In an earlier article, I talked about the potential dangers to bloggers and website owners of using PLR articles to pad out the content on your site or blog. The search engines dislike PLR because it creates a lot of duplicate content on the web as a whole, so they will punish blogs and websites that publish a lot of it.

But what about using PLR off-site for promotional gain?

Again, the search engines hate duplicate content wherever it mighty be. So if you choose to use a PLR article to promote your blog or website via article marketing means, then you’ll still be causing yourself a potential cyber-headache when the search engine screws are tightened.

And they are getting tighter all the time.

Recently I had one of my ezine accounts suspended because I had inadvertently posted an un-altered PLR article to their database. I had to remove it and apologise profusely for my stupidity before they reinstated my account. So it’s not just the search engines that are getting strict about duplicity.

Bottom line here is that if you intend using PLR articles for article marketing, then make sure you alter each one (and run it past Copyscape) before you submit it. The old days of blitzing an article to a ton of article directories are numbered. That’s obvious as these directories and ezines themselves are being penalised by the search engines for publishing duplicate content. So they’ll pass on that slap on the wrist to the author to cover their backsides.

PS: Don’t think you can get away with posting a duplicate article here either! We’ll check any submissions against Copyscape ourselves before approving any article. Just so you are clear on that point!

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0

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Blogs are favored by search engines, we all know that. But for bloggers one of the biggest issues is to be able to drive a consistent stream of targeted traffic to the blog. We can do this by writing good content that is relevant to our industry. Another way to get traffic is to write articles for article directories. But what many bloggers don’t know is that by guest blogging you can expose yourself and your writing to a whole new bunch of people.

I guess you know what that means, yes, more traffic to your own blog. It is a win-win situation for both the blog owners and the guest bloggers. The blog owners gain new fresh blood with a new perspective and maybe even a new audience by you writing for them. If you do run your own blog then most likely you will tell your readers about your upcoming stint. Some of them will be coming over to have a peek at your guest blog - so the blog owner gains new readers.

As for you the blogger, you will be able to gain a whole new following of readers by exposing yourself in another market. Not only that, you will also build your brand, depending whether you actually blog under your name or some made up name instead.

My advice is to give it a go. What have you got to loose. And before I forget, might I hint that we accept new bloggers right here.

Thank you and have a great day

Monika Mundell Creator and Author of Blogging Web 2.0

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A lot of blogging enthusiasts and internet marketers like to use PLR articles in their media because it saves a lot of writing and is a quick and easy way to get relevant content published on your site or blog.

PLR might seem like a gift from heaven, especially when you get hold of some for free. There are plenty of places you can download a whole bunch of PLR articles for use on your site or blog. Just Google “free PLR” and you’ll find pages of it! While you might be happily copying and pasting tons of this content into your own space on the web, imagining how much the search engines will love you for adding all this relevant content, it can have a nasty surprise in store.

Beware. The content of PLR is NOT unique!

That might sound like stating the obvious, but how many of you have used PLR articles exactly like that without giving it a second thought? Well, you should. If you want to see how un-original your PLR content really is, try submitting it to Copyscape.

Your eyes may well pop out of your head at the dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of copies of your same article out there on different sites!

If you have a lot of PLR content on your site or blog, you might want to go back and start changing it around as much as you can, then check it against Copyscape again to make sure it shows up as original content.

Why should you?

Well, if you don’t, the search engines (Google in particular) will punish you by lowering your coveted Page Rank if it finds enough of it on your site. That in itself is reason enough to always ensure you have original content on your blog or website.

The bottom line is this: If you want the search engines (and your readers) to love your website or blog, then write your articles yourself. Sure it’s more work, but think about it.

People come to read your blog because they like your creative and entertaining writing style, not someone else’s!

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0

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If you are an affiliate marketer you probably wondering why you never make any sales. Maybe your are not even aware that some people steal them from right under your nose. But how can that be - it’s easy really. If you are like most people promoting clickbank as an affiliate marketer, then those in the know will simply replace your clickbank id with theirs when they are about to purchase a product from your site. What this means for you is two things.

1. You won’t get a commission as the sale is officially going to the buyer who stole your link
2. You will get very frustrated and eventually give up altogether on affiliate marketing

Either way it isn’t a very nice experience for you. But there is a way to cloak your links quite easily provided you have your own web hosting.

If you don’t, then there is still ways to circumnavigate this issue by cloaking your links with an URL shortener. Instead of having an ugly URL that would read like

http://www.vendor.com/12grus?=xxxx or similar, you could have one that reads

http://doiop.com/blogging

This is in my eyes still not the best option as it screams affiliate but looks better than the first option anyway.

The following 4 sites allow you to cloak your link for free:

1. Diop - you can cloak your link by choosing your keyword.
2. Tiny URL - create a tiny URL from a long and ugly one, the downside of this site is that most good URL’s are already taken
3. Read This URL - with this one you can even tag the links
4. Memurl - Lets you create a mnemonic URL that looks like this http://memurl.com/kusipe

These cloaking helpers should however only be used, when you don’t have your own hosting - e.g. your site/blog is on a free platform.

A much better way to install a redirect link is via .htaccess. To do this, you will need to navigate through your CPanel to - File Manager - public_html - .htaccess - click on edit file - then put in the following code:

Redirect /recommends http://www.youraffiliatelink.com

What this will do in effect is to redirect the affiliate link from your website with the extension of the folder name you gave it. In my case the folder name is “recommends”. So the link I would advertise would be

http://www.bloggingweb20.com/recommends instead of the ugly looking affiliate link. Make sure that you leave one space between your “Redirect” and the backslash (/) as well as between your folder name and the beginning of the URL.

Naturally, there are even more ways to cloak your affiliate links, but for now we will leave it at that as it will keep you busy in learning new things. (For those who didn’t know this)

Keep your eyes out for Part 2 of this series.

To your Success

Monika Mundell Creator and Author of Blogging Web 2.0

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Blogging, web2.0, social networking, promotion and marketing - these all tie in together to form a powerful set of tools for the online business person to use in the process of building their own business.

Despite all the new fangled gadgets, widgets, grommets and thingamyjigs, there are still the basics that should not be forgotten in the clamber and rush to embrace the newest and most talked about gizmos for promoting your site or blog. One of these most revered basic building blocks of any online business is the ability to write. And to write well and in sufficient volumes to produce the necessary amount of original and relevant content that the search engines crave.

Writing is the basic key to success.

If you are a serious blogger and are in it to make money as well as for the enjoyment of spreading yourself around cyberspace and making friends along the way, then this applies. The ability to convert thoughts into words and words into coherent sentences and sentences into informative, interesting and entertaining articles means you have the best chances of succeeding in this cut throat business. That’s because you won’t have to rely on other people to do it for you.

Your articles will be completely your own, written in your style and in your words, your way!

If you have a flair for creating great articles, then your readership will grow steadily as word gets around about your own carefully cultivated medium, be it a blog or website with constantly updated content.

The best part about writing for yourself to promote yourself and your blog or site is that over time, your writing skills become honed and your creativity expands.

Practice makes perfect!

So even if you think you can only write mediocre, bland or uninteresting pieces, write them anyway! Read lots of other people’s creations, visit lots of other blogs and see how their owner’s write and what they write about and learn from them. As you do, your own skills will improve.

So grab your keyboard and get typing! Your business will prosper because of it, the search engines will love your blog or site thanks to it and you will reap the rewards of improving your own writing skills doing it!

Write for success!

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0

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If you have been around the Internet for a while you would have heard the term Web 2.0 quite often. Directly related to social networking, the Internet and wiki’s, the revolution of Web 2.0 has already taken place. But what can we as an individual do, to take advantage of the emerging trend? Isn’t Web 2.0 just a fluffed up expression to re-invent the wheel that was already turning previously?

Well, here is my take on the whole topic. In past years, especially in the 90’s the Internet platform was used predominantly for heavy promotion and marketing purposes. Most businesses put up websites and blogs. They used them to showcase to the world what they had. And even though some focused on great customer service, it wasn’t what Web 2.0 really stands for. Mainly social networking, wiki’s (open mediums that can be edited by anyone) or folksonomies (tagging).

This trend of Web 2.0 is a relative new trend and became known to the masses by the most popular social networking sites like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. People and especially bloggers suddenly realized that there is more to blogging than just trying to promote our services to our readers. In fact, the chances of gaining popularity and making sales are directly related to our ability to network with one another. And that is were Web 2.0 comes into play.

With the sheer endless amount of sites that allow us to network in real Web 2.0 fashion, it can literally be confusing to choose which ones to peruse. Not only that, but it is also time consuming to say the least. In my eyes however this “time investment” is a small price to pay for the networks, friendships and traffic I can build with Web 2.0 tactics.

Web 2.0 has become my favorite “platform” to build my ever expanding business. If I think about my effort in terms of time invested prior to using these tools in my old network marketing business I feel like throwing up. If I only had used the power of Web 2.0 then, my life might be different right now. But regardless of this, I have no regrets at all. All I can hope to do with this post is to make you aware of the powers that are within Web 2.0 and hope that it will also help to grow your business in a real modern fashion.

• Bebo Schools and colleges

• Facebook Started for colleges, then high schools, and now everyone.

• Flickr Photo sharing

• Friendster General

• LinkedIn Business

• LiveJournal Blogging

• MySpace General

• Ryze Business

• Soundpedia Web 2.0 based music community

• Stumbleupon Websurfing

• Bumpzee Websurfing

• MyBlogLog Websurfing

These are just a few of the Web 2.0 social networking sites to either get you started or to expand to.

What you need to realize, is that it doesn’t help to simply sign up and forget about them. Once you are a member, try to network with others whenever you have a spare minute.

Here is to your blogging success

Monika Mundell Creator and Author of Blogging Web 2.0

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Following on from my post on forums it’s a natural progression to give some guidance on forum etiquette. After all, when blogging is such an important part of your life, the more ways you can use for spreading the word about your blog, the better. I think it’s important to stress a few points about posting in forums in general to help you with this side of the marketing and promotion and traffic building of your blog or site. It’s important to do it the right way and not to run afoul of forum moderators, or even possessive members.

First, I’ll take my last couple of words from the opening paragraph and expand on that a little.

Possessive members are those members of forums who have probably been around for a long time and see the forum in question as very much “their” forum. This is not a bad thing and is encouraged in forums because it makes for a tighter community spirit as the older and longer serving members will look out for their forum and will rush to the defence of any other old timer who is being flamed by a young upstart!

Ok, it sounds a little crazy, but people in a community, by nature will look out for each other.

This is, of course in addition to forum admin and moderators, who have the power to delete posts that break the rules of the forum and even ban offending members altogether.

Where does that leave you if you’ve just joined a forum with an older, “inner circle” of members like that?

Well, it doesn’t mean the forum is going to be hostile to new members. Quite the opposite, in fact. They welcome new members and wish them well and as long as you take things slowly and gradually merge into the forum rather than trying to bulldoze your way in, you’ll be accepted and will make some great friends.

So what do I mean about merging in slowly rather than bulldozing in with all guns firing?

Well, unlike other social network platforms, forums have some ground rules that all the members stick to and expect new members to do so as well.

Here’s how to do it totally the wrong way:

Sign up and make sure you’ve placed the URL to your website in as many of the boxes as you can in your profile and also fill your sig with a load of affiliate links as well.

Post your first message in any category you like (hey, it doesn’t matter, does it?). In that first post, use your best hyped up sales pitch and tell everybody they “really must visit the site below ’cause it’ll make them rich overnight” and place a link to your business opportunity or affiliate link.

Then copy the message and post it again all over the place for good measure - hey, you want everyone to see it, after all!

Then find a seasoned member’s post and rubbish it with as many defamatory remarks as you can think of and then start a new thread telling everyone how great you are.

Sound a little exaggerated? Maybe, but you’d be surprised at how often that sort of thing occurs in forums. Guess what happens to new members who do that sort of thing. Yep, they get their IP address logged, their membership banned and they lose a valuable resource for promoting their blog or site. If a forum owner is particularly strict, he’ll most likely also post your details around other forums to warn them to ban you as soon as you arrive. Guess what that’ll do to your credibility? Well, you might as well start looking through the classified employment pages of your local newspaper, because your online business prospects will have dropped through the floor, so you might as well get used to working 9 to 5 again!

On the other hand, here is the right way to do it:

Once you have signed up, read the rules of the forum before you post anything. Make sure you understand them - it’s important!

Introduce yourself in the appropriate place and wait for some of the other members to say hi. They will, don’t worry.

Read through the most recent posts and anything else that gets your interest and make a note of which members post the most often and the ones that give the most advice - these are usually the older and more experienced members and you want to get them on your side.

When you find a thread that interests you and that you know something about, go ahead and post a reply, making sure it is relevant and adds value to the thread. Posting a “yes, I agree with you” or “good point” is not good enough and will irritate older members. It adds nothing to the thread and is a waste of your time.

It’s tempting to get your number of posts up as quickly as possible in this way - don’t do it.

You should create your signature after your first post so that future posts will carry a legal link or more (however many the rules allow) that can link to your own site or blog and maybe an affiliate link too. Advice on this differs but my own preference is to only put links to my own sites. The reason being is that these links count as valuable one-way back-links to your site so each time you post a good, original and well written message with lots of content, the search engines will reward you for your trouble and it will count towards your eventual page rank from Google. Posting affiliate links merely gives that link love to the owner of the affiliate site, so you are doing all that work to boost their page rank and not your own. Also by adding a link to your own site, you are driving targeted traffic directly there where you can promote that affiliate program in a much better way.

When you start replying to topics with valuable information, you will quickly gain the respect of the other members who will most likely bring you into the conversation if your reply gets their attention (in the right way!)

After you’ve made a few good replies to other people’s threads and had some response back, you will have started to become accepted by the members. Now if you feel confident to start your own thread, go for it - if it’s a good one you’ll get lots of replies. You’re now an accepted member of the forum. Congratulations!

So there you have it, in a fair sized nutshell. How to conduct yourself as a new member in forums if you want to be accepted, by following the correct forum etiquette. More importantly you will enlarge and expand your social network in that direction, as well as giving more weight to your own promotion campaign.

All the best reasons for doing it the right way every time!

Terry Didcott
Blogging Web 2.0

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