Designing Your Blog Logo

Once you have chosen your domain name and web host, you have to think about your blog design. Before someone even reads your content, they have already formed an impression based off the appearance of your website. Therefore, designing your logo is something you will want to consider carefully.

A well-designed logo can establish a brand for your blog. Therefore, when designing your blog, you should strive for a logo that is representative of your business. It should also be unique, simple, and easy to remember. Complex logos are harder to remember.

There are essentially three types of logos: text, symbols, and text plus symbols. Even if you just have a text logo, you can still covey feelings with the type and size of font. For instance, bold or thick fonts convey strength whereas a slanted font can convey movement.

Other factors you’ll want to remember when you’re designing you logo is whether it is aesthetically appealing on the page. Think about the relationship between the height and width of the letters, the alignment of the logo on the page, the balance, and whether there is a recognizable shape for the outline. Contrast can help the shape be more recognizable. Try to use no more than two different fonts and two different colors.

Since a logo establishes brand, you will want to get it right the first time. Take your time. Ask for input from others. Try to enjoy the creative process.

Choosing a Domain Name

Second to your niche, choosing a domain name is one of the most important decisions you will make in building your blog. Essentially, a domain name is your address on the internet. Not only will a good domain name help the search engines find you more easily, it will draw more traffic too.

Basics

Anyone can register a domain name.

You can register a domain name up to 67 characters.

You can register a name for up to 10 years in advance.

Look for

Choose unique name

Choose a dot com extension. Most internet users assume domain names are a dot com.

If you have a business, try registering your actual business name.

After you register your business name, try to get one or more generic names that describe your business.

Use keywords that describe your business. Try not to use more than two or three keywords. Using more than three key words can damage the search engine results. The longer your name, the more likelihood customers will misspell it. Furthermore, your email address will be longer too.

To protect your domain name, you may want to register for .net and .org.
If the domain name you want is already registered, you might want to try buying it from the owner. Sometimes the owner may not have a website attached to it yet. You can find the name of the owner at www.allwhois.com.

Domain names are also sold on the secondary market. Check out www.GreatNames.com or www.Afternic.com.

Look for a short name that is easy to spell.

If you’re having problems coming up with a name, a thesaurus may help you think of words.

Avoid

Hyphens

Slashes

Numbers

Abbreviations

Names too long

Don’t use a sub domain. Sub domain names make you look less professional, cheap, and unwilling to invest anything in your business. Customers expect a business to have a top-level domain name. By using a sub domain, you can lose 50% of your customer base. Secondly, if your subdomain isn’t relative to the top domain level, your site will be harder for the search engines to find, categorize, and index. If your site isn’t indexed, no one will be able find it, and there will be no traffic. It will also be harder to build backlinks for your site which is critical in obtaining a higher search engine rank page.

Domain Name Availability
Before you try registering your domain, check to see if it is available. Typing the url in a search engine is not good enough. The name may be registered but not showing online. You can find out whether the name is available on any online web host server or domain registry site.

Conclusion
Since a domain name is so important, take your time choosing a name. . Not only does the domain name give you a home on the web, it helps internet users find your site, and draw traffic, it can also develop a brand for your business. Brands diffentiate your website from another website. Strive to develop a name that is unique, simple, keyword rich, and easy to remember. Your effort will pay off in the end.

A good name, like good will, is attained by many actions and may be lost by one. - Author Unknown

Definitions

Niche: A narrowly, focused topic

Domain: A group of computers on a web hosting site.

Domain name: A domain’s address on the internet or url.

Subdomain: A domain that is part of a larger domain.

Traffic: The number of visitors in a given amount of time.

Backlink: A one-way link pointing to your site from another site.

Search engine rank page (SERP): The page you come up on in search engine results.

Brand: A name, sign, or symbol that a consumer associates his overall perception of a product or service.

Blogs: Paid Hosting Services vs. Free Hosting Services

Before your blog can be viewed worldwide, you need to decide whether you are going to use a free blogging host service or a paid blogging host service. Although there are advantages and disadvantages to both, the biggest decision factor will be your blog’s goal. If your blog is a personal blog for family and friends, a free blogging host will probably be adequate. However, if you are planning to monetize your blog or use it to promote a business, a paid blogging host might be better.

When trying to make a decision, there are certain factors you should consider. Here is a list of the advantages and disadvantages of a paid hosting service.

Advantages

• Some people think blogs hosted with a free sevice do look as professional.


• Like businesses, blogs can have a brand too. A brand is a name, sign, or symbol that a consumer associates with his or her overall impression of a product or service. Consequently, it helps a consumer distinguish one company‘s product or service from another company‘s product or service. A blog’s logo, appearance, name, content, and url all help to develop brand. Since a paid service offers a greater degree of customization, it can help build brand more easily. Furthermore, your blog’s name is usually a sub domain of the free hosting company. This makes it harder to develop brand and for your customer to remember your url.


• There is greater control with a paid hosting service. First, free hosting services limit your ability to monetize your blog whereas with paid services the sky is limit. For instance, the free Wordpress does not allow any monetization. Blogger limits it to Adsense. Hubpages allows Adsense, Kontrera, and the opportunities to be an Ebay and Amazon affiliate. However, you only receive 60% of your Adsense profits in exchange for the free hosting platform. Therefore, using a free hosting service can greatly affect your ability to make money with your blog.


• There is greater flexibility with a paid hosting service. You can add more plug-ins.


• There is usually better support with a paid hosting service.


• With free hosting services, there may be a limit in disc space. Therefore you may not be able to add any new content after a certain point.


• With a free hosting service, there may be a limit in bandwith. If your site is too popular, it may be shut down.


• Most free hosting services don’t offer domain based email accounts.


Disadvantages

• You have to pay for a hosting service and the domain.


• Paid hosting services are not as easy to setup and use. You need a knowledge of html in order to customize your blog. Therefore, free hosting services are easier to use.


If you want to monetize your blog, I think the advantages of a paid hosting service far outweigh a free hosting service. With a paid hosting service, you have greater control and more flexibility. Therefore, unless you are certain you don’t want to monetize your blog, I think it is easier to go with a paid hosting service from the beginning.

You get what you pay for - Gabriel Biel

Definitions

Adsense: A contextual advertising program ran by Google.

Blogger: A free blog hosting site owned by Google.

Domain: A unique url that identifies a website.

Bandwith: The speed at which data transfers over a connection in a given time expressed as bps or bits per second.

Affiliate: An advertising program that rewards websites for each customer purchases.

Kontrera: A form of contextual advertising that shows a textbox ad when a keyword is clicked on.

Url: An internet address for a website.

Choosing the Right Niche

Choosing the right niche for your blog can mean the difference between success and failure. Since it is so important, how do choose a niche? For some people the answer is easy. However, others have no idea what to choose.

In most articles you read about building successful blogs, they will give you several pieces of advice.

• Write about what you are interested in and passionate about.


• Write about what you know.


• Try to find a niche that isn’t oversaturated.

Writing what you‘re interested in and passionate about is important from two standpoints. Without an interest in the subject, more than likely, you will not continue blogging about it. Furthermore, usually your readers will be able to sense whether you are passionate about your topic.

If you write about what you know, it will be easier to develop content and authority. Even in investing, Warren Buffet, an infamous investor and the richest man in the world, will tell you to invest in companies you understand. However, this is not always easy. Some people are interested in many different subjects but a master in none.

Unless you're writing a personal blog for family and friends, it is easier to attract a readership if the niche isn‘t oversaturated. However, at the same time, you need to ensure there is a big enough audience to get traffic. Otherwise, if there isn‘t a very big audience, your blog will lack traffic. No traffic means no money.

By using Google’s Adwords Free Keyword Search tool, you can get an idea of how many searches a day are done on your blog topic of interest. This tool will show you the approximate search volume per month and the approximate average volume.

If you plan to make money on your blog, since Google Adsense is popular from of contextual advertising, you may want to get an idea of how much a topic will pay. Although Adsense does not tell you how much you will make by placing contextual advertising on your blog, you can make an educated guess by finding out how much the advertisers are paying per click advertise. Advertisers bid on keywords for an ad. If the adword has more competition and demand, they have to pay more money for it. Consequently, this leads to higher payout for Adsense users.

In addition to using Google’s Adword tool for the number of searches, it will also give you an estimate of the competition for the Adword. Although the use of this tool is free, you will have to create an Adwords account with Google.

Choosing the right niche is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. When considering what niche is right for you, look for an unsaturated niche which has potential for traffic and earnings that you write about with passion. If you succeed at this, you are on the right road to building a successful blog.

Every choice you make has an end result. - Zig Ziglar

Definitions

Niche: A narrowly focused topic.

Traffic: The amount of visitors your website recieves in a given time.

Contextual advertising: Advertisements that are relevant to a website's content.

Adsense: An advertising program by Google where advertisements are placed on a website relevant to the website's content. For each ad clicked on, the website owner recieves money.

Adwords: An advertising program by Google where advertisers bid on topical keywords for their ads. Each time an internet user clicks on the ad, the advertiser pays a certain amount based on they keyword bid.

Building a Niche for Successful Blogging

Many people hear about the money to be made with blogging and start a blog on a whim. However, building a blog is not as simple as it appears. Besides writing quality content, many other factors affect the success of a blog, too. In the beginning, one of most important pieces of advice you’ll receive is to blog about a niche.

Consequently, since niches are so important, what are they? Unlike personal blogs that usually cover a wide array of topics, a niche covers a focused topic. For instance, one example of a successful niche blog is a digital photography blog.

You may wonder why a niche is so important. They are important for several different reasons. First, it is easier to develop a readership with a niche blog. When people perform an internet search, they usually have a particular topic in mind. Since a niche blog is focused, there is a better chance they will find the information they‘re searching for. Conversely, if it isn’t focused, they will usually leave the site before they will search for a topic. Secondly, they will be more likely to keep coming back if there is regularly updated content on the topic they are interested in.

In addition to developing a readership, niche blogs are easier to optimize. To attract traffic, readers need to be able to find your blog. Since readers do not usually go beyond the first page or two of search results, page rank is important. To increase page rank, backlinks are one of the main factors Google examines. The more quality backlinks you have that are relative to your content, the higher your blog will rank in the search engine results. Not only will you rank higher in the search engine results, but other blogs will be more likely to link to your site if the content is relative to their content, and they view you as an authority.

Supposedly, 95% of all blogs fail. Learning from other’s mistakes can save a lot of time and grief. If you want to be successful, build a blog the right way. Choose a niche.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas Edison

Definitions

Niche: A focused and narrowly defined topic.

Optimize: The process of making a website rank higher in search engine results.

Backlink: A one way link from another website to your website.

Page rank: The value of your website to Google. The higher the pagerank, the better your search engine ranking.

Traffic: the number of visitors a website recieves in a given amount of time.

The Blogging Blues

Are you new to blogging? Do you have the blogging blues? If so, you are not alone. According to statistics over 95% of all blogs fail.

Like most people, I enjoy browsing on the internet. One night while I was browsing, I saw an article on how you can make money with blogging. Consequently, I ran across Hubpages, a free blogging host, and I signed up for an account under the user name of Seamist. Since then, I have experienced the blogging blues.

When I first began blogging, I didn't have any idea what to write about. Since I didn't know any better rather than focusing on a niche, I answered whatever requests appealed to me. At the same time, I didn't understand Hubpage's expectations either. Unlike other blogs, Hubpages expects article quality blogs.

Although I didn’t focus on a niche, I did start writing quality hubs. However, after awhile, I noticed a disturbing trend. After I initially published a hub, my traffic would go up for a few days, and gradually, it would dwindle to nothing. Furthermore, I noticed as the hubs accumulated, my traffic still stayed in the same tight range. One would think more hubs would bring more traffic. However, that wasn't the case.

Since I didn’t understand what was happening, I decided to see if my hubs were still indexed with Google. I was not only frustrated but discouraged when I discovered two-thirds of my hubs had dropped from Google’s index after initially being indexed. Sometimes, content will be dropped from Google’s index if it is duplicate content or if unacceptable SEO (search engine optimization) techniques are used. However, I had done either. Therefore, it was a depressing situation. Accordingly if your website is not indexed with Google, no one will be able to find it, and you are not going to receive any traffic. If you don’t have any traffic, you’re not going to make any money.

In an effort to gain visibility and traffic, over the course of time, I have been researching SEO methods. Experts will tell you that “Content is king." If you have quality content, the backlinks and traffic will come. Although this may be true for established blogs, it does not seem true for new blogs. Before people can read your content, they need to be able to find it.

One part of me said just forget it; it’s just too much work. However, at the same time, I believe people can make money with blogging. There have been others who have done so. Was it luck? In some cases, I believe luck or having the right blog theme at the right time is a major factor. However, I believe knowledge is even more important in success.

If you want to make money at blogging, the path is not easy. Although most people don't realize it in the beginning, blogging is so much more than writing quality content. In order to be successful at making money, you also have to monetize your blog and use SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to promote it. SEO has a large learning curve. Therefore, before you begin blogging with dreams of recognition or dollars, keep in mind, it is harder than it looks.

Perhaps it is my Swedish/Danish stubborness, but I don't intend to give up. Although I am obviously not an expert, the purpose of this blog is to share what I learn with others and beat the blogging blues.

When the world says, “Give up,” Hope whispers, “Try it one more time.” ~ Author Unknown

Definitions

Traffic: The number of visitors a webpage or website recieves in a given time.

Monetize: Making money with your blog through Google Adsense, affiliate programs, direct advertise, selling products, or other ways.

Google index: a cache of webpages the search engine uses in queries.

SEO (search engine optimization): Methods used to increase your search engine rank and bring traffic to your website.