I am sure that most of the new bloggers have a shared hosting plan, not a dedicated server and there is no problem. Why spend hundreds of dollars on a dedicated server if your blogs stays very well on a shared hosting plan. I tried to make a little research because I always argue with the guys from support on different reasons.

Today, I asked at Hostgator what happens if I get on the digg’s front page with my blog hosted at them, on a shared hosting plan. Here is the conversation ( I got the permission to post it here ):

So, as you can see, at the beginning, Jacob P - the guy from support tried to convince me that a shared hosting plan at Hostgator is very powerful and should resist at huge traffic. Then, after I said that there is a possibility to buy a dedicated server (that means giving more money to them) he changed his mind and he wasn’t so sure if a shared account will resist at a .. let’s say digg’s front page.

Right now, I am hosting about 10 websites on my shared account at Hostgator and they all have a traffic of about 15,000 visits / day and I really don’t have any problems, my account gets suspended only when I receive many visitors in a small period of time.

So, you should upgrade to a dedicated server only when yo earn more than the hosting’s price and only when your blog  really needs a dedicated server, you will know that by seeing your account getting suspended very often.

Wordpress is making five years, five years of intense blogging! There was a long but beautiful way from the first release - 0.7.

If you want to celebrate this with other bloggers, then you should rush to the wordpress birthday party that will take place in San Francisco at 111 Minna, starting at 9PM.

For more details check this link.

Many thanks to Matt Mullenweg, the genius behind the Wordpress blogging platform!

Some of us had this problem, how to write the first post? Who knows, maybe you will be famous in the blogosphere and many people will be curious to see how you started.

To be honest with you, it depends very much on your niche. If you start a news blog, there isn’t necessary to be a first post where to introduce yourself. You should be professional, start with the news and make an “about” page where to write everything (almost) you want, regarding the blog and you.

If you have a more personal blog, like mine, it’s a must to write a first post where to introduce yourself. You should consider the following aspects:

Give details about you

It’s very important to give some details about you, like what’s your name, how old are you, what are your passions, what’s your job. Because your readers will be curious who writes the blog, what kind of person he or she is.

Why did you make a blog?

Seriously, why did you make a blog? Give your readers some more details about your intentions, what’s so special at your blog?

What will you write about?

If the blog’s domain doesn’t say much, you should tell your readers what you are going to write about. More concrete, what niche you will research.

How to get in touch of you?

Ok, I love your posts, I love the way you think, I would like to get in touch with you. How can I do that? Never forget to make a contact page!

I’ve started writing an e-book about blogging and I stopped at this chapter - “Why blog and not website?”. There are pros and cons regarding this subject. Blogs are the last trend, that’s for sure, but are they better than websites, pointing their usability, interface, user-friendly?

The first thing that comes in my mind is that blogs are pretty cheap, the script is free and a .com domain is not more than 10$. About websites, it may be a little hard to make a great one. Some months ago I started a project called PcPedia.net. It’s a news website that runs on the cms called Joomla and it was very difficult to modify it the way I wanted.

Many people would tend to say that a website is more professional than a blog, but I think that they are wrong. Take a look at TechCrunch - a very successful blog and professional too.

Another great plus for the blogs is that they look more user-friendly and are not so hard to be a little personalized. You know what a typical blog is, one or two sidebars and the content in the middle. By clicking on a post’s title you are able to write a comment. Nothing hard here, but an website can sometimes be tricky.

But what do you think? It’s better to have a blog or a website?

photo by grantmac 

Driving traffic to your blog is very important, I agree with that, but every new blogger should know that at the beginning, subscribers are more important than traffic. You know .. visitors come and leave, subscribers read you every day and it’s very important to build a community, and have strong connections with your readers. So how do you convert traffic to subscribers?

• Write great posts

Yes, this is a must. Nobody will ever come back on a blog that has poor content and nothing interesting. I know, you can’t have 100% original content, the blogosphere is immense and the internet too but you should say the things in a different way, be unique with something, come with something new! And don’t forget, many bloggers think that there’s a rule to write daily, like many posts per day. This is completely wrong. It’s better two write 3 awesome posts/week than 15 so and so posts/week.

• Make it easy to subscribe

So you have great content, and your readers want to subscribe at your blog, but it’s pretty difficult to find the subscriptions button or the box where they have to enter their e-mail. You should make this two things very visible. Look at my blog, the top part of my sidebar is reserved for these, but don’t believe me, take a look at other succesful blogs like problogger. Or at the end of your article you could write something like “If you liked this post, please subscribe” and include a link to your feed there.

• Offer something free for the ones who subscribe

We all like free stuff, don’t you? So this is a great tip to increase your subscribers number. You could offer an ebook written by you (a 50 pages one should be ok) or a free review on your blog. As I said, everyone loves free stuff! And if you have great content, that readers will remain subscribed.

• Teach your readers what’s rss and how to use it

You can never know. Maybe many readers of your blog don’t know what is RSS and how to use it so it should be a great idea to write a page where to tell them what’s a RSS and how to subscribe.

• Show the number of your subscribers

If you have something like 100 subscribers or even more, you should make that visible on your blog. New visitors will see that and will think that there must be something good at your blog if you have so many subscribers.

This is a pretty common question. There are many “big guys” (this is how I call them) that have some bucks and want to get some traffic instead of them. Maybe you are one of that “big guys” and that’s why I am writing this article.

Ok, so which is the best way to spend your money for getting some traffic? Actually, it depends very much on your niche. Most of you would tend to say “Adsense for the win!” but if you want to promote a great tech blog I would recommend you to use Chitika.

I think that that another great way to spend your money in order to get some traffic is by paying a seo master! Google has a great potential for sending thousands of targeted visitors to your site, and it’s kinda cheap to pay a seo master that will rank you high for some keywords that will send you traffic long time from now.

Or, you could be more creative and a little crazy. I live in Romania, and the elections are running. Many people want get popular, and one of them found a really crazy idea of promoting himself - eggvertising or advertising on eggs:

On that eggs is written in Romanian “Vote Matei” and the expiry date of the eggs.

Let’s be serious now. Another method ( I didn’t try it so I can’t say if it’s good or not ) it’s buying some text ad links. I have a feeling that this way of advertising is worth the money, but I can’t be sure.

All in all, it’s all on you! You have to decide how you want to spend the money. But my best recommendation is to hire a seo master!