5 Things to Know When Starting a Blog

Is there a better way to express yourself and interact with unknown yet like-minded people than starting a blog? Perhaps not. Blogs allow an ordinary man to write the story of his life, share his thoughts with people he doesn’t know and even make a living out of it. This has made blogs more than a phenomenon these days. However, not every blog is a success. While some blogs enjoy enormous popularity, others are not equally well known and some fail to attract the attention of the readers completely. Clearly, a huge number of people plough on with a lot of determination as they love blogging but only a few taste the kind of success that they dream of. So if you are contemplating on starting a blog then make sure that you know the ground rules. Here are a few things you should know before you put your right foot forward:

Develop a niche
The world of blogging is a busy place overstocked with the stuffs offered by amateurs as well as professionals. Making your own personal space here can be a challenging thing. It is generally agreed that to build a huge and loyal audience you need to have a niche. It is very important for you to focus on something in particular and have firsthand experience as well as expertise on the subject. This will help you to present things in a creative and interesting manner. On the other hand, if you try to cover life, universe and everything then most probably you won’t be heard.

Content is the king
One of the most important ways to build a successful blog is to provide your readers something that is really intriguing and hard to find anywhere on the web. Fresh and innovative content should be presented in a unique manner in order to attract readers. Top bloggers always make a buzz because they are trendsetters. They focus on introducing new things, stuffs that are unheard of to attract the readers. If you publish bulk articles on topics that others have covered then it’s not wise to expect huge traffic. Also make sure that your blog is free from duplicate content. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. hate duplicate content and will punish your blog by not indexing it.

Awesome Marketing
Having good content is a primary requirement but it might not be very effective without proper marketing. Make people aware of what you are offering with effective web marketing. This primarily involves SEO link building. It means your blog should have backlinks from top quality blogs and sites. This will increase the search engine ranking of your blog. If your blog appears in the first few pages of the search results for certain keywords then it will possibly have a decent number of visitors. Also make it a point to promote your blog in popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook etc. Having presence in social content sharing sites (for instance, Hubpages) also helps in a major way. Your blog will climb up the ladder of popularity pretty soon if you follow the above tips.

Patience is the key
Before starting a blog it’s important to realize that blogs do not become successful overnight. For many blogs, it takes years to achieve even moderate success. You have to spend quite some time on marketing the blog and tweaking its design. Moreover, to enhance your chances of building a successful blog you should post everyday. Most successful blogs publish more than one article daily. Initially you might not feel motivated to post heavily since you won’t see any immediate results. But understand that the posting more content will increase recognition among the search engines. You must Continue updating your blog and wait patiently. Chances are high that readers and search engines will eventually embrace your blog.

Think twice before quitting your full time job
We understand that you are really passionate about blogging but how rational is it to quit your regular job for it? Blogging is a very uncertain proposition. It works for some and not for others in spite of their best efforts. So leaving your full time job can actually push you towards financial crisis and debt. To play safe you should set aside some time for your blog on a daily basis. Once it gets popular and generates stable revenue, you can contemplate on saying goodbye to your boss.
Are you beginning to think that blogging is a psychological and physical strain? Well, you are mistaken. Blogging can be a very enjoyable, rewarding and satisfying experience if you remember what you have read. Go ahead; maybe it’s your turn to be the winner. Good luck.

Number 1 – This is actually an article on about.com, so its unlikely that you will be able to advertise on this page.

Number 2 - www.moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/

This is a blog that clearly has a lot of advertising on it, and you can see that they even have an ‘Advertise here’ section.

Number 3 - http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/...g-money-online

Again, you can see plenty of advertising on this site, and a few seconds browsing reveals the advertising contact details

Number 4 - www.successwithauctions.com/

Has Google adsense all over it, but doesn’t look like its running any other form of advertising. However, if you browse around then you can see that you are able to submit articles too them, which could be good for the SEO of your site as well as advertising

Site 5 - www.moneymakingmommy.com/

This is a huge site, and you can see plenty of advertising on it. A quick search reveals that there is a large ‘Advertise with us’ section that has plenty of options for you

Site 6 - www.pcmoneymaker.net/

Again, whilst this site isn’t covered in advertising, other than adsense, there is a contact us page where you could mail them to ask them if they are accepting advertising

Site 7 - www.makingonlinemoney.com/

There doesn’t seem to be any form of advertising on this site, but there is a contact us form, so you could drop them a quick email to see if you can advertise

Site 8 - www.paid2review.co.uk/

A clear link to the advertisers area in the top navigation - http://www.paid2review.co.uk/adverti...to-review.html - shows the different options on the site as well as prices and traffic volumes which makes planning your campaign simple

Site 9 - www.onlinemoneymaking.net/

There do appear to be advertising opportunities on this site, but they don’t seem to have a simple way to contact them or advertise.

Site 10 - www.makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com

Another top-ranking blog with very clear advertising opportunities, and a clear way to contact the owner.


So there you have it…that’s several new places to try advertising and that’s just from one search in one search engine! There are absolutely tons of opportunities out there if you look for them. The best thing about doing these types of sites is that they rank for the keywords you want, so your traffic is targeted, and if you choose the right sites, the traffic can be very receptive to your offers.

The top things that I recommend that you do to make sure you get the most out of your advertising campaigns with these types of site are;

1) Try to focus on sites that are very open about their advertising. http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com and http://Paid2review.co.uk for example both are very, very clear about the options that they have on the site, what kind of traffic the site recievs and how much your campaign will cost. These sites are by far the simplest to work with, as you know you will get a professional response.

2) Look for sites that are ranking for multiple keywords. The more keywords they are ranking for, the more exposure your site will get

3) Get an email template written for the sites that are harder to contact. You don’t want to waste a lot of time on a site that doesn’t have a clear advertisers section. Whilst some can turn out great, the vast majority will not even reply to your email, so you don’t want to spend ages writing to them!

4) Don’t be afraid to negotiate. Its your hard earned money you are spending and you need to make sure you are making a return on your investment. Most sites that have a professional ‘advertise’ section will be able to tailor their offerings to suit you, and will often offer discounts for larger/longer deals.

5) Volume is key! Just because you contact someone doesn’t mean you HAVE to advertise with them. Try contacting dozens of sites in one go, and then pick and choose from those that respond. As a general guide, those that are most communicative will be the best to work with, and you will be able to deal with them the easiest.

6) Remember .com and .co.uk searches will give different results. Below is the list of results in .co.uk, so you can see that all of a sudden http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/...-money-online/ has jumped from 3rd to 1st, and www.paid2review.co.uk has gone from 8th to 2nd! Good rankings in .com and .co.uk will help you get a good ROI on your campaigns