A New Blog Is Born

The first of a number of ways I am deviating from the accepted way to start and run a blog.

It is true that if you want to make lots of money from blogging you need a hot niche. A niche a a small market that will support lots of traffic. The classic examples are things like weight loss and acne treatments. Rock music is not a niche, Frank Zappa could be a niche, not a very hot one probably. The latest boy band, or C&W star could be hot niches, but not rock music as such it is too broad.

So, why Real Rock and Blues? It's easy, I like real rock and blues. No, I LOVE real rock and blues, it is a passion and I enjoy listening to is, talking about it and writing about it. I do not really want to make loads of money (it would be nice but....)

It is up to you, do you want loads of money and spend your time writing about counting carbs or do you want to really enjoy what you do by writing about a your hobby and passion?

Over the next few days and weeks I will go through everything I did to set up Real Rock and Blues. From choosing the platform and host (both easy choices for me) to monetizing the blog and how well that is going and the number of readers. All mistakes, failures, and, hopefully successes will be there.

Honest.

First the platform. The platform is the software that you are going to use to build your blog. Think of it as the equivalent of MS Word for your blog. All platforms will do the same basic things. You can write text, add photos, music, video etc.

There are differences in platforms however. You need functionality, ease of use, extendability, and ownership. The decision usually comes down to a choice between Blogger and WordPress.org Both are stable and free.

With Blogger you do not need to have a hosting company because your blog would be hosted on Google. With WordPress you do need a hosting company, you need a company that will rent out a part of their servers to you. One up to Blogger, or not. The biggest problem with Blogger to my mind is that the blogger never owns their own blogs. As Google owns Blogger and the servers that it runs on means that they own the blog, in effect. Contravene any of their rules and they will close you down. I also have read of questions about the ability to turn Blogger into a real revenue stream.

Where WordPress really scores is that it is open source. The code is available to anyone. There are thousands of people developing add bits of software (called plugins) that extend what you can do with you blog. You want a calender showing events? You got it. You want a gallery that you can customise? You got it. You want a piece of software that will do something never done wit a blog before? You can find someone who will write it for you.

On the back of being open source you have a choice of literally thousand of different looks (themes) for your blog on WordPress.

There is no question for a serious blogger it has to be Wordpress.org

Hosting. The hosting company has to be reliable, provide good service and be inexpensive. I have used other hosting companies but now I only use BlueHost. With other hosting companies I have had service issues, outages etc. BlueHost have always been reliable and offered great service and advice. I can not say anything but praise for them.

The first place I would go is eBay Pulse. This is a great research tool. It shows you the most popular searches on the most popular online market place. click on the category drop down box and look at the searches in the category that attracts you. Remember that these are searches made by people wanting to buy. The link, by the way, is for Pusle at ebay.com there are local eBay Pulses eBay.co.uk for example but as we are looking at a world wide market for our blog .com is the place to start.

Next, go to Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers is great! People go there to ask questions on any topic you can imagine. It shows the popularity of any given topic. I just searched for 'dog training' and there were 47,864 questions. That is an indication that there is a need there, if your blog can fill that need you will get readers, and make money. Weight loss came in at 68,598 and acne at 133,598. Both look like good niches. Frank Zappa had 1,095 questions and the wonderful Captain Beefheart a mere 177. Obviously, I would not make a lot of money writing a blog about them, but I would love it!

So, you have found a hot niche? Well, nearly. One last thing to do. Go over to Google and search for your niche. I just searched for 'dog training'36,800,000 hits. That is not what should interest you, however. Look for the sponsored ads, are there loads? Yup, there sure are for dog training. What makes this interesting for us is that people are willing to pay for those ads. In other words. This is a profitable area of advertising. This could be a very good hot niche!

Perhaps I should scrap Real Rock and Blues and start writing about dog training......

If you want to know about dogs you could types 'dog' into you friendly. Neighbourhood search engine. For dog training you would type 'dog training' for dog training in London you could type 'dog training in London'. 'Dog', 'dog training' and 'dog training in London' are all keywords for sites involved in dogs and dog training.

Keywords are the terms that you think that people will use to find your blog or service. I say "that you think" but a little bit of research will show you what words and phrases people are using in your niche. Here is a short list of keywords I was looking at for Real Rock and Blues.

best classic rock
blues artists
blues history
blues licks
blues music cds
blues music facts
blues robert johnson
blues rock
blues rock music
blues scale
blues tabs
blues woman
buddy guy blues
city blues music
classic rock music
great rock
history of the blues
howlin wolf blues
johnny winter blues
miles davis kind of blue
old blues
old blues music
punk rock music
rock groups
rock music albums
rock music trivia

What I want are keywords that will promote Real Rock and Blues. Now, obviously, until I promote guitar lessons (which I will at some point) I would not use terms such as 'blues tabs', 'blues licks', or 'blues tabs'. This is important, you may find a keyword that gets lots of hit but does it get the right type of hits for your site? I could probably get loads of people coming to Real Rock and Blues if I used a key word related to 'pain free instant weight loss', but they would not hang around long on the site, and would not come back again........

I took this list and whittled it down to 6 good keywords to promote. The list I ended up with is;

Classic Rock Music
Chicago Blues
& blues music
History of the blues
Old blues music
Blues music

Also interesting is the search term '[NAME] blues' using a specific artist's name. The traffic is not great but this is one of the things about using keywords. There are 550,000 searches for 'blues music' and only 6,600 for 'Buddy Guy Blues'. If I am writing about Buddy Guy guess what my keywords will be. I will push the lower rating keywords. There are 2 reasons, the people searching for Buddy Guy's music will be better focused for my post or article. Second it is much easier to become listed better on Google for less competitive keywords.

I have settled on one main keyword. I am using 'rock and blues' as my anchor text for comments and links. If you look at the stats this is not a good idea. If you put that into Google there are 394,000,000 results. I have been commenting on some blogs, using Angela's links (more later on this excellent service), looking at forums, Yahoo Answers and such like. The result? My blog now ranks as #8 for the search 'rock and blues'. This gives me about 15 - 20 unique visits a day. Not too shabby, and has not taken much time. As I am working 11 hours days at my day job that is pretty good.

It will not be a surprise that the Michael Jackson saga has helped me. I have been monitoring the posturing and the whole tasteless business. What it does mean is that I have not had the time to write about the things that I love, Lightnin' Hopkins, Beefheart, Wreckless Eric, Tim Fite et al.

As a blogger there is an important decision to be made. Do you cop out (as I have about responding to 'news') or do you keep to your heart? I think that the sensible thing to do is to acknowledge the prevailing wind but to keep what you do true to your heart. This is a delicate balance.

When you search for anything in Google, or any of the other search engines there are millions of sites presented for you to look at. How many pages do you go through before clicking on a link? 20, 10, 5, or just the first 2? Most people never go beyond the first 3. If your new blog is on page 10 you will get very, very, few readers from Google.

How do you move up the Google rankings? The answer, one of them, is back links. A back link is when a site links to you. If you are presenting good, quality content some sites will naturally link to you. However, those links alone are not likely to move you up Google's results. You need to actively forge back links. You can do this by searching out other blogs that have a 'do follow' comments section and post comments. (Do follow means that when you comment a back link to your site is generated to your site). To see if a blog's comments are do follow look at other comments and put your cursor on the author's name of a comment. At the bottom of your screen do you see a link to a different site? If you do it is a do follow comment page.

The problem is that you have to spend lots of time looking for blogs to comment on and you have to spend lots of time writing good comments. There must be an easier way.

You could email other sites in your niche and suggest reciprocal links (you link to mine and I will link to yours). Again it takes a lot of time, some people will agree, some will not, some will not reply. You will also have to keep checking that the sites that have agreed set up and keep your link. Also, reciprocal links are less valued by Google than single way links. You could ask site A to link to Site B and B to link to you and you link to A so that you all get non reciprocal back links. Sounds complicated, it is, and do not think that Google are unaware of this tactic. There must be an easier way.

If you search for my key word 'rock and blues' you will find 46,000,000 results. Currently, Realrockand blues.com comes in at number 5. Not on page 5, number 5 out of 46,000,000. How did I do it? By using targeted back links, that's how. A page with a page rank of 7 carries much more weight when it gives you a back link than a blog with 10 readers a day. Search those sites out and get a back link from them? How? That is the million dollar question (I know, it should be $64,000 question but that's inflation for you).

Thankfully, there is a simple and inexpensive solution to the whole problem (Sadly, I get no commission for telling you this). Angela's Back Links is a superb service. For $5 a month she will send you 30 high page rank sites that will link to you. That is what I have done for both of my blogs and their search rankings have soared. I can not think of a better way to spend $5 a month.

'Content is king' is a favourite saying of the blogger gurus. What is really important is good, original, regular content.

For Real Rock and Blues my choice of the type of content is a series of 'On This Day' posts. I like this format for a number of reasons;

Firstly, people like music trivia. A good blog post is interesting and not too long. There are places for articles but not as posts. Create separate pages for longer, timeless pieces.

Secondly, this type of post does push me to keep writing and researching. Every day I look for interesting facts to include. It is too easy to put off writing another post but this format imposes a discipline that I find useful.

Thirdly, this type of post will build for the future. Next year I will be able to recycle this year's posts and add more. As time goes on the blog will build and become of more value to readers.

Fourthly, one thing leads to another with this type of post. For example, I recently wrote a post to celebrate John lennon's birth. That spawned a post about the early Beatles and the Quarrymen. From that I discovered that the first Beatles record was recorded in the back of a shop in Liverpool and there was only one pressing which MaCartney later bought. Look! another post! Suddenly, from one post I have another 2 already scheduled.

Fifthly, it is easy for me to include Amazon links to relevant CDs and books.

How often do I post? Ideally I would like to post daily but that is not always possible. I have an eBay shop to run, work full-time and have a life. I manage 3 or 4 posts a week and that seems to work.