Todays budding blogger has a wide range of blogging platforms to choose from. Wordpress, LiveJournal, Blogspot, Squidoo and many others all seem to boast similar features at face value.

It can therefore be a daunting task to decide which of the available blogging platforms will best meet your blogging needs. However, most professional bloggers name Wordpress as their “blog of choice”.

Wordpress, like the majority of other blogging platforms, is free to use. However, Wordpress has a higher storage allowance then it’s competitors — a whopping 3 gigs! Additionally, unlike most other blogging platforms, Wordpress has the option of allowing you to install it on your own personal website. Should you install Wordpress on your own domain, which isn’t necessary but is recommended, you’ll have complete control over it and you are given all the bandwidth your internet hosting plan allows. That already generous 3 gig limit then become limitless!

While most blogging platforms allow for only the hosting of image files, Wordpress offers another another benefit in that as well as hosting images, you can also host a variety of files including PDFs, Word documents and PowerPoint presentations.

A further benefit of Wordpress over other blogging platforms is it’s open-sourced nature. This gives bloggers a great amount of flexibility. Wordpress has become a favorite among many bloggers for this reason alone. Your blog can be almost completely customized in terms of appearance and functionality, making it possible for you to recreate the exact impression of your blog that you’ve formed in your head.

Lets review the benefits of Wordpress over other blogging platforms. We see that we have the option to house the blog on our own sever. We have the function to host a wide range of file types, and the the limitless flexibility afforded by its open source nature. If you haven’t already started using Wordpress, then now is the time to start!

This is a guest post by Matthew Wolfe. He teaches entreprenuers how to create blogs, generate traffic, and make money with his free video tutorials at The Wordpress Classroom. You can also find out more about Matthew, as well as learn more tips and tricks at his personal blog, MatthewWolfe.com.

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How Much Do You Actually Need To Earn Online To Survive?

There are so many people online that figure if you are going to blog for profit you need to be a really dedicated professional and blogging about one’s hobbies doesn’t play a role in earning money online.

That is fine for those willing to put in the amount of time and effort required to be a pro blogger. For me, well I am online to earn what I need to enjoy my lifestyle.

It might cost me a few thousand dollars a month to survive but when you take into consideration that my wife works a full time job we don’t need that much.

Now realistically speaking I only need to earn about $1000 a month to have all we need and still have a bit of fun money left over.

Heck I know people in other countries that would consider $1000 a month in expenses really high. Earning money like that for them would be like hitting the lottery.

My way of marketing is far less stressful and I don’t need to be nearly as professional as I was in the brick and mortar world, before 2001 when I started my online business.

So, how much do you really need to earn monthly to make a living?

Answer that question and set your goals to focus on that amount.

Is it necessary to have multiple blogs?

Yes and No. This one will take some research on your part so that you know what the market is like for your niche.

Currently my blogs don’t make a lot of money individually. For that reason I didn’t just stop with one site per hobby.

I like fishing and started with one fishing blog. When I saw that I was making some money I created another fishing blog focusing on a slightly different aspect of fishing.

Once the second fishing blog was earning from affiliate sales… Yes I started another one.

I did the same thing with a garden blog when we decided to start gardening. That started earning a little but the domain name had nothing to do with the niche so I started a second gardening blog that was keyworded.

The second garden site blew my first garden site out of the water in half the time it took for that first blog to start earning.

Then I decided to start a specific gardening blog. I focused this one on vegetable gardening tips. It’s new so I don’t have anything to brag about with this one yet, but you get my drift.

What goes great with a garden? Recipes to make the best of what we grow in our garden so I started a blog about great garden recipes.

Now I like to be truthful so I am letting you know that not all of my bright ideas for blogging worked out. That’s alright, it would be nice to be on all the time but GoDaddy Domains are cheap and I pay one low price for all my hosting with HostGator Hosting.

One of my flops was my digital photography blog. I gave it a try, twice I might add. I should have found guest bloggers for that site, it might have done better.

The key to your success is to keep working. Don’t give up and stay focused on hobbies that people actually spend money on.

I would like to add something about a recession.

We are having some hard times in the Maritimes and have had the need to cut back in a few places to save money, but you know I have not cut back on the spending I do for my hobbies and neither has any of my fishing buddies or gardening friends. Hobbies keep us young and we can’t give them up.

That is why you can always make a littel extra money talking about your hobbies.

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Some people sell products from other website owners while others sell products and services that they offer. Whatever your online business is, we need to generate a lot of traffic to our website. Of course, you want traffic that are interested with your product or services.

When I started studying internet marketing, I learned about many techniques on traffic generation. Many of the programs and services that I have purchased did not have a lot of effect on my website traffic.

Listed below are the three traffic generation techniques that I found most effective:

• Text Link Advertisements

Linking can be by either paid or unpaid methods. Adding links in e-zines or in other websites are some examples of paid linking methods. Make sure you need the traffic from that source before buying advertising space to make the most out of your money. For ezines, make sure they have a good number of subscribers before you advertise.

The unpaid method is through article creation . If you keep doing this, it will definitely make a good impact in your business. Keep in mind, your articles should be relevant and address the subject matter of your site and products.

• Pay Per Click (PPC)

If you have some advertising budget, it makes sense to put it in pay per click. In this advertising method, you create an advertisement like in the classified section of the newspaper and bid on the keywords that you would like to target. This takes time, energy, persistence and money  and research unless you know the google secret loophole by now. Make sure you understand the rules of the search engine where you want to do PPC before you start your campaigns.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The main goal for SEO is to make sure your website is ranked well in the search engines by optimizing your website. Although you get free traffic with SEO, optimizing your website can be time consuming.

These are traffic generation tactics that are the most effective.

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