Design

Building a blog today has taken on an entirely new dimension compared to just a few years ago. Formerly, they were simple to create online platforms to opinionate on, share personal insights, or even utilized as online journals much like diaries. But just like most anything else, blogs have evolved. Their effectiveness to passively promote products or services has become widely recognized.

If you market online, a blog is just about a necessity considering all it can do for your business. The ability to engage your readers and get their feedback is priceless and if set up correctly and with enough visitors reading your post, you can even sell advertising space thereby collecting a passive income.

There are some very basic steps you want to take to make your blog work for you. Keep in mind that there's more involved to fully optimize your blog for business but these 3 components will be the foundation you build on.

1) Appearance

You need to have a layout that is easy for the first time visitors to navigate, making it simple for them to access old postings and to just look around your site. You want a look and feel that is you and an appearance that is a fit for the business or product you're promoting. You will have a choice of templates and layouts to choose from. This part is fun so enjoy it but don't worry, if you don't like what you initially picked you can change it any time you like.

2) Quality Postings

This area which will be the cornerstone of your site. What you post will determine how effective your efforts are to be. Your post has to entice your visitors to continue reading. It has to have useful, interesting, and entertaining content if possible. Let your personality out of the bag. Anybody can find and post useful information, its how you present it that will keep them coming back for more. Just be yourself and go with the flow.

Remember to post regularly with fresh and concise content. Keep your delivery natural. You're having a conversation with your readers, not reporting the 6 o'clock news to them.

3) Monetizing Your Blog Space

With a good amount of visitors, advertisers will be tripping over each other to get space on your blog. Here's where you can charge a rate (monthly) for advertisers to 'rent' space on your site. Be careful not to clutter your pages. Too many advertisers or activity and it will distract your visitors. You lose your visitors, you lose your page rankings, you lose your advertising and you are starting all over again. As a rule 2 to 3 per page should keep things orderly and acceptable to your visitors and make the posted ads more effective for the sponsors.

Building a blog following this format will insure you visitors, a strong page ranking, and income if that is your goal.

To your blogging success!

T.J. Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina. For more information on succeeding in blog marketing and to receive a free guide that demonstrates how to find both profitable markets and products, visit: http://blogbrawn.com

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. 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. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. 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 your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should 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. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com, etc. The more blog accounts the better. You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

8) Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You're a Professional

You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "Old Blog has been moved to New Blog 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.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. 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.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

About The Author

Ant Onaf is the owner and founder of http://www.JournalHome.com He is an online internet marketer, content writer, and IT consultant. Ant Onaf has years of IT-related experience and Internet-related experience. His ingenuity, dedication, and passion for technology, internet marketing, & writing have made him a monumental icon in the World Wide Web. His blog can be visited at http://www.journalhome.com/AntOnaf

There are so many new-age terms flying around these days, such as social media strategy or blogging and Web 2.0., all applying to the Internet. Many older individuals (and even some younger ones) have a hard time keeping up with the many changes and elements our high-tech world presents to us. If you had blurted out that you were going to check your email account on a cell phone a couple of decades ago, everyone would have thought you were completely crazy. However, this is a boundary testing new world we all share and it's loaded with gadgets, more gadgets, and many mediums. Take presenting your opinion for example. While people used to be limited to doing via the radio or television, they can now do it via the Internet. So if you want to know what blogging is, we'll tell you. It's basically a portal to express your thoughts, share your emotions and voice your opinions right on the web. If you have something to say, blog it!

Blogging, Social Media, and You

In actuality, tons of people take full advantage of the Internet for social media strategies or blogging. They do this to share their viewpoints, companies, talents, and more. While most were asking, "What is blogging" even just five years ago, today it's all the rage and going full steam ahead. Now, think of a few reasons you might want to invest in some social media strategies and start blogging. Oh, hang on! Let's establish a few formats first. Websites like Blogger.com and Wordpress.com offer free blogging accounts upon quick and simple sign up. Then you can start blogging about whatever you please. It really is that easy. Within no time, you be published online and officially involved in social media strategies or blogging. Anyway, what are you interested in blogging about? Perhaps you want to start a blog on politics, credit solutions, kitchen utensils, inflation, religion, money making, or a TV series. The choices are unlimited and they're all yours.

Now, if you're still don't understand what social media or blogging is or why you should do it, you should consider the monetary gain. Yep, that's correct! You can actually compensate from social media strategies or blogging on the web. Certain websites such as Blogger.com, which is affiliated with Google, allows you to place particular ads on your blogs. This makes it possible for you to earn ad revenue whenever a web surfer clicks on one of the ads. This is one main reason why so many people make the decision to create blogs in the first place. You can earn a little cash from your knowledge and advice. Now you no longer have to question what is blogging? At this point, you know!

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