The blogosphere, comprised of countless blogs from worldwide, is among the hottest faces of the Internet. It's not just for teenagers anymore. In the past, most blogs were run by kids who just wished to talk to their friends, or people who just wanted to discuss their daily life.
These days, everyone online has a blog.
Chances are, you have one - and when you don't, you should.
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, and they blog about their upcoming events, movies, and roles (not forgetting scandals).
And marketers have blogs about every niche imaginable!
I'm confident to state I myself am section of the blogging culture.
Blogging is a wonderful way to reach out to the people on the Internet. They can touch an incredible number of lives, and spread your message like no other medium. It is possible to say almost anything you want, and you will have an audience for nearly every niche!
It is possible to run a blog just for fun. If you need to discuss parties you attend, restaurants you take in at, places you shop, or where you continue vacation, someone will probably want to read about it.
Even if the only real audience you have can be your close friends and relatives, you should have fun and have the ability to say whatever's on your mind.
Increasing numbers of people are embracing blogging in an effort to make money. Some people just want to create a few extra dollars for extra cash, but others are actually creating a full-time income with their blogs.
A few 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 numerous ways to earn money blogging. Whether you're a scholar who just really 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 millions of hits per month. Blog traffic has been growing steadily for several years as consumers gain confidence from peers instead of trusting hard hitting sales pitches they find on the internet.
With more and much more people jumping onto the blogosphere bandwagon, it probably won't slow down within the foreseeable future. If you're thinking about getting into blogging, it's a good idea to get started now.
It generally requires 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 get subscribers to your RSS feed, because those people should come back often to learn your new posts.
And remember to lend your own unique voice to your posts. The most important nuances in regards to why blogging is such a 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 read information that has personality and isn't stale or stuffy, which means it's been translated by way of a single editor in order that every voice is uniform. This is the reason columnist pages in local newspapers are so popular.
Your unique voice is the most important part of getting regular people to your blog. To be able to see types of this, visit probably the most popular blogs you could find. 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, Create a Blueprint
Many bloggers come up with a blog without any real arrange for how they're going to promote it or monetize it. Putting a blog together without a plan is like attempting to build a house with out a blueprint.
It's possible, yes. However the end result is probably likely to be shoddy, and the whole thing could fall apart at any minute.
You should develop a solid course of action before you even choose the domain. You need to create a strong blueprint before you ever begin. Waiting until after you've already arrange it and are getting traffic could mean plenty 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're able to fix everything.
The first section of your plan should be choosing a niche, of course. Part of choosing a niche is finding products you can promote. In case a niche has no products available, you can create your own.
But if you can find no affiliate products available, it may be because there isn't enough demand there for a product. In this instance, you'd want to do some careful market research in order to determine if a niche is actually viable.
What's your purpose for blogging?
Do you have your own product you intend to promote?
Do you want to promote affiliate products?
Do you want 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 would like to monetize the site. If 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 poor quality and they got it since they trusted you. Even worse, what if you end up promoting something that actually is a scam?
You don't necessarily have to purchase every product you intend to promote. When you can prove you've got a decent quantity of traffic (and sometimes in the event that you just ask), you might be able to get free review copies of a few of the products you would like to promote.
It generally does not hurt to ask. Even though you don't have any existing traffic yet, it is possible to write to who owns a particular affiliate program, tell them what you're planning to accomplish, and ask if you could get an assessment copy.
Some people won't give you a review copy. Plenty of marketers get requests for review copies from those that just want to get a copy of these product for free. If you run into a skeptic, or someone who's been burned before, you may get turned down.
In this instance, it's probably best to just go ahead and buy the product if you really want to promote it. If it's a scam or a really crappy product, just require a refund.
You can also contemplate using a donation button on your own blog. If you can't find any good products to promote, and you also don't have enough time, money, or ability to create your personal product, you can still set up a donation button. If your site is very good, you may get donations.
Or, it is possible to always sell ad space on your own blog. If you start getting a large amount of traffic or you obtain a very high PageRank in Google, you can charge a lot of money for a link on your own blog. You can even get paid to make posts on your blog that review other sites.
Should a Blog Topic Be Broad or Narrow?
You can find two schools of thought regarding blog topics. Some people believe your topic should 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 believe that anything worth doing will probably be worth doing big. They think that the only way blogging can truly be worthwhile is if you're bringing in massive traffic, and the only way you can achieve that level of traffic is when you are very broad - casting a broad net, as they say.
For example, you may have a sports blog which has broad appeal. You can discuss baseball, football, basketball, soccer, tennis, and golf. This might give you a a lot 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, the way I view it is, if I'm interested in golf, I really won't care about another parts of your blog, therefore the value of it plummets in my 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 numerous things you could reveal golf - vacations, apparel, clubs, courses, techniques, etc.
You could choose a far 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 rankings. Of course, women's golf would get far less traffic from the main spot of Google than the combined traffic out of all the other sports niches, however the chances of that traffic converting right 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 top of the search engines rather quickly, you then might be able to handle an easy topic blog.
Unless you believe your abilities are up-to-snuff, you then might want to stick to 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 can then link to all your smaller blogs from your own large blog.
You could also focus on the smaller blogs, get them to gain some popularity, and take up a large, broad blog later. As soon as you start the larger blog, you should have several smaller blogs already getting traffic 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 great search engine ranking positions quickly, then you start with a more broad blog might be a better option.
You can still get some good of the benefits of having a smaller blog insurance firms categories for every of small niches on your own broad topic blog. One very 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 niche site about skin care, you can find plenty 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 willing to buy something.
Where Will You Host Your Blog?
Many people start out by hosting their blog for free at one of many common blog hosting companies. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it is a much better idea to host your blog all on your own domain if possible.
Let's have a look at 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 site on your own domain.
Here are a few reasons why you need to host your personal blog, instead of hosting your blog on WordPress.com. For one thing, 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 need to host it yourself. Another reason you shouldn't host your blog on WordPress may be the fact that you can't utilize the variety of plugins and themes that you could use on your own domain.
WordPress is very limited so far as the functionality, so don't have a much anything really cool on your blog if you host it there. You can find free WordPress tutorials to obtain 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 wish. But they're also against what they deem as "spam blogs" or "splogs." Should they decide your site is spam, or they decide it's "too" commercial, or they just don't like it, they are able to delete it for any reason.
There goes all that hard work you placed into it!
You have to consent to those conditions and terms when you subscribe. That means that even though you don't actually break any rules, they might still delete your blog if they chose. That is clearly a pretty powerful motivator.
It certainly wouldn't be a very pleasant thing to build a blog around several thousand hits each day, only to have it deleted (and trust me, I've heard these horror stories). You'd lose all that traffic, all those backlinks, your entire 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 during your offline store and you don't have any insurance to rebuild.
Another very important reason to host your blog all on your own domain is that it gives 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 much more serious if you're hosting your blog all on your own domain, rather than putting it up somewhere for free. If you do opt to host your personal domain, the very first thing you'll need to do is choose a domain that contains several keywords linked to your niche.
If your blog is about home cleaning tips, then try to get housecleaningtips.com. In the event that's not available, go down your keyword list and find the next most sensible thing. Then register the domain.
Next you have to find a host for the blog. You may want to choose a host that has Fantastico, which is a program that sits on the server and allows you to quickly install WordPress (along with other scripts) without needing to create and manage MySQL databases yourself.
After you have hosting, you merely need to go to your domain registrar and setup the name servers to indicate your new host. Your hosting company's support should be able to help you with this particular.
Blogging Is Big Business
Progressively more companies are starting blogs, and several people are even forming their entire companies around blogging. Customers really love blogs because they're generally filled with 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 many 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 can help build loyalty to your blog and your company, and readers really 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 just like the company really cares in what they need to say - even if that "company" can be an entrepreneur as if you! Blogs are a fantastic solution to build loyalty.
You can reach your audience in a very personal way, must way more than with a typical, stuffy stagnant website. Readers be prepared to see some personality coming out in a blog. If you really let your personality shine through, it is possible to build a following that may subscribe to your RSS feed and keep coming back often, eagerly waiting to hear more of everything you have to say.
This is a smart way to brand yourself and your business. Since you can get more personal with a blog, people start to get to know you a bit as a person. 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 in it.
Remember, if you are 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 can get a bit personal - after all, that's what really enables you to stand out.
But most individuals who are reading your blog are there to find out information regarding the niche, seeking answers to their needs. Keep your posts on topic, but get personal by giving your personal voice within those entries.
Provide valuable information inside your blog posts. People aren't likely 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 desire 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 coming back.
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 helpful. You almost certainly don't mind the casual sales pitch on a blog full of great information, but you'd be pretty annoyed to reading only pitch after pitch.
If you're in operation blog, it is critical to keep your readers at heart. Give them the kind of quality information they're hungry for, and they're going to keep returning for more. Actually, the more you give them for free, the more loyal they'll become, and the more likely they'll be to get from you in the future.
Blogging is all about informing and educating. If you can do that, your visitors will form a bond with you and they'll make sure you spread the term about your blog which means that your URL goes viral also it attracts a straight bigger following inside your niche.
Blogging can be quite 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 would be to go narrow).
2.) Find a domain and purchase it.
3.) Setup your WordPress blog making use of your Fantastico host.
4.) Select a theme online - Google free WordPress themes and you will find millions you can 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 varied products you promote on your blog and switch out those that aren't working well for you.