I think we can all come to the same agreement when I say that one of the most important things when you are driving traffic to your web site or blog, as well as gaining Page Rank, is finding back links with web sites, blogs, forums and directories who use do-follow.

Today I am going to offer you a small list of some forums and social bookmarking sites that allow do-follow.

Bookmarking Sites

a1-webmarks
Aeonity
Ask
Backflip
Bibsonomy
Blinkbits
Blinklist
Blogengage
Blogmarks
Blogmemes
Blue Dot
Bookmarktracker
Bmaccess
Bringr
Buddymarks
Business-planet
Connectedy
Connotea
Corank
Diigo
DZone
Excites
Faves
Folkd
Fritterware
Furl
Getigadget
Google Bookmarks
Healthranker
Hugg
Iedig
Indianpad
Jumptags
Linkagogo
Linkatopia
Linkroll
Looklater
ma.gnolia
Markaboo
Marktd
Millionsofgames
Mister Wong
Mixx
Multiply
Myjeeves
Mylinkvault.com
Myspace
Myvmarks
Pixelmo
Plugim
Postonfire
Propeller
Oyax.com
Rawsugar
Reddit
Redy3beat
Relevantlogs
Searchallinone
Searchles
Shadows
Shoutwire
Slashdot
Socialogs
Spotback
Spurl
Squidoo
Tumblr
Tutable
Twittley
Unalog
Upchukr
Wink
Wirefan
Xilinus
Yahoo!Buzz
Yahoo bookmark

Do-Follow Forums

Please note that if you join these forums simply to spam then you will be banned in the blink of a neye.

Bloggeries
Designerstalk
Digital Point
Income Diary
Site Point
Startups
Submit Express
v7network
Web design forum
Work from Home

This is by no means a complete list and I may add to it at some point. Feel free to drop a comment to let me know if these sites don’t work, are not do-follow or if you come across others.

As somebody who produces a web blog on the internet on the subject of how to make an income from the internet (as well as also how to improve your blog), I am regularly asked two simple questions.

1) “How can I earn an income from the internet just like you?”

2) “How do I go about starting up and running my own online blog?”

While the first question is a very good one, it is actually the how to start blogging question that I would like to talk about in this blog post.

Having your own blog is an excellent idea. I know of countless people who have their own blogs (both hosted and self-hosted) who are using it as an avenue to make their voices heard where otherwise they would be part of the silent majority.

I also know of a few people who use their blog as an avenue for them to scream, shout and generally let off a little steam from the stresses of the day, without them they would probably have a breakdown of some kind.

Choosing your blogging platform is just as important as what you write about. For me it has to be Wordpress all the way, they literally urinate on the opposition form a very, very, great height. They offer both self-hosting version and a hosted version for the newbies among you.

Then you must write. Write until your arms become sore and your fingers become bloody. It may sound like an absurd thing to say but blogging is all about the content. When blogging you will hear many people say “content is king” and that is very true.

Your blog is worthless if nobody comes to visit it. That is where the next 3 most important words come into play and they are web design, SEO and traffic.

There are hundreds of thousands of free themes to choose from, a quick search on Google will display more than enough results to get your teeth stuck into.

SEO is something that I am not too hot on (hey, I never claimed to be a guru or an expert) but I have found a plug-in called SEO All-In-One Pack that helps me gain decent enough ratings in the serps until I can learn more about it.

Traffic is the baby that you need to take care of first. Submit your blog to web directories, submit it to search engines like Google & Yahoo, swap links with your friend’s blogs, you can even comment on other blogs (like this one) to gain traffic.

The last thing is enjoy blogging.

If you use Google Adsense then you will probably be aware that there is an option to place a Google Search box on your blog so you can earn money for every search that is conducted. I’ve never really been a fan of the fact that it takes the searcher to a boring results page away from your blog.

Did you know that with a little bit of customisation and editing you can actually have the search results appear on your blog instead of showing on a page that is not connected with your blog?

I’m going to show you how to do it.

What you will need:

- Google Adsense account
- Some Spare Time (about five minutes at the most)
- Exclude Pages plug-in

Step One.- Setting Up Search

The first thing you need to do is to get Google Search set up. So go to AdSense Setup > AdSense for Search and fill in the fields as you see fit and click next.

When you get to the Search Results Style page (should be third page) you should see the following options:

1.1 Opening of search results page

You have three choices, the one you want is the bottom one ‘Open results within my own site’. This will reveal a field below it. This is where you type in your search page, it will be http://yourdomain.com/search/.

Leave ‘enter width of results area’ as 800 for now, you can’t make it lower here but I will show you how to do that later on in this tutorial.

1.2 Ad Location

This is where you want your results to appear on the blog search page. I’d suggest Top and Bottom. You can always edit this later on.

All you have to do now is click Next, then give your search page a name and click Submit.

Step Two – Placing Search On Your Blog

You will see two sets of code. The first set of code is your search box code. This is to be placed where you want the search box to show up in your blog template.

Take the second set of code and go into your Wordpress admin panel. Go to Pages and create a new page. This page will be called ‘Search’. Put the second set of code into the page, disable the comments & the pings and then publish.

Now go and test it out. Type something into you search box and see what the results page looks like.

If the results are too wide go back to your admin panel and go to the Search page. Find the section of the code that looks like the bit below:

var googleSearchFrameWidth = 575;

Edit the size to suit your design.

Step Three – Removing Search Page From Menus

If like me you don’t want the Search page showing up on your menu because if people click it directly they will see a blank page. I use the excellent Exclude Pages plug-in which makes this process so incredibly easy.

I hope you find this helpful. Why not leave a comment and let us know if it worked for you?