Grammar usage in blogs and websites to attract readers

Here is something that you have probably not heard about websites and blogs - using misspelled words and bad grammar to gather traffic from search engines. I am not saying that you should use bad grammar or misspelled words all of the time to get visitors to your website or blog but at the same time don't overlook misspelling a word or two to get in on web searches.

For example someone searching for a laptop computer might misspell computer as "computar" and type that in the search engine. If you had that one misspelled word on your website and you sell laptops or computer accessories then you could get a few extra visitors that way. The same also goes for bad grammar. For example if you are a moving company in New York state and most people typed in "movers in New York" they would get lots of listings but say you had a phrase that said "movers New York" and forgot the word "in", you might just get visitors forgetting to type in that extra word in their search.

You might not garner a lot of visitors by misusing the English language but you might get a few paying customers.

A special offer just for readers of this blog

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Help for the desperate

We have all felt the hand of oppression when money is short. We have anger, fear and sometimes hate towards those who either have asked for payment of a bill that we really do owe or have laid us off for a job we badly needed. To get though those short periods of desperation here is something that might help - a online prayer site that you can interact with others that are also going through the same thing.

Free Prayer Request
Thousands pray with you
Prayabout.com

Making money with your blog, part 4

If you have been following my step-by-step series on how to make a blog that generates money that great and I hope you have learned a lot since part 1. Don’t worry if you have missed the first installments, I will put the links to them at the end of this post.

So far I have bought the domain name, made a banner, joined thenewsroom.com for some great news videos and news articles that I get paid to display (yes money in my pocket) and have put up some interesting posts at The Playful Pup blog. I have also joined Entrecard for some added exposure for the blog and have listed the blog one just one of the literally thousands of pet blog directories in cyber space. So far I have about 5 -10 visitors a day which is not too bad considering the only advertising that is done is through Entrecard.

Now I am going to list the blog on at least 3 more blog directories and write at least 4 more posts before I start putting up any affiliate links or advertisements for dog supplies or dog training books. I did have one affiliate banner ad on there as an experiment and so far no click throughs on it so I removed it. Not every ad will appeal to your readers so you will need to switch ads around to see what income bracket and age group your blog will attract. Those are the 2 things a stat tracker cannot tell you.

Here are the links to the series so far on How to make money with your blog
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

State of the economy

I normally don't make political comments but since we are in the middle of the Democratic Convention week I figure what the heck. Most of us are not only frustrated with the current state of the economy but are finding out fast that the limited choices that we have for our future president is not going to turn around things very quickly. First you have a multi-millionaire in McCain that not only didn't know how many houses he owned but I am certain that he has never even had to look into getting mortgage quotes or even cared about the property taxes on a home. next you have Obama with his slogan of "change". Since the man has never spearheaded any political change in his career so far, I can only assume that the change he is referring to is the jingle in his pocket. Both choices are a do nothing and go nowhere type of candidate for me. Now I am looking at other party candidates like Ralph Nader (Independent). At least Ralph is a consumer advocate from way back.

How to use products to promote your company

You should have at least 10 business cards on you at all times when you are out in the public. We all know how that makes good business sense - to hand out your business card to someone you meet. Besides business cards, are there other types of promotional products that you can use to promote your business? Sure there are. If you have a business that does custom embroidery then the best items would be ball caps with your business logo embroidered on them. An account or financial type of business would do well to have custom printing on pens to be handed out. A pet shop might do well with key fobs or refrigerator magnets with their logos and phone number on it. If you are gardener or landscape company then look into having packets of seeds with your company logo on them made to give to potential customers.

Mainly keep the items inexpensive but effective. Don't rely on promotional items as your only course of advertising it is just another outlet.

One more bill paid off

I am happy to report that one more household bill has bitten the dust. It was a medical bill that we had made payments on for the past year. I simply added $10 to each payment and paid off the bill in 10 months instead of 13. Now before my family starts thinking about Brazil vacation packages or a newer car, we have at least 2 more medical/dental bills to pay off then that should free up at least 300-400 dollars a month for savings and investing in a solid mutual fund.

The amount that went to the medical bill that is now paid off will be divided up between several bills, adding $15.00 to each one in order to reduce the amount of time it will take to pay them off. At the current rate, most, if not all medical bills, and one purchased item (bought on credit) will paid off in 4-5 months. Those items do NOT have a revolving credit card attached to them so once they are paid off they are gone for good.

Revolving credit cards are the last item to ever be paid off when you are trying to become debt free. The reason for this is that when you pay off a card it tempts you to purchase more by being available again to use. The only way to stop that is to cancel the card before you pay it off.

Stop wasting your time online

If you are spending more than 2 hours a day online trying to make money and you are not making at least $10.00 a day - then you are wasting your time. That is a strong statement but needs to be said. Most people that try to make money online end up wasting their time either by getting sidetracked or have no set plan on how to go about making money online in the first place.

So what do you do with your time while online? My first guess is that you check your email. Next you might visit your blog or website to see how many visitors have stopped by. You then do a number of things from finding out the weather or shopping on eBay. Finally about 2 hours later you might get around to writing a blog post or checking to see if all the outbound links on your website work. After all of that you then check on either Google Adsense or any number of affiliates you have joined only to find that there have been no clicks or sales. Frustrated you have now been online about 3-4 hours and have done almost nothing. You have wasted your time and have gotten frustrated in the process.

To end that cycle you need to have a plan of action before you even get online. First if you have a blog you need to write your blog posts off line, do spell check and reread them a few times before you put them online. Make the blog posts interesting and entertaining. Write at least 200-500 word blog posts and get in the habit of writing and posting them at least 3 times a week.

After posting to your blog find at least one blog or website directory to list your blog on. There are literally thousands of them and I have a few listed on the side panel of this blog. That gives you at least one link pointing to your blog or website. Spend no more than 30 minutes doing those first few steps. Next check on your affiliate links. If there are no clicks or sales on any of the links you have looked at then either remove them or change them. Don’t waste precious website or blog space on non-income producing affiliate ads or links. I personally give links at least 3 weeks to produce income before removing them.

Next is probably the most important you will need to do - network. By networking I mean visit other blogs and leave comments. Don’t leave useless comments like “great blog” or just a comment that sounds like an ad for your blog. Not only are they rarely published but are rude and can prompt a blog owner to form a type of retaliation. The retaliation can be anything from a nasty and rude comment on your blog to having your blog mentioned all over the internet as a spam blog. I know of one blog owner that has such influence that she can by simply mentioning a website or blog in her blog in an unfriendly light can put that blog or website under within 24 hours. She has over 6000 visitors a day at last count and still growing.

After doing all of that it should have only taken you just under 2 hours. Now you have time to surf the internet as you wish. The next time you log on to your blog or website and check your visitor count you should see an increase in traffic and maybe an increase in clicks and buys.

Oil prices are on the rise again

As you are probably aware by now, the price of oil and thus gasoline at the pump is based on supply and demand. Demand has been low for the last few months. The price of oil had been going down slowly, I said "had" because it is now going back up. My guess is that the general public has decided that gasoline is now cheap enough to drive more. That in turn has driven the price back up. The cost of a barrel of oil rose again today by $6.00 so expect gasoline to start going back up in price. As we all know the price at the pump is very quick to rise but slow to go back down regardless of how much the price of oil drops in one day.

General spending habits

With the economy having a slight down turn, I call it slight because this is in no way likened to the great depression, I have noticed that only a few spending habits have changed. People are spending less on gas but more on frivolous things like metal detectors for finding buried "treasures" and cosmetics like Proactiv acne cream. I fail to understand the spending habits of the American public. I can only imagine that people want to find rare coins when they can't even find a job or look good to maybe get employed.

Now let's look at this logically - if you can't afford to buy something with cash in hand, don't buy it! How many items do you have stuff in that "junk" drawer? I wonder if you took everything out and priced it to see how much you spent on it what would you think? My guess is that you have at least $100 worth of items (the price you originally spent buying them) in that drawer.

Next time you go shopping think before you buy. Stop being an impulse buyer.

Is cheap gas good or bad?

I think we have all wondered if that gas from the grocery store or Costco is as good as the brand name stuff sold at the gas stations. I have found a video that might enlighten you. View it below.

The dangers of Anitvirus2009

I spent the better half of Sunday not relaxing but ridding my daughter's laptop of a hideous malware program called Antivirus 2009. What this little nasty program does is place warning messages on your computer that state "you have 38 (or some other high number) of viruses detected on your computer - run scan now". The scan is of course fake and the malware then tries to convince you that the software you have installed in not the paid version and you must go to their website and purchase a full copy of the software.

My daughter had mistaken thought that this program was our Norton virus program since it had a fake shield that looked like the Norton one. She only let me know that she was having problems with the computer when it refused to let her visit main websites like MSN or Yahoo, saying they could be fake or phishing websites.

After doing some searches online for cure with my computer (since hers was now at risk for becoming a slave computer) I found several ways to get rid of the nasty little trojan. One was a step by step instructions on how to remove each file and registry problem. I failed to find one and as soon as I went on line with her computer it started to try and download it's self again. This time I went on line with my computer again and found a malware remover program for free. I made a copy of it and transfered it to my daughter's computer and ran the malware remover program. it found that other file that I couldn't find and removed it. It also found 15 other files and removed them as well. Now all is well.

Making money with your blog, step 3

Have you been following me so far? If not here is part 1 and part 2 of my step by step series on how to develop a blog to make money.

In this step (part 3), I have added 2 dog training videos to the blog The Playful Pup. Here is the first one and here is the second one. The videos not only add some very helpful info for the visitor but I earn money every time someone watches one. The website that supplies the videos is called The Newsroom and you can do the same thing by joining their site for free. They have a huge selection of videos to display and earn money from. I caution you against using too many videos on you front page of your blog because it will take longer to load the page. The longer it takes for your page to load the more likely your visitors will leave the blog before it loads completely. The Newsroom actually recommends a maximum of 3 videos per page.

So far it is pretty easy. Next time we will get in to promoting your blog.

Here is a blog post about how to encourage the search engines to find your blog and index it really fast.

Making money with your blog, part 2

This is the next step in my multiple post guide to creating a money making blog. If you missed part 1 here is the post.

Now that the blog The Playful Pup is now up and running with it's new banner title and the very first blog post it is time to add a visitor and stat counter. I added one from Statcounter. Of course they are free and I find them very useful. Also the one that is on the right side of this blog farther down is very handy too. That one is from HiStats. I like the one on this blog because it will show how many people are on the blog at the same time. That can be a big boost to your readership once you have more than 50 or so readers a day. They are both the type of counters you will need to find out where your visitors are coming from and what they are clicking on too. In the very beginning you can be misled by a rather large amount of "visitors" to your blog, only to find out that those visitors are search engine bots just hitting on your blog. Once your blog has been on the internet for about 6 months or more, expect at least 30% of your daily traffic to come from search engine bots and not real visitors at all. So you now know when someone tells you that they have "X" amount of visitors a day you can be pretty sure they are including the bots as well. I have had the bots hit one of my blogs every 15 minutes for a few days a week. It sure does drive the traffic counter up!

I chose a visible counter for now but you can also pick an invisible one that only you know the stats of.

Stay tuned for part 3 of how to make money with a blog.

Horse feed coupon

I am always looking out for some decent money savings coupons. Here is a link to a horse feed coupon from Purina Horse Feeds for $8.00 off.

Purina coupon

Manteca, California, foreclosure news

My brother-in-law and his wife live in Manteca, California and recently told me about how their neighborhood is fairing in the foreclosure crisis. They live in one of the newer developments in Manteca, built just about 8 years ago. They live in one of the many cul-du-sacs in the area. Of the 15 homes on their cul-du-sac, 3 are in foreclosure. They told me that the value of their home has gone from 500K to just over 200K in one year. They estimate that the house is just barely worth about what they paid for it new 8 years ago. The problem is the fact that they used the equity in their house a few years back to pay off all their credit cards. They now owe more than the house is valued at. They have confidence that the prices will start to go back up soon.

I remember in the early 1990's the real estate market did the same thing in California. We had bought our first home in 1988 and wanted to sell it to move else where in the state. The bottom had fallen out of the real estate market at that time. When we put our house on the market in 1993 we had offers of 20K less than we bought it for in 1988. It did take a few years but the real estate market bounced back.

If you own a home and you want to move or sell it, wait a few years for the real estate market comes back up. If your mortgage is higher than the houses' value then just think of it a rent until the value goes back up. You have to live somewhere and you might as well take the tax advantages while you live in your own home.

How to make money with a blog, step by step, part 1

Since making money with a blog is a fairly easy method of money making I thought I would take you step by step right through the process. I am starting up a brand new blog and I will show you step by step what I am doing and how I am doing it. The income will come mainly from paid advertisements and affiliate links.

The blog I have decided on is called "The Playful Pup". I bought the domain name through Blogger when I signed up for the blog. Right now it is in transition and should be on the domain name http://www.theplayfulpup.com/ soon. It takes about 3 days from the time you purchase the domain name for it to go live. I can still play around on the http://theplayfulpup.blogspot.com/ blog until then.

The main reason I bought a domain name for it was that some advertisers and affiliates don't like sub domains and will not approve your blog if you don't show some sort of monetary commitment to it.

I chose the pup or should I say dog theme because I have knowledge about dog training, breeding and showing dogs. Also dogs are in 1 household in 3 in the USA so that makes the subject of dogs very interesting to people. You should choose a subject that you have experience or knowledge about. Pick a subject that has a lot of other people who share that interest, hobby or fascination.

My first order of business was to make a nice title banner for the blog. I used Microsoft Paint, the free program that comes with almost every computer. I also experimented with color schemes for the blog itself, all found in the control panel of blogger.

Stay tuned for part 2

Amazon VS eBay

Now if you have sold anything online you probably started out at eBay. Most first time sellers usually do. As you get more experienced at selling you find that there are other websites that you can sell your used and new items through. Amazon.com is one of them. Amazon also has a different type of visitor than eBay does. Here are the differences between Amazon and eBay:

• eBay charges up front a "listing fee", Amazon is free to list
• eBay charges a selling fee, Amazon only charges a selling fee
• eBay customers are looking for a bargain, Amazon customers have higher incomes and are looking for something they can't find elsewhere.
• eBay you can sell almost anything, Amazon limits the seller to certain categories and items

For selling of books, software, DVDs and videos I would personally have them listed on Amazon rather than eBay. From my experience I have gotten a much higher prices for my used software and collectors books than eBay. eBay is great for selling arts and crafts and one-of-a-kind type of item.

Amazon also sells high end jewelry and fine furnishings like a tv lift cabinet. I doubt very much if I could even trust a seller that has a diamond ring for sale on eBay. Amazon also protects it's buyers better than eBay so there is where most of the good customers are. If you are selling online and have not checked out Amazon.com then by all means do so.

When saving money is not so good

I remember when I was younger (many, many moons ago) the detergent companies would put on ads that said using their product would give your clothes that smell as if dried in fresh spring air. Looking out of the living room window I remember seeing the air heavy with California smog. I wondered then what they would call our smog laden air - good or bad for drying clothes. Step ahead by 20 years and the air is much cleaner but I still would hesitate to dry clothes outside with gasoline fumes drifting in the air, dust from local empty city lots or bird sitting on the line and leaving their calling cards.

I know that not using my clothes dryer would save money in the electricity bill, but having to wash the clothes again when they got soiled or "smelled funny", would cancel out that savings. Now that I live in a semi-rural area you would think that the air would be better, not true. We have dusty days when they are plowing the local fields, birds by the bushel and the occasional forest fire that sends smoke our way.

I think I'll just stick to my clothes dryer for now and just keep an eye out for more energy efficient ones when I am in the market for it.

The USA, a study in contradictions

If you have watched any TV lately you would have noticed that there is a greater amount of ads for cars, diet pills, prescription drugs, fast foods and restaurants. After pushing fast food and fancy restaurant food down our throats the drug companies then want to sell us a magic little pill that will get us in shape with no worries about cholesterol or strokes. Add to that scenario you have the car companies desperately trying to convince us that driving a car is good for us.

With a down turn in the economy you would think that people in general would be spending less on food and drugs but it seems that it is the other way around. Are people turning to food as a pacifier in times of trouble? Are more men suffering from ED because of the economy? I would like to hear your opinions on this. Drop me a comment on what you think people are turning to in hard economic times.

More money coming my way

I just got the shock of my life. I logged into my favorite paying survey site and found a nice little stash of money there. I don't often do the surveys that much anymore but it is the people that I have referred to the site that is making money for me. The survey site pays me $1 every time someone that I referred to them completes a survey. When I first started doing paid surveys for them over 2 years ago now, I was getting paid about $5 - 20 a survey. I soon got bored of doing surveys and they kept offering them to me. My sister signed up with them and she was making lots more money doing the surveys than I was. Of course every time she did one I got $1 for it.

The survey site is free to join and they pay you by check whenever you request payment. There is no minimum amount nor do you need a PayPal account. The checks are mailed directly to you. I will tell you up front that after you have signed up with them fill out all the "portraits" so you will get lots of surveys to do. Now if I get money from people doing surveys then you can do the same thing. Every time someone signs up with your referral you will get $1. You can refer all your friends and family and then some. Well, what are you waiting for? Go and join and earn some money. Here is the link again - survey website.

Another way to make money from your blog

I just found another company that pays for product reviews on blogs. Sponsored Reviews will pay for you to write blog posts about products or services. The lowest payment I have seen so far is $10 per written review. The more popular your blog is the amount raises up dramatically. It does have rather a high level of requirements to take part in their system. This blog unfortunately failed and did not come up to the amount of traffic that they require. One of my blogspot blogs did qualify but it does have at least 300 visitors a day. Now if your blog has at least 100 visitors a day I would give it a try. Finding out if your blog qualifies only takes a few minutes. Just click on the widget below to get started.

The cake business

One of my sister-in-laws was a stay at home mom and wanted to start her own business. Her husband encouraged her to take cake decorating classes at a local bakery. She did so well that the bakery hired her for to do all their wedding cakes. She did a wonderful job at them and even did mine. She only ventured out on her own to do other wedding cakes on occasion, mostly she just did the odd part time wedding cake job through the bakery.

She lacked the self confidence she needed to do the "sales" and "marketing" part of the job. Sometimes just having a skill is not enough. Take for example someone who has the sales skill but not the baking and decorating skill to make fabulous cakes. Yes they will sell them but they probably won't get repeat customers. Here is a blog that is dedicated to cake disasters, called Cake Wrecks. If those cakes are made by a person trying to get into the baking business, all I can do is shake my head.

Using Excel to save money

I recently got to attend a class on Excel. I already knew the basics but I learned quite a few tricks to the program that helped me out. If you are not familiar with Excel, it is a data and spreadsheet software program. Almost every computer sold already has it preloaded as part of a free software package. You should take advantage of Excel if it is already on your computer. It will come in handy for setting up budgets and finding out how you are doing with paying of bills. Play around with it and even do some fantasy budgets like "where will my millions go when I win the lottery?"

If you don't know anything about Excel here is a link on how to use it.

Become a supplier of information

Let's face it, the internet is where people go nowadays to look something up. Yes they also shop but most of the time it is to check out the weather, see what local times are for the movie theater or check their email. Many people are also looking up items that are to do with a hobby. How-to websites and blogs are highly trafficked. Often the information they give away for free brings visitors back, day after day. What are they making money from, if they are giving away information? One way is by displaying ads on their website or blog that has to do with the subject matter. Another way is to offer tips via email only to those how subscribe to their newsletter. The ads in the newsletter are now targeted ads which usually has a better chance of being viewed. Those ads are often paid ads that the advertiser knows will be seen by lots of people.

What types of information get the high traffic? Here is a list, starting with the most popular types of info people are searching for on the internet:

• Programing how-to's
• Software cheats and tips
• Troubleshooting software and hardware
• Free games
• Free anything (includes software, electronics, toys, you name it)
• Scam info
• Genealogy
  
• Looking for someone
• Hobby information
• Consumer fraud

I bet you can devise a blog based on one of those above and see just how many visitors you have coming to check you out. One famous blog was started up by 2 teenagers that wrote code for myspace layouts. They gave the codes away and made money on the display ads they ran.

So you want to be a writer

The internet has opened up the world of writing for many people that had not even thought about become professional writers. The internet is after all, just one great big library full of entertaining reading and informative reading. Of course all those articles have to be written by someone.

Writing for the internet is very different than writing a book for sale at the local book store. Internet writing has a lot more with putting phases into your articles or blog posts that can be easily caught up by search engines and put your work at the top or near the top of their search inquires. That is great for getting your written work on a blog out there in cyberland but what about getting paid to write articles for other websites and blogs? That is a question that many people that have ventured into writing for a hobby but now want the next step in their careers.

If you have a popular blog you will be approached at first to put ads on there from companies. Some blogs charge and get $1000 a month for one simple little ad. The more well known blog writers will get offers of doing reviews of other blogs, websites or products for a nice chunk of change in the $200+ range. Those types of bloggers are also commonly asked to write a "guest" blog post for other blogs. But if you are not so well known you can still find opportunities like writing a product or blog review. If you are offered the chance to write a product review, stick with what you know something about. Don't for example write any Leptovox reviews if you have no idea what Leptovox is. If you forte' is bikes then write some product reviews on bicycle products.

Something that I have found to really work to make a writer more popular and sought after is controversy. Write an article or blog based on controversy and watch your visitors soar. Nothing gets more readers involved in your writing than being an idiot, hero or mudslinger.

Pick a screen (pen) name that you can hide behind. Make up an interesting and intriguing personality just for your writing. Some of the best book authors had pen names, join them.