Finding your blogging niche should be one of the aspects of blogging which the blogger carefully considers before starting a blog. This is especially important if the blogging is being done for the purpose of financial compensation. Ideally a blog owner should select a blog subject about which they are passionate and knowledgeable. However, bloggers should also carefully consider the direct competition as well as the purpose of the blog before starting their blog. This article will discuss these considerations in greater detail in an attempt to assists bloggers in choosing a subject for a new blog. This information is applicable to both bloggers who are completely new to blogging as well as experienced bloggers who are considering starting a new blog.

Isolating Your Interests

One of the first considerations for a new blogger is his personal interests. This is important because a blogger who is passionate and knowledgeable about a particular subject will not only have an easy time coming up with ideas for new blog posts but will also likely be highly successful. This success will likely be attributable to the fact that blog visitors can sense his passion for the subject matter and greatly appreciate the knowledgeable posts which are informative and accurate.

The interests of the blogger may run the gamut from subjects which are widely popular to subjects which are of interest to only a small subset of the population. However, there will likely be interested readers regardless of the subject of the blog. Therefore bloggers are not discouraged from opting to blog about even the most obscure subjects. However, bloggers who are seeking financial gain through high blog traffic should consider selecting a topic which appeals to a larger audience.

Evaluating the Competition

Once a blogger has selected one or more subjects he is considering for a blog, it is time to begin evaluating the competition. This includes viewing other blogs covering the same subject matter. This will not only give the blogger a good indication of whether or not the market is already saturated with blogs on this subject and the quality of the existing blogs on this subject. Based on this information the blogger can make an informed decision about whether or not he feels capable of competing for blog traffic with the existing blogs.

Considering the Purpose of the Blog

Another important consideration for bloggers is the purpose of the blogs. Blogs can be created for a variety of reasons including financial compensation, personal use or to promote a cause. Bloggers who are starting a blog for personal use may only wish to consider their own interests when starting a blog because they are not likely seeking high blog traffic. However, bloggers who are creating a blog for purposes of generating a profit or promoting a cause do have to consider factors such as the ability to generate blog traffic. In these cases the blogger should choose a subject which appeals to a large audience. Additionally, the Internet should not already be saturated with blogs on this subject because it will likely be difficult for the new blog to garner a share of blog traffic. Finally, blog owners should consider the quality of the blog they are capable of creating on a particular subject. The blogger should choose a subject where he is confident he can not only make regular posts but also ensure these posts are original, informative and interesting.

This free adwords ebook explains how to market your site using adwords, How to select your keywords and what to do once you get visitors.

Download: AWMadeEasy_signed.pdf

This contest comprises of over 62 genuine prizes including cash, material goods and quality digital products that a domainer / blogger can make use of on a daily basis.

• $700 in cash from We Build Pages who offer Link Building Services. ($700 value)
• $200 credit deposited into NameDrive domain parking account courtesy of NameDrive.com. ($200 value)
• $100 Godaddy Gift card from instantdomaintool.com. ($100 value)
• $100 credit in Bidvertiser account. ($100 value)
• $100 cash from WordPressFreelance. ($100 value)
• $50 cash from Ades blog ($50 value)
• $35 Cash from Tim Schroeder of eMonetized.com. ($35 value)
• $35 Cash from Web Hosting Reviews. ($35 value)
• $30 Cash from Life is colourful. ($30 value)
• 1 Market Leverage promo pack consisting of: MarketLeverage iFlip (digital camera), MLRewards card ($50), MarketLeverage USB Pen, MarketLeverage Polo and hat, MarketLeverage/Nike duffelbag. ($350 value)
• 2 x Market Leverage promo pack consisting of MLRewards card ($25), MarketLeverage USB Pen, MarketLeverage Polo and hat, MarketLeverage/Nike duffelbag. (2 x $220 value)
• 3 x Market Leverage USB Pens with $10 ML Rewards card. (3 x $35 value)
• 6 months subscription to MarketMotive.com top internet marketing minds. ($1794 value)
• 1 hour of SEO Consulting from Todd Malicoat from seo consulting. ($500 value)
• 1 year’s PRO Subscriptions membership to FreshDrop.net. ($395.40 value)
• 5 x 1 license of the software product Domain Name Pro (5 x $64.95 value)
• 3 months membership at Aaron Wall’s SeoBook course. ($300 value)
• 3 x 1 copy of the Domain Graduate ebook. (3 x $87 value)
• 5 x 1 exclusive list of 100 expired domains from DNXpert.com (5 x $50 value)
• 6 months premium clustered hosting at iMountain.com (6 x $39.95 value)
• 2 months VIP membership at ClickMojo ($200 value)
• 15 minute one on one phone coaching session with Simon Johnson from Domainer Income ($200 value)
• 2 year subscription to DNSstuff pro tools. ($139 value)
• 1 x 100 domain parking account at WhyPark.com ($99.95 value)
• 1 copy of the Revenue Domains Exposed ebook ($97 value)
• 2 month subscription at Wordze.com ($90 value)
• 3 x 1 copy of the Domaining Manifesto ebook. (3 x $27 value)
• 1 copy of Wordze’s Guide to Keyword Research & Niche Wealth Building! ($80 value)
• 1 copy of a single use license of Brian Gardner’s Revolution blog theme of the winners’ choice ($79.99 value)
• 1 copy of Optin Comments WP plugin. ($77 value)
• 1 DNForum.com Platinum membership. ($59.95 value)
• 1 yearly subscription to Gold Account at iwebtool.com ($59 value)
• 3 x 1 copy of the Killer Domains ebook (3 x $17 value)
• 2 x 50 available domains from WordFuse.com (2 x $24.95 value)
• 1 featured listing on Sedo’s homepage for 1 domain. (worth $39)
• 1 DNForum.com Gold membership ($19.95 value)
• 1 Month DomainNews.com Newsletter Sponsorship - Top Position Advertizing ($500 value)
• 2 months 160×90 ad on ClickFire.com homepage (2 x $200 value)
• 1 Month text link on JustDropped.com search pages ($100 value)
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• 1 month of 125×125 banner advertising on Winning the Web ($50 value)
• 1 month 125×125 banner advertising at DNXpert.com ($50 value)
• 1 month 125×125 banner advertising at DotSauce.com ($40 value)
• 1 month text link on blogaboutyourblog.com ($10 value)
• 1 copy of Darren Rowse's ProBlogger ebook ($16.49 value)

Win GoDaddy Linux hosting for 1 year, 4 domain names, 4 custom web sites, a copy of BANS, a copy of SpeedPPC Pro and much more! Best of all, it's quick, free and easy to enter!

Just so we're clear, there will be more than one winner, however, the GRAND PRIZE LIST valued at over $1900 will go to just ONE PERSON!
How To Enter: Social Bookmark THIS POST and THIS SITE. Leave a comment on the OFFICIAL CONTEST POST explaining what motivated you to enter (a specific prize perhaps) and also include links so I can verify your bookmarks. For EXTRA ENTRIES you can download and post THIS ARTICLE on your blog or web site. All of the HTML is included. Contest Ends: June 23, 2008 at 12:00 PM EST

Prize List:

• $83.88 Value - 1 year GoDaddy Linux Deluxe Hosting Plan that allows you to host unlimited web sites.
• $1.99 Value - 1 domain name registration for 1 year. Choose between .com, .org, .net or .info
• $29.97 Value - 3 domain name registrations for 1 year. Choose between .com, .org, .net or .info
• $270.00 Value - 1 Traditional Blog setup, 1 Review Site setup, 1 BANS (Build A Niche Store) site setup
• $97.00 Value - 1 BANS license
• $39.00 Value - 1 custom landing page and unique article for any niche from LPCreations.com.
• $29.95 Value - 1 RoboForm password manager/form filler license.
• $20.00 Value - 1 T-Shirt from GroovyTs t-shirts.
• $30.00 Value - 1 All-Access-Pass for 1 year from Animoto.com.
• $689.00 Value - 1 BANS theme AND matching Wordpress theme and upgrade of BANS site to BANS/Wordpress blog combination from TheNicheStoreBuilder.com.
• $30.00 Value - 6 keywords from TheSocialMillionaire.com.
• $497.00 Value - 1 copy of SpeedPPC - PPC Marketing Campaign Builder Pro Version.
• $37.00 Value - 3 premium BANS templates from IanFernando.com.
• $50.00 Value - 1 hour consulting with the author of TheUniversityKid.com - Young Entrepreneur Blog
• $35.00 Value - 1 BANS template (theme) and 1 custom header image from DesignerNiches.com who offers affordable Build A Niche Store templates.

HostingRealm is running a contest with all sorts of prizes. The prizes are comprised of shared hosting accounts, reseller hosting accounts, virtual private servers, dedicated servers, and more!

Prizes for the contest

• A basic VPS for 3 months donated by Crissic Solutions, LLC (A $59.97 value)
• A business shared hosting plan for 1 year donated by Crissic Solutions, LLC (A $95.88 value)
• A business reseller hosting plan for 1 year donated by Crissic Solutions, LLC (A $143.88 value)
• A US1 free for 3 months donated by HostingForYou (A $71.85 value)
• An advanced reseller for 1 year donated by HostingForYou (A $311.88 value)
• A gold shared hosting plan for 1 year donated by MidnightSoftware (A $305.88 value)
• An Inter VPS for 3 months donated by Steadcom (A $134.85 value)
• A stellar shared hosting plan for 1 year donated by Exact-Hosting (A $58.99 value)
• One free domain registration for 1 year donated by Exact-Hosting (A $9.99 value)
• Two copies of the Domaining Manifesto donated by John Motson (A $54.00 value)
• Two Shared 0.5 plans for 1 year donated by Fused Hosting (A $23.40 value)
• Two Shared 0.75 plans for 1 year donated by Fused Hosting (A $23.40 value)
• One VPS6 for 1 month donated by Atjeu (A $85.00 value)
• One Swamp plan for 1 year donated by HostGator (A $155.40 value)
• One Basic shared hosting plan for life donated by Cirtex Hosting
• One Bronze shared hosting plan for 6 months donated by AYKSolutions (A $83.40 value)
• One Starter reseller hosting plan for 6 months donated by AYKSolutions (A $119.80 value)
• One 6 month server management plan donated by BlueTrident (A $300.00 value)
• One [cx]Argon VPS donated by CreativeVPS (A $128.85 value)
• Three gigadeal shared hosting plans for 3 months donated by JaguarPC (A $53.73 value)
• Two partner plus reseller accounts for 1 month donated by JaguarPC (A $39.94 value)
• One freedom VPS hosting account for 2 months donated by JaguarPC (A $79.94 value)

How It Works

Now that you have read the prizes and are hooked on the contest, let's explain how it works.

This contest will last forty five days, and end on July 16, 2008. All of the prize drawings will be done randomly. Drawings will be held in a chat room, the location is to be announced at a later point. Each point is one entry in the drawing. You can obtain more entries in the drawing by accumulating more points.

You can earn points in many ways:

• Any social bookmark (Digg, StumbleUpon, Furl, Delicious, etc.) is worth one point
• Making a blog post about this contest on your site in your own words is worth two points
• Making a blog post about this contest on your site by using our post is worth three points
• Subscribing to our newsletter is worth one point

Stay tuned for more ways to earn points, they will be announced during the next few weeks via the newsletter and with posts there.

When you have completed one of these tasks, leave a comment here saying what you have done and post URL's so they may verify it.

Good luck to everyone!

Blogs, by their very nature, are search engine friendly and give you built-in
advantages in optimizing for the Search Engines. For a variety of reasons, nearly all
SEOs agree that WordPress provides optimization benefits other blog platforms do
not.

By following this simple tips and using this recommended plugins, you can have an
easy-to-use content management system which also ranks well in the Search
Engines.

Download: seo-for-wordpress-blogs-blizzard-internet-marketing.pdf

There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot's job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.

Stop using wrong HTML tags like to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

How To Slice A WordPress Theme is part two of ebook on how to create a WordPress theme from scratch. (Check out part one.) It shows you how to merge all layers and save the areas that you want to use as images.

Homepage: http://www.wpdesigner.com/
Download: how-to-slice-a-wordpress-theme.zip

A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

1) Navigation purposes

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

2) Conveying your site's theme

When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the "big picture" of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors' time.

3) Site optimization purposes

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page -- they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

4) Organization and relevance

A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird's eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance.

From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accesible and neatly organized for everyone.

Best things in life are free, as many would say. This especially holds true with efforts in advertising one's products or services. With free Internet marketing services, one can save a lot. Instead of shelling out for the marketing aspect of your product or services, that chunk of money could be put to other important elements of your business since many information websites now offer knowledge regarding Internet marketing services that comes with no price tag at all.

This is not to tell you that better focus on plain Internet marketing. It still will do your business a lot good if you mix traditional advertisement efforts such as traditional and new marketing media.

Here are few of the free methods that you could employ to make your products and services be in their most visible, thus saleable, form.


1. Promote your business through free search engine submission and optimization.

Submit your website to various search engines monthly. This will make many more people know that your website actually exists. Aiming for the top search engines will help a lot in this endeavor.

2. Improve your articles.

Remember that information on articles with good content as traffic-bringer of websites? This time it's about making these articles serve your website better by using keyword suggestion tools that are offered for free. Update your web site's content by regularly checking the standing of your keywords with the current market.

3. Acquire free content.

If you have no time to increase the SEO or search engine optimization-friendliness of your articles, you can look for free content from article directories. All you need to do is retain the resource box of those write-ups.

4. Avail of free comprehensive web traffic analyzers.

These are tools that you can make use of without costing you a cent. Your website's hits statistics will be produced by this kind of Internet marketing tool for your own analysis.

5. Learn to manipulate web design templates.

You don't have to be too techie-geeky to be able to design your web site. Oftentimes, web design templates or custom-made layouts are available for the Internet marketer to use.

6. Monitor your website's visibility.

Tools such as search engine position trackers may be used to see your website's standing.

These processes are very convenient to use as long as you keep in mind that you use and try to master their use for your own benefit. Just don't get obsessed with your achievements when you finally learn how to use them and incorporate them in your Internet marketing feat.

This ebook is the third part of free e-book on how to create a Wordpress theme from scratch.

Download: http://www.wpdesigner.com/

Jerry Yang and David Filo were graduate students at Stanford University in January of 1994 when they created a website that they called "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web," a directory that organized other web sites into a hierarchy. Four months later Yang and Filo renamed the search engine Yahoo! after a word used by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels. Swift's definition of Yahoo! was "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."

At the end of 1994, approximately twelve months after its creation, Yang and Filo had over one million hits on their fledgling search engine. Understanding that they had designed something that could enjoy potential business success Filo and Yang incorporated Yahoo! early in March of 1995, fourteen months after its inception. Because the name Yahoo was already the brand name of other enterprises, human propelled watercraft, barbecue sauce, and knives, Yang and Filo were forced to add the exclamation point in order to trademark the name. Yahoo! had it first public offering on April 12, 1996. Two point six million shares of Yahoo! were sold at thirteen dollars a piece, earning a total of thirty-three point eight million dollars.

By the late 1990's Yahoo! and several other internet communications company's diversified into web portals.

In the late 1990's Yahoo! also started buying out other companies such as eGroups and GeoCities. Because Yahoo! had a reputation for changing terms of service when purchasing companies most of the buy outs were wrought with controversy.

Although it stocks fell to an all time lo, Yahoo! was able to survive the dot.com bubble burst. In order to help rebuild itself, Yahoo! started forming partnerships with telecommunication companies and internet providers, these alliances led to the creation of content rich broadband services that actively competed with AOL.

With their eye on the future, the powers in charge at Yahoo! are working on creating Yahoo!Next, a concept similar to Google Labs that contains forums that provide places for Yahoo! users to leave feedback that will hopefully assist in the development of future Yahoo! enterprises and technologies.

Like most successful companies Yahoo! is constantly working to improve and expand. Yahoo! currently provides its customers with a smorgasbord of internet services that cater o most online activities. These services include Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Maps and Driving Directions, and Yahoo! Messenger. While Google holds the top spot in search engines Yahoo! is standing strong in second place. Yahoo! competes against Yahoo! by offering its customers vertical search services such as, Yahoo! Image, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! Shopping Search, Yahoo! Video, and Yahoo! News. Yahoo! is proud to boast the largest, most successful e-mail service in the world.

User generated content products such as Yahoo! Personals, Yahoo! Photos, Yahoo! 360, and Flicker offer Yahoo!'s customer's social networking services.

Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, Yahoo! Store, Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Domains, and Yahoo! Business Email are services Yahoo! provides to small business owners that allows them to develop their own online business using Yahoo!'s tools.

In March of 2004 Yahoo! launched a paid inclusion program that guaranteed commercial websites listings on Yahoo! search engines for a fee. While the paid inclusions were lucrative for Yahoo!, they where unpopular with the online marketing world. Business owners didn't want to pay the internet mogul for search engine optimization. Paid inclusion simply guaranteed that the businesses websites would be ranked; it didn't guarantee that it would be ranked in the first two pages.

The 4 Phases of Internet Marketing report highlights the 4 critical parts of any Internet marketing campaign:

Phase 1 - Website Structure - ensures you have the basics right to appeal to both search engines and visitors.

Phase 2 - Automation & Launch - puts into place technology that multiplies the impact of your Internet marketing and instantaneously brings a high volume of relevant traffic to your website.

Phase 3 - Broaden Your Base - reduces the reliance on just the one source of traffic and helps you build a sustainable, predictable level of long-term business.

Phase 4 - Broaden Your Horizon - helps you understand the impact that new media forms of Internet marketing like video, audio, and social networking sites can have on your website.

The 61-page report details each of the 4 phases, and gives you a comprehensive example of an Internet marketing method appropriate for each phase.

Download: http://www.26weekplan.com/