Website Review Problogger

The ultimate goal of the Problogger website is to make money, but it does so in an informative manner. Darren Rowse earns the bulk of his money by discussing how bloggers make money. He then embeds affiliate links with the description or review. A person then clicks on that affiliate link and if that person signs up for a service, Darren then gets a cut. Along with advertising this makes for a lucrative blogging business.

Pro Blogger also provides a lot of informative information that is interesting to bloggers. Overall, I think that the content is excellent although it can be a bit fluffy at times. Upon further examination and by reading between the lines, you can learn everything you need to be a successful blogger.

I really like how the blog is laid out. It is divided up into individual sections as you scroll down. It feels like about 5 websites in one as you move down the page. The first section is a bit like a media source for bloggers with links to his vidcast, recent articles, subscription information and advertisers.

As we scroll down, we get a list of his best articles that I really feel helps transition us down the page towards the sitemap and blogging resources which are usually veiled methods of promoting Problogger Products or affiliate links.

This website is both informative and profitable and that is ultimately why it is one of the primary websites on Professional Blogging.

SEO Tools

This is a guest post from SEO Ninja. Please check out his page for more exciting information on blogging and Search Engine Optimization. If you would like to be a guest blogger on the Media Production Blog, just email me and I will include a link (PR4) to your blog along with the post.

Here is a list of my favorite SEO Tools. In my opinion these are the only tools that you will ever need for article based search engine optimization. I will create a resource for SEO via Web Design at a later date. For now I thought that I would start small and simple.

1. Google Keyword Suggestion is a great tool for helping you select keywords. You can either type in the topic you are writing about or the url to your website. I prefer to use the URL to my website. For example: The Keyword to this post is SEO Tools. The proper density for keyword usage varies but I would recommend repeating the keywords from your title in the first paragraph of your content.

2. Google Trends is a really great way to see what is hot this hour and is especially useful for news related topics and keywords. It also provides you with access to the top blogging, website, and news pages attached to that keyword. Studying how they have laid out their videos, alt tags, content, headers, and keywords can help you learn how to best optimize your website.

3. Google’s Blog Search is a great tool for bloggers. The Blog Search works the same as the image, video, or web search. If you can master the art of putting your content at the top of engine, you will maximize your traffic.

4. Google Analytics is another great tool for seeing where your traffic comes from and how successful your posts are.

5. Google Adwords also has some really cool options that can help you play around with the layout and content of your website to maximize your SEO.

6. Spy Fu is a great website for seeing the cost per click for various keywords.

7. My Search Engine Submission List has a lot of search engines with high page rank which is important. I recommend submitting you blog or website to the highest ranking directories as well as the ones who do not require a reciprocal link. Article-Based SEO can take you a long way but ultimately it is the links that you develop that will make or break your website’s page rank.

8. The Digital Points Forum is my favorite forum for SEO; It is a great website for webmasters and web publishers so I thought that I would toss it out there. Including your links in Forum posts can be another great way to bring traffic to your website. I have received thousands of visitors via IMDB which is an unlikely source of traffic.

SEO Link Building Tools

There are a lot of other great link building websites but there are my favorites. They are the ones have done the most good for me.

4. Creating a Popular Squidoo Lens is not only a good way to create links for your blog it can also bring a lot of traffic to your blog if optimize your lens.

5. Flickr: I like to upload graphics that pertain to my website or blog post and then link to that post in the description.

6. Blog Carnivals are a great way to receive links to your content. They work a lot like an online magazine.

7. Myspace and Facebook remain powerful marketing tools if you know how to leverage them right. I will do a post later on about how to use these for success.

Blogger 101

Blogger 101 is a list of tips and techniques ranging from how to be a better blogger, how to make money off youtube, or just sites of interest to bloggers and webmasters. It is a more traditional blogging resource in that it consists of various top ten lists that have been compiled here on Blogger Mogul.

Top Youtube Channels for Entertainment Bloggers (Embeddable Videos)

Top Youtube Press Sites for Entertainment Bloggers

Here is a list of Youtube Sites that are very useful to entertainment and news bloggers. These are websites that I go to find videos to embed on my blog. I will of course be adding more as I find them.

Reelz Channel is possibly my most favorite website for embeddable video on my blog. They have great celebrity interviews that you can’t find anywhere else.

The Associated Press channel is another good place to find raw news footage. The only problem is that sometimes the audio is bad. There is often some great entertainment footage on there.

TMZ is not as useful for me anymore because I am out of the Celebrity Gossip Game for the time being at least. I may have to return to my paparazzi roots though if I don’t star making some real cash. Times are tight and I have medical bills to pay.

Getty Images is the last channel on the list (for now) of sites that I use to embed video.

Movieweb: is a great site for behind the scenes footage, celebrity interviews, and movie trailers. Plus they have a whole bunch of other movie related stuff as well.

I hope that this list is as helpful to you as it has been for me. I will update the list as I find more good sites providing quality videos. If you know of any good sites, I would really appreciate it if you helped add to the list. What are your favorite websites to embed video from?

Best Blogs worth 150 Million

Who says that you cannot make money blogging? According to ProBlog News: Here’s another talking point the next time chums Nick Denton and Michael Arrington get together to discuss cricket - Gawker Media is worth $150 million versus TechCrunch’s $36 million. Or so figures the folks at 24/7 Wall St., the financial blog owned by AOL.

So, how much is my Media Production Blog worth? A measly 10k was the last offer I received. But I made 15k last year in revenue so I didn’t even consider the offer. So if any of you want to buy my blog and my links, you are going to have to offer me more than that to get me to flip it. Just kidding, I don’t think I will be selling any time soon.

Still I was incredibly flattered to get the offer. I think getting a 10k offer for a blog hosted by Blogger is a pretty nice accomplishment. But this just goes to show you that you can make money blogging. You just have to find a unique angle and some keywords that one of the big guys doesn’t have a monopoly on yet.

If you would like to see the list of blogs and where they rank on the Fortunate List, you can click here.

Blog Graphics and Graphic Design

I highly recommend using Blog Graphics to enhance the Design of your blog. Graphic Design can do so much to separate your blog or website from all the others. For example which website looks more professional judging by the header: The header for my Media Production Blog or the header for Blogger Mogul?

The Media Production Blog is much more plain and I think for that reason, I had to work a lot harder to make it successful. Ultimately it was my resources such as My Blogging School for example that has made it so successful. I might not be the best writer or blogger in the blogosphere but I am the most honest.

I tell you all the blogging tools and methods that have made me successful. I don’t BS you with a bunch of crap that will waste your time. For Example: Never worry about being the top blog on Technorati. It would take you years to build enough links to even get on that list. Trading Technorati Favorites however is a worth-while endeavor.

Back to Blog Graphics and Graphic Design: A lot of people think that you need Adobe Photoshop to make good blog graphics but you don’t. You can do a lot of great stuff with Microsoft Paint. It’s not just a toy.

Graphic Design Tips for Your Blog

Here are some graphic design tips for those of you who do not have Photoshop. Professional Graphic Design is all about text placement and where you crop the image. It helps to have the filters and special doo-dads that Photoshop affords you but that does not mean that it is necessary.

1. Set the Canvas Size to be extremely small. That way you can just cut and paste the finished graphic rather than trying to trim white space off the canvas.

2. It’s very difficult to resize images in Microsoft Paint so make the graphics fairly large. You can resize them as you import them into your blog posts.

3. Save your graphics as a PNG file. This extension seems to yield the highest quality graphics. When I have saved graphics as a JPEG file the text tends to become fuzzy and faded.

4. Google Images and Flickr are great sources for images to use as Graphics. But I have to advise you that you need to change the graphics to the point where you cannot recognize the original or you risk infringing on someone’s copyright.

5. Don’t try to get too fancy if all you have is Microsoft Paint. Keep it simple. Most of the time I only use it to embed text onto pictures but I have done some fairly neat stuff. If you would like to see some examples you can click here.

6. Always fill in the “alt” text for your graphics. Google’s Image Search works in similar ways as Youtube or its Blog Search. If you can optimize your images, you can bring traffic to your website.

7. Host your images with Flickr and include the url of your blog in the description of the photo. That provides you with possible traffic and a link.

8. Link to individual blog posts in Flickr using this method as well.

I hope that these tips have been helpful for you. I have a list somewhere of more tips and I will incorporate that list into this one when I find it. That’s blogging tip number 2: “Stay Organized” Don’t be like me and have blog posts floating around your room in loose paper.

Blogging News: Forbes to Launch Financial Blogging Network

We have some exciting blogging news to talk to you about today. According to ProBlogNews: “Forbes is expected to announce Monday the launch of a 400-blog finance advertising network. The network, Forbes’ Business and Financial Blog Network, has already attracted Talking Biz News and Xconomy. The ad network is managed by adify.com.”

This is exciting news for financial bloggers looking to expand their network and blog about their niche. Many more blogs are expected to join the network over the next few weeks leading up to the launch.

About Forbes.com

Forbes.com (www.forbes.com), home page for the world's business leaders and the No. 1 business news source in the world, is among the most trusted resources for senior business executives, providing them the real-time reporting, uncompromising commentary, concise analysis, relevant tools and community they need to succeed at work, profit from investing and have fun with the rewards of winning - Source