If you blog to make money online, here are three tools you need to use straight away. If you’re not already using these tools, they can make a difference to your traffic and your earnings.  If you’re using them already and have some other tools that you find indispensable, we’d love to hear what they are!

RSS

A lot of blog templates have RSS built in. If not, you should add it. Really Simple Syndication can help you feed your blog to other places and have people subscribe to you.  In a future post, we’ll talk about some of the things you can do with your feeds!

MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog or BOTH

I’ve talked a lot about these tools here on SeanSEO and it’s because they add a level of interactivity to your blog. Using these interactive tools puts you in a directory and provides you with colourful widgets for your blog that allow you to see who’s visiting.  When you click on a widget you can be taken to blog communities, ratings pages, tag clouds and individual member lists which can help you find more followers to network with and is a great tool to use for finding places in your niche to comment and trade links with.  There are many benefits to using these services  as they’re a combination of a blog directory and social marketing tool.

Magic Traffic Formula

Now you should go ahead and follow your own magic blog traffic formula to get people to that blog post.  Do you have one yet? This kind of formula will include a handful of actions that you do after each blog post that will bring traffic to your website.  The tools mentioned above will start you off but your little formula for getting extra traffic will help you significantly.  Do you have a formula yet?  If not, stop back tomorrow and I’ll give you a few tips to help you brew up a formula for getting maximum mileage out of each blog post you write.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2009

Today’s post shares some great blogs you might want to consider reading if you’re someone who wants to make money on the internet.  Staying abreast of news in the industry and linking yourself to these blogs by way of commenting and pingbacks can also help your SEO.

5 Blogs to Read Today

1. TechCrunch:  Just voted the most powerful and influential man in social media, TechCrunch “profiles and reviews” internet stuff keeping you informed and is run by Michael Arrington.
2. ProBlogger: Anyone who blogs needs to follow Darren Rowse, one of the most successful professional bloggers online who teaches you how to monetize your blog.
3. DoshDosh:  Like money? Enough said.
4. SEOMOZ: While the service isn’t free, reading the blog is and you can find very valuable information here with a daily dose of SEO.
5. Sean Rasmussen:  I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug my co-author. Sean is inspirational and his motivation is contagious!

Subscribing to a few valuable blogs and getting posts delivered to your e-mail every day is a great way to continually educate and motivate yourself for your craft! Don’t forget to subscribe to SeanSEO.com while you’re at it and get your regular dose of internet marketing tips.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2009

Deciding to blog is a tough decision isn’t it? What subject should it be about? What kind of posts should you write? Should you go it alone or get it hosted for free at a blogging site?

Blogging isn’t the easy job some people think it is. It can certainly be rewarding, enlightening and enjoyable, but the hardest part is definitely getting it going in the first place.

Equally as Hard

For some reason creating a blog isn’t generally seen to be as hard as getting a website up and running. But in reality it can be equally as hard. You might not be selling anything directly from your blog – you certainly haven’t got lots of product pages to worry about – but you do have to think about all the same design aspects when you are creating a blog, and you still have to think about updating it regularly and optimising it for the search engines and so on.

When you think about all that, it’s small wonder that it’s easy to put off creating a blog for quite a while before you actually get around to taking the plunge. It’s also very important to make sure that you do get it set up exactly as you want it before you publish it for the whole world (hopefully) to see.

Creating a Blog

You might find it easier to plan what you aim to achieve from creating a blog before you actually do it if you really are hesitant about making the leap. Do you want to build up a big readership and then funnel them across to your website to sell various items to them? Do you want to monetize the blog itself? Do you simply want to provide good value by creating a blog that imparts good value to its readers?

Once you have the basics in place, you might find that creating a blog becomes a much easier process.

Have a most outstanding day.

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2009

When you use social media tools to try to increase your chances of making more sales, you can take informration in these tools and use them to your advantage. A lot of hype is spread around about monetizing Facebook, MySpace and Twitter but new marketers often don’t know how to mine these systems for information that can help them.  Here are some tips:

Search for keywords

Twitter Search is a tool that can help you in internet marketing if you’re using it to its full potential.  A good way to use it is to search for people you can market to. If you sell widgets, you can search for others that have tweeted about widgets or that use widgets in their profile and add them to your friend list. From there, you can establish yourself as a guru in that niche and you could develop more subscribers, clients and people who’ll buzz about you on the social marketing scene.

Search for groups

Some of these tools such as MySpace and FaceBook have common interest groups. By joining those groups, you increase your ability to find people interested in your subject matter..

Make the most of your profile

Use the profile on these sites to maximize your potential for followers and for success. You need to look like a valuable member of the community and not just another person trying to sell something.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2009

If you want to learn the secrets to your competition’s success, you need to analyse their moves.  Google Alerts can help you do that.  Use it to do keyword searches and to help you get hand delivered information about your niche and your customers.

Google Alerts for Creative Research

There are loads of free Google tools to help you get information that can help you succeed. Get creative! Everyone needs to do creative niche research and everyone needs to do competitive analysis. Besides researching on the search engines, research for your keywords and research your competitor’s names and find out what’s out there that is making someone else money instead of you.  The results that get delivered to your e-mail could help you fine tune your copywriting skills, give you new angles to use for your article marketing and help you keep up to date on news in internet marketing by getting the infromation you want delivered to you so you don’t have to remember to go out and look for it.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2009