Guide To Blogging

Blogging can be a lucrative endeavor especially if you can bring your traffic up. But how do you do it, especially if you have a small budget.

With a small budget one of the best ways to increase the traffic to your blog is by using your social network. Use Facebook, Twitter and other social network sites to promote your blog entries. Paste links to your blog on your social network wall and ask friends to visit. You can also ask them to repost the links on their wall. Since the people in your network are friends, it’s pretty certain that a significant number of people will actually help you.

One proven way of improving your blog status is by having it linked by as many sites as possible. You could do this by visiting and blog-hopping and commenting on other sites. Make known that you want to be linked and offer a link exchange if possible. If you do this often, you can increase your linkage over time, as many as possible.

Of course, do not be hypocritical when asking for link exchange. You got to let them know that you truly like their blogs. Pretentious commenter are mostly shunned. And it is of course without saying that you need to have a good content, when content is always king, in order to invite linkages from other sites.

You could also get linkages by purchasing link spots on very popular sites who offers this kind of service. Of course, they go with a fee. But it is not so expensive or very costly. Maybe you could spend 10 Dollars in a week for having your site linked to highly visited sites and it could pay of for you. You could even avail of Adsense placements at a reasonable cost.

No matter how you do it, whether through exchange of links or thru purchase of commercial link spots, you got to have your blog linked as much as possible. That’s the only way to go.

(image from smcclouisville.org )

This is a proven way of driving site traffic towards the roof. As much as possible, try to update your blog in the most frequent of manner. And to aim for the maximum, do blogging on almost on a daily basis. Sites that are rarely updated are not searched that much and search engines just disregard them. If you blog almost all day and you have a niche form of blogging, those traffics stats could easily go up and ad revenues would surely come in.

Of course, this would take a lot of patience and determination. But if you are really aiming at blog success, and at being a pro in the field, you got to do this, or sink.

One way to achieve this goal is by having a list of possible topics for about a week ahead. Searched for the news and infos on the net and list down the topics you could write from Monday to Sunday and of course you need a high-speed connection for this.

A blog post a day would surely keep blogging and your blog the healthiest possible.

(image from blogging101.com )

What to do when you don’t know what to post. I occasionally encounter this problem at least once a week. This is mostly due to stress that I can’t think of any possible topic to post about, or when the good topics have already been posted. What I usually do is fix myself a cup of coffee, relax and just chill out, listen to music ( rock music works for me ). When writing an article you must enjoy and be comfortable on that subject, the harder the subject the less you would be able to post an article so in order to do that you must be stress free. Another tip is do something which is not related to blogging, take me as an example, for my stress busting day-off from blogging I go out with my friends for a nice day of paintball, releases all those pent-up rages and adrenaline you’ve kept for the week. Now after a tiring day of paintball, I can think of far-out topics about “how not to be a sitting duck when playing paintball” or “That 13-year old kid Owned me”, and or you can apply your guerilla tactics to your blog post, like “seek and destroy” , “Hit and Run” that sort of stuff, now will you be that lonely sniper that wait for perpetual targets to come into your view, will you be the Delta Force ( Elite Special Forces), or the Grunt of the blogging Army. Blogging is fun when you enjoy every minute of it.

Thanks to Blog Tutorials : Don’t know what article to Post?

For most of the time, blogging is a hobby, a past time that allows release of thoughts and feelings. Blogging is, for the most part, an outlet. You post and post, not really caring if you’d have new subscribers, new visitors, new comments, and the like. But such are most welcome, of course, and it makes you happy.

However, you notice that on random days, you have more visitors / comments than usual. Does it mean that those random days have your best posts? Try looking at those posts that gained more / new viewers and look at how comments were directed. Were the comments merely observant or was there a formed discussion among the readers?

Read through your entries and find these posts. Apparently, these posts have the kind of topics that appeal more to readers. What you can do is write similar posts, improve on the ideas you’ve written in it, expound and make it in-depth, and explore similar topics. This is certain to gain you readership and maintain it as well.

Taken From Jaren’s Post on Blog Tutorials : Writing your Most Popular Post – and Keeping at It

I like Jaren’s post on Blog Tutorials Titled Blogging is Like…

There He compared blogging to playing the Game Sid Meier’s Civilization, I for one also Like playing Civilization and was excited upon reading the post. So here it is. I had to post it in here because it give a nice explanation why we blog.

Blogging is like playing Sid Meier’s Civilization, at first you start at something small, manage your resources (ideas, contents, topics), take care of your Cities and Citizens (your blog and readers) to make it grow by giving that what they want luxuries, food (info, tips, news) but somehow your cities ( your blog) also need security that’s why you have to make a defensive unit for it’s protection (spam-blockers, plugins) to make a very successful city (blog) in the long run. It takes time and effort to make it to the top. So if you agitated that your city (blog) isn’t growing, don’t fret maybe you need to trade with other civilizations (linking to relevant blogs, articles, posts) or maybe issue a trade embargo to other civilizations (stop linking to splogs or spam blogs) and yes you have to establish an embassy to other civilizations (commenting on blogs and establishing a communication with the blogger) and you have to balance your resources, luxuries and also your tax and science (researching on the topics that you would post) all this is hard work on the first hundred of years as you build roads, irrigation, mines to work make your city a top class city.

That’s Why I think blogging is like playing Sid Meier’s Civilization. The aspect of the game itself is building a civilization to stand the test of time and that should be your motto in blogging. You build a blog to stand the test of time.

If you want that hit stat to go up like a rocket to the sky, it’s better to find a niche for you blogging. It’s a matter of deciding of what you like best to right, and most of all, on what you know best.

This expert advice had been prescribed by the most successful bloggers in the pro field. Search engines has a way of putting priority to content search towards sites with uniform and consistent web content and this is most especially helpful when one is aiming to earn much from advertisement placement such as from Google Adsense and Adbrite.

So if you are into pro blogging, this is the main thing you should be doing first of all. To find a niche of your own and not put content in your blog that is so scattered and wide-ranging, search engines are not much inclined to direct to blogs who has no specialty content.

So if you are into tech, bring forth those tech news and infos. They are mostly the most searched items on the net. If you are into politics, stick with that most of the time. If you are into electronics, you’d be having a lot of visitors from online shoppers of gadgets and electronics.

(image from sunagency.com)

Tips on how you can blog longer

Now it’s hard to maintain the level of competency in blogging, at some point you’re doing this great post, but on the next week you’d been posting dull articles or not even posting at all. Ideas run up and sometimes get exhausted, so here are tips to keep you blogging for a lifetime, blog indefinitely, and to be able to blog longer and have fun doing it.

Keep it simple and small, yet fascinating
Ok, it’s best to start to blog small and simple. Don’t start with a view from the top and work your way down it doesn’t work that way. What you need to do is start small, at the bottom then work your way to the top as blog becomes bigger and your topics diverse.

Make blogging enjoyable by blogging about what you love
If you like what you are blogging about chances are you can blog about that certain topic for as long as you like. If you’re really into a certain topic, chances are you have deep knowledge on the subject matter and will have fun writing great, descriptive and helpful posts.

Set a Blogging schedule
Doing a week’s worth of blog post can wear you out so it’s best that you keep a blogging schedule and very much stick to it, follow it to the letter and also allot a free time to recharge your batteries, such as taking the weekend off from blogging or spending time with family, friends which is not related to blogging. This may cause you to miss the part of blogging which in turn would give you the fuel to make a great post.

Blogging as habit
Blog regularly to make it a habit once you get the hang of it, blogging comes easy to you that you just can’t live without it, a day may seem incomplete and you may feel lost when you aren’t able to blog. Maybe a good or a bad thing.

Make a list of ideas and topics for your blog
It’s a very good idea to keep a blog topic list or a stash of ideas, so you have ample time to think about what to write. This saves time and mental energy instead of cramming the thick skull for ideas which seem to fly away from you mind. And also if ever a sudden flow ideas pop in your head in those inconvinient times when you can’t fire up your laptop or PC, then I suggest keep a handy little notepad or a tape recorder, so you can input ideas on the said devices or tools

Read, read, read
Read other blogs daily check out their writing style, how they write their ideas to be able to reach their readers, you can learn a lot form other bloggers simply by just reading at their post. Plus it will encourage you to do well on your blog too. Also read the comments on your blog, if you ever you get a bad comment or got criticized for something you posted you it to better yourself and your blog. Use negative comments, as your “blogging fuel”.

Blog for the people
Blog for the people, blog about what they want to read and blog to help your readers. Give solutions to problems, give the reader what they want. And also add media to your blog. Don’t be confined to a 2-dimensional blog, make it unpredictable, add media, like pictures, video, etc, to make it appealing as well as entertaining to the readers.

I like this article… It’s a very realistic and has dynamic feel to it… as you can interchange the word “blogging” and insert any type of hobby you are into… “designing, programming, eating”… hahahhaa!

Taken from Jaren‘s PostBlog Tutorials – Blogging Indefinitely

No, writing creative blogs does not include topics of absurd imagination or far-fetched ideas. Creative blogs may contain everyday stuff but keep the Dear Diary format on a minimum. So what really is a creative blog?
First, do away with stagnant topics. Stagnant topics are everywhere and they are the ones usually comment-able by “wow, great post” and it ends there. Write about thought-provoking stuff. Your readers are sure to comment endlessly, with you joining the comment conversation. Eventually, one comment is sure to strike you and it can lead you to write a new topic out of it. You can also try posting reviews of whatever’s current – movies, books, TV series and the like. This is sure to create a discussion among your readers and with each insight comes a new idea that you can write about.

Avoid These WHEN Writing
- Spell check: Ignore the red-underlined words.
- Dictionary / Thesaurus: Resist yourself from always looking for a “better” word.
- Sentence Structure: Never mind if it doesn’t really make sense or if it’s run-on.
- Google / other search engines: Don’t stop with the goal of “adding more stuff” to what you are writing. You’ll end up digressing and eventually, procrastinating.
- Looking back: Write until all else is pretty much exhausted from you.
Imperatives AFTER writing
- Do all those listed above.
- Always, always separate editing from writing.
- Never ever interrupt the momentum of your creativity.