Blog PR Wire

Google Forms is a great tool. As a blog contact form, or simply to collect data from your visitors, Google forms pulls the form contents into an excel chart (within Google Documents) and will notify you of any updates by email.

The one concern I see over and over on blogs is how to streamline the form into a blog page or blog post. Three simple steps can take your form from looking – well – not so pleasant. To looking like it is mean tot be there.

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If you share a computer with your children, you probably understand the REAL fear of a malicious download wiping out your desktop. Even if you are the sole user of your precious computer, losing your hard work, research, images for your blog posts is a rather scary thought.

How do you keep all those important tidbits for your blog safe? Most will answer with long winded instructions on backing up your computer (including your blog backup files). Not I! My solution is called drag and drop into a desktop folder – or save the files in the folder. Easy Peasy.

For those of us with little time or money to pay someone here’s a handy FREE solution. It’s called Drop box. Not only does it back up to their remote server – it also allows you to access your files from any computer or phone.

So bloggers, my blogger tool of the week is Drop box. We can’t live without it!  Register for free at Drop Box

” I”ve been blogging for a long time. I have a message to convey or a product to promote, but my words just aren’t reaching as many folks as they should.”

If this sounds like you, you are not alone.

I love to write. For me it is something that I am truly passionate about. Readers have often referred to it as an artform. But like so many of us, a large amount of my work has been trapped in the bowels of the blogosphere with a very tiny audience. I was not effectively marketing the product of my time and effort and it is easy to look back at what I did wrong.

I did not promote myself or my work in any effective way whatsoever.  What I was saying was being heard by very few people. Looking back, I’m somewhat frustrated by my lack of know-how, but I can help you avoid my folly.

Today’s tool you need to use is called Zimbio, and if you’re not part of this network, you are seriously missing out.

So what is Zimbio? Quite simply, it is the ultimate writer-driven internet newspaper. And what’s more, it is one of the easiest tools you can use to multiply your reach exponentially.

When you sign up, Zimbio will crawl your blog for articles to post. You choose the categories and they will be submitted immediately. Since your website is in the subtitle, people will find your blog with a simple click.

The great part about Zimbio is the freedom to choose which posts will hit their network. Unlike many blog networks, Zimbio only publishes what you want, when you want. If you write 20 posts a day, choose a few that you think will draw traffic to your blog. You can also use links, publish half of an article, and edit your work as you go. It’s really that simple.

Services like Zimbio also have a hidden benefit- they make you conscious of what you write, and the quality of work tends to rise. As your writing skills improve, your ability to attract and captivate an audience will increase. How you convey a message is often as important as the message itself. Engage your readers and they will return.

Do you want a larger, more intelligent audience that will increase your revenue?

If the answer is yes, you need Zimbio.

Whether you blog for pleasure or for profit, you invest your time, effort, and metal acumen developing content.

Your work could have a political, educational, or emotional focus. You could write about how to buy stocks or how to remove stains from cloth diapers, but whatever it is that causes your digits to move is something that is important to you. Most importantly, what you publish belongs to you.

One of the most serious irritations to bloggers today is the flood of people who want something for nothing. Folks who lack creativity troll the interwebs hunting for appealing content to fill their websites with readers and keep their advertisers happy.  Since some individuals have neither the writing nor research skills to continually come up with quality material, they steal the intellectual property of others.

Most of us know someone who has been plagiarized. I have found my articles posted on websites around the world including news blogs that garner millions of daily hits. But I have discovered ways to defend myself and I’ll pass a few tips on to you so that you will know how to establish ownership of your creative material and thusly prevent it from theft.

The first thing that any blogger should do is copyright his or her content. You do not have to be CNN or the Wall Street Journal in order to do this.  A one-stop FREE stop you must visit is myfreecopyright.com . Once you have been accepted your posts will be registered and the registry numbers e-mailed to you daily for your records. The digital fingerprint is your evidence should you ever need to pursue an online thief.

Another great feature is the fact that having their logo featured on your website is a visual deterrent to would-be pilferers. Simply put, if someone sees this , they might think twice before booting your blog.

Another free service that you can use is creativecommons.org , which gives you the ability to determine exactly how your work can be shared on the internet.

Now that you have protected your work, you might want to check for evidence of theft, and there are a number of ways to do this. I’ll give you a few of the easier options.

First- try Google Alerts . Simply enter a few key phrases from that epic blog entry and Google will e-mail you if it is copied anywhere on the net.

Another dandy that I use is Copyscape.com . The great part about Copyscape is that all you need do is enter the RSS feed or URL of your blog and let Copyscape do the roaming for you. The drawback is that the service only permits a few checks per month for free and is otherwise paid for by the consumer (A.K.A : you).

So now your content is copyrighted and you have discovered that some dolt has ripped you off. What do you do to track the miscreant down?

Sometimes the person has contact information featured on their website and if this is so, a diplomatic e-mail should force the administrator to either remove the content or publish it under your terms. In some cases you can work out a resolution in a way that everyone wins. This is the ideal.

Unfortunately though, there are serial plagiarists. These are more difficult to find because they know what they are doing is wrong and they usually take steps to try and avoid being identified.  But you might still have remedy thanks to Domain Tools’ award-winning WHOIS service . Simply forward your Creative Commons license or MyFreeCopyright registration page to the offender and he or she may just behave.

As a last resort, think revenge. Most websites operated by content sharks feature Google Adsense or Amazon affiliate programs. You can contact Google and they will remove the website from their index and suspend their Adsense account after an investigation. If you absolutely cannot get any reaction from the violator, contact the company that pays their bills. No reputable business will want to be associated with someone who does not abide by copyright laws.

When you work as hard at your craft as you do, you deserve to be acknowledged for your efforts. By taking a few minutes to protect yourself, you will ensure that your art remains your own.

Blog well and prosper.

Ahh Traffic. Whether you consider yourself a blogger or a publisher, TRAFFIC is the key to earning revenue.

You have the content. You write on your blog, but all the content in the world won’t  help you earn revenue of you don’t have traffic. And not just ANY traffic, you need the RIGHT traffic for the offers and advertisements you are promoting.

Unique visitors. Having Google followers or Facebook fans doesn’t qualify you for large ad buys. Having a LARGE volume of quality UNIQUE visitors does.

‘A unique visitor is a statistic describing a unit of traffic to a Web site, counting each visitor only once in the time frame of the report. This statistic is relevant to site publishers and advertisers as a measure of a site’s true audience size, equivalent to the term “Reach” used in other media’. – Wikipdia

Qualifying visitors. Qualifying visitors are the one who will interact and follow through with your ads.  You can have 100 visitors click on an ad, but if the advertiser doesn’t see an ‘action’ on their side you will soon find that  advertisers are no longer interested in your blog.

The key in earning advertising revenue on your blog  is to know your visitors.  Knowing where they come from, what they do on your site, and where they go when the leave.

Gathering this information is not as hard as you may think. Simply set up Google Analytics.

Set up up analytics today if you haven’t yet. When an advertiser calls, you need to know you traffic trends.