Blog is a short of "weB LOG" or a method of storing any kind of information online. Such organized informational posting and archiving was named "Blog".By the form Blog represents an updated web-site of current and archived posts. A dead-simple concept turned out to be extremely powerful in terms of satisfaction of Internet community needs.
People online look for fresh, relevant information on a certain topic and this is where Blogs come into arena and win that battle for a visitors' attention hands-down.
They give you exactly what you need - targeted, updated information on any given topic, with an access to archive, search functions and even some sort of interactive experience as you can usually read comments of other visitors and participate in a small discussion like on a message board.
Why Blog can be just the perfect solution you have been looking for and how it can solve massive publishing problems at once. Here is why Blog can be your website and money-making system in one:
1. Blog is a simple CMS (Content Management System). It helps you solve hundreds of little hassles webmasters were forced to waste months before in order to solve each of them such as means of easy creating new pages with automatic cross-linking and archiving functions, installing visitor feedback script, managing and updating navigational menu, republishing RSS feeds and creating own feed and so on.
2. Built-in promotion. RSS feed is also a great viral marketing tool by itself. You don't have to stuff your head with "how-to-make-my-content-viral" problems any "traditional" website webmaster faces.
As a Blog publisher you use the same RSS feed as a way of syndicating your Blog content for any other websites. What they need is adding your RSS feed to their Feed rendering software. The technology is highly popular, so you will not have any problems with that.
Just add your RSS feed to a number of Blog Directories, ping (notify) Blog servers each time you make a new post (a common built-in feature for almost all Blogs) and in 90% case it will be enough to start your marketing ball rolling plus reassure fast search engine indexing.
3. Built in RSS (Atom) feeds are considered by many to be the ideal solution for all SPAM and filters problems of "traditional" email marketers.
RSS feeds are updated automatically as soon as you make a new post to your Blog. No more troubles with managing "email lists", subscribers, unsubscribers, email filters, HTML forms, SPAM complaints, follow-ups and so on and so forth. Forget about it. RSS will help you do everything, including follow-ups and even email courses publishing.
The difference, and many consider it to be the true benefit, is that RSS uses so-called "pull" method of delivering a message. Unlike "traditional" email, you don't have to send (push) anything to anybody. When you publish a new post, your RSS feed updates automatically, pings syndicating websites with a new Blog post and notifies (or not) your RSS subscribers about your new post, so they can load (pull) it and read.
That is how RSS solves SPAM emails and SPAM filters problems with one stone. Your subscribers just don't receive anything to be complained or worried about. They just personally subscribe to your RSS feed (no one can subscribe for them) with their special RSS reader program (RSS aggregator, available free everywhere on the net). Then they periodically and mostly automatically load your new Blog posts. If they don't like it, they just remove your RSS feed from their RSS feed aggregator software and that's all. Unlike email you cannot "push" your post to their RSS soft without their wish. Depending on set options, they need to manually, semi-automatically or automatically load your Blog post themselves.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against email. Quite the contrary, at some point, when you feel that you have a lot of spare time because of advantages that RSS brings, I strongly advise you to add email marketing to your arsenal. It does help you out in some special occasions. It is just you won't rely on email as the only money-making resource and will use it professionally as a great add-on instrument, limiting its possible negative effects.
From what you can see, blogs are perfect and simple software machines to run and maintain your informational business. They proved their efficiency in small niche markets as well as multilevel blog systems generating stable income for their glad owners. You can be one of them.
This article was posted on October 10, 2005
