The invention of the printing press didn't start the advertising game. It just made it quicker and easier to find
and inform business clients. And technology rolled on. Moving steadily from telegraph, telephone, fax machine, direct mail
marketing, right up to today's internet. And all along the way entrepreneurs’ took advantage of the changes to engage in
their business endeavors. And nothing has changed. Taking the ever popular blogging phenomenon and changing it from
a home spun communications medium to a business promotion wonderland. Enter the blog the poor man's website.


Blogs started out being a place where the common person had somewhere to express themselves. A place to open up their
diary's and let the whole world know their hereto before private thoughts or an opportunity to express their political views.
Truly this was a quagmire of unprofitable information though interesting as heck. The blog wasn't made popular because of financial gain
initially. Regardless of why blogs became so popular they did achieve a phenomenal growth. And with that explosion of
popularity the greedy blew in with it. A Blog as a retail marketing medium was a certain destiny.


One of the advantages of blogs for business is that it's easy to get access and use of one for free. Free in a
sense. Usually the free ones require one to advertise the company providing the free blog. Because blogs
are user friendly, and designed to be easy to customize, it's a real cost effective tool for the internet marketer. Even if you
choose to pay for your own the cost is usually a under $10 a month. Most important is the fact that hundreds of thousands
of blogs are in use. Statistics show there are currently close to 14 million blogs posted on the internet with an estimated
80,000 additional blogs signing up daily. Couple those facts with the reality that there are over 50 million internet users and
that 30% of them are reading a blog. It becomes a no brainer why for the online marketer it's a mind boggling, ready made,
opportunity to be exploited for profit.


One of the common formats that are used on blogs is the mini forum. This has great advantages for the serious
online marketer. It provides real input as to how the public thinks and feels about the product or services being
promoted. It always helps to know exactly what you need to change to keep things moving upward. A popular technique
used with blogs is to treat them as a stepping stone to another website. For example let’s say you might have a website selling
sports tennis shoes. So now you create a blog called, " Freddie the Sneaker Tweaker". A site where folks come to get Freddie's
latest complaint or praise about different sneaker brands being sold on the internet. However most conveniently there happens to be a URL for the sports tennis shoe website clearly
seen on the blogs review page which , "bingo", directs more traffic it. Doing this of course feeds more traffic to the real money maker.


If you’re new to the internet don't expect like so many unfortunately do that your simply having a website will guarantee that here comes
the money. Even blogs being used for business reasons require good SEO practices. It would be advantageous for the newbie
to join a SEO blogging community along with having their blog indexed by the larger search engines. They also should take a serious peek at their
competition. The best business blogs are those owned by people who only started out sharing something they had passion over
and that passion caught on to all those others with a common interest. This is a win-win situation. Good blogs are those
which truly provide the public with meaningful information.


For those folks that were the charter members of blogging what's happened to the blog is discouraging. Yet change is
a natural part of life. And sense behind all those two dimensional blogs is a human director it was only a matter of time
before the business blog appeared and with its success it grew and grew. Yet, there is a bright side. Because of the
blogging explosion thousands of good people overnight found themselves suddenly wanted and financially bettered. May the blog live long
and prosper.