Would you like to learn how to create a website or blog?  For me, creating emomsblog has been fun.  I started off with the intention of making money but this blog has turned into one huge learning opportunity for me; learning how the World Wide Web works and learning a lot about parenting.  You can make a lot of money but that has not been my focus to date.  I really love it! 

The program I learned from has 10 free videos showing you how to get your website going and a free eBook.     They also offer a course that only opens up about 2 times each year.  You receive weekly lessons and they do a live conference call once per month.  It is an awesome course.  I am learning about putting audio and video on a website now. 

The reason for this post is just to let you know that they are offering the course right now.  The first day you can sign up is July 29^th and the last day is July 3^rd.  If you already have a basic blog, or if you just go through the 10 free videos to set one up and would like instructions on how to take your site further, this is the program for you.  I highly recommend it.

If you are interested and have questions about the program, please feel free to email me at shanna@emomsblog.com or send a comment below.  I will respond within 24 hours.

Are you interested in building a membership site?

I wanted to share a free eBook called The Membership Site Masterplan. The free book is very informative. Here is the link to get your copy: Membership Site Masterplan

When I find free information on building blogs and websites that I feel is of value, I will share the links with readers of emomsblog because this blog has been such a wonderful experience for me. My start came when I found 10 free videos that walked me through, step by step, how to set up a blog, this blog. Writing emomsblog has been so much fun and is still a work in progress as many of my pages are still not complete, but will be soon.

Watch for the kids’ summer planning information coming soon. I am excited to share what I have been working on!

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

I want to thank Yaro Starak whose free videos walked me through, step-by-step, how to get this blog up and running using a hosting company.  You can view those videos and request a free blogging ebook from his website by going to this link 10 Easy To Follow Videos Showing You How To Create Your Blog From Scratch!

I use HOSTMONSTER for my hosting company and I really recommend their services.  The how-to videos on how to blog use Hostgator (above link).  If you are going through these video and would like to use the hosting company I use, 
CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR HOSTMONSTER.COM NOW.

Good Luck on your website/blog!

More information to come.

I believe the internet is the way of the future so I have set each of my children up with domain and website, and with that website comes a unique email address.  On their websites (blogs) they will talk about what kids talk about.  I am preparing them for success, or at least giving them a boost, in the internet world.

Since their blogs are so new, there isn’t a lot of substance to them yet and I haven’t finished the changes we will make.  The websites are www.egirlsblog.com and www.random4boys.com. 

They are both excited and have picked out themes from wordpress.org and have started making entries.  I know I will have to monitor their sites and I have set clear rules. 

Since this is my first website (emomsblog), I had to re-read how to create their sites.  It was a good exercise for me to run through the steps again.   I hope I am on the correct path!

Today I write this post because I know, first  hand, how a person can be so busy that they do not have time for themselves.  Even with all the effort you can muster, there is just not enough time in the day.  You think every day “If I could only have 20 minutes to work on me” but when you get that 20 minutes, you are too tired or something else arises and your opportunity vanishes.  Then you end your day and rise early to start all over again.  Help! 

I am re-energized!  You will see more posts from me.  I am writing my goals and as I go along, I will post under the GOALS category ideas to help you set goals and stay on track.  Let’s work on distributing what time we have evenly between our family, work, and our children. 

I want to thank Yaro Starak whose free videos walked me through, step-by-step, how to get this blog up and running using a hosting company.  You can view those videos and request a free blogging ebook from his website at www.becomeablogger.com. 

I am excited about this blog and I promise to keep this blog exciting and updated for all of the people who visit this blog.  Comments and suggestions are welcome.