A new blog is launched every second. If you somehow have not yet had the pleasure of reading one, they are online publications in the form of a log or journal where the writer can voice their opinion and information of the topic on hand. We read marketing blogs, blogs about shopping, kids, dogs, home-selling, entertainment news, and more.

People write blogs to keep in touch with family members, to have a creative outlet, to have an extension of their already existing website, and (but not limited to) to make money on referrals. Due to their popularity, blogs are also being used as an Internet marketing tool. Corporate blogs can be a viable tool in effective communication to the corporate community.

Mistakes to avoid when blogging:

1. Never launching your blog. Enough said.
2. Using a sub domain. You are going to want full control over your website URL later, and it will be more difficult to fix if you have it separate. You can even map your own domain to a blogging site.
3. Spending too much time on the design. Pick a template and stick with it. The focus should be on the content.
4. Keeping your blog to yourself. When a new blog is launched, there has not yet been enough time to get links to you or be ranked by a search engine. You have to do a lot of word-of-mouth marketing.
5. Getting discouraged. It is hard to get everything up and running and successful overnight. Everything takes time. Give yourself one year.
6. Biting off more than you can chew. While Google offers many advertising possibilities, hold off until you have an audience. Once you have readers then work on making money.
7. Update in a regular, timely fashion. Your readers want to know what to expect!

Cyber Monday is right around the corner. Affiliates and retailers are preparing themselves for, hopefully, a very lucrative holiday season. Are you getting ready? Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) sets the pace for physical retail stores nationwide. Cyber Monday gives online retailers something to look forward to. Or at least, this is what is believed. Actually, according to Business Week, Cyber Monday is only the 12^th busiest online shopping day of the year. A term named in 2005, Cyber Monday is not thething to start planning for, but the entire holiday shopping season.

Many holiday shoppers log on to search for the best deals. They may possibly go to their favorite sites or hit shopping comparison engines, such as shopping.com, or bizrate.com. However your online shoppers find you, the best way to prepare is to fully track and analyze which page they are on and what they are looking at on your site. But most importantly, don’t forget to track your shopping cart abandonment rate and improve your check out process.

The upcoming holiday season is a critical time for online retailers. In Q4, online retail sales should be in the billions and for many companies that means 20-40% of their sales occur during this time. With the holiday season signaling the countdown to gift-giving, online retailers should execute online marketing campaigns to drive shopping behavior around this key time period.

Here are our top marketing recommendations for the holiday season:

• Launch personalized email campaigns, increase paid search daily budgets and per-click bids, and optimize shopping comparison site placements
• Communicate a sense of urgency and drive customers to shop prior to inventory limitations, high shipment costs, or inability to deliver on time

Throughout the holiday season, you can also:

• Promote top gifts available on your site (use gender-specific, hard-to-shop-for friend, or life-stage searches)
• You can offer e-gift certificates for the hard-to-search-for friend or for convenience for your shoppers
• Try to use gorilla marketing to engage in customer reviews and/or referral promotions

Happy Holidays!