You want to make money from your blog right? Of course you do, if not then this post isn’t for you and I suggest you don’t read any further. Otherwise please read on..

How difficult can it be to setup a blog that generates daily cash through the use of Google AdSense? Not difficult at all, in fact I’m going to give you my own personal tips to a successful start in optimising your blogs for Google AdSense. This wont make you rich overnight, but if you stick to the advice given you will notice an improvement and over time you may even start to make bucket loads of cash!

Tip 1
Google AdSense works best when your blog sticks to one subject area. If you must have a personal blog (aka online journal), keep it separate from your money making blog ideas. Don’t try and mix keyword rich content with your personal blog, unless of course you only ever talk about one subject like a hobby for example, or your online journal is based around a central topic.

Tip 2
Choose a subject and stick with it long enough to be sure whether it will work or fail. Simply trying something out for a few months does not constitute a proper test of your blogs earning potential. You should aim at running your blog for several months, checking your Google AdSense reports for increasing profits each month. For example, I nearly gave up on UrbanSkaters.co.uk until I noticed that each month my Google AdSense takings were increasing by roughly 10-15%. I made nothing in the first 3 months, then it slowly started to climb.

Tip 3
Got more than one idea? Then build separate blogs for each of them. Running multiple blogs can be easy, you just need to be sure you’ve got the time and motivation to update them at least 3-5 times a week. Never try to combine two separate subjects into one blog, this only confuses Google AdSense and you will never achieve the higher paying ads that are targeted at sites with better keyword scoring.

Tip 4
If you give up on a blog and decide not to update it anymore. Keep it online if you can, because people will still visit and you may get the odd click here and there which will add to your Google AdSense. Anything is better than nothing! Try another blog idea, register a new domain name and start over. Repetition is the mother of success baby, yeah!

Tip 5
Keywords are key. (MORE ON KEYWORDS ANOTHER TIME!)

Have you got any tips or advice ? Then please leave your comments below.

Apparently Weblogs Inc, the blog media company founded by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey has been bought by AOL for a staggering $20 million (or so i’ve been told). That’s twenty million dollars my fellow bloggers! Holy mother of blogs, that’s amazing. I was also shocked to learn that Weblogs Inc were making an average turnover of $1 million plus per year on Google AdSense alone bringing their overall takings each year to roughly $2 million.

Podcasting is a portmanteau word combining the words Broadcasting and iPod. The term Podcasting is misleading in a way, because to listen to a Podcast you don’t need an iPod and you certainly don’t need one to broadcast either.

Let’s say for example that I wanted to broadcast this blog in the format of a radio-show, so you could listen to this blog instead of reading it. First I’d need a microphone and some recording software (windows comes with a simple voice recorder as standard). Then I’d sit myself down, grab my coffee and get totally wired (very important), then when i’m ready start recording the show. When that’s done it’s time to convert my recording into an Internet ready media format, such as MP3 or WMA for example. Then the final step is to simply upload the file to my web server for everyone to download onto their portable players, or simply stream over the internet on their computer.

You may also choose to get fancy and add some jingles or other cool effects into your Podcast. The more professional and friendly your Podcast sounds, the more likely people are to download the next broadcast.

Obviously podcasting will consume a great deal more bandwidth than your standard text based blog, so make sure you check with your webspace provider about storage and bandwidth limitations.

A while back I talked about the latest anti-splog (blog spam) measures over at blogger.com (aka blogspot). While that was a great tip for visitors browsing blogspot blogs, it still didn’t give the rest of the world a way to report spam from non-blogspot blogs. So after much searching and digging around in my favourites folder and google, I came across Splog Reporter:

Splog Reporter allows users to submit splogs they encounter to its database. The data is complied, confirmed and made available to search engines that wish to optimize search results for their users. Ultimately, the users who submit splog to Splog Reporter benefit from the accumulation of this data through search engine improvements.

Bring it on….

Since our first post about BlogExplosion I’ve noticed some pretty radical improvements on their site lately. The most noticeable being a complete face-lift of the entire site. I’ve got high expectations for BlogExplosion and apparently, so do they:

BlogExplosion is continually upgrading features and making improvements on a daily basis. Please excuse the non-stop work in progress and watch as we build BlogExplosion into one of the leading blogging resources on the internet.

I couldn’t agree more.

Blogger.com have decided to take a stand against splog, blogs that are simply promoting spam, considered illegal, objectionable or downright offensive. People browsing blogs over at blogger.com will have the option to report blogs with the blogger bar flag button.

This feature is called “Flag As Objectionable” and it’s accessible via the Blogger Navbar. The “Flag?” button allows the blogging community to easily note questionable content, which in turn helps us take action when needed. So we’re relying on you, the users, to be our eyes on the web, and to let us know of potential issues that are important to you.

Well done blogger.com, we salute you in your fight against splog!

Users of Wordpress version 1.5.1.3 should upgrade to version 1.5.2 as soon as possible. A security exploit exists on servers with register_globals=on set in their php configuration, the exploit may allow an attacker to execute code on the victims account.

If you are using a version below 1.5.1.3, then upgrade to this version before patching it with Wordpress version 1.5.2 which also fixes other bugs and adds a few enhancements.

One thing that most blogging software lacks the most is an in-built spellchecker. I for one admit to not being a great speller, especially when typing quicker than my brain can keep up with. So you can imagine my sheer delight when I discovered the SpellCheck feature that comes with Google Toolbar. Type any text into any form then click the SpellCheck icon to correct all those (if any) embarrassing spelling mistakes. Other cool features available in Google Toolbar are: Word translator, popup blocker, auto-fill (for forms) and much more.

Bloggers beware. Poor spelling and grammar in your blog entries puts people off from visiting regularly. So get yourself a copy of Google Toolbar or consider using wBlogger reviewed in an earlier post by Bes.

Have a little fun with the Wayback Machine from the owners of the Internet Archive web site. Look back at over 40 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. Type in any web site address and you should get a list of dates when the site was archived, to view how the site looked on a particular date just click on the month link.

Of course the Wayback machine has its practical uses as well. Let’s say for example that you want to start a blog on a specific subject and let’s presume that you’ve already thought of a domain name for your blog. Rather than jumping straight in and registering your domain, why not use the Wayback machine to check whether the domain hasn’t already been used before and if so, for what purpose. You don’t want to register a domain name that was used for illegal or unethical purposes, if the domain was used before for spamming for example then you may find it has been blacklisted by ISPs all over the globe.

An extremely handy tool for any webmaster or fellow blogger.

A blogging tool for blogger.com members with a mobile device.

AvantBlog is a very simple tool that allows you to post to your blog from your Palm or WinCE device. This version of AvantBlog only works with Blogger.com, the author says that future versions will have support for other blogging systems. We’ll hold him to his word for you

If anyone else knows of any other Palm based blogging utilities please drop me an email with details.