The blogosphere, made up of countless blogs from all over the world, is one of the most popular faces of the Internet. It's not simply for teenagers anymore. In blog posts , most blogs were run by kids who just wanted to keep in touch with their friends, or individuals who just wanted to discuss their daily life.
These days, everyone online includes a blog.
Itâs likely that, you have one - and if you don't, you should.
Stay at 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, and 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 portion of the blogging culture.
Blogging is a fantastic way to reach out to the people on the net. They can touch millions of lives, and spread your message like no other medium. You can say almost anything you want, and you will see an audience for almost every niche!
It is possible to run a blog just for fun. In order to discuss parties you attend, restaurants you eat at, places you shop, or where you go on vacation, someone will probably want to read about it.
Even if the only audience you have is your close friends and relatives, you should have fun and manage to say whatever's in your thoughts.
Increasing numbers of people are embracing blogging as a way to make money. Some individuals just want to create a few extra dollars for spending money, but others are in fact creating a full-time income making use of 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 of dollars in ad money each month, which delivered him his own Television show, podcast, and clothing line)!
There are many ways to earn money blogging. Whether you're a scholar who just wants to make a little supplemental income 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 rather than trusting hard hitting sales pitches they find on the internet.
With more and more people jumping onto the blogosphere bandwagon, it probably won't slow down within the near future. If you're considering getting into blogging, it's wise to get started now.
It generally takes a few months to begin building up a following. And you really need regular visitors if you want to make money with your blog. You should work to gain subscribers to your Feed, because those people should come back often to learn your new posts.
And be sure you lend your own unique voice to your posts. One of 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 in order that every voice is uniform. For this reason columnist pages in local newspapers are so popular.
Your unique voice is the most important section of getting regular visitors to your blog. If you need to see examples of this, visit some of the most popular blogs you can get. You'll see that one thing these blogs have in common is the 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
A lot 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 trying to build a house without a blueprint.
It's possible, yes. However the end result is probably likely to be shoddy, and the whole thing could break apart at any minute.
You should create a solid plan of action before you even buy the domain. You must develop a strong blueprint before you ever begin. Waiting until after you've already arrange it 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 site, that could mean a loss of traffic (and money) until you're able to fix everything.
The first section of your plan should be choosing a niche, needless to say. Part of choosing a niche is finding products you can promote. If a niche does not have any products available, you could create your own.
But if you can find no affiliate products available, it may be because there is not enough demand there for a product. In this case, you'd have to do some careful general market trends so as to determine whether or not a niche is truly viable.
What's your purpose for blogging?
Do you have your own product you intend to promote?
Do you wish to promote affiliate products?
Do you wish to just put AdSense or CPA offers on your own site?
You need to ask yourself questions like these in order that you'll know how you intend to monetize the site. If you intend to promote affiliate products, you should test the merchandise yourself before you promote them.
If you don't, these potential customers could become very upset if you promoted a product of really low quality and they bought it since 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 intend to promote. If you can prove you have a decent quantity of traffic (and sometimes if you just ask), you could be able to get free review copies of some of the products you'd like to promote.
It doesn't hurt to ask. Although you may haven't any existing traffic yet, it is possible to write to who owns a particular affiliate program, inform them what you're planning to do, and ask in the event that you could get a review copy.
Some people won't offer you a review copy. A lot of marketers get requests for review copies from those that just want to get a copy of these product for free. If you come across a skeptic, or someone who's been burned before, you may get turned down.
In cases like this, it's probably far better just go right ahead and buy the product in the event that you really want to promote it. Whether it's a scam or a really crappy product, just require 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 the time, money, or capability to create your own product, it is possible to still put up a donation button. If your blog is very good, you may get donations.
Or, it is possible to always sell ad space on your own blog. If you strat to get a large amount of traffic or you obtain a very high PageRank in Google, you could charge a lot of cash for a link on your own blog. You can even get paid for making posts on your own blog that review other sites.
Should a Blog Topic Be Broad or Narrow?
There are two schools of thought regarding blog topics. Some individuals 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 believe that anything worth doing will probably be worth doing big. They think that the only path blogging can truly be worthwhile is if you're attracting massive traffic, and the only path you can make that happen level of traffic is when you are very broad - casting a broad net, as they say.
For example, you may have a sports blog that has broad appeal. You could talk about baseball, football, basketball, soccer, tennis, and golf. This might give you a much more broad appeal, and the potential for larger traffic.
But since there will be so much competition, it could take a lot longer to get more traffic coming in. 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, therefore the value of it plummets in my own eyes.
But let's say you choose golf as your broad topic. Even this is broad, although you merely segregated it from the other sports in existence. There are various 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 can be a smaller segment of a small niche. This means you can get traffic faster, because there will be less competition.
Less competition means you have the potential to go up faster in the search engine ranking positions. Of course, women's golf would get much less traffic from the number one spot of Google compared to the combined traffic of all of the other sports niches, but the chances of that traffic converting into a sale will soar.
So basically, it boils down to how you feel about your abilities. If you were to think you have the ability to get one large blog to the very best of the search engines rather quickly, then you might have the ability to handle an easy topic blog.
If you don't believe your abilities are up-to-snuff, you then might want to stick with a smaller niche initially. Remember, you can always start other blogs later. You can either create a network of small niche blogs, or you might start out with one broad blog and start multiple sub-niche blogs later. You can then link to your entire smaller blogs from your own large blog.
You could also focus on the smaller blogs, get them to gain some popularity, and then take up a large, broad blog later. As soon as you start the bigger blog, you'll have several smaller blogs already traffic generation and already having PR that may link to the bigger blog to get it started.
If you curently have a lot of SEO experience and you're confident in your ability to pull off some very nice search engine ranking positions quickly, then starting with a more broad blog may be a better option.
You can still get some of the advantages of having an inferior 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 if you run a broad blog.
If you have a site about skin care, you can find a lot of traffic that's just searching for information about the best lotions or skin creams. But in the event that you start a blog about something specific, like acne, you're more prone to get those who are ready and willing to buy something.
Where DO YOU WANT TO Host Your Blog?
Lots of people start out by hosting their blog free of charge at among the common blog serves. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it is a far better idea to host your site by yourself domain if possible.
Let's have a look at WordPress. WordPress is an extremely popular blogging platform. You can host your blog on the servers, or it is possible to download the software and host your site by yourself domain.
There are many reasons why you need to host your personal blog, instead of hosting your blog on WordPress.com. To begin with, WordPress doesn't allow you to promote affiliate links on their domain.
So if you want to make any money with your blog, you can't host it on their server, you'll have to host it yourself. Another reason why you shouldn't host your blog on WordPress is the fact that you can't utilize the selection of plugins and themes that you could use by yourself domain.
WordPress is very limited so far as the functionality, so don't have a much anything really cool on your own blog in the event that you host it there. You will discover 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 want. But they're also against what they deem as "spam blogs" or "splogs." If they decide your blog is spam, or they decide it's "too" commercial, or they just can't stand it, they can delete it for just about any reason.
There goes all that hard work you placed into it!
You have to agree to those terms and conditions when you subscribe. That means that even though you don't actually break any rules, they could still delete your site if they chose. That's a pretty powerful motivator.
It certainly wouldn't be a very pleasant thing to create a blog around several thousand hits each day, only to own it deleted (and trust me, I've heard these horror stories). You'd lose all that traffic, all those backlinks, all of your reputation and your search engine ranking positions.
Imagine everything being wiped out overnight. That's not a very important thing.
It's like having a fire rip through your brick and mortar store and you haven't any insurance to rebuild.
Another very important reason to host your blog on your own domain is that it gives you credibility. If you host your blog all on your own domain, you'll appear more professional, and more like an authority figure in your niche.
People will automatically assume you're more serious if you're hosting your blog all on your own domain, instead of putting it up somewhere for free. If you do opt to host your own domain, one thing you will have to do is choose a domain that contains a few keywords related to your niche.
If your blog is approximately house cleaning tips, then make an effort to get housecleaningtips.com. If that's not available, go down your keyword list and find the next best thing. Then register the domain.
Next you have to find a host for the blog. You should choose a host that has Fantastico, which is a program that sits on the server and allows you to very easily install WordPress (along with other scripts) and never have to create and manage MySQL databases yourself.
After you have hosting, you just need to go to your domain registrar and set up the name servers to point to your new host. Your hosting company's support should be able to help you with this particular.
Blogging Is Big Business
An increasing number of companies are starting blogs, and many folks are even forming their entire companies around blogging. Customers really like blogs because they're generally filled with great (free) information, they provide an individual touch that generally isn't entirely on a typical corporate website, and they're not usually full of a great deal 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 to their comments. This helps build loyalty to your site and your company, and readers really enjoy this level of interaction with someone they consider an authority figure.
It helps them feel like they're really being paid attention to, and like the company really cares about what they need to say - even though that "company" is an entrepreneur as if you! Blogs certainly are a fantastic solution to build loyalty.
You can achieve your audience in an exceedingly personal way, must way more than with a standard, stuffy stagnant website. Readers be prepared to see some personality coming out in a blog. In the event that you really let your personality shine through, it is possible to build a following which will subscribe to your 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 as well as your business. Since you will get more personal with a blog, people start to get to know you a little as a person. This enables you to seem more real, and people commence to trust you and your messages more.
For reasons uknown, people trust websites with identifiable people in it.
Remember, if you are blogging for business you need to stay somewhat professional. It's probably best not 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 makes you stand out.
But most people who find themselves reading your blog are 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 inside your blogs. People aren't likely to keep returning to your blog again and again just to find out about the new products you're releasing, unless you're releasing some really revolutionary stuff.
They're going to desire to read industry news, guidelines, special strategies, along with other important information for free. While it's perfectly fine to blog about new product releases, you'll want to keep providing helpful information to help keep your readers returning.
Don't ever lose sight of the fact that your readers are real people. Guess what happens you love reading in a blog, right? You want solid information - something useful. You almost certainly don't mind the casual sales page on a blog full of great information, but you would be pretty annoyed to reading nothing but pitch after pitch.
If you're in operation blog, it is critical to keep your readers at heart. Give them the type of quality information they're hungry for, and they'll keep returning 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 all about informing and educating. If you can do that, these potential customers will form a bond with you and they'll make sure you spread the word about your blog so that your URL goes viral also it attracts an even bigger following inside your niche.
Blogging can be very lucrative, not forgetting it enhances your overall branding and networking on the 'net. Listed below are the steps you need to take to begin RIGHT NOW:
1.) Select 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'll find millions you can upload.
5.) Set up your blog 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 site and sharing that connect to get it moving in 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.