As I’m not a professional blogger, I need to maintain my blog while having a full-time job ( and a life for that matter -)). I’ve been looking into several ways to become more effective in maintaining and writing a blog. All the time I spend with blogging can actually be divided in 4 large chunks :

1. Setup and maintenance of my blog : setting up the blog, installing plugins, blog design, …
2. Traffic generation and analysis: search engine & directory submission, search engine optimization ,..
3. Sourcing : finding good sources or material to write about
4. Writing posts : writing new posts from the collected information

After your blogs construction phase, there is obviously ongoing work on maintenance & traffic generation but relatively less then time spent with sourcing and article writing. Especially so when unique content is intended as a traffic generator ! Sourcing is the most obvious part to save time and involves :

1. Collecting enough relevant fixed sources ( writing about related content) which are typically RSS feeds, mails or links to sites.
2. Collecting link or RSS directories as a starting point to new related sources
3. Search engines

Of course, finding the right sources can be time consuming but even more is reading through all your existing sources. Although I used some very good tools to read E-mail, browse RSS feeds and organize bookmarks, I have been looking for the one tool that bundles all of these ( for free ). I found this combination in My Yahoo and more …

If you sign up for a Yahoo account, you start immediately by customizing your own My Yahoo page ! You define your own layout and theme, create one or more pages and select the content of your interest for each page. Reordering can be done by simple drag & drop. To understand how powerful this tool can be in optimizing your sourcing productivity, I’ll explain how I optimized my own page to optimize productivity :

To start, I divide My Yahoo in several pages : a home page where all my key content appears and some side pages where I put focussed content on.

The home page is divided in 3 columns : 2 sidebars and a larger middle section.

The left sidebar contains 2 modules :

1. A Search box which allows you to immediately start searching topics using the Yahoo search engine. Searches can be personalized in order to find the most relevant content according your preferences.
2. A Calendar that lists your tasks to do, Eg. Plan to research on a certain topic or to write a new article at a certain day. Besides using it as a blog time management tool, it can also be synchronized with your existing appointments on your palm or outlook.

The middle column contains :

1. A mail preview box to preview your incoming mail
2. A notepad to list new ideas or draft concepts for your next posts
3. A list of modules previewing the latest posts from your key RSS sources

The right sidebar contains :

1. A module to Add content from Yahoo’s listings or any other RSS feed. An even more valuable sourcing technique is the possibility to create your own custom RSS feeds based on keywords !
2. A message center to list incoming messages
3. A bookmarks section where you can links to your favorite blogs or sites
4. A module that allows to browse Yahoo’s directory

Besides my home page, I’ve created a number of pages which contain news for specific topics. For these pages, I choose to have a two-column layout with only a right sidebar which is pretty much the same sidebar as on the home page, except that I also inserted the search box. The left part contains only news items on a specific topic, from an existing RSS feed or one or more custom feeds containing keywords, relevant to that topic, Eg. Adsense.

Last I’d like to sum-up what I believe to be the key benefits of using My Yahoo as a blogging productivity tool :

1. It bundles several tools in one : mail reader, RSS news reader & aggregator, agenda, sticky notes, search engine, online bookmarking and browsing Yahoo directories.
2. RSS feeds can be easily added and categorized using pages, preview preferences can be easily customized ( Eg. Preview posts from last 3 days ). A single topic can be completely previewed by scrolling down which I find more responsive then browsing different folders and clicking an RSS feed to preview it’s topics as most RSS readers do.
3. It is web-based and thus can be easily accessed from any pc you are working on. On top of that, the tool is very performing and responsive, in contrary to most web-based applications !
4. Yahoo is continuously developing new amazing programs which provide more and more usefull tools like alerts when new content is found on a topic of interest, Yahoo 360 which includes the ability to blog, Yahoo groups to build your community and much more …
5. Last but not least : it is completely free !!!

James Collins posts tips, tricks and tutorials at Lucrative tips on making some money on the web. No promises for big fortune, no automated-lay-back-and-become-a-millionaire-scams here, but serious ways to make an additional income or living on the web.

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These days, everybody is blogging.

How about you?

You can incorporate blogging into your sales marketing
and achieve more success.

Have your customers publish an online diary instead
of giving you a testimonial. The diary would include
regularly updated entries of how customers are using
your product to improve their life. You could give
customers a free product or a rebate in exchange for
them publishing it online.

Your customers could write diary entries about goals
they have reached using your product, the positive
emotions it’s given them, the fears and worries your
product has taken out of their lives, how bad their
lives were before they bought it, how it has helped
other people in their lives, etc.

Your customers could update it daily, weekly or
monthly. It will depend on how often they use your
product. You could publish the diary right in your
ad or link directly to the diary. You could provide
the people with web space for writing the online
diary or have them e-mail you the diary entries for
you to publish.

You can make the online diary extra persuasive by
also including customer’s personal profile, pictures,
online video of them using your product, net audio
of them talking about your product, even scanned
handwritten letters, etc.

An online diary would likely outsell the common
testimonial because it’s updated on a regular basis
and reveals more personal information. A diary is
considered private which would make people more
curious to read it and believe it’s legitimacy.

May you these sales marketing secrets help you to make
a lot of money.

Warmly,

I-key Benney, CEO

I-key, a Millionaire CEO from New York City is the creator of “Mscsrrr: Millionaire Secret Cash System”, (internet income opportunity) program, which has helped thousands of ordinary people from all over the world to attain financial security and shining success during the past 2 yrs.

Mscsrrr Millionaire Cash System helps you to generate $1,500+/Week for life, from home or office, part time or full time. No large investment or hassles. Win $1000-$2000 free “cash”

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Internet marketing using blogs has quickly gained a lot of popularity as a wonderful way to promote your business.

There are many ways that blogging can help in the promotion of your business. Since blogs are usually full of links and contain a large amount of keywords it will give your site a much better chance of being picked up by a search engine allowing more exposure for your business.

Taking a course on search engine optimization with help you determine the best keywords for your blog.

You can establish yourself to be very knowledgeable about the items your business carries and be influential in the decision making process of your customers. This will give you credibility in your field and generate leads for your business.

You can use your blog as a method of introducing the people behind your business to your customers giving your business a more personalized feel which will give you an edge on larger corporations. Also make sure that whomever you have creating the entries in your blog has suitable writing skills because by keeping the entries short and easy to read you will find it will bring your customers visiting often to see what is going on with your company.

Blogs can be used to run daily or weekly contests which is another great way to keep you customers coming back to your site. You can also highlight new business promotions with your blog. Blogs can be used to test out new projects or to get feedback on new products. If your blog contains a feedback feature you can judge the feedback a new product might receive before it goes live on your web site. Customers and potential customers will love to be able to give you input on the products or services of your business.

Photos are an excellent internet marketing tool to use on blogs. Having a picture and a short blurb describing the product can be a lot more effective then simply writing a descriptive paragraph highlighting the item. You can set up a frequently asked questions section to your blog and by leaving out a lot of the terms that public relations people use in their writing for large corporations you will be making your business a lot more personable which is what a lot of people prefer these days. You could add new questions you your site as you receive them if you believe they would be of help to your customers.

I personally have been making regular contributions to my blog over the last number of weeks. I am one of those slow learners who FINALLY caught on that these things do actually help increase traffic to my main sites and affiliate programs. I have been seeing excellent results and I’ve only just started. You can view my blog here: http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/blog

The possibilities of internet marketing with a blog are endless and with the current popularity of blogging you would be making an excellent choice of creating one to aide you in the promotion of your business.

Mal Keenan is editor and publisher of Home Business Tips Newsletter:
Work at home business opportunities

Find a work at home business you can believe in visit: Work at home Opportunities & Ideas

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