>> You
should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service
such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free
blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging
instantly without having any advance knowledge of
scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus
on your content and not the internal maintenance of the
blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service
is, in the case your blog doesn't become successful you
do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill.
The great thing about a blog is that they are organized
in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed
first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are
ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply
make your last blog entry the announcement of your
"move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog
has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which
directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your
following, without a major inconvenience to anyone.
Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!
2) Niche
A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You
should first decide on a product, service, or topic
which interest you. Choose an area which you can
enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can
use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or
Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It
does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as
there is a audience for your topic and the topic is
precisely focused then your blog should be successful.
Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a
target audience no matter how large or how small the
audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a
blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger
niche market, if there are people who are interested in
hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family...you
can even choose to build your audience for a market
which an audience does not exist, but first you must
build your blog.
3) Update Daily (nothing less)
This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your
blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to
readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a
day to day making it more appealing to search engines.
Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one
day here and there is understandable to most, but
missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will
most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To
keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest
it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple
entries. You should try to update your blog everyday
with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to
accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for
tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even
be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to
your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat
your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to
work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get
fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog
for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.
4) Traffic
It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from
blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid
advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search
engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You
should always use your blog URL address in the signature
of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any
other communication media. You should submit your blog
URL address to search engines and blog directories. You
should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping
services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger.
You should confidently share your blog with family,
friends, co-workers, associates, and business
professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be
considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose
you should submit your blog entries (those that are
valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators
like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted
your articles can be picked up and published by others.
The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL
address in the "About the Author" passage. What this
does is create link popularity and backlinks for your
blog, when someone picks up your article from the
syndication then publish the article on their website
the "About the Author" passage is included with each
publication and the link you included is followed,
crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your
article is popular enough or controversial enough to
produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search
engines is bound to find your site in no time with that
many publications and credit you a authority on the
topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines.
The small effort of writing a well written article is
rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full
length article every week for syndication and submit
your article to at least 10 article syndicators.
5) Track Your Blog
How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because
no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't
growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they
are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with
blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to
say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd
time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily
visitors.
Tracking your blog does not have to be overly
sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like
StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick.
Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog
template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to
use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis,
such as keyword tracking information, referral
information, and search engine information. Visitors,
returning visitors, and unique visitors should be
standard for any page counter service you choose.
6) Listen to Your Audience
When using the proper page counter you should begin to
see how others are finding your blog and if through
search engines then which keywords are being used to
find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found
by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those
keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing
entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as
possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.
7) Multiple blogs
Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people.
This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com,
Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com,
etc. The more blog accounts the better. You can copy/paste
from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog
accounts is like having a publication in different
newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors
and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs
will be in the search engine results for your focused
keywords.
8) Short & Concise
Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication
and publication your blog entries should be short &
concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are
exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to
blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as
possible. You do not want your blog entries to become
hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find
information and skim through your entries. It is good to
be detailed and provide useful information, but do not
include useless information or run away sentences that
veer away from your topic.
9) Digital Art
Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures,
photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once
a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog
to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most
important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your
content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a
bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics
and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add
content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original
graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.
10) Keep it Personal
A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try
to include personal experiences which relates to the
topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business
style of writing. Write with a more personal style and
use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your
entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews
and personal endeavors.
11) Interact With Your Visitors
You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin
interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme
such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week"
which entices your readers to look forward to each week.
Give your readers advance notice about a product,
service, or topic which you are going to review and then
talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give
a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will
discuss the speech and give your opinion after the
speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".
Try your best to find exclusive information that not
many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret
information which is deemed illegal or can potentially
get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before
everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about
Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry
about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be
interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture
of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort
to dig and search the internet for exclusive information
and you will possibly come up with something useful.
Your readers will appreciate this and they show their
appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine
how many readers will tell their friends, family, and
others about information they only can find at your
blog.
12) Make Money
Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your
blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start
thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You
should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense
or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links
which use the content of your blog to publish targeted
ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a
pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad
receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits.
In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also
use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com,
Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.
13) You're a Professional
You're a professional now! What are you still doing with
that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to
a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and
choose a domain name for your blog then check its
availability. Select the blogging software you wish to
use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org,
MovableType.org, etc. When you have your new blog domain
setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to
announce your move on all your previous blog accounts.
Your last entry to the blog should be a "move"
announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog
entry should state something like "Old Blog has been
moved to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link
for future reference: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com".
This way all returning visitors and new readers should
not have any problem finding your new blog domain.
At the level of a professional blogger you may want to
team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create
a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old
saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean
more advertising and exposure because each author will
have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team
blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all
authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and
keeping the blog interesting for visitors.
Following these blogging techniques should make your
blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no
guarantee that your blog will become popular or a
household name, but the effort should at least put you
one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight
experience like many may think, but making money online
is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well,
growing popularity on the web is not an overnight
experience, but through time, dedication, and
persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties
of blogging.
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