Blogitize

People choose to blog for all sorts of reasons. Many of those reasons have nothing to do with money. Often, people just wish to share a piece of themselves with the world. For most people, blogging is much more enjoyable when money is not part of the equation. People who blog for the love of it should be careful when considering making a business out of blogging.

If you blog because you care about something or because you enjoy expressing yourself, you should realize that turning what you enjoy into a business will change the thing you love. It isn’t that you cannot still be happy blogging. Finding a way to make money doing something they love is one of the best things that can happen to a person. You need to know, however, that once the thing you love becomes a business you have to treat it like a business. That will take some of the fun out of it.

Before you decide to blog for profit, you need to evaluate what you wish to accomplish and why. The decision to treat blogging as a for-profit-business is one that you need to consider carefully. You are not going to start making loads of money the first week or the first month. It may take a year or longer to build up your audience to the point of profitability. During that time you need to be posting information daily, or even several times a day depending on the material you are covering. To do this requires a commitment, and that commitment shouldn’t be made lightly. Blogging for profit is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Blogging is a grounds-up publishing business that requires more dedication than capital.

The point of making a career out of blogging should be to find something you can happily do, without supervision, for years to come. You need to either love the concept of blogging or to love the topic you are blogging about. Preferably you should love both. At points, especially in the first year, you will question whether or not to continue. There are plenty of bumps along the road. Your advertising revenue and/or your readership can suddenly drop off. Your site can get taken down by hackers or bugs. Your readers can send you nasty letters for over the smallest of mistakes. Things can and will go wrong as you build your blogging business. Moving past these problems requires a degree of dedication and hardheadedness that many people lack.

I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture for people who want to turn blogging into a business. I love what I am doing. I love having the ability to write about the things I love without anyone telling me what I can and cannot say. I love that I can make a living doing it. For me, that is worth the struggles I have been through. What I want people to understand is that blogging for profit is like starting any other business. It requires hard work, dedication and intelligent planning. I can’t provide the first two items, but I hope I can help with the third.

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The term blog is short for web log. The original meaning of the term was any diary or journal kept online. The goal of blogging was to create a site in which one person or group wrote about their lives and invited other people to comment on what they wrote. The concept began to grow, however, and now encompasses a far wider variety of subjects and providers. There are now corporate blogs, professional blogs, job blogs, political blogs and many other types of blogs. Just about any topic can be turned into a blog, so the concept of it as a diary is a little outdated.

For our purposes, a blog is more about the technology and the presentation than the subject discussed. Blogs use server-side software to present their information. In other words, the person writing the blog typically does little more than type and format the article. The programming and presentation are automated using software that originates on the web site, not on the person’s computer. Blog scripting allows a publisher to automatically post information. This greatly increases the speed in which a site can be developed and updated.

One of the most important features/limitations of blogs is that blogs are chronological. The most recent entry appears at the top of the page and subsequent entries appear below the first entry or on separate pages. The relevance and positioning of an article is determined by time. The timeliness of the information presented is vital. People are most likely to read the most recent blog entry and less likely to read older entries. This is what differentiates a blog from a standard web site. On a standard web site, the designer decides what information goes where and determines the relative importance of the articles/links that appear.

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Blogitize is a powerful blogging resource of quality, family-friendly, and spam-free resources organized via a comprehensive category structure. Blogitize is a collection of the net’s best blogging resources coupled with detailed and informative articles. Blogitize aims to be the internet’s definitive blog resource site.

Founded in 2007, Blogitize has grown into a large blogging resource, providing users with a spam-free categorization of plugins, themes, and resources. In 2007, Blogitize also started to offer free wordpress themes availible for download.

Blogitize is now a part of the AeroSpect Media Network, a network of dozens of blogs and directories authored by subject experts.

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AeroSpect Web Directory is a powerful human edited web directory of quality, family-friendly, and spam-free sites organized via a comprehensive category structure. AeroSpect is about providing a directory of quality sites for Internet users. Our goal is to list the best sites for a wide variety of topics giving our users the most relevant results for their searches.

Founded in 2006, AeroSpect has grown into a large directory, providing users with a spam-free categorization of websites. In 2007, AeroSpect also transformed into a directory owner and webmaster resource by adding a resource blog to the site which looks for sites with original content, also considering user-friendliness and web standards, and provides useful articles to blog about.

Additions can be made in two ways. Listings can be paid for by website owners, with no guarantee of being listed. Listings can also be added by volunteer editors.

Volunteer editors are not registered automatically. They do have to go through a review process. The sites they submit go to a higher-level editor regardless of topic. This allows the submitter to get a quick review of the site without the likelihood that the reviewer is a competitor.

AeroSpect also maintains the AeroSpect Media Network, a network of dozens of blogs and directories authored by subject experts.

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The next useful plugin blogitize is going to look at is “Ad Rotator“.

There are many wordpress plugins out there which allow rotation of adverts on your blog, however this is one of the easiest to configure and use. So easy and simple, Blogitize has chosen to use it itself, as seen at the top of each page.

You begin here, at the homepage of the plugin.

Once you have downloaded the plugin, and uploaded it to the wp-content directory on your server, you need to switch it on via the Admin CP.

The real bonus here, is you simply add your text/banner codes into a .txt file (which you upload onto the server also). From here its the simple case of pasting the ad codes whereever you need them on the template!

For an example see the top of the page!

Overall, this script can be used to rotate text links, banner ad’s and even google adsense etc. Simply this is a great free blog resource, a highly recommended plugin.

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The question many bloggers are faced by. What can I blog about? Many blogs fail very easily simply due to lack of posts and lack of input. Like most things in life, the more you put in, the more you get out.

Its happened to nearly all bloggers, you get that killer idea, get a great theme for your blog and start writing for a few days. A week roles by, your motivation is gone and your stuck for things to write about.

Heres a few tips on how to beat this, and decide what you can blog about.

1. The biggest rule of blogging. You can blog about anything. Thats right, anything can go onto a blog; Sports, love, hobbies, professions, cheese, to name a few! If its well written, informative and interesting, bet your bottom dollar other people will have the same interests.

2. Make sure your interested. This is perhaps the second ‘golden rule’; blog about something that interests you! Theres really no point forcing yourself to blog about something for the sake of it. You want some spare cash so you set up a blog and just bung a load of posts/articles in there. 1. You wont have had any fun doing it and 2. Because of that, they will be of an extremely low standard. Oh and 3. You wont have made any of that cash. Picking a subject you are familar to, comfortable with, and motivated about, will ensure you keep putting effort in, leading to quality posts.

3. Keep it logical. Aside from personal blogs (which can be a mixture of genres), try to pick a small area/theme and stick to it. For example Blogitize, all about blogging and resources for your blog. You wont see us straying into forum design or making a banner ad for your website. Blogs which keep it simple and deliver what the audience are expect are often the most successful.

4. Plan. Yes, drafting functions on blogs can be useful! Dont just think you can write a post or article, and overnight visitors will come streaming in. A great article, takes great care and great planning. Posts/Articles can be prepared and touched up for days or even weeks before they hit the live environment on the best blogs. Take your time, and plan everything.

5. Get your language right. Of course, good spelling and grammar are expected from the top blogs out there but this is only the beginning. Addressing the target audience in the correct way, (formally or casually for example) will be a key way in communicating with them. If you are on a different level to your audience, they will be turned away and less likely to read. If they like it simple, put it down simple. If they prefer a bit of technical jargon, thats what you’ve got to give them.

Hopefully, in this article we’ve opened your eyes to what has to be considered when deciding what to blog about. This is by far the trickiest thing to decide on in the blogging world and therefore should be given some serious thought.

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FamFamFam icons. Nearly every web-designer and his dog has used them. However over used they are, they really are great icons.

FamFamFam Icons

Theres 4 sets available, Flags, Mini & Bitsy, as well as the extremely popular SILK icon set. As you may notice the icons used on Blogitize are from the FamFamFam website and we’re extremely pleased with the extra spice they add to the site.

The icons are for general use on person or commercial sites and the author loves to see how you’ve used them.

For download of the popular SILK icon set, with over 700 16×16px icons, take a look here.

If you want the best free icons for your blog, look no further than the FamFamFam icon set.

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Blogitize would like to apologise to its users for the downtime they may have experienced over the last day or two.

It has been caused by a hosting account switch, which brings blogitize onto a seperate account from other networked sites. Hosting, as always provided by HostedFX.

Secondly I would like to apologise for the downloads not being available, but they are back now and working fine.

Theres several articles in the pipeline so check back soon for more resources and articles!

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Overview:

In this article, Blogitize will be looking at the best ways to get your ‘blog’ online. We’ll start with the very basic blogging platforms and then move into some of the more advanced blogging platforms available; identifying which is the most suitable for you!

As described in this previous article, a blog is the authoring and publishing of a journal on the internet. Blog’s can be about anything, personal experiences, sports, jobs etc etc. What is the best way to publish your blog? How can you get your views and opinions online? Read on!

Basic ways to get blogging online:

Social Network Sites: Bebo, Myspace, Virb, MSN Spaces all offer, ‘type and click’ blogging. These offer an extremely quick way to get online, often forming part of your ‘profile’, however go little further. Simple formatting is available, for example text colour/background, however any real modification is extremely limited.

Blog Sites: Blogger, Wordpress are the big two here. Your blog will be hosted on their web server, and will be accessible from a link such as ‘blogger.com/YOURBLOG’. Again these are a really quick way of getting your blog online but also delve a little deeper. More advanced options are available, better layout control, RSS feeds and integration with other sites (flickr for example) are just a few of the different options. However, the customisation is limited and for real power and control over the main files, you’ll need to look elsewhere. For a quick start up, basic/medium blogging controls, take a look here.

A more advanced way of blogging:

The more advanced blogs on the internet are nearly always seperately hosted. For this you’ll need some webhosting, a nice domain name and quite a bit of time! Having set up the hosting and domain, you’ll download the software of your choice and install it onto your server.

From here you have access to the full set of blogging controls as well as access to the route, source files that make everything tick. Understanding and adapting these can lead to amazing blogs, packed full of uniqueness and different features.

A recommendation here would be wordpress, as it has become the leading blogging software; many different customisations are available for free! Blogitize itself is running on a version of wordpress!

Creating your blog like this will take some time, and a little technical knowledge, but will give you the best control over your blog available. Recommended for technically competant bloggers, who wish to invest a fair ammount of time for polished results.

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Blogitize is very proud to present its first 2 themes, available for free download!

You may use these themes for your own internet blog, completely free, if you just leave the blogitize links in the footer. Click on the screenshots to download the .zip files. Included in these are all the files you need, simply copy and paste the files into your wordpress theme folder. Blogitize has included a .psd for the header, so you can edit the text to suite your site! - alternatively you could even create your own!

Sleeky Green:

Sleeky Blue:

A live demo can be found here. Use the style switcher to change themes!

These themes are sleek, simple and great looking. For beginners and more advanced users looking for a clean presentation to their blog.

Blogitize reserves the right to withdraw these themes at any time, for any reason. You may not distribute or sell these themes. For questions, please contact admin. Continue Reading »

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