Blogs can be a very marketable and very
profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a
matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any
actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most
essential steps to successful blogging.
1) Where to start?
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.
profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a
matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any
actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most
essential steps to successful blogging.
1) Where to start?
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.
