Using Blogs As Sources In Articles

Depending on what type of blog that you have, it might
be a good idea to advertise your blog using articles.

For example, say you know about jewelry and gemstones,
and your blog is a place where you post information
for people to read about jewelry.

Submitting an article to a website such as Associated
Content can be very instrumental in bringing people to
your blog.

An good example would be is if you wanted to talk
about the common misconceptions about the colors of
gemstones.

You could write about the fact that people assume that
gemstones such as emeralds, sapphires and rubies are
one different color, but the truth is that those
stones come in a variety of colors and hues.

Then you can use your blog as a source for your
information, as long as you have blogged about those
gemstones.

The great thing is that some places, like Associated
Content, will pay you for the articles that you write.

So if you sell jewelry on your blog, it's like being
paid twice for your knowledge. Of course, this is just
an example of the way you can use articles to
advertise your blog.

When you are writing an article, be creative. You
don't have to be an expert at what you do. If you
enjoy writing stories, you can say that posting
stories on blogs is a new and different way to share
your stories with others.

Then, post your blog link as your source and you have
people checking out your blog and your stories.

The Pros and Cons You Should Know

When it's done right, blog advertising can be very

profitable. It will not only pay for the maintenance

of your blog but it will also a source of some nice

extra income. In fact, a good percentage of bloggers

take this route to monetize their blog. However, with

every good thing come a few disadvantages. If you're

thinking of using advertising for your blog, here are

some pros and cons you need to know:



Pros of blog advertising There are several advantages

to using advertising for blogs, which make it an

attractive option for your website. These are:



Your blog earns. The revenue generated by advertising

allows you to perform improvements on your blog. You

can spend for maintenance, pay for better website

design, buy a bigger storage space, pay for faster

bandwidth, etc. This allows you to grow your blog and

attract better traffic.



Advertising gives your blog credibility. Visitors see

your blog as something reliable since you have

advertisers sponsoring you. Most professional bloggers

have advertisers, which means you will also be seen as

an authority in the field of your choice. The

partnership with a known company will indicate that

you offer quality content.



Advertising offers visitors access to relevant

products and services. Since ads will appear on the

same web pages as related content, your blog's

visitors will be able to view any product, service or

information from your advertisers that they may

actually be interested in.



You'll be inspired to maintain a quality blog. Only

strong blogs attract advertisers. As a result, you

will have all the reasons in the world to make sure

that your blog offers quality, useful content. You

will be more careful with your choice of topics and

subjects. As a result, your writing is much more

improved and your blog will become a reliable source

of information. The result: increased traffic, a more

targeted audience and more advertisers.



Cons of blog advertising Blog advertising can affect

certain aspects of your blog in a negative way. Some

of its disadvantages are:



It dictates the type of content you will publish. Once

you have advertising on your web pages, you'll have to

work extra to make sure those ads are noticed and are

considered relevant by visitors. This forces you to

modify your content just to adapt it to what will

attract your readers and entice them to click on your

ads. Sometimes, you'll find that you will have to

sacrifice meaty content just to write posts that will

promote your ads.



It takes up space on your web pages. You'll notice

this after a while, when you have multiple sponsors

and running several ads in one web page. As sponsors

buy more ad space, that will take away from the

available space usually reserved for meaningful

content. As a result, you'll have to control your

content more just to give more room to your ads.



Maintaining advertising on blogs is time consuming.

Having enough ads on your blog should allow your site

to pay for itself. However, it won't run all on its

own. Now that you have advertisers and sponsors

depending on you, you will have to make sure that your

blog is worth it.



This means you will have to spend enough time in

optimizing your blog so the ads get the audience they

need. You will also have to constantly be on the

lookout for other advertisers and be ready to

negotiate. Other than that, you will have to manage

payments and monitor the necessary statistics to make

sure that your blog remains competitive. Blog

advertising may pay for your blog but it doesn’t take

the work away from you.

Join A Community

Something that you will find, especially if you join
something like LiveJournal or GreatestJournal, is that
users just like you have created communities for
people with common interests.

There are communities for just about any subject, and
if you find that there isn't a community for the
subject you can create one. This is a great place to
advertise your blog.

The nice thing about communities is that there isn't
any limit as to how many communities that you can
join.

For example, say that you love blogging about books,
horseback riding, and skiing in Tahoe. All you have to
do is look through the communities for ones that have
those interests and join them.

As long as you post something related to the topic to
the chosen community, people will see you and perhaps
they will check out your personal blog.

Something to remember is that you don't want to write
a post tht is one sentence long in order to get people
to go to your blog. They will want to know that what
you write is interesting and is something worth
reading.

Joining communities can be a great way to advertise
your blog and drive traffic to it. If you are
referring to something that you posted about on your
blog, you can use a link back to your entry in your
post.

As with posting comments on someone else's blog, you d
on't want people to think that you joined a community
simply to get traffic to your blog. Otherwise, people
won't visit your blog and you may get banned from the
community as well.