Has Your Content Been Stolen?

Has your content been stolen? This can happen to any honest blogger who is always writing posts by himself. Someone might simply take advantage out of it and steal whatever posts he likes. There are at least a few different ways you can react in such situation:

1. Remain silent and do not do anything while telling yourself that you do not care about it. Sometimes if is not worth to do anything about it.
2. Contact the scraper by email and ask him to remove the stolen content from his blog. The problem is that he might not listen to you. Sometimes it might be even hard to find a way to contact him.
3. Use a Wordpress plug-in (such as RSS footer from joostdevalk.nl/wordpress/rss-footer/) that will automatically link back to your site from the website of a scraper where he published your post. This plug-in might be very useful if you want to stay informed about any attempts of stealing your content. Of course, simply knowing about your content being published somewhere will not remove it.

Overall, there are not many things you can do if your content is being stolen by some unknown website. On the other hand, webmasters of popular websites may be afraid that you might spread the news of what they did.

March 1st, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Technology, Websites | | 1 Comments

Blogging

Blogging can be very rewarding if you blog about the things you love and that are interesting. When you set up a blog you decide on which topic you are going to write about to your readers. From my experience I can say that the more attractive the subject for you, the more likely you will want to write posts on your blog and the longer you will remain a blogger. However, blogging is not only about writing. It gives us opportunities to make new friends, participate in social events and maybe even make some money. There are various websites dedicated to bloggers that are doing a great job by giving us what is the best in the blogosphere. If you enjoy writing like I do and if writing gives you a lot of fun, then writing articles and sharing them with others will not be a problem for you and you will find pleasure in it. The world of the blogosphere has never been so vibrant and alive and it is thanks to various websites that connect bloggers. Almost everybody can become a blogger, so if you have something to write about and would like to get the word spread about it, then simply start your own blog. It is also good to have conversations with other bloggers, because what can be better than spreading the word through other bloggers and writers?

February 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet | | 0 Comments

Social Activities and Blog Promotion

Every blogger knows how important it is to participate actively in different kinds of social activities to make out of blogging as much as possible and bring new traffic to a blog. This can be achieved by visiting various sites. With many social bookmarking websites you will be able to effectively promote your blog. Personally, I have never enough of hearing about new sites that help bloggers promote their blogs. Often, you will have the possibility to upload your favorite piece of music, photos, as well as posts. Usually, there are a lot of ways you can make yourself visible on their site and thus attract more visitors to your website. As a result, you will have a chance to meet some friends, or even create your own circle of acquaintances. There are many ways to promote a blog, but it is important to stay active and be active in various social activities.

February 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet | | 0 Comments

Promoting Your Blog

Blogging is for many people not only a hobby, but also a passion. They spend a lot of time working on their blog, polishing some details, networking and so on. No wonder then, that there are many bloggers who are nearly obsessed with rankings. Personally I love rankings, because it is a nice feeling to see in some cases my blog ranked high, but not only for this reason because I also enjoy to observed which are the top blogs in the blogospheare. If you are one of such people that is interested in traffic rankings, then you should be promoting your blog in various ways.
Do you want to promote your blog? If that is the case, then you might want to check out various blog bookmarking and rating sites. You can start marketing your blog by submitting your sites and blog posts to such websites. By submitting your links and blog posts to various websites you have a chance to improve your brand awareness and a chance to acquire more visitors. Of course, before you start advertising a lot you should make sure that your website has a lot of valuable content. This way there will be a bigger probability that those who visit your website for the first time will become loyal readers. Remember, marketing is one of the key aspects of blogging, so it is important not to neglect it.

February 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet | | 1 Comments

Blog Directories

Recently, I have been involved in submitting my blog to different directories in order boost the popularity of my blog. Here is the list of directories that you might consider submitting your blog to:

-Blog Flux is weblog directory plus a button maker, Google PageRank checker, and a pinging service.
-BlogStreet features blog profiles, RSS ecosystem, blog “tops”, search and directory.
-Globe of Blogs is an index of weblogs as submitted by their authors.
-LS Blogs is a directory of blogging-related sites: forums, directories and search engines, software and hosts, and blogs.
-Technorati is perhaps the most popular directory. You can submit your photo as well.
-Findory aggregates blogs and recommends content based on users interest. It means that if a user is reading a blog with similar content he may be presented with your blog.
-Blogarama is another popular directory.
-2rss.com is where you can submit your RSS feed.
-Blogdigger is an RSS search engine. Submit your feed here.
-Bloghop allows users to tagsurf blogs that match their interest.

Keep in mind that in most cases editors of those directories will want to review your website before accepting it. Make sure your blog is at least a few weeks/months old and has some original content.

February 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Internet, Websites | | 9 Comments

How to Write Guest Posts

There are more and more people writing guest posts, and that is why I feel that it might be a good idea to share my knowledge about how to do it in a proper way. This way you can avoid making mistakes, and your post will look more professional. This in turn will result in many more blogs asking you to guest blog for them. I have a few points I would like to make as the topic is quite complicated.

The most important thing is to understand what the requirements are of such post. There might be a few requirements you will have to fulfill, but often bloggers will tell you directly what they expect from you. In such case you should look at other posts on that blog to see how long they usually are. This way you will be able to estimate whether your post contains the minimum amount of words required. You should be knowledgeable about the topics you write about so consider obtaining real online degrees. You may also want to investigate whether you are expected to include any links, images, or embedded video clips. This is what many guest bloggers do not pay attention to. Later they might be disappointed that they are no longer offered to write any guest posts. To check the number of words you have written, it is a good idea to write a post in Word, as under “Tools” you might be able to find the “Word Count” option. Before sending your post, you can check if all links are working by clicking on them yourself. To see if images or videos are working properly, you might want to see how they are displayed in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and a few other browsers. Putting a lot of work into your guest post is a good idea, because that is a great way to market your blog.

January 13th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Websites | | 0 Comments

Blogoholics

Do you ever wonder how many people are blogoholics? Quite often I notice bloggers who are blogging a lot. That is probably due to the fact that they want to increase various rankings like Page Rank and Alexa. Many of them are doing some marketing and focusing on attracting visitors. I think that very few things can be as addictive as blogging. By blogging I not only mean writing and publishing posts, but also staying in touch with other writers and contributing to their blogs. If you give out your personal details to a lot of people on the Internet, then you may be interested in the new LifeLock Command Center.
It might be a good idea to set hours at which you should work on your blog so that you will not be tempted to work throughout the whole day. I wonder how many bloggers would be able to admit that they are blogoholics, and how many blogoholics there actually are out there.

January 11th, 2010 - Posted in About Internet, Websites | | 0 Comments

Hosting a Blog on Your Own Domain

This time I would like to write about advantages and disadvantages of blogs hosted on your own domain name:

-You will have to pay for the domain name and for hosting your domain. This can amount to approximately $150 per year, but it varies depending on which hosting plan you will choose.
-If your blog is hosted on Blogspot you can incorporate AdSense, but Google will take part of the profit. However, you will not need to share your profit with Google if you decide to have your own domain.
-Other bloggers might show more respect towards bloggers who have their blog hosted on their own domain. That is because they might assume that such a blogger is more serious about blogging.
-If you have your own domain, you have a lot higher possibility to fully customize your blog. However, it might require some html and php knowledge. Make sure you learn some basic html before you decide to host your own blog.

I will leave you to make your own conclusions about hosting, because it really depends on circumstances. Overall, if you are really serious about blogging you may eventually decide to host your blog on your own domain.

January 7th, 2010 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Websites | | 0 Comments

Linkbaiting

Linkbaiting is a strategy that some bloggers use to attract others to link to their site. There are many ways to do so, and one of them is to offer backlinks to people that will link to your site. You can learn a lot about linkbaiting by observing how others have tried to benefit from it. Here are some examples of linkbaiting strategies used by bloggers over the years:

-John Chow asked people to post a review of his site. He also promised that he will link to anyone who does so. By organizing this event he obtained a lot of backlinks. What attracted people to participate were his blog’s high Page Rank and number of readers.
-Somewhere Over the Debt was giving a free copy of a book to a person who referred most people to her site. This resulted in contestants writing posts about her site, so she obtained a lot of backlinks this way. She also emphasized her high PR.
-Make Money online with a 13-Year Old organized a link exchange program. He requested links to three of his posts with any anchor text a blogger wanted. In turn, Carl promised to link from one of his posts.

As you see, linkbaiting is all about encouraging others to link to your site. There are also many other strategies that could be used.

December 21st, 2009 - Posted in About Blogging, About Internet, Websites | | 7 Comments

Accept Payments

If you own an Internet business, you will want to have multiple ways of accepting payments. On the other hand, if you want to earn some money by participating in various online programs, you will also need to make sure that you have an account to which you will get paid. There are various payment processors, buy PayPal is probably the most popular one.

PayPal is an online website allowing its customers to accept payments made through the Internet. It is a very convenient way to accept money, as if you plan on making money through the Internet, it will not take long to realize that some companies only pay through PayPal. Additionally, PayPal in owned by eBay so if you want to do some online shopping on the biggest online auction house in the world, you will benefit from it as well. So whether you are making money online or not, you might find PayPal services quite useful, as you will be able to make payments as well.
Of course Paypal is not the only payment processor, and Moneybookers is one of its competitors. Moneybookers allows citizens from more countries to participate so it is definitely a good choice for those who cannot have a PayPal account. While Moneybookers may not be a bank, generally users agree that it can be trusted.

December 2nd, 2009 - Posted in About Internet, Business Topics | | 0 Comments