Quite often people want to know if they can make any money with this blog thing. To this I currently have two answers: yes and maybe so. There are many ways to measure the success of one’s blogging efforts and an announcement by AllBusiness.com demonstrates a growing trend in the "mainstreamness" of blogs. A number of bloggers (Okay, including me) have entered into an agreement to blog for All Busineess, a small business portal. Look for this type of business writing and opportunity to grow.

AllBusiness.com, an online media and e-commerce company that operates one of the leading business Web sites, today announced the launch of its new AllBusiness Blog Center at http://www.allbusiness.com/blog/.

Blogs in the AllBusiness.com Blog Center include:  “Bizz Bang Buzz,” a legal blog by Anthony Cerminaro; “Duct Tape Marketing” covering marketing issues by John Jantsch; “Just For Small Business,” a running a business blog by Denise O’Berry; “Management Craft,” a management blog by Lisa Haneberg;  “Only Once,” a blog about day-to-day activities of running a business by Matt Blumberg; “Sales Diva” by Lori Richardson, which covers the sales process; “The Small Business Blog” by Doug Kersten, covering business news; and Denise Wakeman’s “Your Project Partner” blog, focused on internet marketing.

I was interviewed this week at Marketing Studies on the subject of corporate blogging.
Have a listen

Some of the topics covered in this interview:

* Steps to producing a blog that won top honors by MarketingSherpa.com readers.
* The difference between e-zines and blogs, especially in terms of the marketing affects of each.
* Is there a difference in the products you can market via blogs and via e-zines and direct e-mail marketing?
* The gap between different content delivery channels, such as RSS and e-mail.
* And much more. . .

These are the folks that produced THE guide to Marketing & Publishing with RSS

I am hosting session 5 in my local online marketing series

Search Engine Optimization basics to win the local search traffic game – Or how to get found in your town

Mar 30th – Noon Central
Special Guest – Aaron Wall – SEO Book

Local prospects, search locally. If you want your web site to be found in your town then you must follow documented search positioning tactics. A Kansas City consumer looking for a day spa will search “Kansas City Day Spa.” Being able to rank high in Google, MSN or Yahoo for that term is the your most important task. Learn the basics of local search from the author of one of the best selling books on the topic – SEO Book.

Make Your Reservation for this free teleseminar today!

Word on the AP wire today is that Yahoo plans to finally take advantage of its gigantic user base to introduce a blogging tool.  The description on a Yahoo beta page describes a service that seems as though it is a hybrid blogging and social networking tool that will allow users to take advantage of all of the resources that already exist on Yahoo and then power up applications such as email and contact management. For example:Users wil be able to text message and send photos to their blogs from their wireless phones. From the AP report:

The service is designed to enable Yahoo’s 165 million
registered users to pull content from the Web site’s discussion groups,
online photo albums and review section to plug into their own Web logs,
or blogs, the Internet shorthand used to describe online personal
journals.

They say that the service won’t be available until March 29 and will be offered by invitaion only, much like gmail, but you can sign-up to be on the invite list.

If you already have a free Yahoo acount you can sign-in and  get more details

For local type businesses, those that just want business from around town, the Internet is becoming more and more important. As the search engines move to implement their local search strategies, local businesses will need to understand the playing field

Here’s a tip: The Internet Is The New Phone Book and you better make sure you get listed.

Today, Google announced the Google Local Business Center, a free tool for businesses to easily add or update their business listings that appear in Google Local. The Google Local Business Center is available for all businesses in the United States regardless of whether or not their listing already exists in Google Local.

To access this new feature, businesses must visit the Google Local Business Center and request that their Google Local business listing be added or edited. After completing the listing information, businesses will receive a mailer from Google with a PIN. The PIN is used to confirm their addition or requested changes to the Google Local business listing. Various information about a business can be added or edited including address, phone number, hours of operation, type of cuisine, payment accepted, website and email.

This one is a no brainer – get listed! – They have even integrated their very cool mapping system into the listings and hint that they may use the data when someone executes a “local looking search” like – Accountant Kansas City. This kind of search is already starting to include some directory type listings.