Blogging Tools You Shouldn't Be Without

Here is a list of the blogging tools I use.

Google Suggest - can give you an idea about the number of competing pages for a topic. It can also be a helpful tool for formulating keyword phrases

Overture's View Bid - can give you an idea what advertisers pay for a particular keyword.

BlogExplosion's Ping Service - BlogExplosion has recently added a ping service. If you are registered with them you can check all blog search engines then ping them with one click of a button.

Alexa Search Engine - Type in the URL of your website and know your site's traffic ranking and the sites the link to you. However traffic ranking only works for root domains.

Link Popularity Check - Type the URL of your website and know the link information about your website.

The first two tools will help you determine what topic to blog. The third one will help you promote your blogs after you have updated them. The fourth one will give you a feedback about the status of your blog on the internet. The fifth one gives you information about your link status across different search engines.

World Clock - And lastly you will also need this time and date reference. Many bloggers are noticing that they get a spike in traffic and earnings if they publish at a certain time of the day. So you will also need this tool to determine what time is most profitable for you.

If You Can Talk You Can Blog

Writing can be scary especially when you feel you don't have the talent for it.

So how can you blog if you don't know how to write?

Simple. Just talk. Talk on your blog. Write your posts as if you were talking to a friend. Dont try to be artistic. Just talk. Eventually you will get better at it and your blog will have that clarity and rhythm we all admire from professional writers.

There are also studies that show that people online would prefer blogs that are written in a more conversational tone than a formal one.

This means that there is not much to worry about. If you simply talk on your blogs you will do fine.

For more indepth discussion refer to "If you can talk You can write by Joe Saltzman".