This is a guest post by Ann Smarty, a SEO consultant and online entrepreneur.

Blogging long ago stopped being just the way to share news and / or personal thoughts. Today it has become a common fashion already to create a blog supporting your main website. Several reasons for that include:

• you can update it regularly with useful relevant information (and thus improve your chances to rank well in Google);
• you can get closer to your customers or readers (by starting a real communication with them);
• you can build business relationships with influential bloggers in your niche (by linking to them and referencing their posts).

Let’s look how these aims are achieved by reviewing just a few examples:

FreeShipping.org

FreeShipping.org, a valuable resource that helps shoppers save money by showing them what stores offer free shipping and provides the necessary coupon codes to get it, has a coupon codes blog where exclusive and time-limited offers are posted regularly. The blog also reviews other similar resources that might be useful for their readers. The blog is thus meant for several aims:

This article is for those of you who want to start a blog but aren’t sure what the best way to start one might be. We’ll look at helping you answer the following questions and end with an open discussion for questions.

1. Should I go with a free blog OR spend a little money and purchase my own web hosting?
2. Which program should I use - WordPress or Blogger?
3. Where should I host my WordPress Blog?
4. Conclusion and open discussion.

When I first came to the conclusion that I wanted to start a blog, I treated my decision just like I would any other business venture I might enter into.

The first thing I did was examine what everyone else was using. I quickly noticed most bloggers were using WordPress and had their blog hosted on their own domain (which means they opted to pay for a web hosting account).

Your bank can help you build your empire. Image by DavidDMuir

Today in the United States the economy sucks.

The term “credit squeeze” has been floating around lately and refers to the fact that banks are in so much trouble themselves that they have tightened their lending policies almost to the point where credit scores don’t matter.

Cash is king, yes, but there is a “queen” out there that is almost as good as cash.

What is it?

Trust.

Being that I deal a little in real estate, people sometimes ask me questions about how to improve their credit scores or what’s the best way to obtain a line of credit.

My answer has always been you need to build trust with a bank, preferably one you can physically walk into and meet with someone face-to-face. If you already have great credit with an out of state bank that’s ok too, continue building that credit and trust, but nothing beats being able to walk into a bank and getting to know the staff.

We here at eVentureBiz are asking for help from our blog readers and visitors.

We currently are running multiple pay-per-click campaigns on both MSN.com and Google and would like some feedback from you.

Here are a few sample ads we are running for our web hosting services on our Google campaign. Please let us know what you think.

Which ad catches your attention best and why? What about these ads might make you not click on them? What would you type into a search box to find a web hosting company? Can you suggest a better worded ad than we currently have? The title can only be 25 characters long (including white space) and the first and second line of text description can only be 35 characters each (also including white space). Lastly, if you were looking for web hosting, what would convince you to click on one ad opposed to another?

Who are you selling lemonade to?

Is simply building a community of bloggers enough to make you a nice profit from blogging?

The last few posts I wrote dealt with some concerns I have and misconceptions out there about what it takes to generate income being a web entrepreneur. Those posts were:

1. Building A Business Through Social Media Vs. The Old-Timer’s Way To Business Success - A post expressing my concerns that with the idea of social media marketing entrepreneurs might become lazy.
2. The Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing and Does It Teach Us Bad Habits As Entrepreneurs? - It takes more than sitting at home everyday in your PJs authoring a blog to become highly successful.
3. The Unplugged Entrepreneur - Taking yourself offline and building your business.

To be successful in generating profits in business, you need to create something that solves a BIG PROBLEM for your potential customers (which might be your blog readers). Let’s look at an analogy.

What would you do business-wise if Internet marketing went away tomorrow? Could you still run a successful business?

In my last couple of posts I mentioned how I feel with the growing popularity of social media and blogging as a means to grow your business has in many ways made some entrepreneurs lazy.

True it is possible to grow your business by only networking online and never off, but limiting yourself in such a way could be a huge mistake.

One of the main reasons for starting a business is to generate wealth. Yes, freedom to do what you want and be your own boss are other reasons, but without the wealth, you won’t be able to do any of those for long.

If you own a business and want to generate substantial wealth, don’t let your knowledge of the Internet (which is a strength) become your Achilles heal in business. What billionaire or even millionaire do you know sits at home, blogs, toys around with social media and comments back and forth on blogs every day all day long?

Craig Newmark, owner of Craiglist.org A social media entrepreneur that does more than sit at home all day at the computer in his PJs Image by AP/Stephen Chernin source Wired

So much has already been written on how powerful of a marketing tool social media can be that I don’t want to spell it all out again here. Visit Problogger, Copyblogger, Dosh Dosh, and sites like those to learn more.

The major downside I see with social media is how much time and effort it can take to create a profit.

For example, I’ve been seeing a lot lately on how to grow your blog. One of the more popular ways is to comment on other people’s blog in order to get those bloggers to in turn visit your blog and read and comment, in other words, return the favor. This is probably one of the best ways to quickly build your comment section and community.