1. Get Listed in Google As Soon As Possible.

This is the most basic requirement I would mention here. In fact, you should target to get listed within the first 30 minutes you post your content online. I managed to get listed within 10 minutes after 5 months of hard work. I suggest you work hard and populate your blog with many contents for the next 6 months.

2. Get Rank High in Search Engine, Probably On Top 10 Listings.

You should also look at getting rank high in search engine. Get rank high will get a lot more exposure to the potential visitors compare to other listing in 11 – 2,000. Trying to work in some linking exercise with other websites / blogs so that you can achieve higher ranking. I managed to rank high for certain keywords for my blog over the time.

3. Use Good Hosting Company

A good hosting company will definitely help in long run. You don’t want your hosting company fail you suddenly in case you have so many visitors come to your blog. Bear in mind, to achieve 20,000 visitors traffic consistently every month, you will probably need 3 – 6 months to achieve it. Besides that, good hosting company will also response you faster when your blog has problem accessing. I would recommend you to use HostGator as it is a very reliable hosting company and I have been using it since 2006.

4. Use WordPress Blog

There are so much easier to rank high on wordpress blog compare to other blog software. Most of the bloggers knew wordpress blog are better than others! In fact, most of the bloggers who use other platform are eventually move to wordpress platform. By the way, I don’t use other platform to create my own blog except wordpress now except some of the old sites. If you need guidance to install your wordpress blog, you can check out my blog installation tutorial on how you too can install wordpress blog in just 5 minutes.

5. Use Google Sitemap Generator Plugin

You need to install Google Sitemap Generator Plugin for wordpress. This powerful not just going to help you create and update the sitemap automatically but also help you to inform (ping) search engine when you have new post published. The plugin is able to inform 3 major search engine (Google, Yahoo and MSN) at one go.

6. Use Share-this Plugin

This is a very good plugin that not use by many people. In fact, this work like “Tell-A-Friend” features in most of the old websites. This plugin will eventually enable the readers to send email to their friends as well as bookmark your contents in their social boomarking accounts. Download the share-this plugin here.

7. Use Social Bookmark Account to Bookmark Your Site

Social bookmark enable us to bookmark our favorite site online. In fact, the post / page that we bookmark will also create a link back to the blog. It is quite good and easy way to create back link without asking webmaster permission. All you need to do is create a few free social bookmark account. However, this is for a new blog that in the growing stage, I seldom bookmark my post / page nowadays as it is quite easy get rank and attract traffic from search engine.

8. Update Ping List

WordPress blog has a feature that you can inform ping site automatically. Do the ping will encourage the search engine spiders come over. However, not all blog created equally as they probably has one ping site in the list. You need to update your blog with more ping site. You can download this updated ping list (there are 38 ping sites in total) and update to your blog.

9. Leave Comment at Other Blogs

You will surprise why I ask you to leave comment at other blogs? In fact, this is a good way to leverage with other high traffic blogs. Since they allow you to leave comments on their blogs, all you need to do it give a really good comments so that the bloggers can’t afford to approve it. Don’t follow like most of the lazy bloggers who are just trying to get a link back from my blog. What I do was I just modify or delete the comments.

10. Start Creating Sub-pages at Free Blog

Another untold secret online, you can create some sub-pages on other from blogs. Web2.0 sites at Blogspot.com, WordPress.com, Squidoo and many other free sites out there able to help you to boost up your rank. Once you establish a back link from those sub-pages, you are indirectly boost up your traffic volume to your blogs.

Want more tips?

Here is another a few more for you:

Bonus 1: Create Right and Quality Contents

Yes, create right and quality contents is as equally important as above 10 tips! Most of my blog visitors (i.e. 75%) are come from search engines. They come to my blog because of certain contents they are looking / searching from search engine. Remember this! People only interest to read about good contents that bring benefits to them. You don’t want to read junk contents, do you?

Bonus 2: Blog About The Current Topic

One of the method I manage to pull off a lot of visitors from search engine is because I blog about the current topic. I read paper offline to find out ideas about the current hot topic. You can try to look at your local newspaper and see what are the popular topic and write a review content. I am sure you will be able to attract many visitors over night.

Bonus 3: Be Consistent On The Contents

A lot of people start a blog and talk about everything! It isn’t a right method. You should select not more than 3 topics to write in your blog. The more topics don’t mean the more traffic you bring in. Unless you are celebrity bloggers like Kenny Sia and LiewCF, otherwise you should try to stick to your topic well.

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In the last 2 months, I have been busy running and organising the Profit Blogging Bootcamp, Melvin and my blogging seminar that help Malaysian to learn how to make money blogging. Due to the busy workloads, I was unable to write for my blogs. However, when I check my blog stats from time to time, I was surprise that the blog visitors not even decrease when I stop posting, but achieve a record high traffic since the 2 blogs started. These 2 blogs I mention are Steven Wong’s Blog Marketing and Jokes Blog.

Below is the traffic statistics of the 2 blogs:

Total Visitors in May: 5,628 + 7,205 = 12,883
Total Visitors in June: 6,253 + 7,621 = 13,874
Total Visitors in 2 months = 26,757

Obviously, people like to read my jokes blog more than the blog marketing’s blog. I don’t know either it is a good or bad sign.

I didn’t really work much on blogging, out of the 4 posts, 3 are promoting my own websites and products and one about the new blogger in Malaysia.

For my main blog, I blog about a new Malaysian blogger – Che Det in May 3. This is the only highlight on blogger news. While the rest, I made announcement on my new website on credit card debt solution for Malaysian, launching and review of Profit Blogging Bootcamp.

As at 2008 YTD, this blog has attract more than 26,400 visitors and it was setup in Sept 2007. The current PR stand at PR3.

Blog Marketing Visitors = 5,628 + 6,253 = 11,881
YTD visitors = 26,400

On the other hand, my Jokes Blog managed to attracted more than 22,800 visitors since Jan 2008. My last post was on Airliners Pictures in 2 April. The PR is stand at PR4.

Jokes Blog Visitors in May and June = 7,205 + 7,621 = 14,826
YTD visitors = 22,800

I look forward to review more about my blogs’ performance from time to time.

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There are many good points and I have summarised it based on my 2 years of experience and received feedbacks. See below for the main advantages of using wordpress blog CMS to build websites.

1. Fast Setup – Install your the blog within 5 minutes or less and get your site up within a day!
2. D.I.Y Style – You can pick up the how-to tutorial and build all your new sites easily.
3. Easy To Update and Make Changes over the time – Once you have master on how to use the WordPress CMS system, you will be able to do it fast.
4. Search Engine Friendlier – get listed in search engine much easier, faster than normal websites. (It is proven and tested – check out my review on how fast on my blog page get indexed by Google!)
5. New Web2.0 Technology – A "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) feature help you to build websites with less painful experience to learn web programming.

6. Minimal HTML, PHP or ASP Programming Knowledge Needed – You can get started without learning the programming code and pick up over the time. However, if you know since day one, it is an advantage for you.  
7. No Purchase of Expensive Softwares like Dreamweaver or FrontPage to build websites.
8. Many Themes and Plugins Available for WordPress blog CMS that build by many experience developers.
9. Themes and Plugins are Open Source Products, that means no purchase of license require. You can save a lot money from buying expensive softwares.
10. Theme Design / Layout Can Change Anytime Without Re-design The Whole Websites – the most wonderful idea of using WordPress blog CMS.
11. Better Content Management System – centralise and manage your contents in one file.
12. Greater Flexibility – All themes and plugins are able to activate for use anytime, while if you are not using it, you can de-activate it without deleting the files from the server.
13. Standardised Folder Management – You are able to locate the installed themes and plugins easily in all WordPress powered websites.
14. Able to Gather Feedbacks from Visitors – this blog feature will help you to build better interaction and relationship with your website’s visitors which normal websites can’t do it easily.
15. Your Reasons …. 

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All you need to do is get your Window Live Writer ready to write a new post with video contents. Check out my review why it is easier to use Window Live Writer.

The instruction to insert video is as below:
1. Search for the video that you want to insert from YouTube.

2. Copy the given embedded code.

3. Open up your notepad and paste the code (you can skip this step if you are familiar with copy and paste mechanism).

4. Open your Window Live Writer and create a new post / page for posting.

5. Prepare your blog content.

6. To insert video code correctly, you need to figure out the right location to insert the video. For easy inserting, you can label as "video 1" and "video 2" (In this case I insert 2 videos in the post).

7. Next, switch to "HTML Code" view.

8. Locate for the "video 1" and "video 2" label, it will look like this:

9. Replace the "video 1" and "video 2" with the embedded code from notepad (You must insert the video code from "Code" view).

10. Switch back to "Normal" view once it is done. You will be able to see the video in the post by now.

11. Click on the play button in the post to make sure it is working.

12. Save Draft.

13. Publish.

That’s all, you are done and you can see the video is posted in your blog by now.

The process is similar to other Video sharing sites such as Google Video, Daily Motion, iFilm, MySpace, MetaCafe, Flixya and many others.

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Share-this feature is a good way to help you to bookmark your favorite blog posts.  It is install in most of the blog and you can see something like this.

It is not difficult to use at all, what you need to do is locate the "Share This" button which is locate at the bottom of the blog post and click on it. You will be able to see a menu look like below appear.

There are many social bookmark accounts such as Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumble Upon, Technorati, Furl and etc. You can select any one and bookmark your favorite posts. Registration is FREE and you need to go through the registration process before you can start using the social bookmark feature. Just follow the instruction in the social bookmark site and follow through the step by step screen instruction and you will be able to use the social bookmark account within 5 minutes.

Select your favorite social bookmark account to bookmark the blog post, (i.e. Del.icio.us at this example) you will prompt to save the page info. Tag the post with a few keywords that related to it. You can select either want to share or not share with other. Once you have finished, click "Save" button.

That’s all you need to do and you will see the post save successfully on your social bookmark account. The left hand side indicate the latest post you save to your bookmark account and right hand side indicate the tagging on various keywords.

Alternatively, you can also send this blog post to your friend via the E-mail page, just fill in your friends’ email address, your name and your email address, press "Send It!". The share this feature will help you to send out to your friend without composing emails.

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In my opinion, politicians are able to get huge benefits by setting up their blogs. Don’t worry about you are not good in writing, you can always learn. If this is too troublesome for you, simple hire a writer to write for your blog CMS. I don’t see any reasons to stop them from setup one. If you are a politician or aspiring to be one, check out the good reasons below:

Platform to interact with people

As a politician, one must always hear from the people voice, blog work out as the feedbacks collection center.

Bring closer to people

Blog can improve relationship between politicians and voters. It is more personalizes and friendlier compare to website. Should they want to target young voters, this is one of the easiest way to win their hearts.

Update of current news / issues

People also keen to know the outcome of current news / issues after addressing to the politicians. They want solution and answers; and the politicians can’t run away from that. After all, that is what we elect them to be Member of Parliament and State Assembly Representatives.

Archive of past achievement

If you have done something good for public, this is probably your best time to showcase your works. As a politician, you are responsible for the people request and complaints but sometimes people just ask repeat questions and expect answers over and over again, if I would them, I will just ask them to check out from the blog and keep their mouth shut.

Increase productivity

You can imagine how busy they are. They might don’t even have time to eat proper and sometimes work till late night. They are a lot of things that can let the blog handle some of the issue for themselves, such as collection of complaints, issues, displaying solutions, answers and much more.

Personal branding and stickiness

Blog can building brand over the time. Once the readers like you blog so much, they will tend to "stick" to your blog and tend to come back more to read your new contents even it is just comments / replies from politicians or other readers.

Easy to update

Can you imagine you can update your website just like writing a word document? WordPress CMS able to help you to achieve that.

Instant update

You can find internet connectivity if not gprs access every where. That means you can update your blog anytime, anywhere, either on notebook, pc or even mobile phone.

Blogging is hot nowadays, and people feel trendy when they read blogs. So, what are you waiting for?

Start a blog today and be part of the blogosphere.

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This is the latest updates on my blog post. This morning I was preparing a blog post about Kelly Tan and David Tan‘s Valentine Story. As soon as I publish it and check out some of the other bloggers who blog about this Valentine story. I found out my own post get indexed by Google in just 10 minutes.

Comparing to the previous testing, which my post managed to get indexed in less than 2 hours. This is really surprising me, I guess my next step is help my blog post to get indexed in 1 minutes. Is that possible? Yes, it is and I am look forward to make it soon!!

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I create that one without having an expert skills in podcast. In fact, it is not difficult to create at all, you just need to trial and error until you got it right.

To help you to get started, here is the Ingredients you’ll need to create a podcast your contents:

Blog Platform: WordPress

Plugin: Podpress

Software: Audocity, alternately you can use Camtasia.

You need to get a good and stable hosting account, I recommend you use HostGator for Podcasting. If you don’t want to host the audio contents in your site, you can consider to upload to some of the sites offer free hosting. There are SermonCloud, OurMedia, or Odeo. You can sign up one for free.

Have fun trying on podcasting.

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In those days, spammers just left a bunch of website urls in my comments but manage to catch by askimet. However, there is getting smarter, what they do is use trackback spam, a less usual way of getting a link back. It is harder for askimet to filter the spam message. I was getting like 5-20 trackback spam messages a day until I made all new message must approve before they can go live.

For those who have never left message in my blog, your message will be moderate by me before it appears. However, if you were previously left any comments in my blog, your comments will automatically approve.

Coming back to my story to combat with the trackback spam. I was so busy to figure out how to overcome this problem. At that time, my askimet able to catch 1,000 – 3,000 spam message but still have 5 – 20 message per day managed to get through the filter.

I began to look for a better way to reduce the spam. I discover WP-Ban plugin by Lester Chan. This plugin is able to help you ban visitors from particular IP address to access / spam your blog. If you key in the IP addresses that leave a lot of spam messages, you can stop them immediately. You can use “*” as a wildcard to stop a range of IP address access as well. In addition, you can also ban by domain name access. This is a very useful plugin to help you reduce the spam message caught by askimet as well. *Warning – this plugin can ban your access to your blog, if you accidentally put in your own IP address. Make sure you didn’t key in your own IP address. This combination of plugins help me reduce the spam significantly.

Download WP-Ban Plugin

Download my Ban IP Address list (contains hackers, spammers IP address).

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Currently they run a limited time sign up offer for new publishers. This is what the offer sound like:

Reach 50,000 impressions during your first month* and get additional $25 with your first payment.

*30 days from your approval date, offer is valid until January 1st, 2008 (extended to March, 1^st 08).

For those who don’t know what is Kontera all about, here is a simple overview for you to understand:

Kontera offer content links (contextual links) advertising within your blogs / websites. Based on the relevant keywords that This allows you to ultilise your great contents with an additional revenue source.

For WordPress or WordPress MU users, here is a good news for you, there is a plugin work well for the blog. Thanks to Rodney Shupe who wrote this plugin. You can now install the Kontera ads in your blog easily. However, there is a concern of invisible text raised up by Sabahan in his post. Make sure you check out that and configure your plugin in order to comply with Google TOS.

For details about Kontera, check out some of the coverage from the websites below:

1. Kontera Blog
2. Hong Kiat
3. Aditya Widyapratama

Sign up for: new Kontera account.

Plugin download like: WordPress plugin for Kontera

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