In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else''s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that''s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers.

These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn”t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that”s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you”ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people”s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger”s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it”s sort of like your blog telling someone else”s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it”s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it”s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn”t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it”s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I”ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won”t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time. Go to Blog Mastermind to get the scoop.

Good Morning from St Louis!

I just finished reading a new report by Walter M. Prorok Jr. and Chris Vendilli. Inside this report Walt & Chris talk about the in’s & out’s of configuring your Twitter account along with some free third party services to maximize your traffic & exposure.

I was skeptical at first, but after reading through the whole report and watching a couple of the videos available at their website I must say, I’m beyond impressed.

These two guys have been silently attracting visitor after visitor to their sites using Twitter, and they’ve created a step by step guide so that anyone can replicate their ideas & systems.

Yes, that’s right, it’s another “system.” Most of us, as marketers, have pretty much come to recognize the word “system” as overused and often incorrectly placed. But, with “The Twitter Report” and the videos that follow, this stuff really is formatted into what you could correctly label a “system” at it’s finest.

Walt & Chris have uncovered every known tip & trick for setting up your Twitter account to give you maximum return per tweet, while keeping everything on auto-pilot as much as possible. They leave nothing to question and go pretty in depth.

Most of the stuff they cover includes many things you could likely figure out on your own, however, this report can save you the time & aggravation of having to go through trial and error while you make the same mistakes they’ve already made for you, & neatly documented along the way.

Why waste time, energy, and money trying to figure it all out on your own when you could just see how it all worked out for them and simply follow their suggestions, which are already proven to work successfully?

After reading the report and watching some of the videos I give TwitterHints.com two enthusiastic thumbs up, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to stay on the cutting edge of this new wave of communications & hyper-connectedness.

You’ll learn how to configure your settings, which 3rd party sites to join & how to set them up to run campaigns automatically, and much more.

I’m sure you’ll enjoy “The Twitter Report” as much as I did and you can go check it out here:

Twitter Hint

Bob Kimball

Ever feel as if nobody is reading your blog? You do all the SEO you read, still the visitor numbers are missing. What do you do? If this kinda describes your current feelings then this article will provide you with ways to blast off your blog to grow your business.

Launch Stage #1
The first place to look at is the basic foundation of a successful blog
(back to the basics). Here are few things that you should keep in mind:

(1) Be sure your blog has a niche topic so you can make a concerted effort to
reach specific blog visitors. So, if you have a hobby such as collecting butterflys, then your main topic should be concentrated on reaching
web visitors who love butterfly collecting.

(2) Use categories/tags that are sub-topics of your main topic. Going with the
previous niche topic, then good sub-topics would be: authors, types,
illustrations, geography, etc.

(3) Good oontent is key to building traffic to your website. Make sure that your
content includes the keywords that you want associated to your niche blog.

Launch Stage #2
Once you have the basics in place, then you need to create a “community” within
your blog. Building a “community” means that you want to create a reason for
repeat visits by your blog visitors. This will help you in the long run to one
day setup a membership website. What does it take to build a “community”? Glad
you asked. Below is a short list of things you can do.

(1) Create a way for your web visitors to contribute to your blog. This can be
done by allowing them to comment on your blog posts or by allowing them to
submit content to be considered for posting to your blog.

(2) Ask your web visitors to submit a link for consideration to be added to your
“blogroll” in exchange for them putting a link back to your blog from theirs.

(3) Visit article websites such as Free Article Directory and find articles that
are in your niche. You would have to give credit to the author of the article
but it is a great way to add content to your website.

Launch Stage #3
Give your blog visitors a reason to come back by rewarding them for continuously
visiting your blog.

(1) Give-away freebies to your blog visitors.

(2) Create a way for them to tell-a-friend about your blog.

(3) Have a contest for guest authors in your niche topic to be guest authors on
your blog and ask them to share a link to the article on your blog from theirs.

Article written by ERIK GIFFORD

Are you looking to promote your network marketing business by using an RSS feed on your blog? If you’re looking to get repeat visitors to a blog or improve your network marketing strategies, it’s time to get serious about RSS feeds.

An RSS feed is a web feed format that is used to frequently update online content, like blog entries, headlines, weather and breaking news in a universally acceptable format. The letters stand for “Really Simple Syndication,” “Rich Site Summary” or “RDF Site Summary,” depending on who you ask.

RSS feeds make it easy to distribute time-sensitive material to a large number of people. RSS feeds are written in computer code that organizes the information in a way that it is easy to read for the general public.

It is often tedious for the general public to constantly check back on a webpage for new updates. If you allow your visitors to sign up for an RSS feed, they will be notified almost automatically of any changes and updates you make to the content of your website. So, when you post a new blog, add a public speaking engagement to your calendar, offer a new product or make any other change to your web content, an RSS feed will let your client base know about it.

E-mail notifications about updated content were the way to go a few years ago. However, now that e-mail spam filters are working overtime to protect people from unwanted e-mails, it is difficult to get e-mails across to people about your website updates.

RSS feeds are welcomed by your website viewers, and they make it much easier to get your updates spread across the Internet. As an added benefit, an RSS feed will increase web traffic to your site.

So, how does an RSS feed work? When you add a new item to your web page, you need to list it on your RSS channel as an “item.” The item will need to be listed with three bits of information: its title, a description and a link to the item. For instance, if you have a new concert date to brag about, list the item on your channel with the title of “New Concert Date Announced!” and a description of the time, date, place and cover charge of the show. Then, link it to your web-based calendar, and you are all set.

Once the RSS file is completed, be sure to validate it to make sure you entered it properly. Using a Feed Validator service, type in the address to your RSS file and make sure everything looks good. If there is a problem with the code or information in your RSS feed, simply change the item until it looks the way you want it to.

Now, you can syndicate news about yourself or your business and drive traffic to your website in a fast and easy manner. Any time of the day or night, you can update your loyal customers and fans with news and information all around the globe. RSS feeds are a great way to keep your audience informed.

Erik Gifford can be reached at Network Marketing Guidance

http://www.networkmarketing-guidance.com

Please let me know if this is the type of content you like to read!

Thanks for visiting,
Bob Kimball

Howdy Folks.

You finally see the light and you realize that you need an opt-in list to make money on the Internet. You’ve read hundreds of times ‘the money is in the list’. You’ve heard all the stories of people creating a profitable business with opt-in lists.

With that light bulb still flashing away you decide to do something about it – start a list of your own. But what’s the first step? And better yet, how do you build a list big enough to generate an income?

It’s a bit daunting when you’re first starting out.

a) Do you need a web site?

b) Do you need an Opt-In form?

c) Should you use an autoresponder service or free script?

d) How should you format the messages?

e) How many should you send each week?

And the list goes on and on.

Much depends on how experienced you are on the Internet. If you have no knowledge of CGI or PHP, then hosting your own script may not be an option. If you don’t know HTML or don’t have direct access to your on-line files, then editing your pages to insert the code for an opt-in form will not be possible.

Sadly, these are just some of the obstacles that you will need to overcome if you want to give this ‘Internet Thing’ a fair shake. Having your own web site is a good thing, but not absolutely necessary, but sooner or later will be a smart move. Without one, you would only be able to promote other people’s products (as they would have their own web sites for you to send traffic to through your affiliate links). However, getting a free Blog for starters is always an option. Try Google’s Blogger for example. You can add your opt-in form on your blog!

Here are three easy steps that you can take to start building your opt-in list right now:

1. Offer a free report or video that contains links back to your web site/blog.You can also make it necessary for your visitors to fill out your opt-in form before they can access the report.

2. Join some of the Fire Sales and Giveaways that other marketers are running (sometimes called Joint Ventures). Add your gift to the site and when visitors want to download your gift make them fill out your opt-in form first. Haven’t got a gift? PLR products are your answer.

3. Exchange ads with other opt-in list owners. You run an ad for them and they run an ad for you. Granted you probably won’t be able to join up with someone who has a huge list (as they won’t be getting much exposure in return) but if you can find other lists that are of a similar size to yours, you should be able to dance with them.

Building a responsive, profitable opt-in list won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. Keep at it and be creative. Think outside of the box; put a twist on an old idea. And most of all – be persistent.