Is your blog making money? Got some spare time? If either of those questions are true for you, then you might consider reinvesting some time and/or money into your blog. It makes sense to continue pushing your blog to the limits, as it is almost a waste to settle for anything less.

Here are a few ways to reinvest your time and money you have earned back into your blog:

Advertising

Advertising might be worth a try if you feeling somewhat outgoing. This is especially true if you have an idea for a great advertising campaign—it might be worth the bigger bucks to advertise your site on various ad networks. I know it works as I have seen numerous bloggers successfully take a barren or new blog and make it popular by utilizing successful advertising techniques and services.

If you do decide to pursue advertising, remember, never put all your eggs in one basket, and always take the time to evaluate the effectiveness of your advertising so you can re-allocate your focus accordingly. Certain niches will always perform better on specific advertising networks. This is why diversifying your advertising efforts will reveal what works and what doesn't. When you find what works, you now know what to do.

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Lately I've seen a bunch of articles in which the author explains his favorite few tools and why. Rather than duplicate what has already been done well, I thought I'd cover an area that has been my biggest small business hassle as of late, getting a hold of finances and money.

It seems like banking and financial services are either designed for individuals or giant corporations, with very few options for those small business owners in between. Thankfully there are a few good new and old tools and tricks that work especially for the small business owner. I rely pretty heavily on these 10.

1. Mint.com

   Mint is an extremely new online program that quickly integrates your bank accounts and breaks them down in order to show you where you’re spending your money. I’ve only been using this for a couple of weeks and already found myself relying on it heavily to plan out my personal and business savings. As an aside, this service is ridiculously easy to setup, so even if you don’t have a lot of extra time, this one may be worthwhile.

2. The Perfect Calculators

   I’m in love with the CCH Calculators. They’re the small businessman’s version of an actuary. I use them to plan out the feasibility of taking on a new loan, the long-term expected ROI on a short term project, or just to play around with things like my retirement plan. Literally everyone I’ve shared my enthusiasm for these things hasn’t felt the same, so I don’t blame you if you disagree. But I would encourage you to go ahead and spend a few hours with these calculators just because putting hard and fast numbers to your ideas is a good way to weed out the really crummy ones.

3. Quickbooks OE

   This is the mother of all small business finance tools. The online edition is frequently updated and will pull in all of your various business accounts (with the notable exception of PayPal). I use this tool to constantly have great documentation of all our company’s activities and it saves me a lot in year end accounting fees, b/c everything is done for me.

4. Wells Fargo Payroll Services

   Not so much an online tool as an online service, Wells Fargo payroll service is the cheapest on the market (at least among the 5 different services I quoted). Having checks made out and sent through them is not only a lot more professional than signing your own checks, it also saves a ton in end of the year accounting fees because they keep track of all of your withholdings and prepare your quarterly tax returns for you.

5. Continental's Frequent Flyer Program

   I live and work out of Houston (which is Continental Airlines hub) so that program works really well for me, but you can basically find an airline rewards program for whatever company is biggest in your city. I only fly about twice a month, but since I always do it with the same airline that’s enough to get me free first class upgrades almost every time I fly, and I get to bring a free guest on some of my flights. I know that a airline rewards plan isn’t specifically a finance tool, but it is a means that I rely pretty heavily on to make my business’ travel dollars go a lot farther.

6. Basecamp

   I realize that its trite to rely on Basecamp, and I sort of hate the fact that I give them $20 something dollars a month to use their software, but using Basecamp has literally saved our business thousands by keeping us organized. I’d suggest that you setup a number of different projects and different to-do lists for each site rather than trying, as most users do, to utilize just a single to-do list.

7. Freshbooks

   Again, it isn’t original, but it is vital. I used to rely heavily on freshbooks for invoicing and time tracking. While I use the service less now that the company has grown, it remains one of the only tools designed for small business owners that actually works the way its supposed to.

8. Google Docs & Spreadsheets

   Why are you still using MS Word and Excel. If you’re a small business, especially an online business, there’s usually tons of collaboration taking place between people in different offices. I use Google Docs and Spreadsheets on a daily basis to collaborate when researching new domains or website niches, as well as to collectively draw up specs on a new project.

9. My Small Business AMEX Card

   I originally thought that only millionaires had AMEX platinum business cards. Not true. Basically if you have good credit you can get one no matter how small your company is. The benefits are a lot better than any other comparable card in terms of the travel rewards as well as the fact that you get into the executive lounges in all major airports for free (many have free liquor BTW). From a finance perspective, AMEX also prepares a complete end-of-year rundown for you for free which provides you with a good foundation if you plan on doing your own taxes.

10. Top Blogs

    There are a number of really bad small business finance blogs on the internet. Thankfully there are also a few really good ones.

Obviously there are different tools that work for different people and different companies. So take the 10 recommendations I've made with a grain of salt. They've worked for me, but all I can really say is that you should consider giving these a try because I can attest that they're proven techniques for getting a handle on your small business finances.

This post was written by Matt Jones, the author of Blogging Fingers

As I'm sure you know it's that amusing time of year when the displayable Google Page Rank is about to be updated and bloggers run about like headless chickens making sure everything is ready. There are always those that mock the bloggers who get over hyped up about the update, but deep down we all know they are exited too. It's like a special Christmas just for bloggers and webmasters to enjoy.

I decided to ask, "What have you done to prepare" over at the BlogLight.ning forum where I received some interesting responses.

"I've done a lot of commenting on high PR 'dofolllow' blogs, and I've made sure to keep posting every possible day, often more than once."

Jeremy Hobbs, who is hoping for a PR3 or above.

"I wrote some good articles that caught some attention links, I did a few link exchanges a while ago and also got mentioned in some high PR websites ."

CristianR, who is hoping for a PR4 or above.

"The only thing that I have really done is participate in a few memes/trains that were making the rounds. To pay the favor back to others, I've continued with my weekly Speedlinking feature to spread the link love out to other blogs as well."

Derek Semmler, who is hoping for a PR5.

What Have I done?

1. Purchased a single PR5 link, but only because it was an absolute bargain. I don't normally buy any links.
2. Taken part in Probloggers group writing project, which is a great opportunity to gain links, traffic share knowledge and discover new blogs.
3. Posting at the Digital Point Forums, with a link to Blogging Fingers and BlogLight.ning in my sig. Forum sigs are worth little in the eyes of Google but it's a good way to spend those idle moments.
4. Continued the same strategy as usual. Guest Blogging has been a key part of this and so has 'networking' and making blogging contacts.

A Note about Page Rank Agreements

It seems that every 3 months when the Page Rank update comes about, people start squawking about how it does not increase traffic and we shouldn't get so obsessed with it. There’s always 1 person who 'cleverly' points out that PR is constantly being updated behind the scenes anyway.

While I agree obsessing over a single statistic (or any statistics) is a bad thing, its a fact that the higher your displayable page rank you have the more you can charge when selling sidebar links, in post links, reviews or even when selling the entire blog. Other than traffic, Page Rank is the most important factor in deciding how much money can be made from your blog.

What have you done to prepare?

Business intelligence (BI) is a broad category of application programs and technologies for gathering, storing, analyzing, and providing access to data to help enterprise users make better business decisions. BI applications include the activities of decision support, query and reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), statistical analysis, forecasting, and data mining.

This isn't so much website promoting as it is blog promoting. The trick is to have a blog promoting your website, as your blog becomes popular so does your website. Once you have a blog up and running you can also use your blog to make money, more on that later. Next follows a way of getting links to your blog.

A new way of getting heaps of one way links to point to your blogs. Most bloggers know that the more links they have pointing to their blogs the higher their Googles PR rating will increase. Not many may know that the best links one could get are one way links. Unlike reciprocal links where sites link to each other, one way links are highly prized by Google. I have found a way to get these highly prized links. Not my idea mind you, its actually a flow on effect brought on by one of PPP's campaign!

If you look at my post found on BlogSire you will notice at the end of the post a badge saying "get paid to review my post"! By clicking on this link you will be taken to PPP's user registration. This is a must do for all bloggers as not only do they pay well (they produced 80% of my $140 of blogging income last week) this will boost the amount of people linking to your blog by a huge amount.

How? Easy, as once you are a member you also will be able to display one of those badges. You will then put that badge at the end of all your posts. Now every time someone joins by clicking on your badge they will do a post about your blog. For everyone who does, you get a one way link to your blog, and that is not the only reason for doing it. For every blogger whose post is approved, you earn $7.50.