Aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners are often misled or misguided on the topic of how to properly conduct market research that uncovers a profitable niche.
The path most unsuspecting entrepreneurs take is by ending up at keyword tool or database to begin their search.
As a keyword research expert and founder of one of the leading keyword research services on the internet, I can say with first hand experience that keyword databases are not the first place to look nor should be even considered. Here's why.
The primary keyword databases that are currently available to the general public only give search counts on a limited amount of data that accounts for 1% - 2% of the actual searches people do around the entire world. They can only predict (emphasis added) the real majority of searches that are being done on the big five search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com which hold 97%-98% of the keyword data.
Most importantly, keyword research only shows what keyword phrases people are using in the search engines to search for answers, not what people actually buy on the internet. Just because a group of people search for specific terms or brand names does not mean that's what they purchase. That's a key distinction many entrepreneurs and business owners tend to gloss over.
When looking for a profitable niche marketplace, your primary focus should be looking for proof of a group of hungry and rabid buyers that want to exchange their money for a service or product (information, physical or digital). Without this crucial qualifier, you may have the greatest product in the world, but you may be lacking a market to sell it to.
This article will present a number of great sources to look at which will give you a running start to uncover a truly, profitable marketplace exists before you go for the gold and put all your resources into a website, product creation or expenditures toward some sort of online property.
Once you establish that you have located a market that contains signs of adequate commerce moving through it, you then have a worthy reason to look further into a keyword research service to find out what keyword phrases people use to find the market you have chosen.
Let's begin looking at how to identify a profitable market.
MAGAZINES
One of the best ways to find signs of a truly profitable marketplace is looking for a magazine in that industry. If a publisher has enough money to print and circulate a full color magazine, there are most likely advertisers that support the funding of the magazine's ability to circulate all the copies which most likely means there are sales being made by those advertisers.
Now, this may bring you to question whether there is too much competition in a marketplace with so many advertisers selling in a magazine.
In fact, it's a great sign to have competition which means there is an adequate amount of customers to sell to and a portion of a sizable pie to be had in that marketplace. If there is very little competition, you may (1) not have adequate product being sold in that space; or (2) not have a marketplace to begin with. The larger the competition is, the larger the piece of revenues you will be able to grab.
Without having to leave your seat, you can hop on over to Magazines.com and looking through the number of different categories to find a profitable topic or industry in which to start an online concern.
One of the things you'll want to focus in on is the number of subscribers each magazine has and how long the magazine has been in print for stability purposes.
Make a list of magazines you want to look into and then go hunting for them at one of those large dedicated newsstands that covers just about every magazine on every topic.
To get a better look at what people are buying in the online world, you will need to ultimately decide whether you wish to represent physical or digital products.
PHYSICAL PRODUCTS
There are two incredibly huge marketplaces that are massively trafficked, move a lot of product and are great places to find what people are really buying.
Let's start with the first huge marketplace…
eBay
At eBay, you can look through a list of the most popular products people are buying through auctions or from eBay stores that vendors have setup. To see a visual path on how to locate the most popular products, please use the reference below to view the extended version of this article.
Amazon.com
Another really big marketplace is Amazon and it's not just for books. You can find just about any product and name brand that is a mover and shaker. Again, look at the most popular products in those categories that catch your attention.
DIGITAL PRODUCTS
If you wish to sell products of the digital nature which does not require inventory and which usually carries high profit margins for affiliates, you'll want to check out the Clickbank digital marketplace that ranks product sales from highest to lowest sellers in each category.
Just browse through categories at Clickbank.com and you'll instantly find the top sellers of digital info products, software and subscription services which are located right at the top listings. See also reference section below for a link to the extended version of this article for visual aids and more detailed guidance.
Once you gather the adequate market research, you can do one of the following:
• Create an online store that ships out physical products and merchandise (requires inventory)
• Sell merchandise through eBay auctions or their online stores (requires inventory)
• Create a site that represents vendors as an affiliate (requires no inventory)
• Create your own product, service or software for a digital product (requires no inventory)
Having used at least two of the four places above, you can be assured that you have conducted proper market research to uncover "proof positive" what people are buying and, thus, a profitable niche market.
You can then quickly build out a non-complex site with a simple product offering, find some low cost keywords to use in a Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click campaign with a minimal spend of $50 to test the market and see if you have a winner.
If the initial test results pan out, meaning that you pulled a profit from your test, you can invest more energies, conduct more extensive keyword research and expend more advertising dollars. If the test results do not pan out, find another market until something sticks.
I believe this should arm you with enough information to get you moving toward finding a market with bottomless profits.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Thursday, December 22, 2011
What your website's homepage needs to have to blow up on sales.
What your website's homepage needs to have to blow up on sales.
The homepage (the front page of your website) is where you and your company get to make a first impression and we all know what they say about first impressions.. It's the first place new visitors come and where old visitors come back. You must cater to both types of customers. There are a few things that are essential to your homepage and each is explained below.
Navigation
Navigation is the most important part of your homepage. It doesn't matter what else is on your site, if the visitors can't get there. On your homepage your visitors need to be able to reach every part of your site. Your links on your navigation bars should be the same on every page. Your visitor will then know how to get back to whatever page really interested him. When users cannot find what they want they simple look at another site. This is a fact. Your links on the navigation bars should also be simple (one or two words) but descriptive. Use text for navigation not buttons. Buttons look great but they take time to download and you don't want your visitors to leave before they can see the whole page, do you?
Branding
Branding is another essential element for you homepage. I am sure that your small business has a logo and it's pasted on everything you can find, to promote your business. Well, it should be posted in a predominate place on your website too. We all know that branding is words or a mark of a company (such as a logo) that shows the consumer the identity of the producer of the product/service. Showing your logo on your homepage reminds users exactly where they are
Content
Last but not least is content. Content is also very important. You must remember to write your content like you are speaking to your visitor as it creates a better connection between your website and the visitor. Your homepage content must be fresh and interesting to make them want to read more of your site. You might create links to the inside of your site in the text. Also, you will want to include in layman's terms exactly what you or your company does. You would be amazed how many websites you have to search to find out what their purpose is.
These things should get you started on building your homepage. There is one rule that I have learned. It is the KISS rule (Keep it Simple Student). Your homepage does not need to be flashy with all types of images, and flash design, or blinking. Most people like sites when they are simple and easy to understand. You must remember who your audience is. Therefore you need to speak in their language.
The homepage (the front page of your website) is where you and your company get to make a first impression and we all know what they say about first impressions.. It's the first place new visitors come and where old visitors come back. You must cater to both types of customers. There are a few things that are essential to your homepage and each is explained below.
Navigation
Navigation is the most important part of your homepage. It doesn't matter what else is on your site, if the visitors can't get there. On your homepage your visitors need to be able to reach every part of your site. Your links on your navigation bars should be the same on every page. Your visitor will then know how to get back to whatever page really interested him. When users cannot find what they want they simple look at another site. This is a fact. Your links on the navigation bars should also be simple (one or two words) but descriptive. Use text for navigation not buttons. Buttons look great but they take time to download and you don't want your visitors to leave before they can see the whole page, do you?
Branding
Branding is another essential element for you homepage. I am sure that your small business has a logo and it's pasted on everything you can find, to promote your business. Well, it should be posted in a predominate place on your website too. We all know that branding is words or a mark of a company (such as a logo) that shows the consumer the identity of the producer of the product/service. Showing your logo on your homepage reminds users exactly where they are
Content
Last but not least is content. Content is also very important. You must remember to write your content like you are speaking to your visitor as it creates a better connection between your website and the visitor. Your homepage content must be fresh and interesting to make them want to read more of your site. You might create links to the inside of your site in the text. Also, you will want to include in layman's terms exactly what you or your company does. You would be amazed how many websites you have to search to find out what their purpose is.
These things should get you started on building your homepage. There is one rule that I have learned. It is the KISS rule (Keep it Simple Student). Your homepage does not need to be flashy with all types of images, and flash design, or blinking. Most people like sites when they are simple and easy to understand. You must remember who your audience is. Therefore you need to speak in their language.
Friday, December 16, 2011
10 EFFECTIVE WAYS TO PROMOTE YOUR BLOGG
Fortunately, there are more ways than one to increase website traffic. And the good news is that you can do things to increase website traffic totally free of cost! It can be done and here are 10 ways to do it:
1.SubmittoSearchEngines:
This is the first step towards increasing your website traffic. Don't wait for the search engines to find your site. Go ahead and submit it to them voluntarily. Submitting a sitemap would be better - this will encourage the search engines to examine your site more often. Visits by the Search Engine Spiders are a key way to increase website traffic.
2.LinkExchange:
The search engines count inbound links when ranking your website. Look for free link exchange programs. You can increase website traffic by including relevant links to your site - so seek out sites with similar or complementary products/services. You can also use free blogs as lead generation tools to help increase website traffic. When you make a post on a blog, include a link to your site URL, using anchor text. Blogs are a direct means to increase website traffic for free! Free classified ads that allow links to your URL are also good ways to increase website traffic.
3.ArticleMarketing:
A relatively new but powerful (and free!) traffic booster. Publish articles on Ezine and Article Directories. Articles create interest in your website as you are seen as an expert. Having links to your URL utilizing anchor text increases your number of relevant inbound links.
4."TellaFriend"Scripts:
Include a "tells a friend" script on your website. This will enable your customers to pass your website (and links) around. You'd be amazed at how well this works. Someone finds your site interesting, passes it to a friend, so on, and so on. You get the picture. This directly helps increase website traffic, and you build your customer base! A favorite technique of Internet business owners and it's free!
5.HoldaContest:
Use your website's auto responder as a means to hold a contest of some type. For example, if they sign up for your newsletter, they get a chance to win free e-books
Or one months' worth of web hosting (or one of your products). Again, this is an excellent way to increase website traffic and build your opt-in list, all at the same time!
6.PressReleases:
This is one of the most overlooked ways to increase website traffic. The subject can be as simple as announcing a new product that you offer, or a new hire that you've made. As long as it's newsworthy, you can distribute your press release to the online press release companies and have it picked up by the major search engine's news categories (for example, Yahoo! News). Do you know how many people read these things? Thousands! An excellent way to increase you website traffic.
7. Affiliate Program:
Do you sell a product or e-book? Then you need to create an affiliate program. This is how it works: you offer to permit sale of your product on other Internet owners' websites, in exchange for giving them a portion of the sale (say, 35%). Do you realize how many websites that you can have your products on using this method? There are many Internet business owners that simply sell other people's products (we call these Super Affiliates). This way, you sell more products and increase website traffic absolutely free of cost! You do have to promote your affiliate program and product, which brings us to the next method, which is....
8. Get A Click Bank Account:
Click bank is the largest product directory on the Internet today. Additionally, Clickbank will set up and manage your affiliate program for you. They will also manage sales and any returns. You don't do a thing! Both your product and affiliate program are listed in the Clickbank directory. People looking for the product you offer find your website and wham! You've just taken a major step toward getting an immediate increase in website traffic! And, it only takes 5 minutes to sign up!
9. Joint Venture:
You can team up with a company that sells similar or complementary products and services. Your website link is then advertised on that company's site and vice versa. This results in directing traffic from their site to yours. All you have to do is contact the company that you are interested in via email, with a proposal. This technique works amazingly well. You increase website traffic, and most importantly, it is both relevant and targeted, increasing your ability to make a sale!
10. Use Ebay:
Stop passing up Ebay! Ebay is less intimidating than it looks, and it is easy for beginners to get started. In fact, Ebay was practically made for the Internet business owner who wants to increase website traffic. You can set up an Ebay store, of course linking back to your website. Including clever sales copy and pictures of your products/services increases your chances of customers clicking through and making a purchase. You can sell ANYTHING on eBay - this is no exaggeration. Go to ebay.com and you'll see what I'm talking about!
1.SubmittoSearchEngines:
This is the first step towards increasing your website traffic. Don't wait for the search engines to find your site. Go ahead and submit it to them voluntarily. Submitting a sitemap would be better - this will encourage the search engines to examine your site more often. Visits by the Search Engine Spiders are a key way to increase website traffic.
2.LinkExchange:
The search engines count inbound links when ranking your website. Look for free link exchange programs. You can increase website traffic by including relevant links to your site - so seek out sites with similar or complementary products/services. You can also use free blogs as lead generation tools to help increase website traffic. When you make a post on a blog, include a link to your site URL, using anchor text. Blogs are a direct means to increase website traffic for free! Free classified ads that allow links to your URL are also good ways to increase website traffic.
3.ArticleMarketing:
A relatively new but powerful (and free!) traffic booster. Publish articles on Ezine and Article Directories. Articles create interest in your website as you are seen as an expert. Having links to your URL utilizing anchor text increases your number of relevant inbound links.
4."TellaFriend"Scripts:
Include a "tells a friend" script on your website. This will enable your customers to pass your website (and links) around. You'd be amazed at how well this works. Someone finds your site interesting, passes it to a friend, so on, and so on. You get the picture. This directly helps increase website traffic, and you build your customer base! A favorite technique of Internet business owners and it's free!
5.HoldaContest:
Use your website's auto responder as a means to hold a contest of some type. For example, if they sign up for your newsletter, they get a chance to win free e-books
Or one months' worth of web hosting (or one of your products). Again, this is an excellent way to increase website traffic and build your opt-in list, all at the same time!
6.PressReleases:
This is one of the most overlooked ways to increase website traffic. The subject can be as simple as announcing a new product that you offer, or a new hire that you've made. As long as it's newsworthy, you can distribute your press release to the online press release companies and have it picked up by the major search engine's news categories (for example, Yahoo! News). Do you know how many people read these things? Thousands! An excellent way to increase you website traffic.
7. Affiliate Program:
Do you sell a product or e-book? Then you need to create an affiliate program. This is how it works: you offer to permit sale of your product on other Internet owners' websites, in exchange for giving them a portion of the sale (say, 35%). Do you realize how many websites that you can have your products on using this method? There are many Internet business owners that simply sell other people's products (we call these Super Affiliates). This way, you sell more products and increase website traffic absolutely free of cost! You do have to promote your affiliate program and product, which brings us to the next method, which is....
8. Get A Click Bank Account:
Click bank is the largest product directory on the Internet today. Additionally, Clickbank will set up and manage your affiliate program for you. They will also manage sales and any returns. You don't do a thing! Both your product and affiliate program are listed in the Clickbank directory. People looking for the product you offer find your website and wham! You've just taken a major step toward getting an immediate increase in website traffic! And, it only takes 5 minutes to sign up!
9. Joint Venture:
You can team up with a company that sells similar or complementary products and services. Your website link is then advertised on that company's site and vice versa. This results in directing traffic from their site to yours. All you have to do is contact the company that you are interested in via email, with a proposal. This technique works amazingly well. You increase website traffic, and most importantly, it is both relevant and targeted, increasing your ability to make a sale!
10. Use Ebay:
Stop passing up Ebay! Ebay is less intimidating than it looks, and it is easy for beginners to get started. In fact, Ebay was practically made for the Internet business owner who wants to increase website traffic. You can set up an Ebay store, of course linking back to your website. Including clever sales copy and pictures of your products/services increases your chances of customers clicking through and making a purchase. You can sell ANYTHING on eBay - this is no exaggeration. Go to ebay.com and you'll see what I'm talking about!
Sunday, December 11, 2011
AFFILIATE MARKETING:
Have you ever dreamed of putting your destiny into your own hands? Or have you imagined that you could earn commission on a brand-name or niche product just by placing a link on your website or in your email? If you have, you may want to try affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is essentially a website network. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finders' fees for introducing new clients to a business. Nowadays, affiliate marketing is primarily conducted online as the number of people surfing the Internet for what they want is growing exponentially. It is a popular method of promoting web business in which an affiliate is rewarded for driving traffic (visitor, subscriber or customer) to merchants' websites through his efforts. Commission may be made depending on a certain value of registrant (pay per lead), sale (pay per sale), or any combination. Simply put, it's about paying people money for helping merchantssellproducts.
Let's say you created a website dedicated to promoting computer repair services/consultations and reaching out to potential customers. While your service is basically fixing PC problems, you notice that your clients also need registry cleaner utilities for the maintenance of their computers. In this case, affiliate marketing could involve contacting software developers selling registry fix or repair products, posting links to their sites on your website, and collecting a percentage of profit for each purchase those companies receive. In the long run, you can exchange links or sign contracts with the companies you are affiliated with. When someone browsing for computer maintenance or repair service on their websites clicks the link to your website and then decides to contact you for a consultation, the website that sends business your way will then receive commission
In fact, you are not required to have your own business as far as affiliate marketing is concerned. You can make a living selling any products without having to take orders or maintain your inventory.
How is this done? Build up a website to promote the products you are interested in. Make sure to include appealing articles about the products. After your website is established, contact online companies selling similar products and set up affiliate agreements. Those who hit your site and become regular visitors will inevitably be interested in ordering the products advertised on your site. Once an advertisement link is clicked by your site visitor and a purchase is made, you will receive commission.
If you don't have a website, you can still earn money through affiliate marketing by generating targeted traffic to the websites you're affiliated with. Google Adwords is the most important PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising system on the Internet. It allows you to directly advertise your affiliate links in the Google search engine results and on their partner networks.
The key to be successful in affiliate marketing is simply driving traffic to your site consistently. The more hits on your website, the more chances you have of gaining profit from purchases made through your links. Promoting your website through eZine and Banner advertising and providing free newsletters for subscribers would be promising ways to generate traffic to your website. Once your site consistently achieves a lower ranking in Alexa toolbar (which means your website is popular), other website owners or companies will be more likely to join forces with you in affiliate agreements.
Affiliate marketing is essentially a website network. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finders' fees for introducing new clients to a business. Nowadays, affiliate marketing is primarily conducted online as the number of people surfing the Internet for what they want is growing exponentially. It is a popular method of promoting web business in which an affiliate is rewarded for driving traffic (visitor, subscriber or customer) to merchants' websites through his efforts. Commission may be made depending on a certain value of registrant (pay per lead), sale (pay per sale), or any combination. Simply put, it's about paying people money for helping merchantssellproducts.
Let's say you created a website dedicated to promoting computer repair services/consultations and reaching out to potential customers. While your service is basically fixing PC problems, you notice that your clients also need registry cleaner utilities for the maintenance of their computers. In this case, affiliate marketing could involve contacting software developers selling registry fix or repair products, posting links to their sites on your website, and collecting a percentage of profit for each purchase those companies receive. In the long run, you can exchange links or sign contracts with the companies you are affiliated with. When someone browsing for computer maintenance or repair service on their websites clicks the link to your website and then decides to contact you for a consultation, the website that sends business your way will then receive commission
In fact, you are not required to have your own business as far as affiliate marketing is concerned. You can make a living selling any products without having to take orders or maintain your inventory.
How is this done? Build up a website to promote the products you are interested in. Make sure to include appealing articles about the products. After your website is established, contact online companies selling similar products and set up affiliate agreements. Those who hit your site and become regular visitors will inevitably be interested in ordering the products advertised on your site. Once an advertisement link is clicked by your site visitor and a purchase is made, you will receive commission.
If you don't have a website, you can still earn money through affiliate marketing by generating targeted traffic to the websites you're affiliated with. Google Adwords is the most important PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising system on the Internet. It allows you to directly advertise your affiliate links in the Google search engine results and on their partner networks.
The key to be successful in affiliate marketing is simply driving traffic to your site consistently. The more hits on your website, the more chances you have of gaining profit from purchases made through your links. Promoting your website through eZine and Banner advertising and providing free newsletters for subscribers would be promising ways to generate traffic to your website. Once your site consistently achieves a lower ranking in Alexa toolbar (which means your website is popular), other website owners or companies will be more likely to join forces with you in affiliate agreements.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
WHAT IS RSS AND HOW IT CAN BENEFIT YOU
RSS is short for Really Simple Syndication. It is part of the XML family that is used for syndicating information. Put simply RSS allows one web site to share information with another web site.
As a web site publisher, RSS offers a way for them to publish their information on many web sites, which in turns increases their reach on the Internet and the amount of traffic they receive to their web site. They also receive more one way links back to their web site. These benefits result in an increase in their search engine ranking.
As a web site owner, RSS allows them to receive up to date links to information on a regular basis that runs on auto pilot. When the publishing site is updated, their web site is also updated.
The result of this is that their web site is updated more regularly which also increases their search engine ranking.
The other benefit the web site owner receives from using RSS is that their information remains "fresh" which encourages their visitors to return on a regular basis.
However, the web site owner does not receive the complete articles, instead, they receive a feed that contains a title, a brief description and a link to the article that resides on the publishers web site.
The main disadvantage to the web site owner is that they trade off traffic for content, as their visitors need to visit the publishers web site to read the complete article.
But, this is a minor disadvantage considering all the benefits that RSS offers the web site owner.
The web site owner will need to install some software in order for them to receive RSS Feeds.
This software ranges from commercial packages the web site owner can purchase all the way down to freeware. Before purchasing any software you should research the different software packages that are available to ensure you get the software that is most suited to your requirements.
Fortunately, setting up an RSS feed is relatively straightforward and should only take a couple of hours at the most, and, once RSS is set up, their is very little maintenance (if any) required.
If you are a web site owner, you should consider the power of RSS and what it can offer you and your website.
As a web site publisher, RSS offers a way for them to publish their information on many web sites, which in turns increases their reach on the Internet and the amount of traffic they receive to their web site. They also receive more one way links back to their web site. These benefits result in an increase in their search engine ranking.
As a web site owner, RSS allows them to receive up to date links to information on a regular basis that runs on auto pilot. When the publishing site is updated, their web site is also updated.
The result of this is that their web site is updated more regularly which also increases their search engine ranking.
The other benefit the web site owner receives from using RSS is that their information remains "fresh" which encourages their visitors to return on a regular basis.
However, the web site owner does not receive the complete articles, instead, they receive a feed that contains a title, a brief description and a link to the article that resides on the publishers web site.
The main disadvantage to the web site owner is that they trade off traffic for content, as their visitors need to visit the publishers web site to read the complete article.
But, this is a minor disadvantage considering all the benefits that RSS offers the web site owner.
The web site owner will need to install some software in order for them to receive RSS Feeds.
This software ranges from commercial packages the web site owner can purchase all the way down to freeware. Before purchasing any software you should research the different software packages that are available to ensure you get the software that is most suited to your requirements.
Fortunately, setting up an RSS feed is relatively straightforward and should only take a couple of hours at the most, and, once RSS is set up, their is very little maintenance (if any) required.
If you are a web site owner, you should consider the power of RSS and what it can offer you and your website.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Syndication
A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above). There are tools out there that call themselves "feedreaders". What they do is they keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don't have to visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these "Syndication" feeds available for the readers to use.
Friday, November 25, 2011
BLOGROLLS.
Blogrolls
A blogroll is a list, sometimes categorized, of links to webpages the author of a blog finds worthwhile or interesting. The links in a blogroll are usually to other blogs with similar interests. The blogroll is often in a "sidebar" on the page or featured as a dedicated separate web page. BlogRolling and blo.gs are two websites that provide some interesting functions or help related to blogrolls. These sites provide methods for users to maintain these rolls effortlessly and integrate them into weblogs. WordPress has a built-in Link Manager so users do not have to depend on a third party for creating and managing their blogroll.
Syndication
A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above). There are tools out there that call themselves "feedreaders". What they do is they keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don't have to visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these "Syndication" feeds available for the readers to use.
A blogroll is a list, sometimes categorized, of links to webpages the author of a blog finds worthwhile or interesting. The links in a blogroll are usually to other blogs with similar interests. The blogroll is often in a "sidebar" on the page or featured as a dedicated separate web page. BlogRolling and blo.gs are two websites that provide some interesting functions or help related to blogrolls. These sites provide methods for users to maintain these rolls effortlessly and integrate them into weblogs. WordPress has a built-in Link Manager so users do not have to depend on a third party for creating and managing their blogroll.
Syndication
A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above). There are tools out there that call themselves "feedreaders". What they do is they keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don't have to visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these "Syndication" feeds available for the readers to use.
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