Do you speak a foreign language? Or were you the kid in the back of the class that thought that the class was too hard or that the scripted dialogues were too lame? Yesterday, during an interview, I was reminded again just how invaluable being a polyglot can be. I mention in this blog that I speak a couple of other languages besides English not to brag, but just to share some of my experiences and some of the places I’ve been able to go simply as a result of having that skill. I would suggest to you that this … Continue reading →

I believe that it is truly important as an employee (but as a person in general, to always ask yourself how you can improve in certain areas of your life. If you feel that your eating habits leave little to be desired, then you should consider eating better foods. If you have been lagging behind in the exercise department, it might be time to dust off those running shoes and take them out for a jog. Do you have a bad habit that you need to break? Then sit down and make a plan to do so. To me, life … Continue reading →

In my last blog, I talked about leaving comments on blogs in order to get the blog owners to notice you, and consequently link to you. Nowhere in that blog did I tell you to e-mail a bunch of sites and ask them to add you to their blogroll. (A blogroll is a list of blogs that a site will put into their sidebar, and that list of blogs usually corresponds very closely to the topic of that blog, meaning you likely won’t find a blog about politics in the blogroll of a cooking blog, and vice-versa.) E-mailing other blogs … Continue reading →

Here we discussed what page ranking was, and here we discussed how Google determines your page ranking. Now let’s figure out how to raise your Google ranking. As I already said, Google rewards people for incoming links, and the high ranked the page is that is linking to you, the more Google rewards you. So it seems like it would only make sense to go after the really high ranking blogs (a 6 or higher) and ignore everyone else. Although this makes sense on the surface, it doesn’t actually work, because a high ranking blog will be inundated with requests … Continue reading →

As I just covered, the higher the page ranking, the more traffic a website receives. This is important to you, the blogger, because if you write an article for a website that has a low page ranking (a 0 or a 1) then the exposure for that article will be minimal at best. If you put that article up on a website that has a high page ranking (a 5 or higher) then you are going to receive quite a bit more traffic, for the same exact article. Since traffic usually means ad revenue, you want traffic. I promise, you … Continue reading →

I have mentioned Page Ranking from Google before, and I wanted to take a moment to explain what it is, and what it means for your blog. The Page Rank (or PR) from Google is a scale from 0 to 10, 0 being a brand-new blog or website, and 10 being one of the most important websites on the Internet. Google assigns a Page Rank to a blog based on a multitude of factors, which I’ll get into in my next blog. Right now, let me explain how your Page Rank affects you. In a nutshell, the higher the PR … Continue reading →

If you missed Part One, check it out here. We discussed having to produce a set amount of blogs each month/week/day, having a set topic you have to write on, and the fact that you can’t blog for companies like PayPerPost or ReviewMe while blogging for a company. There are more downsides – read on: *Each blog has to have at least X amount of words in it. They can usually be longer than the requirement, but they can never be shorter. If you watched a YouTube video and thought it was good enough to want to share on the … Continue reading →

I just finished writing about the great benefits that come from blogging for a company but there are also some disadvantages that come from blogging for a company versus running a personal blog. Check out the following: *You have a set amount of blogs per month or per week or even per day that you have to write. Many company blogs say “X is the least amount of blogs you can write per month, and Y is the most.” You cannot just write when you’re “in the mood” – you have signed a contract to produce and you must produce … Continue reading →

If you missed it, here is Part One. Knowing how much you’ll make as a blogger is a great benefit of working for a company, but there are more. Check them out: *The Page Rank for a company blog is almost always higher than the Page Rank for a start-up personal blog. This is only true in the case of where the company blog is established – if the company blog is a start up also, then obviously the Page Rank will be nonexistent at first. If you don’t know what I mean by “Page Rank,” then check out the … Continue reading →

I have talked about the great benefits of having a personal blog and now I wanted to talk about the upside to working for a company as a blogger. *You know how much you’re going to make with each blog entry. When you have a personal blog, you may only end up making pennies each month, literally. When I write a blog for Families, on the other hand, I know exactly how much I am going to make from each blog. I can calculate how much my paycheck will be before it is even cut and sent to me, and … Continue reading →