The blogosphere, comprised of countless blogs from everywhere, is among the hottest faces of the Internet. It's not simply for teenagers anymore. In the past, most blogs were run by kids who just wanted to keep in touch with their friends, or individuals who just wanted to talk about their daily life.
These days, everyone online has a blog.
Itâs likely that, you have one - and when you don't, you need to.
Stay in the home moms like to blog about their daily lives and raising children. CEOs of major corporations own blogs about the latest happenings at their company. Many celebrities run blogs, plus they blog about their upcoming events, movies, and roles (not to mention scandals).
And marketers have blogs about every niche imaginable!
I'm confident to say I myself am part of the blogging culture.
Blogging is an excellent way to reach out to the people online. They can touch an incredible number of lives, and spread your message like no other medium. You can say almost anything you want, and you will see an audience for nearly every niche!
You can run a blog just for fun. In order to talk about parties you attend, restaurants you eat at, places you shop, or where you continue vacation, someone should probably read about it.
Even if the only audience you have can be your good friends and relatives, you should have fun and have the ability to say whatever's on your mind.
More and more people are turning to blogging as a way to make money. Some people just want to create a few extra dollars for extra cash, but others are actually making a full-time income with their blogs.
Several prominent bloggers even feature making thousands of dollars with their blogs (a la Perez Hilton, who parlayed his blogging fun into thousands in ad money each month, which delivered him their own Television show, podcast, and clothing line)!
There are plenty of ways to make money blogging. Whether you're a college student who just wants to make a little extra cash for pizza and clothes, or you're a serious marketer who wants to make a lot of money, it's totally possible with blogging.
Blogs are big, even if they're small. Some blogs get an incredible number of hits monthly. Blog traffic has been growing steadily for quite some time as consumers gain confidence from peers instead of trusting hard hitting sales pitches they find online.
With more and more people jumping onto the blogosphere bandwagon, it probably won't decelerate within the foreseeable future. If you're considering getting into blogging, it's wise to begin with now.
It generally requires a few months to begin accumulating a following. And you also actually need regular visitors in order to make money together with your blog. You need to work to get subscribers to your RSS feed, because those people will come back often to read your new posts.
And remember to lend your own unique voice to your posts. Probably the most important nuances in regards to why blogging is this type of major global phenomenon is the fact that people really enjoy reading unique voices on certain topics.
They crave the differences in personalities. It's refreshing to learn information which has personality and isn't stale or stuffy, this means it's been translated by a single editor so that every voice is uniform. This is why columnist pages in local newspapers are so popular.
Your unique voice may be the most important section of getting regular visitors to your blog. If you want to see examples of this, visit many of the most popular blogs you can find. You'll see that one thing these blogs have in common is the proven fact that the bloggers make engaging, funny, or original posts.
That's your key to rendering it big in the blogosphere!
Before You Blog, Build a Blueprint
Plenty of bloggers put together a blog without any real plan for how they're going to promote it or monetize it. Putting a blog together with out a plan is like attempting to build a house with out a blueprint.
It's possible, yes. However the end result is most likely going to be shoddy, and the whole lot could break apart at any minute.
You should create a solid plan of action before you even choose the domain. You have to create a strong blueprint before you ever begin. Waiting until after you have already set it up and are getting traffic could mean a lot of extra work going in to correct mistakes.
Changing themes and adding plugins after you're already getting traffic could interrupt your traffic. Sometimes new plugins and themes can temporarily break your blog, which could mean a loss of traffic (and money) until you can fix everything.
The first part of your plan ought to be choosing a niche, of course. Part of selecting a niche is finding products it is possible to promote. In case a niche does not have any products available, you can create your own.
But if there are no affiliate products available, it may be because there isn't enough demand there for a product. In this instance, you'd have to do some careful market research as a way to determine if a niche is truly viable.
What's your purpose for blogging?
Do you have your personal product you intend to promote?
Do you want to promote affiliate products?
Do you wish to just put AdSense or CPA offers on your site?
You need to ask yourself questions like these in order that you'll know how you want to monetize the site. In the event that you plan to promote affiliate products, you need to test the merchandise yourself before you promote them.
If you don't, your visitors could become very upset in the event that you promoted a product of really low quality and they got it because they trusted you. Even worse, what if you end up promoting something that turns out to be a scam?
You don't necessarily need to purchase every product you wish to promote. If https://blogging.org can prove you have a decent level of traffic (and sometimes if you just ask), you might be in a position to get free review copies of a few of the products you'd like to promote.
It generally does not hurt to ask. Even if you haven't any existing traffic yet, you can write to who owns a particular affiliate program, tell them what you're planning to do, and ask if you could get a review copy.
Some people won't provide you with a review copy. A lot of marketers get requests for review copies from those who just want to get a copy of their product for free. So if you run into a skeptic, or someone who's been burned before, you may get turned down.
In this case, it's probably best to just go right ahead and buy the product if you actually want to promote it. Whether it's a scam or a really crappy product, just ask for a refund.
You can also consider using a donation button on your blog. If you can't find worthwhile products to promote, and you also don't have enough time, money, or ability to create your own product, you can still put up a donation button. If your site is very good, you can find donations.
Or, you can always sell ad space on your blog. If you start getting a substantial amount of traffic or you get an extremely high PageRank in Google, you could charge a lot of cash for a link on your blog. You may also get paid for making posts on your blog that review other sites.
Should a Blog Topic Be Broad or Narrow?
There are two schools of thought regarding blog topics. Some people believe your topic ought to be very focused, as you may bring in a flurry of laser-targeted visitors. Plus, you have less competition in smaller market segments.
Another group of people think that anything worth doing is worth doing big. They think that the only way blogging can truly be worth it is if you're bringing in massive traffic, and the only way you can make that happen level of traffic is when you are very broad - casting a broad net, as they say.
For example, you might have a sports blog that has broad appeal. You can talk about baseball, football, basketball, soccer, tennis, and golf. This might give you a much more broad appeal, and the prospect of larger traffic.
But since there will be so much competition, it might take a lot longer to get more traffic to arrive. Plus, just how I view it is, if I'm thinking about golf, I really won't care about the other parts of your blog, so the value of it plummets in my own eyes.
But let's say you select golf as your broad topic. Even that is broad, although you just segregated it from the other sports in existence. There are several things you could write about golf - vacations, apparel, clubs, courses, techniques, etc.
You could choose an even more targeted niche like women's golf or senior golf. This is usually a smaller segment of a little niche. This means you can get traffic faster, because there will be less competition.
Less competition means you have the potential to rise faster in the search engine ranking positions. Needless to say, women's golf would get much less traffic from the main spot of Google compared to the combined traffic out of all the other sports niches, but the likelihood of that traffic converting right into a sale will soar.
So essentially, it boils right down to how you experience your abilities. If you believe you have the ability to get one large blog to the top of the search engines rather quickly, you then might manage to handle an easy topic blog.
Unless you believe your abilities are up-to-snuff, you then might want to stick with a smaller niche at first. Remember, you can always start other blogs later. You can either build a network of small niche blogs, or you might start out with one broad blog and start multiple sub-niche blogs later. You could then link to all your smaller blogs from your large blog.
You could also focus on the smaller blogs, get them to gain some popularity, and start a large, broad blog later. Once you start the larger blog, you should have several smaller blogs already traffic generation and already having PR that may link to the larger blog to obtain it started.
If you curently have plenty of SEO experience and you're confident in your ability to pull off some great search engine rankings quickly, then starting with a more broad blog might be a better option.
You can still get some good of the advantages of having a smaller blog by having categories for each of the smaller niches on your own broad topic blog. One last thing to bear in mind is that your traffic will be less targeted in the event that you run an easy blog.
If you have a site about skin care, you may get plenty of traffic that's just looking for information about the very best lotions or skin creams. But if you start a blog about something specific, like acne, you're more likely to get people who are ready and willing to buy something.
Where DO YOU WANT TO Host Your Blog?
A lot of people begin by hosting their blog free of charge at among the common blog serves. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it is a much better idea to host your blog by yourself domain if possible.
Let's check out WordPress. WordPress is an extremely popular blogging platform. It is possible to host your blog on their servers, or it is possible to download the program and host your blog by yourself domain.
There are a few reasons why you need to host your personal blog, rather than hosting your blog on WordPress.com. To begin with, WordPress doesn't allow you to promote affiliate links on their domain.
So if you desire to make any money with your blog, you can't host it on the server, you need to host it yourself. Another reason why you shouldn't host your blog on WordPress may be the fact that you can't utilize the selection of plugins and themes that you could use on your own domain.
WordPress is very limited as far as the functionality, so don't have a much anything really cool on your blog if you host it there. You could find free WordPress tutorials to help you get started with your blog.
Now let's look at Blogger. They do allow commercial blogs, in order to post affiliate links there if you need. But they're also against what they deem as "spam blogs" or "splogs." Should they decide your blog is spam, or they decide it's "too" commercial, or they just can't stand it, they are able to delete it for just about any reason.
There goes all that effort you placed into it!
You have to consent to those terms and conditions when you sign up. That means that even though you don't actually break any rules, they could still delete your site if they chose. That is clearly a pretty powerful motivator.
It certainly wouldn't be a very pleasant thing to build a blog up to several thousand hits each day, only to have it deleted (and believe me, I've heard these horror stories). You'd lose all of that traffic, all of those backlinks, all of your reputation and your search engine rankings.
Imagine it all being wiped out overnight. That's not a very important thing.
It's like having a fire rip through your offline store and you don't have any insurance to rebuild.
Another essential reason to host your blog on your own domain is that it offers you credibility. In the event that you host your blog on your own domain, you'll appear more professional, and more as an authority figure in your niche.
People will automatically assume you're more serious if you're hosting your site by yourself domain, instead of putting it up somewhere for free. If you do opt to host your own domain, the first thing you'll need to do is select a domain that contains several keywords linked to your niche.
If your blog is approximately home cleaning tips, then make an effort to get housecleaningtips.com. In the event that's not available, go down your keyword list and discover the next best thing. Then register the domain.
Next you have to find a host for the blog. You might want to choose a host which has Fantastico, that is a program that sits on the server and allows you to very easily install WordPress (and other scripts) and never have to create and manage MySQL databases yourself.
Once you have hosting, you merely need to visit your domain registrar and setup the name servers to point to your brand-new host. Your hosting company's support will be able to help you with this.
Blogging Is Big Business
Increasingly more companies are starting blogs, and several folks are even forming their entire companies around blogging. Customers really like blogs because they're generally full of great (free) information, they offer an individual touch that generally isn't entirely on a typical corporate website, and they are not usually full of plenty of hype and hard sell tactics.
Another reason customers love blogs is that they offer a great medium for interaction. Visitors can leave comments and receive responses with their comments. This helps build loyalty to your blog as well as your company, and readers enjoy this level of interaction with someone they consider an authority figure.
It helps them feel like they're really being listened to, and just like the company really cares in what they have to say - even if that "company" can be an entrepreneur as if you! Blogs certainly are a fantastic way to build loyalty.
You can achieve your audience in a very personal way, must way more than with a standard, stuffy stagnant website. Readers be prepared to see some personality coming out in a blog. If you really let your personality shine through, you can build a following that will subscribe to your RSS feed and come back often, eagerly waiting to listen to more of what you have to say.
This is a great way to brand yourself and your business. Since you can get more personal with a blog, people begin to get to know you a little as an individual. This enables you to seem more real, and people begin to trust you and your messages more.
For reasons uknown, people trust websites with identifiable people behind them.
Remember, when you're blogging for business you should stay somewhat professional. It's probably best never to post about your aunt's cataract surgery or your grandma's cat that died. You may get a bit personal - after all, that's what really enables you to stand out.
But most those people who are reading your blog is there to find out information about the niche, seeking answers to their needs. Keep your posts on topic, but get personal by providing your personal voice within those entries.
Provide valuable information within your blogs. People aren't going to keep returning to your blog over and over just to find out about the new products you're releasing, unless you're releasing some really revolutionary stuff.
They're going to want to read industry news, tips and tricks, special strategies, along with other important information for free. While it's perfectly fine to blog about new product releases, it's also important to keep providing helpful information to keep your readers returning.
Don't ever lose sight to the fact that your readers are real people. You know what you enjoy reading in a blog, right? You need solid information - something useful. You probably don't mind the occasional sales page on a blog filled with great information, but you'd be pretty annoyed to reading only pitch after pitch.
If you're in operation blog, it is important to keep your readers in mind. Give them the kind of quality information they're hungry for, and they're going to keep coming back for more. Actually, the more you provide them with free of charge, the more loyal they'll become, and the more likely they'll be to buy from you in the future.
Blogging is focused on informing and educating. When you can do that, these potential customers will form a bond with you and they'll be sure to spread the word about your blog which means that your URL goes viral and it attracts an even bigger following inside your niche.
Blogging can be quite lucrative, not to mention it enhances your current branding and networking on the 'net. Here are the steps you will need to take to begin RIGHT NOW:
1.) Pick a niche topic (my advice would be to go narrow).
2.) Find a domain and buy it.
3.) Create your WordPress blog using your Fantastico host.
4.) Select a theme online - Google free WordPress themes and you will find millions it is possible to upload.
5.) Set up your site for categories, ad space, and stick an opt-in box inside it to begin building a list.
6.) Start posting to your blog using keyword relevant titles and entries.
7.) Start bookmarking your blog and sharing that link to get it relocating the viral direction.
8.) Test the conversion of various products you promote on your own blog and replace the ones that aren't working well for you.