The fact of the matter is, blogging is in. It’s not just for teens and personal sites anymore. More and more companies are introducing their own company blogs as a way to help keep their customers informed and keep interest in their product. It’s becoming so common now that if you don’t have one, you may not be able to keep up a positive reputation.

People do read blogs. They add a personal touch to a company that helps the customer know there’s someone behind the company. It is actually a really low-cost way to get and maintain interest in a website, product, or service. Other than the inital setup and the designer, there’s very little cost to maintaining a company blog. Simply add it to your existing website.

Maintaining a company blog can also help you gain valuable feedback you might only be able to get via survey. You can pay a survey company, but most likely the only people interested in giving feedback are those who were either very happy or very unhappy with your company. You can use a blog to introduce new products or services and get immediate real-world feedback.

You may wonder if blogs are just a phase, if they’re worth the effort. Do you remember when message boards became big? Probably not, unless you’ve been around since the beginning of the ‘WWW’. When message boards first appeared on the scene they weren’t much. If you take a look now, you’ll find that more often than not, companies are running their own forums. Blogs are a lot like this, except people don’t need to sign up to leave their thoughts on your articles.

Company blogs are beneficial for the rest of us, too. I’m planning a fitness blog with a case study where I apply my methods to another person. While I am working on this fitness blog, the one over at Women’s Health Magazine helps inspire me and gives me ideas to apply to my own fitness case study.

Businesses with blogs have also begun buying advertisements on other blogs, like this one, to get the word out about their blogs or specific articles. Depending on the popularity of your own blog, you can make millions from them.

I am no longer going to be blogging on The Blog World.

Don’t cry for me Argentina! I will still be around. All my amazingly wonderful tips will be on Pajama Mommy Community. The good thing is its flourishing beyond all my expectations, the bad thing is it takes up all my time! I am trying to write really good blog posts on that site! So even if you aren’t a mommy go there for the business and networking its really awesome.

The good thing is the blog world will NOT be closing down. All my old posts will stay here, I have given it to a friend of mine. Amy. She has been learning from me so don’t think I wont be around in some way or another. She is really good just give her some time. She’s new to SEO but she’s learning very quickly. She has to! Heck I didn’t know anything about it when I started and doing all the things I taught from learning from others has put Pajama Mommy on the map in a lot of ways. So just be nice! Please don’t leave just because its a new owner. Just ask questions! She will find the answers! Trust me! If not she’ll ask me! <3

I have to say for marketing these guys are doing really well. They do some sponsored reviews which is okay and really good to boost up things like your technorati or your page rank. I have purchased a few in my time. They are actually doing it the smart way to promote their chat rooms services.

Their design is a little dated I would definitely update that, but over all their service is reliable. I was testing out the site myself and find it to be highly useful and resource full especially in promoting businesses. If you were to for example collaborate with this company on creating a business chat rooms for your blog It will not only cross promote their services but promote yours as well. Or if you make something along the lines of targeting your niche market in their services it is really helpful to you. Don’t you think?

I know how hard it is these days to figure out more things to add to your niche or your website that allows you to create even more statistics to gain advertisers but this could be one of them. Make a chat room based on your website. If you were john chow or darren rowse this could be very successful an alternative method if you may to added a message board on your site. but if you’re joe schmoe with an RSS readership of 4 don’t do it until you’ve gained more grown instead join and experiment with the site and become a master of it so when you do have the ability to offer your users something more you don’t have to research you will already know how to do everything.

Giving your readers another edge is what is important, everyone is continuously trying to out do the other its really hard to even focus on the readers at that point. This is why chat rooms are awesome even if you schedule a regular chat session, like some places do it allows you to talk to your readers and interact with them on a basis without giving out all your personal screen names to be stalked online. This is also something people don’t seem to do. OOH OOH Idea for my readers oh thats good, I will pat myself on the back. If you have a readership of enough people check out and see if they would like a weekly chat session to pick your brain or interact. Think about it this way you’re a mini celebrity to them. Get to know your readers what could it hurt?

So I have founded another potentially awesome venture. I am thinking about doing things called Purse Parties, offline of course.

However if I decide I wanted to branch and offer my party attendants ways to purchase even if they decide not to throw a party why force them only to throw parties? Granted people can buy thousands of dollars worth of merchandise at a party but I don’t want people to be forced to do that if they just want that one bag?

I would need a merchant account I am doing a ton of research into whats the best. I would want to be able to take credit cards online and off without having to lug around an entire POS (point of sale) unit with me. Granted not everyone will want to write down their credit card number. So I am doing a lot of research in the best way. A part of me though I should have purchased a laptop since I can easily get that card that allows you to get wireless internet anywhere. However when I used to sell Mary Kay the customer would write down the credit card number and we would charge it via online.

However I never fully felt comfortable doing that I was always afraid of what if someone broke into my house they would be able to steal these identities. So what I am thinking is if I am forced to do this make out 2 receipts, one with the credit card number and one without and just shred the one with the number on it, but keep the 2nd one for records.

What do you think? What do you use?