www.diyara.com

This has always been a tricky question. Think this through before you do this. As you know services like WordPress.com and Blogspot host your blog for you. However, they do this often under a sub-domain like xyz.blogspot.com or xyz.wordpress.com, which honestly, nobody likes.

Hosting your blog gives you a snazzy domain and your blog gets a higher “status” as you finally get an Alexa ranking, you have a slightly higher chance to get into 9rules, you are more likely to win competitions, and it just looks plain cool.

Hosting also makes this blogging a bit trickier. If you choose many blogging systems like WordPress or MovableType, some knowledge of MySQL, PHP (if WordPress, especially - Perl for MT), FTP, and such can prove useful. If you are using Blogger with an external host, you need no knowledge except the information given to you by your hosting service. However Blogger down time will still affect your blog, and you may get a few FTP errors now and again. So externally using Blogger may be simpler, but WordPress, and similar systems, gives you a ton of advantages, if you can, try as many out before starting your blog. (As later you will find it hard to switch)

There are alternatives. You could buy a domain and have it redirect to your sub-domain. It’s an easy to remember address you can list in directories and tell your friends, it also is much more memorable. Again, disadvantages: as people will link to your redirecting .com address, you lose out any search engine ranking you could have gained by them linking to your actual address (the sub-domain).

So, should I host externally? The choice is ultimately yours, try it and see what happens. Hosting prices vary; with GoDaddy hosting starts at $3 a month - and $9 a year for a domain - though services like DreamHost (if you choose them use the promotion code WEBBYSWORLD) and Bluehost may be better, but at a higher price. MediaTemple are also a good host.

Written by Azhar Chougle giving advice for bloggers at http://www.blogsblog.joeanderson.co.uk and doing his own photoblog at http://www.thedailysunrise.com.

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Did you know you are literally giving away money
and time on advertising if you are not publishing a blog?

Nowadays blogs have become very popular for diverse reasons.
For internet home based business entrepreneurs,
blogging represents a great opportunity for increasing
their internet marketing effectiveness and presence.

You should really consider starting a blog to complement
your advertisement efforts.

Here are 3 reasons why you should stop leaving money
on the table and start blogging instead:

It’s the quickest way to build a website
Blogging expands your marketing reach dramatically
You can increase delivery rates for your newsletter

Establishing your web presence in minutes and slowly
but surely building an empire:

Publishing a blog is the easiest, quickest way to establish
an online presence. You don’t even need your own website
to publish a blog (although it’s recommended that you host it
there for SEO reasons).

You can have your own blog up and running in
as little as 5 minutes, using third party services
such as Blogger (www.blogger.com).

As far as search engines are concerned, blogs are
full-blown websites. And they love them because of the
regularly updated, fresh content they often present.
As time goes by and your posts become to accumulate,
your “website” grows too, without any effort, linking,
or HTML knowledge required from your part.

Soon your blog becomes your little “empire” of content-rich,
interlinked webpages, which search engines keep visiting,
crawling and indexing like crazy, often at various times
during the day.

Easily and effortlessly expanding your marketing reach:

Here’s a surefire way to spread your advertisement
across the web. Once you have your blog running,
you can easily syndicate your content using RSS feeds.

You can submit your blog and RSS feed URLs to blog
and RSS directories, which are proven means to increase
your online presence besides normal website directories.

Even better, if your content is good, other webmasters
might beging syndicating your blog posts, giving you
effortless free advertising! And your posts can now
be delivered instantly right to your readers’ desktops
if they are subscribing via an RSS reader.

Giving SPAM filters the finger and
auto-archiving your newsletter:

SPAM filters driving you crazy? Does your newsletter end up
as a delicious snack on filter’s stomachs instead of
client inboxes?

You can now give those nasty SPAM filters the finger forever!
If you publish a newsletter by email, you may consider posting
it at your blog instead, and using your mailing list just to
announce your new issues to your subscribers. This way,
you avoid the SPAM filter issue associated with delivering
your newsletter via email.

At the same time, you are reaching more subscribers,
the ones who have added your blog to their RSS readers,
effectively “killing two birds with one shot”.

In addition to the above, you are naturally building
an archive of your newsletter issues, which get included
in your blog’s archives.

As with any new technologies, you should study the potential
you are missing by not publishing a blog, and compare it
to the extra work blogging would mean for you.

Personally, I think the benefits clearly outweigh the extra work
involved, and I strongly encourage you to start blogging
right now. Blogging is easy, even fun, and it doesn’t take
much time either.

If you are not much of a writer, just try to blog something,
anything, when you feel like it.

When you become consistent with your blogging, you will soon
realize why it’s so important for internet marketers.

—
Turning Internet Marketing Newbies into Gurus, one subscriber at a time! Get a FREE 4-Week Intensive Pro Internet Marketing E-Course from self-taught Internet Marketer Juan Pablo Cangas’ newsletter on: http://www.getfreedom.ws/newsletter/

Juan Pablo Cangas is a self-taught online entrepreneur.
He specializes in internet marketing & promoting,
copywriting and networking. In his website
(http://www.getfreedom.ws), newsletter
and blog (http://www.getfreedom.ws/blog/), Juan Pablo
teaches you how to how to promote and sale online
like a real pro, all the time giving you valuable gifts
just for following his advice! Juan Pablo also shares
his experiences and business opportunities
he is currently involved in, so you can make money too.

You may reprint this article in any way,
provided you don’t modify it, and you include
this resource box in your publication.

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In this article, I will describe 7 benefits of building niche blogs.

A “niche” refers to a targeted market with profit potential that is not saturated with competitors. The whole idea is to realize the benefits of building niche blogs and then find the niche markets out there and start building.

Benefit #1

Niche Blogs are essentially niche websites that are alive!

That’s because your blog will grow as you continue to publish posts or pages regularly to your blog. In contrast, many niche websites are seldom modified or updated after they are created.

Benefit #2

Blogs are designed to publish and update contents easily once you have them set up, configured and running.

Once you get the hang of it, it’s a matter of getting into that habit of writing blog posts and pages and publishing them regularly.

Benefit #3

They are either FREE or cost very little to set up.

You can create your blogs easily by visiting blogger.com or wordpress.org and taking time to study and learn the “how-to”.

Benefit #4

You can make money with your niche blogs in many ways, such as:

- Publishing third-party ads in your blogs (eg. Google Adsense pubishing)

- Recommending affiliate products and services in your blogs (eg. Amazon)

Benefit #5

Unlike websites, blogs are interactive. Visitors, or blog readers, are usually allowed to post comments for a blog post (or article) to the blog owner.

This ‘dialog’ helps to build rapport and relationship between the blog owner and his visitors or members.

Benefit #6

Since blogs are usually updated regularly via blog posts and pages, blogs will rank higher in search engines as compared to websites. In contrast, you have to do a lot of tweaking to a niche website through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques.

Search engines will visit your blogs more regularly as you blog more regularly.

Thus, you can also place links of your other websites to get them indexed quickly by the search engines.

Benefit #7

A blog’s syndication function is its most powerful benefit!

You can syndicate the contents of your blog by allowing other website publishers to publish your feed (or channel) on their sites. This helps to bring more traffic to your blogs as the visitors of these sites subscribe to your feed via web-based or desktop newsreaders.

So, with the above benefits, doesn’t it make a lot of sense to start building niche blogs as quickly as possible?

Copyright 2006 Roger Loh

Roger Loh spent many years setting up computer networks and is an Internet marketer who focuses on Affiliate Marketing, Blogging and eBook creation, among other business models.
To get started with your Internet Marketing business, visit his BLOG:
http://www.rogerloh.com

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