Most experts, be they individuals, e-books, online articles or affiliate marketing companies stress the importance of creating a successful blog.

So, why even have a blog? The reasons are many, and here are 9 of the most important:

1. To Help Achieve Your Goals. You need to define your own goals. After they are determined, you can structure your blog so that these goals are satisfied. Maybe you have goals of finding leads for your primary programs or affiliate programs.

2. Create Personal Branding. In my opinion, this is the most important reason to create a blog. Personal Branding, as defined by Wikipedia is: …“the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands. …success comes from self-packaging. Further defined as the creation of an asset that pertains to a particular person or individual; this includes but is not limited to the body, clothing, appearance and knowledge contained within, leading to an indelible impression that is uniquely distinguishable. So, why is this important? To put it bluntly: your personal branding shows your visitors that you are a professional who knows what you are doing.

3. Create Position. With numerous well written articles, your blog will establish you as an expert in your market. Naturally, visitors will want to return to your blog frequently to read your latest posting. They will want to subscribe to your blog. They will want to take advantage of the programs you offer. They will want to opt-in so that they can learn more from you.

4. Create Stickability. Stickability is the desire for your audience to “stick” around for a while. If your blog is interesting, people will want to explore the entire site, read your articles, and explore your opportunities. This will create a desire to subscribe to your blog and return often to learn.

5. Create Trust. Your blog can provide a “safe” place for your prospects. Most often, trust is not established immediately. By learning about you, your family, your struggles and your ultimate success, they develop a kinship with you. They can see similarities and a reason to find out more. By reading posted articles they can learn how you think and eventually develop trust in you. This creates a reason for them to fill in their contact information for you and, in fact, buy from you. In general, strangers do not care about your products or your opportunity before they care about you. On the other hand, if your blog shows you as someone they are not interested in learning more about, if your blog shows pictures that are distressing, if it is filled with nothing but “sales pitches”, they learn to NOT trust you and leave, never to return.

6. Create Search Engine Ranking. Google and other search engines love blogs. Blogs are ranked very high by these search engines, primarily because they provide frequent updates. With higher rankings on search engines, more people will find out about you.

7. Build Your List. After you have built trust, have established yourself as a leader and have provided valuable content, visitors will want to opt-in to your list so that they can learn more from you, the expert. It is best not to lead your prospects to your capture page from Facebook or Twitter. They are Social Networks – primarily a way for your friends to find out more about you, the person.

8. Build Equity. Over time you will have hundreds of posts on your blog. This is an asset and is very valuable to your readers and yourself.

9. Attract Quality Traffic. You will attract individuals interested in what you have to offer with your personal branding, position and articles written for your niche. They will be quality prospects. Period….

Bill McMahon

To learn more blogging and social networking secrets:  http://joinbillmcmahon.com

A blog is an online personal journal that usually contains posts, audio, video’s and web links to other preferred sites. Blogs are about individual day to day experiences. There are also “service oriented” blogs providing the blogging public with a broad spectrum of diverse topics ranging from the occult to technology. Simply put, there is a blog for every area of human interest.

Currently, every manner of blogging is practiced by a multitude of online users worldwide. It has achieved such an extensive penetration of the Internet public’s consciousness, that blogging is now being exploited by business operators as a medium to connect with their particular market niches and make profit for their respective endeavors. In fact, one of the common questions of bloggers at present is how to translate their numerous viewers into “customers”.

If you are serious in making money out of your blog, the first thing to do is to make sure the site you use is easy to access. People will not wait for a page that takes forever to download. For easy navigation, page consistency is important and your contact details should be evident.

Make certain that you have strong “headers”, so as to capture the interest of your guests and convince them to read more. Provide the answers to their troubles. Put yourself in their shoes by acknowledging their troubles then providing the solution they need. Once you understand the difficulty your visitors encountered, revise your blog to address those needs.

With the current state of the economy, people will be looking for some sort of “life raft” to cling to. If your blog is about an MLM opportunity, there’s no better time for your blog site and business to prosper.

Online users scour the Internet for information. Having a number of articles on your blog can generate a lot of leads for your business. Encourage the viewers of your blog to post their comments and to address their queries and replies to you personally. Testimonials and assurances can have an enormous effect on your level of sales. Aside from giving you additional leads, you also get the reactions you need on what the majority of your prospects really require or wish for. The common methods used are broadcasting the testimonials of satisfied prospects, a privacy statement and a strong guarantee. On the web, a crucial precedence is to build credibility.

There are several errors that are often made when setting up your blog. These mistakes can cause you to not get the traffic you desire; and thus, make much less money than you want. They also cost you more money than necessary! Here are some very important tips to help you to avoid some of the biggest blogging blunders.

Now, the internet is such a great source for information. Often times, you find so much information that just investigating the sources will take far longer than expected or desired. Be sure not to get caught in analysis paralysis. Another problem with the internet is that a lot of the information will get you headed in the wrong direction, and cause you to waste time, resources and money. And it can take weeks or months to finally learn that your road map is flawed and you are not getting the results that you desired.

The sad thing is that there are convincing books, magazine articles, ebooks and sites that will persuade you to immediately post 30 to 100 blogs; some sites even call them “automated”. There is no such thing as an automated blog. They require your time and effort. In your first week, you should attempt to put up one post per day. This will help show Google that you have a valid site. After that week, you will need fresh content at least once a week. If you post much more often than that, you will be working all night (or day), and there will be little return for all of your effort.

One bad suggestion that you may hear about is buying an article package to save yourself some time in writing your own articles. Well, if you use the package that you have purchased only on your blog, you will be fine. However, be sure not to also place your article package into the article directories. Since they are not original, they will not be allowed.

Now, you may decide to work very hard on creating many of your own articles for your blog. Some experts will advise you to sell these articles in a package. Money for all of your hard work sounds good, right? Wrong! Once other people purchase and use your articles, your Google ranking for these posts will deteriorate. The more they are sold, the lower your ranking. Why? Well, Google promotes only new, original material. So, because of the lower ranking, less folks will be attracted to your articles and your blog, and less chance you will have to market your materials.

Imagine that you are attracted to a specific blog because of the articles that are being posted. In fact, you even subscribe to that blog so that you can be privy to all of the informative articles. Now, the author changes his subject, changes his niche, and changes his topics. Would you stay involved with that blog? I doubt it. My message is that once you choose the area that you will be discussing, stay with it. This will drive more frequent traffic to your site and give you a much better opportunity to help your audience with some products.

Finally, Google won’t see your blog unless you have your own domain, such as YourBlog.com. Putting your blog on a free site will not allow Google to recognize your site. I suggest using a .com extension. The Google spiders will recognize that sort of extension. WordPress is my recommendation for your blog. It is a fairly simple program to learn. HostGator is my recommendation for hosting your blog.

Now, I know all of this can be very intimidating. One last suggestion is my shameless offer to click on the banner to the right that says “Building Your Home Business on a Budget”. There are many informational sites available and many are excellent. This particular one is very helpful with step by step instructions on how to set up your blog, along with many other aspects of your Home Business on a budget. Feel free to check out the free information.