With a lot of blogs out there commissioning people to make blog entries for their sites, paid blogging positions are apparently the preference of most bloggers today. Some offer a profit-sharing scheme but between the two, it is apparent that bloggers are motivated more if they know the compensation that they would get.

How does one measure the proper compensation for blogging as a career? Well for one, word count. The number of words is something that helps determine the actual compensation that bloggers will be getting. Aside from this, other add-on requirements include the following:

1. Social Bookmarking
2. Commenting on forums or other sites
3. Adding images
4. Deep Linking

There are other instances where online marketing is also another consideration. The matter of how to build incoming links (exchange or one way) is also a consideration. If the company is generous, they can even give you extra percentages from adsense or text-link ad earnings. It all really depends on the people running the blog.

Some give stipulations where current blog rates would be increased in time if the site advances and gets good traffic. Traffic is the main gauge for identifying if a site will be going places and certainly people have to make sure that they make good blog posts while they are at it.

Finally, good grammar is strictly important. Taking a second look at your post would be a good idea to make sure your main entry is free from errors as far as composition and words used are concerned.

Put all of that together and you are sure to get better chances of landing a blogging job.

This is something familiar for subscribers that have signed up with Twitter and want to monitor certain bloggers in the blogosphere. But the thing is, would anyone care about following a certain blogger in mind?

Perhaps if the blogger is affiliated in a certain way such as perhaps handling a popular blog. It may look like similar to subscribing to RSS feeds only that you are able to follow that person on his other blogs as well.

Certainly, there is more than one blog that many bloggers handle. This is only common as probloggers are a rarity. Not all people today are aware that blogging can be a good profession to follow and for all intents and purposes, the tweet is something that they can very well learn from as well.

As with traditional web-based diaries or blogs, micro-bloggers create a profile with a blog service and use it to post short entries. These posts are not normally more than 140 keystrokes long – shorter than a standard text message.

Source

If you are thinking of what to blog today, you just have to peak at the current events and you can see that politics and business are perhaps two of the hottest searches in the web today.

On the area of business, it is apparent that the most celebrated issue today is the financial crisis we are in. The Lehman Brothers issues is passé and much of the attention today is aimed at the remaining companies which are trying to cope with the financial bailout which has drawn numerous qualms as far as its real intent and support towards companies in dire need of financial support.

For politics, it is all about the elections. There is a connection between them and the business sector as the politicians are having a field day trying to infuse these problems into their campaign platform. One thing that you need to get the nod of those votes is to provide resolutions towards these issues.

As a blogger, you can go deeper. Reveal the unseen views that are normally hidden by the people in the news. As much as possible, quote the people who blabber on these issues such as the real deal with the bailout and how the aspiring candidates try to pull a fast one over the other. In short, it is all about trying to expand the information gateway that people have at the moment.

For sure, a lot of readers will be interested in that. Hit the right issues and you will surely get traffic to your blog thanks to search engines.

While income may be something that would truly entice people to take up writing as a professional pastime, it is the quality of the content that should be taken into perspective. People become more focused on money making potential that it comes to a point where the whole article or entry will eventually lose its focus. This is something that has become a chink in the armor, the loss of focus and should be something that must not be forgotten overall.

[tags]adsense, affiliate marketing, problogging[/tags]

Still on the topic of sploggers, the head lemur, Allan Herrell, has been writing about his experience with a particular splogging network. He has been writing about a particular blogging network, actually. As he pointed out in Splogger John Bransford, Chronic News and the head lemur:

John Bransford has not contacted me either as an individual, owner of ChronicNews.com, Phoenixsnews.com or any other entity to obtain permission to republish my material on his network of splogs. In every case that permission is denied now and until the heat death of the universe.

Allan Herrell also made sure that on his sidebar, there is the button that says “Some Rights Reserved.” I suppose that if you are mainly someone who uses a blog reader for personal purposes, you wouldn’t bother with that. However, if you are someone who likes aggregating material for your ‘network’ you would have to think again. And again. And again.

Upon reading such blog entries, it made me wonder. What makes up a blogging network? Who defines it? How would we even verify such things? What about those who aspire to either become part of a blogging network or a blog ‘overlord’ so to speak?

Maybe those questions would be more on the entire philosophy of blogging and also the business-side of blogging. Those questions are rather general and ask the rationale behind things. If you are a problogger, you know that there are some things that you can do and cannot do — a matter of ethics, as some people would say. You know that there are limits to how much freedom you can have and how much freedom you can also give to people in terms of access to your blog.

In any case, just think about it. Have you seen people who put up networks of splogs? Is there a pattern? Have you become a ‘part’ of that blogging network? If you are apparently part of one, what will you do? Allan Herrell tried to get in touch with the splog network overlord and he really tried to do something about it, as you can see the chronicles on his blog. Bloggers really seemed concerned about their content appearing on splogs because it potentially could damage one’s reputation. Imagine if they associate your blog with a splog — your credibility would be at stake.

For those who would like to make a network of blogs:
If you want individual bloggers to join your network, scraping off their feeds is definitely not the way to do it. It is really so much better that you contact them and find out if they are interested in joining you. You better make sure that you give a win-win situation so that the bloggers will know you are not taking advantage of them by either abusing them (using their content to benefit you) and that you are sincere in your offer.

For individual bloggers whose content appear on splogs:
Though you might not be able to track down each of those sploggers but the moment you do find out your content is being scraped, you could do several things:

• Email the splogger about it and talk about it.
• Blog about your case (like what Allan Herrell did, somewhat recently).
• Track down the splogger’s account on Google Adsense and DMCA it (as suggested by Jonathan Bailey).

There are so many trends out there. Are you watching them closely? Especially those that affect the topic that you are blogging about. If not, it’s time to get yourself some tools.

There are some basic stuff that you need to have. One of them is an RSS Reader. Another would be a mail client. There would also be an MP3 player.

RSS Reader

In this day and age of blogging, you would see RSS or feeds here, there and everywhere. How would you like to read them RSS or feeds? Would you like to see how people are giving out scores to them? Would you simply like to know the latest news? If you have a Google account, you could easily set up Google Reader. There’s also Tail Rank and Rojo. If you are someone who does not like the idea of having to set up your own filter, you could also try checking out topix.net where all sorts of topics are indexed.

Mail client

Not everyone uses a mail client. There are people who prefer web mail over others. If you would like to subscribe to quite a number of mailing lists, you might want to consider using a mail client so that you could download email then later on sort out things according to your preferences. You could do filtering on your web mail. But — it’s not always that manageable considering the possible number of spam you might receive. And if you’d like to have a local copy of the information, at least you have it on your mail client already.

MP3 player

Be it a gadget or your computer, you need to find ways to listen to what other people are saying. There are a lot of podcasts out there and they are available in different file formats. You could download them for free! The beauty of having a gadget like an MP3 player is that you could do other things while listening to them. Imagine traveling on your own and it’s a long trip. Wouldn’t it be so much better when you could listen to some intellectually stimulating material or something like it?

If you have other tools you would like to share when it comes to getting updates, please feel free to post them here.

[tags]blogging,tips[/tags]

There are all sorts of perks when it comes to professional blogging. Not everyone might see these perks because they might not be the kind of perks that they’d like to have. In any case, it really depends on the individual. For this blog’s purpose, here’s a short list:

Getting paid while doing something you like.

Most of the bloggers out there who get hired enjoy what they like doing. Why? It’s because there’s creativity involved as well as the flexibility of time and the convenience of not having to go to an office to work. Or even if you are the type who does go to an office to blog, it’s still fairly a flexible job in terms of work hours, compared to other kinds of jobs wherein there is a big probability that you would end up having to work overtime.

Getting known on the ‘Net.

There are employers who scout out people on the Internet. Why? It’s easy to see what you are talking about, how you talk about it and so on. They would see immediately if you reflect the kind of attitude that they want in their company. There are, after all, companies who encourage blogging. Whatever their reasons are, it could help you if you are on the lookout for better opportunities.

Convenience.

If you are already a parent and you have to take care of your children, there are so many things that you have to do. If you are working in a company that requires you to be there on a strict schedule, you might miss out on so many things that are happening to your children. If you are blogging professionally, it is more convenient because you could do everything at home anyway. You could catch up on the work if you have to.

[tags]lifestyle,blogging,careers[/tags]

The question of the domain name

Maybe you feel that you’ve been writing on your blog for ages. Maybe you’ve started it when Blogger started offering their services. As such, you have seen how much the blogosphere has evolved. There came blogging software that you install on your own webspace and you get a domain name to go with it. Maybe you’ve thought about it before but maybe you found it a little bit too expensive at the time. Now that years have passed you consider yourself a professional blogger because you have been able to generate so much or you’ve been trying to generate income from your blog, maybe it’s time to get a domain name for your blog.

The domain name is a way for you to further establish your brand of blogging. You could use particular keywords (that you always use when you blog) in the domain name so that it would be search engine friendly. It’s a good idea actually. And a domain name would give your blog a shorter url than let’s say somedomain.com/your_folder/your_blog_name/index.html

You don’t have to give in to the pressure of getting a new domain name immediately. Check if the domain name you want to use is available. You would rather have a name that suits your topic and your personality. You would get stuck with that domain name for quite a while so it might as well be not just memorable but appropriate. Aside from that there are also practical considerations why you are better off with your own domain and even hosting space. It’s for you to be able to easily make a backup of your own blog and that in case something happens to the blogging service you have been using, you still have your own. Of course others would say that you would end up having more responsibilities when you are going to do everything by yourself. Well, maybe it’s time to weigh the options.

There are people who are looking for background information about you might as well know about you from your own blog. What is there to hide in the first place? Nothing, perhaps and it would be best if you could share them yourself.

Things to include in your profile:
Links
It could be to your other works, articles and maybe speeches you have delivered. After all, there might be a lot of bloggers who also talk about the same things that you talk about. However, if you’re a tech geek who’s blogging about all things tech and geek, how would you let people know that you are a trust-worthy source? You could show them samples of your work and articles you have written, right?

Resume
It could be something simple like a very brief list of work you have done already. Sometimes it could be a short semi-biographical thing just so you could tell your personal career-related story.

Downloads
Some people have downloads of the ebooks they have written. That or vidcasts of their talks at different conventions. Having something like these materials also help in building up your credibility in one way or another.

It is not very difficult to do these things. You just need to set aside the time do these things. If you find it difficult to sort things out because you might have had a lot of work experiences and stuff like that, do not fret. Somehow, you would be able to do it. Schedule it! Just make sure you do it.

[tags]blogging,reputation[/tags]