Another decade has begun and it's impressive how topical blogging for a living still is. Perhaps because for some people it works and you'll have to have been living under a rock to avoid discovering about the concept of blogging for a living. Maybe you are looking for a way to make some additional income for yourself and are considering blogging as an option I have been blogging for a few years now and am sharing some of the things that have helped along the way. The long and short of it is, what you get out of your blog depends on what you put into it. Many people start on the path of blogging for an income but few succeed at it

Do your preparation

Niche.

Careful niche research and selection is essential and can make or break your blogging career. Who are you targeting and is the market viable? It's key that you determine your niche before you get your domain name does the niche you selected have a need you can fill? It determines what your content is going to be Also different niches have their own lingo and introducing some of this into your content is easier and more accurate if you know what the market is. But the most important reason for niche selection is to identify the needs of the market so you can cater to those needs.


 
Work Schedule. 

You have to work out a work plan before you start. Blogging is a real business so treat it like one. This is the biggest tip you'll ever read. Set scheduled hours and stick to them. The schedule you decide on will depend on whether you are doing this part time or full time Some of your time will be committed to generating content but some needs to be devoted to learning and getting traffic to your blog


Determine how often you intend to post articles.

The moe frequently you post useful content on your blog, the better your blog performs in the search engine results pages [SERPS]. Also encourages repeat visits to your blog Most blogging tutorials I have purchased advise posting every day or several times a day.  Personally I think a lower limit of three times a week is okay especially if you want to avoid burn out to start with and once you have your audience you can slow this down. Having said that only post as frequently as you have useful information to share.

Plan your SEO strategy
Without an audience, your blog is dead in the water. It's why search engine optimization should be a crucial aspect of your planning. Good SEO means a ton of search engine targeted traffic to your blog. It's what makes the difference between a blog that commands a few thousand visits a day and one managing 10 visitors a week It should be reflected in your choice of domain name, the titles of your posts, the categories you use to archive your posts etc. It could actually determine the blogging platform you decide to use. Wordpress we all know has a fair amount of search engine optimization enhancing plug ins. A word of caution. The best on page search engine optimization is determined by the words you use on your page, the volume of your content and the quality of your content. No amount of plugins can compensate for that

Become The Go to Guy In Your Niche
At the start of your new career, your degree of expertise in your niche is not particularly relevant. But you must aim to become the local expert in your niche as quickly as possible. And for this reason your niche selection must be something you are enthusiastic about Obviously if you choose a niche that you are lukewarm about either in knowledge base or level of enthusiasm, it will reflect in your blog posts and you will lose visitors...fast.


Jump Right in

Knowledge Paralysis.

You really want to go through the planning stage of your new blogging career very quickly and then jump right in. You have to keep in mind that no blogger started off with all the knowledge in his or her head. We all learned as we went along. And the best way to learn is by doing. So get that blog up and running Get through learning the basics quickly and then get your business going There is the concept of perpetual newbie who is someone stuck in the learning phase without getting into the doing phase. And it is really easy to get into this mode. What with the enormous amount of information you need to learn. But you need to keep moving in this blogging business or you'll find your blog to be one of those million than never make an impression 

SEO Is Crucial.

Good SEO must be the start point of each and every post you write on your blog Select the keywords you want the post to rank for. different posts should be optimized for a different set of keywords so that your posts cover a larger section of your niche in the search engines Include your keyword or keyword phrase in your post title and early in the content of your article. Keep this concept in mind when you are generating backlinks to your blog. Do follow anchor text backlinks that conatain variations of your keywords is your main aim The number of words on your pages seems to have a lot of relevance to your posts search engine ranking. 350 to 500 words seems to be the consensus among bloggersThe content must be original. I would advice not to use PLR articles or other content that can be found elsewhere on the internet. Write your own posts or get a ghost writer but make sure that your content is original

Network.

Your reputation is only as big as your network so you need to get busy building a network of friends in the blogging world and in your niche There are several blogging networks online including mybloglog, technorati and blogcatalog. Facebook has a few groups for bloggers and linked in is another good networking site.  See what other bloggers are doing, learn from them and their mistakes.

Blogging Platform.

The two most popular platforms are Blogger and Wordpress. A lot of internet marketer and professional blogger swear by wordpress. It's great because of the versatility it provides. A new plugin comes every so often that can help with things like SEO, commenting, bookmarking etc. Personally I use Blogger and wordpress. Blogger has the distinct advantage of doing well in the search engines and each post get it's own optimized page with the post title included in the page URL. It however does not have the advantage of plug ins so a little less versatile than wordpress. The blogger platform is however very user friendly The question may also arise as to whether to purchase your own hositng account or to use the free blogging platforms. As a professional blogger the aim is to host your own blogs. However as a beginner you could opt to use the free blogging platform and then migrate it to your own server once you have started making money from the blog. The one major disadvantage of this though is the loss of your backlinks you would have generated to the free hosted blog. Also a domain name and hosting service are not prohibitively expensive so for a few dollars, it certailnly is worth starting with your own hosting account

Increasing Blog Traffic

SEO

This has been mentioned before but highlights how important SEO is to getting traffic to your blog in the long term. Each post must be optimized on an individual basis

Pillar articles

These are articles that comprehensivey and exhaustively cover a particular subject in your niche. They usually go into a lot of detail about the topic and often become a reference article for other webmasters. These are wikipedia style articles To determine what to write a poillar article on, forums are good source of information. Browse the forums in your niche and see if there are any questions that gets asked over and over again. These make great topics for pillar articles This article will act as a magnet for visitors to your site and could help establish your reputation as an expert in the field

Blog carnivals

These are a very effective method of getting the word out about your blog. Blog Carnivals are posts that are a collection of the best blog posts on a certain topic. Usually hosted on a popular blog When published, the carnival post has a short intoduction to what the carnival is about then has snippets of blog posts that have been accepted on the carnival. There is then a link under each snippet to the blog where the original post is i.e your blog  If your post gets accepted in someones carnival it's a good thing both for SEO and direct traffic

Article marketing

Article marketing is still a very effective method of generating backlinks to your blog if done correctly With article marketing you submit articles to article directories and include a link to your blog in your bio box. It's good practice to use content for the article directories that is different from the content on your blog

Guest blogging. This is a variation on the article marketing theme. The difference here is instead of submitting to an article directory, you submit your article to a blog that already attracts an audience in your niche Choose blogs that already have an established reputation in your niche and have a lot of traffic

Blog Directories And Social Bookmarking

Most of them are no follow so the backlink is not worth much from the SEO perspective but it does tell other people that your blog is out there. Social bookmarking sites are great if you have a large group of strategically placed followers The earlier you start building a reputation or a network at the social bookmarking sites the better it will be for your bookmarks when you eventually start bookmarking your blog posts


Back to school

The world of blogging involves continued education. Both with regards to your niche and also the techniques involved in taking your blog forward Blogging techniques and the resources available to you are continually upgraded and changing. There are new software being developed, new rules regarding sharing of information and a myriad of things.Staing abreast of these developments can be daunting. A great way to get information is to join forums in your niche, forums about blogging and internet marketing forums There is a wealth of information shared in the forums on a daily basis. For tips on internet marketing, the warrior forum has a lot of marketers sharing tips and ideas. Whatever you do, keep learning and keep implementing what you learn

Monetization
Blog is up, traffic is comming in. How do you make money from the blog?

Google Adsense

Requires you to register with Google adsense and acceptance to the program is not automatic. adsense is an ad serving program that allows you the blog owner to make money by displaying ggogle adsense ads on your posts.  The ads are targeted to your content via a small code that the adsense program gives you to paste in the HTML of your blog Every time someone clicks on one of these adverts your adsense account gets credited with a small amount of money. This usually is a few cents but if you have a lot of traffic and a lot of clicks, the money soon adds up. At the end of the month Google sends you a cheque for the amount you have made. Pretty cool!

Affiliate Marketing.

This is a really popular method of monetizing blogs and websites.  As an affiliate marketer you promote other peoples products and get paid a commission if a desires action is achieved. This could be a sale or a sign up. The beauty of affiliate marketing is you do not store the product and never have to handle the product. You act simply as a middle man who suggests products to your readers.

Promote your Business You may have a product of your own or a bricks and mortar business that you wish to promote. Your blog could be your internet portal to get the word out about your business or product

There are many more methods of making money from your blog but these should get you well on your way

So that was a crash course on getting started with blogging.

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