What do you mean by being successful as a blogger?

In order to get success with blogs, producing good content on them is definitely the most important factor. Whilst getting your content to reach to the masses is another area of concern. To generate good revenue from either of the practices you get yourself involved into viz. Adsense, Affiliates, Ads, etc., you need to have a decent amount of traffic. Higher the traffic, better is the probability of striking gold! That’s the simple math every blogger who blogs for money is invariably aware of.

How to get that traffic juice into your blog?

When it comes to getting traffic for a blog, we have a lot of ways to help ourselves with. These include SEO, reciprocal link-backs, etc. One great way to draw traffic is to submit your blog to the world’s leading blog directories which look for submission. All you need to do it log on to the blog directory websites, register for an account(depending on the blog directory, if it needs you to), fill in the details about your blog and submit it! This would allow your blog to be classified on the directory. Doing this with a lot of directories is definitely an added advantage. Most of such services are free! Isn’t it a great way to evangelize your blog across the globe?

It’s time now for some action:

Based on my experience and research, I would like to share with you a list of top blog directories apart from Yahoo! and Google submissions, where you can get your blogs listed, for free!

9rules network - One of the best network of blogs which focuses on selection of quality content in order to get listed. A lot of top rated blogs are listed with the 9rules network. They’re know to put the best content from the independent web on their charts! They have an interesting set of 9 rules, and hence the name!

Technorati - This name needs no introduction. Techhnorati indexes the web within minutes of posting an article on a blog. This provides its users up-to-date information regarding the topics & authors one wishes to know about. They also have a featured list of top 100 blogs which have been exceptionally good with what they aim at.

Weblogs - It is a VeriSign service and a ping server which automatically notifies its subscribers whenever there is some new contenton the registered blog. Weblogs.com receives millions of pings every day from blogs that configure their publishing software, like wordpressto notify Weblogs.com the very moment content is published on them.

blo.gs - This is a Yahoo! acquired directory of weblogs and tools for tracking interesting and of course your favorite webloglets on which you keep an eye on. The best part of this service is that you can keep a track of your lists through the web and email, both. It also allows you to put a list on your blog/website as a blogroll which shall list whatever is new on the blog-o-sphere!

Blogarama - It is yet another free blog directory with more than 93000 listings. Apart from the free traffic that results from this service, Bograma also does paid advertisements for your blog, if and when needed. A good service to dirty your hands with. Try it out!

Blogging isn’t just a geek thing. Lots of women blog for many reasons. Some just to connect with friends, and some are making a very serious living full-time from their blogs. Smart, interesting and beautiful.

So I decided to do a list (in my free time) of the most beautiful female bloggers I’ve ever come across. Excluded from this list are:

• Professional models, celebrities and famous people who have a blog
• Inactive bloggers (no posts in the past 30 days)
• Guys who use pictures of women in their profile for cheap publicity

I’m talking about real bloggers, who write their own content and share their own ideas. Here’s my but feel free to suggest someone in the comments section and I’ll add them in later.

Note: Do not ask me to create a list of most "desirable" male bloggers, that would ruin my day.

World’s Most Beautiful Bloggers - First 10

	Wendy Yan @ Xiaxue - http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/ She blogs about: Her VERY colorful life Events, parties Quote: "I’m now 21, with 10,000 readers on this blog everyday." Get to know her >> (she’s extremely popular in Singapore, being number one out of 50 other female bloggers - extremely photogenic too..)
	Agnes Elena C - http://forloveofcolor.blogspot.com/ She blogs about: Internet marketing Social networking PPC Get to know her >>
	Mariuca - www.mariuca.blogspot.com She blogs about: Her life Travel & food Get to know her >> (she gets more comments on that blog than all my blogs put together)
	MeiQ Doido - www.mqdoido.com She blogs about: Her life Travel & food Quote: "By the way, Doido means Nutcase in Portuguese." Get to know her >>
	Briana F - www.breezedebris.com She blogs about: Her life, food, travel A little bit of tech A little bit of everything else
	"Ms Danielle" - www.msdanielle.com She blogs about: Internet marketing Social networking PPC Quote: "When you don’t feel like writing, just write. It will make you a stronger blogger." Get to know her >>
	Cathrina Jones - http://cathrinajones.blogspot.com/  She blogs about: Love, politics, events and everything in-between Quote: "I am a Graphic Designer,designing websites for my clients." Get to know her >>
	Sasha Samuel - http://hanging-out.blogspot.com/ She blogs about: Her life, travels and adventures Dating, love A little bit on tech Quote: ""It’s all about kicking back and enjoying life, sweetie. Let the sun make you golden." Get to know her >>
	Toki Tover - www.tokitover.com She blogs about: Affiliate marketing Blogging tips Seminars she’s been to Get to know her >> (The only person in this list I’ve met. She has a great smile..)
	Olivia Zaleski - Washington Post She blogs about: Green living Environmental issues Quote: "Olivia writes for green-living authorities Discovery’s Treehugger.com, Eco-chick.com and Hearst Magazines’ TheDailyGreen.com."

Is it a coincidence, or do most of the female bloggers above make a great living just telling others about their daily lives? I wish that worked for me!

It’s easy really, compared with all the "how to blog" information we have to read just to start writing great blog posts in our markets. Then again, they probably have very interesting lives worth following and reading about.

Ok now, back to what you were doing before.

Today, an online business definitely needs a blog to do wonders. One with fresh and tempting content for the visitors to stumble on frequently and in a large number. All that a blog needs is audience to visit, get some valuable information and interact through comments. What audience need is pretty ubiquitous - better stuff to read than they would find elsewhere!

Blogging involves intensive research and takes a lot of time. Apart from this, it requires regular posts on topics which help hold your readers’ interest. On a long run, it can often get difficult to generate new ideas for posts. This would turn your blog stagnant. Hence, you losing on your readers! This is where Auto-blogging can help keep your blog stay active with fresh content.

Auto-blogging generates regular content on your blog using feeds from elsewhere. One can co-relate it with a robot-run assembly line! There is no need for you to cut-paste articles from varying sources to get content for your blog. Of course, the content generated by auto-blogging can never match the one written by oneself. But when it comes to revenue, you can earn to satisfaction through affiliates and Adsense-like programs by using auto-blogging tools on a number of websites/blogs. This would ensure you getting things in quantity, if not quality.

How to get things done?

• Firstly, you need to choose a good enough domain name and a host. Consider a domain name which reflects the niche you’re targeting. Next in line is the choice of blogging platform. WordPress, is a undisputed winner for this! WordPress being open source allows you to change things to suit your niche. You may get a lot of plugins for wordpress like - MaxBannerAds, WP Blaster, etc. which would further help you run an auto-blog.
• The next big thing you’ll need for sure is RSS aggregator. Most of the auto-blogging applications need an RSS aggregator.
• Lately, there has been a lot of arguments over the use of RSS feeds to generate content. A lot of webmasters do not want their content-feed to be reproduced on other sites. You need to respect this and use RSS feeds which allow content syndication. I would recommend feeds from News websites, PR websites, etc.
• WP-o-Matic is a cool WordPess plugin that allows you to use RSS feeds to create blog posts automagically! All you need to do is type in the feed url and choose the categories which you want the post to appear in. Can it get any simpler?

• Another recommendation is Kathy’s Wordpress auto-blogging tool. It automatically adds attribution to each post so that readers can see where does the post originate from, keeping most RSS publishers happy as they get traffic from your website and you get away with free content. It also incorporates a auto-Ping script which shall ping a list of pre-defined websites.

• If you want your new blog to reach out the masses, you need to make sure they’re submitted to social bookmarking websites like Delicious, Stumble Upon, etc. For that matter, you may need to get a script to automate the process of submitting the posts to these social bookmarking websites.
• Lastly, you need language translation scripts to get on to the whole world with each individual posts. If you’re looking for a good Internet marketing presence, make your blogs available to each one on the Internet, irrespective of their language.

What to expect?

After having built a dozen readable blogs, each with an auto-blogging software along with some effort on SEO, you can expect a tidy sum of traffic even if each of them generates a few thousand hits each month. That’s not bad at all if you have an array of auto-blogs running for you!

Once you have mastered the art of auto-blogging on few blogs and can visualize a decent growth in traffic and income, you can think that you’ve accomplished what you had set out to do. Thinking of your own blog-empire would no more be astonishing!

Please also take this poll:
[poll id="2"]

Many blog owners have started to build their own forums, both to foster a community around their niche and also to benefit from user-generated content and traffic. Although paid forum software like VBulettin would be the best choice if you had a proper budget, the easiest way to get a forum up and running is to use PhpBB, a free forum software bundled into most Cpanel web hosting accounts.

Installing PhpBB is as easy as installing WordPress via Fantastico, and just by entering a few variables everything is done for you. All you need to do then is to login, create your forums and sub-forums, and get yourself a new forum "skin"

That is usually a major headache if you’re running WordPress and you want your forum to have the exact layout your WordPress blog does. The most common way to do this, if you’re not a coder or designer yourself, is to get a freelancer to build you a new PhpBB theme based on your WordPress blog’s CSS file.

However, Brian Gardner has made it extremely easy for regular people like you and me to perfectly blend our WordPress blogs with PhpBB, if you’re using any of his wonderful Revolution themes.

This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution CMS theme:

WordPress Blog Theme	PhpBB Forum Skin

This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution Pro Media theme:

WordPress Blog Theme	PhpBB Forum Skin

This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution Magazine theme:

WordPress Blog Theme	PhpBB Forum Skin

This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution City theme:

Wordpress Blog Theme	PhpBB Forum Skin

As a result I can get massive site that looks professional and clean.

You can see the updated list of all available PhpBB forum skins or themes here. If you don’t have any Revolution WordPress theme, I recommend that you at least get the single-user license to the Revolution Magazine theme or the Revolution CMS theme. It’s a great bang-for-buck and with just a few changes you can make your blogs look great..

How to Create A Single Login for WordPress / PhpBB

One thing most site owners want is to create a single user id and login for both the WordPress blog and PhpBB forum. Before you even try to do this, consider for a while if it’s really worth your time:

• Does your blog require registration? Unless you require people to create their accounts and log into your WordPress blog before making comments on the blog, there is no use trying to integrate with PhpBB.
• Can you handle tech stuff? If you cannot, or don’t have access to someone who can help you, be prepared for nightmares when you upgrade WordPress or PhpBB, or both.

If you decide to integrate, then what you need is a PhpBB / WordPress integration tool called "WP United". Although WP United is free to download and use, it may requires a certain amount of fiddling around before you get it right. Plus, once you DO get it right, make sure you don’t regularly update WordPress or it might just all break down.

According to the site:

WP-United is a new integration package that glues together PhpBB, the leading open source bulletin board, and WordPress, the popular blogging tool.

WP-United is for PhpBB users who want to integrate WordPress into an existing community — perhaps using it as a content management system for articles, perhaps to offer their members personal blogs, or perhaps as a portal page. The choice is yours!

WP-United ties WordPress to a PhpBB community, with login to WordPress (optionally) handled automatically by the integration package.

View a useful forum topic here on WordPress / PhpBB integration issues.

Alex Sysoeff and  ho previously released Web 2.0 Wealth, has a new and interesting product. "Expert WordPress", as you may expect, will reveal everything you’ve always wanted to know about installing, using and maximizing the WordPress platform.

Overall, this is a comprehensive course on blogging with WordPress, and Alex goes to great lengths with his videos to show you how to overcome all the common technical hurdles that are great obstacles to the newbie blogger.

See Expert WordPress