Recently, I have been looking for an ebook that would give me a few tips and tricks about blogging. I decided to look at “The Blog Manual” after reading reviews boasting about how great of a resource it was. Well, this purchase was one of the best ones I have made in a long time and would recommend it to anyone that is looking to enter the blogging world.

The 31 page ebook teaches you various blogging tips that you must understand in order to have a successful blog. It takes you through the beginning stages of your blog and gives information about basic blogging topics, like how to pick the right webhosting company.

After you have mastered the basics, it will take provide tips to better optimize your site for search engines and web bots. It also provides some useful blogging plugins that are beneficial to the growth of your blog.

The ebook covers a few advanced topics like how to use social media sites to benefit your site and security issues that every website must deal with. This is a piece that I thought was very useful and I actually learned a lot from reading it.

Not only does Brad provide informational written text, but he also provides pictures and diagrams. They are used to support the written content and help people that may get lost while reading. I am more of a visual person so the pictures and diagrams really helped me understand Brad’s points.

Overall, I wish I had this book when I first started blogging. It would have saved me time that I spent reading and researching topics that every new blogger will need to figure out. If you are looking for a very helpful resource, then check “The Blog Manual”.

Get Your Blog Manual Here!

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Here is a strategy that I once used to promote a blog I used to own.  This basic strategy is for beginners and will only take your site so far.

1. Create a post on your niche site. Make the post informative to your readers.
2. Find 5 forums that relate to your niche an make intelligent posts on these forums.  Do not reply to others threads with “I Agree” or “Nice Post”.  Have something to say on the subject.  When you register for the forum, make sure you add your site to your signature.  People will click through!
3. Find 5 blogs that are related to your niche.  Read the blogs and make comments on each.  Subscribe to their RSS feeds so you know when they make a post and then can easily comment on these posts.
4. Research topics on the internet that are related to your niche.  After your research is complete, create an article.  The article should be around 350-450 words.
5. After you have created your article, submit it to different sites including social bookmarking (digg, del,icio.us, etc), article directories (articledashboard, ezinearticles, etc), and post on your 5 forums above.
6. Repeat steps 1-5 three times per week.

From this strategy, I got between 20-50 daily visitors per day.  Like stated above, this strategy is for beginners and can only take your site so far.

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This post is aimed towards bloggers that are just starting out.  I will get into more advanced techniques in later posts.

Why do visitors come to your site?  Simple, visitors come to your site because you offer information about a certain subject/topic.

Here are my first 5 tips when writing web content

1.  Keep To Your Topic -  There is nothing I hate more than reading an article/post where the author wanders from the main topic of their post.  Keep your articles/posts simple and on topic.  If you find yourself straying from the main topic then create another article/post with this information.

2.  Know Your Target Audience – Know who you are writing for.  Obviously, I wouldn’t want to write an article on Da Blogger about web programming.  My content is targeted towards providing tips for bloggers because that is what the focus of my site is.

3.  Check for grammer/spelling mistakes – Please, Please, Please, check for spelling errors or grammar mistakes.  Grammatical mistakes make your site less creditable and distracts from your message.  Simply have someone proof read your article/post before publishing them.

4.  Don’t Copy – Don’t plagiarize someone else’s hard work.  Write your own content!  If you have to use content from another site then get permission and give credit to the site or author.

5.  Use Subtitles or Bullets -  Internet visitors rarely read your entire article/post.  Most scan your aricle/post for informative tidbits.  Use subtitles or bullets to make these tidbits standout.

I will be posting a Part 2 later on in the week.

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This is the first of our free blog reviews. To be in with a chance of getting your blog reviewed, all you have to do is subscribe via email. We will review one blog every week. If you have been reviewed before, you can sign up with another email for a new website. Here’s why you should subscribe to Da Blogger Dot Com.

The Net Fool is a blog created by Jim Regan, a nineteen year old student teaching you how to make money online.

It was created only a few months ago, but from what I can see it is coming on in leaps and bounds. With near 600 subscribers and traffic and other revenue metrics constantly shooting up, Jim is establishing a foothold in his niche.

The main focus of the blog is the Stock Market and GPT (Get Paid To), however it also talks about making money online with other methods.

Here’s some of the best posts of TNF:

Make Money Bum Marketing

Make Money Begging

Three Ways To Create Artificial Demand For Your Blog

Make Money With Landing Pages And CPA

Use Images In Blog Posts

As you can see, there are lots of tips to make money online – something everyone loves to learn about.

The Net Fool currently uses John Cow’s Milk It theme, however it’s customized in a blue / grey colour scheme. I like the look, as well as the brandable header, as it really helps his blog stand out. He tends to blog every 3-4 days – I’d like to see more posts from him as most of his posts are pretty good.

At the moment, I think TNF is in the second tier of blogs – and I think it has the potential to join the top tier, if Jim promotes it and markets it a little more. They have had contests, but perhaps too many – I’d like to see some creative marketing more, as with the right type of viral marketing I feel that the blog could be taken to the next level.

The best thing about the blog is that the simple things are taken care of.

Most people haven’t really customized the theme, but Jim has taken care of everything – the favicon showing a die, the email subscription box showing a backdrop of buildings, a custom $$$ orientated RSS feed button and even the small buttons next to the links in the footer have been changed.

The Net Fool also uses a lot of video, something that could be done by a few other bloggers more. Video makes things easier to understand and his video walkthroughs have helped me quite a bit in starting out this blog. Another thing used are a lot of images (high quality stock images) in blog posts, making them easy to read, even if they are long.

I’d rate The Net Fool at a 7.5/10, due to some serious link bait like his Google Pagerank post. I’m sure the rating will increase if he continues to improve at the rate he has been doing.

Keep up the good work Jim. We’d love you to send us some love too – let your readers know about this review! More success to you, hopefully.

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