Ecommerce Shopping Cart

I wanted to mention a bit more about shopping carts before leaving the topic. There are several good ones, and several that can cost more than $100 a month, but offer nothing of value.

Always try a demo or make sure there is a trial period. This is because you want to make sure that your definition of easy matches the company's. I was with prostores and their idea of easy was horrific. It took me more than 20 hours to just set up the template. Then, it wouldn't do half of the things their features page promised - without me knowing a bunch of coding, or hiring a programmer. This makes the service of little value to a small ecommerce site.

All ecommerce software should be easy to use, and state clearly whether a programmer is required. I personally have purchased 3 scripts that I had to abandon because I didn't write PHP code or have the proper scripts on my hosting service.

Now, I do three things before looking at any new shopping cart software, cgi scripts, forums or other software. First, I research the web until I find 5 that fit my needs. Second, I look for reviews. Third, I look for forums that discuss problems with the product. Only then will I buy the product.

Tools For Web Businesses

You will not be blogging for long before you run into the over abundance of shopping carts and shopping cart scripts. Bloggers do not need a shopping cart script - but many bloggers build empires from a single blog.

The important thing is to start researching the internet tools. Whether you need to know the difference between different shopping cart software packages for your own use, or to write reviews. Or, whether you will need it. Waiting until the last moment is never a good plan. Instead, start keeping an eye open now.

I've personally used several scripts and learned a few things. The free ones are useless. If you can figure out how to set them up, they look cheap, they work poorly, and there is no service

Other shopping cart scripts cost money, but they offer service. Six of One - Half a Dozen of Another. The important thing to consider is the shopping cart service.

Is Paid Blogging For Your Blog?

I Started five blogs this summer, to help the students of my course 'make $1000 a month blogging wat writersonlinecourses.com' learn the ropes and actually see that the claims in the course are true.

Paid Blog Posts and Page Rank

This blog now has a PR2. That is good enough to get started, but it does bring up some good questions. Will blogging for pay lower the site's PR. The simple answer is no.

One reason it does not lower the page rank is because paid blog links almost always lead to a page with a higher PR than the blog post. So, in fact, the opportunity to increase the PR of the blog is real.

Communati mentioned that I helped increase the Page Rank of this site. In a real way, I did, by linking back and forth from this site to web pages and blogs with PR3 and PR4. This increased the value of the communati page.

Understanding Page Rank

Now, if the blogger were using heading titles, and were 'breaking' their posts every 150 words. If the blogger were building 'keyword anchored' links to a specific post, then yes. There may be an argument that the blog is being degraded by the paid ads. But, as there are few blogs in a site like communati that meet the criteria:

-No more than 10 keywords which are repeated through the entire blog
-Staying on topic
-Using proper coding and H1/H2/H3 titles

Then the effect of paid blog posts is minimal and on the 'plus' side of the scale, as apposed to the minus side.

Not everyone is intrested in writing for pay. This is totally acceptable. For others, the concept is a natural progression from hobby writer to professional blogger status. Will it offend your readers? I will talk more on this later, but the answer is basically - no, not if done right.

The Question of Ethics

It is difficult to decide whether you write about a post - or not. While you can make $1000 a month, easily, especially with 10 blogs at PR3 or higher, it is important to remember to read the fine print.

Blogitive and blogvertise expect bloggers to post every post. Now, you can let the posts laps, but over time, this will have a dramatic effect on the number of offers in the dash board. But then, accepting every one requires balance.

It is okay to talk 'on topic' for most posts, while still including the link. You'll notice that I do it. What is not allowed is including the word sponsored, or indicating that the post is paid for. I get around this by writing a lot of my own content, and leaving tags off the paid posts. This way, they just disappear into the background.

Still, it is a good way to get paid to write. It took me 3 years to start making money from Google. This year I received 3 checks in 10 months, with less time between each check. I have a friend who makes more, but she works hard to please Google.

This also raises a question. The only way to make Google money is to build a site that people will leave. Most bloggers want to keep their blog readers. So, optimizing for Google is not an option.

What Do You Write About?

When you are paid to blog, the tasks come into a dashboard at the paid to blog site. These can vary from diet pills and top us online casinos, to valuable tools that will benefit your readers such as online shopping and health care.

I am not a fan of the online gambling sites. However, my son does visit one and plays poker with his grandfather. They started this last summer when my son visited for two weeks. At first I was alarmed. Then I found that there was no money involved. After a while my son learned a few truths about gambling and I've seen the site for the valuable resource it is.

However, I do visit review sites and use their tools to evaluate whether my son should visit one of the sites reviewed, or I should keep him off it. I will admit that this is the very first time I have ever written about a gambling site. For the most part, they are nothing more than money grabs. But, being able to compare gambling sites and pick the 'safe' ones is a bonus.

Google Page Rank Calculator

A friend of mine was expressing her confusion over page rank. She didn't really understand it. So, I thought I would write a post to try and explain what Page Rank really is.

First, it is nothing more than a grade, like you received in school. Google grades your blog. It uses this grade to rank you in searches, drive traffic to your site, and determine how much google money you will earn from them. At PR2 and PR3, I rarely receive more than 5% of what Google promises for a certain keyword. That is okay, it still works out to $15 - $25 a month. A friend of mine who optimizes for Google earns about $100 + a month.

So, if you would like to see what grade Google gives your blog, then visit this page rank calculator and enter your url. Remember that you must try it with and without the www.

I Started This Blog to Prove a Point

I started this blog to prove to my students at www.writersonlinecourses.com in the 'make $1000 a month blogging' that it is possible to make good money writing blogs, in less than five months.

I reached the mark this month. This blog has a few dozen posts. I have not purchased any directory submissions - yet. But, it is active. I checked the ranking yesterday, and had a PR3. So, I submitted it to a couple of directory ad sites.

The first one to bite is smorty. Smorty is a service that connects advertisers with bloggers. the advertisers pay bloggers to write opinion posts, much like this one. The purpose is not to promote the service, but to build links back to the advertisers site.

This is how bloggers get paid to blog. They are paid for their blog advertising, from about $5 - $100 per ad. The ad does not need to endorse the product although I find that smorty pays my above norm to advertise on blogs.

This is all there is to the program. You will notice over the next few posts that some are reviews of products, some are just links. I use my discretion whether I feel a product is worth promoting. If not, I will just skim over the advertiser's blog and write 'on topic' and include the link, but not actually promote.

If your blog has PR2, and you want to get started in blog advertising then visit smorty.