Starting a Successful Blog

Whether you
are starting up a new web site aimed at bloggers or
whether you are looking to make your existing blogging
site more distinctive, the key to building and
maintaining a site that will capture the interest and
attention of the blogging community is finding your
niche. If you can fill a unique need in a way that no
other web site does, you'll be able to build a lasting
readership among web surfers. Once you have
discovered a niche, you will still have a lot to do, but
finding your place in the blogosphere is the place to
begin.

Every great blogging web site starts with a great idea,
and you can't build a successful site that will last
without one. There are many great sites aimed at
today's bloggers, and competition for the attention of
this growing demographic is fierce. To make your
blogging web site stand out from the pack, you will
need to offer something that no other site is currently
offering, or you will need to do the same thing that an
already popular site does but in a more impressive or
valuable way.

Once you have a great idea for your site, have
pinpointed a special niche that you are well equipped to
fill, and have infused the site with personality, the next
step is figuring out how to get the word out to bloggers.
In the long run, a great idea just isn't enough to propel
your blogging web site to success. You will need to
draft a smart and realistic marketing plan in order to
draw readers to your site. Once you hook a blogger,
your great content will keep them coming back, but it is
vital to get that first glance or your site won't have a
chance to shine.

The Right Blogging Platform For Your Needs

Choosing which blogging platform to use is one of the
most important decisions that you can make as a
blogger. The right platform can make blogging a
breeze, and the wrong platform can make blogging a
chore. Because the program that you use to blog with is
such a powerful part of your blogging experience, it is
well worth putting in the time to find a platform that
provides your ideal balance between a user-friendly
interface and a flexible framework that allows you to
make your blog look and feel unique. Finding the right
platform isn't always easy, but with a little bit of
contemplation and a little bit of research, you will be on
your way to finding the perfect blogging platform.

Deciding what your priorities are in terms of ease of use
versus customization. Most highly customizable
blogging platforms, like moveable type, are a bit more
difficult to use than very automated platforms like
wordpress. You might try a basic platform like
Blogger which is the first platform I used If you are new to blogs
and to internet technolog, you might want to sacrifice the ability to
create a custom background design or to integrate a
unique font into your template in order to find a
program that will be easy for you to use. On the other
hand, if you are a veteran web designer with knowledge
of html or javascript, you will probably find the
limitations of a user-friendly platform to be frustrating.

There is no such thing as a blogging platform that is
objectively the best platform, because every blogger has
unique needs. The blogging movement is very much
about individuality, so it makes plenty of sense that
there would be many different platforms available that
are designed to meet the needs of different kinds of
individuals undertaking different kinds of projects. This
diversity is a good thing, because it means that you will
almost certainly be able to find a program that suits
your level of technical aptitude.

The fact that no two bloggers need the same
thing from a blogging platform can make your search
for the right platform a bit tricky. When you are reading
reviews of different platforms, try to keep your
priorities in mind and do your best to take into account
the position that the reviewer is coming from. For
example, a negative review written by an accomplished
software designer who complains that a popular
platform is too limited may tell you that the platform in
question is ideal for a beginning blogger. There is no
such thing as the perfect platform for everybody, so
instead of looking for the "best" platform, look for the
best platform for your specific criteria.

Blogging: Consolidation, Debt, and New Information
Technology

If you are interested in blogging, consolidation, debt, and
other financial topics are sure to appear in many of the
blogs that you regularly read. Techniques to make and
manage money are some of the most popular topics for
bloggers to explore on the web, so it is little wonder that
so many bloggers turn their attention to dealing with
debt. Falling into debt is all too easy, and getting out of
debt can be very difficult for people who do not have a
lot of financial expertise. For people who have a knack
for dealing with finances, blogging about their insights
and knowledge can be a great way to literally and
figuratively share the wealth.

If you are considering getting into blogging,
consolidation, debt, savings, and investment topics can
prove to be very fruitful things to write about. Many
professional bloggers who make a living off of their
blogs spend their days writing about money. If you
know how to court advertisers and build a blog fan
base, you can make money just by talking about money.
If you are familiar with loan consolidation, negotiating
settlements with credit card companies, or any other
financial topics, consider using your knowledge to
create a successful blog. By sharing your expertise, you
may be able to help your readers get out of debt while
you reap sizable monetary rewards for your time and
knowledge.

Blogging is the new media of the 21st century, and is a fantastic way to create a long term sustainable income, as long as you can write! Mike Cliffe-Jones is the author of a 60 day training course for people who are planning to start a blog, or failing to achieve their aims with one.

In this second part of a series, we're going to talk about choosing topics for your first posts, and Mike shares extracts from the course as well as his method for getting lots of topics very quickly.

At last! We're into the writing and interesting stuff! By the end of today's lesson, you'll have around 30 post titles in "the bank."

I'm going to share with you my technique for deciding on content, but first let's talk about posting frequency briefly, but we will be coming back to this in a later lesson. Blog readers like some consistency - too many blogs post a couple of times one day, then do nothing for a week - this can lead to a loss of subscribers. The ideal is to come up with a posting frequency you know you can stick to. For me, I post pretty much every day on Mike's Life, but it is my full time job. If you're working as well, an objective of two or three posts a week is fine.

Can you post too often? Yes you can! And it has two effects when you do:

%u2022 Each post doesn't spend very long at the top of your home page, so people might miss it
%u2022 Getting constant updates through RSS or email can be annoying!

It's easy to make this mistake when you first start and have lots of things you want to write, so to avoid it, keep writing and build up a backlog of posts, and then post them on your planned schedule.

Wordpress allows you to choose a future date to publish a post, so you can set it up to go when you want. With other platforms, just save the post and don't publish it.

In the last lesson I asked you to jot down the ideas for five posts that were "burning" to come out. I'm hoping that you've ended up with five key subjects relating to your niche. Are they the five most important things to your readers? Are they subjects you can write something really good about? If the answer is yes, carry on, if it's no pause and have another look at them.

These are going to become your "Pillar posts". Every blog has some key posts which go on to become the most read on the site, and they're posts which most new visitors to the site will arrive at (via search) or find within the site. These are going to be the first five posts you write.

Either write them down on a blank sheet of paper, or use a spreadsheet or some other means to records them. I'm going to do this using an example, a scuba diving site, because I know a bit about the subject.

Here are the five pillar posts I came up with:

-Passing PADI open water course
-Boat diving skills for divers
-Overview of sea life in the ocean
-Wreck diving
-Basic diving equipment

As you can see, I've left spaces below each. Do the same. Now, examine each title and add five "related" posts you could write underneath each. Don't think too hard at this stage, just let them flow. In time you may decide they aren't right, or to change the headings. This is how mine ended up:

-Passing PADI Open Water course - advanced course / Rescue diver course / basic equipment / books to buy
-Boat Diving Skills for divers - using an SMB / boat handling skills / boat recovery / navigation
-Overview of sea life in the oceans - shark special / endangered species / corals / Whales
-Wreck Diving - special skills / night diving / stage taking / shot lines
-Basic diving equipment - computers / wet or dry suit? / Nitrox

I've had plenty of practice at this, but it took me just 15 minutes to do the above, and I've ended up with 24 posts I can write! The great thing is, you can easily carry on to yet another level. For example, the shark post could lead to a special on my favourite sharks, Angel Sharks. Or the wreck penetration post could lead to one about penetrating engine rooms and different type of engines. You really can go on for ages with this!

Whenever my list of posts to write drops below about 12, I do this exercise again and build up a great stock of stuff to write.

It makes sense to spread these over time, so don't post all of the ones in each section, mix them up a bit, otherwise you could end up boring readers who aren't interested in a particular topic.

If you're struggling for ideas, have a look at other blogs in your niche as well and see what they're writing about. Can you offer an alternative view, or write a better post?

As a professional blogger, this is your stock in trade, so you always need a list like this to hand. That way, when you have some spare time, you can begin to produce a post without pausing to decide what you're going to write about.

Also keep a notebook with you all the time. Now that you are a writer, you'll always be coming up with ideas for new posts, so jot them down before you forget them. In terms of process, I allow about two hours to write, edit and create a post, but I spread that over time, so I'll write a quick draft, come back to it later, edit it, then add the links, photo and so on. I might revisit a post 5 or 6 times before I'm happy to hit the publish button. I currently have about 8 posts at various stages of completion, just waiting to be finished.

I hope that's been helpful to you. If you want to learn how to start a blog and earn a long term sustainable income from doing so, then have a look at The Beginner's Guide to Blogging.

Mike



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Cliffe-Jones

You can earn money writing for blogging sites looking for writers to promote certain products or services. Once you find reputable paid blogging sites, choose the ones you want to write for. Write about your interest, be knowledgeable (RESEARCH) in writing about diverse topics such as gadgets, travel, and consumer products that need reviews as a form of advertisement. You can also write articles that promote products and services and publish them on your own site. Online businesses look for advertising opportunities on sites that have traffic, as you promote your site, providing fresh valuable content, an avenue for revenue becomes possible as promoters buy advertising space on your site.. You will need to market your site, make it attractive, and work to develop it into a popular blog site that has a lot of visitors. The more visitors that you can generate per month, the more business you will attract and the higher the price you can charge for advertising on your blog. There are a myriad of other means to monetize (make money from) your site, once your begin these ideas will become available to you.
Trust me you'll run across the sites and articles describing various ways of monetizing.
Blogging profits are ever increasing as you hone your skills and become more adept at marketing and providing valuable content. The great thing about blogging profits is that you can start where you are, you have a computer you have interest and at least some time. You decide what you want to write about you submit your articles to sites like articles.com, http://www.selfgrowth.com, http://www.goarticles.com, etc (just Google "ezine publishing" , I only found 349 thousand sites just now on Google search)
Popular blogging sites are making cash, it is not unheard of for popular bloggers to generate upwards of $5000 per month or more just in selling adds on their blog. As you become more experienced and spend more time on the web, you'll find that freelance article writing as well as maintaining one or more blogs can provide a monthly income for you. Start slow and then start working several sites as your skills and time and patience allow. Nobody comes to the net with all the information they need to know and you may need to learn some basic computing skills. Don't worry there is a lot of help on the internet, there are many sites that are designed to help you get started without spending any money for instance you can visit , there you will find some links to successful marketers who have a lot of free training that you can start with. A visit to will net you some information about building your first blog including a couple of how to videos.One tip that I have learned is to go to Amazon or Clickbank, pick a consumer product make a blog about it,
then start promoting that blog and working to get a high rank on goggle. You can see an example of type of blog in my squidoo lens It seems daunting to begin with but little by little you will get there, and the secret rule is this "the things you need to know you will learn by doing them". Internet blogging entails writing about different topics, and don't think that you haven't anything to say you, are unique with view that someone some where will identify with. Some of the most popular topics that are written about on blog are by people that started out just like you and now are making real good blogging profits , enough to allow them to quit their day jobs and have a lifestyle most just dream about.The concern here is that in this society many folks have an instant success mindset, we are used to the sports figure getting a million bucks a season or per game or we see the American Idol winner release a new album we never see the work that those individuals put forth before they succeeded. lt may take you months or even a year or two to hit the big time, but you will be successful, you have to lay the groundwork for success here . You will earn a lot of money once you know which sites to write for, and how to market with your own sites. There are certain sites that value your skills and when they publish an article for you, you get paid for the article. Do an appropriate amount of research and you will find sites that pay you, but sites that don't pay are also good because you can promote your sites in the article you have published, and don't forget to put a link or to in your bio box on every site you belong to. Yes a blog can make money a lot of money, question is whether you will stay through the learning curve or not.
Blogging profits are possible for you because the more you work, the more you write, the higher your quality of writing, the more you will attract profit. You will learn while you earn, money is not the only incentive. Blogging let's you express who you are and what you think no matter the content. This can be a great way to work out a lot of things on your mind. Some disdain blogging for its slow-pay-and-hard-work aspect, but the amount of satisfaction from realizing that you are producing an article is of great value . When you first have an article reviewed by say ezinearticles and accepted you get a pretty big rush believe me. So then your started just keep going and the profits will come maybe not overnight but guess what nobody is going to tell you how much or how little you can make the internet is wide open and growing daily, you go for it!!

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Blogging News Stories as They Happen

Blogging news stories as they unfold is one of the most
exciting and controversial applications of technology
that bloggers have discovered. One thing that makes the
blogosphere so active is the fact that it is possible to
update a blog instantaneously, so the news on blogs
tends to be more current than the news in the paper, or
on television. Unlike news delivered by these other
media, news that appears on blogs does not have to
travel through a series of editors and administrators
before it reaches the public eye. This has some
advantages, and some distinct disadvantages.

One of the most notable cases of news hitting a blog
before appearing in other media took place in July 2005
when terrorism struck London. As passengers were
evacuated from a subway car near an explosion, one
man took several photographs of the scene with his
cellular phone, and within an hour these images were
posted online. First-person accounts of the catastrophe
began appearing on blogs soon after these photos
appeared, and people all over the world learned about
the events in London by reading the words and seeing
the photos posted by bloggers.

The fact that these stories and images were being spread
directly by individuals operating without the added
filter of a reporter helped to make the crisis feel very
immediate to people across the globe. When it comes to
blogging, news often appears in a very personal context.
This has the potential to be the beginning of an exciting
new era of reporting, one that takes "New Journalism"
to it's logical next step by putting the power to shape
how the news is written and read directly into the hands
of the public.

Many bloggers and cultural commentators who are
champions of the weblog movement feel that this
growing trend of individuals who getting their news
from blogs is a good thing, because it makes the flow of
information more democratic. By decentralizing the
control of news, blogs allow more voices to enter the
field of debate about important current events.
However, many people are adamantly opposed to the
use of blogs as news outlets, and there are plenty of
good arguments on this side of the debate. Unlike
newspapers or television stations, few blogs have fact-
checkers, and there is little attention paid to journalistic
accountability on many blogs. This can lead to the rapid
spread of misinformation, and more than one falsehood
has taken the blogosphere by storm. The questions
about whether blogging news as it happens is ethical or
not are very complicated, but no matter where you stand
on the topic of current events blogs you are almost sure
to agree that this movement has the potential to
revolutionize how modern people get their news.