5 Steps a Newbie Blogger Never Misses

This is a guest post by Jane Sheeba. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Blogging is an exciting thing. Even more exciting is being a newbie blogger. Every matured living being passes few stages before becoming so. For instance, there is a single cell stage, an embryo, new born, child, teen and so on. Similarly every blogger is a newbie before becoming a matured blogger. And there are certain stages every newbie blogger passes through. Here I discuss 5 stages every newbie blogger comes across.

1. Excited blogger

This is the very first step of every newbie blogger. He/She cannot miss the initial excitement when starting to blog. It won’t be inappropriate to call it over-excitement. In this over-excited state, a newbie blogger can go as crazy as he/she can.

For instance some or all of the following things can happen: Purchasing bunches and bunches of cheap domain names, starting blogs at every profitable niche prevalent in the world, posting three or four times a day, downloading all plugins and installing them (and getting screwed), downloading all free ebooks (or literally anything available in pdf format) that talks about blogging and so on. The list is not exhaustive. Even more crazy things can happen.

At this stage, the blogger is either excited about his/her own blog or even sometimes excited about an A-lister blog.

2. The stat checker

The first thing every blogger does after launching a blog, even before publishing a single post, is to check stats. That is purely human nature to be curious about who is visiting the blog. But this curiosity takes over everything else at the earlier stages of blogging.

Checking stats becomes the blogger’s irresistible thing. Even without concentrating on writing blog posts, even without worrying about the design and the misaligned pages of the blog, even without taking into account that it has been just one week after the blog has been launched, the blogger couldn’t resist himself/herself checking the stats every hour.

When there is one new visitor since the last check that is a great motivation. But if there are no visitors to the blog, which is what is to be expected at this stage, the blogger becomes disappointed and frustrated. This is a big factor that greatly affects the development of the blog, especially at its initial stage when extra care and effort are needed to build the blog without worrying about the stats.

3. The monetization phobic

The blogger at this stage does Google searches (hundreds of them) to learn about all types of monetization techniques for a blog. PPC, CPC, CPM, PPM, ABC or XYZ… whatever! The blogger ruthlessly reads about all sorts of advertising.

He/She struggles hard to get an Adsense account approved. If this step doesn’t turn out to be successful, then the blogger Googles for “Adsense alternates”. As always there are a bunch of them available. So the blogger starts accounts in all of those advertising websites, puts all those banners on the blog and BOOM! One gets a beautiful site that has misaligned banners which blink, change colours, flash kisses at you and sell you stuff.

That is not all. There are places where one can do direct selling of ad banners. There are also in-text ads, strip ads, interstial ads, you name it. The blogger sincerely tries them all out and gets frustrated to see that the earning for the past three months is $0.50.

4. Endless learner

This is when the excitement in down a little bit. The blogger’s focus is now not on writing for their own blog(s) but to know what others are writing about. That is good, but it is actually over done or done endlessly.

The blogger starts reading a killer article about “how to blog successfully” from a A-lister blog; the article ends and there are a bunch of related posts. Oh there is that interesting post about “how to earn $1000 dollars from your blog in less than a month” and that article gets a click. This goes on and on- reading comments, related posts, about the products the A-lister is offering and so on.

And, now the blogger looks at his/her clock when it is almost mid-night. He/she feels so tired and hence goes to bed. Great!

5. Stat-free minded blogger

This is the stage when the newbie blogger becomes a matured blogger. I call him/her matured blogger not because his/her blog is now getting 10000 page views per day but the blogger is very well aware of what blogging is really about.

The blogger exactly knows what it takes to develop a good blog, what it is about to write quality content, what are the factors that are to be taken care of at this stage of blogging, and what are the things that are not to be taken care of.

The blogger now knows that blogging is not about building it, forgetting it and earning while snoring. It is about developing a good quality blog which has useful and valuable content, developing trust and good relationship with the readers, maintaining the motivation at a consistent level and sticking to it without worrying about anything else.

How about you when you were or are a newbie?

The 10 Commandments to Successful Blogging

This is a guest post by Diggy. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

I’ll start off by saying that blogging is absolutely fantastic to do if you are passionate about a certain topic.

If you can write dozens or hundreds of articles related to the same topic without seeing it as a chore, then a blog is a great medium to build up an audience and establish yourself as an authority in a certain niche.

If you want to blog to make a full-time income, I can tell you that it’s possible but it’s not easy and it won’t happen overnight.

Let me share with you what I’ve learned since starting my blog

It’s been just over 2 years since I bought my blog domain. When I started Upgrade Reality, I had zero knowledge about websites, blogging or WordPress.

It took me an entire year of having a horrible theme, spending hours playing with code and tweaking my blog, and writing dozens of (in retrospect) terrible articles before I had a decent understanding of what a respectable blog should look like and what content it should have.

Looking back at some of my older screenshots and articles, it was so bad I can’t imagine how anyone ever read that I had to say.

I truly wish that I had spent money on a mentor or found a blog post like this one, because it would have saved me months of discovering things by trial and error. I can tell you that there is no point in re-inventing the wheel. There are proven methods and tactics that work, and until you know better…copy.

Here are 10 ‘Commandments’ you need to follow if you want to have a successful blog and dominate your industry.

1-Invest In Your Blog

With millions of blogs and websites to compete with, you need to set yourself apart from the rest in order to gain a big audience.

The first thing that a new visitor sees when he lands on your blog is the design.

I’m a big fan of a simple and clean, yet gorgeous design and pretty logo. Your blog should be easy to navigate and it should be 100% clear what you want the visitor to do (I.e. subscribe or click on your latest article).

Unless you have web-designing experience, don’t try to design your own blog layout. Find a web designer who will create a custom theme for your WordPress blog, and be prepared to spend $250-$500 on that. It may seem like a lot of money if you are just starting, but it’s the best investment you can make. Trust me!

2-Have A Specific Direction

Your blog needs to have a clear purpose.

What do you write about? (e.g. Self Improvement)
What are you trying to achieve? (e.g. Helping people gain confidence and get the life they want)

This direction that you have with your blog needs to be overly evident to anyone landing on your page. Every article you write should be related to the purpose of your blog (trying to help people) and it should be clear to anyone who lands on your blog for the first time (i.e. your logo or slogan should state what your blog is about).

3-Learn To Format Your Articles

One thing that took me a long time to realize is that articles on a blog are formatted in a completely different way to a book you buy in the store or an essay that you write in the office.

Articles on blogs are broken down into lots of small paragraphs, many sub-headings, list points and they often contain images.

The reason for this is that people don’t read massive chunks of text on their computer screens. In fact, the majority of people scan through an article, reading only the subheadings or bullet-points, and they will read the entire article properly if you managed to get their attention when they scanned the article.

For an excellent resource about writing and text-formatting, head over to Copyblogger.com.

4-Study The Writing of Successful Bloggers

There’s no better way to learn than by studying and copying successful people.

Take time to read and study the articles and writing styles of some of the top bloggers in the world like: Leo Babauta, Darren Rowse, Steve Pavlina and Jay White.

5-Start Building A List From Day 1

This is probably the biggest mistake I made with my blog and it is one that I regret.

If you do not have an email list, start today. The money is in the list. Not only will you be able to make much more money when you have an email list, you will be able to build a much better relationship with your readers and help a lot more people than when you only write articles on your blog.

I don’t mean a Feedburner email list, I mean using a professional mailing-list system like Aweber or Mailchimp.

6-Have a Free Report

Have a free report, a video or an ebook that you can offer to new visitors. People love free stuff, especially if the free stuff contains awesome content and information.

Offer your freebie as an incentive for people to sign up to your mailing list. It will increase the number of people who sign up to your updates dramatically!

7-Guest Post

Do you want more exposure and more readers to your blog?

Then you need to get your name out there. The easiest way to do this is to write great quality, useful articles as guest posts for other blogs in your niche.

Take a month or two and write 30-50 awesome articles that you are going to send to related blogs in your niche. You will see a massive increase in readers from a guest-posting campaign like that.

For a great resource about guest posting, check out this article on Viperchill.com

8-Network

It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know.

This is such an old but such a true statement. Knowing the right people could result in massive growth and awareness of your blog.

Go out and find the top 10 blogs in your niche. Then go out and find another 20 medium-sized blogs in your niche. Then go out and find 10 smaller blogs than your own blog.

Leave a few comments on their posts and send the owner of each of those blogs an email. Follow them on Twitter.

Note: Don’t network for the sake of personal gain. This is very important. Be genuine, make real connections and make friends with these people without asking anything of them. Over time they will happily help you out if you have shown that you are trustworthy and shown them that you help them out too.

9-Create Your Own Products

Creating and selling your own products is by far the most profitable business model.

You can make some money with advertising space on your blog, and you can make decent money by promoting products and using affiliate links.

However, the most profitable is if you create your own products (ebooks, guides, videos, membership sites etc.) and you sell them to your readers.

Creating a product is hard work, but you don’t have to do everything yourself. You can outsource many parts, like the design, the sales page and even the content. If you know the problem you want to create a product (solution) for, you can give guidelines or a skeleton to an experienced writer and pay him to create the ebook for you.

Start with a small product, but start with it. Create your own products and keep creating them. Henri does it, hundreds of other bloggers do it, I do it and now you need to do it too!

10-Provide Value

This is the most important thing that I can tell you about blogging. You need to always provide value.

Whether you are making someone laugh, or helping them live a healthy lifestyle, or giving them information how to blog like a pro…make sure that your content is always useful.

If you are providing value, visitors will become loyal readers. They will return, and a percentage of them will turn into regular buyers of the products you create and recommend to them.

Parting Words

Before I end this article off I want to leave you with some final blogging advice.

If you are blogging to build up an online income, then you need to treat your blog as a business. A blog does not make money, a business does.

The blog is just the medium that you use to connect with the hundreds or thousands of people that could become buying customers. If you do not have the mindset that your blog is an actual business, I can tell you that you are doomed to make little money until you change that mindset.

Work your way through all the points in this list and you should notice a big difference in your blog’s traffic, readers and in the amount of money you make from it. (But it will not happen overnight).

5 Things You Need To Be Prepared For When Starting A Blog

So, you want to start a blog?

Becoming a blogger can be an adventurous and exciting endeavor. The entire process can be an adrenaline rush as you think about all of the visitors and ad dollars that will be coming your way. It sounds like the perfect career. While blogging can be a printable profession, there are however a few things that you need to be prepared for when you start blogging.

Let’s take a look at the top 5.

1. Guest Post Rejection

Every blogger will tell you that you need to write guest posts to attract more viewers to your site. While this is true, it can be difficult for a new blogger to be approved for a guest post on a larger site. If you get rejected by a big blog, don’t take it personally. Keep trying! You can always write guest posts for small and medium sized blogs. This will give you examples of your published works that you can show to bigger blogs. Eventually the larger blogs will open up their doors to you as well.

2. Delayed Monetization

There are lots of bloggers making money online. Most of them have been blogging for years and know exactly what it takes to monetize a blog. Most of the successful bloggers that I know learned a lot through trial and error. Finding out the best way to monetize your website takes time. Your blog may do well selling ads or it may be more suited for affiliate marketing. The only way to figure out what works best for your site is through experimentation. Don’t obsess over making money the first month or two. Spend that time figuring out your monetization strategy.

3. The Give Up Moment

Every blogger faces that moment. It’s the time when you ask yourself, why am I blogging? You get tired of writing posts day after day that no one reads. You start slacking off on your posting and blogging becomes less and less important. Your blog isn’t bringing in any money and you just want to give up. This is the moment that separates the bloggers that will make it from the ones that won’t. The key to surviving the give up moment is to push through and keep churning out content regardless of how you may feel at that moment. If you give up, you will never know how things would have turned out.

4. Traffic Plateau

Another obstacle that bloggers face is hitting a traffic plateau. It’s exciting to see your blog growing and gaining new readers. There comes a point when every website will experience a lull at some point. When this happens to you, you need to come up with creative ways to boost your traffic. You can try hosting a blog carnival, sponsoring a cash giveaway or making deal with similar blogs to cross promote posts. You can take time everyday and comment on different blogs which will help bring traffic to your site. All of these are great ways to give your blog a boost.

5. Content Criticism

One of the things that comes along with building a successful blog is criticism. You will be criticized as you grow your blog. Some readers will leave comments disagreeing with and even criticizing your posts. Other bloggers may criticize you for trying to duplicate the success of another blogger. These are all good things however because it’s all traffic to your website. If someone comes to your website to criticize you, it means that they are reading your posts. A little criticism can do wonders for increasing the popularity of a post.

Final Thoughts
These are all experiences that I went through when I first started blogging in 2008. You will be prepared to deal with many of these blogging hiccups by knowing what to look for in advance.

How Planning Helps Your Blogging

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Do you plan? How important is planning in regards to blogging?

You probably know that having a plan is crucial to your success in everything in life including blogging. When it comes to blogging, you have to know what you are doing and where you are going.

Anyone nowadays can make a blog, put on some posts and starts to work on getting more traffic and make the blog popular. However, if you goal is to have your own e-business online then it is very imperative to have a plan and a vision to where you are going.

1. Plan your posts

Planning your posts is crucial. You should try to have posts that are ready for publishing for a minimum of one week. You never know what could happen in a week as you might get sick, go on a vacation, or get busy with family, among other things. This is why planning your posts in advance is a crucial part if you want your blog and e-business to flourish.

2. Plan to create products

If you want to succeed in your blog and e-business, then you probably want to create your own products. You would earn way more than marketing someone else’s products if your goal is to make money. It is crucial to know what products you are going to release this year and how much time it takes you to complete each product.

Personally, I know the products that I’m going to be releasing this year including how long it will take me to finish each product. Having a written plan is half the work.

3. Plan your time

One of the major excuses I hear is that bloggers say they don’t have enough time to write posts more frequently, find time to write their own products. The truth is you do have time. For instance, if you spend one hour a day writing content for your product, that is around 30 hours a month. You would be surprised what you can accomplish with those hours.
If you don’t manage your time correctly, then you will not be able to work on creating posts and products in a timely manner, which could harm your blog and e-business. Time management is crucial to the success of every business.

4. Plan how to market strategically

Are you going to use social media to market your blog and e-business? If so, how often? Are you going to work on writing guest posts? Are you going on building relationships with other bloggers? These are all questions that have to be taken into consideration.

Having a strategic plan is crucial to your success online. Many seem to create blogs without having a clear marketing plan. Think about it, if you don’t have a specific plan, how can you succeed at your blog or e-business? The more you spend time marketing, the more traffic you will get.