When and How Will Google Index My Website?

Question
I have a two-part question about how Google indexes sites:

1. Is Google supposed to index an entire site at once or does it do so incrementally? My blog (on my own domain) appears to be getting indexed incrementally, to the point where it’s taken a month to index all 30+ of my pages. Most of those pages were present before I manually submitted my URL to Google. I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong or not doing something I should be doing. Does this have anything to do with my blog being new, or having no external links pointing to it?
2. Does Google eventually drop noindex and 404 pages? I have archive pages that got indexed but I have since added to them the “noindex” tag. I also deleted an empty category that Google now gets a 404 on. Will Google eventually remove those pages as it re-crawls my site?

I will answer to each question individually.

1. Most of the times Google will index a new website gradually, yes. That is at least what I have observed with most of my websites. The speed at which Google will index all your internal pages will depend on different factors though.
2. If you get some very trusted and relevant backlinks, and on top of that you also have a very efficient internal link structure, all your internal pages will get indexed fast. If, on the other hand, you have very few backlinks and a poor link structure, it might take a while before you get to see all your pages indexed.
3. Keep in mind that using the manual URL submission to Google will have a small impact upon the speed and breadth of your indexation. In fact many people recommend that if you want to get a site indexed fast you should NOT use that feature, and rather focus on getting some trusted backlinks to your site.
4. Yes, eventually Google will fix those issues. New sites don’t get crawled very often, so that is certainly the reason. As soon as Google finds out about the “noindex” tag, for example, it will remove those pages from their index.

Preparing for the Worst

By : Deny E.Y.
This is not about the problems and solutions, but something that might be experienced by a bogger.
When starting a blog, we always have a purpose, although perhaps just a simple goal. Some of us build a blog to introduce yourself and make the writings to be read by everyone so that the aspirations distributed to the public, partly to make a popular scientific articles of people and read every day, there is a blog to sell products and goods, there also the only fun and to have fun. Some of them realized that blogs can make money and want to make blogging as a major work for a living.
But, things do not always go according to plan and desire as if it is difficult to be fulfilled.
Yag problems may occur:

1. You really want a booming visitors but in fact even just to get some visitors have had to do 'blog walking' is exhausting to leave a trail link in other people's blogs.
2. Dreamed of writing a popular, but instead of getting fans actually feel one open end of the blog and instantly closed it in when they think have read the "garbage that must be avoided". Very sad.
3. Pursuing google pagerank or alexa rank but never moved from the bottom.
4. Crave dollars of ad clicks that were installed on the blog, but the fact that ad box to make allergy and avoided visitors vacant as a result of income.
5. Because of the things above, make us become bored and desperate.
6. Run out of ideas to develop a blog that is like a stalemate.
7. Offline and online activities you do not leave time for maintaining blog. Your wife or even interfere with your blogging activities.
8. Feeling frustrated with the blog for no apparent reason.
9. Blog without a clear vision that makes writing in shambles and no focus.

Once again, this is not about problems and solutions. But by knowing the potential obstacles that might happen to make us better prepared and able to develop their own ways to deal with, even before the problem above actually happened. That the road to success becomes more spacious and mulus.Selamat work!

Should I Use MyName.com as My Domain?

Source : DailyBlogTips

by Daniel Scocco

This post is part of the weekly Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

Vlad asks:

Should one start a blog using his own name or should he seek a general, more describing domain name? In other words, do you think that DanielScocco.com could have had the same success as DailyBlogTips.com when writing about blogging? To extend this question to other fields, do you think a writer, a historian etc, should brand his name or set up a blog using a specific domain name?

Quite a controversial topic, as there are people sitting on both sides of the fence here.

In my opinion the answer is connected to the goals that you have for your blog. Let me break down the different scenarios:

Scenario 1: You want to start a personal blog to talk about whatever comes to your mind, update friends and family about your endeavors and so on.

Ideal domain name: Either YourName.com or any other cool domain that you find and like. Since we are talking about a personal blog, there aren’t any rules here. Go with whatever you like best.

Scenario 2: You want to start a blog to promote your personal brand or your services. This could include writers, consultants, painters, lawyers and so on.

Ideal domain name: YourName.com. Keep in mind that in this scenario I am not talking about professionals who want to promote their companies. For those a domain with the name of the company is obviously preferred. I am talking about people who make money thanks to their personal brands, like Seth Godin.

Scenario 3: You want to start a blog on a specific niche and make it a popular site. You might want to monetize it in the future as well, either with advertising, affiliate marketing or by selling your own products and services.

Ideal domain name: Something descriptive, brandable, easy to spell, easy to remember and with a .com extension.

So to answer your initial question, I don’t think that DanielScocco.com would’ve been as successful as DailyBlogTips.com for this blog.

What you guys think though? Feel free to answer Vlad’s question with your own take on the issue.

Blogging Tips : 3 Methods to Showcase Your Best Content to New Visitors

This post is part of the weekly Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question.

Chanda Himanshu asks:

As with every blog, the latest post comes up pushing the others down. I have recently launched a business blog, and as part of attracting eyeballs I post some good content. By the time more people will visit the blog, however, that good content will be gone from the homepage. What pointers can you give on bringing the best posts in front of the new comers on my blog.

Making sure that new visitors can easily access your best content is indeed very important. Here are the three methods to achieve that.

1. The “Popular Posts” Section

This is probably the most common method, and it involves creating a section in your blog template where you can display your “Popular Posts.” Those posts can be chosen manually by you, or you can use a plugin to rank them according to page views, comments and the like.

Usually this section goes in the sidebar, but it can also be placed in the header, footer, and below single posts (e.g., aside or replacing the “Related Posts”).

2. The “Best Of” Page

If you don’t want to or can’t modify your template, you could create an internal page in your blog where your best content would be displayed. You can use a simple list, or even break down the popular posts per category or per month.

After that it would be a matter of linking to that page. Again there are several places that you could use for that link, including the main navigation menu and the sidebar. If you to make sure visitors will see that link, you create a special image or badge saying “Best of the Best” (or something like that) and place it in the sidebar.

3. The Roundups

Roundups are posts that have the goal of highlight your best content within a certain time frame. For example, you could have weekly, monthly, quarterly and even annual roundups. Usually they contain links and descriptions of your posts.

Apart from being useful for your visitors, roundups can also bring some SEO value as they contain keyword rich links to posts that already have good chances of ranking in search engines.

Blogging Tips : Should I Add a Donation Button to My Blog?

A question that hits my inbox or is sent to me on Twitter from time to time is - ‘Should I Add a Donation Button to My Blog?‘

When I first started blogging 7 years back it was not uncommon to see bloggers attempting to add an income stream to their blog with some kind of a donation button or invitation on their blog. Often these buttons were tied to a PayPal account that enabled the readers of the blog to send the blogger a little money as a thank you and/or as an encouragement to keep blogging.

Many bloggers tried the reader donation model as a way to make money from blogging but few made it work.

Example of Someone Who Made it Work (For a While)

One of the few who was able to sustain himself completely via donations was Jason Kottke who in 2005 famously quit his job to focus upon his blog solely funded by the generosity of his readers (see his supporter list for 2005 as an example of the large numbers of gifts he received).

His model was simple and worked to at least some level - one month a year he called for people to become micropatrons - he limited these calls for donations to a week long campaign so as not to overdo it with readers over a full year. You can read some reflections on how it went in the first year here - he actually did make enough from the donations to keep his income to a level he could live off but in his reflections admitted that it might not be a feasible model in the long term.

Jason proved that it was possible to make a living from your blog solely on the back of reader gifts - but it is worth noting that these days he has sold advertising on his blog (via the Deck) since 2006 and in his RSS feed.

I’m not completely sure of the reason that Jason switched his model to an ad based one back in 2006 but in chatting to quite a few other bloggers who went down the donation model route I suspect it was a pretty difficult model to sustain - even for a blog with large traffic like Kottke.

Can Donation Buttons Work?

So in answering this question of whether donations ‘can’ work on a blog I guess we’d have to answer with a ‘yes’ - at least in theory. However the reality is that they are not likely to work on the vast majority of blogs.

If they were to work I suspect the blog would have to have some or all of these factors:

1. a very large readership - a small % will always be willing to donate but to get enough to live off you’d need a large readership
2. a very loyal readership - obsessed readers who simply couldn’t live without the blog who were willing to dip into their own pockets to keep it running. Of course to get this high loyalty you need to provide readers with something that they can’t live without whether that be some kind of service or fulfillment of a need of some kind.
3. no other forms of income - I think sites with lots of other income streams (advertising, affiliate programs) would be likely to see a decreased chance of readers contributing as there would be a perception that the blog was already making money

Donations as a supplementary Income

So making a living solely from donations is not likely unless you have a lot of raving fans - but this doesn’t mean it is a model with no merit at all. I do know of a couple of bloggers who are using it as a secondary income source. They know they’ll not make a lot of money from it but are still able to supplement their other non blogging income streams with the donations that their blog brings in.

One of those bloggers just uses a PayPal donations button and another uses a ‘Buy me a Beer’ WordPress plugin under their posts. Neither sees big money but both are happy to let this help earn them some extra dollars instead of running advertising on their blogs.

Adding Value to Supporters

Let me finish by saying that one way that I think donations could work for some bloggers is if they gave extra value to those who made donations. Whether this be by giving away a free ebook with donations, allowing donators to be listed somewhere, giving them larger avatars and a signature in their comments….. etc. This is a model that I’ve seen quite a few forums use successfully. It’s not purely a donation in that the person paying gets something in return but it is a low cost way for those using the site to give something back but also get something to acknowledge their gift.

Have you Ever Asked for or Received Donations on your Blog?

Got some experience to share on this topic? I’d love to hear your story of asking for and/or getting donations on your blog in comments below.

Blogging Tips : Trouble Installing WordPress?

Try EasyWP Install

Installing WordPress manually is not a hard task, but I might be biased here since I have been doing it for the past three years or so. For someone just starting out on the web and with no technical knowledge whatsoever it could be problematic.

The easiest way to solve this problem is by getting a hosting plan on a company that offers the Fantastico script. That script basically provides a one-click install of many open source software and applications, including WordPress.

Not all hosting companies offer Fantastico, though, and maybe you already signed up on one and can’t change now. For those people there is a new tool called EasyWP Install. It is basically a PHP script that you need to upload to your server and execute by accessing www.yourdomain.com/easywp.php. The script will then download all the WordPress files automatically and put them on your server. After that you will just need to finish the installation by going through the WordPress setup.

The script is obviously free and licensed under the GPL, so check it out.

Blogging Tips : When did you get start with your own blog?

Interview with Ali Hale on Staff Blogging

I first met Ali Hale via a guest post submission. She sent an article to be published on Daily Writing Tips, and it was so good that I offered her the chance of becoming a paid staff writer on the blog. She accepted, and stayed with us for almost 8 months, writing over 50 posts. After that she went on to become a paid writer for several other high profile blogs.

Last week she contacted me to talk about her newest project, which is an ebook course aimed at people who want to make money with paid writing gigs. I through it was an interesting idea, as most courses around teach people how to make money with their blogs, and not with their writing, which according to Ali, can be more profitable to many people.

I asked her some questions on this topic, and here is what she answered:

1. When did you get start with your own blog, and when did you start writing for other people?

I first got interested in “Pro Blogging” (and became an avid reader of Daily Blog Tips!) in Autumn 2007, and launched my first blog, www.theofficediet.com, in January 2008.

My first guest post for www.diet-blog.net was a thinly disguised attempt to get more than three readers for my own blog, also in January 2008. By the end of February, I was a paid writer for Diet Blog.

2. Do you think that for some people writing as a staff writer for other blogs can be more profitable than trying to make money with their own?

Yes, absolutely. In fact, I strongly believe that for most people, it’s more profitable to work as a staff writer. Think about it this way: if you wanted to write for magazines, you’d find an existing publication to freelance for - you wouldn’t try to launch your own. Obviously, it’s much cheaper to launch a blog than a magazine, but building up traffic is a long, hard slog.

From a personal point of view, I made peanuts in 2008 from The Office Diet (a few cents of advertising revenue each day) - but by the end of 2008, I was making enough from my work as a staff writer on other blogs to pay my rent and bills each month.

Back in 2005 or 2006, problogging was new enough that newbies could come in and make good money. It’s still possible, but unless you’re very very talented or very very lucky, staff blogging is far more likely to get you a good, reliable income. There are just so many great blogs out there already!

3. How much time do you spend every month with your writing gigs, and how much money do you earn with them?

I spend about eight hours a week on my blogging gigs (that includes admin, brainstorming, answering comments etc, not just the writing), and I make around $1000 a month (it fluctuates slightly as sometimes a blog will want extra or fewer posts). That works out to about $30/hour.

The rest of my time goes on other paid work (copywriting and various website design/creation services), some voluntary work for my church and college, and my part-time Creative Writing MA (a post-graduate degree).

4. People often wonder if they need outstanding writing skills to make money writing. Do you think that is the case?

Absolutely not. If you work as a staff writer, you need to be confident with your writing, but no-one’s going to expect you to be the next Shakespeare. If you really struggle with basic issues like grammar, or if you find writing a slow and torturous process, however, you might want to think about finding a different job.

I would suggest that staff writers need to be able to:

• Communicate ideas clearly (it’s actually an advantage here to use simple, rather than “literary”, language)
• Write in a conversational, friendly style
• Avoid glaring errors with grammar, spelling and punctuation (readers will forgive minor slip-ups, so don’t obsess over every comma)

You definitely don’t need to be an English major to make good money from writing. If you feel that you do need to brush up your writing skills, I recommend www.copyblogger.com, www.dailywritingtips.com and www.menwithpens.ca as great places to learn.

5. Do you think that the economic crisis affected the demand for staff writers on the web?

I’ve certainly not seen my work dip - in fact, I’ve taken on some new regular work over the past few months. I’ve not noticed a rise in demand, but I certainly feel safer having multiple clients rather than one employer! If one of the blogs I write for closes, it won’t be a big financial problem.

—–

Ali asked if I would like to become an affiliate for her Staff Blogging Course, but instead I asked if she could create a discount code for our readers. She agreed. If you use the code “DBTreader” you will get $5 off. The price of the course is $19, so that is 25% off.

Blogging Tips : Business Model

Why You Need a (Blogging) Business Model ?

Today Shaun Connell from Learn Financial Planning shares some thoughts about blog business models.

After managing a website or blog for a significant period of time, it becomes extremely easy to assume that because we do our business online, that we aren’t engaging in ‘real’ business, and all of the ‘real’ principles of business don’t apply. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

You need a (blogging) business model.

This post explains why you need to actually write out your own business plan - even if you’re ‘just’ running an online business. Without a specific business model, you’re chances of success are greatly diminished.

But first, let’s dig a little deeper before we talk specifically about blogging. Let’s look at the fundamentals of science, business, economics and the Universe itself.

How the Universe Works

The most important concept I’ve ever read about was explained in a book by Richard Maybury, a popular author, investor and economist. In his book, Maybury explained that the world operates in terms of what he called ‘models’, or systems.

There’s the solar system, the system of natural selection, the system of economics, the systems of business - everything operates in terms of a system. Everything from door knobs, to atoms, to TVs, to Wal Mart - there’s a system to everything.

Maybury explained if you want to accomplish a certain goal, the most important thing you can learn is how the systems operate, and implement them for yourself. Timothy Ferris has taken this to the extreme, deconstructing everything from learning a language, to wrestling, to building a business based on logical system.

I know, I know — the word “system” is often used by scammers to lend credibility to a get-rich-quick program. Feel free to think the word “plan” instead of “system” and we’ll both be on the same page.

In the same way the ’system’ of a motor has fuel, a framework, pistons, etc - a typical business model has funding, a location, employees, etc. You’re blogging model will need content, marketing and monetization — a system.

Everything operates systematically. Everything.

Why Bloggers Often Fail

Let’s face it: most bloggers fail to earn a full-time income. Some spend literally years trying to make it. The statistics are “against” blogging success.

But it’s not because of a lack of information. Yaro, Darren, Brian and dozens of other successful people have poured their guts into free content and relatively inexpensive courses, explaining the ins-and-outs of building a successful blog.

Success certainly isn’t distant because of a lack of data.

But raw data is useless unless we know what to do with it.

A business is a business, whether it’s on a blog or in a ‘brick and mortar’ building. Blogging without a general business plan is akin to trying to start a ‘regular’ business without a plan. Success is possible, but much, much less likely.

How to Get a Blogging Model

A business “model” is basically just a plan — a roadmap that details every step and action you take in your business that leads to the end result of a profit.

There are dozens of popular ways to turn a profit online, with models based on affiliate marketing, pay-per-click advertising, search-engine marketing, social media marketing, etc. Most blogs mix-and-match the various tactics into a model they are most comfortable with.

As you write your own model, make sure to be as specific as possible without being restrictive. Here are some of the concepts your model will need to consider:

• Content Model. Who will write your content? How often will your content be published? What’s the purpose of every article? Will you do straight-up blogging, or a little bit of traditional webmastering? Will you be doing “open-ended blogging” without an “end date” for your content to be roughly finished? Will you accept guest posts?
• Marketing Model. Almost all traffic is good, but what kind will you focus on? Will you build links? Will you pay for ads? Will you write guest posts? Will you spend a majority of your time doing keyword research? Will you focus on social media?
• Monetization Model. Some “gurus” claim the need to focus on content now, and think about monetization later. That’s risky, and for many small niches it’s a little naive. Will you use AdSense? What affiliate programs will you focus on? How will you get visitors from your “regular posts” to your money-making posts? Will you focus your web design on usability?

These questions are just the beginning. Most of us have a general idea of what the answers to these questions are, but putting them into concrete form helps “seal the deal” and gives us tangible steps to take in order to achieve our goals to make money.

Last Thoughts

Being a beginner blogger without a blogging plan is like learning to cook without using any recipes - success is possible, but not probable.

I’m not saying you should restrict yourself into a little box — that’d be counter-productive for obvious reasons. A good blogging model doesn’t restrict you, but allows you to focus on the important steps you need to take to achieve your blogging goals. That’s it.

This isn’t revolutionary material, and has been explained in literature from the Bible, to business textbooks, to self-growth books like “Think and Grow Rich.”

So what’s your blogging model? Have you ever spent a few moments to write down what your goals are? What your marketing strategy is? Any tips on writing a blogging plan that you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments.

This post was written by Shaun Connell, the webmaster of Learn Financial Planning, where he writes about everything from picking a savings account to learning how to make money online.

Blogging Tips : How Do Your Come Up, Store and Organize Ideas for Blog Posts?

Joel Drapper asks:

I would like to know how you come up with ideas for posts, and also how you store, and organize those ideas.

Most of the times ideas will come to me naturally. Sometimes I am surfing the web, other times I am taking a shower, and the idea will just pop in my head.

There are times when I not particularly inspired, though, and on those occasions I need to use some exercises to get the creative juices flowing. Here are the exercises that I use:

1. Looking on other niches. Sometimes I will browse around websites that cover completely different niches, and I will take a look at the content that they are publishing and evaluate whether or not I could translate those ideas or concepts to my own niche.

2. Reading print stuff. The print industry is much older than the web, and those guys have a lot of experience. You just need to buy a newspaper or a magazine on a topic related to your niche and I am sure you will get plenty of ideas for new posts.

3. Doing something else. Sometimes it is useless to keep trying harder. Maybe you are stressed with the work, maybe you are tired. On those occasions, doing something completely different can help. If you work in your home, for example, you could go out for a bicycle ride or jogging with a friend.

4. Using paper to brainstorm. Jotting ideas down on a piece of paper is a very efficient way to organize your thoughts. It becomes easier, after all, to interlink things and to see what ramifications they could have.

That is pretty much it.

The second part is about storing the ideas, which is just as important. In fact, one common mistake that people do is to not store their ideas somewhere, relying solely on their memories. Then when they realize the idea is gone for good.

My process for storing ideas is the following: when they hit me I write them down as soon as possible. If I am outside of my office, I use any piece of paper that I can put my hands on. If I am inside my office, I will write it down on the notebook that is always on my desk or on the whiteboard. Then at the end of the day I will add that idea to my WordPress dashboard as a draft. Usually I just include the title and some central topics that I think could be covered on the future post.

As of today I have 30 or so drafts stored. Whenever I don’t have something to post on a given day I will just go through those drafts, pick one, and write it.

What about you guys? What exercises do you use to come up with ideas, and how do you store and organize them?

Blogging Tips : What If the Blog Outranks the Company Website?

What If the Blog Outranks the Company Website?

Punchu asks:

Today I suggested to my manager that we should install the All in One SEO pack in our blog. He said fine, but then he told me something really weird. Few months back (before I joined this company) they did some improvements on the blog and it got better ranks for our targeted keywords than our website. The blog was almost getting 1st page results while the website dropped behind. So the CEO got really annoyed with this and now according to what I understand they are not trying to improve the blog anymore. Well my question is: Is this really a bad thing? I suggested to him that getting a good rank should be a good thing. I don’t understand this. Plus if we work on our blog again and get a good rank then how can the website benefit from it? Please let me know. I really need help. I am so confused.

Interesting question. Unfortunately, we are missing some important variables that would be necessary to elaborate a more complete answer. For example, it would be important to know if the blog is located in the same domain as the company website or not, and what exactly were the changes in the search rankings for both the blog pages and for the company website pages.

That being said, we can hypothesize some scenarios.

If the blog is in the same domain, especially if it is in a sub-directory (i.e. domain.com/blog), it would be difficult for the blog itself to outrank the main website for the main keywords. For example, if you have a company offering “red bubble gum,” it would be difficult for the blog of the company rank first for that keyword, because link juice and trust always flow to the homepage. If this is happening, it means that either the homepage is not well optimized for search engines, or the internal link structure is not an efficient one. Both of those issues can easily be solved by someone who understands SEO.

The blog would certainly rank higher for long tail keywords, though, because it would have a wide range of topic specific posts. Those should not represent a direct competition with the company website, though, and therefore should be considered as beneficial.

The real problem would be having the blog on a separate domain name. This would make the competition between the two parts more explicit, and it would also split the link portfolio and overall trust between the two domains, which is not ideal. If that is the case, I would consider moving the blog to an internal sub-directory.

The second aspect that we need to analyze is how the rankings were affected. The only situation where the rankings of the blog could be harmful to the company is if the company homepage was ranking in the first position for its main keyword, and then the blog outplaced it. Since there is a huge difference in the traffic that the first and second positions receive from search engines, such a shift could affect the number of organic visitors going to the company homepage. Those visitors would still visit the blog, but only a fraction of them would make a second click to the homepage.

On all other situations, the improved rankings of the blog would benefit the company. Suppose that the company homepage is ranking in the second page for one of its keywords. Then a new blog entry is published and it starts ranking in the 5th position of Google. This would mean that a blog post is outranking the company homepage for that keyword. But so what? The blog post would bring in organic traffic, and that traffic could still reach the homepage if the internal navigation is well planned.

Even if the company homepage was ranking in the 5th position and thus outplaced by the blog post the company would still be benefited. The organic traffic among the lower end results in the first page of results is very similar, so having a blog post ranked in the 5th position and the company homepage ranked in the 6th position is better than having just the company homepage ranked in the 5th position.

Unless the blog disrupted the first position of the company homepage for its main keyword, therefore, all other rankings should be welcomed.

Blogging Tips : When and How Will Google Index My Website?

Rick Regan asks:

I have a two-part question about how Google indexes sites:

1) Is Google supposed to index an entire site at once or does it do so incrementally? My blog (on my own domain) appears to be getting indexed incrementally, to the point where it’s taken a month to index all 30+ of my pages. Most of those pages were present before I manually submitted my URL to Google. I’m wondering if I’m doing something wrong or not doing something I should be doing.

Does this have anything to do with my blog being new, or having no external links pointing to it?

2) Does Google eventually drop noindex and 404 pages? I have archive pages that got indexed but I have since added to them the “noindex” tag. I also deleted an empty category that Google now gets a 404 on. Will Google eventually remove those pages as it re-crawls my site?

I will answer to each question individually.

1) Most of the times Google will index a new website gradually, yes. That is at least what I have observed with most of my websites. The speed at which Google will index all your internal pages will depend on different factors though.

If you get some very trusted and relevant backlinks, and on top of that you also have a very efficient internal link structure, all your internal pages will get indexed fast. If, on the other hand, you have very few backlinks and a poor link structure, it might take a while before you get to see all your pages indexed.

Keep in mind that using the manual URL submission to Google will have a small impact upon the speed and breadth of your indexation. In fact many people recommend that if you want to get a site indexed fast you should NOT use that feature, and rather focus on getting some trusted backlinks to your site.

2) Yes, eventually Google will fix those issues. New sites don’t get crawled very often, so that is certainly the reason. As soon as Google finds out about the “noindex” tag, for example, it will remove those pages from their index.

Blogging Tips : Should I Publish My Best Content In My Own Blog, Or Guest Blog It?

Farrahd A. asks:

What would you pick: Write an amazing guest post on a really popular blog or write it for your own blog and see if it does well?

This is a common question among bloggers, and not only among new ones. Both options have advantages and disadvantages, hence why it can create a dilemma. If you publish it in your own blog, you will retain all the traffic and backlinks, but there is a risk that the post won’t gain enough exposure, especially if your blog is relatively small.

If you publish it as a guest post on a larger blog, on the other hand, you will certainly get exposed to a new audience, gain a powerful backlink, and possibly some new readers and subscribers along the way. The disadvantage here is the fact that the blog that will host your post will retain most of the traffic and backlinks associated with it.

So what should you do?

You should mix both strategies, with varying proportions depending on the maturity and size of your blog.

When your blog is new, small, and you are trying to get the word about it out, you could use a balanced split, say 50% and 50%. That means that for every two long and structured posts that you write, one should be published in your blog, and one should be offered as guest post.

The only caution here is to make sure that your blog will have a decent amount of good articles already published before you go around guest blogging. Else your new readers won’t have a reason to subscribe and keep visiting your site.

Over the time your blog will mature and your audience will grow. As this happens, it becomes more important to have your top quality posts published inside your own blog. That is your ultimate objective after all, to have a website that people consider a valuable resource for one reason or another.

You could still guest post once in a while, but limit it to good opportunities when high profile bloggers invite you to do so.

Blogging Tips : How Do I Get a Domain Indexed?

John asks:

I have some unused domains that I added to Google Adsense for Domains for parking, but I’m wondering how one gets indexed when all you have is a park page like that. For small sites is it better to put a custom park page with some content to get indexed?

First of all making sure that your unused domains get indexed by Google is a good idea indeed. Why? Because indexed domains are like wine, they get better as they get older. Basically the longer your domain has been included in Google’s index (without getting penalized obviously), the higher the trust that Google will have on it.

Should you decide to create a website on that domain in the future, it will be easier to get good search rankings. Similarly, if you decide to sell the domain in the future, you will probably be able to charge a bonus for the age of the domain.

Now back to the central question: how do I get a domain indexed?

It is very simple: you just need to 1) put some content there, and 2) let Google know about it.

You don’t need any special type of content to get your domain indexed. Even a simple message stating that your domain is for sale would be enough.

The second part is about letting Google know about your domain (which is now practically a website). How does Google discovers websites? By crawling the links on the web. If you want to get your site discovered and subsequently indexed, therefore, all you need is a backlink from a site that is routinely crawled by Google.

Here are some ideas to get that backlink:

• link to it from your established website
• post a comment on a do-follow blog
• use forum signatures
• submit an article to a directory
• get the domain listed on a marketplace

That is it. Once you are done, wait a couple of days and search in Google for your domain name with its extension (e.g., yourdomain.org). You should be able to find it in the first page of results.

Blogging Tips : What’s Your Bread and Butter?

this guest post is by Dot Com Dud

In business, the phrase “Bread & Butter” is used to describe something that is core to the success of a business. A good example is a lawyer for whom divorce cases bring in the majority of their income, those cases are their Bread & Butter. Without these cases they would be struggling to fill their workload and bring in an income.

When it comes to posting quality content for your blog you should be careful not to forget your Bread & Butter either. In the case of blogs posts your Bread & Butter are usually posts which are regular features that tie-in to the core topic of the blog. By identifying these posts you can make your work as a blogger a lot easier as well as making your blog’s appeal to readers much more consistent.

Why are Bread & Butter posts important?

Bread & Butter posts help identify what your blog is about, they are the kind of posts that your regular readers will come to expect from your blog. These posts can become your blog’s trademark because readers will associate them with your blog and they will in turn become a part of your brand.

Another advantage of Bread & Butter posts is that you usually wont need a flash of inspiration to write a Bread & Butter post. You’ll know when they need to be posted and what they need to be about, so the hard part is done for you. Not only do they give your blog structure but they will help shape your work flow and the other posts around them.

Examples of Bread & Butter?

A well known example of Bread & Butter posts are income reports on Make Money Online blogs. These work because they appeal to the targeted audience of the MMO niche and they can be relied upon to get the attention of readers.

Some other examples of common Bread & Butter posts on blogs of different topics include;

Progress Updates - These don’t have to be on Make Money blogs only, there are a lot of personal development blogs that would be ideal for regular progress updates.

Regular Reviews - Movies, weekly TV shows, sporting matches etc. Anything that occurs often or on a regular schedule is ideal for posts like this and can be easily used as a basis for an entire blog.

Reoccurring Prizes - If you give away prizes on a regular basis, you can utilise these to create Bread & Butter posts. For each competition you can include an announcement posts, a sponsor “shout out”, a prize update (planned from the start) and naturally the prize drawing. Contests can also feed into progress update posts if they are long running or have specif criteria for the entrants to be informed of (such as a points scoreboard).

Weekly Roundups - Not everyone agrees with the value of having regular posts consisting solely of link lists to your week’s best posts or news from around your niche but they are common enough and usually become a staple for the blog that use them.

Whats your Bread & Butter?

The answer to this question will be different for almost every blog out there, what is important is knowing how to identify the kinds of posts that make up your core blog content.

Once you’ve done this you can start planning your content around them and focus on what makes them successful, so that you can adapt this into new potential Bread & Butter posts.

Ask Yourself:

• Which posts are the most popular? Follow your readers!
• Look at your categories and see which have the most content, these posts already make up your core content
• Are you repeatedly posting about the same topic, why not make them a permanent feature?

You can also run a survey with your readers to find out their favorite posts and what they’d like to see more of. It’s important to remember that a potential post must have longevity if it’s going to become reoccurring content.

In closing, I have only written about the Bread & Butter concept in regards to blog posts but there are plenty of other areas that this idea can be applied to. There are Bread & Butter advertisers, traffic sources, affiliate programs and more but the goal is the same; find out what works, what is reliable and repeatable, then use it to your advantage!

Blogging Tips : Blogging vs Twitter [A few Random Thoughts on the Two Mediums]

On Twitter yesterday Yaro asked me whether I like Twitter more than Blogging.

My reply was of course limited to 140 characters and as a result not overly comprehensive:

“no I like blogging more than Twitter but Twitter is fun and a useful part of the mix of what I do - both have their place”

I thought perhaps it was a topic worth expanding upon here on ProBlogger. While I’ve shifted most of my blogging about Twitter to TwiTip I thought it might be worth sharing a few of the thoughts on how I’m using Twitter here on ProBlogger.

What follows is both a more extended answer to Yaro (and others) but also a collection of thoughts on my experiences of working with Twitter over the last few months.

Blogging Remains My Primary Activity

While I tweet more often than I post to my blog - my blogs remain my primary focus and what I spend most time building.

It may not always seem like it when you look at the 20+ tweets that I produce a day on my twitter account but when you consider that a tweet takes seconds to write and a post can take hours - the blogs I run do take considerably more of my time and focus to produce.

My thinking around this is something that I’ve talked about previously in my description of how I use social media as outposts as opposed to my blog which I see as a home base.

In essence my use of twitter is something I do as a support to my blogging.

I guess the question will come at some point whether I will need to change this approach a little when my Twitter follower numbers go past my blog reader numbers. I suspect my approach won’t change at this point - however it’ll probably present some interesting challenges in working out priorities.

Blogging and Twitter have Different Strengths

Having said that blogging is my primary focus it is increasingly obvious to me that both mediums have their own strengths and that Twitter is able to achieve things that blogging can not (at least for me).

The immediacy of Twitter and the fact that it is a network that can spread word of a story, idea, question or thought quickly around the world to many thousands of people very quickly makes it unique.

For example one of the main ways that I find Twitter useful is getting quick feedback or answers to questions from a diverse group of people. While you can get similar feedback from a blog post Twitter is much faster. On the other hand a blog lends itself more to discussions among readers that are a little more considered, in depth and interactive (between those responding).

Blog are also great for more in depth posts. This post is a perfect illustration of this - when Yaro asked me his question on Twitter I had 140 characters to sum up a lot of different thoughts and experiences and ended up not really saying a lot whereas this post is able to explore the topic in depth.

While some people see the strengths of one and the weaknesses of the other as reason to choose between Blogging and Twitter - I’ve come to see the power of using both in tandem. The key is to know what you’re trying to achieve with your online presences and to understand what each medium can do to help you achieve this.

Twitter and Driving Traffic

I’ve written previously about the topic of Twitter driving traffic to a blog and each time have talked about how much traffic ProBlogger gets directly from Twitter. The figures have increased each time I’ve written on the topic as my own follower numbers grow and of late the numbers have continued to grow considerably.

My Google Analytics stats show that Twitter.com is now the 3rd largest referrer of traffic to this blog (only behind Google and Direct Traffic). This probably sounds a little more impressive than it is - overall it sends around 4% of my traffic (Google is 46% and Direct Traffic is 21%). This doesn’t count traffic arriving from Twitter applications - so the figure is probably closer to 10%.

My other two blogs illustrate that Twitter’s ability to send traffic is varied depending upon your site. TwiTip has over 16% of its traffic directly from Twitter.com and Digital Photography School gets 0.34% of its traffic from Twitter (although my DPS Twitter account has considerably less followers).

Twitter is Quick but Takes More Time to Use Well as Follower Numbers Grow

Actually tweeting on twitter is a relatively quick and easy process. I’ve used a variety of tools in my use of Twitter that have helped me manage the process really well - however as my number of followers has grown so does the amount of time needed to manage the account - at least if I want to remain interactive and engaging.

The number of @replies and DMs that one gets as follower numbers goes up also rises and there comes a point where a Twitter user needs to decide how interactive that they can be.

As I write this my follower numbers are just over 42,500 - to this point I still read all replies and DMs but it is becoming more and more challenging to do and I’m aware that I’m going to have to make some tough choices in the coming weeks and months if the number increases as it has.

The ReTweet is Powerful

The practice of ‘ReTweeting’ has really come into its own over the last 6 months. While people have always ‘re tweeted’ what others have tweeted - a lot more tools and services have risen up around the practice of late. Some see retweeting as a measure of authority of a twitter user - I’ve personally been more interested in its viral nature, particularly when your link is the one being retweeted.

If a link gets retweeted widely it can drive many many thousands of visitors to a blog post.

In the last few months we’ve seen more and more bloggers adding retweet buttons to their blogs in a similar way to how social media buttons are often added to blogs - I’ve done it on TwiTip with a button from Tweetmeme which has worked well but I suspect we’ll see more and more tools released.

Usefulness Remains the Key to Both Mediums

I can’t stress it enough - the key to both success in both mediums is to become the most useful resource that you can to those who you come into contact with online. Solve problems, meet needs, connect with people where they are at and both mediums will come into their own for you.

All in All….

Blogging Tips : One Blog and Many Topics, or Many Blogs with One Topic?

Arun Basil asks:

Suppose one blogger has got multiple interests , like Books, Gadgets and Cars. Will he get more readers and traffic when he writes about them in separate blogs, or if he writes about all of them on a single blog?

Both strategies can work. Let’s analyze the pros and cons of each of them.

Pros of One Blog with Many Topics

The largest advantage of this model is that you will have a very strong domain, since it will receive the link juice from all the different topics and content channels. Over time it will become relatively easy to rank for keywords because of the high trust that the root domain has. That is why websites like Wikipedia or Digg rank so well in Google.

Another advantage of this model is the unlimited potential for expansion. Provided your domain is a generic one, you will be able to add and remove topics over the time without needing to rework the brand.

Cons of One Blog with Many Topics

The main disadvantage of one large blog covering many topics is the fact that it will require a huge amount of time, energy and money to become successful.

Why? Because you would need to shape it as a content portal. That means that you should have a design that supports the portal structure, different channels inside it, and different writers to keep each of the channels updated regularly.

Trying to do a content portal by yourself and with no investment would probably yield mediocre results.

Pros of Many Blogs with One Topic

The advantage of having many blogs, each with a niche topic, is the fact that it will be easier to attract loyal visitors on each of those sites. The sharper your focus, the easier it is to convince a first time visitor that he should come back tomorrow or subscribe to your RSS feed.

Secondly, niche websites are also easier to be monetized. Advertisers like to be able to control the audience that is going to see their ads.

Cons of Many Blogs with One Topic

The disadvantage of having many blogs, each with a niche topic, is the time and energy that you will need to spend managing them. You will inevitably need to worry about the web hosting, web design, software, maintenance so on. The higher the number of sites you have, the more time they will consume with those tasks.

Additionally, there is always the risk to spread yourself too thin. If you can’t keep up with the content production and promotion activities on all the blogs, they will probably tank over the time.

Conclusion

As you can see there are pros and cons related to both strategies. Choosing one over the other is a personal decision.

My preferred strategy is to go with niche blogs. You just need to make sure that your niche is not too narrow. For example creating a blog about “Nepal Photography” would probably not be a good idea. If you choose “Digital Photography,” however, you should be fine.

I also prefer to focus on the development of one website or blog at a time. Trying to do too many things at once is one of the most common business mistakes.

Blogging Tips : What to do with People that Own Me Money?

Q&A: What to do with People that Own Me Money?

Bilingual Blogger asks:

Hi Daniel,
I have a question that is very timely in light of the current economic climate. It’s about professional blogger etiquette and how to handle non-payment for posts.

Another blog in my niche approached me a few months back about becoming a regular contributor to his blog. He said he was willing to pay. I agreed and filed 14 posts on time and with no problems. For the past month, I’ve been trying to get paid. He owes me over $500.

I’ve heard several excuses mixed in with promises of a payment “next week.” Finally today he told me that he doesn’t have the money and that he will try to pay me within the next 30 days, but obviously I’m not counting on it.

So, my questions are the following:

Should I delete all my content from his blog or should I let it stay there? (There is another contributor to his blog who I know has been paid because she told me so. Also, he had given me a username and password to his blog so that I could write my posts directly, so that’s how I would be able to delete them.)

On one hand I think it is not right that he has had the use of tons of original content that I spent several hours writing specifically for his blog. But on the other hand, I don’t want to burn any bridges since the niche I’m blogging in is kind of a small circle of the same people.

All of my entries on his blog have links back to my blog, so at least there’s that benefit, right? Although, to tell you the truth, the traffic I’ve gotten from his blog has been minimal.

So, what do you recommend? Should I send him an email notifying him that I’m deleting my posts and he doesn’t have to worry about paying me? Say nothing for now but wait 30 days and then delete my posts if there is no payment? Or just leave everything as it currently is (meaning leave my content on his blog)?

That is a tough question. As you correctly pointed out, any action that you take has benefits and drawbacks.

My preferred course of action with any dispute or problem is always the friendly one. That is, I try to talk with the other party to see if we can come to a solution that is good for both of us.

Why do I prefer to work in this fashion? First of and foremost because it is business, not personal. If someone owns you money, it is probably because he really is in a tough financial situation, and not because he does not like you or wanted to fool you.

Of course there are all sorts of scammers around. But even for them it is business. They are just trying to make money the easy way.

When you have a friendly response to problems, most of the times you will be able to solve them without further head aches. If you get aggressive right from the beginning, on the other hand, you will make dialogue harder, and if you take actions, you can be sure that the other party will retaliate and try to harm you too. In the end both of you will lose. Lose money. Lose rankings. Lose credibility. And that is regardless of who was right and who was wrong to begin with.

The only situation where I would not try to settle friendly first is when someone deliberately tries to hurt my business. For example, if someone stole the content from one of my products (say an ebook) and tried to resell it to make money, I would get lawyers on the matter right away (and I would try to make as much damage as possible).

Going back to your question, I would suggest for you to wait the 30 days and then see whether you will get paid or not. If you don’t, try to talk with the person to find a possible solution. Negotiate to receive part of the payment in money and part in advertising, spread the payment in several months and so on.

If you can’t get paid no matter what, and if you get the impression that the other party is in bad faith, then yes try to minimize your losses by getting your content back and using it somewhere else.

In the future, though, try to avoid entering into similar situations. Do not deliver your services or goods before you get the payment, unless you trust the other person 100%.

Blogging Tips : Is There Such a Thing as a Saturated Niche?

This is a guest post by Hendry Lee.

I bet you’ve heard this advice somewhere. Perhaps several times. Internet marketing experts almost always recommend you to avoid saturated niche as part of their teachings.

Their advice is to corner your own small but profitable niche. With little to no competition, you should be able to dominate the niche and make money by either selling advertising space on your blog / web site for advertisers who want to sell to this market, or sell your own product and service.

At a quick glance, this advice may perfectly make sense. However, it may come to your surprise that picking a small niche may not always be the right strategy. Worse of all you may find out later that it becomes one of the biggest lies that prevents you from getting the most out of your online business.

False Perception about Saturation

According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, saturation means:

“The supplying of a market with as much of a product as it will absorb.”

Based on that definition, saturated niche as the dictionary refers to simply can’t exist. Close to saturation is possible, but there can’t ever be a saturated market.

In real life, especially in the era of long tail distribution, it is impossible that everyone buys from one or a handful of vendors. Customers could switch from one brand to another. They may also wait for new product to appear before buying.

Let’s not forget there is always new customers who replace old customers too. As more people come online, presuming it is a growing niche, more customers become available to the market.

Finally, the same person often buys multiple items of the same product from two or more vendors.

Getting It Straight

When asked further, usually these marketers use the wrong word to describe what they mean. By saturation, they refer to a condition where there are a lot of competitions doing business in the same niche.

Satellite TV and credit card are just two examples of niches with a lot of competition. And here’s the truth. Competition isn’t equal to saturation.

When two or more businesses are trying to sell the same type of product to the same individual, they are competing. Competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing though.

Oftentimes, competitions can only means one thing: there are more customers who are still in demand for the products. If no one else wants the product, and people are no longer making money from the niche, then competitions should not exist at all.

Your Competition, Your Partner

Here is a strategy, or mindset if you will, that applies especially well to certain type of online business. Actually this strategy works everywhere just that in other markets some people may think it is impossible. Lack of creativity, perhaps?

Competitions may as well be your best partners. Think about it for a moment. They spend money to generate traffic and leads. They build a list of prospects and customers. All of these customer profiles fit very well for your products and vice versa.

Business owners are only going to make more money if they just cross promote or do some type of partnership. After all, people rarely buy from one vendor only. People who are very fond of surfing often buy half a dozen, if not dozens, of surfboards, most likely from different brands.

By doing cross promotion, you will be able to generate revenue when your existing customers buy from others too. This purchase habit happens with or without you, so why not take advantage of it?

In other words, a partnership not only allows you to get customers faster, but also at a cost that is much lower than if you have to do it yourself.

What does this have to do with blogging and online business?

A lot. Let me elaborate.

Blogging in the “Saturated” Niche

One of the important metrics of a successful blog is traffic.

If you look at it from the search engine optimization perspective, an expert tells you to pick a less crowded niche because with that you will be able to climb the search engine ladder easier. With the right pick of long tail keywords, you may start getting into the first page of the search results within the first weeks, or even days.

At the same time, you are limiting the number of traffic you can possibly get from search engines. By no means you should target the broadest niche possible but you also want a topic with room to expand, perhaps for years.

Competitive niche usually has more keyword variations, although it may not always be so. It definitely will take longer time to rank for your most wanted keywords, but you can work from the bottom up — from those easier to rank, long tail keywords.

Everyone knows that links are very important for search rankings. If your blog contains high quality content, you are more likely to get people to link to your blog if there are more bloggers blogging the same topic. By getting links you can also speed up the ranking process for your keywords.

Making friends and getting links are easier if you know someone to network with.

And if you don’t want to see if from the search engine perspective, plunging into a competitive niche also means more partners to promote your products. If you’ve ever struggled to find affiliates to promote your niche product, you should know what I mean.

Competitive niche usually means more and better products to choose from, more affiliate programs, more everything.

I could go on and on with examples but you get the idea.

Before You Dip a Toe into Shark-Infested Waters

Be prepared. Despite all the great reasons to play in a larger pond, it is not for everyone.

Unless you have a unique selling proposition, you should not try to compete with the sharks, or they will eat you for lunch.

On the other hand, if you have something valuable to contribute back to the niche, or if you have a tested product idea that will be accepted by the market, there is no reason why you can’t conquer a share of the niche.

At the end of the day, if you have something interesting to offer, you are doing people a disservice by not taking the necessary steps to contribute.

It may take a lot of brainstorming and planning. You may have to play like the big fish but if you are ready then jump in.

Those sharks who are already dominating will thank you too because soon they will have another great partner to link to and promote. By nature, this process will push the less interesting products out of the market, which is what competition is all about.

Keep in mind that in order to make six or seven figure online, you don’t have to dominate a niche, although it certainly sounds nice. You only need a small share of the pie.

No matter which path you choose, remember that it never is a good strategy to start a blog where you are the only one who blog about the topic. That usually means other than your spouse and mom, no one will read it.

Blogging Tips : How do I Handle Content Scrapers? Can They Hurt My Rankings?

Q&A:
questions and answers
Arun Basil asks:

Daniel,
Recently I had been getting some backlinks to my articles from sites that look like genuine sites. These backlinks comes within about 2/3 hours of posting content. My blog is not a very popular blog, so i dont think that the guys found my latest posts anywhere online (like Google or Social sites). I used to think that, these bloggers would have found my posts while random surfing. But then, these things happen very often now, that too from different sites. And the good thing is that, these sites publish only excerts from my blog and a link to the main article. But I do not get visitors from any of these sites.

My questions are:
1. How did they find my post within 3 hours of posting the content?
2. Will backlinks from spam sites affect my rankings?
3. Should I ask them to remove links to my site?
4. If someone else publishes excerpts from my blog, will Google consider them as copies of the same content?
5. These sites have page ranks of 0 or 1. Will link backs from such sites help me improve my PR..?

It looks like you are talking about content scrapers. Those are people that create websites on specific niches, and for the content part they just scrape other blogs or sites around the web. One method to scrape that content is via the RSS feed of blogs. There are many plugins and scripts that will automatically grab an RSS feed and output its content as new blog posts.

Scrapers who republish 100% of the content that they find on other websites are obviously violating copyrights, and you could try to bring them down. Scrapers that only republish excerpts, however, are probably protected under the “fair use” clause, so there isn’t much you can do about them (except forcing them to link back to you, as I will show below).

Now let’s answer the 5 questions.

1. How did they find my post within 3 hours of posting the content?

As I mentioned before, it is likely that those pseudo blogs simply added your RSS feed to their script, so every time you publish a new post they will get notified about it, and the script will automatically write about your post on the scraping blog (either with an excerpt or with the full content).

2. Will backlinks from spam sites affect my rankings?

If you mean affect your rankings negatively, the answer is no. External links will almost never hurt your search rankings. This is a necessary measure for Google and other search engines, else it would be too easy to sabotage competing websites.

Notice that I said “almost never,” however, because under some situations the external links could end up hurting a site’s ranking. But here I am talking about elaborate linking patterns that have the purpose of simulating the manipulation of Google’s index or spam activities. In order words, this would only happen if you have an expert SEO trying to hurt your rankings deliberately, and not as a result of content scrapers.

Linking out to bad neighbor and spam websites can hurt you a lot, though, so keep an eye for the pingbacks and trackbacks that those sites will send to you.

3. Should I ask them to remove links to my site?

As long as those links are not generating pingbacks and trackbacks, I wouldn’t worry too much about them. In fact there are some chances that those links might be passing link juice to your site and helping with your search engine optimization.

Secondly, those links are also good to help Google identify what is the original source of the content. Making sure that scraping sites will link back to the original post is therefore a method to protect your site from search penalties.

If you want to make sure that people scraping your RSS feed will link back to your original post, you just need to use the RSS Footer plugin.

4. If someone else publishes excerpts from my blog, will Google consider them as copies of the same content?

No. Google’s definition of duplicate content is: “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.”

Excerpts are obviously not substantive blocks of content.

5. These sites have page ranks of 0 or 1. Will link backs from such sites help me improve my PR..?

Possibly. It depends on the number of links that those sites will send to you, on whether or not the links are nofollowed, and on the overall quality and relevancy of those websites.

Don’t expect to get a huge PR boost from scrapers though.

Blogging Tips : How Does Trademark Law Work?

Q&A:
questions and answers
Shrihari asks:

Are really trademarks given by use and not by registration ? You say “Daily Blog Tips” is your trademark. But i can still apply to register “Daily Blog Tips” as my trademark. Right ? In that case, i’ll have the rights to take your blog down. Am i right ? Or, am i missing anything ?

First things first, what is a trademark? According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a trademark is “a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others.”

Notice, therefore, that trademarks are different from copyrights (which protect original works like articles and pictures) and from patents (which protect inventions).

How do you acquire a trademark? Simply by using it in a legitimate way. If you have being doing business under the name of “XYZ Company” for years, for example, you could claim trademark over that name (or logo).

Now, one can also apply for a trademark registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Why should one, if trademarks are given by use? Simple: because the registration will give you several benefits, including:

• the ability to bring people who are violating your trademark to federal courts
• a public notice that you claim ownership over that trademark
• the ability to register your trademark in other countries
• an overall stronger stance when defending your trademark

You say that you could still apply to register a trademark that some other people own by use, for example Daily Blog Tips. That is correct, you can apply for it, but I doubt that you would be able to gain ownership over it.

For one thing, when you apply for a trademark, you must provide the “Basis for filling.” That is, you must explain where you are currently using that trademark. The most common “Basis for filling” is use of the trademark for commercial purposes. So you would need to be using the trademark before applying for registration.

Secondly, even if you managed to use a trademark that you don’t own (say by creating a fake website or business) and provide the “Basis for filling,” the trademark office would still have its attorneys checking the market (and I am sure they include the Internet these days) for conflicting trademarks. If they find someone who is already using the trademark you are applying to own, they will reject your application.

Finally, let me make a note about the trademark symbols. Anyone claiming a trademark can use the TM letters next to its name or logo. You don’t need to have a trademark registration for that. The ® symbol, on the other hand, is to be used only by people that own registered trademarks.