Research out of Forrester is showing a growing interest to place advertisements on blogs and/or in RSS feeds. This should be no surprise, given the mainstream business coverage of blogs that has issued recently.

Of those surveyed by Forrester, 64% would be interested in advertising on blogs, while 57% would be interested in advertising through RSS. Both these figures represent more interest than advertising on mobile devices - this just shows which way the industry is set to grow.

Forrester estimates that total online advertising and marketing dollars will reach $14.7 billion for the 2005 year - that’s 23% more than in 2004. Banners/sponsorships will grow 11% per year to $8 billion by 2010. We’ll also see a large increase in spending for search engine marketing over the next few years, up to $11.6 billion by 2010. Online marketing spending is the only area of growth in advertising spending as a whole - so interest is definitely present.

By 2010, however, online marketing will only represent 8% of total ad spending. This is not to say that there will not be a lot of online marketing going on, but perhaps just that online marketing is less costly - an ad online will not run you into millions such as television would.

So, advertisements on blogs and in RSS represent a significant growth opportunity in the market. The also represent a very relevant opportunity to bloggers who want to monetize their blogs. As a recent professional blogger, this is something I’ll be seeking for myself, as well as for others through my services.

Via ZDNet

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I’ve just posted my first Podcast on the topic of Professional Blogging with Tris Hussey. Our first topic explores how we became professional bloggers. We’ll be delivering installments every few days, and are open to suggestions.

We’re really proud to be a part of all the Canadian podcast scene, especially with the announcement of a national podcast show on the CBC!

Our series will discuss being a professional blogger - how we got where we are, some hot blogging issues, and tips for others interested in professional blogging. In particular, we’ll try to highlight the vibrant blogging community here in Canada and what it’s like to base your blogging career here.

Hop over to Blogaholics for the official post and download the podcast!

Blog taglines are important. I have read this and learned this over and over. But I was reminded also by a post by Darren to maybe rethink my own. I know he recently upgraded his from “ProBlogger” to “Blog Tips - ProBlogger”

Now taglines are important for many reasons. They tell readers what to expect, and they are highly looked at and considered in the whole SEO process. I also realized, upon Darren’s change, that it could also mean how soon you are read by your readers.

Ok, imagine this. Most people don’t organize their feeds into folders. They just drop them all into their Bloglines or NewsGator. So, when reading, most people go top to bottom. It’s the way we read. So, when Darren went from being at the “P” section to the “B” section, he was more likely to be read first.

What could being read first mean? Well, it could mean that you get readers before they are tired. More likely to comment. To reblog. And simply more likely to read and not just clear away.

So, maybe the first letter in your blog name should be important as well. I guess “Blogging Help…” is not doing so bad there.

Anyway, I thought I’d open up to discussion our own blog tag:

“blogging help - blog consulting by professional bloggers Arieanna & Ianiv”

I recently put that new tagline up there. I wanted the keyphrase of ‘blog consulting’ to be in there, as well as our names. Our names were coming up in our search logs, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt. As well, I wanted to use the term ‘professional blogger’ - this is where I came to a stumble. We are a plural group here: bloggerS. So, I chose to be grammatically correct rather than just putting in the keyphrase. Was this a good idea? Opinions?

Technorati Tags: blogging help, blogs, blogging, SEO, taglines

Two new blog directories have come out.

BlogSweet
FindingBlog

Being in more directories can never hurt. Especially if you’re Sandboxed or you want to be indexed by more bots.

Link via Blog Business World

Six Apart released today version 3.17 of Movable Type. The changelog is small, containing only 4 entries, and the release will not affect the majority of users. The changes are:

• Installation at the root of a domain no longer continually logs out the user.
• Fixed URL-encoding of uploaded file paths (e.g. images%2fbeach-pic.jpeg)
• Fixed a bug in the nofollow plugin which causes HTML sanitization of everything within an <MTPings> block.
• Fixed a bug in mt-db2sql.cgi which caused it to fail in certain situations when subcategories are in use before conversion.

If any of these apply to you then it might be worth upgrading.