4 Blogging Topic Trends for 2010

The topics I’m recommending are ones that have shown a healthy rise in the last few months that is likely to carry over on to the next year. Here are four topics that may rise in 2010:

1. Television – Several new shows launched this year have definitely caught the viewing public’s attention. These shows include “Glee,” “V,” and “The Vampire Diaries” and these shows could gather more steam by next year and blogging about these shows with reviews could be beneficial in getting good traffic and possibly earnings.
2. Social Network Privacy – If we are to believe the online social networks’ data, more and more people are signing up and establishing their own online presences. This could also mean more compromised accounts and stolen identities. This topic could focus on a younger demographic that may need some resources on privacy and online reputation handling.
3. Social Games – We all know that games are big business but niche topics on social games like the ones from Zynga and Playfish are booming. Blogs on tips and tricks on FarmVille and Mafia Wars will definitely have an audience in my opinion.
4. Finance – The global financial sector is recovering and people may be interested in recovering their financial positions. If you have the know how and have the passion for writing, your financial blog could be 2010’s sleeper hit.

There may be other topics that will explode in December so this topics of 2010 blogging trends will be revisited. :)

Blogging for A Company? Makes Sense to Me.

Professional blogging comes in different sizes and shapes. For some, professional blogging is just getting some money for a paid review. And for others, its seeing the checks in gather in the mail from ad networks.

There’s one aspect of professional blogging I feel doesn’t get the cred it deserves: the Hired Blogger aspect.

Hired blogger are on a company’s payroll like regular employees or a consultants on a retainer. Depending on the arrangement, the hired blogger may be paid per per post or a fixed salary with specific goals and measured performance indicators. Responsibilities include writing blog posts on topics surrounding the company’s business and making sure that the blog posts are error-free and interesting enough to be shared around by the blog’s readers, and hopefully the company’s customers.

If you ask me, this kind of professional arrangement makes sense to the company and the blogger.

It really boils down to stability and consistency in the professional relationship– the company has a steady hand behind the blog and the company can give direct feedback about the posts with little fear that the blogger will just jump ship. The blogger, on the other hand, will have a predictable stream of income.

The only caveat here is the motivation factor. Money will never be the full motivator for the blogger to come up with good posts, so the company has to keep an eye on the hiring process to really see the candidates who really has the passion.

As I’ve said, blogging is marked by passion and but when a company tries to leverage on this passion, is there really anything amiss? From the professional side of things, it just makes sense if you ask me.

Why It's Good to Test Your Blog on Different Browsers

From the web design perspective, the relationship most bloggers have with their blog's design is quite limited. More often than not, bloggingfolk use web design templates designed and developed by another person so the determination of the blog's look and feel aspect becomes more like a shopping task.

But once the template has been selected, one big assumption oftentimes arises: This template works in all browsers.

Blog templates are never 100% working, especially with some broken browsers (*cough*IE6*cough*) still out there.

It's good practice to test the browser yourself with the common browsers. You can start with Internet Explorer (version 7 and 8 if possible) and Mozilla Firefox. These two browsers would already comprise almost 80% of browsers out there. For good measure, you can also check on Google Chrome and Opera Browser. To be sure, you can refer to your blog's stats (if available) to see which browser the majority of your readers are using and test your blog's template.

If you don't want to install extra browsers in your machine, there's always BrowserShots, a web site that will take a snapshot of your sites using different browsers.

Just remember not all browsers are created equal and a blog template not working could spell the difference between a successful blog and a lemon.

How Concerned Should Bloggers Be About SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was such a buzzword in the early 2000's because most web folks noticed a change in behavior in the internet users. What's that behavior? People used search engines as their primary starting point in their web usage.

By now, tips are all over the web on how to make your blog search engine optimized and how to get to the top SERP (search engine result page) for keywords related to your niche. But while it is generally accepted to be aware and avail of the basic SEO techniques, most bloggers are concerned that they are not concerned about SEO enough.

But really, how concerned should bloggers be about SEO?

If you ask me, not as much as before.

These days, the entry point to the web just got wider because there's social media. Content discovery is the primary function of search, but social media (in the form of blogs and microblogs) may give users what they need. Thus, instead of being concerned about being "findable," bloggers should now strive to be "shareable."

Making Money Through Blogging: A Review

Blogging for profit has been around since the early part of this decade but for some bloggers, blog monetization is often taken for granted. Especially when the global financial markets started crashing one by one last year, the diversification of  how blogs can earn money became a must.
Here's a review of the different methods bloggers can earn money through their blogs:

• Banner Advertising - The granddaddy of online business model still works today, despite the ad spend slowdown. Of course, advertisers are attracted to popular, high-traffic blogs.
• Pay Per Click Advertising - A democratized method since this requires more focused niches,  this is perhaps the most common way bloggers earn. Ad networks like Google AdSense, BlogAds, and AdBrite provide relatively easy way to monetize blogs.
• Paid posts/reviews - An ethical grey area for most bloggers, this will surely be affected by the recent FTC announcement about blog reviews and testimonials. This type of regulation is not new, but may blaze the trail for other governments to implement their own version.
• Getting hired as a Blogger - Bloggers can also take the "Professional Blogger" route by getting hired to blog or join a blog publishing network. This is most stable ways of making money but the most restrictive if you ask me.

For some people, this is obvious but new bloggers who have just entered into the fold must be reminded that there's more to earning online than just Google AdSense.