The most common “make money blogging scam” revolves around using a blog as a publishing tool. A blog is an excellent Content Management System (CMS) for small site. With the underlying infrastructure and the blogosphere, a blog is suitable for anyone who have a passion to immediately publish their own thoughts online and get found.

Conventional CMS indeed makes content publishing very easy. Yet it lacks many features that only a blog has.

A blog allows readers to interact with the blogger.

It is not uncommon that a blog got traffic the same day it was started. Search engine spiders are known to crawl blogs within 24-48 hours since the first entry was published. Some blogs take longer, but still it is a shortcut to getting listed in major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search.

Back to the blog scams thing, there are a few fundamental concepts or principles that make this possible:

1. Online users are searching for information.
2. There are many untapped keywords; ones that are not very popular but will add up soon if enough keywords exist.
3. A blog lets anyone quickly publish information.
4. A blog allows publisher to get their site or blog crawled at record speed by the spiders.
5. Frequently updated blog tends to rank high in search engines.
6. A blog lets people find you in many ways.
7. There are some advertising networks that allow any publisher to cash in on their content almost immediately.

Armed with these principles and the facts there were many holes that smoothen the process, it became possible to earn quick money from blogging. Although some of these techniques still work as this writing, they have become very ineffective compared to a year ago.

Not so long ago, there are a bunch of hype about getting rich quick (GRQ) by building blogs.

Generally here are how they work.

It takes advantage of the fact that a blog is easy to update and publish new content and then using a scripted web application scour the Internet for free articles or even dump junk content on the blogs. Hundreds, if not thousands of them in different niches.

The junk pages are created in a way so that each page is optimized for specific keyword or keyphrase. Hopefully, some of them will rank on search engines.

Different ways are used to monetize the so called “content”; from Google AdSense to affiliate programs.

Some of those who used this method had successfully earned some good money. Others jumped into the water too late.

Today as I was searching for “make money blogging” in Google, I still found a few entries in Google AdWords about such things. Here are just one example.

Imagine that. After more than a year, and still the scammers stay.

For example, one ad claims that you can make $31,000 per month blogging with easy step-by-step guide. Another gives a bold promise that you can add thousands of extra dollars to your online income using free blogs.

The former is a guide that is sold for $49.95. If you look at the sales letter, it even includes the seller’s email address as a bonus so he can help you “succeed.” Sounds good huh?

The second ad is actually an affiliate promoting “Blogging for Dollar” course by The Internet Marketing Center. While I personally know that they are legitimate, often their sales pages are too aggressive.

If a money making tactic used to work and earn some of its first movers some healthy money, could it still be a scam? At least it delivered the promise when the method still worked.

I don’t know about you, but what I think won’t give long term value to my business is a scam.

Exploiting holes in search engines perhaps will make you quick bucks, but if you quit your job thinking that it will be the only source of your income for even a year to come, I would say the chances that it will happen is very slim.

At least we could learn one thing. A lot of us are a victim of such scammers. Still, everyday more people discover blogging and are excited about the new marketing medium. These new comers are potential new targets for this type of product.

And yet, there are not much we could do about it other than to educate as much readers as possible about the truth.

In the next few articles, I am going to reveal different aspects of such scams. This might not be new information but considering the fact that such programs are still alive and well, I feel the obligation to do something about it.

If these articles could make some of us keep the money in our pocket, then it is more than worth the effort.

A blog will not automatically turns a business into overnight success. There are a lot of things we need to commit to on a regular basis to make it successful.

In this blog post, I am going to list some questions, sort of a quiz to let you do a quick assessment — as a prospective blogger if a blog is the right tool for you or otherwise.

Please note that blogging is not and will not be the ultimate solution to establishing a web presence. You can still use a conventional website to showcase your product or service. E-commerce stores are thriving.

There are many other marketing tactics and strategies online marketers could use to promote their business.

A blog is just another tool that could do certain things very well.

Without further ado, here are the questions you can take as an assessment if blogging is really for you.

Sidenote: Don’t despair too soon though. This is not a preliminary requirement before you can start blogging. If you don’t have the characteristic to be a blogger, but are willing to take the time to learn and feel you will enjoy the time to go through all of these, you are more than welcome to join in the blogosphere.

The purpose of this article is to avoid prospective bloggers dip their toe into blogging too soon, at the risk of wasting their time without reaching their expected results.

1. Do you enjoy blogging?

Blogging is reading, thinking, researching and writing. While you are not required to be a perfect writer, still you are going to spend a lot of your time doing all of them. If writing is not for you, because you love speaking more, then consider podcasting.

2. Can you communicate well?

If you can get across the points you are trying to communicate, you can be a good blogger. You can learn to be more effective on the way, though.

3. Can you dedicate your resource?

Blogging demands your time to keep it updated. A blog is only effective if you regularly update it. While you are not set to specific time, you have to allocate some time during the week to update a few times or even daily. The latter requires discipline.

4. Are you willing to learn the tool?

Not only do you need to learn how to use the blog software, but also how to format your post so it is easy to read, tweak your blog and others. Although you may have other people who can do it for you, it can be far easier if you can do some of those by yourself.

5. Can you express yourself personally?

A blog needs personality, otherwise it is just another piece of formally written and censored work. If you can write like you talk to your audience, you are on the right track.

6. Are you willing to work hard?

As with anything in your business, you need to work to reach your goals. If you set a goal high, you should expect more work to reach it.

7. Are you organized?

Doing a lot of research could mean tracking resources such as web feeds, downloading white papers, taking notes, write down ideas, exchange emails and so much more. It helps if you can get those routines organized.

8. Do you enjoy networking?

Blogging can result in both online and offline relationships. Blogging is a social tool that allows you to communicate with fellow bloggers and readers. In fact, you must do it for it to be effective. If you enjoy building relationship this way, you can have a lot of fun blogging.

9. Can you accept criticism?

Not all of your readers and fellow bloggers would agree with what you have to say. It is just a fact. Can you accept criticism and not respond in such a way that will jeopardize your brand or business? Could you just take the lesson and go on?

10. Can you afford being transparent?

Can you write independently? Other bloggers biased for one reason or another, but quickly got found. The blogosphere has an unique way of keeping itself transparent. Bloggers who stay for long are those who are honest.

These questions by no means should be the definite guide to decide if a blog is right for you or otherwise. Although some of them could really show the unique traits most bloggers should have, they are not etched in stones. I believe there are also other factors you need to consider before you start blogging. Until there are some extensive study about this, consider a list like this a guide to prepare you about what you are going to face when you jump into blogging.

Jakob Nielsen has an article about participation inequality and tips on how to encourage more users to contribute. In most online communities, 90% of users are simply lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

When it comes to weblogs, the number is even worse. Only 5% of Internet users have blogs (55 million according to Technorati as of now), and only 0.1% of users post daily (1.6 million posting per day).

My thoughts: I don’t think this is an apple to apple comparison. All forum users and visitors know about the forum or community. But not all Internet users know what a blog is, let alone have one.

Nevertheless, Nielsen has some important points to make. The participation inequality has caused some biases. For instance, users who want to buy a product usually search for a review or two. They have to trust the reviews that only represent a tiny minority of people who have experiences the product.

My addition: Don’t forget that negative experiences are more likely to encourage people to write a review.

The problem with this problem is something we can’t overcome. It is a fact that will never go away. What we can attempt is to achieve a more equitable distribution: minimize the number of lurkers while actively push contribution. Some ways to do it include make it easier to contribute, reward and promote quality contributors.

[Useit]

Google blog search pinging service

Google has launched the Google Search Pinging Service, which is a way for individual bloggers and blog platform to inform Google of content changes. These updates are then published and shared with other search engines to allow them to discover the changes to your weblogs.

Additionally, Google Blog Search will add submitted weblogs to the list of blogs it needs to crawl and index.

To use this service, either add http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 to the list of your hosts to ping, or ping it manually.

b5media gets $2 million funding

b5media has just closed a deal with two Canadian VC companis (Brightspark and JL Albright) for a round of financing. Darren Rowse, the VP of Training and Development at b5media, blogged that this injection of investment will allow them to ramp up what they’re able to do an extra few notches.

As part of the funding, he will be transitioning many of his blogs into others writing. ProBlogger.net will remain to be maintained personally by him.

Ice Rockets adds free blog stats service

Ice Rocket, a weblog search engine, has added a free stats service for bloggers called BlogTracker. Ice Rocket will compare the traffic ranking of your blog to all others that use the statistics package. [Via]