Many people blog nowadays. A great percentage of internet users maintain a blog, majority of them even have multiple blogs. The niches range from how-to tips, health, online marketing, sports, travel, product reviews, blogging, online diaries and the most popular of them all, “how to earn money online”. These bloggers find blogging a good way to spend their idle time and for some, in order to earn extra dollars for their pockets.

Many people find blogging more useful and profitable than simply chatting, playing an online game or going somewhere else. Many people are even addicted to it that they spend most of their time creating, writing posts, developing and marketing their blogs ( consider me as an example ^.^ ). Some have even resigned from their day jobs already and made it their full time work at home job ( my goal ). A lot are now earning from it and they do earn a decent amount monthly.

So, why do people blog? Some of the reasons were already mentioned above but blogging covers a wide range of topics. Most of the blogs do cover a specific niche as it would be too big a task to cover all areas of knowledge in one blog. Below are some of the reasons why people get hooked in blogging. Learning these reasons will help us understand more why bloggers spends most of their time on the computer and chose blogging as their communication style. Most of these bloggers also want to find another way to earn some extra cash online and blogging is one of these ways.

1. To bookmark interesting sites, photos, videos and other interesting finds online. People love to read interesting posts, we love sharing photos of important events in our lives or about someone we know who has in a way touched our lives. Videos online cover different kinds from music videos, skincare videos, funny videos, marketing and other tutorials and basic information. Most people want to document these things and one way to do it is by keeping a blog and store all these information there. Wherever we are, we can always access it and this brings great convenience to all of us.

2. To keep an online diary. Diaries have always been popular since we were children. Our schools even require us to have one, to record every event that happens in our lives. Mostly, we even add photos or videos of the activity. The new technology has improved diary-making a lot. From notebooks, we now have e-notebooks. Many people already use blogs to record their daily activities. These kinds of blog are called personal blogs. Most moms do create personal blogs. These include their daily and rewarding experiences on motherhood, the trials and joy of having a family, their journey to being a new mom and a lot more.

3. To advertise a product, business or services. Many professional affiliate marketers use this method. They create a blog, make a review about the products they are endorsing with the link to their landing pages provided. Then they advertise this blog in forums, post comments in other blogs, submit their blogposts to social bookmarking sites and many other link building techniques. This is one of the effective ways in affiliate marketing and it still being used by many internet marketers today.

4. To have a venue to publish our written work. Many people dream of seeing their work and be published online. There are many people who love creating poems, short stories, formulating new and informative content and other written works. Blogs have become their partners. It is where their dreams come true, their dream of being an accomplished and published writer. Blogging makes most dreams come to reality and it has fulfilled many amateur writers and even professional writers wishes.

5. To have a place where we could store our collection of our favorite recipes. Many people love to cook and share their new recipes and food discoveries to the world. Blogs are great places to store them so other people would find them and at the same time try it themselves. This gives fulfillment to the creator and at the same time gives them an opportunity to earn money from the ads that they could add to their blogs.

6. To post our collection of music videos, TV series, and other similar stuff. Entertainment is one of the things people won’t miss. All of us love listening to new released videos. We spend hours watching TV series from one episode to another. There are times that we miss some of our favorite episodes because of work or other unavoidable things to attend to. Our blogs could be great places to embed our favorite music videos, TV series and even movies. There are many people who do this and they enjoy the fact that they could always access these favorites online.

7. To record one’s mini-adventure in travel. Many people love to travel. These people love documenting the places and creating a little story of their travels. Many people also love to share information about a place they have visited or would want to visit. That’s where travel blogs came into the picture. There are thousands of them online and travel blogs have always brought great joy to the readers, the beautiful photos, new discoveries and interesting travel information.

8. Last but not the least, in order to earn money. Creating a blog is a great way to earn money online. We could always monetize it through Google Adsense, text link ads, affiliate products and we could accept paid blog, product or site reviews. The money-making opportunities are limitless.

These are just some of the reasons why many people blog. There are still more and the list is endless, this is just a short list to motivate you and to get you into the blogging world. As years go by, blogging will evolve and more features will be added. Blogging is here to stay and we are all thankful that the new technology has introduced us to the world of blogging. It does not only provide us a venue to publish online our created work, affiliate products and other interesting stuff but it also has provided us a way to express ourselves and earn money online. Blogging has really changed the way I live.

There are hundreds of wordpress plugins available on the Internet, some of them are very useful and some others are only a waste of time. Back in 2008, I posted about a list of necessary WordPress plugins, this is another post about some new and useful plugins that will make your blogging activity more easier.

Advertising Manager:

A.M plugin will allow you to manage all your ads, rotate your Google Adsense and other ads on your WordPress blog. It automatically recognises many ad networks including Google Adsense, AdBrite, Chitika, Commission Junction and many other popular networks. You may be interested in the best 7 Google Adsense WordPress plugins too.

WordPress Automatic upgrade:

This plugin allows WordPress users to automatically upgrade their wordpress installation to the latest version using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

Google Analytics for WordPress:

This plugin easily adds your Google Analytics tracking code (the new ga.js one) to all pages within your blog, tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, Adsense clicks, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads.

TweetMeme Button:

The TweetMeme plugin easily allows your blogposts to be retweeted. The button also provides a current count of how many times your blogpost has been retweeted.

Social Bookmarking for WordPress:

With this plugin, you can add social media buttons to your blogposts and RSS feed in an easy and beautiful way. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites.

Today, and after my successful previous blogpost about the professional WordPress themes pack, I’m posting about another great 6 premium WordPress themes that are free and amazing. It’s an exclusive collection of free premium wordpress themes that you can use to start-up a new blog ot to give a new look to your actual one.

Remedy:

A 3 column widget and adsense ready wordpress magazine style, Remedy WordPress theme is what you need if you want to create a media industry blog magazine.

FREEmium:

A 3 column WordPress theme designed by Paul Kadysz and developed by Dariusz Siedlecki.

Versatility:

A 2 column, ad-ready, widgetized theme with a Featured Post section, CSS menu, social bookmarking buttons, integrated related posts and much more cool features.

ZinePress:

A 2 column widget ready WordPress magazine style theme, clean and nice layout.

Magaling:

A premium WordPress theme with Twitter status integration, Featured Post Gallery, Feedburner Email Subscription, Popular Posts, Ajax Tabbed Sidebar, Automatic Thumbnail Resizer, Adsense ready with advertising space totally customizable via an option Page.

Statement:

Nice and clean themewith two sidebars on the right and a tabbed section for recent posts, comments and archives.

Download the pack of the 6 premium WordPress themes.

In this post, I’m introducing a list of 15 tips that surely will help you to create a great successful blog:

1. Post early and post often. If it’s a news oriented blog you should be posting 3 to 5 times each day. An authoritative blog can get away with 3 to 5 times per week, but each post should be unique and of high value.

2. Make the blog look and feel like the feeling of the content of the website. Work with a designer if you don’t trust yourself to do a good job.

3. Outbound links should be of web sites and other authoritative blogs. Think quality when you are thinking about your outbound links.

4. Create and distribute a press release. Don’t necessarily concentrate on the main stream press, they have a habit of ignoring blogs and websites. Instead, send the press release to other blogs and websites that would be interested in the kind of content your feature.

5. Thank other bloggers if they mention you on their blog. The best place to thank them is in the comment section of their post that mentions your blog.

6. Use sticky posts for the posts that you really want the readers to see. Sticky posts will stay at the top of the blog rather than letting them fall down as new posts are added.

7. Create unique content. Even though the Internet if full of pages that link to other pages, the best way to get people to link to your page is to give them something new.

8. Optimize the wording in your title. Don’t let a software create the title for you. You should gear your title to the reader and not the search engines, even though the search engines do look at it.

9. Don’t show your Feedburner badge until you have at least 100 subscribers. Keep it a secret a little while, you will look much more professional after you can show 100.

10. Use new technologies on your blog. Posting video from sites like YouTube and audio from audio blogs and radio stations. Post your Twitter link as well as MySpace and Facebook links and post from other users. Google Earth widgets are good content for drawing visitors. Jump on any new technology that comes along, especially if it is a networking technology.

11. Use Full Text in Your RSS. This pulls readers in much easier than just the few words that most people use for their RSS feeds. That is what the competition is doing and you need to beat the competition.

12. If you have the gadgets, create a video blog or audio blog regularly on your site. These bring in different visitors who might not want to read. Video is much more popular than audio, but audio’s popularity is increasig as more iPods are sold and people are looking for stuff to fill them up.

13. Get your own domain. Even if you use blogger to run your blog, get a domain of the name of your blog. It gives a more professional appearance. This is good for possible advertisers who might want to buy ad space on your blog.

14. Be sociable with your visitors. Post links to their websites if the content if of quality and meshes with your blog. Answer questions and email that your readers send your way. This can help turn them into loyal visitors.

15. Get a niche. Blog on a topic that is a little different, a little more specialized than the other blogs in your category.

Any tip to add? share it with us via comments