I’m starting a random Blog Engage User Tip activity where every time I come up with a tip that can benefit our users I will write about it here on the blog. I will also add a link to each tip on our FAQ Page.

Today’s tip is our first in the serious and in my opinion can prove to be life saving for your positive Blog Engage experience! The fact of Blog Engage is we are starting to get very big! In fact so big it’s impossible to keep up with what’s being submitted.

In today’s tip I would like to teach you how to start focusing your energy in the area’s that matter the most. If you’re in the SEO and Marketing niche you don’t need to be seeing celebrity and home renovation blog articles do you? The same can be said for the health and beauty bloggers, you don’t need to read the latest SEO and Marketing news do you?

The Solution!

When logged into Blog Engage hover your profile area, you will see a link that will bring you to a settings page with tons of check boxes for each category found on Blog Engage. If you don’t want to see articles from a specific category, go ahead and remove the check mark from the category box. When you save your final settings the articles being shown on Blog Engage will be articles you want to see, and are not forced to see.

About

Hi There my name is Brian, I'm the owner of Blog Engage. I own a personal blog about SEO and Marketing. Make sure to follow blogengage on twitter @blogengage and like us on facebook. Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• LinkedIn
|
• Google+
|
• More Posts (447)

Hi everyone and welcome to another amazing giveaway from Tripoutlook and EXEBIT. The entire process is extremely easy to do and when done you have a chance at winning $50 USD paid via PayPal.

Join the below giveaway and gain as many entries as you can. Like on Facebook, Follow on Twitter and Tweet the giveaway to all your friends. This is your chance to win a free Blog Engage Standard Account.

You can also visit this post everyday to earn more entries, remember the more entries you can get the better chances you have at winning the contest. Like on Facebook, Follow on Twitter it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Standard Account

You will receive your very own Blog Engage standard account. Blog Engage is a blogging community where all bloggers submit their latest blog articles to for exposure, backlinks and traffic. All articles submitted are sent to the upcoming page where users read and vote on the submissions. When articles receive enough votes they become published and are then found on the Blog Engage home page.

Enjoy the contest, visit daily to tweet which helps you gain even more entries. The more entries you have the better chance you have of winning. Engage with our customers and get your blog exposure, what do you have to lose? Nothing!

Do you want us to host you a contest? Want to gain new Followers and Facebook likes?

Sign up to our Business Plus Marketing Package.

About

Hi There my name is Brian, I'm the owner of Blog Engage. I own a personal blog about SEO and Marketing. Make sure to follow blogengage on twitter @blogengage and like us on facebook. Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• LinkedIn
|
• Google+
|
• More Posts (447)

If you’re into blogging then you probably know some of the obvious reasons why bloggers fail…

Most of the time they simply don’t see any results of their work. And this can both mean lack of money (not monetizing their blogs), or no readers. What’s the point of blogging if no one pays attention to you, right?

However, there are also other reasons, ones that are not that obvious, but can still kill your blog … slowly and painfully. Here’s the list.

1. Lack of motivation

Only motivated people can find success in anything, actually.

No matter what results you’re getting from your blog, you need to remain motivated to put in your everyday work. So how to do it…?

Motivation can be a really complex thing, and it seems like something we don’t have a complete control over. But even though that is somewhat true, we can still do a couple of things to help us remain motivated.

First of all, set your environment right. You need to have a nice workspace, where there are no distractions and you can write a blog post uninterrupted.

Secondly, and this goes all the way back to the moment when you first started blogging. Make sure to blog about a topic that actually interests you. If you’re naturally interested in something then remaining motivated should be a lot easier.

Thirdly, pay attention to what’s going on in your niche. When you can witness what others are doing, you will feel naturally convinced to make something similar happen yourself.

2. Technical challenges

WordPress isn’t really that difficult to use. This creates a lot of opportunities for people who are not very tech savvy but still want to launch a blog.

However, at some point, there’s a need to install a new plugin, or configure something differently. This is when some issues might come to the surface. Also, sometimes your blog can crash completely due to some tweaks or adjustments you’ve made.

If any of the above happens, some people just decide to leave this blogging thing behind them (if the blog hasn’t been a popular one at that point).

What to do? Simply make sure to use only quality plugins and themes, ones that offer some kind of user support in case anything happens. Also, make sure to work with a good hosting company.

3. Too much work

This all depends on your personal approach, but no one said that blogging is going to be easy.

If you want to get your blog to the professional level, where it’s earning you money, this will take some time, work, and dedication.

If you’re not ready to put this work in, you might have to face a really big challenge on your way.

In some aspects, blogging is kind of similar to any other profession. You need to be willing to spend some time working to see any worthwhile results. this is something you need to know from the get-go if you’re serious about your blog.

(If you just have a personal blog then this point doesn’t concern you that much.)

4. Your blog gets erased from Google

These days, Google introduces quite a lot of algorithm updates. These updates are geared to improve the overall user experience people have with Google, but sometimes they cause a site to completely disappear from the results.

If you’ve relied on Google as one of your main sources of new traffic then this kind of slap can even kill your blog. What’s worse, people usually feel kind of helpless when this happens to their blogs.

Here are a couple of things you can do to either prevent a Google slap or revert its effects:

• Be up-to-date with best practices of SEO by reading a popular SEO blog.

• Don’t take part in any black hat SEO.

• Adhere to Google’s guidelines if they send you an email describing the nature of your slap.

• Wait still and don’t panic. If you didn’t do anything wrong, your site will return to its previous state.

I hope this list gave you some awareness about the things that might happen to you and your blog, and that you’ll have an easier time fighting them if they come.

In the meantime, feel free to comment and share your thoughts.

Image courtesy of Artur84 | Stuart Miles | Sdmania | Stuart Miles | FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Hi everyone and welcome to yet another featured community spotlight. Today, I’m going to introduce Image Works Studio. If you didn’t know Image Works Studio is an all round site cum blog for marketing, web designing and SEO combined.

Founded way back in 1996, it was then known as Image Works Creative, it has one of the most talented in-house designers, developers, copywriters, search and social media marketers, and project managers who position Image Works as the “go to” company for branding and marketing solutions that get great results.

Design Services

Their design services is one of the best and one of the most extensive one I have ever seen. Some of their design services include logo design and stationery, brochures and sales kits, infographic design, email template design, trade show design, exhibits and trade show booths for sales, word and powerpoint templates and proposal design & optimization.

Their web design services also covers an extensive range of designing and template development. Some of their web designing modules include web design “facelifts”, smart business web design (budget) , mobile web design, blog design, landing page design, videos & presentations etc.

Some other impressive features of Image Works Studio is that it can also host your website. Your website or blog for your business will be hosted on their private servers and security is provided to prevent unauthorized hacking or phlishing activities. Image Works Studio doesn’t provide hosting services to half the planet. The limited no. of hosting also means that your site will be paid attention to and everything will be tailored to your needs.

Image Works Studio also provides Website Maintenance Services which includes training and providing you tips to make yourself a highly secured killer website.

Marketing Services

Image Works Studio also provides one of the most extensive marketing services out there in the Internet. Some of it’s marketing services or modules include search engine marketing (SEO) , social media update and engagement, content marketing plans, Google Adwords (pay per click), social site customization, email newsletter campaigns, email lead nurturing, landing page marketing, Google reamarketing and advertising, social and citation site advertising, tradeshow marketing plans, brand naming / taglines and copywriting and content optimization.

Another good thing about Image Works Studio is the pricing. Depending on what you need like web hosting, or any of the design or marketing services, the company will give you a customized proposal based on your need. Adding more services to existing ones or removal also results in modification of your pricing.

Image Works Studio also has a blog section on their site which provides high quality articles on SEO, Online Marketing , Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing and much more.

Ohh. .. Almost forgot to mention that they also have a portfolio of their clients and the sites they have developed. Some of those sites are extremely well crafted and beautifully designed. Go there and take a look at their portfolio.

So, what are you waiting for ? Make sure you connect with Image Works Studio to know more about them. You can add them as a friend here on Blog Engage, add them as a friend on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, connect with them on LinkedIn and add them to circles on Google Plus.

About

Hi There my name is Brian, I'm the owner of Blog Engage. I own a personal blog about SEO and Marketing. Make sure to follow blogengage on twitter @blogengage and like us on facebook. Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• LinkedIn
|
• Google+
|
• More Posts (447)

There’s no real difference between selfishness and selflessness if we define these words the way most people understand them, whereas selfish acts are in pursuit of enriching yourself, and selfless acts are those which enrich others without material benefit to yourself. Even selfless acts are typically undertaken out of personal self interest.

Simply ask yourself if you feel good after “selflessly” helping someone out and you’ll see if you were really selfless or simply acted in a way that benefits both you and others. If it benefited yourself, and if that’s a part of the outcome you sought, even if it is just the satisfaction, then you actually acted in self interest.

Real selflessness, the literal selflessness, would be acting against your own wishes, values, health and well being. Such acts would leave you feel impoverished and no better off emotionally for it either. You would be less happy, and felt less valuable. This isn’t really what we should be advocating for. We shouldn’t be advising each other to do things that actually take away from us and leave us feeling no better. Besides, is an act of altruism that you committed against your own will, and after which you felt zero satisfaction, really an act of altruism or is it actually just borderline coercion?

Between people who give because they feel good giving, because they want to give, because giving enriches their own life too, and people who give because they have to, but don’t really want to, most people will appreciate the former more.

As a side note this is just a part of the reason why taxation is a flawed form of charity, and why taxpayers aren’t really appreciated by those who take their money away. Coercion doesn’t work. An act must be selfish, even if it helps others and even if it is technically altruistic, for everyone to be a winner.

What we really want is selfish acts that benefit others. That’s the holy grail. Such acts enrich others while simultaneously enriching yourself. This leads to overall win-win situations, win-win relationships, and ultimately making everyone better off.

Such acts also allow you to help the maximum number of people. If every act of helping others also enriches you in some way you will be that much more likely and capable to help someone else again.

Besides honest charitable activities, and by honest I mean acts of charity which you are genuinely happy to conduct, another great way of helping others while simultaneously enriching yourself is entrepreneurship. Having a mentality oriented around serving other people, providing as much value to other people as you can, helping solve world’s problems and helping make the world a better place is the best mentality for success in entrepreneurship. When these are the priorities, and the process of helping is executed properly, success is a side-effect. Making money shouldn’t be front and center, but rather a side-effect of creating value for others. Sounds almost altruistic, doesn’t it?

In conclusion, I’m not trying to discourage charitable activities nor somehow devalue the work of those who help people even when it doesn’t bring them any material benefit. I’m merely pointing out that if what you’re doing is truly, literally selfless you would probably feel bad about it. You wouldn’t derive anything positive out of the act for your own self. You would derive nothing good from it. If you do, then it’s just a form of a selfish act that is designed in such a way to give a significant and perhaps even disproportionate benefit to others. Altruistic acts should increase the happiness of everyone involved.

I realize that “selfish” is a word with negative connotations, but it shouldn’t be, and if it weren’t this would solve some crucial problems in the world. For example, when a parent tells a child he is selfish in a tone suggesting that this is something negative the parent is instilling in him the idea that it is bad to do things that make him feel good. And that isn’t quite the message we had in mind, is it? The real message should be that it is good to make others happier and richer, and bad to take away what is theirs.

The message isn’t, or certainly shouldn’t be, that you shouldn’t act in your own self interest or that enriching others must automatically mean impoverishing yourself. There’s a big difference. The former approach focuses on the positive; make other people happier and richer. The latter approach focuses on the negative and implies that there’s something wrong about trying to also enrich yourself. The first implies win-win relationships as the desirable default, while the latter implies win-lose.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici | Photo Stock FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About Daniel Memetic

My name is Daniel, and I am a front end web developer, editor, and blogger working for Memebridge, a web publishing company focused on offering a variety of resources that improve your knowledge and allow you to be more independent. I mainly write for The Tech FAQ, our biggest resource, which you may want to follow on twitter and like on facebook.

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• More Posts (2)

Hi there and welcome to our featured community spotlight. Today, we have Tom Jamieson from TomJamieson.com. If you didn’t know, he is passionate about blogging and social media and ministry as well. He is a part-time blogger and loves to write about current events and anything that he finds amusing, entertaining or fascinating.

He is currently a student at the University of South Florida doing his second Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology with concentration on Web Development and Design. Tom has been blogging for about 4 years now. When he first started blogging back in 2009 , everything was brand new to him and he quite didn’t know what he was actually doing. He made a lot of mistakes along the way and would definitely do some things differently if he were to start all over again.

Tom has earned a B.A. in psychology from The University of South Florida and a M.A. in Christian Education from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has also served churches in Indiana and Florida as both Associate Pastor and Senior Pastor. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, golfing, and connecting with other Christians, writers, and bloggers.

His blog – TomJamieson.com is mostly a personal blog and he is extremely passionate about Blogging and Social Media. He regularly shares great tips about Blogging, SEO, Social Media.

Tom can be considered as a pretty good SEO specialist as well. His recent post on 10 SEO benefits of Social Bookmarking gives you an overall view of the importance of Social Bookmarking.

For those who didn’t know, Tom has also created a content curation site on various topics of WordPress and WordPress resources. WPBig is the new and cool content curation site that Tom has created. It basically is a blog but on a more concentrated niche. It’s a blog about WordPress and nothing else. Tom regularly scours through the internet and searches for some awesome posts about WordPress and then posts it on his curation site with a link to the original article. You can find everything about WordPress and all sorts of interesting information, news, themes, plugins, reviews, and more.

Blog Engage is his favorite blogging community and he also loves to hangout on Google+ and on some Facebook Groups as well. For Blog Engage readers he shares the following tips :

Network with other bloggers. The only way to improve is to be involved in the blogging community and to be proactive.

Another thing that may completely surprise you about Tom is that he is also available to speak in Churches on different topics as well. If you want to hire him as a speaker please check out this page.

So, what are you waiting for ? Make sure you connect with Tom to get to know more about him. You can add him as a friend here on Blog Engage , add him as a friend on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, add him to your professional network on LinkedIn, add him to circles on Google Plus, follow him on Pinterest, call him on Skype and subscribe to his blog’s feed.

About

Hi There my name is Brian, I'm the owner of Blog Engage. I own a personal blog about SEO and Marketing. Make sure to follow blogengage on twitter @blogengage and like us on facebook. Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• LinkedIn
|
• Google+
|
• More Posts (447)

If you are involved in anything SEO and/or blogging, you’re probably wondering what Google has up its sleeve when it comes to scary farm animals and updates. Keeping current when it comes to this kind of information can help you defeat your arch nemesis (or competitor) and win the adult popularity contests that take place every single day in the halls of Google Search High.

Everyone is competing to get higher ranking, and if you don’t know the latest when it comes to SEO, you might as well hand the lead to competing businesses. If you are not worried about the next PR update then here are some other things that would make you think.

Going Mobile

Those days of carting around a laptop or waiting until you got home to look up the name of that song or where to eat are long gone. An near-unlimited amount of consumers have limitless access to the Internet through their smartphones and other mobile devices. What does this have to do with Google? Well, Google is like a giant instant gratification system. When people want to know or see something, they Google it. It is no different when they are out and about and away from their traditional computers.

Google knows that the future holds untold amounts of mobile phone users. They introduced Adwords Enhanced Campaigns in February 2013. This system allows business owners to be able to take care of their tablet, mobile, and desktop campaigns from one location. If you still aren’t catching on, Marin Software has foretold that in the U.S., mobile devices will be the source of at least one third of all clicks by the end of the year. That’s a lot of mobile users to instantly gratify.

Bigger Pictures Means Fewer Clicks?

Google has also introduced larger images next to their search results. Just think about this for a minute. If you are searching for information about something (for example, your product or service) and they see a picture of it, will that be enough to satisfy their curiosity? This has some people scared that no one will click through to their website. Google has tried to assuage these fears by saying that they have actually seen an increase in the click-through rates, yet skeptics are waiting for more time to weigh in on the results.

Life in the Google Lane

Google offers a tool to gauge how fast your website loads. Why? Well, who wants to wait for a page to load when they can find someone else’s page that loads faster? You probably don’t; nor do millions of other people. Google did some tests that showed how slowing down the search results page by just a pinch (or 400 milliseconds, to be exact) decreased the number of searches by up to -0.6%. Tweaking your webpage to run faster is a great way to steal some attention from your slower competitors and keep people coming to your website.

Being seen is difficult enough on Google, however, understanding certain major elements of the way Google works and the way it is evolving can help. Accommodating mobile searches, watching the click-through rates based on pictures and speeding up your webpage can make a big difference in the visibility and ultimate success of your website on Google.

Image courtesy of Nuttakit FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About Keral Patel

Hey guys, My name is Keral Patel and I am a full time webmaster. I have been designing and developing websites since last 11 years. Sometimes I share my experiences and other tutorials at my Webmaster Blog.

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• LinkedIn
|
• Google+
|
• More Posts (1)

Making money is both difficult and easy. One good way to make money is to start a blog, do something meaningful with your blog and swell your bank account. I know that the primary reason for starting a blog should not be for the purpose of making money. A lot of bloggers are in the blogosphere to promote their brand, express their personal opinions or just to share their knowledge with other people.

I know so many people have written articles on the topic of making money; but I am here to write from my own perspective and make my own contribution from the way I see things and understand them. So, as a professional or newbie blogger, you should spare me your time and read this to the end. At the end you should be free to make your observation, criticisms or contributions.

Why do people start a blog?

People start a blog for different reasons, having different targets in their minds and with a particular group of persons as their target audience. Some of the reasons include, but are not limited to the following:

Share knowledge:

This is the driving force or the motivation behind many blogs. Some persons just want to be heard and they want to find a way to share the little knowledge they have acquired. Blogging easily provides them the platform and avenue to reach a vast audience. Their primary purpose is not to make money. Promote their brand. One of the best ways to promote a brand is to start a blog which you can use to aggressively create awareness about that brand.

Make money:

Blogging has evolved over the years and a lot of people now see the money making potential in it that they all want to become bloggers. It is not a bad idea to make money with your blog; but that should not be the sole aim of setting up a blog.

Time would fail me to mention other reasons. I know you have some important things to do with your precious time, so I am not going to dwell much on that. I am going to try and accommodate all three sets of people mentioned above in this write up, though it favours the last set more – those who want to make money blogging.

Before you can make money with your blog

If you start a blog today, it does not guarantee that you would start making money immediately or in the near future. There are a lot of works to do on your blog before it becomes a money making factory for you. I personally want to be a problogger and make a lot of money too (laugh). I believe some of you reading this post have that dream too. We do not need to pretend about it. In order to earn with your blog, you need to:

Position your blog:

First thing is to position your blog in a way as to be able to withstand the fierce competition online and become the place of attraction for both information seekers and for those willing to buy your products. You need to customize your blog, add quality content, do the internal SEO, drive traffic to it, increase your blog popularity and also engage your readers. When the level of interactivity on your blog grows higher, then you are sure you have an audience or a community to sell to and make money.

Now that you have positioned your blog for the purpose of making money, it is time to look at what and what is capable of fetching you money on your blog. When you have one or few of these you are sure to make money endlessly with your blogsite.

How to make money with your blog

Your blog can really become a full time business, earning you lots of cash. So let’s look at the following services you could render in order to get some dough:

1. Tutorials:

Recently, while doing some research online, I discovered that some of the high income earners are those providing tutorials on different subjects. Among these are tutorials on web design, coding, programming, logo design, template customization, blogging, etc. Make money today by simply providing “how-to” tutorials.

2. Writing:

Offer writing services on your blog and get paid handsomely. There are writers and freelance writers everywhere, but there is dearth of quality writers. If you can start a blog today and offer quality writing services to bloggers, SEO companies, company blogs, online magazines, etc, you are bound to hit it big. You can also participate in Paid-to-write programmes to make some extra income for yourself.

3. Sponsored reviews:

Once your blog is well positioned and has a high PR and quality traffic, a lot of people would scramble to have you write sponsored reviews about their products on your site. What would this translate to? Money of course!

4. Sell products:

Selling your own products is another sure way to earn good money with your blog. Some of the products you could sell include blog/website templates, software, e-books, etc. Once you have tested and proven products to sell, buyers would throng your blogsite to buy them.

5. Affiliate products:

Do you love selling products but you don’t have your personal one to sell? Why don’t you go for affiliate products marketing instead of giving excuses as to why you are failing to make money online? Join affiliate programmes and offer their products to your blog community. You can promote such products by writing an unbiased reviews on them and add your affiliate links to them that you can get paid for every buyer that comes through your link.

6. Advert spaces:

Offer advertisement spaces to prospective advertisers and make your cool cash. This can be done through banner placement or through text link placement. If you get good advertisers, you can make more money from advert placement than from Google Adsense.

7. Google Adsense:

This is about the most popular way of making money with blogs online, and it’s also one of the most popular topics being discussed in the blogosphere from time to time. You can make a hell of money with Google Adsense if you have quality traffic to your blog. Some great bloggers are earning six figures from this every month.

Conclusion

Making money as a blogger is both simple and easy if you are determined to do so. Simply offer services or products that are needed by others and get paid for doing so. Do you want to make money online today? Then start a blog and start earning.

Image courtesy of Dream Designs | Rattigon FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About Efoghor Joseph Ezie

Hi, my name is Efoghor Joseph Ezie, a Small Business manager with years of experience in helping young entrepreneurs reposition their dying businesses. I am the owner of Business Success Guide where I blog about small business tips, SEO, affiliate marketing, social media and blogging tips. You are free to visit my blog if you wish.

• Mail
|
• Web
|
• Twitter
|
• Facebook
|
• LinkedIn
|
• Google+
|
• More Posts (3)