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. I don't say that because I'm
the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog. 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 build an audience and buzz
for your blog. 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 interests 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 an 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,
then you have a niche...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. Though I am
seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily,
but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their
blog daily. Regardless, these blogs are
still updated weekly with multiple entries.
Until you have a steady audience 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! The 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
<a href="http://www.zapcontent.com">ZapContent.com</a>.
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 are bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications
and credit you as an 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 on 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. It's better to use a
service that 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
(free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with
JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read
and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). 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. Stay keyword-focused.
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 that 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 an actual picture of Paris Hilton's 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 on 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 that 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,
TypePad, 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 "I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and
follow the link: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all
returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new
blog domain. Plus, search engines can
easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be
popular with the search engines.
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 are 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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