I read the article below and wanted to share it with others. It is great for boomer blogging to think about a blogging approach for making money with your blog. Read it and think about it. I am still reflecting on this perspective from a seasoned blogger.
Strategic Blogging: Creating the Right Content to Achieve Your Income Goals
All bloggers please ignore this post! This is for anyone who is reading blogs but still do not have a blog. We just wanted to write the basic overlooked two steps for logging into the blog. There may be other ways someone out there gets in but here is the basic two step approach.
Follow the following steps to get you to the administration panel:
Step 1.
Go to the top of your browser and enter www.thenameofyourblog/wp-admin
Step 2.
Enter your Username and Password that was assigned to you
Now you are at the adminstration panel and the fun begins!
I just joined and having fun exploring this awesome social marketing site. So for now I want to share some reasons that convinced me to join according to a recent report in Revenue magazine.
1. The fastest growing group is 25 and up!
Note: a 21 year old made reference to facebook as a place to locate someone when I emailed her. This made me curious about it and explored it further. I found a good number of baby boomer groups but they are small and we need more of a presence sharing our expertise and fun.
2.Facebook is the sith-most trafficked site in the US.
3. The site is the No.1 photo-sharing app on the web
Note: Know what you can do with those pictures from your last trip?
3.Canada, with about 3 million users, has the most users outside of the US (Revenue-10/07)
4. More than 1,800 applications have been built on the Facebook platform.
5. The UK has the third-largest membership, with about 2 million.
6.Facebook has more than 31 million active users.
7. Facebook is waiting for more boomers to strut their stuff, their business and their blogs.
That is all for now if you have some experience you can share I would love to hear from you. Meanwhile we are exploring. Ray is looking at the photo and art groups, etc. I am looking at boomers and will also look at presentation skills and marketing stuff.
Rosie
After reading that excellent article in ProBlogger archives I thought it was best to share some critical information, as we understand it with my boomer mind about some of the common blogging platforms beginner and intermediate boomer bloggers may or may not already know about.
What is WordPress.com?
Wordpress.com is a FREE hosted blogging platform. It is built on the Worpress.org software (Which will be discussed in a future post). T he very important thing to remember is that if you have a domain name in this platform it will always have suffix “*.wordpress.com”.
For example I have a couple of blogs that I have set up to stay in touch with workshop participants after a training session has been completed. I find it a great advantage to have a place I can post pictures, PowerPoint slides, and word documents.
My most recent site is preventionpresenters.wordpress.com. I am using this site to maintain helpful presentation skills tips and issues for people who are doing health prevention presentations. The site is open to the web and easy to upload pictures and handouts from past presentations I have conducted.
This works well if you do not want to use a list service. However, always check with clients who are on networks to insure that they have not blocked wordpress.com. There are a few of my list participants who are blocked from using it. However, more are blocked using blogger.com than using wordpress.com.
As a result I maintain the list service and will repeat information on the blog with the bonus of adding pictures and other goodies with the widgets available and uploads you can do so easy with this powerful and easy blog platform.
Pros
1. It’s FREE AND EASY
2. You do not have to find a hosting service or set up the WordPress software on your own.
3. WordPress will take care of the blog set up, backup, security and upgrades. Thus, you do not need to have any technical knowledge.
4. You can
5. You can put up to 50 mgs of photos, powerPoints , etc.
6. You can post videos from YouTube, Google, and VodPod(beta)
7. They have one of the most boomer-friendly help documentation I have ever read.
Cons
1. You are not able, at this writing, to monetize your wordpress.com blog.
2. You don’t have many themes to choose from for your blog
3. Your blog url will always contains the *.wordpress.com suffix. i.e, preventionspeakers.wordpress.com
So if you want to quickly create a blog and you are not concerned about putting adsense ads on it wordpress can work for you. I strongly suggest however that since you must use the wordpress.com suffix that your create links for folks to click on rather than verbalizing the name to someone and expecting them to remember.
Also, we feel that you can still monetize your blog with affiliate reviews if you include the links in the post. We have not talked about affiliate marketing yet but look out for it in the future.
What are your thoughts and experience?
The Old School Team
I was going to write a post on blogging platforms to choose but this said it all by a super-pro.
It is especially good for folks who only know blogger.com. Regardless of what you choose remember the earlier posts listed under the catagory
“Before you blog” on this site.
Boomers you will learn much from this post!
Is posting to your blog, keeping up with blogging communities, changing themes, checking stats, etc causing stress for you as a boomer?
We would like to know what you think.
WHY SUBMIT ARTICLES TO Articles For Boomers
(c) Copyright 2007 Rosie Horner
Some of you reading this are baby boomers or writing for baby boomers. When you promote your well researched and expert articles they will provide invaluable information that will be sought after by newsletter publishers, magazines, ezines, webmasters and bloggers.
Webmasters, bloggers and publication editors have an insatiable appetite for “niched” articles that are relevant to their web sites or publications topics. So it is a win-win situation. You get published with links back to your sites and they get more content and better placement in the search engines.
Let me repeat something that you may have missed. “When you publish articles you provide more links back to your sites. How do the search engines know about your sites? They know because you are placing your links into something called a resource box. This is where you really do what I call “Strut Your Stuff.”
In the resource box you can put your short bio with your links or special offers. It sounds something like this
“Sue Jones, Copyright, 2007, reprint rights granted, go to www.mysite.com for special ebook on…” “Sue is an expert on…”
Articles for Boomers is a great niche. That means that anyone who is looking for great content related to baby boomers can find your article. When you post your article here you are putting it into a directory. It will be categorized and archived so editors and publishers can find them. THIS IS A FREE DIRECTORY. We provide a submission system and your article will be online and available for anyone to read or download at any time any place in the world!
Because the search engines love article directories. This directory will provide the engines a steady flow of meaningful content and they are spidered aggressively by all major search engines. Editors also find directories particularly useful when researching articles for publication in their ezines, print newsletters, magazines, etc… and rely on directories as their prime-source for materials. The very best article directories also provide RSS feeds for all their article categories. This allows editors to keep up-to-date on new articles that become available in their primary interest areas. You will be amazed at the number and variety of article directory sites available. You will generally get the best quality traffic flow from article directories that are “niched” to a specific genre of articles. For example, Articles for Boomers specializes in publishing high quality articles in the baby boomer arena about and created by baby boomers. This makes it simple and easy for editors, looking for articles in that niche, to access the best content quickly.
So if you have something to say that boomers can benefit from please submit an article. Or if you are a boomer with something to share that can help someone else share that expertise today!
Oh, did I say that you can really PROMOTE YOUR BLOG by putting your link to your site in the resource box of your article template. If you do not believe me submit an article then check your blog stats with your host ( If your host has a statistical package). You will see links coming from the directory and other places that have picked up your article.
And guess what, do not stop with articles for boomers but go to other ezine directories out there in the world wide web. I often use ezinearticles.com, searchwarp.com and articles.narrowisthepath.com just to name a few.
But if you submit to articles for boomers in the next 30 days you will get real fast response.
Please do not be angry if porn and other funky stuff is rejected. That is for another site.
Take care
Just a reminder that if you go to the lessons page on this blog you will get some free lessons on blogging. This is how I first started blogging by doing the entire course. We subscribe to the online tutorial service and it is real comfortable just skipping a movie and deciding to watch online training movies on computer skills, internet marketing or software programs. I also like it because I can go at my own pace.
So check it out and enjoy. I am not pushing you to subscribe for a year like we do but give it a try for 30 days free or for one month. Schedule time in your calender to view movies on any topic you want during that time. You really cannot lose if you take the time view the information and apply the skills immediately after you learn. For example, if you look the movie on installing a wordpress blog and then travel to your host and start doing it, WOW!
So give it a try today.
Rosie
Another great teleseminar with Cathy Perkins, The WordPress Wizard. This time the teleseminar will be Thursday, Oct. 11 at 8:00 pm.
One day my eyes were opened real wide when I learned from Cathy the power of a widget in your blog. I really got excited. So if you want to learn more about the power of widgets tune in.
Sign up at our sister site, I don’t know but I know someone who does!
Rosie
I was so excited at last, I knew enough to start my blog. I knew how to post and thought what else is there? Then I decided to put up google ads, widgets, and a host of other things. However, my chosen theme was not going to work.
“Shucks, I should have gotten three columns instead of just two”, I said to myself. Then there was the matter of my site tagline and description. Should it say more than just the name of the site?
Regarding links, I knew that I wanted to put my static website as a link but what others should go in the blogroll? What other links were relevant to the site I had put up?
And what about the name. I should have spent more time making sure the name was keyword rich and workable for my target market. What were my keywords? What will go in the footer? Am I using audio and or video? Did I know what categories I wanted besides uncategorized?
All of these simple questions needed answers before the launch of the site. I lost hours and probably some brain cells trying to pull it all together with rapid emotional decisions.
Therefore, I asked my husband, Ray Horner Jr, (http://www.hornerartworkshop.com) an artist who was passionate with Adobe Illustrator to create a template. A planning form that would help me to map out visually what my future sites should look like.
I tested this form with a group of folks planning a blog with selected health messages. The committee is responsible for the posting and comment approvals for a new blog. I used the template to solicit feedback from each member.
We actually spent close to 45 min. just on the description of the site. However, it was worth the time invested. We listed potential links, pages, and decided on the number of columns. This information was invaluable for the wordpress expert, Cathy Perkins who would install our blog.
All the information was uploaded to a private wordpress.com blog restricted to just the members of the team. The template can be used again when we want to make changes or start another blog.
I encourage you to make the time and plan your blog just like you planned your static website. Just because it is easy to post and update do not be fooled and neglect to visually plan the layout of your blog.
If you would like a FREE copy of this planning form just go to the link below and grab it off my blog. Just promise me that you will let me know how it works for you. We are working on a more comprehensive format, let’s call it a plugin?(smile)