Today weblogs have transformed completely from what they were a decade back. Thousands of new blogs sprout everyday on diverse topics of which, some are created by hobbyists, some are company blogs to promote their businesses and some are professional blogs dedicated to a particular niche, made solely for the purpose of making money out of it. Professional blogging is an art as well as science.
Many aspiring bloggers who want to take it as profession, struggle to make their presence felt in the blogosphere in the beginning. If we closely follow the top bloggers, we will find some common traits inherent in them, which helps them in becoming an influencing blogger. Let us see what is takes to become a professional blogger. Before you start your blogging ventures, you must ask few basic questions to yourself.
• Am I a writer?
• Can I devote enough time for blogging?
• Am I Web Savvy?
• Do I have enough funds to pay my ISP and hosting bills till my blog start giving me returns?
• On which topic (niche) should I blog?
Content creation : Can I do it?
It is one of the most important quality of a good blogger. Ability to write useful content that attracts the readers makes you different from your peers, and your authority over your niche is established firmly. Writing a killer post is no mean task. You must have already read this famous phrase, "Content is the King". No matter how stunning your blog looks , unless you do not have the writing skills, you are not going to succeed in pulling readers to your blog.
Time Management: How much can I blog per day?
If you cannot devote at least 3-4 hours per day to your blog, its better to not do it at all. Your readers and the web crawlers need fresh content from your blog at fairly consistent pace, and only then you can expect some inflow of targeted visitors to your blog.
Web Savvy: Do I have technical bent of mind?
If you are not web savvy, then you are a dead duck in blogoshpere. For taking your blog one step ahead from your competitors blog, you have to equip yourself with all the technical knowledge to grow and popularize your blog, like SEO, a bit of basic HTML and PHP programming, web hosting fundamentals and many more. If you have that zeal to dig the net and filter and absorb that technical knowledge, you will find it easier to get your blog ranked higher in your niche.
Funds: Can I maintain a blog (for some months) from my pocket?
Starting a professional blog on sub-domain address with free hosting service is not a wise option. If you are serious about making money from your blog, get a top level .com domain with paid hosting service which will give you complete control of your blog.
Niche: What can I blog endlessly?
Always choose a topic in which you are personally interested and are passionate about it. It will give you a reason to blog consistently without loosing the interest. But before you chose your blog niche, some research need to be done. If your chosen topic have low search volume in major search engines and does not have good advertiser base in major PPC programs, then no matter how expert you are in your niche, you will not be able to make decent money from it.
Making money from blog takes hard work and time. There is no shortcut. If you decide to go for it, do it with passion and work on it endlessly for at least one or two years and the returns will be extremely promising. Good Luck...
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
How to Create Loyal Blog Readers By Casey Stubbs
If you remember this saying you will succeed. "Your blog is not about you, it's about your readers" I know that you want to make some money or something like that but if you don't write useful content that actually helps people and solves peoples problems, you might as well shut down your blog and go home because you are wasting your time.
Ok, so I know that might not be the best way to start off but I have seen so many garbage blogs out there with weak content or some computer generated junk that I won't ever visit again. I don't want you to be one of those because I want you to be successful and have a great blog and that way you will help yourself and help others it is a win, win situation.
How to write useful content
To start off write about what you have learned in your niche that has helped you. Write about your failures and successes that will help others to follow the right path to achieve their goals whatever they may be.
You can look at successful blogs and websites in your niche and see what their content looks like to give you an idea about how to write appealing helpful articles. This is also a way to learn new things yourself which makes you a better blogger. I frequently visit the blogs in my blog roll which I recommend you check out as well.
Or you can ask other bloggers in your niche to write a guest post for you. This will help you because you won't have to write yourself and you can get more traffic from the guests blog. There is a great service out there I recommend called Blogger Link Up which gives bloggers the opportunity to find other bloggers to write for their websites and vice versa.
One other method is to find articles from EzineArticles which has a large variety of articles to choose from and you can post them on your blog for free as long as you give the author credit and keep a link to his article. This is useful but remember this is not original content and original is the best for your blog. However, if you find an excellent article that will help your readers than it is a great tool. Jack Humphrey from Friday Traffic Report says that duplicate content is ok but the most important part of any blog is to write in your own unique style.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Casey_Stubbs
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