you are interested in my articles or services then please take a look over at my personal website – MrMunro.com.

Contact me at mrmunro@mrmunro.com

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Here are four good ways you can get paid to blog:

1. PayPerPost

Are you familiar with this company?

PayPerPost.com is a marketplace that brings websites and blogs together and you can get paid to write comments about services, products and websites that you love.

There are people that earn $500 a month or more just writing on projects that are advertised at PayPerPost.com.

Advertisers are willing to pay you for your opinion on various topics and it is as simple as searching through a list of opportunities, making a blog posting, getting your content approved, and then getting paid for it.

2. Contact other blog owners

Another thing you can do is contact blog owners and offer to write content for them. There are plenty of bloggers who just do not have time to keep up with their blogs on a daily or even weekly basis and this is where you can help them out.

Offer to write blog posts of a few hundred words for them on a consistent basis, set up a quick pay page with your PayPal button on it that they can pay you and you are off and running.

With literally millions of blogs available, there is no shortage of potential customers for you.

3. Start a number of your own blogs and monetize them

Another way to make money blogging is to start various blogs of your own on themes that you have an interest in or expertise on. You can take what you know and turn it into a real moneyspinning business.

The way you make money on a blog of your own is to monetize it with various products that people can buy. You can join affiliate programs and put pay per click, pay per lead, and pay per sale products on your blog. Then anytime a person completes the desired response you earn a commission.

Certainly the easiest of all affiliate programs to earn money on is Google Adsense. It is very easy to add javascript to your blog once you are an affiliate for the Google Adsense program and it is completely free to join.

4. Sell advertising space on your blogs

There are many other blog owners and webmasters who would be willing to pay for a text ad or banner on your blog if it is popular and attracts quality traffic.

This is a very easy way to make money once your blog has established itself, because once you place the ad you can set the billing to go on a subscription basis, and every month you get a recurring income for keeping their ad on your blog.

You can also charge different rates depending on the location of the banner. Banners at the top of the page should be charged at a higher rate than a banner on the side or at the bottom because it is one of the first things visitors see when they land on the page.

There is no shortage of ways to get paid to blog whether it be working for other people or starting your own and then setting up another and another.

Blogging has become an exciting industry over recent years and what the future holds in store no one knows. But one thing is for sure – as long as there are blogs, there will be lots of people making good money getting paid to blog.

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This month has seen yet another technology take off in a big way.

Twitter is a really simple tool that lets you post simple status updates (of 160 characters) throughout the day, much as you do in Facebook, and share them with people on Twitter. But where Facebook only allows you to share updates with your chosen friends, anyone can see your Twitter updates. Treat it as a micro-blog and you’re pretty much on the right lines.

The same issues with blogging apply to Twitter, You want to have a big following and to do that you have to write great content. If you’re already an established authority on a subject then it’s far easier to get a big following, but the great thing about Twitter is that it has a much smaller membership than the blogging world, so the possibility of becoming an authority figure is much easier.

So where do you start?

I started by looking up some of bloggers that I like and started to ‘Follow’ them. They often ‘Tweet’ or post an update where they mention a particular blog that they’re reading or mention a particular development and it’s quite interesting to read what they’re saying and what they’re reading. You can also listen in on what they’re saying to the people in their network so you can see who they consider to be people worth listening to and you can follow them too.

It’s pretty much like evesdropping (and not far off stalking!) when you approach it this way. But if you’re lucky, some of the people that you’re following might follow you and then, all of a sudden, you effectively have the ear of an authority in your chosen area.

That’s great, but what’s even better is that they have the ears of a huge network of other authorities and if you tweet something or post something insightful or useful enough then it’ll very quickly get distributed to this huge network of authorities.

So the questions are:

How do you get people to follow you?

How do you use this tool effectively?

How do you build a network?

Well, this is pretty hard, but there are plenty of blog posts offering ideas that you might want to try. What I would do is to have a really cool profile picture – one that’s really eye catching, distinct and memorable, a link to your blog (that will, of course, have loads of interesting stuff in it) and a very catchy profile – it has to be short (160 chars I think), so take time to make it punchy and attractive.

It’s not easy, but if you start to follow someone, you can guarantee that they’ll be checking out your profile so make it brilliant – nothing less. If they like what they see then they’ll follow you. Most importantly, make sure that all of your tweets are really worthwhile, cutting edge, thought provoking stuff on the subject matter of the network you’re trying to get into. You can tweet about your favourite colour and your broken toenail once you have good sized network. At the moment you’re marketing yourself so make sure you’re got something good to say, If you’ve got something interesting to say then people will want to follow you. Once you start to get a few followers then a natural momentum should begin.

How do you make the most out of Twitter?

Who knows? The main thing to remember is that good content always works. If you post good stuff then people will love you for it. If you read a good article then post a link. If you post lots of good articles then you could maybe post your latest blog entry. Perhaps you just read something and it struck a chord with you – why not mention it and share the love with your friends.

Imaging the power of having the ear of loads of authority figures and then when you post your latest blog entry then all pile in to read it! And it’s not just that they all pile in to read it – it’s that they read it and if they like it then they stumble it and digg it and add it to delicious. Imagine the size of that extended network? Imagine the sheer traffic that would drive to your blog?

But like everything else, use it sensibly. Don’t spam – you’ll lose all of your friends, be an outcast and probably die a loner in the gutter somewhere. Instead, use it as you would with your real life friends. Recommend stuff, share stuff, ask for favours, offer favours. Treat the people on there as you would treat your real life friends.

Good luck!

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Gregor Spowart is a partner in Mass Media Design, a Website Design and Internet Marketing company based in Reading (Berkshire), Swindon (Wiltshire) and Cardiff. Gregor is an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) specialist.

Search Engine Optimisation, Reading

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The problem is that you can’t think of recommending or linking the right affiliate program when you are trying to concentrate on writing a blog post.

Even when you figure out what to promote, you first have to find the affiliate link, then link it to the right keyword in your blog post.

You can do this for a new post you are writing. But what if you discovered a new affiliate program and you want to promote it in your old posts? You’ll obviously have to edit and save them again.

Now, think about this- what will you do if you want to change hundreds of posts you have already written to include the affiliate link?

Won’t it take forever to do such things?

BUT by using MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate, you can do that in mere seconds.

You’ll just have to tell it what your affilite link is and what keywords you want it to link. Then it will automatically replace all the keywords in your wordpress blog with the affiliate link you want.

The hundreds of old posts sitting there in your blog doing nothing will now instantly promote various affiliate programs which will keep on earning affiliate commissions on autopilot for you.

Not only that, MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate is a complete link management solution as well.

You can manage, track, cloak and shorten unlimited number of links from the Ninja Affiliate itself.