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 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, 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! 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 are bound to find your blog in
no time with that many publications and credit you 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 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 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 (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 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 an 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, 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 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.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com
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