A blog can be a very marketable and profitable tool if used correctly. Successful blogging is a matter of grabbing the attention of a possibly worldwide audience and has almost nothing in common with the work of your average salesperson. In this article I shall point out to you the 12 most essential steps to a successful blogging career.
1. Getting Started
You should consider starting your blogging career at a free blog hosting service such as Blogger or Wordpress. This way you you can just jump in and try out blogging without having to worry about knowledge of scripts, hosting, domains and programming. It allows you to focus on creating interesting content and honing your writing skills while leaving the internal maintenance of your blog to professionals. The best thing about starting with a free service is that there is no risk of losing money if your blog does not become successful or you just happen to find out that blogging is not your cup of tea (just make sure to choose a service that lets you export your content whenever you want). A blog is the simplest form of a website and is organized in chronological order; your latest entry will always be displayed first. When your blog traffic grows considerably you should consider upgrading to your own domain. In this case your last blog entry should be the announcement of your "move". Do not forget to provide the URL address of your new site together with a link that will re-direct your visitors to the new site, thereby enabling you to keep your following without causing a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade...but only when you need to!
2. Finding Your 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 or at least weekly basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find out what topics people are currently searching for. But keep in mind that 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 – it just may take a little longer. Anything anyone can think of can become a viable niche - as long as it has a target audience (no matter how large or how small that audience might be). A blog about your cat will obviously be a much smaller niche than a blog about domestic cats in general ...you can even choose to build an audience for a market which as yet does not exist, but first you must build your blog.
3. Update Regularly (2-3 times a week should suffice)
This step is a must, not just a suggestion. Updating your blog regularly not only keeps readers coming back for more, but it also gives your site fresh content on a day to day basis thereby making it more appealing to search engines. It is only understandable that you may not have the time or the inspiration to update your blog daily, but letting days or even weeks pass by without posting anything is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. In order to keep your visitors interested as well as traffic to your blog high it is simply a must to add content to your blog regularly. If possible you should update your blog every day, maybe even try to post a couple of entries daily. 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 working on your blog each day. Treat your blog as a job (but as a job you really like!). What happens if you do not come to work for days or weeks...you lose income and/ or get fired! The same applies here...if you do not update your blog regularly you will lose visitors.
4. Generating Traffic
This one is a no-brainer. You have to have traffic to be able to profit from your blog or site. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Advertising (paid as well as free), search engine marketing, feeds (RSS or Atom), viral marketing, usage of social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc.), and word-of-mouth. For starters, you should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your emails, forum discussions, message boards, or any other form of online communication. Submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. Also be sure to 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. If your blog (like so many others) can be described as a collection of articles you should consider submitting your blog entries (only those that are valuable and lengthy) to content syndicators/article directories like GoArticles.com, ArticleCity.com or DropJack.com. Once submitted, your articles can be picked up and published by others. The important thing is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. This creates link popularity and backlinks for your blog. When someone picks up your article from the syndication site and then publishes it on his or her website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included will be followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Just imagine what will happen if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 5.000 or even 10.000 publications across the web. All the search engines are bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and will regard you as an authority on the subject, which will in turn increase your rank on search engines. The relatively small effort of writing an interesting and helpful article can be very rewarding. You should try to write at least one full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to as many article directories as possible.
5. Tracking Your Blog
How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments does not mean your blog is not becoming popular. Many visitors just like to read or watch and do not care about comments – but they still may be returning visitors. Most people following blogs simply are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many readers do not comment till they are quite familiar with a blog, and some will never comment at all although they are devoted fllowers of your blog.
Tracking your blog does not require knowledge in statistics or any other fancy sciences. A simple free page counter like StatCounter, FeeStats, SiteMeter or Active Meter will do the trick. Just install (copy/paste) the code you will be given after registering into the HTML of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. If you really want to use tracking to your advantage you should choose a service that gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Hit counter, unique and returning visitors, visitor path and visit lenght, and keyword analysis should be standard features no matter what page counter service you choose.
6. Listen to Your Audience
When using the proper page counter you should soon be able to see which pages your visitors are coming from and where they are going. If they find your site through search engines then keyword analysis will show you which keywords are being used to find your blog. If your blog should happen to be constantly found by just one or a few select keywords then you should focus your blog around those keywords to generate even more traffic. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping your blog readable and interesting.
7. Branching Out - Multiple Blogs
Use multiple blogs and bloggging accounts to attract more people. You should consider having blogs at a variety of popular blog hosting services like Blogger, Wordpress, LiveJournal, JournalHome, Blog-City, etc. The more blog accounts you are able to manage, the better. You can copy/paste from one blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This will enable you to attract more visitors and increase the chances that one of your blogs will show in the search engine results for the keywords you are focusing on.
8. Short & Concise Posts
Aside from the one lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short and concise (if possible). Sometimes your topic may warrant or even require a wordy blog entry, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Most visitors tend to skim through your entries and like to find what they are looking for on first glance. If you make them read through hundreds or even thousands of words they will not come back for another visit. It is good to provide detailed and useful information, but do not stray from your topic and do not include filler or useless chunks of information to make your entries look more interesting.
9. Pictures & Graphics
Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries (if it fits in with the overall content). But do not overdo it. Once in awhile is fine. Graphics can be a suitable tool for bringing your blog to life. Of course, the content has to remain the most important aspect of your blog, and you do not want to overshadow this content with graphics, but displaying graphics and photos can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about the graphics you choose and make sure they fit the topic of your entry. You should always add content along with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art are recommended. But keep in mind that graphics take up more server space than words which in turn means that the loading time for your page or blog will be longer. Therefore you should not use more than 50kb of graphics per page. And always ask the copyright owner for permission before using pictures other than your own.
For copyright-free and copyright-friendly graphics and photos you might want to check out WebQuest.org or Free-Stuff-Me.uk, among others.
10. Keep It Personal
A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences and anecdotes relating to your blog´s topic. Stay away from business style writing. Be courageous and find your personal style - and include first-person narratives whenever they fit in. Do not post anything in the style of sales letters, share product reviews and personal opinions instead.
11. Interact With Your Visitors
You should now have the amount of traffic you deserve. In order to keep traffic up while at the same time trying to attract even more you should now start interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Tip of the Week" or "Picture of the Day" which entices your readers to visit your blog regularly.
Give your readers an advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and/or talk about later. If an important football/baseball/baketball game is scheduled to take place then you should state in your blog that you "will discuss the game and give your opinion as soon as the game is over. Comments will be appreciated".
Try everything you can to find and present exclusive information. Do not – ever!! - disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or has the potential to get you into trouble, but try to get the inside scoop before everyone else does. For instance: If your blog was about a famous actress and you had a blog entry about "She (name) Is Getting Married" then it would be of utmost interest to your readers if you could provide an actual picture of the engagement ring on her finger. Give your best effort to dig and search more than just the internet for exclusive information, because if it is on the net a lot of other people will have found the information as well. Your readers will appreciate your zeal and show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals and/or links to your site. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they find at your blog first.
12. Make a Profit
Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning that traffic into profit. The easiest way to do so is by using contextual advertising like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising means that these services analyze the content of your blog and then publish ads aimed specifically at your audience. The payout is usually based on some kind of pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you will be paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising you also might want to consider using graphical advertising such as: BlogAds, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, etc.. But make sure that the ads do not overshadow your blog´s content. Pop-ups, especially, should be used sparingly. Nobody likes them. They will only increase the loading time of your page and annoy your visitors.
CONGRATULATIONS, You Are a Professional Blogger!
You have done it! You are now a true internet professional! Now may be the time to upgrade from your free blog hosting service to a domain hosted solution. You need to choose a domain name for your blog, check its availability and the find a suitable web host. Select the blogging software you wish to use: WordPress, MovableType (open source), Squarespace, ... When you have your new blog domain set up and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts by posting a "move" announcement as your last entry. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should read something like "My Blog has been moved to a new site, 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.
As a professional blogger you might want to team up with one or more other bloggers. This will enable you to create a more interesting and more powerful blog. More authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog and his or her writing will probably appeal to a different type of reader, thereby creating a larger following for the blog as a whole. 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. To spare yourself trouble and headaches later on you should settle important issues like who contributes how much and how to split revenues beforehand.
Applying these simple blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or even a household name, but your effort should at least increase your chances. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many people think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. Likewise, increasing your popularity on the internet is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with enough royalties to make your blog a considerable source of income.
Good luck!
Related article:
Things to Consider Before Blogging for Money
Posts
0 Comments:
Post a Comment