How to Make Money with Affiliate Programs ???

Welcome to “how to make money from affiliate programs” – The best affiliate 
 programs online available on the internet to make money from your website 
and blogs with work from home jobs.



Affiliate Programs: Here I explain some of the best Affiliate Programs and how to make money from Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Marketing - Best
CPA, Commission, Revenue for Life-Time, Affiliate Tips on all top affiliate programs
to make money from your website and Blogs.

How to Make  Money from Affiliate Programs: Affiliate programs or Affiliate Marketing are now one of the most popular ways to make money online and add some extra income to your revenue. But why are affiliate programs so popular? Well, the reason is that all real and legitimate affiliate programs that are not one of those “Scams” are completely FREE to Join. You don’t have to pay any fee or joining fee or money to join real and legitimate affiliate programs. Affiliate programs are all over the Internet but choosing the best affiliate programs is the difficult job.

Here I explain about Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Marketing:
Visitors will find the best affiliate programs ranked and reviewed, offering
you the chance of making money online. Complete information on all top
affiliate programs in lucrative niches – poker, casino, shopping, education
etc. Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Marketing great moneymaker online
where you can work from home and earn money.




Affiliate Programs or Affiliate Networks may
sound big but they are simple and easy if you can understand the basics. All
you need to do is to sing-up for the best, real and legitimate affiliate
program and select advertisers for your website or Blog. Once you select the
advertisers, you will get the required code to place on your Blog or
website. It is as simple as that!



These advertisers usually pay to be a
member of the affiliate program and then every time the advertisement on
your website is clicked on you will be paid a portion of what the affiliate
network is paid for each click.

Please keep in mind that every affiliate program work differently.



Before
you choose any affiliate marketing program or before you sign-up one,  you
should understand how you are going to get paid and how you will make money
through these programs.



There are three basic payment setups and they are pay per impression, pay
per click, and pay per sale or lead.



One payment scheme may benefit some
while another payment scheme would more greatly benefit another.



To start
with, you can open
a

Paypal Account because Most Online Companies Pay through Paypal.
 
Pay Per Impression Affiliate Programs

Pay per impression affiliate program means that you are
paid according to the number of times any given advertiser's banner is
displayed on your website.



How much money you make is normally calculated by the CPM or click per
thousand.



For e.g. - if your CPM is $10, it means that you will be paid $10 for
every 1,000 displays or impression of the advertiser’s banner.



This may sound like you may not make good money but if you have a lot of
traffic to your website or blog then it will add up to good and big
money.





Value Click Media: Value click
media is a leading affiliate network that pays on a per click and
impression basis. They pay back 65% of the total revenue that they earn
from selling ad space.



PopUpTraffic.com: This is a simple pay per impression affiliate
network. It Pays $3 per thousand impressions.



ExitFuel: This is a great exit pop-up affiliate network paying $5
CPM for multiple popups and $1.50 CPM for single pop-ups.



AzoogleAds: This affiliate program is good medium sized network
offering a variety of lead based CPA programs. In addition they also
offer a CPM network.



Focalex: Focalex is a leading company in opt-in permission email
marketing. They pay you 40 cents for every new e-mail address you send
them or $1 for every thousand pop-up impressions.





Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs






Pay per click affiliate program means that you are paid when visitors to
your website or blog click on the ads or advertiser's banner. This payment
scheme pays better than the pay per impression, but you depend on your
visitors to click on the advertisement or banner to get paid. If your
website or blog receives a lot of traffic, you can do quite well with a pay
per click program. If you don't have a lot of traffic, it is difficult to
earn with such a system. If you can select the advertisements that will
appear on your website so that they are relevant to your site you'll give
you better results and more money or revenue.





Shareasale.com: Shareasale.com is a medium sized affiliate network
offering pay per sale/lead and pay per click affiliate networks you can
join.



Clickxchange: A good sized
affiliate network that offers many different types of affiliate programs.



ClickThruTraffic: Easy to use click
thru program offering text links, banner ads, and pop ups.



ClixGalore: Large affiliate network
that lacks in customer service but is a good choice for 'niche' sites.




LeadHound: This is a well-organized
affiliate program that offers some great programs; mainly pay per lead
programs, but some pay per click and pay per impression. Great affiliate
program!



BulletAds: This is a good medium
sized affiliate network specializing is in CPA (mainly leads) affiliate
programs, although they do offer a handful of pay per click programs.




LeadCrunch: Smaller affiliate
network that has great potential. Easy to use with a solid base of great
advertisers.





Pay Per Sale Affiliate Programs

A pay per sale or lead affiliate program can give you the highest money or
revenue but the number of people who click on a banner should end up buying
a product. You get your percentage of commission for the sales revenue. You
may also get paid for sending a lead to the advertiser’s website. You'll
will always do better with a pay per sale or lead scheme if the banners or
advertisements are targeted toward your audience, and if they are good you
can earn a good amount of money through this affiliate program.




Clickbank:
It is one of the largest
affiliate program used by webmasters and bloggers to earn money. Product
marketers can earn as high as 75% percent of sales revenue.



Amazon.com:
The Amazon.com
Associates program
differentiates itself from other
affiliate programs by offering millions of products to choose
from. One of the widely used pay per sale affiliate program.



ebay.com:
With just a little effort, you can earn a lot of money in the
eBay Affiliate Program. All you
have to do is drive traffic to eBay
or one of their partners website. eBay
Partner Network is a global
program where you can make a lot of money.

Commission Junction:
This is one of the top affiliate networks. They have helped set the bar for
affiliate networks.

Conclusion:






With so many great affiliate programs available on the internet, you can
often sign-up and work with more than one. Make sure to do your research you
should definitely check them out before you so sign-up so that you can
choose the best one.



All Affiliate programs mentioned here are 100% real and legitimate. I have
made sure that the is no scam. I myself earn several hundred dollars from
these affiliate programs and I can assure you that the work. Yes, they work
great ! You just need to be smart and have patience.



With Affiliate programs you can earn good extra income and add to your
current earnings. In fact, every website owner and Blogger should look into
affiliate programs because it's easy and can earn good amount of money over
time.

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Submit RSS Feeds and Pings

In this article, we list all the Feed Directories to which you can submit your feeds for Free. We shall also list the Ping services that you can use to ping whenever you update your Blog. This should help increase awareness of your new articles and attract more readers to your Blog. As the list is ever-growing, you might want to consider bookmarking this page as we shall update the list whenever we come across other useful services.

Even if you are not familiar with feeds, you would have probably seen this icon in your web browsers. When you come across a page with contents that are viewable in web feed formats, you will be able to click the icon in your browsers to subscribe to the feed of that page. These feeds may either be a full text or summary of the content. The content can be read on a feed reader or aggregator which checks the sites regularly for new content. The terms RSS and Atom are feed formats.

To ensure that your Blog is able to syndicate the feed content of your Posts, login to your Dashboard and go to Settings -> Site Feed. Make sure that you have set “Allow Blog Feed” to Short or Full. Save the settings.

Next, key this URL into your browser, substituting YOUR-BLOG-URL with the URL of your blog beginning with http://

YOUR-BLOG-URL/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Do you see your Blog feed? Next, test with this URL

YOUR-BLOG-URL/feeds/posts/default

You should be able to see the contents of your Posts, either in summary form or full, depending on your Settings. These are your Blog Feed URLs. You can submit any of them to the Feed Directories that we list below. If you have syndicated your feed to other services like Feedburner, you can submit that Feed URL too.

To confirm whether your URL is correct, you may also enter it into this RSS Feed Validator.

Submit Blog Feed to Feed Directories

1. General

2RSS

4Guys from Rolla - For resource RSS feeds.

ASP Index - For resource RSS feeds.

Blo.gs

BlogDigger

Bloglines

Blogz

Bloogz

BulkFeeds [Update: Site inaccessible]

Chordata - Register to submit RSS feed in relevant category.

Daypop - For news sites.

DayTimeNews

DevASP

Feed24

FeedAge - Register to submit RSS feed.

FeedBase

FeedBomb - Select a category to submit RSS feed.

FeedBlitz - Register to submit RSS feed.

FeedBurner - Register to submit RSS feed.

FeedCat - Register to submit feed in relevant category.

Feed-Directory

FeedDirectory

FeedFury

Feedmap

Feedooyoo - Submit RSS feeds and keywords.

FeedPlex

Feeds2Read

Feeds4All

FeedFarm – For news related RSS feeds.

Findory

FindRSS [Update: site inaccessible]

FreeRSS

FreshPodcasts - For podcasts.

GeneCast - Register to submit your news feeds.

GoldenFeed [Update: error message when adding feed]

IceRocket

JordoMedia

Memigo [Update: site inaccessible]

MoreOver

NewzAlert.com - Register to submit RSS feed.

nFeeds

Octora

Odeo - Register to submit RSS feed.

Plazoo

Postami

ReadABlog [Update: error message when adding feed]

RedTram

RocketInfo

Rojo - Register to submit RSS feed.

RSSFeed - Register to submit RSS feed.

RSSFeeds

RSSKnip - Add RSS feed at the bottom. [Update: not accepting new feeds]

RSSMad - RSS feed submission at bottom right.

RSSMicro

RSSMotron

RSSNetwork [Update: error message when adding feed]

Rubhub [Update: site inaccessible]

Search4RSS

Sourceforge - For news feeds.

Syndic8

Technorati

TheFeedDirectory [Update: unable to add feed]

Videocast - For videocast or vodcast.

WeBlogALot

2. Specific

Auto Feeds - For automotive feeds only.

Nooked - For corporate feeds only.

Educational Feeds - For educational podcasts and RSS feeds.

Finance Investing Feeds - For finance or investment related RSS feeds.

Government Feeds - Only for feeds from local and federal government agencies.

Medical Feeds - For medical care or health related RSS feeds.

National Lib for Health - For medical and health RSS feeds.

Political Feeds - For political podcasts and RSS feeds.

Realty Feeds - For home related RSS feeds in the appropriate category.

Religious Podcasts - For podcasts relating to religion, sermon or spiritual beliefs.

Science Port - For scientific news feeds.

Security Protection Feeds - For security or protection related RSS feeds.

Sports Feeds - For sports related podcasts and RSS feeds.

3. Regional

1470 - Japanese RSS feeds.

31engine - Japanese RSS feeds.

Bakeinu - Japanese RSS feeds.

Bitacoras - Spanish blogs.

Bitacoles - Spanish RSS feeds.

Blogblogs - Brazilian blogs.

Blogbot - Danish RSS feeds.

Blogg - German RSS feeds.

BlogPeople - Japanese RSS feeds.

Blog-search - Japanese blogs.

Blogstyle - Japanese RSS feeds.

Feeds.com.br - Portuguese RSS feeds.

RSS Israel - Israeli RSS feeds.

RSS Nachrichten - German RSS feeds.

RSS Verzeichnis - German RSS feeds.

Technorati.jp - Japanese version of Technorati.

Veneblogs - Venezuela blogs.

Weblogues - French RSS feeds.

Submit Blog Pings

Now that your Blog appears in several Blog and Feed directories, you would want to keep these directories and search engines notified of your latest blog updates. By pinging some of the services, they will be able to crawl or visit your site to index the latest blog contents. You can ping them when you have created a new post or updated an old post. Fortunately for us, there are a number of useful services that make it easy for us to submit the pings to the tracking sites.

First essential step. Go to Settings -> Publishing and under “Send Pings”, select “Yes”. Whenever your blog is updated, Blogger will ping certain services that track blog changes.

Rather than pinging individual tracking sites, we have been using services which help us update different sites and search engines that include Verisign's Weblogs.com, Yahoo!'s blo.gs, Technorati, Newsgator, Feedburner, Moreover, Bulkfeeds and Syndic8. All we need to do is to enter the Blog URL and Blog Title and they will send the pings to all the sites we select.

Ping Services

Google Blog Search Ping Service - We thought we should mention this. For new bloggers who do not find their sites when they key them into the NavBar search box, ping this site.

Pingoat - A very comprehensive list of sites that you can choose to ping. The service is also very fast and it is done within seconds.

Ping-O-Matic - Less comprehensive list.

Blog Flux Ping Service - A list of sites as comprehensive as Pingoat's but the ping takes a much longer time and is not often successful.

Feeds Pings - A short list but has pretty relevant sites.

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Submit Blogger Sitemap to Yahoo!

Publicize your site by having your Blogger.com or Blogspot.com blog site included in Yahoo! Directory and Yahoo! Search. I went to the official Yahoo! submission of URL page and clicked the link “Submit Your Site for Free”. You will be prompted to log in using your Yahoo! account. For those of you who do not have a Yahoo! account, simply sign up for one. It is Free.

After you have your Yahoo! account, and are logged in, you will see this screen.



Select “Submit Site Feed” and enter the URL of your Blog's site feed. You can use either:-

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml

OR

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Remember to replace YOURBLOGNAME with that of your Blog's. For Blogger blogs, do not add "www." to YOURBLOGNAME. Once the Sitemaps are submitted, click the “Authentication” link shown at the top right hand corner of the page.



You will now have to authenticate your site ownership with Yahoo!, by either uploading a verification file to your site, or adding a META tag to your site. The authentication via a META tag was only introduced by Yahoo! recently, on Jan 30, 2007.

Note: Blogs created under Blogger.com or Blogspot.com cannot upload a verification file in the root directory. The first method is therefore NOT applicable to you.

The only way to authenticate your Blogger.com and Blogspot.com blogs with Yahoo! is to add a META tag. Copy the META tag that is generated for you, and paste it in your site's home page in the first section of the page, before the first section. What you do is to go to your Blogger dashboard. Under Template ->Edit HTML, somewhere near the top of the script, add the META Tag as follows:-

<head> <META Tag> <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

Remember to replace the META Tag with the code generated by Yahoo! Site Explorer. Once done, Save the Template. When you return to Yahoo! Site Explorer, click the button that says “Ready to Authenticate” as shown below.



You will see a message that says “Your site is pending authentication.” Check back later, and you will notice that your site is now indexed and crawled by Yahoo!

According to the Yahoo Site Explorer instructions:-

“If you have added the META tag, please keep the tag in your site's home page. We will revalidate your site ownership by checking this META tag regularly.”

It is alright to leave this meta tag as well as the Google sitemap meta tag in your template.

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Submit Blogger Sitemap to Google Webmaster

Submitting your Blogger.com or Blogspot.com blog site to Google Webmaster will enable Google to find, index, and rank your site. For those who are new to this, you may go to the official Google Webmaster Tools site to create a new Webmaster profile.

Upon logging in using your Gmail account, key in your blog site URL, and click OK. You will then be asked to verify your site. This is to ascertain that you are indeed the owner of the site.

There are two ways to verify your site. You can either add a Meta Tag or Upload an HTML file. If you are using the Meta Tag method, Google will generate a Meta Tag code. Copy the META tag that is generated for you, and paste it in your site's home page in the first section of the page, before the first section. What you do is to go to your Blogger dashboard. Under Template ->Edit HTML, somewhere near the top of the script, add the Meta Tag as follows:-

<head> <META TAG> <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

Replace the META TAG with the code generated by Google Webmaster. Once done, Save the Template. When you return to Google Webmaster site, you can click the button that says “Verify”.

Note: The second method of uploading an HTML file is NOT applicable to Bloggers using Blogger.com or Blogspot.com because this requires you to upload a file to the root directory of your Blog, which is not possible. There is therefore only one method for you to verify your site, and that is by inserting the Meta Tag as explained above.

After you have had your site verified, click on the Sitemaps tab as shown below. By adding a Sitemap, you will be providing Google with more details and information about your Blog. With this, Google will crawl your site, report information on any errors in the Sitemaps tab, and index your Blog site at a faster rate.



Click the link that says “Add a Sitemap”. This will take you to another screen where you should choose the type “Add General Web Sitemap”. The Sitemap URL for any normal website is usually the index page that is stored in the highest-level directory of that site. In the case of Blogger.com or Blogspot.com, the only way to add a Sitemap is to use either of the following 2 Sitemaps:-

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml

OR

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Remember to replace YOURBLOGNAME with that of your Blog's. For Blogger blogs, do not add "www." to YOURBLOGNAME. Once you have added your Sitemaps, you will receive a confirmation telling you that reports are being generated but “may take several hours to update”. Congratulations! You have successfully added your Sitemaps. When you login to your Google Webmaster days later, you should be able to see the indexed pages and statistics of Google webcrawl of your Blog.

Leave the meta tag in the template if you want to view the statistics of your site. If Google can't find the meta tag, it will show an error message in your webmaster toolbox and you may have to verify your site again.

You may want to read the articles on how to Submit Blogger URL sitemap to Yahoo! and Submit Blogger Sitemap to MSN and Ask.com. Also, submit your Blog to Blog Directories and Feed Directories to let more people know about your Blog. As well, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines for maximum exposure.

© www.RIOtunes.blogspot.com

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Submit Blog to Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) aims at increasing the volume and improving the quality of traffic to a website from search engine results. Search engines work on different algorithms to analyze the contents and keywords, and present the search results. Google, for instance, assigns page ranks to the sites and sites that rank highly will appear early in the results. Of course, many other factors are considered by search engines, such as relevance, unique content, coding and quality of links. The major search engines know that revealing these factors will only encourage manipulation of the ranking system and have thus been secretive about how the ranking algorithms work.

While no SEO consultant can be absolutely certain about how each search engine views your site, the common agreement is that the more visible your site is on the internet, the higher your ranking will eventually be. Having your site linked to by many other sites and indexed by different search engines increase its exposure and visibility. We have given readers a list of Blog Directories and Feed Directories. In this article, we shall provide a list of search engines where you can submit your website or Blog URLs for Free and have your site or Blog indexed by the search engines.

Website Indexing

Unless you have created a private blog, it is a matter of time that your blog is indexed by the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. One of the fastest ways to have your site indexed is to get another site that is already in the search engine listings to link to you. When the search engine crawlers visit that site, they will find your site and index it. We tried this out by linking to our new Blog and it appeared in Google search listings within three hours. Hence, try this method if you do not want to wait for search engines to approve your site submission.

Before we proceed to the list of search engine sites, there are a few points to note:-

1. To check if your site has been indexed by a search engine, enter the full URL into their search query. For some search engines like Microsoft Live Search, enter site: followed by the full URL. If you see your site appearing in the search results, it has been indexed and there is no need to resubmit the site.

2. If your Blog has been linked to by Blog Directories, websites or Blogs, you may see these other sites that mention your Blog appearing first in the search results. More likely than not, they have a higher page rank. Scroll through the remaining search result pages and you will probably find a listing that is solely about your Blog.

3. When submitting your site, you do not need to submit the URL of each individual webpage. Submit only the top-level webpage and for Blogger Blogs, it will be an address like this http://blogname.blogspot.com without the www. before the blogname.

4. You can submit your sitemap to Google and login to Google Webmaster site to know the status of the indexing and view traffic statistics. Also, submit your sitemap to Yahoo! to find out more about the index and links to your site. Submit Blogger Sitemap to MSN and Ask.com too.


5. If you add your URL in Yahoo!, it will appear in their other search sites like AlltheWeb and AltaVista as well. Similarly, AOL Search uses the data by Google.

6. Some of the sites send advertisements and newsletters to you in exchange for free submission. If you don't want that, remember to opt out of it. Avoid having your regular email account filled with these mail by creating another free web-based email account just for website submissions.

7. Since search engines have different standards of content, design and technical specifications, submission of your site does not guarantee that it will be included in their database.

List of Search Engines

You may submit your site URL to these search engines for Free. If you lack the time, submit your site to the top few leading search engines.

• Google
• Yahoo! Search
• Microsoft Live Search
• Alexa Web Search
• Baidu (Chinese search engine)
• ExactSeek
• SearchSight
• Scrub the Web
• EntireWeb
• Gigablast
• Exalead
• SearchKing
• whatUseek
• AnooX
• Splat Search
• Walhello
• SearchIt
• email Mozdex
• Jayde
• Infotiger
• Abacho (European search engine)
• Submit-one
• TowerSearch
• HotLaunch
• Shoula
• The-search-site
• Websquash
• Unasked
• eVisum (educational resource)
• DinoSearch
• SearchRamp
• SearchtheWeb
• SearchWarp
• Mixcat
• BestYellow
• Beamed

Website Submission Services

There are many sites on the internet offering free website submission services to search engines. The list of search engines are by and large the same. For a fee, some of them offer to send your URL to more than a hundred search engines. Is it necessary to have your webpage listed in all the smaller search engines? We think that Google, Yahoo! and MSN have cornered such a large share of the market that it is sufficient just to have your website listed there. However, the decision is yours to make. For a start, you may want to use their free services and monitor the traffic.

• FastSubmit
• Submit Express
• AddMe
• Freesubmissionweb
• ineedhits
• Submitshop
• Searchengineoptimising
• AddPro
• Pageranklist
• Freewebsubmission
• Amfibi
• Burf
• Jerkasmarknad
• LocalSubmit
• SrSubmit

We shall update this list every now and then and you may want to bookmark this page. Click the Bookmark button below and revisit this page.

© www.RioTunes.blogspot.com

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Submit Blog to Blog Directories (III)

This is a continuation from the earlier list of Blog directories to which you can submit your blog for free. For completeness, it is advisable to read the earlier installments Part I and Part II before you read this.

Feel free to share comments on your experiences with these sites but refrain from posting suggestions of new blog directory sites.

Blogflux

Other than a blog directory, the site also provides you with tools and utilities like a pinger form which can submit your feed to several websites.

Blogsearch

Serves its purpose as a blog directory well. You can list your blog in 3 different categories to maximize the exposure to visitors.

Bloghub

A fine blog directory which allows visitor ratings.

Findingblogs

This is not a big directory and hence navigation is easy and fast. [Update: Site is inaccessible and link is therefore removed.]

Bloggernity

This has been around for some time and has a large database of blogs.

Bloggernow

Almost the same layout as Bloggernity but this carries a much smaller collection of blogs.

Weblog-index

Simple and easy to navigate blog directory.

5starblogs

I wonder why some blogs have screenshots while many others don't. Anyway, this is a free directory you can consider listing your blog in.

Getblogs

I like this directory, mainly due to the sleek design and quick search speed.

Blogtree

Rather interesting to provide a blog genealogy. For some time, the site exceeded its bandwidth and access was cut. The administrator supposedly switched to a new server host and the site seems to be working very fine now. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

eBlogzilla

Such an interesting name for a blog directory. Approval for listing didn't take long.

Search4Blogs

The site is filled with too many advertisements, and the blog directory is a mere secondary aspect of it. Not to my liking, but it is a blog directory nevertheless.

BloggerTalk

This is a forum for bloggers. They have a blog directory as well, although don't bang on it that your blog will be included.

LSblogs

Another directory that is slow in approving your listing.

Be sure to click the Bookmark button below and check back here for a Part IV to this article on free Blog directories to submit your blog to.

For more visibility, you may want to submit your Blog to Feed Directories and ping your Blog every time your contents are updated. Also, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines for maximum exposure.

While you are looking at blog directories, you may also want to consider earning money while you are surfing the net. AGLOCO seems to have a nice scheme for you which you may want to take a look. You may also want to consider having AuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget which is compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. No harm trying it since it might give you an extra income.

© www.RioTunes.blogspot.com

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Submit Blog to Blog Directories (II)

This is a continued list of Blog directories to which you can submit your blog for free. If you have not read the first part, please check out Submit Blog to Blog Directories (I).


Again, I seek your understanding that while comments on your experiences with these sites are welcomed, kindly refrain from posting suggestions of new blog directory sites. As you will see, where there are voting gateways to the blog directories, visitors can either vote if they like the blog or enter the directory site without voting.

Blogvillage

If you can direct more visitors from your blog to visit this Blog Village site, chances are that your blog will appear in the first couple of pages. There is no search function, and viewers have to browse the pages to pick the blogs they want to view.

[Update: Search feature in place on May 6, 2007. Also, beginning Aug 1, 2007, to continue to be listed in the directory, you must have at least one click every month into their site from the voting link displayed in your Blog. They ask you to vote for yourself if you have to. After that vote is cast, your ranking in their directory is based on the Hits Out, meaning to say the more people visit your Blog through their site, the higher your ranking will be. Take note of this because this is unlike other directories which will rank you highly if you can get more readers to visit their site. We encourage you to check out the new blogs through Blogvillage, but if you have a blog listed there, do yourself a favor by clicking on your own blog too to register a Hit Out.]

Blogelites

The ranking is based on the number of unique votes from your blog visitors. The score is reset everyday. This directory is plagued by a number of inactive blogs though, and presently all you need is one visit a day to appear on the first page of the directory.

Myblogdirectory

This directory has an interesting concept. If you can drive some of your visitors to the site, your blog can be featured as the Blog of the Day.

Blogcatalog

The administrator was rather efficient in approving my blog. It has a huge catalog of blogs. I like the presentation and layout, simple and neat.

Blogarama

Quite a popular blog directory but has a slow access speed most of the time.

Blogion

Another simple and neat blog directory.

Bloggeries

For a change, nice graphics and colors with an icon next to your listing to allow visitors to easily rate your blog. [Update: Submission for listing is no longer free.]

Bloghop

Nice design for a blog directory. It allows you to tagsurf, pixelsurf or ratesurf, and if you'd like, you could rate this blog to see the pretty cool graphics too.

Bloggingfusion

This is currently not a big directory, but has the makings of a good one.

Blog-search

A simple, no-frills blog directory.

Blogpoint

This looks like a new directory to me. The code given to you is supposed to monitor the hits by your visitors to the site.

Blogs-collection

Text-based, simple, and neat blog directory.

Globeofblogs

This was one of the first directories I submitted my blog to, and with their huge backlog, they seemed to be taking a really long time approving the listing. If you are linking to them using a link button, following their HTML code given on their main page will not work because they have not provided the URL of the button in the src tag. What you can do is to pick the button that you like, right-click on it and save the button onto your drive. Next, upload the button onto a free Image Host. Insert the URL into the code where src="URL of button".

Blogoriffic

On the contrary, approval at this blog directory took a much shorter time. It is however difficult to find the relevant blogs using their search box.

This article continues at Submit Blog to Blog Directories (III).

For more visibility, you may want to submit your Blog to Feed Directories and ping your Blog every time your contents are updated. Also, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines for maximum exposure.

While you are looking at blog directories, you may also want to consider earning money while you are surfing the net. AGLOCO seems to have a nice scheme for you which you may want to take a look. You may also want to consider having AuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget which is compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. No harm trying it since it might give you an extra income.

© www.RiOtunes.blogspot.com

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Submit Blog to Blog Directories (I)

How do you attract more readers and visitors to your Blog? To make your Blog more visible, the solution lies in submitting your Blog URL or RSS Feed to as many good Blog directories as possible. There are hundreds of websites touting themselves as blog search engines, blog directory hosts, feed aggregators, and traffic exchanges. A couple of the website creators are out to make a quick buck, selling their sites and member database on eBay the moment they attract sufficient traffic.

Over the past few weeks, I have submitted this Blog and RSS feed to many of these Blog directories for free. The first submissions were of course to Google and Yahoo; if you have not submitted your Blog URL to them, you may read the earlier articles on submitting sitemap to Google and submitting sitemap to Yahoo. At the same time, submit the Blogger Sitemap to MSN and Ask.com too.


Although my blog is only about 2 months' old at the time of this writing, if I were to enter my blog title “tips for new bloggers” into Google search, I am able to see it appearing at the top of the search results. Many of the other results are those of the blog directories in which this blog was listed. Listing in directories therefore helps in promoting your blog.

Before you proceed to submit your site to these directories, my personal advice is that you create a free web-based email account solely for this purpose. Should the directory hosts decide to sell their sites and database in future, your present email account would not be compromised. This is also to prevent flooding of your personal email with updates sent to you by the many directory administrators.

The aim of this article is to relate to you my experience in those free blog directories that I have tried submitting to. While I appreciate comments on these, please refrain from posting suggestions of new blog directory sites. A number of them may be fly-by-nights and I will not recommend them unless I have personally used them. Others may have specific requirements such as blogs having to be older than 6 months, or blogs covering specific news contents.

Different directories have different forms to fill when submitting your blog. Their instructions are usually easy to follow. However, you may want to note the following:-

1. Some directories require you to register before adding your Blog. While most of them allow you to submit more than one Blog, some may require you to use a different login name for each Blog. What I did in these situations was to create different login names but using the same email address.

2. If you are asked for the RSS Feed or your Feed URL, check that under your Settings -> Site Feed, the “Allow Blog Feed” shows either “Full” or “Short.” Do not choose “None.” Your Feed URL is yourblogURL/feeds/posts/default or yourblogURL/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss where yourblogURL is the URL of your Blog beginning with http:// Do not type in “www” for Blogger blogs. For example, our Atom Feed URL is http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default You can test it by typing your feed address into a web browser and view. If you have an external Feed address like a Feedburner Feed address, you may submit that too. I shall go into the details of Feed and Feed directories in a separate article.

3. Where you are to create a picture, banner, or link button to represent your blog, you can use Google's Picasa or any image editing software to create a new picture, or resize a current one to the required dimensions. Normally, you are required to upload it onto a free image host or server and provide the URL of your banner or picture. You can read about using free hosts like Google Page Creator and Google Groups. We also have a rather comprehensive list of free Image Hosts and File Hosting Services in our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space. Check out those sites and choose one that is fast, reliable and enables hotlinking to the uploaded files.

4. The “Reciprocal Link URL” is the main page where you will be putting a link to their blog directory. More likely than not, this will be the URL of your Blog.

5. The “meta keywords” or “tags” are keywords that represent your blog's content. Similarly “meta description” is a short few sentences describing your blog. Basically, “meta” tags provide information about your Blog for search engines to identify and match.

As the directory list is long, the article will be split into several parts, and updated as and when I try out the sites. Some sites track the number of the visitors to your blog. You may see voting gateways, which basically give visitors a chance to vote for your blog if they wish to. If they do not want to vote, there is always an option for them to enter the site without voting. Have a look at the directory sites and submit your blog to those you like.

Traffic Exchange Sites

A number of traffic exchange sites have blog directories which can include links to your blog. You may read my earlier article for a more detailed discussion on traffic exchange programs.

Blog Directories

Technorati

They supposedly track 75.2 million blogs. Quite naturally, you would want your blog to be one of them. Register with them and submit your blog. Follow their instructions to claim your blog. They will provide you with statistics like the number of blogs that link to you. You can also invite other members to favorite your blog.

Wikablog

If you are familiar with Wikipedia, this is the equivalent for blogs. It faces the same problems as Wikipedia i.e., while it is easy to list your blog, it is equally easy for others to edit your listing. Nevertheless, for a new blogger, this is one of the fastest way to have your blog appear in a directory. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

Fuel My Blog

This is an interesting directory. Unlike the usual text-based blog directories, this site goes by images that you create to represent your blog. When your visitors click a link on your site that says Fuel My Blog!, your image will move up the ranks and appear on the front page, making it more visible to directory viewers.

Blogtoplist

A blog directory listing that is sorted by the number of unique visitors to your blog. Your visitors can also cast a Vote to increase your ranking. The scores are reset every week to allow new bloggers like us a chance to be placed among the top.

Topblogsites

Here, you are ranked by unique hits based on the Votes you receive from your visitors. Many of the comments posted on the directory site are spam comments, and if you can disable comments, you might want to do that. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

Mybloggingarea

Another directory that ranks you based on the Votes and the number of unique visitors to your site.

Topblogarea

A blog directory that tracks unique visitors. Unlike the earlier ones, visitors do not vote at this directory.

Blogflare

This is a simple, nice blog directory that tracks your unique visitors and pageviews. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

Topblogging

Here, you are ranked based on unique visitors. Although there is a count for votes in, somehow the code provided by them did not track this vote count.

Blogroll

I joined this directory only about a week ago. A simple directory that monitors the Votes and unique hits.

Worldtopblogs

Ranking is by the Votes cast by the visitors to your blog.

Topbloglists

There is a voting gateway for your visitors but ranking is based on unique pageviews.

This article continues at Submit Blog to Blog Directories (II).

For more visibility, you may want to submit your Blog to Feed Directories and ping your Blog every time your contents are updated. Also, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines for maximum exposure.

While you are looking at blog directories, you may also want to consider earning money while you are surfing the net. AGLOCO seems to have a nice scheme for you which you may want to take a look. You may also want to consider having AuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget which is compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. No harm trying it since it might give you an extra income.

www.RiOtunes.blogspot.com 

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