Advantages of complementary blogging are obvious. This type of group blogging is clear example where such blogging wins over solo projects. Single blogger will never be able to do amount of work that team of bloggers can do.

Let's take blogging about politics as example, especially, about politics in USA. During election year complementary bloggers can write from both democrats (one blogger) and republicans (another blogger) point of view. Another example would be blogging about relationships where two complementary bloggers can write from different sex point of view. Possibilities are endless. Even better if there are more than two authors. There is blog about programming where every blogger writes about one programming language: PHP, C++, Perl, Java, etc. This blog is updated more than once a day, has many visitors, RSS subscribers and excellent income from advertisements.

Blogs produced from complementary blogging have richer and more objective content. This contributes to blog quality, which then leads to blog success.

Amazon, Chitika and WidgetBucks are Adsense alternatives. You can monetize your blogs and Web siteswith Amazon, Chitika and WidgetBucks widgets. Chitika and Amazon shopping widgets look good and blendin well. With WidgetBucks, you get paid per click and CPM, and you earn 10 percent of your referrals' earnings the first year. Membership is free.

Widgets From Amazon

The Amazon Associate Section now has many different kinds of widgets you can add to many websites including blogs and social networks. You can make slideshows, favorites widgets, wish lists, searches, links and many other interesting widgets. You also earn up to 10% of the revenue with those widgets. You can put the widgets in your sidebar, in your posts, on your websites and many other places to monetize your blogs and websites.

What are some other kinds of widgets for blogs? You can create your own CoRank Social NewsNetwork with a free CoRank website. People can write news stories, rank them and share websites.You can put CoRank widgets on your blogs with Your Top Stories from your CoRank website. Membership is free.

Blog Widgets, Blidgets And Bligets

There are some websites online where you can create a Blidget with your blog's name, description, RSS Feed and posts. People can get the code for your Blidget and put it on their blogs and websites free. Then you will get more traffic to your blog. You can put your Blidgets on your other blogs.That will help you keep visitors on your blogs.

Where can you get your own Blidgets? You can get your own Blidgets that show your Blog's Name, Feed and Posts at YourMinis.com and WidgetBox.com.

What are some other kinds of widgets for blogs? There are Bumpzee Widgets that show popular postsin your Blog's Community, Visitors and Statistics

Earn Money With Blidgets And Widgets With Snipperoo And PayPerWidget

You can promote your blogs with blidgets on Snipperoo. You can also earn money
for PayPerWidget widgets placed on your blogs and websites.

Snipperoo is a widget directory with panels that display widgets that you can add to your
blogs and websites. You can add your own widgets to the Snipperoo Widget Directory.

Snipperoo also has a new website PayPerWidget. You can monetize your websites withPayPerWidget widgets. You can earn money for having PayPerWidget widgets on your blogs and websites.

You can read more about Blidgets on these websites with posts tagged blidget. You can alsosee blidgets at WidgetBox.com.

Choosing Your Blog Name and Topic

The very first step that needs to be accomplished is for you to decide exactly what it is that you wish to blog about. The topic of discussion on your blog can affect anything from the name of your new blog to whether you wish to place advertisements on your site.

You don't want the name of your blog to be “Billy Bob's Bed And Breakfast” and have all of your posts be about sports. You need to build trust with your potential readership. Heading to “Billy Bob's Bed And Breakfast” blog only to find out that baseball preseason has started will instantly reduce your credibility in the eye or your potential readership.

The subject of your blog can also impact your decision to place advertisements on your site. If your goal is to earn money from your blog, a narrowly focused niche topic is advised. If your goal is to simply get out there and blog, the need for a narrowly focused nich topic is not needed.

Purchasing and Registering Your Domain Name

When choosing your domain name be sure that the word or phrase that you choose reflects the content of your blog and is also related to the title of your blog. You may also consider purchasing any common misspellings of your chosen name. This will allow you to redirect potential readership from the mistyped address to the correct address of your blog. This is done from within your host server if you decide to self host. It is advisable to stick with the more common domains of .com, .net, or .org. Domainsite - NameCheap.com - Godaddy - Network Solutions - RegFly - are jus t some of the sites that offer domain name pruchasing and registering services.

Pay Hosting or Free Hosting

Hosting your blog on a blog hosting site such as Wordpress or Blogspot is an excellent choice for the new blogger on a tight budget. Along with free hosting you get the ease of use of the free hosts built in content manager. There is no need to be familiar with HTML or PHP coding. Most free hosting site also offer various quantities of pre-made blog templates for you to choose from. The domain name for a free hosted blog is usually formated as http://yourblogname.freehostsname.com Keep that in mind.

Pay hosting offers numerous advantages of its own. You can host your own domain (http://www.yourblogname.com). Paid hosting allows you to control every aspect of your site. You decide the design and if needed the advertising content. Increase in versatility is another intrinsic quality of paid hosting. You are able to run various CGI and scripting application. A knowledge of server function, file managers, file editors, HTML and PHP is advised in order to take full advantage of the options paid hosting offers. Some of the better known paid hosting sites are Host Gator , HostMonster , LunarPages , and , WebHostingPad.

Social Networking

The life blood of any blog is traffic. Every day approximatley 150,000 new blogs are created. Having a solid plan in place in order to promote your blog is an absolute neccessity. There are dozens if not hundreds of social network sites available for you to join. These networks are vital in promoting and directing traffic to your blog. Populair is the absolutely best site for finding all the social networks that you need. It also contains a list of the hottest blogs. Bookmark those blogs. Read them. Post comments in them. The more you make your name seen and known the more traffic you will generate for your site.

Odds and Ends

Always ping your blog after each new post that you publish. Pinging your blog alerts search engines and crawlers that your blog has been updated with fresh content. By pinging your blog you improving your chances of having your blog indexed. A simple search for "ping blog" on any search engine will retrieve the most popular sites offering pinging services.

Use a traffic monitor for your blog. Google Analytics is web based free traffic monitor. Monitoring your traffic will allow you to pinpoint the dips and spikes in your traffic. By analyzing those dips and spikes you can ascertain whether a recent post, redesign or anything else has affected your traffic flow.

Create a sitemap. A sitemap is a list of the pages on your website or blog. Creating and submitting a sitemap helps make sure that search engines and indexes crawlers know about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by normal crawling process.

Set up an RSS feed for your blog. RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, blogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS feed to whoever wants it. Set up an option for readers to subscribe to your blog via email. Offer your readers various means of obtaining your blog's content.

Finally, enjoy the blogging and blogosphere experience!

Start visiting blogs who write over similar topics. Read the articles, comment on them. Offer intelligent feedback, not just "good work" but detailed criticisms. Tell them why it was good, or what could have been improved upon. Make sure and leave a link to your blog at the end of every post, don't push them to view it, because if they enjoyed your post, they will check out your blog.

Writing a weekly newsletter to your subscribers will encourage them to visit often and tell friends. In the newsletter, don't include full articles, but samples that will beckon your audience to want more, thus going to your blog. I would advise Zookoda, they offer a hosting service for newsletters, best of all, its free! Zookoda allows people to subscribe to your newsletter and you get detailed information about click counts and subscriber demographics.

Cross promote other blogs. Talk about blogs you enjoy reading. Have those bloggers write an article for your blog, then write an article for theirs. This will keep fresh viewers coming in and plugging your blog.

Submit your blog to search engines. Also keep linking to your blog every time you post, on myspace, facebook, other blogs and on social bookmarking sites. Search engines work in a way that not only do they find relevance to keywords from the actual search, but also the number of pages linking to the blog. So the more your link to it, the higher up on the list it will appear. Don't annoy people though, because if you put your link up everywhere, some search engines might see this as spam and ignore your site!

Use Facebook, MySpace, Furl, Twitter, and Flickr to your advantage. Link into your blog from these social sites. Tell people when you have a new post. Keep the traffic visiting each one and they will frequent your blog. Email your friends and family, have them email some people.

Most importantly, keep your advertisements tasteful. Don't put flashing banners up all over your page. Let your viewers know what is a paid advertisement and what isn't, this will show them that you care about them reading your article and not just clicking your links.

Summary

• Link to other blogs.
• Post on other blogs.
• Write for other blogs.
• Include your link after every post.
• Submit to search engines.
• Use social networking sites to your advantage.
• Keep your advertisements tasteful.

Follow these tips to drive traffic to your blog through advertisement and make sure to view my other 3 articles on keeping your blog looking good and easy to navigate. Happy Blogging!

let your readers know who you are. Have an about page where they can read about you. Many times readers get attached not only to your writing or photos, but to you. Let your readers know how to contact you, via email, phone, post or whatever. Give them what they want. Include photos, education, where you live, and what you do. Don't be afraid to share your life with them, thats why your have a blog in the first place.

Update Frequently

By constantly updating your blog people will constantly check it, simple as that. If your viewers start seeing that you are putting up new post daily, they will check daily. If they see you only post every week or so, they will eventually just stop coming back. Give a time and date to every update, even if your just writing a simple blurb, do it frequently enough so that you embed that frequency in your readers mind.

Include Photos

This will keep your site visually dynamic and your viewers frequenting. Put pictures of you up with every post. Add photos you took or maps of where you are. Change your main page image weekly so that your readers know that you just updated your page, even if you haven't!

Write in Segments

Make a long story a two part story. Leave a cliff hanger at the end. Be controversial and opinionated. What these do is beckon your viewers to want more, learn more about you or even become frustrated. Don't be afraid to be on the edge, you'll anger some but they will usually come back to read more and begin to know you better and start checking your blog often.

Let Friends Write Articles for Your Website

Make sure that they are on similar topics. This will drive traffic from another blog over to yours and hopefully expose each others fan base and make it larger. Find a good writer who contrast your style or dynamic. This way you will have content and styles that relate to a variety of audiences.

Summary

• Make it personal
• Update Frequently
• Include Photos
• Have a bio page
• Write in Segments
• Use guest writers

By following these tips on content you can hopefully drive more traffic to your blog and keep that traffic coming back for more. If you haven't read my other perts in this series on making your blog aesthetically pleasing, navigation and advertising, I would advise you too, as they are geared towards keeping that traffic flow heavy. Happy Blogging!

When you first visit a blog, you usually see a banner, photo, logo, or name. Make sure that when your guests visit your site they are immediately hooked. Use a photo you took or a graphic you designed.

Many times the photo or graphic doesn't even have to do with what your blog is about. You could have a blog written about your new puppy and your love for animals but a picture of a green pasture or the ocean. Make it visually pleasing. You just want to make sure that your visitors are immediately hooked, and the image on top is what will keep them interested enough to not click away to the next blog.

Web browsers usually spend under a second before they decide to either stay on the page, or leave. Use a color scheme that relates to your content. If your writing dark poetry and prose, don't use light greens and yellows, but deep magentas and dark blues. This leaves a good sense of visual dynamic in the mind of the viewer as they navigate through your blog.

When choosing colors for your web page, pick complimentary colors and complimentary hues. Below is a color wheel demonstrating complimentary colors. Colors directly opposite are complimentary, and look good together.

After choosing a color theme, keep it simple. Don't use more than three colors or your viewers start to get confused and will leave. Remember, you've seen the site hundreds of times, but this is their first visit.

When it comes to the aesthetics of your blog, make sure and always keep it pleasing. Don't have flashing banners or scrolling text, these make the viewer uneasy and they tend to click away. Avoid hard edges, keep corners rounded and use fades to lead in and out of your images and to match your sites background.

Having a solid photo atop your page with a smooth gradient fade into your background will lead your viewers eye from the top banner down into your content. Always be aware of your focal point and secondary focal points. Human brains are attracted to lighter colors, especially reds and oranges. Use this knowledge to guide your viewer through the website.

Have a strong set of colors where you want your viewer to look first, then lead them away with similar hues of varying brightness, so they naturally want to stay on your page longer and keep reading.

Think of your blog or web page as a piece of art. Step back and look at it as a whole and consider what will pop out and what won't, and use this knowledge to reshape your blog and guide your viewers attention.

Summary:

• Use a strong photograph or graphic to immediately hook your viewers.
  
• Keep it visually pleasing.
• Use complimentary colors.
  
• Pick a theme.
• Guide your viewers attention through your page to keep them reading.

Make sure and view the other parts of this article on blog navigation, content and advertising to continue to drive traffic. Happy Blogging!

Navigation placement is possibly the most important part of running a blog or website.

De-clutter your navigation. Instead of having 12 links to all the pages on your website, use 3 or 4 links with sub navigation on those pages. Not only will this help your viewer find what he or she is looking for, but it will drive up the page counts and clicks!

Example. You have a blog on your travels. You also include travel writing and photography from your adventures. Instead of having a navigation that has every place you've been too and links to your photography and writing from those places, put up just three links, Travel, Photography and Writing. Under your writing link, put a page with links to the different cities, countries and places you've been and the writing from those place. Do the same for photography.

By doing this it will help your viewers navigate around what they are not interested in and find what they do want to read. Those interested in your writing can directly find it, instead of having to click through the different places you've been, same for those interested in your photography.

When working on content pages and post, make sure and include links outside of your navigation bar to other pages on your site. If we take our travel blog as an example, at the end of one article leave a link to the next article or a link to view photos from the place that you wrote about. By doing this you will keep your viewers on your page longer and exploring more and more of your website.

Navigation placement is key. Many blogs have links, and archived articles all on the same page. The human brain naturally lends itself to the left and to the top of a web page. Place your most important links on the top of your web page, and keep them simple. Place your ancillary links, such as an archive or outside websites on the left. Stay away from the right side of your page when it comes to important links or information, most viewers tend to skim over those parts.

Summary

• Keep it simple!
• Use as few links as possible.
• Use sub navigation pages.
• De-Clutter your navigation.
• Link to the next article at the bottom of every page.
• Keep important links on top and ancillary links on the left side of the page.

Hopefully these tips will help your viewer navigate your page easier and keep them on your blog longer! Check out my other articles in this series, on Blog Aesthetics, advertising and content! Happy Blogging!

Is there a fastest way or a shorter way maybe to reach the level when you're getting paid big time? Or you really have to start from the bottom and realize the success of your work after 3 or maybe 5 long years. I really don't have a clue yet so I'll start here at bottom. Your comments and advises will be appreciated whole heartedly. More questions to come as I get along on these blogging system. Thank you!

There are many blogging sites which help you to create a blog in easy steps. Various blog providers are available for different purposes of the blog. The purpose of blog may be personal or social. Different sites for blogging are

Blogspot

Blogspot is the blogging provided by google. With the help of your google account, you can start a blog in easy steps. It is very easy to blog on Blogspot as you don't need to have a knowledge of HTML or you don't need to be an internet expert. It is very easy to maintain and update a blog on Blogspot. The main disadvantage of a blog on Blogspot is that it has only limited themes which may not suit every purpose. There are only limited widgets available which make the blog look not so dashing. This blog supports google adsense with the help of which you can display ads on your blog and earn some money.

Wordpress

Wordpress is one of the most popular blogging services available. Though they suit more for business or research purpose, they are not unsuitable for other purposes. This blog too is very easy to maintain and update. The major advantage of this blog is it's font which is of very superior quality. Tags are provided automatically at the side of the blog to let the reader go to the post related to particular tag. Though wordpress has limited themes, they are very pleasant themes and are good to look at.

Xamba

Xamba is a rapidly developing blogging service. It is started very recently and it succeeded in attracting many bloggers in less time. The ease of use, varied themes, and ease of navigation and maintaining made it an instant success. It suits well to write journals and general subjects.

LiveJournal

Live Journal is basically a social networking community where anyone can keep a blog. It is in the league of oldest blogs on internet and it is established and reliable too. You can write about your personal life on this type of blogs and these blogs are called "Personal blogs." You can write your blog in text or HTML format. Though these blogs too don't come in varied themes, they serve the purpose well.

While the above blogging services are free of cost and they don't cost you a penny to start and maintain, there are some other blogs which are paid ones and they give a domain name and web hosting service. Some of them are

BraveNet

Brave Net is the very popular paid blogging service. It has many options which made it one of the most used blogging. It is very easy to design this blog as you can arrange any widgets with the help of mouse. There are many widgets available which make the blog look good. The different themes and colors make it look very appealing. This blog almost serves the purpose of a web site but at a lower cost.

TypePad

Type Pad is the best blogging one can get. It suits any type of blogging like business, public, and personal blogging. The subscription fees for these blogs vary depending on your need. It has all the options to make it look a very good blog. The design is very adjustable and we can change any feature as we want. We can change the color, font, and look of the whole page. You can add video and audio files easily to the blog. Typepad is not only the best blogging service among paid blogging services but it is the best blogging among all the blog services.

Other popular blogging services are Blog, Blogdrive, Easyjournal, and Tribe.net. Though the purpose of any blogging service is the same, which is to publish your writings. It is important to choose the best blogging that suits your need.