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Freelance blogging involves writing blog posts for other bloggers. You will be helping other bloggers keep their blogs supplied with fresh, well-written content while doing work you enjoy for decent pay. Adding freelance blogging to your portfolio can be an effective way to keep a more steady flow of work coming your way while adding more variety to your work life.

Freelance writers enjoy an enviable lifestyle that affords them the ability to work where and when they choose,  and for clients that they choose doing work that they enjoy. One of the downsides is that there tends to be a bit of a ‘feast or famine’ cycle of being swamped with work, and then sometimes, work is difficult to find. Adding more skills to your service offerings gives you more opportunities to serve a more diverse client base.

Aside from a love and passion for the craft of writing, you’ll also need a solid foundation in Internet marketing, effective website design and some knowledge of basic SEO practices to become a freelance blogger.  Knowledge of how to manage the popular blogging platform, WordPress, is also important. Your clients may want you to write the posts and then publish them to the blog as well.

Because basically anyone who can write a sentence, and who has Internet access can slap up a blog, you’ll have to differentiate yourself from the teeming masses by providing excellent, well-written content that’s beyond what the average person would be able to find upon doing a cursory online search.

Here are five tips for getting started with freelance blogging:

1. Start your own blog.
Your first step is going to be to demonstrate that you can create some results with your content. Create a blog on a topic that you are passionate about and work towards getting it ranked high in the search engines for your keywords. Cultivate an audience and engage with them on your blog. Demonstrate best practices and show potential clients that you know how to build and maintain an effective blog.

2. Create a page for your blogging services
Decide on what price you will charge per word, giving a price for a range of word counts from 350-400, 500-600, and 1,000 word posts. Although blog posts tend to be more effective when they are shorter and to the point.

Post your resume and a way for potential clients to request references.

Provide sample blog posts and consider sharing traffic data for particular posts.

Include testimonials that describe the results your blog posts have helped other blogs achieve.

3. Create relationships with potential clients by guest posting.
You can begin by offering to guest post for bloggers that you’d eventually like to write for. If they like your work they may consider hiring you in the future.

4. Comment regularly on blogs that you’d like to work with.
Leave thoughtful comments that add value rather than trying to show how nifty and smart you are. Join in the conversation and keep coming back to blogs that you like so that you can establish a reputation and credibility.

5. Utilize social media to gain exposure.
Use your Facebook profile, create a fan page for your blog and use the Networked Blogs app to connect your blog with the millions of other blogs on Facebook. Use Twitter to get traffic by tweeting when you publish a post. You
can also tweet about your topic and what’s happening with you.

If your blog is on a more serious business topic you’ll want to create a LinkedIn profile, add lots of relevant connections, and join participate in and start groups on your topic.

Visit the following forums to find blogging gigs:

• forum.freelanceswitch.com
• forum.freelancevenue.com
• jobs.problogger.net
• bloggerjobs.biz

You can also find blogging gigs on the regular freelancing sites such as oDesk, Elance and Guru.com.

If you’re an online freelance writer looking to expand your reach, freelance blogging can be a fun way to branch out , attract more clients and increase your bottom line.

Resources:

http://www.bloggingteacher.com/how-to-become-a-freelance-blogger

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Writing for the web is not the same as writing for print. If you are going to be writing content that will be consumed online there are a few concepts that you need to get clear on. By now most people understand the fact that we don’t read text online in the same way that we read text in hard copy such as a book or a newspaper that we hold in our hands.

People tend to skim online copy very quickly with their eyes.
The Internet is by nature fast moving and bright and shiny. Our brains and eyes move hyper-fast when we are online and if what we are looking at does not appeal to us, we can quickly get rid of it within a nano-second by clicking the next link.

As writers, we need to get in touch with the way our readers engage with our work online so that we can create a product that will be both useful and enjoyable by those who consume it. You want to craft content that makes your readers stop long enough for you to convey the message that you are trying to send. Your words must draw them in so that they can consume your content and in exchange for their attention you must fulfill the promise of supplying the information they were searching for.

Write for human readers but with SEO in mind.
Another unseen audience that is consuming our content online is the search engines. Since our human readers’ eyeballs are our most important audience we write for them, but it’s also important to keep the principles of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, in mind as we create web content.

Since many of us learned to write prior to the Internet age, there are a few specific strategies that we can employ in order to be effective at online writing.

• Do Keyword research and write content that focuses on one or two keywords while delivering concise information that the end user is searching for.
• Link to other related pieces of content within the site that add to topic.
• Link out to related authority sites that have high search engine rankings and provide additional information for your reader.
• Use images that illustrate your point and break up the text on the page.
• Write in shorter paragraphs allowing for sufficient white space on the page to give the reader’s eyes a place to rest.
• Use bullets and call-out boxes for the skimmers to grab information quickly.
• Use meaningful sub-headers to introduce ideas.

Tips for sharpening the saw:
This is a list of five tips that can help you to improve your online writing skills, but this does not pretend to be an exhaustive list. You’ll want to keep learning and constantly strive to improve your craft over time–’sharpening the saw’ as Steven Covey calls it.

1. Read excellent writing
While it might sound far too simple and obvious, but reading good writing is really the best way to improve your own writing skills. Read widely on diverse topics. Pick authors whose writing style you admire and read several of their books. Get suggestions for good reads from fellow book-lovers, or make friends with your local librarian.

Here are a few blogs that feature both excellent writing and compelling content for writers:

• http://www.copyblogger.com/
• http://www.problogger.net/
• http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/
• http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
• http://www.doshdosh.com/

2. Join a writing group
This can be tricky because a really good, established writing group can be quite challenging to find. You may end up starting one of your own, but find a group of fellow writers of varying levels of skill and accomplishment where you can share your work and get honest feedback on how you can improve it.

There are tons of writing groups online, but I prefer live groups because it gives you the chance to interact with other writers and create real relationships with real people who share your interests. Check out meetup.com to find a local writer’s critique group, or search online writing forums to find local writing groups.

3. Take a class
Visit your local University or Community College’s website to see if they offer an online writing class. It may, oddly enough, only be offered online, but you can find some live online writing classes as well. Other resources for online writing classes include:

• The Education Portal has an article with links to 10 Universities that offer free online writing classes

  http://education-portal.com/articles/10_Universities_Offering_Free_Writing_Courses_Online.html

• The Gotham Writing Workshop

  http://www.writingclasses.com/

• Wrter’s Digest University writing classes

  http://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/

4. Hire a writing coach
Working with a writing coach is an excellent investment. If you want to write a book, but you would like to polish up your writing style, a coach can help you to get motivated, get unstuck, create a writing routine that works for your lifestyle, and most of all hold you accountable to the goals that you have set for yourself.

• http://www.writingforward.com/category/writing-help/writing-coach
• http://writingcompanion.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/writing-mentor-coach/
• http://www.genreality.net/ten-reasons-to-hire-a-writing-coach

5. Practice, practice and more practice.
“A writer writes,” as they say. Write something everyday. Set a daily word count goal that you feel that you can stick to, but that will also force you to stretch yourself a bit. Commit to meeting this goal, but don’t beat yourself up when you don’t. Just pick up where you left off. Keeping a daily longhand journal can be therapeutic and help you clear out what’s on your mind so that you can focus on creating good writing.

Keep a blog where you write about whatever inspires you. Write a new post every day and before long you will begin to notice that you are developing a unique style that your readers will come to enjoy.

Additional Writing Resources:

• http://www.webanddesigners.com/20-ways-to-improve-websites-readability
• http://www.problogger.net/31-days-to-building-a-better-blog/
• http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/fifty-50-tools-which-can-help-you-in-writing.html

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People create blogs for various purposes ranging from simply writing about what’s happening in their daily lives, trying to bring attention to a particular cause, selling products, for corporate outreach, or gaining increased exposure for the author, every blog works better when it has a clearly defined purpose. By the time you have finished reading this blog post, you will have a clear idea of the advantages of having a purpose driven blog and some ideas for refining and communicating your blog’s purpose to the world.

The blog seems to embody the spirit of new media. The blog has emerged as a great equalizer in the world of publishing and media. It provided the average person who might otherwise never get a book publishing contract the ability to get their message out to the world.

Anyone can start a blog for free, or you can purchase a domain name and hosting for minimal cost and potentially reach millions of readers. But in order to maximize this opportunity to reach your audience, you’ve got to make your blog’s purpose plain when visitors arrive.

People make a decision within about three to five seconds as to whether or not they like or find useful what you have to offer on your blog.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself as you begin to refine your blog’s purpose:

• What are you trying to accomplish with your blog?
• Clearly a blog whose purpose is to sell products will have a different layout and style from one whose purpose is to generate interest in a particular topic or cause.
• Can visitors tell what your blog is about in less than five seconds after landing on your page?
• The mission and goal of your blog should be clearly communicated in the title, and the content should not veer too far from the main topic keywords.
• Have you narrowed your focus sufficiently?

Some bloggers who are knowledgeable about and passionate about several topics try to cram all of them in to one blog. This can make it challenging to attract targeted traffic, and the search engines won’t be clear on how to rank your site with such a divergent array of keywords.

Are you creating value for your readers?

Regardless of your blog’s purpose, if you are not creating value for your readers they will not have much reason to stay long or return. You are competing with millions of other blogs for your reader’s attention. Do not squander the opportunity to shine by always presenting your best content.

LaShanda Henry, author of the Sistasense.com blog, among several others, says this about blogging:

“Blog like you’ve got an audience of millions reading your blog. Blog like everybody’s watching you”

Don’t wait and hold back your best content until you get ‘discovered’ because you will not get discovered unless you consistently provide excellent, valuable content that attracts readers, keeps them coming back and inspires them to share your posts with their friends and followers.

When you give valuable content away on your blog it communicates your depth of knowledge about your topic and it causes people to keep coming back because they are confident that you will always have something important to say that will benefit them in some way.

Do you love your topic?

When you love your blog topic, when you have a passion for what you are writing about, when an idea hits you and you can’t wait to get out your laptop and blog about it, that passion and enthusiasm is absolutely infectious and it comes across to your readers.

If you love your topic, chance are there are lots of other people out there who share your feelings and who will be thrilled to find a kindred spirit.

Clearly defining your purpose will make it easier for you to create excellent content because you will be delving deeply into a narrow topic rather than going all over the place on a variety of topics.

The purpose driven blog has a clear focus, it provides value for the reader, and it communicates the bloggers passion for the topic. If you are a blogger, take a moment and re-visit your blog’s vision and mission. Where can you make your purpose more clear? Try doing a quick poll for your readers to see if you can discover what kind of impression they are getting and what suggestions they might offer to make yours a more purpose driven blog.

Now it’s your turn. Go ahead and leave a comment about your blog along with the URL. Visitors who read this post will visit your blog and leave you a comment about their impressions of how effectively your are communicating your blog’s purpose.

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“We accomplish more by concentration than by fitness; the man that is apparently best suited for a place does not always fill it best. It is the man that concentrates on its every possibility that makes an art of both his work and his life.”
–Theron Q. Dumont

As a writer, blogger and online entrepreneur, I find that one of my biggest challenges is to remain focused. I will candidly share with you the fact that I have both ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and Dyslexia, which is a learning disability related to reading decoding, comprehension and fluency. I was fortunate enough to have an observant mother who noticed my quirky reading and ‘inventive’ writing when I was in Kindergarten, so I was tested and given special resources to help me to overcome these challenges and accommodate my peculiar learning style in the classroom.

Because I have been blessed with the gift of a dyslexic brain, I have been forced to learn how to focus my attention and to constantly course-correct when I get easily distracted. My special learning style has taught me to be very organized in my work. I create lists and spreadsheets for everything to keep all of my concurrent projects on track. Without lists to work from and keep me on task, my ADD brain would go sailing off to find something completely unrelated to occupy herself and I lose valuable time.

With that being said, many of us approach developing and running a business with our own unique set of challenges, but the ability to focus on the task at hand and bring it to a successful conclusion is a skill that can be learned. By the time you have finished reading this blog post, you will have learned some new strategies for improving your focus so that you can increase your productivity regardless of what you are pursuing.

Your time is your most valuable asset. Everyone on earth is given the same amount of time each day. The power is in your hands as to how you will leverage your time to create the things and the life that you desire. The ability to focus on your goals will help you to manifest your desires.

Ask yourself these questions to help sharpen your focus:

What is distracting you from focusing on your daily tasks and goals?

From the moment you wake up in the morning your brain is filled with chatter about a million things. The power of concentration allows you to shut out those distractions that are vying for your attention so that you can focus on the task that you have before you.

Take a look at your work environment and eliminate things that can distract you. For instance, is your desk facing a window? Do you ever find yourself staring out the window when you should be working? Move your desk so that you are facing a wall if the window presents a distraction.

Are you distracted by the Internet when you should be focusing your attention on a particular task? If you are working on a writing project, unplug from the Internet so that you can focus on your work. If you need the Internet for a particular task open just one browser window at a time, work through that task until it complete; check it off your list and then move on to the next task.

What habits are contributing to your lack of focus?

How can you tighten up your overall work and productivity habits? Make a list of everything you must accomplish each day and create daily rituals. Create a morning routine, a framework for a workday routine and an evening routine.

What should you be focusing on?
Every business has basic tasks that must be done to keep in running, and then there is the actual area of expertise that requires attention.

Focus on practicing and honing your area of expertise and get help with the other necessary tasks that can be done by anyone.

How to leverage your time by outsourcing so you can focus on your high value tasks.
Outsourcing or hiring someone outside of your company–typically an independent contractor–is a great way to get those essential tasks such as record keeping, email, marketing and advertising, etc. done for you so that you have more time to focus on your core strengths.

If your business is not bringing in enough money to hire a full-time person, start with hiring out just a specific task and see how much time and energy that frees up for you.

Another option is bartering services. What do you have or do that other people in your network want or need? What can they do for you in return?

All of this leads back to the area of focusing your attention efficiently so that you can accomplish more in less time.

Here are some additional resources that you might want to check out if you want to pursue honing your skills of focus and concentration:

“>The Power of Concentration by Theron Q. Dumont

Find Your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload“>Find Your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload by Lucy Jo Palladino

Focus and Concentration Collection: Increase Productivity, Improve Performance, Self-Hypnosis, Self-Help, NLP (Unabridged) by Erick Brown

How have you solved the challenge of focus in your business? Feel free to leave a comment with your tips and suggestions for greater productivity and efficiency.

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If you have ever had any interest in personal development than you already understand that you are an infinite being with infinite potential and that you create your own reality every day. But there is one thing that directs all of your co-creation and manifestation. This one thing is the seat of your power to achieve and that one thing is your attention.

Your attention is you directing your mind to focus on a particular thing. Your attention is a powerful force because where attention goes energy flows. Part of your evolution as a spiritual being having a human experience is to choose carefully where you focus your attention because whatever you focus your attention on expands.

Attention is a form of currency. When you ‘pay’ attention to something you take it in and it begins to shape your thinking. Advertisers pay dearly to grab just the smallest amount of your attention to try to persuade you to purchase their products. What you have been paying attention to lately will be evident in what has been showing up in your experience.

So, in order to move from where you are to where you would like to be in life, you must be diligent about where you place your attention. Learn to pay attention to what you want and ignore what you don’t want. What do you want more of? Focus your attention on that and feel good about it. As an infinite being it is within your power to do and be and have whatever you desire. But, so many of us get caught in the trap of giving all of our attention to the status quo rather than focusing on making our dreams and intentions a reality.

Here’s how to use your attention to your advantage:

•Your attention directs your powerful, creative energy and life force so use it to your best advantage. Take out that list of goals and dust it off.

•Pick just one thing that if you devoted your attention to it and accomplished it, your life would be closer to what you want it to be.

•Choose an end-date when that goal will be accomplished.

•Open your calendar and schedule in the tasks along with how much time it will take to complete each task on your calendar. If your calendar syncs with your cell phone, program in audible, daily reminders to give your attention to your goal.

•Celebrate when you achieve milestones whether they are major or minor as long as they are moving you forward.

Focus, discipline and diligence are the best weapons against overwhelm and analysis paralysis. Imperfect action is far better than perfect inaction, and failing early on teaches you valuable lessons that you can incorporate as you pick yourself up and keep moving forward. A helpful mnemonic is: FOCUS: Follow One Course Until Successful.

Your consistent, unrelenting attention and action will ensure that you successfully achieve any goal you set for yourself.

The benefits of developing the discipline to focus your attention will begin to show up in all areas of your life. Whether you want to get a better job, start your own business, go back to school and finish your degree or finish a big project around the house, your attention and your action is what will transform your vision and idea into its physical manifestation. So, pay attention!

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Mark Twain once quipped, “I can live for two months on a good compliment,” and I can totally relate to his
sentiments. It just really feels good when someone points out something positive about you in a public way.
Hearing a compliment really can make all of the difference in a person’s day.

As bloggers, each of us knows that our blog can be compared to a single tree in a vast forest of millions of other trees just like it. We spend hours doing research to write what we hope will be useful, compelling content for our blogs, but there are days when you just feel like a small fish in a big pond. You’re not getting the steady flow of traffic that you dream of, and you spend more time than you’d like deleting comment spam.

Just one positive comment from a real live person who has actually taken the time to read your post and has
something thoughtful to say in response makes you feel really good when it first starts to happen. It reminds you of why you started blogging in the first place.

But commenting is not just you being magnanimous to the blog author. Commenting is a win-win. Please take a minute and watch this video training by Amanda-Marie, a blogger that I met in the Unified Tribe community, who’s got some great tips about how to select the right blogs to comment on. I first found Amanda-Marie’s blog post because another UTribe member, Chris Bernardo, shared it with me. So, the Unified Tribe really rocks:

Here are some tips to keep in mind when you start leaving comments on blogs:

As Amanda-Marie said, choose mid-level blogs that have at least one or more of the following plugins installed:

• Top commentator’s plugin
• Gravatar plugin
• Comment Luv
  Coree Silvera from the marketlikeachick, blog recommends adding NoFollow Free WordPress plugin that allows you to determine the number of times a commenter should comment before being given a ‘do-follow’ link.

• Write meaningful comments that shows you actually read the post and found something that resonated with you.
• What is motivating you to write that comment? Being authentic and writing a thoughtful response can be more beneficial than trying to sound like an expert. (Nobody likes a smarty-pants know-it-all)
• Keep your comments short and to the point.
• Be respectful and remember my grandma’s advice that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

  For bloggers who want to encourage more comments:

• Sounds pretty simple, but ask for comments in your post.
• Make it simple and advantageous for people to comment by using plugins such as Comment Luv.
• Respond to the comments you receive to create a continuing conversation.

Commenting on blogs benefits both you and the blogger. The blog gets more attention and better SEO with more comments, if done effectively, you can come off as an authority in your topic and attact traffic back to your blog.

Giving that which you’d most like to receive opens you up to receive even more. In Luke 6:38 of the Bible it says, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

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I can quite easily be described as a personal development ‘junkie.’ I discovered self-help books when I was in my late teens. Already a complete perfectionist, I think that my initial motivation for reading all of those books, listening to countless hours of tapes, and watching videos of motivational speakers talk about how great your life can be, was to learn how to be the best person I could be.

But at the heart of it–my basic belief was that I flawed and I was looking to these programs and to religiousness, to somehow ‘fix’ me where I was broken and show me how to be a powerhouse of success and achievement. Somehow, despite having read all of those hundreds of books and following teacher after teacher, my life was not improving, I was still working at a dead-end job that I hated and my relationships were a classic, dysfunctional mess.

Then I met Angela Bear on Facebook. I had been meeting several spiritual teachers and life coaches on Facebook and other places on the Internet. They all had a similar message related to the Law of Attraction and focusing on being positive–wonderful messages, but I was looking for something deeper.

I joined one of Angela’s free calls where she was introducing a private, three session class where a small group could work with her personally to get support for our business or personal issues and questions. What I learned by working with Angela during that class and in the private session I had with her transformed my life in a deeper, more profound way than any other book or course I had participated in.

Angela is an intuitive who reads energy, so she can cut through all of the crap, and tell you exactly what is going on. She does not want to hear your ‘story,’ she simply reads your energy and gives you some powerful questions to work with that help to get to the heart of whatever you perceive to be holding you back. By giving you the tools to eliminate those limiting beliefs that create the proverbial ‘glass ceiling’ on your growth, it gives you a new perspective on the contextual reality that we happen to find ourselves in at this time.

Angela helps you to remember that you are an infinite being with absolutely infinite potential to realize your dreams and goals.

The Ultimate Dream Project is a membership program that Angela has created to provide a place where she can meet and interact with her clients and members can interact with each other to learn and grow and express their infinite potential. As you know, life is not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes when you are on a path of growth you will meet periods of resistance when you feel blocked and you wonder why you even waste your time trying to grow yourself. When I get into those funky places of resistance, Angela always has a way of snapping me out of it by asking me, “What creation of this energy am I using to validate other people’s realities?”

I cherish working with Angela because she reminds me that there is nothing about me that needs to be ‘fixed.’ I am confident now that I am an infinite being with infinite potential. Now that I have let go of closely examining the wrongness of me, I can put more energy on expanding the Universe, and modeling what she is teaching me and what I am learning for my children.

My business is now thriving, my relationships have been transformed and I feel so much more personal freedom now that I have stopped trying to ‘fix’ myself. I now have the confidence to pursue my dreams and desires because I know that everything I want is on the other side of my fears and limiting beliefs.

So, if you are ready to step away from the need for another ‘hit’ from motivational, self-help gurus who pump you up and get you excited about going for your dreams, but subconsciously, your limiting beliefs are holding up a ‘Stop’ sign on your progress, visit Angela Bear’s website, http://www.ultimatedreamproject.com, and sign up for her email list. You’ll receive a ‘taster packet,’ or what I call little mini-appetizers that will give you a feel for what it’s like to work with Angela.

You are an infinite being and when you are ready embrace the fabulousness of who you are, Angela is eager to support you in your discovery process.

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When you launch your first blog and publish your first post, you’re full of excitement and anticipation. But the frightening news is that your new blog has been thrust out into a blogosphere that is full of millions of other blogs all clamoring for your reader’s attention. Guest blogging on established blogs in your niche/topic is an effective way to gain some favorable exposure with your audience quickly.

What you want to do is to find a way to show up where your ideal audience is already hanging out. Guest blogging is an effective way to do that. One of my favorite quotes on this topic is by Jeff Herring, the Article Marketing Guy, who says, The best way to get traffic is to find out where the traffic is going and get out in front of it.” When you get out in front of the traffic you can then direct it wherever you want it to go.

Begin by becoming familiar with the top blogs in your subject area or niche. You can do a search on alltop.com, blogsearch.google.com, technorati.com or simply type your topic into your favorite search engine. Let’s say you are looking for blogs on the topic of bird watching. Type: bird watching + blogs into the search field and see what you find.

Make a list of the blogs that appeal most to you and start commenting on them leaving a link back to your site. Actually read the posts and make comments that add value. Next, contact the blogger and ask if they are interested in guest posts. Keep the email short and tell them exactly what you are prepared to write about, but show that you are actually familiar with their blog and their audience.

Make contact with several bloggers and try to schedule your guest posts to appear closely following your launch. If the readers like your posts, they will come to your blog. It’s up to you to provide excellent content on your blog so that when your new visitors arrive they’ll find a reason to come back and maybe even subscribe.

For lots of great tips and resources to help you get started check out this guest blog posting guide. Save the time and frustration of trying to figure it out on your own and instead hit the ground running with fabulous results.

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WordPress security is an important issue for wordpress bloggers. I maintain a network of about seven blogs, and thank God none have been hacked yet. Last year I installed a blog for a client, and recently she came to me saying that her blog had been hacked.

A hacker had gotten in and embedded some malicious code, so Google blocked it. Now imagine if your blog that you had worked on for months to develop a stream of traffic and revenue got hacked and then banned? Does the thought give your chills? It did for me, so I have taken this as a warning and I’ve done a little bit of research on WordPress security.

Since I am by no means an expert on this topic, I came up with some links to a few good blog posts about blog security that should be helpful to you:

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress

• http://blogsecurity.net/wordpress/wordpress-security-whitepaper

• http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/wordpress-security-tips-and-hacks.html

Here are five of the tips that I gleaned from these articles that I plan to implement immediately:

• Always update to the latest version of WP. WordPress developers take security seriously. As new potential security vulnerabilities are discovered they are cleared up in subsequent versions.

• Back up regularly using the WP DB Backup plugin. Set a schedule and stick with it. Otherwise, you may be kissing your hard work goodbye.

• Change your username and password regularly. Don’t use the word ‘password’ for your password. Use a secure password which should be at least 7 digits, not a word in the dictionary or a name, contain numbers and letters and a capital letter.

• Add an index.html file to hide the contents within your directory. Upload to your ‘plugins’ directory to help prevent unwelcome intruders from seeing the plugins you are running. Just open up a Notepad file and save the blank file as index.html.

• Add a security plugin. WP Security Scan is a good one: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-security-scan, but there are many others to be found at wordpress.org.

Take a minute and put these security measures in place so that your blog will be secure.

Please share your favorite blog security methods here.

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If you are using article marketing to drive traffic to your blog, and you have not yet tried Scribd.com, you are missing out on a fabulous traffic source. Scribd is also a good resource for selling your eBooks, and establishing your credibility as an expert in your niche.

Called the, “Youtube.com of documents,” by Business Week, Scribd.com is a document sharing social media website where you can upload documents in several formats including .pdf, presentation or word processing documents for anyone to discover and read online or on mobile devices. After you have published a document you can get live statistics on page views and downloads.

Scribd.com is a vibrant community of users that make up the largest social publishing and reading website in the world according to their ‘about’ page. Through connections with Facebook and Twitter, and search engines like Google, a vast variety of free and paid documents are shared around the globe.

Discover a new audience for your articles
What this means for you as an article marketer is that you’ve got a whole new audience with which to share your articles and get exposure for your blog and your products. One of the limitations of the traditional model of article marketing has been the strict limitations that some of the better article directories place on writers.

Get more back links and targeted traffic to your blog
When you use social networking sites such as Scribd to publish your articles and eBooks you can put anchor text links in the body of your article allowing you to get more back links along with some nicely targeted traffic. If you know anything about Search Engine Optimization you know that the more, high quality, relevant back links you have to your site, the more important Google considers you to be.

Here are five quick tips to help you to make the most of scribd.com in your article marketing efforts:

1. Use a different profile for each topic/niche that you publish in. There is a ‘More from this user’ box on your profile page that allows viewers to see all of the previous documents you have published. If you have some articles on list building, some on fly fishing and another on porcelain doll collecting, you may come across as a dabbler and not a knowledgeable expert in any of those disparate topics.

2. Format your articles so that they are visually appealing. There will be a snapshot of the first page of the document. Make sure that you spell check and format the document so that it looks clean, professional and error-free. Use images where appropriate. Use Keywords in the title.

3. Tag documents with relevant keywords. Use the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool and enter your main keywords. Select 20-30 related keywords appropriate to your article’s topic and add them to the ‘tag’ field separated by commas.

4. Write a clear, thorough description using keywords. People will read the description to decide if they are going to click on your document to read it. The description will accompany the title in the search results, so make sure it contains a brief synopsis of what they will find in your article.

5. Integrate with Facebook, and Twitter. There are buttons that you can click that will integrate your profile so that your Facebook profile and Twitter feed are updated whenever you add a new document to scribd.com.

Follow these five tips and you should see a nice flow of traffic to your blog when you publish documents to scribd.com. If you’ve used Scribd.com, please share your impressions.

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