I would like to thank Michelle Macphearson of the blog Social Marketing for providing the information that is contained in this article and to bringing these fantastic tools to my attention.

If you are wanting traffic to your Internet marketing blogs it is important to get targeted traffic. You wouldn’t advertise how to grow watermelons on an advertising site about making money online would you?

Michelle Macphearson writes an interesting post about two plugins that can help you to get targeted traffic to your Internet marketing blog(s). Her post is found at Two Braindead Simple Ways to Bring Traffic to Your Marketing Blog Today.

These plugins are associated with websites  for internet marketers, by internet marketers that have the main goal to send you targeted, quality traffic. PlugIM and Sphinn are the two websites that Michelle is referring to in her blog post.

Your first order of business is to visit PlugIM and Sphinn and create your free accounts. Next go to the download the PlugIM Wordpress Plugin. Next do the same with the Sphinn plugin.

PlugIM allows you to add your RSS feed so that your new blog posts are automatically added to their site - a neat feature that makes this process even simpler. With Sphinn, you’ll have to click your new “Sphinn It” button that shows up on your posts - you’ll be brought to the submission page and can add a brief excerpt to your story. In this way you can also categorize the post in Sphinn so that people searching for posts in a certain category can find them.

Install these plugins as you would install any other Wordpress plugins and activate them in the plugin section of your Wordpress administrative area.

These plugins will help your SEO as you will be receiving backlinks from authority sites in the marketing niche every time you submit a story.

If you need more detailed instructions on how to use these be sure to visit Michelle’s post.

seo,search engine optimization,plugim,wordpress plugins,social media marketing,internet marketing

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, plugim, wordpress plugins, social media marketing, internet marketing

This website isn’t related to blogs but it has two components related to Web 2.0 and therefore it is for that reason that I am reviewing the website. The name of the website is CouponChief.com and if you want to save money on a variety of items and you like to utilize coupons then this site might interest you.

Of course to utilize the savings you must be a coupon user. This of course is something I have failed to do as every time I cut a coupon out I fail to use it. With this site you print your coupons however. Usually when one thinks of coupons one thinks of grocery coupons. This is not the case here as CouponChief.com has a wide variety of coupons available for your use. Some examples are Apparel for Men, Food & Wine, Pet Supplies, Computers and Software. In all there are 22 categories listed.

The two reasons that this website falls into a wide definition of Web 2.0 is that it is a membership website and it also offers RSS feeds of the daily coupons and savings. Although many membership websites cannot be placed in the Web 2.0 category the fact that this site utilizes RSS, a component of Web 2.0 that I am mentioning it here.A review of the website CouponChief.com and how it relates to Web 2.0. Whether you want to view the site to see how RSS is used in the case of this website or if you would like to utilize the savings of their coupons I would suggest visiting this site.

web 2.0,coupons,savings,membership sites,rss feeds

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, coupons, savings, membership sites, rss feeds

Blog Soldiers is a free traffic exchange specifically for blogs. Although I mentioned them ages ago in the past when this blog was using the blogspot platform I had almost forgotten about them. I am going to start using them more as a way to promote my blogs.

If you have a blog that you would like people to see and read they are an excellent way to promote it simply by entering your blog url in their system and then surfing through and reading other blogs. It’s simple. View blogs, earn credits, get traffic to your blog. Simply visit Blog Soldiers and sign up for an account.

blogs,blog soldiers,blog traffic exchanges,blog visitors

Technorati Tags: blogs, blog soldiers, blog traffic exchanges, blog visitors

If you aren’t blogging and plan to get started soon beware. There are several free blogging services available that make the idea of starting one’s own blog very easy and attractive. Indeed, many bloggers fall into the trap of using a free blogging service as their first entry into the filed of blogging. This of course makes a great deal of sense, as the free blog service providers offer some very easy to use powerful platforms. Also, this approach avoids spending funds and therefore reduces the risk involved in starting a blog to a bare minimum.

Although using a free blogging service may be an easy way to get started with blogging and learning about the process of blogging there are simply too many pitfalls associated with using these services. Indeed, they are a poor choice for those hoping to generate significant blogging profits.

There are four main reasons that they are poor choices for those looking to generate significant blogging profits. These reasons are as follows:

1. Since most of the free blog services offer the free blog and server space in order to display their own Adsense or other ads. The free service provider’s terms of service often prohibit the user from displaying any additional contextual advertising. The reason for this is that the free services generate their revenue this way, therefore there TOS makes perfect sense. Unfortunately this takes one of the most powerful tools for a blogger to make money away from the blogger.

2. If you operate a blog on a free service then you lose much of the control over your site. This is not only a matter of advertising or content restriction, rather this lack of control is much more serious. Such free blog service providers as Blogger.com is known to regularly freeze blogs and delete blogs for reasons they do not explain to the bloggers operating those blogs. Blogs simply disappear and so does the great deal of work that the blogger has done. With other lesser known blog service providers the provider may be undercapitalized. These blog providers may simply go out of business and take your blog right along with them. In the case of blogger deleting blogs I had this happen and it was very discouraging. Although I was able to set up my blogs again and with the same urls, I was not able to recover any of the previous posts that existed before the blog was deleted.

3. If you use a free blog hosting provider there is an issue of credibility. Surfers are more likely to visit and bestow a great deal more credibility to blogs that are hosted upon their own domain. Blogs that are obviously hosted on a sub domain at a free host make potential visitors and customers doubt a blog’s credibility, legitimacy and have a negative impact on generating sales of any kind.

4. Last but not necessarily the least of the reasons why using a free blog host can be detrimental to your profitability is the what I shall refer to here as the matter of flexibility. With some free blog services your options to alter the appearance of the blog may be limited to nonexistent. These free services may use platforms that lack some features that can aid in making your blog profitable. For an example the blogs hosted at Blogger.com lack the category function found in their Wordpress counterparts. Other free services may offer only a few templates that can have any changes at all made to them and these are minimal. If you want your moneymaking blog to be profitable and perform optimally, you should be able to make any and all desired changes to your blog template.

There are a variety of blog platforms that won’t cost you anything at all and many of these are very powerful. Because of all the competition among the various hosting and domain registration companies you can find having your own website quite affordable. If you are planning to make an income through your blogging activities using a free blogging service to launch your online business does not make sense. Most domain hosts today offer such services as Wordpress and other blog platforms that you can simply add to your current domain. This is a definite bargain when one considers the pitfalls associated with the alternative of the free blog services.

Keith P. Stieneke is a network and affiliate marketer with a background in psychology and direct sales. You can view his ever-changing website the Opportunity Assistance at http://www.opportunityassistance.com. He has also built the blog resource website Blog Smart Resources at http://www.blogsmart-resources.com for those interested in learning more about blogging.

blogging,blogger,blogspot,blogs,free blog services,blog platforms,wordpress,blogspot

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogger, blogspot, blogs, free blog services, blog platforms, wordpress, blogspot