The blogosphere, made up of countless blogs from everywhere, is probably the most popular faces of the web. It's not simply for teenagers anymore. Several years ago, most blogs were run by kids who just wished to talk to their friends, or people who just wanted to talk about their daily life.
These days, everyone online includes a blog.
Itâs likely that, you have one - and when you don't, you need to.
Stay in the home moms prefer 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 forgetting scandals).
And marketers have blogs about every niche imaginable!
I'm confident to say I myself am area of the blogging culture.
Blogging is a great way to reach out to the people on the web. They can touch an incredible number of lives, and spread your message like no other medium. You can say almost anything you need, and you will see an audience for almost every niche!
It is possible to run a blog just for fun. To be able 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 is your good friends and relatives, you'll have fun and manage to say whatever's in your thoughts.
Increasing numbers of people are embracing blogging in an effort to make money. Some people just want to create a few extra dollars for spending money, but others are in fact creating 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 every month, which delivered him their own Television show, podcast, and clothing line)!
There are many ways to make money blogging. Whether you're a scholar who just wants to make a little supplemental income for pizza and clothes, or you're a significant marketer who would like to make a lot of money, it's totally possible with blogging.
Blogs are big, even though they're small. Some blogs get millions of hits per month. 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 web.
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 actually need regular visitors if you want to make money together with your blog. You should work to get 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. The most important nuances in regards to why blogging is such a major global phenomenon may be the fact that people really enjoy reading unique voices on certain topics.
They crave the differences in personalities. It's refreshing to read information which has personality and isn't stale or stuffy, this means it's been translated by way of a single editor so that every voice is uniform. That is why columnist pages in local newspapers are so popular.
Your unique voice may be the most important part of getting regular visitors to your blog. If you need to see examples of this, visit many of the most popular blogs you will discover. You'll see that certain thing these blogs have as a common factor is the proven fact that the bloggers make engaging, funny, or original posts.
That's your key to making it big in the blogosphere!
Before You Blog, Build a Blueprint
A lot of bloggers come up with a blog without any real plan for how they will promote it or monetize it. Putting a blog together without a plan is like trying to build a house with out a blueprint.
It's possible, yes. But the end result is most likely likely to be shoddy, and the whole lot could fall apart at any minute.
You should create a solid course of action before you even choose the domain. You need to develop a strong blueprint before you ever get started. Waiting until after you have already arrange it and are traffic generation could mean plenty of extra work going in to correct mistakes.
Changing themes and adding plugins after you're already traffic generation 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 section of your plan should be choosing a niche, needless to say. Part of selecting a niche is finding products you can promote. In case a niche does not have any products available, you could 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 cases like this, you'd have to do some careful market research so as to determine whether or not a niche is truly viable.
What's your purpose for blogging?
Do you have your personal product you would like to promote?
Do you wish to promote affiliate products?
Do you want to just put AdSense or CPA offers on your site?
You need to ask yourself questions like these so that you'll know how you want to monetize the site. In the event that you intend to promote affiliate products, you should test the products yourself before you promote them.
If you don't, these potential customers could become very upset in the event that you promoted a product of really poor quality and they got it since they trusted you. Even worse, what if you wind 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've got a decent quantity of traffic (and sometimes in the event that you just ask), you may be in a position to get free review copies of a few of the products you'd like to promote.
It doesn't hurt to ask. Although you may 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 offer you a review copy. A lot of marketers get requests for review copies from those who just want to get yourself a copy of their product for free. If you come across a skeptic, or someone who's been burned before, you can find turned down.
In this case, it's probably best to just go ahead and buy the product in the event that you actually 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 any good products to promote, and you also don't have the time, money, or capability to create your own product, you can still put up a donation button. If your site is very good, you may get donations.
Or, you can always sell ad space on your blog. If you strat to get a large amount of traffic or you get an extremely high PageRank in Google, you could charge a lot of money for a link on your own blog. Also you can 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 can 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 way blogging can truly be worth it is if you're bringing in massive traffic, and the only path you can make that happen degree of traffic is by being very broad - casting a wide net, as they say.
For example, you may have a sports blog which has broad appeal. You could talk about baseball, football, basketball, soccer, tennis, and golf. This would give you a much more broad appeal, and the potential for larger traffic.
But since there will be so much competition, it might take a lot longer to obtain additional traffic to arrive. Plus, the way I see it is, if I'm interested in golf, I must say i won't care about another parts of the blog, therefore the value of it plummets in my own eyes.
But let's say you select golf as your broad topic. Even this is broad, although you merely segregated it from another sports in existence. There are many things you could reveal golf - vacations, apparel, clubs, courses, techniques, etc.
You could choose an even more targeted niche like women's golf or senior golf. That is a smaller segment of a little niche. This means you could 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 far less traffic from the main spot of Google compared to the combined traffic of all of the other sports niches, however the likelihood 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 opportunity to get one large blog to the very best of the various search engines rather quickly, you then might manage to handle a broad 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 could either create a network of small niche blogs, or you might start out with one broad blog and then start multiple sub-niche blogs later. You can then link to your entire 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'll have several smaller blogs already traffic generation and already having PR that can link to the larger blog to get it started.
If you already have plenty of SEO experience and you're confident in your ability to pull off some great search engine ranking positions quickly, then starting with a far more broad blog may be a better option.
You can still get some good of the advantages of having a smaller blog by having categories for every of the smaller niches on your own broad topic blog. One very last thing to keep in mind is that your traffic will undoubtedly be less targeted in the event that you run a broad blog.
If you have a niche site about skin care, you may get a lot of traffic that's just looking for information about the best lotions or skin creams. But if you take up a blog about something specific, like acne, you're more likely to get people who are ready and ready to buy something.
Where Will You Host Your Blog?
Lots of people begin by hosting their blog free of charge at one of many common blog hosting companies. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it is a far better idea to host your site all on your own domain if possible.
Let's have a look at WordPress. WordPress is a very popular blogging platform. You can host your blog on their servers, or it is possible to download the software and host your site on your own domain.
There are many reasons why you need to host your own blog, rather than hosting your blog directly on WordPress.com. For one thing, WordPress doesn't let you promote affiliate links on their domain.
So if you desire to make any money together with your blog, you can't host it on the server, you need to host it yourself. Another reason 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 on your own domain.
WordPress is very limited as far as the functionality, so don't have a much anything really cool on your own 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, so that you can 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 put 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 blog if they chose. That is clearly a pretty powerful motivator.
It certainly wouldn't be considered a very pleasant thing to create a blog up to several thousand hits each day, only to own 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 everything being wiped out overnight. That's not a good thing.
It's like having a fire rip during your brick and mortar store and you don't have any insurance to rebuild.
Another very important reason to host your site by yourself domain is that it offers you credibility. If you host your blog by yourself domain, you'll appear more professional, and much more like an authority figure in your niche.
People will automatically assume you're more serious if you're hosting your blog by yourself domain, instead of putting it up somewhere free of charge. If you do opt to host your own domain, the very first thing you'll need to do is select a domain that contains a few keywords related to your niche.
If your blog is about house cleaning tips, then make an effort to get housecleaningtips.com. In the event that's not available, decrease your keyword list and discover the next best thing. Then register the domain.
Next you need to find a host for your blog. You should choose a host that has Fantastico, which is a program that sits on the server and lets you very easily install WordPress (along with other scripts) without having to create and manage MySQL databases yourself.
After you have hosting, you merely need to go to your domain registrar and create 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
An increasing number of companies are starting blogs, and many people are even forming their entire companies around blogging. Customers really like blogs because they're generally full of great (free) information, they provide a personal touch that generally isn't found on a standard corporate website, and they're not usually filled with plenty of hype and hard sell tactics.
Another reason customers love blogs is they offer a great medium for interaction. Visitors can leave comments and receive responses to their comments. This helps build loyalty to your blog and your company, and readers enjoy this degree 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 more so than with a standard, stuffy stagnant website. Readers expect to see some personality developing 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 hear more of everything 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 become familiar with you a bit as an individual. This enables you to seem more real, and folks 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 not to post about your aunt's cataract surgery or your grandma's cat that died. You can get a bit personal - in the end, that's what really makes you stand out.
But most individuals who are reading your blog are there to find out information regarding the niche, seeking solutions to their needs. Keep your posts on topic, but get personal by providing your own voice within those entries.
Provide valuable information within your blog posts. Home page aren't going to keep returning to your blog again and again just to read 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, and other important information free of charge. While it's perfectly fine to blog about new product releases, it is additionally vital 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. You know what you love reading in a blog, right? You want solid information - something helpful. You probably don't mind the casual sales page on a blog filled with great information, but you would be pretty annoyed to reading nothing but pitch after pitch.
If you're in operation blog, it is important to keep your readers in mind. Give them the type of quality information they're hungry for, and they're going to keep returning for more. In fact, the more you give them for free, the more loyal they'll become, and the much more likely they'll be to buy from you in the future.
Blogging is centered on informing and educating. When you can do that, your visitors will form a bond with you and they're going to be sure you spread the word about your blog so that your URL goes viral and it attracts an even bigger following inside your niche.
Blogging can be very lucrative, not to mention it enhances your overall branding and networking on the 'net. Listed below are the steps you will need to take to begin RIGHT NOW:
1.) Pick a niche topic (my advice is to go narrow).
2.) Find a domain and purchase it.
3.) Setup 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 blog for categories, ad space, and stick an opt-in box inside it to begin creating 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 blog and replace those that aren't working well for you.