Blogs are the biggest things to happen to the Internet since personal home pages. Blogging software has made it easy for the average Joe to create his own blog,and the thriving community of bloggers have spurred designers to release completely free, and professionally looking templates.

However, other than being personal journals, blogs are a fantastic way to market your product or service. For example, you can create a blog about your company and the latest happenings, or what the management is doing. Or you could create a blog that showcases the development of your product, and the ways that it can improve someone's daily life.

Using such inexpensive, low-maintenance technology to market your e-commerce site - without having to learn HTML or any of that gibberish - can create an awareness for your brand that conventional advertising can't, and you can typically do it for less than $10 a month.

Either way, it is a site that your readers will appreciate for your honesty and the way that you put across your business/product/service. Typically blogs are a very casual medium, and are completely different from your usual corporate websites. Think of it as if you are conducting a conversation, and you will have a good idea of how a blog should be. Do not make the mistake of making your blog one big sales letter though! That will just create the opposite effect of what you want - turning off your readers and dismissing your blog instantly.

If you do it correctly, your blog will soon be improving your business's reputation, and you will be getting more traffic over time. You will also have a great community of readers to bounce new product ideas or changes off. The more traffic you get to your blog, the more business you should be expecting. The thing about blogs is that they generate a lot of word-of-mouth recommendations, which are a great form of getting new customers, since they hear about you from a trusted source.

Before you begin blogging, you will have to make a choice of blogging software to use. There are paid service providers such as Blogware's Blogtex, Expression Engine, or TypePad, which gives you everything from the software to the hosting service. Alternatively, you can also use free blog software such as or WordPress, which is just as powerful, and install them on your own web servers.

Alvin Poh has been specialising in web development, content distribution, advertising and marketing strategies since 1995. His goal is to provide practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, website designers, and self-employed people achieve their goals in today's competitive Internet. At his site, you can learn how to make money online.