The blogosphere, comprised of countless blogs from around the globe, is probably the hottest faces of the web. It's not just for teenagers anymore. Several years ago, most blogs were run by kids who just wanted to talk to 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 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 forgetting scandals).
And marketers have blogs about every niche imaginable!
I'm confident to state I myself am part of the blogging culture.
Blogging is an excellent way to reach out to the people on the net. They can touch an incredible number of lives, and spread your message like no other medium. It is possible to say almost anything you need, and you will see an audience for nearly every niche!
You can run a blog simply for fun. If you need to discuss parties you attend, restaurants you eat at, places you go shopping, or where you continue vacation, someone will probably want to read about it.
Even if the only audience you have can be your good friends and relatives, you'll have fun and manage to say whatever's on your mind.
Increasing numbers of 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 making use of their blogs (a la Perez Hilton, who parlayed his blogging fun into thousands of dollars in ad money each month, which delivered him their own TV 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 supplemental income for pizza and clothes, or you're a serious marketer who would like to make a small fortune, it's very possible with blogging.
Blogs are big, even if they're small. Some blogs get millions 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 net.
With more and much more people jumping onto the blogosphere bandwagon, it will most likely not decelerate within the foreseeable future. If you're thinking about getting into blogging, it's wise to begin with now.
It generally takes a few months to begin with building up a following. And you also actually need regular visitors if you need 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 be sure you lend your own unique voice to your posts. Just about the most important nuances when it comes to why blogging is this type of 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 learn information which has personality and isn't stale or stuffy, which means it's been translated by way of a single editor so that every voice is uniform. This is the reason columnist pages in local newspapers are so popular.
Your unique voice may be the most important section of getting regular people to your blog. If you want to see types of this, visit some of the most popular blogs you could 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 making it big in the blogosphere!
Before You Blog, Create a Blueprint
Plenty of bloggers come up with a blog without any real plan 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 without a blueprint.
It's possible, yes. However the end result is most likely going to be shoddy, and the whole thing could fall 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 get started. 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 ought to be choosing a niche, needless to say. Part of selecting a niche is finding products you can promote. If a niche has no products available, you can create your own.
But if you can find no affiliate products available, it could be because there isn't enough demand there for something. In this instance, you'd have to do some careful market research so as to determine if a niche is truly viable.
What's your purpose for blogging?
Do you have your personal product you want to promote?
Do you want to promote affiliate products?
Do you want to just put AdSense or CPA offers on your site?
You need to consider questions like these in order that you'll know how you intend to monetize the site. In the event that you intend to promote affiliate products, you need to test the merchandise yourself before you promote them.
If you don't, these potential customers could end up being very upset if you promoted a product of really poor quality and they got it because they trusted you. Even worse, what if you end up promoting something that actually is 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 if you just ask), you may well be in a position to get free review copies of a few of the products you would like to promote.
It doesn't hurt to ask. Even when you don't have any existing traffic yet, you can write to the owner of a specific affiliate program, inform them what you're planning to accomplish, and ask in the event that you could get a review copy.
Some people won't offer you a review copy. Plenty of marketers get requests for review copies from those who just want to get yourself a copy of these product for free. So if you come across a skeptic, or someone who's been burned before, you may get turned down.
In this case, it's probably far better just go ahead and buy the product if you actually want to promote it. If it's a scam or a really crappy product, just ask for a refund.
You can also contemplate using a donation button on your blog. If you cannot find any good products to promote, and you also don't have enough time, money, or capability to create your own product, you can still set up a donation button. If your site is very good, you can find donations.
Or, it is possible to always sell ad space on your own blog. If you strat to get a substantial amount of traffic or you get an extremely high PageRank in Google, you can charge big money for a link on your blog. Also you can get paid to make posts on your own 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, because you can 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 will probably be worth doing big. They think that the only path blogging can truly be worthwhile is if you're bringing in massive traffic, and the only path you can achieve that level of traffic is when you are very broad - casting a broad net, as they say.
For example, you might have a sports blog which has broad appeal. You could talk about baseball, football, basketball, soccer, tennis, and golf. This might give you a a lot more broad appeal, and the potential for larger traffic.
But since there would be so much competition, it might take a lot longer to get more traffic coming in. Plus, the way I view it is, if I'm thinking about golf, I must say i won't care about the other parts of your blog, so the value of it plummets in my eyes.
But let's say you choose golf as your broad topic. Even that is broad, although you merely segregated it from the other sports in existence. There are plenty of things you could write about golf - vacations, apparel, clubs, courses, techniques, etc.
You could choose a far more targeted niche like women's golf or senior golf. This is the smaller segment of a small niche. This means you could get traffic faster, because there would be less competition.
Less competition means you have the potential to go up faster in the search engine rankings. Of course, women's golf would get much less traffic from the number one spot of Google than the combined traffic of all of the other sports niches, but the chances of that traffic converting right into a sale will soar.
So essentially, it boils right down to how you experience your abilities. If you were to think you have the opportunity to get one large blog to the very best of the search engines rather quickly, then you might be able to handle a broad topic blog.
Unless you believe your abilities are up-to-snuff, you then might want to stick to a smaller niche initially. Remember, you can always start other blogs later. You could either create a network of small niche blogs, or you could 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 start with the smaller blogs, get them to gain some popularity, and then start a large, broad blog later. Once you start the larger blog, you'll have several smaller blogs already getting traffic and already having PR that can link to the bigger blog to obtain it started.
If you curently have plenty of SEO experience and you're confident in your capability to pull off some great search engine rankings 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 last thing to keep in mind is your traffic will undoubtedly be less targeted if you run an easy blog.
If you have a niche site about skin care, you may get lots of traffic that's just searching for information about the best lotions or skin creams. But if you take up a blog about something specific, like acne, you're more prone to get people who find themselves ready and ready to buy something.
Where DO YOU WANT TO Host Your Blog?
Lots of people begin 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 on your own domain if possible.
Let's take a look at WordPress. WordPress is an extremely popular blogging platform. It is possible to host your blog on the servers, or you can download the software and host your site on your own domain.
There are several reasons why you need to host your personal blog, rather than hosting your blog on WordPress.com. For one thing, WordPress doesn't allow you to promote affiliate links on the 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 is the proven fact that you can't use the variety of plugins and themes you could use all on your own domain.
WordPress is quite limited as far as the functionality, so don't have a much anything really cool on your blog if you host it there. You will discover free WordPress tutorials to help you get started together 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 site is spam, or they decide it's "too" commercial, or they just can't stand it, they can delete it for any reason.
There goes all that hard work you put into it!
You have to agree to those conditions and terms when you sign up. That means that even though you don't actually break any rules, they might still delete your site if they chose. That is clearly a pretty powerful motivator.
It certainly wouldn't be considered a very pleasant thing to build a blog up to several thousand hits each day, only to have it deleted (and trust me, I've heard these horror stories). You'd lose all of that traffic, all of those backlinks, your entire reputation and your search engine ranking positions.
Imagine it all being destroyed overnight. That's not a good thing.
It's like having a fire rip during your brick and mortar store and you haven't any insurance to rebuild.
Another essential reason to host your blog all 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 much more serious if you're hosting your site by yourself domain, rather than putting it up somewhere for free. If you do decide to host your personal domain, the vital thing you will have to do is select a domain that contains several keywords related to your niche.
If your blog is approximately home 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 https://blogging.org have 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 permits you to very easily install WordPress (and other scripts) and never have to create and manage MySQL databases yourself.
After you have hosting, you just need to visit your domain registrar and setup the name servers to indicate your new host. Your hosting company's support will be able to help you with this particular.
Blogging Is Big Business
A lot more companies are starting blogs, and many folks are even forming their entire companies around blogging. Customers really love blogs because they're generally filled with great (free) information, they offer a personal touch that generally isn't entirely 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 that they provide a great medium for interaction. Visitors can leave comments and receive responses with their comments. This helps build loyalty to your site as well as your company, and readers enjoy this degree of interaction with someone they consider an authority figure.
It helps them feel just like they're really being paid attention to, and like the company really cares about what they have to say - even if that "company" is an entrepreneur like you! Blogs are a fantastic way 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. In the event that you really let your personality shine through, it is possible to 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 start to become familiar with you a bit as an individual. This enables you to seem more real, and people commence to trust you as well as your messages more.
For reasons uknown, people trust websites with identifiable people behind them.
Remember, when you're blogging for business you need to 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 little personal - after all, that's what really makes you stand out.
But most people who are 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 giving your personal voice within those entries.
Provide valuable information inside your blogs. People aren't likely to keep coming back to your blog over and over just to find out about the brand 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, you'll want to keep providing helpful tips to keep your readers coming back.
Don't ever lose sight to the fact that your readers are real people. You know what you love reading in a blog, right? You need solid information - something useful. You almost certainly don't mind the casual sales pitch on a blog full of great information, but you would be pretty annoyed to reading nothing but pitch after pitch.
If you're running a business blog, it's important to keep your readers in mind. Give them the kind of quality information they're hungry for, and they'll keep returning for more. In fact, the more you give them 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, your visitors will form a bond with you and they'll be sure you spread the word about your blog so that your URL goes viral and it attracts an even bigger following within your niche.
Blogging can be extremely lucrative, not forgetting it enhances your current branding and networking on the 'net. Listed below are the steps you need to take to get started RIGHT NOW:
1.) Pick a niche topic (my advice would be to go narrow).
2.) Find a domain and purchase it.
3.) Set up 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 in 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 connect to get it moving in the viral direction.
8.) Test the conversion of varied products you promote on your own blog and replace the ones that aren't working well for you personally.