Excellent Video on Increasing RSS Subscribers

Darren Rowse and crew over at ProBlogger put together this video that offers up some solid tips on building your RSS subscribership (is that even a word?). Give some of these ideas a shot, they're sure to help...

Attention Wordpress Bloggers: Check Out WP Greet Box

If you own a Wordpress blog then be sure to check out the WP Greet Box plugin. This thing could seriously drive up your RSS subscribers and makes every visit to your blog a bit more personal.

Roundup of All of the Free Wordpress Theme Roundups

Finding a good, free Wordpress template for your blog can be tricky. To make things a bit easier we've pulled together all of those Wordpress themes roundups that we could find into one list:

100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes
83 Beautiful WordPress Themes
21 Mindblowing Premium-Like Free Wordpress Themes
21 Fresh, Usable and Elegant Themes
45 Excellent Free Wordpress Themes
50 Beautiful Free WordPress Themes
10 Fresh and Clean Themes
13 Wordpress Magazine Themes
20 Free Corporate WordPress Themes
45+ Free Premium WordPress Themes with Magazine or Grid Layouts
Ten Best Free Wordpress Themes and Templates Part 1
Ten Best Free Wordpress Themes and Templates Part 2
Ten Best Free Wordpress Themes and Templates Part 3
39 Amazing Wordpress Themes
16 Free Premium Wordpress Themes That Don’t Suck
45+ Must See WordPress Themes - Noupe
Top 50 free Wordpress themes - CrazyLeaf
15 High Quality Free Premium WordPress 2.7 Themes - Noupe

Alternatives to AdSense: Chitika

Its hard to find a blog out there that doesn't use Google's AdSense as a part of their monetization strategy. But there's much more out there than just AdSense and if you're not testing other advertising options then its likely that you're leaving money on the table.

One other ad network that I've had some great success with on other sites that I run is Chitika. I use Chitika's Premium Ads which are targeted to your search traffic coming into your blog. By working this way Chitika Premium ads are in compliance with Google AdSense's terms and conditions and can be used on the same page as AdSense. You also have the option of showing untargeted ads to visitors that didn't come from a search engine, for example the ad below, if you came from a search engine, will be targeted to whatever you searched. And then if you didn't arrive here via search then it will just show a random advertisement. When you sign up you'll get the choice of whether you want to show the random ad or would rather insert blank space instead.



So that's the basics on Chitika, its totally free to setup and definitely worth a try on your blog. Click here to sign-up.

When Blogs Just Won't Work

While in general I am a huge fan of blogs and blogging platforms, there are some instances where you may want to make a website and a blog just won't work for you. Usually this is the case if you want to have a more static look and feel to the site, for example a small business' website should probably not be a blog and should instead have a more professional and consistent feel to it.

So what do you do in these instances? Well, there are a few different options, but far and away I'd suggest using a Content Management System, or CMS, to get the job done. Technically, blog platforms (Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, etc.) are CMSs, but in this instance I'm going to focus on a CMS that would be a better fit for the job and that's Joomla.

Joomla is a free open-source CMS that is widely used, supported and you can even get ramped up quickly with a ton of free templates built for Joomla. Learning Joomla does take some time and effort, but with a good template, you'll be up and running quickly and the customization process will be fairly straightforward.

Combating Splogs

I recently noticed another blog that I run was getting an increasing number of trackbacks to my most recent posts. Seems like good news at first...people are liking what I write and writing about it on their own blogs. Not the case though.

Upon a little closer inspection I found a few different sites with the exact same content as I had posted to my blog just minutes beforehand. Spam blogs or more commonly splogs. These splogs were reading my blog's content from my RSS feed and then posting it to their site literally minutes after I post it.

This is bad news. Google and the other search engines do not look favorably upon duplicate content and there's no guarantee that the search bots will visit my blog before the splog. If the splog gets indexed first then there could potentially be penalties for my blog.

So what options do legitimate bloggers have against splogs?

1. Flag the Blog - If the splog is hosted on blogspot, click the flag button in Blogger to report a blogspot splog.


2. Report the blog - Splog Reporter and SplogSpot are two services looking to aggregate a list of splogs. Not sure how effective they are but worth a try.


3. If the splog uses AdSense, tell Google that they are violating the AdSense Terms of Service - To do this Click on the Ads by Google link on any of the AdSense ads on the splog. Then select "Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw." From there its pretty self-explanatory, just report that the site is using your content to profit from AdSense.


4. Contact the splog owner and ask them to discontinue using your feed - Not much chance of this succeeding but it still might be worth a shot. A WhoIs search would be the place to start. If that fails then you could try leaving a comment on the splog. Again, this method has slim to no chance of working but might be worth a try.

In my case, I have pursued all of the above options. I'll be sure to post again on any success (or failure) that I have in reducing my splogs stealing my content.

The Power of Blogs -TrueHoop

An interesting development in the blogosphere occurred the other day when TrueHoop, a blog about NBA basketball, was bought by ESPN.

Just goes to show how blogging about something that you love can really pay off in the end. No idea yet on how much the deal was worth but I'm sure the TrueHoop owners made out ok.

So what can we the average blogger take away from this? Well, a few things.

First of all check out TrueHoop, the site design is very plain and simple. Way too often bloggers overload the senses rather than just clearly communicating their thoughts to their readers.

Secondly TrueHoop has clearly done a great job of getting readers to participate in their conversations about the NBA. Each of there posts has a number of comments, most of which add to the overall site's content.

And finally you might notice that TrueHoop has 0 (yes...0) advertisements on it. For many bloggers that's just a crazy idea (me included), but it is interesting to note. TrueHoop is about the NBA, nothing else. Focus your blog on a specific topic and keep writing.

Adsense Optimized Blog Templates

In light of my previous on using AdSense in a blog to make money, I thought I share this site I just stumbled across that provides free AdSense optimized blog templates based on Google's heat map. The site has both Blogger templates and Wordpress templates. Might be worth checking out.

If you use one of the templates, swing by again and leave a comment to let me know if the templates work out well or not.

Making Money From Blogging - Part 2: Affiliate Programs

The use of Affiliate Programs can be another excellent source of income from your blog. Affiliate programs are basically just a way for large online retailers to pay you for referring sales to them.

Most likely, no matter what your blog is about there is some sort of affiliate program that would make sense for your readers.

For example, my blog, The Blogging Fool, uses Amazon.com's affiliate program to post those various blogging books that you can see on the right side of the page. Anyone that clicks through on one of those book links and then buys anything from Amazon.com, I get a commission on. Pretty simple.

Before deciding whether or not to give affiliate programs a try, take a second to ask yourself two questions:

1. Who is my target reader?
2. What goods or services are they most likely to be interested in?

Answer those two questions and you'll be well on your way to making money from blogging via affiliate programs.

A few good Affiliate Programs:

• Amazon.com Associates Program - You can almost always find some sort of books or cds that your reader may be interested in.


• LinkShare Referral Program - LinkShare runs affiliate programs for Target, Apple, Macy's, Netflix, Overstock.com and a ton more. Odds are you'll find something worthwhile.


• Commission Junction - Affiliate programs include Sony, Hammacher Schlemmer, Petco, Home Depot and a lot more.

Making Money From Blogging - Part 1: Adsense

This is the start of a new series on making money by blogging. Today we'll start with probably the most obvious method for making money from a blog, AdSense. AdSense is a free service designed by Google that anyone can place on a webpage. AdSense then determines what the topic (or topics) of the webpage are and shows advertisements relevant to those topics. For example, on this blog, The Blogging Fool, the main topic covered is blogging and making money from blogging. So if you look at the ads on the right side of the page most likely some or all of the ads are in regard to blogging and/or making money from blogging. Simple enough.

Get AdSense

So if you don't already have an AdSense account I strongly suggest that you get one right now. It's totally free and will help you start to make money from your blog. If you're interested, click on this button to sign up: Ok you've signed up, now what?

Placing Your Ads

The next step is placing your ads on your website. Google's heat map is a huge help for this. Based on Google's research, the heat map shows you exactly what sections of a website tend to be most successful. Of course, every webpage is different so this should only be used as a guideline. In fact, no one knows your webpage as well as you do so take a minute and think of how people's eyes look at your page and go from there. One great resource that AdSense also provides is custom channel tracking which will allow you track the performance of each ad unit on your page. Make sure that you use custom channel tracking and check every few weeks or so to see which channels are performing best.

Color Choices For Your Ads

One other choice that you must make when placing AdSense ad units on your page is the color of the text in the ads. There are two schools of thought on how to best do this. One is to make the ads blend into your page so that they fit with the overall theme and appear somewhat as part of the content. The second is to make the ads stand out by using contrasting colors to draw visitors attention. As you can probably tell from the ads on this page I prefer the former, in which the ads are blended into the page. I think it makes the site more professional and avoids giving people the feeling that all you want to do is make a quick buck. Well that's all for now, if you have any further questions on AdSense please drop a comment and I'll either respond with my own comment or write another post to clarify. Best of luck with AdSense!