Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 9 of May , 2008 at 7:25 am
…..And Nasty. I forgot to add the tag to the end of the title! Being serious for just one moment, if you were hoping to find out how to get your blog and website services really cheap, don’t bother. The two do not belong together.
In today’s online world, you really do get what you pay for. If you pay $5 per month for hosting then you are going to get $5 worth of blog and website service and that is it. Possibly limited bandwidth and SQL databases and when it comes to person to person service, forget it.
I have known some of these cheap providers to take 30 minutes to answer a phone call and the person on the other end of the phone not having an answer to your question - even hanging up on you.
If you are serious about running a website or blog then you need to start by being serious about your blog and website service provider. It is not just about bandwidth. What support do they have? What is included with your service? What software, particularly eCommerce do you have access to?
The top quality blog and website service providers include features such as search engine submission when you launch your website. Many of the good providers also have webpage design, graphic design and search engine optimization service available.
Select a cheap host and you will, eventually, regret the decision. Saving a few dollars now may end up costing you a lot more down the track so think about your blog and website services right from the start and find a professional service that meets your needs, not just your wallet.
Category: Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 23 of April , 2008 at 1:20 am
Are you proactive, interactive, reactive or just totally inactive when it comes to working with your blog and website services provider? It takes all kinds to make the world go around, or so they say, but as a service provider it can be rather frustrating when it comes to dealing with clients.
The inactive client I can deal with. If I don’t hear from the I assume I am doing the job ok and keep going. However, you are the client. Do you check and see whether or not I am providing you with the service you want? If you are paying good money for a blog and website service provider, you should.
Each client type does have a positive and negative aspect to them. I don’t mind a reactive website owners. As a blog and website provider I provide a service and as it is their site, if I make a mistake like spelling or grammar they need to contact me to let me know so that I can correct the problem.
Interactive owners are great. Every step is discussed, they show an interest in what is happening and rather than being reactive, they work together with their blog and website services provider to fix any problems and look at ways to prevent them happening into the future.
The owner that does worry me at times is the proactive owner. Generally speaking, proactive is good. Working together and finding problems before they happen makes for a much smoother relationship. However, when an error is made, a proactive owner is quite likely to jump in and try and fix the problem themselves. This is fine if they know what they are doing, it is when they don’t know what they are doing that worries most blog and website services providers. Fixing the problems they have created can often be a nightmare.
Are you a blog or web site owner that uses a blog and websites services provider? What is your owner type - tell me its not proactive -please!
Category: Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 10 of April , 2008 at 9:59 am
Big businesses are jumping on the blog bandwagon, what about small businesses, is it worth the effort or time to create a blog? Blogs are strange creatures. They are easy to start, easy to maintain and easy to create content. Perhaps too easy.
There are millions of great blogs throughout web. There are tens of millions of absolute garbage blogs as well. The problem is that creating a blog is easy. Grab a cheap dot com. Get some cheap or free hosting. Install WordPress and start publishing your life story. Or perhaps start creating the very best in solid content. Or perhaps take the lazy way out and scrape some RSS content. It can be very easily done.
If you are small business and wondering whether or not to start a blog, take a number of issues into account before you start.
The first of these is commitment. Once you start a blog and have your business associated with it, you need to maintain it. If you blog starts to look stale and dreary, it may adversly affect your business.
Do you have the ability to create content that will interest your readers. Content is one of the most important aspects to a creditable blog.
Dollars. Blogging can be a cheap form of advertising however you need to have the time and commitment to make a successful blog. Either that or spend money to have professionals do it for you.
Small businesses often don’t have the resources to pay for professional blogging services. However, often the money spent could result in a small business gaining a strong growth spurt that elevates them from the small to medium size business.
Blog and website services are growing at a steady pace with competition bringing down prices. Small businesses into the future will need to ask whether or not they can afford not to blog. Blogging can be effective in increasing your business online.
Category: Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 31 of March , 2008 at 1:45 am
At last count there were more than 100 pinging services available along several WordPress plugins.
Pinging, for the uninitiated, is the act of notifying a wide variety of web directories, search engines and RSS feed aggregators of a new or updated post on your blog. The more directories and search engines that are notified of your post, the more likely you are to attract visitors whilst receiving back links.
The question is, should you ping your blog? The previous paragraph makes it clear there are definite advantages to pinging, there are also definite disadvantages as well. Blog and website services that offer to ping your blog do so by linking as many directories and search engines as possible. Not all services are the same. Service A may have 40 directories, search engines and RSS aggregators on their books while service B has 50. Therein lies a problem.
Many bloggers look at ping services and compare their ping recipients. Ping service A has 40; ping service B has 50; the duplication may be only 10 so the blogger decides to use both services to ping their latest blog. What they have done is pinged 10 of those services twice. Thats ok occasionally, do it to often and you may get banned for spamming.
Using plugins can be a good idea. With plugins you can enter in the services that you wish to ping. This avoids the duplicate ping that may occur by using more than one blog and website service. When using a plugin there is one catch. Some plugins do not check for previous pings, so a simple act like publishing - with an automatic ping, followed by a quick edit for a spelling or layout change, may result in a second ping the moment you save again.
Use a good plugin and it will identify the previous ping and not ping a second time. My advice, where possible, use a plugin if it is available and only use a blog and website service to ping your blog after making a major change to the posts content - in those situations, you want the updated post out there.
Category: Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Tuesday, 18 of March , 2008 at 1:33 am
How old is your blog? When was the last time you gave it a good overhaul? Blogs are a little like cars in a way. Over time they become clogged with little impurities and need a good service and tune up. You can do the job yourself - a home tune up, or you can find a mechanic, a good blog and website services specialist to do the job for you.
Giving your blog a regular service is not always difficult. It can be time consuming and may require the downloading and installing of more up to date components. The outcome may just be a leaner and faster blog that your visitors will appreciate.
Over time we tend to accumulate a lot of unnecessary fluff within our blogs. If your like me and like to fiddle a little, you will have plugins installed, some even unused. Perhaps there are a few themes just sitting and taking up space. Are your categories may be all over the place and without any structure?
Then there are some of the harder tasks like the datafile. Has that been checked and optimized at all since you started blogging? Yes - you can get a plugin to do that for you too.
If you have any doubts about giving your blog a good service, talk to a blog and website services professional. You will be surprised at how little it can cost to have your blog polished back to a shiny new lean machine. It will be brought up to date with all the latest software and running like a dream.
Category: Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Wednesday, 5 of March , 2008 at 8:08 am
There are many very successful business people running very successful businesses and some of these businesses include websites. Although their websites are already successful I still often suggest they start writing a blog as a customer service and marketing tool. The answer I get back runs along the lines of this articles title, ‘I just don’t have the time’. My response, you don’t need the time. There are many blog and website services around that will do the job for you - and at a reasonable price.
Whether your business and web site is successful or you are just starting out, having professionals develop a blog and then provide the content can actually be a very cost effective proposal. There is little doubt that an effective blog can help to boost your business particularly if the articles are well written and relevant to your business and effective social marketing is undertaken.
Brick Marketing provide a wide range of blog and website services that are designed to help you develop a professional blog. We can also provide quality articles on regular basis that will engage your readers and help bring more traffic to your business.
Do you have a business? Are you thinking of creating a web site? I suggest you include a blog that has been professionally optimized for your business by a blog and website services provider. The extra service it provides to your customers together with the extra business it can help develop make it an extremely attractive and affordable option.
Category: Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 23 of February , 2008 at 8:12 am
There are many blog and website services provider in the market place now. What features do you look for before buying their services.
The first and most important feature to look for is the level of expertise in the services they offer. Some services providers claim a high level expertise but unless they can back these claims up with evidence, generally in the form of a portfolio of successful clients, then tread warily.
The second feature, whilst not truly a feature, is price. Cheap is not always best, in fact it rarely is. The lower the price the lower the level of service - it is a simple matter of economics. If your are offering a service that requires a high level of expertise from a team then low fees indicate either a small team or a lack of dedicated resources.
The major features to consider are of course the services themselves. Do they offer web hosting? Price again is important here - cheap hosting invariably leads to cheap service - frequent down times and little support. When it comes to web hosting, you get what you pay for.
Other features include web design, content writing, directory and search engine submission, SEO, blog and/or website marketing and an ongoing help program.
Providers such as Brick Marketing not only offer a comprehensive range of blog and website services, they have the expertise to see your project through from start to finish. Brick Marketing also have a wide range of blog and website services to assist you in the ongoing development of your blog or website.
Category: Blog Content, Blog Design, Blog Marketing, Blog SEO, Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 2 of February , 2008 at 8:10 am
Where does your blog SEO focus sit - concentrated heavily on Google, or spread to cover all major search engines. The announcement that Microsoft have made a huge offer for Yahoo may leave some looking at their current strategies. The question that must be asked first is what changes can Microsoft bring to Yahoo?
The announcement stated that the focus would be on consumers, advertisers and publishers and not so much on technologies. The immediate question in my mind is the Google-Firefox relationship and whether or not Microsoft will align Yahoo more with Internet Explorer.
It seems that Microsoft and Yahoo have been in discussion for almost 18 months with the Yahoo board obviously interested in the proposal. With that in mind it will be interesting to see if Yahoo starts to implement any Microsoft ideas prior to the takeover. Of course Yahoo have to agree to the proposal first and I am sure there are many government agencies that will run their magnifying glasses over the proposal. For now, watch for any changes to Yahoo’s requirements.
Irrespective of the outcome, your blog SEO strategies should target all search engines. Not only should you target all search engines, you should be constantly watching what the search engines are doing. Determine what blog SEO strategies you need to tweak to keep pace with search engine changes and what directions they are taking into the future.
If this all appears too difficult or too complicated then look at some of the blog and website services that specialize in blog SEO strategies and blog marketing - the dollars invested could turn out to be dollars saved.
Category: Blog SEO, Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Tuesday, 22 of January , 2008 at 1:58 am
Most blog software platforms have one deficiency in common, the inability to display an email link while hiding your email address. There are a lot of email robots just touring around web sites collecting email addresses. The email addresses are collected into data bases and used to send out spam mail.
Some bloggers try to side step this by writing their email in long hand - you may have seen it - webmaster (at) domain-name (dot) com. This is very effective at stopping the email robot collectors, it can also deter readers from using your email service. We seem to live in a click society now - if I cannot click I won’t bother.
There are many services available that will enable you to offer the one click email link while hiding your email address. These still rely on a piece of Java code which needs to be copied and pasted into a text box (for WordPress users). The code works by breaking the email address up into pieces that cannot be read by the mail bot. One such as service is provided by BlogFlux - they are one of many. You simply type in your email address and they will provide you with the Java Script to place on your page.
They are effective at slowing down the incidence of email spam. Unfortunately you will never totally prevent mail bots and email spam - but the, blog software can only do so much - a good email filter should handle the rest.
Category: Blog Software, Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Sunday, 6 of January , 2008 at 8:08 am
There is nothing worse when surfing the blog network than to be faced with a mirror of your own blog, just with different content. If your blogging for fun then a public domain or free template will suit your purpose. In fact you may think it amusing to find your template being used elsewhere.
There comes a time however when you may need to think professional. For some blog owners, particularly corporate blogs, you have to start with a custom designed blog. If you are using a free template then at the very least you need to consider designing a header, or having one designed for you.
When considering your blog design don’t stop at what you want. It comes back to why you are blogging in the first place.
- think about what message you are trying to deliver,
- who your target audience is, and
- what it is you are trying to sell.
These are not exclusive. If you are selling a product or service then your blog design needs to make it easy for you to market your product to the right audience with, in all probability, the aim of getting them to click through to a sales or order page. This message may well be lost in a cluttered three column blog design. You may however be selling many different messages where the content is the attraction but the sales pitch is in the side bars - in this case a three column blog design would be perfect.
There are many blog and website services that can design blog templates at very competitive prices. Check out some of their work first. If the designer is a professional then they will generally have links to working pages that they have designed. You can see them in action; see them being used.
Approach the designer with a clear idea of what you are looking for; the layout, the header and any extra options like links to sales or checkout sites. Most importantly, make sure the end result is going to be a blog design that is usable by both yourself and your reader. Design is the first step to attracting and keeping your readers.
Category: Blog Design, Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Monday, 24 of December , 2007 at 10:36 pm
Choosing a domain name for your new blog is just one thing. There’s still the hosting, SEO, content, and design to think about. It’s important to tackle each and every issue if you are ready to start a new blog, whether corporate or personal. DailyBits’ Steven Ward wrote an interesting list of 8 Bad Decisions When Starting a Website. The items included in the list may seem basic but a lot of webmasters completely forget about them.
So here they are. I called them “8 No So Wise Decisions” because really, forgetting about them is just not so wise.
1. Free or Cheap Web Hosting. Low cost hosting will bring you to hell Frequent downtimes? Low bandwidth? Goodluck!
2. Not Buying a Domain Name. Read Why Domain Names Matter.
3. Not Getting the Right Domain Name. Review the 7 Highly Effective Domain-name Habits.
4. Designing Exclusively for Search Engines. SEO, SEO, and SEO. It’s all about optimization baby! Try to get noticed by Google.
5. Prioritizing the Look Over the Content. Content is still king. What’’s the point of having a really cool flash-based blog if your content is so-so?
6. Forgetting About the Target Market. On a niche? Stick to it.
7. Poor Navigation. Please, don’t confuse your readers with fancy navigations. It’s just pointless. Help them by pointing them to the right page easily.
8. Ineffective Keyword Targeting. As part of good optimization efforts, learn to target the right keywords.There are lots of keyword research tools out there that could help you find the more popular keywords.
Category: Blog Content, Blog Design, Blog Marketing, Blog Metrics, Blog SEO, Blog and Website Services, Blogging Tips
Writing by Brick Marketing on Sunday, 23 of December , 2007 at 10:21 pm
Still on the topic of domain names, have you ever wondered why domain names vary in price? Top level domains .com, .org. or .net’s are more expensive than .info, .biz, or country domains such as .us, .eu, or the newest .asia.
So why are some domain names more expensive than the others? One word : COMPETITION. People compete over the most common yet highly popular keywords like Sex, Business, or Diamond.
Truth to tell, there were domain names who were sold and bold as much as at $350 million!
Top 10 Most Expensive Domain Names :
10. Shop.com - sold for $3,500,000
9. Korea.com - $ 5,000,000 in January 2000
8. SEO.com - sold for $ 5,000,000 in June 2007
7. AsSeenOnTv.com - sold for $5,100,000 million in January 2000
6. Casino.com - sold for $5,500,000 million in 2003
5. Beer.com - sold for $7,000,000 million in 2004
4. Diamonds.com - sold for $7,500,000 million in 2006
3. Porn.com - sold for $9,500,000 million in 2007
2. Sex.com - sold for 14,000,000 million in January 2006
1. Business.com - sold for $350,000,000 million in 2007
(Source : Rhyan and Oylinki)
Domains tailing behind the list:AltaVista.com ($3,300,000) ; Vodka.com ($3,000,000) ; Loans.com ($3,000,000) ; Wine.com ($2,900,000), CreditCards.com ($2,750,000), Tom.com ($2,500,000), Autos.com ($2,200,000).
I’m not going to ask anymore why such and such were worth millions of dollars (enough to feed a small African country) because the reason is just obvious. Business is business—the more you spend, expect more in return.
Now, I wonder how much blogmarketingjournal.com is now worth?How much is your blog domain name worth? I guess it’s time for you to increase the market value of your blog. Or who knows, your domain is now worth a million dollars.
Category: Blog Metrics, Blog SEO, Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Saturday, 22 of December , 2007 at 1:46 pm
I was tempted to write “domaining” in the title but it doesn’t fully describe what I want to say. By domaining we mean. the process of selling or buying domain names. But issue here is choosing how to choose the right domain for a highly successful blog, so I called it domain-naming.
Now that you know domain names matter, it’s time to learn how to identify a good domain name when you see one. Daniel Scocco writes about the 7 Characterics of Good Names and here they are:
1. They are short. The shorter the domain name the better.
2. They are easy to remember. People tend to just memorize domains.
3. They are easy to spell. Do not give them reason to misspell your domain names.
4. They have a .com extension .Go with the most popular extension
5. They are descriptive. Give your visitors idea what your website is about at a glance.
6. They are brandable . People will associate your website with the brand and with the content, product, or service.
7. They don’t contain hyphens or numbers. Such are cheaper for a reason.
Daniel said that “a good domain name will be the corner stone of your website’s success” and I agree. Why do you think Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, or Multiply made it big in the Web 2.0 era?
Category: Blog Content, Blog Marketing, Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing on Friday, 14 of December , 2007 at 1:07 pm
Gone are the days when blogs are regarded as personal online diaries. Its power and magic has turned millions of bloggers to instant celebrities and some, millionaires. Almost anyone can make a blog in a few minutes. Sign up at some blogging platform, log in, and then type your way to blogosphere.
Gaining more popularity and achieving success are corporate blogs. Why a certain company should blog…the list is endless. Why, it’s what this blog has been campaigning for since day one.
I’d like to make a recap of why companies should blog:
> blogs are more popular within the business world
> blogs are easily customizable and editable
> blogs are cheaper alternative to traditional offline marketing
> blogs are designed to rank well in search engines
> blogs make your clients and customers feel like your company is open
> blogs can make bring you unwanted attention that may someday bring more business opportunities
…and the list goes on and on. Not all companies are doing this smart marketing tactic because they simply don’t have time to write, However, there are companies offering business blog services that further increase the online popularity of a brand or company.
Corporate blogs for me are important because they help shape the reputation of a company. It’s giving prospective clients or customers a sense of familiarity with the company right away. While it requires effort, the results can be mind-blowing.
But remember, not all companies can and should blog. There are right ways to achieving a successful blogging career.
Category: Blog Content, Blog Marketing, Blog SEO, Blog and Website Services
Writing by Brick Marketing Staff on Sunday, 9 of December , 2007 at 12:37 pm
WebPosition 4 is a popular SEO Ranking software that I’d recommend, even if the only website you have is a blog. If you are trying to monetize your blog then you’ll need a way to track your conversions, right?
WebPosition 4 can do that and so much more.
Not only does WebPosition 4 track conversions, but it also reports your search engine rankings, helps you target your keywords better, uses a built-in expert to optimize your web pages more effectively, and submits your URLs to the search engines for you. It’s an automated process that is well worth the time.
There are two products that you might have an interest in: The standard edition and the professional. The standard edition is good if all you want to do is use a metrics system for your website or blog. But if you do any pay per click advertising at all then you’ll need the professional edition. The way it tracks and reports pay per click conversions is well worth the extra that you’ll spend on the professional edition.
The standard edition supports up to 5 domains, but the professional edition has unlimited domain support, so if you have multiple domains then you should think about shelling out the extra bucks for the professional edition. You can also have your reports e-mailed to you with the professional edition, which is a huge time saver. And two other new services that come with the professional edition are meta tag manager and link validation. I really like the link validation tool!
At any rate, before I go on too long, check out WebPosition 4. You’ll be glad you did.
Category: Blog Metrics, Blog and Website Services, Blogging Income, Blogging Tips
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