It’s easy to get caught up in our fantasies of what we want to do that we often overlook what we need to do in order to bring to life the future we want for ourselves and for our families.

Why You May Be Just Spinning Your Wheels After All

The Violent Truth Of Opportunity

Should I Stop Blogging: 20 Questions To Ask Yourself

A videoblog requires larger disk spaces on websites, a faster server, and a whole new set of programs to support it. Videoblogs can be fed through RSS. This is technology of syndicating your website to other RSS aggregators.

Videoblogging works with people on the internet expressing their selves. Now if you put this on a business prospective, you are up to a lot of benefits. Think of it as a powerful tool in making showing your prospective customers your line of products or your services. It’s just like showing a commercial all for free. And if you videoblog through RSS, then most probably you are getting your target market.

People like to see what they are going to buy. Some would like to see proof and be sure that they are getting their money’s worth before shelving their dimes on it. All of us know the influence of a thirty second commercial. The effect of videoblogging is similar to that. You show your product, people watch it. If they like it, they buy it. If you present it good enough, they’ll buy the product even if they don’t need it.

Now on the web, things are pretty much static, unlike in television in which all are moving. If you post something that is mobile, it would most likely catch attention. Now imaging your product parading in all it’s royalty through videoblog. You’ll get phone call orders in no time.

If your business is just starting up, you can create a videoblog right at your own home. All you need is your web camera, microphone, video software, and lights. For as long as you know how to use your camera, then you can create a videoblog.

Invest in a good web camera. The higher its resolution is the better the output. And you like to present your goods in the optimum way so get the best one possible. Make a short story, or just capture your goods in one go. Just make sure you are getting the best profile for each. Get those creativity juices flowing.

Lights are important in a production. Make sure you illuminate entirely the area you are going to use to create videoblog. The brighter the area, the crispier the images will be. You can also use lighting effects for added appeal to the presentation.

Should you require sounds for your videoblog, you need a microphone. Record you voice as a voice over for promoting the product and its benefit to consumers. Sounds are as important as videos on a videoblog. It is advisable to make your sound effects as enticing as the video.

Your video editing software can be any program. You need this to finalize your work. You can add sounds, delete some bad angles, or insert some still pictures in there too. Some programs are user-friendly and can be used even with zero knowledge on video editing. Even simple video editing programs should do the trick. Select your background carefully too. The light affects the presentation so make sure that the background and the light complements each other.

Videoblogging is a great tool but it also has it downside. It may slow down the computer so other may steer clear of it. Download time may also be time consuming especially if customer is still on a dial- up connection.

But don’t let those stop you. Let videoblogging be an alternative for you, though it is best to still keep the text and pictures present in your presentation to accommodate all possible viewers of your site.

Nowadays, the more creative you are in presenting your product to the market, they more you are likely to succeed. Videoblogging offers an interactive way of selling. You involve the customers. You instill in them the advantage of your goods. And at times, those are enough to make a sale.

If you are blogging with the goal of selling advertising, there are two basic ways that you can go about
recruiting sponsors who want to put ads on your site; you can let someone else do all of the legwork, or you can do the work yourself and keep all of the revenue. Within the first group, many people make money blogging by selling space through Google’s AdSense program. The advantages of this program are numerous, as it requires very little effort on the part of the blogger or webmaster to begin raking in profits. However, most people discover that they make less money through this method than they had hoped that their blog would earn.

Selling advertising directly to companies who want to put banner ads or sponsored links on your blog can take quite a bit of time, but it is often fairly lucrative. If you have a lot of contacts in industries that are related to the topic of your blog, you may want to try to go this route. People who have a strong background in sales and are experienced at pitching proposals can make quite a bit of money by renting blog space to interested companies. The most serious problem with this model is that you often have to build quite a sizable readership before you can attract advertisers, which can mean that you have to
do several months of work before you start to make money blogging.

As blogging becomes a more and more lucrative business, a lot of established companies are considering
how they can get into the action. One way that companies are capitalizing on the blog movement is by
having blogs that provide a kind of friendly face for their corporation. Often, a company will employ an
established blogger to create a weblog designed specifically to appeal to that company’s customers and
to create positive associations with the brand in consumers’ minds. More than one writer who never even dreamed that he or she could make money blogging has been approached by a company and offered quite a pretty penny for this kind of gig.

I’ve always considered myself to be the exception of the average woman. I have an impulse control problem, thus my constantly clicking away to banner ads and websites not directly related to my job. What can I say, I get bored easily. I have computer ADD. I look at many of the websites “tailored” for women and I don’t frequent them often. I don’t shop online as much as the next chick. I know about most of the women websites because my job is to know what’s going on in the Internet realm, not because I have a shopping addiction to shoes. Maybe I should check “male” when filling out online market research polls. Sometimes I feel like I think more like a guy than a girl. Then it hit me, one of my oh-so-frequent “Aha” moments. Why do I feel bad about not being the typical “chick”?

I love my job. I work with a lot of guys and I’m glad I do because they cut the crap out of our working relationships. No drama, no personalizing, no “why can’t we be friends too” issues. I’d like to think that maybe I represent a different type of woman, one that doesn’t have to apologize for being a girl with a guy’s mind. Granted, when you see my blog for the first time it’s pretty HARD to disguise that I’m a chick, and a girlie chick at that. I was conflicted with the design because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go with a whimsical girlie motif. I’ve designed websites before and for my business and projects I’m always told to stay away from pink or anything that will gender-fy my online presence. If I wanted to appeal to guys as well I should remain “neutral.”

But why?

When I think about what women want, I think of me and about what I want.

• I want to not have to apologize for being a girl but still be able to play with the boys.
• I want to not have to worry about women hating on me because of that.
• I want to be able to express my thoughts and feelings and not have to worry about them being used against me to help compensate for their overblown egos and insecurities.

How do these “wants” translate into online behavior patterns? Maybe I’m checking out Wired instead of Glam. Or perhaps I pay more attention to articles about SEO than I do to the numerous Daily Candy emails I have yet to open. I’m not saying I don’t connect with that feminine community.

I’m just simply asking how do we quantify the different types of women that use the Internet for different purposes because I think at the end of the day all women want is to not be compartmentalized.

So what is Blog Marketing?

I will define it as the following:

promoting a blog through traditional and online efforts including but not limited to postcards, email newsletters, Myspace profiles, MyBlogLog communities, linkbaiting, directory submissions, etc.

I decided to make this my first article because this is my first “real” blog and I wanted to capture the process of getting this baby up and running. I have a point to prove to myself and I’ll share it with the world once I’ve reached it.

POINT: I CAN DO THIS.

Sounds like a simple point, yet it has always been my Achilles heel. My insecurities inhibit me from realizing my potential. And so this blog serves as public proof that success online is indeed possible, especially if I can do it. Marketing my blog will take the form of many different phases and milestones. Not too many drastic and over-the-top goals, but very manageable and realistic expectations, which is crucial for any marketing efforts you take for your blog.

Establish online presence. This is the very first goal to creating a blog. You have to read what’s out there first and see what’s going on. Even the greatest of ideas have been done before you. A reality check into seeing who’s doing it and how is critical. This is not meant to burst your optimistic bubble. It’s to give you a sense of how to craft your voice. I’m not saying that you can’t do it if someone else is talking about it online. Just remember, what makes your voice different from theirs.

Once you’ve got a sense for who you want to be online and how you want to harness that voice, think of a clever name. Something that’s catchy and simple. I knew I wanted to blog for a while and had made several half-ass attempts at doing so. It wasn’t until I came up with the name “Ambition Is The New Black” that I felt like I could do it and do it well. This kind of confidence is underrated. When you are completely sure of your voice it will call to you every single waking moment. It might take weeks or months. That’s fine. Don’t put something up just to put something up. You’ll more than likely end up doing it for a month and then neglect it.

Now that you’ve got your clever name, check online to see if it’s in use.

SIDE NOTE: DON’T EVER GET ATTACHED TO A NAME!!

I’ve seen too many people get so emotionally attached to their name that it cripples them from moving forward. They get a domain name with .net or .biz and then get upset when I say WTF is wrong with you? If you can’t get .com change the name. Seriously, CHANGE THE NAME. Why? Because people online are not that bright. Sorry to break it to you so early on. They’re not. Web savvy people who blog and do alot online are SOMEWHAT the exception to the rule. But even then the first thing we do is check “[insert blog name].com” to see what you’re about. If the .com is taken by someone else, why go through all the effort of optimizing the keywords for your blog (including your name) and not own the domain most people will go to when looking for you?

So you don’t think I’m talking out of my a$$, I remember a few years ago when a client had a .net. She would network and meet all sorts of people. She gave them her business cards and when she followed up with emails, many told her that her website was under construction. Surprised, she quickly asked me if something was wrong. Her website was up and running just fine. She offered her website in her email signatures and that was when she found out. Most of the people who she had met encountered the same problem because they Google’d her name and the .com came up. Not one to say “I told you so” she quickly changed her domain to include .com on all her business cards.

Once you’ve got the domain name and hosting, it’s time for the fun part, design! Woo hoo. This is the part I absolutely love. Why? Because I love to procrastinate and what better phase to play the perfectionist hat than during design time. It’s awesome. It lets you be months behind schedule because something just doesn’t seem “right” and after you spend 36 hours designing the “perfect” blog, you now all of a sudden don’t like the color blue. You’re actually repulsed by it. That’s ok. Let’s start again from scratch.

Design is overrated, and that’s saying alot coming from me. No one really cares that much about the details to your site.

• Is it functional?
• Is it user-friendly?
• Do you have relevant content on it?

Then that’s all you need. Seriously, don’t go overboard and don’t let it become so overwhelming that you can’t scale up or down later. It’s a good rule of thumb to let others give you feedback on it but I stopped doing that a while ago. Everyone has an opinion about something. Listen to your inner voice. Not the one you bribed to tell you what you want to hear. Listen to the honest one, the one you roll your eyes to when you ask her/him something. If you’re rolling your eyes or sucking your teeth as you read this, then you know EXACTLY who I’m talking about!

So does this mean you completely neglect the design phase? Absolutely not. The thing to remember here is balance. Spend time on it but don’t spend too much time. You have to take some time to think about what vibe you want to give off. I use Wordpress because it’s totally awesome. There’s a ton of templates, free and paid, that you can use to convey any message you want to put out there. Take a day to check them out. They might even inspire you!

One of the most notable cases of news hitting a blog before appearing in other media took place in July 2005 when terrorism struck London. As passengers were evacuated from a subway car near an explosion, one man took several photographs of the scene with his cellular phone, and within an hour these images were posted online. First-person accounts of the catastrophe began appearing on blogs soon after these photos appeared, and people all over the world learned about the events in London by reading the words and seeing the photos posted by bloggers.

The fact that these stories and images were being spread directly by individuals operating without the added filter of a reporter helped to make the crisis feel very immediate to people across the globe. When it comes to blogging, news often appears in a very personal context. This has the potential to be the beginning of an exciting new era of reporting, one that takes “New Journalism” to it’s logical next step by putting the power to shape how the news is written and read directly into the hands of the public.

Many bloggers and cultural commentators who are champions of the weblog movement feel that this growing trend of individuals who getting their news from blogs is a good thing, because it makes the flow of information more democratic. By decentralizing the control of news, blogs allow more voices to enter the field of debate about important current events. However, many people are adamantly opposed to the use of blogs as news outlets, and there are plenty of good arguments on this side of the debate. Unlike newspapers or television stations, few blogs have fact-checkers, and there is little attention paid to journalistic accountability on many blogs. This can lead to the rapid spread of misinformation, and more than one falsehood has taken the blogosphere by storm.

The questions about whether blogging news as it happens is ethical or not are very complicated, but no matter where you stand on the topic of current events blogs you are almost sure to agree that this movement has the potential to revolutionize how modern people get their news.

The first step in getting traffic to your blog is to make sure that you have an interesting topic. If you are writing about your personal experiences, you may find that not everyone wants to read about them, that is unless you lead an adventurous life. However, if you blog on a wider range of topics, such as working from home, saving money, or being a good partner, you are automatically likely to get a bigger audience. This is because more internet users, especially ones that you do not know, would be more willing to read information on these topics, rather than your daily adventures or lack of adventures.

Once you have found a topic that you would like to write about, you will need to start creating your blog, if you haven’t already. When making your blog it is important that you write content that will be useful to your blog’s general topic. It is also important to include lots of content. Content is what most search engines use when picking up websites. In the event that your blog gets indexed by a search engine, you will find that your blog’s traffic should automatically increase. This is because a large number of internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for.

Although a high search engine ranking may help to increase the amount of traffic your blog sees, it is sometimes difficult to do. Most individuals do not go further than the third or fourth page, when looking at search engine results. This means that if your blog is not considered to be high ranking, you may not get the results that you were hoping for. However, this does not mean that you should give up. Instead, it means that you just have to find another way to promote your blog.

One of the many other ways that you can go about promoting your blog is through the use of online video websites, particularly the ones that are free to use. Online video websites are websites that allow internet users to upload videos that they have created. Once uploaded, these videos can be viewed by thousands, if not millions, of internet users. If you are looking for a fun and low-cost way to market your blog, you are advised to give online video websites some though.

Before uploading your video, to an online video website, you will have to make your video. To do so, you will need a recording device. The best devices to use include camcorders and webcams. When making your online video, it is important not to make your video sound too pushy or like spam. It may be a good idea to state the purpose of your blog and what can be found there. You may also want to record yourself or someone else visiting your blog to showcase your blog’s features. You could also take still shots, also commonly known as screen shots. These shots will allow you to post pictures of your blog pages. Having those pictures float through your online video is a great way to show internet users what your blog is all about.

Once you have finished making your video, you will need to upload that video to your computer. Once your recording device is hooked up to your computer, it should be recognized by a moving making software program. These programs will not only allow you to save your video, but edit it as well. Once your video is saved, you will need to follow the uploading directions for each online video website that you would like your video or videos to be uploaded to.

It is important to note that you are not guaranteed to see an increase in your blog’s traffic, but why not at least give it a shot? With most video websites being free to use, there shouldn’t be any risks associated with incorporating your blog into your next online video.