When you have just started out with a new website of any kind it is often hard to get attention flowing towards your content. If you are writing a blog this can mean that you enter your sixth week wondering if anyone has even noticed your world class writing.

What you need is a Blog Boost.

Run by yours truly the Cohort of Blog Boosters is a class that runs just once or twice a year with the aim of getting just ten new bloggers up and running with a healthy head start.

Topics include getting a minimum of page rank of 4 with google.com which should be relatively easy with a little help scoring good quality inbound links (what they are, why you should want them and the right way to seek them) and how to pick a good blog platform which many readers may be aware the team here has very strong views on.

Click here to sign up

If you are even slightly serious about running your own blog the last place you want to be is Google's blogger.com and yet it is by far the single most popular blogging platform currently available.

This leadership is somewhat undeserved. Blogger.com lacks a significant number of tools and features that others take for granted (trackbacks, Bayesian filtration of comments, static pages, choice of XML feed format and threaded comments to name a few) and has the reputation of holding the largest collection of spam anywhere on the Internet.


Sure it is great if you live under an oppressive government and need the freedom to speak out but in any other case with even UK£10 (about US$20) to spend you can do so much better for yourself. Even without that modest budget other free options exist and merit some investigation.

A huge problem with blogger.com (especially the hosted for free domains on blogspot.com) is the vast number of pure spam blogs that use the service.

If you want people to take your blog seriously you need to place a certain amount of distance between yourself and the spammers or this open and well known abuse could hinder your rise to fame.

Mark Cuban, owner of Ice Rocket (the blog search site) was back in 2005 seriously considering removing all blogspot.com blogs from the listings as the spam blogs were drowning out all legitimate bloggers.

The situation might be slightly better today but the feeling still remains that you put a blog on blogspot if you don't actually care about it.

What I’ve found, though, is that a large percentage (maybe up to a third) of all Blogspot blogs are spam-logs - sites created to increase the Google ranking of some other site (which is itself usually a Google-spamming site). The ultimate purpose of these spamlogs is usually to drive traffic to a commission-paying pharmacy, pr0n, or casino site. — geektronica.com

Is that the kind of company that you want to keep?

But even if Google do get around to cleaning up the service (and they are showing no real sign of doing so) another question still remains - who owns your blog?

If your blog is a business venture or for an official company blog the question to ask is: "why is your company so cheap as to not even host the blog properly?" Perhaps, people will say, neither the company nor the blogger understand blogs and blogging or maybe does not care.

This is not something you need people to be thinking.

But it is not just business bloggers that should think twice before using blogger.com - take for an example the story of Charlotte Wyatt.

Charlotte was born extremely early and had to be resuscitate several times in her first few weeks of life. She was subject to a "do not resuscitate" order and was at the centre of a prolonged legal battle to have this order lifted. Her parents maintained a blog on the subject hosted by blogspot.

Now blogger.com (the direct owners of blogspot.com) are a US based company subject to the laws of the United States of America but when the UK courts decided that this information was not in the public's best interest they ordered Blogger to take down the blog.

Blogger.com acted without hesitation or challenge.

According to savecharlotte.com the message they got looked like this:

Hello,

We’d like to inform you that we’ve received a court order regarding your
blog charlottewyatt.blogspot.com. In accordance with the court order,
we’ve been forced to remove your blog.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

The fact remains that blogger.com were under no requirement to do anything and have appealed to their own government to protect freedom of speech. However, it is expensive to consult the legal department (apparently) and require that the UK authorities justify themselves especially when the customer in question gives you no money ever.

Goodbye blog, fair well readership, TTFN search engine placement, so long, nice to know you.

You own exactly what you paid for (nothing) and must start again.

In preparing to write this article I looked at a lot of blogs and what I found was that more blogspot blogs than all other bloggers said they would not use blogger had they known when they started what they know now.

It could be argued that the unique selling point (the draw power if you like) "...of blogspot is due to unawareness. blogspot is catching people young and once you get some publicity you are left with no way back. --AjiNIMC

Once you start with Blogger you are stuck with them unless a way to move elsewhere (with your data and blog readers) can be found.

These solutions do exist but they are not well publicised nor evenly documented.

As a “Problogger” I’ve got to say that I’d NEVER set up a serious blog on a free service. Why? it’s a matter of control. If you are serious about blogging you’ll want to be sure that forever more you’ll have 100% control over your blog and will not be dependent on Google for your hosting. Every time I see a commercial or “Pro” blog launched that uses Blogger I cringe. — problogger.net

If you already run a website then surely the blog should be on that site too?

If you don't run a website and indeed have never run a website, (not even a blog) and are now starting to consider you options ask yourself these questions first:

What will I do if I want to criticise my host (Blogger or Google)?
What will happen if a government is frightened by my posts?
What would I do if I wanted to run a shop?
What does my being on a free host say about me and my blog?
What if my activities or content one day find they are not in line with a revision of the TOS?
What will I do if I need a feature and it is not there?
How can I collect statistics about my readers?
What will I do about the regular "downtime"? (for a long while now Blogger.com has suffered from regular periods of "down time" where the service becomes temporarily unavailable)
If blogspot gets blocked from the big portals how will that effect me?
Does my school, college or workplace blog blogspot.com automatically to protect it's networks?

These questions can easily be answered (or stop being a consideration at all) at any time if you control the domain and the content. When you control he data it is much harder for bad luck, a falling out or a suspect court order to shut you down.

It takes only a little extra effort to find a platform to suit you and your requirements. That effort while seeming a bit much now will be something you will be very grateful for later.

We will be the first to admit that quick blog is not for everyone but plenty of other good options do exist. NucleusCMS, Wordpress, and many more. You can try out 16 Blogs and over 50 full on content management systems at opensourcecms.com before you make up your mind.

With any of the above and from under £12 (or less) you could purchase basic hosting (on Linux with php and MySQL) and a domain name you could setup any one of the 70+ site frameworks all under your full control.

As frameworks go NucleusCMS is easy to get going and has a good strong support community for English, German and Japanese (as well as other languages to a lesser degree). It has our approval (it's what we run here).

The software you may need to upload with (an FTP program) is free too with a free and open source FTP program like FileZilla which will cost you nothing but a few minuets download (longer over a 56K connection).

The strongest reason for doing this is that having spent a little money on a domain you have a name unsullied by other people's actions and you can take data, platform, inbound links and everything else with you to another provider if things go wrong or an oppressive court action threatens to override your basic freedoms. No man in a suit can press a button and take that from you.

But if you are stuck with blogspot then all this seems a little too late.

Fortunately help is at hand and over the coming weeks we will be looking at what we can do to help you get from blogger to blogging.

Links are not everything but in the world of the website they an count for a great deal.

A link is how you visitors find your site and how search engines judge your site. It does not matter if you are working on a website for the huge corporation where you work or for a blog about your cat. Once the basics of content are in place you are going to need a few links to get you started. (The basics being: content that people will want to look at).

The world and his brother want to tell you how to do it but when it comes to getting links there are the good, the bad and truly bad.

Below are listed the top recommended ways of getting your link out there. Assuming that you are not going to pay someone else a small fortune to do this for you mae sure you take the time to do it properly.

1. Press Release

The first place to look for getting linked to your site is the press release. If you are running a business or working for one then there should be some one able to write you a good quality press release. Even one based on a template will do.

Here is an example - this was a press release we created to announce our 6-in-1 SSL Certificates. Not complex but brief and to the point. Here is another example this time from Google.com herself.

You should be looking to get a series of these released tot he wider world over the first month of launch (which should be a little while after the site goes live, although that is another story for another time).

If your site is informal or off beat then sites like Buzz42 are a good place to post your press release. Other user submitted article sites may require that you write an article about the subject instead and this too is good but only if you or your team have time or money to get articles written.

Generally whatever else you do you should be looking to submit your release to press release sites. Several hundred of these sites exist but you should cherry pick only the best. If you are going to be spending money be sure to use just a few sites maybe four at most.

Examples of such sites are pr.com and prnewswire.com.

2. Network, Network, Network

If you are running a small business or even if you are running a larger one you will be only to aware of the power of networking to bring in custom. Without it many business would die.

There is nothing different about getting you name (or link) about on line - the game is just the same, as they say.

If you have built up a good relationship with people who write blogs or regularly review things that you are offering from your site then now would be the time to drop them a line. Snap off a few short emails and ask your contacts to consider you for review.

For the one man band just starting out on-line you may find yourself without many contacts.

If that is you then you need to start networking and making friends. If you have done your homework prior to creating your site you should have a good idea who the leaders in your field are. If you have not already stopped of to their sites and engaged them in conversation (leaving comments, filling out a feed back form or contact form) then you should do so now.

While you are getting to know the people around you perhaps your site (especially if it has or is a blog) could carry a review of others. This will at the very least get you recognition as a team player.

Ideally you wanted to have a large number of friends before you started but if you went into this cold its better late than never.

Go and make friends with other people. Don't be afraid to ask for advice or help.

3. Search Basics

So your content is building up nicely and you have a few contacts and you have a few press releases out there. It is time to put your attention on the search giants.

First make sure you are correctly listed in the open directory project. Many search engines use it as a starting point.

Each search engine has it's own rules on how you should let them know about your site so take the time to read up on them before filling out the forms.

After you have submitted your site the search engines are likely to sit on that for ages. While you wait there are a few lesser activities that will add up in your favor later.

4. Other Bits

Are there any specialist listings or communities specifically focused on your market segment or area of interest? Join up.

Is there an outspoken columnist or blogger in your market segment or area of interest? Make sure that they know you exist. Write to them personally and engage with them. They may rubbish you in public or they may praise you but they will link and people will follow those links.

Are you doing anything newsworthy and if not could you arrange to? If so set it up and then let a smattering of bloggers and writers know about it. Talk about it on your site too. This would also be a good chance to get another press release out.

When sending company emails (or personal emails if it is a personal site) be sure that ever message has your web address on it. If your company is large enough to have headed paper get the address added to the headed paper.

Make sure all employees know about the site.

In a large company the chances are some of the employees write blogs. The fastest way to find out is to do a Google search. Int he event that you snag a few people (say Barney from accounts and Jane from reception) ask them to review the site. In fact see if you can get clearance to give them a monetary or work related incentive.

Perhaps you can arrange for them to have access to the executive suit for the day. Don't forget to recommend them tot he boss in your project report saying how they used personal resources for the good of the company. If your two bloggers find they get pay rises or outright promotions out of the work they have done you can be sure that they will blog about it (on their own time and for free).

A similar result can be had by offering something free on the site itself, drop an email to those blog writers you have made friends with and perhaps the local press and leak the word out.

Free stuff is impossible to keep secret and people wills tart telling each other and best of all bloggers will start blogging about it.

In this exclusive article we will be looking at globallylocal.com and what we can expect to see once the code starts to roll into production and the doors are opened to the public later this year.

While some surprises no doubt remain I think it is safe to say that some things can be predicted with savage certainty.


Adullam Limited started globallylocal.com (GL) the day the company formed. It was written in classic ASP and based on a HND project of Adullam Limited's Founder Matt Brown.

Shortly thereafter it added an open source project called MaxWebPortal which was reworked into MaxWebEdit.

The plan had always been to create a user-centric portal of information relating to take-aways, business and local amenities reviewed and categorized by the customers that use them. It seemed clear that the selfsame feedback systems used to build customer confidence on auction sites combined with the power of user opinion meant that a single system could answer such questions as "Which of these sixteen is the best plumber?", "Where can I get a good pizza" or even "I'm a woman and want to get my car repaired but not my body ogled - where is best?"

If you could find out the average price of a pint in pub, if they have football or cricket and what state the pool table is when trying to find a good local after moving to a new town. That would be something useful.

But for the shop in some little town somewhere that makes custom saddles for motor bikes. That shop might be the only one like it. But the profit margin is such that they may not feel it wise to try and set up and run a web shop on top of everything else. But if they were able to be found via a really good index maybe they could trade with people living the other end of the country.

Suddenly little shops would have the edge over bigger chains and who knows where it could end.

That is still the dream to this day.

However, It soon became clear that ogled did not handle objects in the way that GL needed and a new open-source project was started to stimulate innovation. However more problems were to emerge. First ASP was ending it's time in the sun and being replaced by ASP.NET and second the database of choice was starting to return messages such as "QUERY TOO COMPLEX".

What was being attempted was not going to happen on that platform. This meant that whatever the next step learning of a new platform and language was pretty certain.

After much soul searching a new platform was selected it would be selected purely for the power of it's data system.

The winner in the cost verses benefit trade off was something called MySQL and it one by a very wide margin. Not only was it free but it was widely supported and well documented.

MySQL had a number of features that would prove invaluable to the design process - the ability to use regular expressions (complex pattern matching) rather than simple like statements. What was immediately obvious was that this would allow more relevant results from search.

MySQL works with a large number of platforms and whatever shouted loudest would be the winner.

One that stood out was Linux, Apache and PHP in a set up so common as to be known as LAMP. The M being the MySQL element that would allow the complex data interrogation.

A new project orbit42 was started from scratch to allow building blocks to be rapidly assembled from a base class that would play nicely with any other well written system.

Orbit42 is almost ready to start test runs of the code with the public and gloallylocal.com is preparing to create the biggest global listing of useful information that has ever been created.

So what can we expect?

To start with expect to see the simple stuff - user accounts, user profiles and a few map related technologies but expect that to come with the ability to list and tag your favorite take away, taxi firm or pub.

Also expect to be able to search an aggregated subset of that public knowledge.

Expect the different "whats" (pub, hotel, shop, park...) to have different questions associated with it.

But most of all expect the site to become very popular.

More than that, I can not say. But it will be very good, very rich in information and free to access, being largely uncluttered by things like adverts or needless images.

"Lord Matt" is offering £100 or about $200 for bloggers wishing to earn money writing content for us here. If you would like to get hold of some of that cash read on.

I wish to give away my money to the tune of UK£100 (or the next best thing a paypal payment of same). UK£100 is about US$200 give or take a little. I also wish to give you an SEO boost with a golden one way link.
-- lordmatt.co.uk

I'm not going to go into detail here as you can read the full condition on the site itself but I will summarize the aim of this blog more clearly.

We are just starting out but plan to offer a selection of howto's and news on the hosting and domain name industry as well as over views of some of our best offers.

Our aim is to produce content that demonstrates that we are the number one choice for domain's and hosting for bloggers and business use alike.

We will also be showcasing the talents of Adullam Limited's best coders and developers (Adullam Limited is the UK company that established parent site globallylocal.com and is currently finalizing the code that will run the service there). We will be giving you access to these developers so that you can not only get a great deal on your domain name and hosting but access to unique and customized web applications and solutions.

Not stopping there we want to show you how your company can stop showing flash movies and start using the company website to enhance it's business and business operations.

All this and more is coming up very, very soon.

Podcasts are quickly becoming the way to broadcast your message across the Internet. According to some sources there are more than 10 million people already downloading and listening to podcasts, and the number of podcasts available on the web is growing daily.

With all that in mind one has to wonder if those seeking blog fame and riches that are not podcasting are missing out.

Just as a recap here are a few podcasting basics (edited from the wikipedia page).

A podcast is a media file that is distributed by subscription over the Internet using syndication feeds (XML), for playback on mobile devices and personal computers.

Like 'radio', podcast can mean both the content and the method of syndication.

The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

The term "podcast" is derived from Apple Computer's mp3 playback device iPod. However, known synonyms for the word pod are capsule, case, container, hull, husk, shell, and vessel. A pod is obviously a container of some sort and the idea of broadcasting to a container or pod correctly the describes the process of podcasting.

Much like the standard blog the world of the pod cast has some key directories that you would want to submit to such as podcast.net, podcast411 or podcastalley.com along with the more obviouse choices such as iTunes and Yahoo!

There is even a pod cast "oscars" of sorts at podcastawards.com.

Now all that remains for a good article is the how to...

How to Podcast

To get started you will need

Minimum
computer and a microphone.
Somewhere to upload the content
Generate and publish podcast RSS feeds (which iTunes and other directories pick up on)

Optionally:
notify Podcast Directories, (including iTunes and Yahoo!), when your new podcasts are available.
Stock sound effects
Free to use background music (see resource section for more).

In simplest terms you need to simply create an audio (or vedio) file recording and embed this into the XML. Being highly biased I would suggest that you use my product - the Quick Podcast service.

Quick Podcast makes it easier than ever to create, publish and share your own audio and video podcasts - use it with your own personalized domain name or set up as a subdomain. Whether you want to share news about your hobby with friends in faraway places or want to share your knowledge about your profession with the world, Quick Podcast has all you need to create and publish your own podcast... for a very affordable price!
Quick Podcast from globallylocal.com and Lord Matt

However, I am aware that other solutions exist. Having not tested them I can offer no real comment and so shall leave that up to other bloggers to cover.


More resources:

One of the biggest problems is finding content that is ok to use in your cast. your voice is fine but what if you want a jingle or some backing music? As such much of this section covers such resources.

Quick Podcast (obviousely)
The Podcasting Legal Guide From Creative Commons
beatpick.com has a large collection of Creative Commons music aranged by category.
The Wikimedia Commons is a good general source of free stuff.
For you sounds (not tunes) you can't go wrong with The Freesound Project

Feel free to comment and link to more lagit free to use content or just to pass comment. Don't be shy now let me know what you think.


Diclosure: Brought to you by Lord Matt, globallylocal.com and the Quick Podcast.

Quick Podcast plans are among the most reliable in the industry with a 99.9% uptime and free, expert support available 24/7. And whether you're new to podcasting or a seasoned expert, your plan is a snap to use.

Originally posted here