Blog Design is Important - Don't Underestimate It!
By Peter Phillips

Blogs have now overtaken static web sites in popularity. Blogs originally started as a platform for people to put down their thoughts and what they were doing at the time, a sort of public diary. Then companies started to use blogs as a means of informing their customers on product updates.

Now, blogs have become mainstream, and an essential part of internet marketing. This is because setting up a blog is so much easier than setting up a static web site. Applications like WordPress mean that knowledge of HTML is not required, and site designs and content are now easy to install, with the advent of themes and widgets.

Because blogs are more dynamic than sites, people will keep returning, if the blog is interesting enough. If the webmaster never updates his site there is no incentive for a visitor to return.

If a blog gets a steady following, they provide a great way of marketing a product, and an income from ads placed on the blog, such as AdSense and other companies' ads.

You can increase your blog traffic by joining affiliate programs and site directories, which will list your blog in a certain category. You can also put relevant comments on popular blogs, always including a link back to your own blog in your signature.

You can get people to keep coming back to your blog by having continually changing interesting or amusing content, together with a good layout and design. If you don't write your own content you can download other peoples' articles and publish them on your own blog, as long as you keep the original author's bio box intact.

The blog's layout and design are almost as important as the content. Your blog has to remain attractive enough that your blog will stand out from the millions of other blogs using free standard templates.

* Get a custom header

You will see a lot of blogs with generic designs downloaded from sites which give away free header templates.

You should personalize your own header by having distinctive graphics or logos. If you know Photoshop or Gimp you can edit the free graphics so that they become exclusive to your blog. You can also get professional looking graphics done for you if you do a search online.

* Use your own photos

People love seeing pictures. A photo of you makes the blog appear more human and friendly.

* Include RSS feeds in your blog.

These let your followers know that there is a new posting on your blog. Tutorials on how to set up RSS feeds are available everywhere on the net.

* Add audio

Audio personalizes your blog; and if it changes, it can keep your visitors coming back. Just make sure that the audio doesn't start automatically. People may be reading your blog at work and forget that they have the volume turned up. If you can't record an audio track of yourself you could try streaming radio stations, or a favourite mp3 file. Just don't make it too intrusive - you want people reading your blog, not listening to music.

If you use these tips, keep your content ever changing and relevant, and you get some traffic, you should definitely have a popular blog, one that stands out from all the others.

Peter Phillips is an internet entrepreneur living in Canberra, Australia

For all you need to get started in internet marketing: http://www.money-makingopportunities.com

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Read Blogging to the Bank to learn more.

Have a great day!

Don