6 Things that Every Blogger Must Know and Do for Success

When I was new to blogging, I didn’t knew much about anything related to blogging, tools required, how to publicize my blog site etc etc.. Each day was a great learning experience and with every passing week there was tons of information that I had to grind to derive some actionable items from. I then started doing a weekly revision of different things that I was doing and, I observed that the practices I was following started to add value to my site, in terms of traffic and repeat visitors.

I know from reading comments on numerous posts in various websites and forums where new bloggers ask for a lot of information on making it big and taking right steps towards making money too. Here are some of my tips that most of you will find useful and some of these will probably have an immediate effect on your success. I call collection of my tips - [Blogger's CODE BOOK]

1. Why should I blog? - Is it because blogging is the most happening thing these days or just that some of my friends have their own blogging sites and some are even minting money from it. Ask yourself - Why do you want to start blogging? Setting your own expectation right is the first step towards successful blogging. Take a paper and write down the topics that you will blog about. These may be Family, Yourself, Technology, Music, Internet, Programming, Web 2.0, Tech News, DIY stuff, Your City, Your Country, Your Music Band and the list will go on. If you plan to setup your personal blog and don’t really look forward to making money out of it or you will not be blogging seriously but just for your interest and fun, then there is not much you have to worry about. For people who are serious about blogging - think about the topics you will blog about, will you have a free sub-domain [something.wordpress.com] or your own domain name, how will you pay for your hosting charges etc etc.

2. The blogging platform - For either personal or professional blogging, I recommend that you get your own domain name and only if you can not afford domain name registration and hosting charges [somewhere around $70USD per annum], think of a free blogging account with WordPress or Blogger or anyone else. My personal recommendation is you own domain name + WordPress - simply because I can do anything with my website. I can change the look, the features, customize the code and many more things. Your website’s look doesn’t need to be unique, any free theme would do as long as content is clearly readable and accessible as well. Read [Best practices of Web Designing] and also [Effective SEO of Wordpress].

3. I am ready to blog - I hope, by now you have decided the topics on which you will blog. The first thing you should think of putting up is an ‘About Me’ page on your blog. No matter if it’s a personal or professional blog, you must put up this page for your visitors to know more about you. Professional blogging sites with a page about the author greatly helps your visitors to know what you do, your areas of expertise etc etc. The more articles you write at the beginning, the more beneficial it’s to attract visitors as soon as your blog is launched. I would suggest you to publish at least 5-10 quality articles as soon as your blog goes live and then publish articles regularly. There is no recommended number of articles a day, per week or every month. Write at your own pace but write regulary and maintain the posting interval. If you happen to post during weekends, then keep posting during weekends [not a rule]. Your visitors will know when to expect new posts on your site.

4. Quality or Quantity? - It will really not help you to write 5-10 articles everyday if it’s not worth reading. Your articles must be appealing and full of information. People must like your articles and keep coming back for more quality articles. It’s ok to write only 5-6 articles a week, but give your best, make it informative and avoid most common topics which every other blogging site writes about. It’s quality of your articles that matters, not the number of articles you post on your site. Keep your articles simple, straight to the point, clear and easy to understand and your visitors will like it. Don’t ever copy articles, content from other sites. This will bring down your reputation and also your site will get penalized by search engines, thus removing all indexed pages from search engines.

5. How to publicize my blog? - The first thing you must do is to setup pinging on your site. This will ensure that search engines, blog syndication sites are always informed about the newly posted articles on your site. Other things that you can do to reach wide group of audience is signup with Technorati and feedburner services. Technorati has got a huge collection of blogs and users too. Signup with Technorati and claim your blog, then setup pinging on your blog site. Feedburner, on the other hand, will offer feed and email subscription services to your visitors. Your visitors will then be able to sign up using Feedburner’s email subscription service and receive your articles in their mailboxes. For professional sites, you may consider AdWords and Text Ads to publicize your blog. The more articles you write, the more visitors you will receive and thus increase your chances of retaining visitors. Happy visitors will speard the word about your blog with their friends and other. So, blog more!

6. Ok, I want to monetize my blog - There are plenty of options available to turn your blog site into a money minting website. For every type of website Google AdSense is a good option. If your website is more of product or hardware based, then chitika is another option. For sites with large number of email subscribers, Feedburner’s Ad Network is just great. Don’t get disappointed in the beginning if you don’t see the results you expected. Things works best with more number of visitors coming to your site which increases the chances of people clicking on the Ads. You must place the AdSense at right places which might yield in better click ratio. Don’t shift your focus towards making more money, just sit tight and keep writing more quality articles and rest will automatically fall in place.

[ If your site has 60 pages that gets you 200 visitors everday out of which 2 click on your Ads to make $2, then how many visitors you might receive with 600 pages after an year of writing those articles and how much money you might make with 20 people clicking on those Ads everyday? -- It's just to tell you that more number of visitors -> more money. Keep writing articles! ]

Summary - To be successful, you must have the right blogging platform which you could customize to any extent, write and keep writing great content, publicize your blog as and when you can and place the Ads at right places.