The number one way I get paid, is to write articles about getting paid to write articles.
You may need to read that again.

Looking back before I post, it does look very silly. But since everyone wants to know how to make extra money from home these days, this is precisely the way to get the job done. It wasn't until I was able to read between the lines and realize this, that I made any kind of spendable cash. Of course there are a million other ways to make a living, but trends come and go like the tide on this world wide circus. At this point I don't see article writing going anywhere because writing is what one does online, in one form or another. It's like breathing. Not only that, but who wants to pay to sign up and sell other people's junk? Nobody pays to get a job.

The thing you must pay close attention to when earning your living from home sweet home is to really make it worth people's time visiting your site. Your readers want something they can take away with them at no cost and information is what sells. It doesn't cost anything to teach a person something that will benefit them, and it's great to know you may have helped somebody out who seriously needed some assistance. You can provide resource links for them to follow, you'll get a page view, and a payment and in turn the reader gets a quality new venue for publishing their own materials. It's an absolute win-win situation for everyone.
Lots of sites do not have affiliate links, but post their homepage link anyway. There is plenty of money in this world for everyone, be nice-share! Invite your readers to post their links on your site too. This is mutually beneficial and you can help somebody get a head start by sending them some of your traffic.

I could go on all day with keywords, stats, facts and figures. I'm not much of a mathematical geek when it comes to adsense, but I do know I get traffic and at the end of the day that is exactly what people must have. I do frequent a couple of freelance sites where people commission others to write articles for them. As usual, some pay very well, while most want something for nothing, after all it is just human nature. Many thanks to google and sites like this one, thanks to persistance I can afford to be picky. I set my price and I don't budge from it. If I wanted minimum wage I would go back to work flipping artificial beef burgers on 3rd shift for minimum wage, after driving across town in the snow and ice.

When you post a new article on your blog, when you link to some other blog or some blog links back to you - Technorati is watching and indexing all information about your blog. Technorati does all this automatically, so how can you benefit from signing in for a technorati account. There is much more stuff offered to Technorati members that you need…

1. Claim Your Blog
Claiming you blog entitles you to add and modify your blog listing in Technorati. This is the first step and you need to confirm ownership of your blog. You need to put a little bit of code on your site, ping Technorati and it will verify that it is indeed your blog. And you get your own blog page (our blog)

2. Edit Blog Description
Once you claim your blog, you can configure your blog settings. Set the description to whatever you like. Fill in your target keywords. Tell them what language your blog is about.

3. Tweak Your Profile
All article listings in Technorati have a link to the author of the blog. This link leads to your technorati profile. This displays all your blogs, their tags and lists the top tags you blog about. Create a meaningful profile to show you are a problogger.

4. Add a Photo
Those with a technorati account can add a nice attractive photo of anything they want. In a long list of results for any search term or tag, articles with photos gain prominence, attract the reader and have a higher chance of getting clicked and drive free traffic to your site.

5. Add the Right Tags
How do you find blogs that frequently write about the subjects you care about? Add your tags and get found on the Technorati Blog Finder page. Become a member to add and modify tags. Claiming a blog lets you enable lisiting your blog in Technorati’s Blog Finder. Choose the right keywords to drive traffic from Technorati. This is the way to get listed in Blogs about Technology.

6. Keep a Watchlist
Members can maintain a watchlist and keep track of your favorite searches. Add some terms or a web page URL to your Watchlist and never miss a single article about your keywords. Get breaking news in the blogosphere as it happens.

7. Track Favourite Blogs
Track the latest posts from your favorite blogs all in one nice interface. You can easily add blogs by entering URLs, or clicking the star in any search result. A nice alternative to your usual RSS feed newsreader. Add us to Technorati Favorites. Try it, you can always remove it.

8. Display All Your Blogs
The profile page gives you an opportunity to display all the blogs you have claimed. Claim all your blogs and help readers find and subscribe to all your blogs. Let them know your multiblogging talents.

9. Put Technorati on your site
Members can put a nice script with a technorati search, their photo, links to technorati profile and a “Blogs that link here link” that shows how many blogs are linking to your site. You can also add the Technorati Favorites widget that shows the last three posts from your favorite blogs, and a handy search box to search your favorite blogs.

10. Blogs by Country
For example, how do you get your blog added to Blogs about Canada. Add the tag Canada in your tag choices and get listed in the Canada blogs. Only members may add a country tag and get listed like this.

OK, so by now you are totally “tuned-in” to blogs and all the wonderful things they can do to help spread the word about you, your company and your ideas. You've seen the power of good blog PR. A mention or two on a prominent blog and traffic to your own blog soars. But their doesn't seem to be any formula for getting those mentions. You keep sending those press releases and you submit every post you write to the popular sites but still the results are hit and miss. You decide to try harder. You begin to email everything to everyone hoping to up the percentage of signal by producing more noise.

Wrong, wrong wrong. You're thinking broadcast in a relationship world. Bloggers, especially popular bloggers, can smell self promotion a mile away. They aren't the PR department for your business or blog. They want relevant value for their own audience. They want information that fits their blog and their voice. If you want their help promoting your ideas you need to know and understand their ideas. This is more complex then building a bigger email list of “marketing” bloggers to whom you can spew send your latest press release. This is about using all the tips and tools of customer intuition to build your blog PR Intuition.

Participate - You need to seriously read and participate in conversations on blogs. Leave relevant value adding comments. Use trackbacks where appropriate.

Link - If you want popular blogs to link to you be sure that you have already linked to them.

Explain Yourself - Don't just submit a URL or send a press release, talk to the blogger. Write a brief personal message explaining why you think a blogger and their audience will be interested in what you have to say.

Thank A Blogger - When a popular blog links to you and you see a good pop in your traffic and/or more inbound links send a brief thank you. Most bloggers are interested in the effects of their blogging. They'll be interested in brief accounts of what their blog does for others.

Be Human - When you are looking to spread your ideas treat others like humans not just email addresses. It's not about broadcasting it's about relationships.

Every blogger is on the lookout for different ways to increase their feed subscribers. You should be no exception. A common misconception is that just because you have more traffic you have more subscribers, this is not completely true.

What is true is that more traffic gives you more people to promote your feeds to, but if you are not successfully promoting you will not reach potential subscribers as you should be. If you take a look at the Technorati Top 100 you will find that even the most successful bloggers relentlessly promote their RSS feeds to their readers. So the big question is, what can you do to increase subscriptions for your blog?

Don’t be shy, just put it out there and recruit. Ask your readers to subscribe to your feeds, let them know you want them to. Include something catchy at the bottom of every post with a link to sign-up.
Place your RSS icons prominently. Make your feed subscriptions a main part of your design. Create a box that is big and bright with large icons so they stand out. Some people won’t think to sign-up if they aren’t reminded.
Another technique becoming more common is offering something to people for signing-up. Write an ebook or pamphlet on your topic that all subscribers get free access to.
Create a subscription page. Many bloggers are now creating subscription pages for people to go and easily sign-up.
These are four tips that if used correctly are sure to build your subscriber base. Do you have any techniques you use? Let us all know your secrets in the comments below.

It is always important to increase relationship with your blog readers. I wrote a post few days back on How to increase interactivity in your blog. In that post, I wrote on how you can make your visitors to take any action in your blog. This post will be on how to build good relationship with your blog readers and what you can do to make the relationship better.

Blogging is a good way to get friends and to tell the truth, I have got many friends. The best people who you can be friend with online are your blog readers, commentators and those who add your post to social sites. So you know whom you can be friend with and you can go and try to start a good relationship with them. Here are few things that you can do:

1. Comment On Their Blog
This is the easiest step and you can win many friends by just making a comment in their blogs. I try to comment on the blogs that link to me and also in the blogs of the people who make comments in my blog. Even a single ‘thank you’ can make wonders. From today, why not visit the blogs of those who comment in your blog and tell them thank you and also make a comment in their blog?



Image source: DerrickT
2. Have A Chat With Them
Having small chats in Google Talk or Skype a help the relationship grow. I have seen many A-list bloggers chat with new bloggers in chat clients. Though this will use some of your valuable time, you will get more than what you spend. You might get a really good friend with a 10 minute of chat. I don’t stay online in chat client very often if I have college. But on holidays I’m online most of the time and talk to people.

3. Help Them By Promoting Their Articles
This is a good way to get friends too. You can promote the articles of your blog readers or commentators. You can offer them a back link from your blog. You can link to their articles in your Sunday links or anything similar. You can even mention their articles in appropriate places in the guest posts you make. One more way of promoting their articles is by giving it a stumble or digg or del.icio.us or something similar. I suggest you not to promote articles which have no good content. But you can promote their good articles. I have got more than a dozen of good friends from social websites. You can get friends easily from social websites or even make your blog readers as your good friends by helping them with social websites.



Image Source: Bernard Mickey Wrangle
Building relationship with readers is important. To be successful, you should have friends and people who can help you at the time of failure. So start making your blog readers and commentators as your friends today. Just stop by their blog and say a ‘HI’. Talk to them when you are free (and of course when they are free). It is not easy to make new friends but once they become your friends they will be helpful to you (and you can in turn help them). Take the first step today and the rest of the steps will be easy. You will have a bunch of friends by the end of this month. Have you made any of your blog reader or commentator as your friend? What do you do to maintain good relationship? Have you been approached any time by any blogger in whose blog you made a comment?

Entrecard is one of the newest blog promotion sites that’s causing quite a buzz around the blogosphere. In short, Entrecard requires no monetary commitment but a fairly significant time commitment in order to provide real benefits.

Entrecard gives bloggers the opportunity to create a virtual business card that looks like a 125×125 ad. As an Entrecard member you’ll install a widget on your blog that provides a place for other Entrecard members to drop off their “cards” when they visit your blog as well as a place for other members to place their 125×125 ads (see the picture above). Members pay for ads with Entrecard “credits.”

You can earn credits by visiting other members’ blogs and dropping off your business card through their Entrecard widget (1 point), when someone else drops off a business card on your blog (1 point) and when someone pays you with credits to place an ad on your blog. Ads cost an amount of credits equal to twice as many cards that are dropped off on the site where you want to advertise each day, so if 100 people drop off cards at a site each day, it will cost 200 credits to advertise on that site. Members can approve or reject ads, which is a great feature, and approved ads run on that site for 24-hours.

It seems that Entrecard is a great way to generate traffic, but how much of that traffic is truly targeted (meaning they’re interested in your blog’s topic). In other words, how much of that traffic is staying on your blog for more than the few seconds it takes to click on the Entrecard widget to drop off their cards then moving onto the next site to drop off another card in order to build credits? Can Entrecard produce meaningful traffic that converts into loyal readers? I understand that the team behind Entrecard is trying to find a way to combat this “drop and dash” behavior, but as of today, it’s still the reality of Entrecard.

Of course, there are tertiary benefits to using Entrecard. Increased traffic can help your blog’s rankings which can potentially lead to advertisers being interested in advertising directly on your blog (possibly paying more to do so than they would have without Entrecard traffic). And it could be argued that each page view could lead to a click-through on another ad on your blog.

In terms of actually placing your own card as an ad on other members’ blogs through your Entrecard credits, this could be helpful to drive a lot more traffic if you save up credits to purchase ad placement on a very popular site (but remember, each ad unit you purchase is only up for 24-hours). Alternatively, it could be very helpful for strong niche sites, where you can specifically target other sites to place your Entrecard ad to drive relevant traffic that is likely to convert to loyal (or at least repeat) readers or to click on related ads.

Is Entrecard right for your blog? That really depends on your goals for your blog. As with any advertising or marketing opportunity, don’t be afraid to test it, track your results through your blog stats and see what works and what doesn’t in terms of reaching your goals. Then tweak your advertising and marketing strategy and try again.