It can be frustrating to set up a blog, write great content, and then receive little traffic in exchange for your efforts. In order to build traffic and readership, it’s important to be an active member of the blogging community… to interact with other bloggers who write about similar topics, and to share what is commonly referred to as “link love”.

Building inbound links for direct traffic and SEO, and becoming known within the “blogosphere” as a respected source for information means networking with other bloggers to get the word out about your blog.

To make it easier to find other bloggers to help you raise your profile in the community, we’ve started a new group at LinkedIn. All bloggers are invited to join our Blogging for Business Group.

Once you join, start a discussion to introduce yourself and your blog and feel free to post articles from your blog. Ask and answer questions, share tips and ideas.

Most importantly, feel free to contact other members who write on similar topics to arrange:

• Link Exchanges
• Guest Posting on each other’s blogs
• Article Trading
• Blog Carnivals
• Any and all other mutually beneficial arrangements

Over 120,000 new blogs are started each day, and the lion’s share of them will use the WordPress platform. If you’ve made the decision to join the blogosphere, chances are you’re looking at, or already using WordPress.

After you’ve decided which blog software to use, the next step is to decide how and where your blog will be hosted. For WordPress, there’s two options. Read the rest of this entry »

My inkjet printer just died… the second one to do so due to the ink drying out and clogging the jets. I don’t do a lot of color printing, and the cost of ink cartridges is ridiculous. So, this time I went with a monochrome laser printer. They’ve come way down in price, and I managed to pick up the Brother HL-2140 for under $80 including tax.

It’s fast, it’s quiet, has great resolution, and there’s one very nice feature… a toner saving print mode, which results in a slightly lighter than normal print that would never be noticed on most documents, unless held up against another one to compare.

I strongly recommend this printer to anyone who needs a good light duty printer for their home office.

Ditch the inkjet unless you absolutely have to print in color, and here’s a tip… take your SD card to Wal-Mart and get their photo lab to print your pictures for you. It’s cheaper, and the print quality is higher than what you can achieve with your own personal inkjet.

The first step to starting your online business should be to start a Blog.

Find a host (if you’re reading this post, then you’ve found one), sign up for a hosting plan, register a domain name, install WordPress… and then BLOG.

This should even come before your business plan for several reasons… Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not exactly news anymore, but a few days ago Blogrush shut down.

It seemed like a great idea to share traffic between blogs, give new blogs a bit of exposure, and put content in front of people who would otherwise never find it.

But, at the end of the day… it just didn’t work. From the official Blogrush website:

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected. We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go. All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

I for one am sad to see something with great potential disappear. Sure, it didn’t work as well as expected but in theory, it’s still a great idea and I believe many of these problems that led to the downfall of Blogrush can be addressed.

I’m posting this message to explore the possibility of developing a new open source replacement for Blogrush… the same in terms of helping bloggers gain exposure by sharing traffic… but obviously a very different implementation since the route Blogrush took wasn’t met with success.

If you’re a blogger who is interested in seeing something developed, or a programmer interested in participating in a new project then leave a comment. As I said, I’m exploring possibilities and I’d love some feedback before I make a decision either way.