To get started, follow these steps. 

1. Find a popular topic that you are knowledgeable about.  

One way to find a topic is to look at what’s already out there. Research which blogs are most successful, and put your own spin on an idea that has already worked for someone else.  

But if you ask me, the most successful blogs are based on completely original ideas that have widespread appeal. The blog writer had a great idea, which probably came in a moment of inspiration, and he or she had the boldness and work ethic to carry that idea as far as it could go. If you have what you consider to be a great idea for a blog, but you don’t see any existing blogs on that topic, all the better. Trust your instincts.  

2. Start writing, and don’t stop.

If you are not confident about writing there are great tools out there will help you. Instant Article Wizard will help you write high quality articles for your blog that you can use in a matter of minutes.

Have you ever stumbled upon a blog that you thought was a great idea, but which either hadn’t been updated in months or was only updated very rarely? The most successful blogs are updated daily, and the internet does not shut down for weekends or holidays. It’s 365-day-a-year endeavor.  

Just as importantly, you need to keep it up for a long time. The most successful blogs earn credibility through longevity and persistence. You have to keep it up for weeks, even months to establish the fact that your blog is both serious and credible.  

This requires hard work and persistence, but nobody said that earning money from blogging was going to be easy.  

3. Get traffic.  

This is easier said than done, but there are some tried and true methods for gaining traffic. First, join a blog network, which gets you linked on other blogs. Second, learn about search engine optimization, and optimize your blog without making it too key-wordy. In other words, use search engine optimization as a tool, but not as your primary method of generating traffic. If you are serious about getting your blog to the top of the Google search engines Keyword Elite is the best product on the market to help you.



To keep traffic, make sure your content is high-quality, that you establish yourself as an authority in the field in which you’re writing, and that your blog is updated daily.   
 

4. Start monetizing.

Once you have a solid readership that is more than just your friends and family, begin monetizing your blog. Look into services such as Google AdSense, Clixgalore, and Amazon Associates. There also may be a specialty ad service for the field in which you’re writing, so try looking into that.  

5. Keep an eye on the competition.  

To earn money blogging, you have to stay aware of what others are doing, and you have to keep a step ahead of the competition wherever possible. Keep a bookmarks folder of all the blogs that you would consider to be direct competitors, and check them frequently. This will not only give you ideas, but it will also inspire you with the spirit of healthy competition.

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How to Be a Successful Blogger

There are millions of blogs on the internet, but only a few of them ever find success. Most start off strong but soon languish and eventually fall into a state of neglect. Nevertheless, the ratio of successful blogs to unsuccessful ones doesn’t seem to discourage people, as there are just as many new blogs as ever, and the format doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon.

The unfortunate fact is that, if you’re reading this and considering starting a blog, the odds are against your success. However, if you have a strong work ethic and don’t give up on things easily, you can be one of the successful few. Just keep these blogging secrets in mind.

1. Successful bloggers blog a lot

Too many people think that they can just put up a few well-written blog posts and the search engines will do the rest. But in today’s highly competitive web environment, this just isn’t going to cut it. The search engines like websites that have hundreds or thousands of pages, not just a few. This is where so many beginning bloggers go wrong. They have a burst of activity when starting out, but then they rest on their laurels hoping their existing content will draw in traffic. The successful bloggers, in contrast, never let up. They start out with a lot of activity and they keep it going. Ideally, you should try to write at least five new blog posts per week, but if you can get up to 10 or 15 or beyond, even better.

2. Getting your blog read

Another important point for having a successful blog is to write in a manner that gets you read. There are lots of things that go into this, but rather than training yourself in every aspect of web writing, just think about what you like to read online, and then try to emulate that. Make your content readable, with lots of bullet points and subheadings, and use a friendly voice that people can enjoy reading. If your content is not just useful but also compellingly written, then you’ll eventually earn some regular visitors, which is the first major stage of growth for any successful blog.

3. Stay focused

If you’ve ever stumbled upon a website whose focus was not clear, then you probably know how disorienting this can be. The best blogs may cover a range of topics, but you usually at least know what the general focus is. On your blog, avoid straying into areas that don’t have anything to do with your primary focus. An occasional off-topic post is fine, but don’t make a habit of it, and be sure to quickly bury any off-topic posts beneath more relevant content.

4. Analyze your results

Every blogger needs a reliable analytics service to keep them updated on how users are finding and navigating through the website. Google Analytics and Statcounter are the two most popular tools for this, but there are others. As you’re getting started, your site stats may not have much meaning to you. But if you learn about what all the stats mean and make an effort to follow the trends, you’ll eventually learn how to put this information to use in your blog posts. It’s possible to go too far with the stats analysis. For example, some bloggers see that a certain post has had a lot of success so they try to emulate that post over and over, inadvertently making their blogs very repetitive. Rather than just recreating the same post over and over, remember that the most important thing is to write useful posts that are relevant to your topic.

5. Connect your blog to others

The best bloggers are plugged into online communities, and they feed off of the communal energy. If you don’t have any other writers that you follow, then your blog will appear isolated, and this tends to look bad. In short, people like to read sites that are interconnected with other sites. Make your site appear more relevant by including plenty of links to other sites, and try to regularly respond to other current blog posts.

6. Keep learning and adjusting

If you do a good job of building traffic during the early stages of your blog, it might be tempting to fall into a rut and to stop venturing out of your comfort zone. Rather than getting too comfortable, keep challenging yourself to make your blog bigger and better. Again, feed off of what other people are doing. If you see a good idea being used on another blog, don’t hesitate to enact your own version of that idea. If you learn that one of your blogging habits is not good for generating traffic, then swallow your pride and change that habit.

After all, the internet is far from static. It is always taking new forms, and it’s up us not just to stay up-to-date with the new trends on the internet, but to constantly invent new trends ourselves. If you want your blog to be vital and have success, you have to keep it dynamic.

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The Best Blogging Sites

On the internet, things evolve fast. And since the advent of blogging a decade ago the act of writing about one’s thoughts and experiences online has become the daily hobby of millions of people. To cater to this rather large community, countless web entities have developed blogging platforms and services for all kinds of bloggers and all web-based social activity. And with so many companies getting in on the game, it can be difficult for the beginning blogger to know where to start.

Every major blogging platform has its advantages and disadvantages. And since different platforms cater to different types of bloggers, the ideal one for you may not be ideal for someone else. So, to help you make up your mind, let’s look at a few of the most widely used blogging platforms available for anyone to sign up for.

But first, it should be noted that there are two main types of blogging services available—those that are fully hosted, and those that are not hosted. For the ones that are not hosted, you must have your own domain and hosting service, and once you have those, you can install the content management system and begin blogging. In this article, we’ll cover a few of both types.

1. WordPress

WordPress is the current king of the blogging world, and for good reason. WordPress offers a highly user-friendly content management system that can be installed on self-hosted websites. The platform comes with templates and a wide variety of customization options—include myriad user-generated plugins—but for the beginning user it’s easy enough to figure out and start blogging right away.

WordPress also offers hosting for a relatively small charge, and the hosted option is rapidly evolving into one of the preferred platforms for highly social bloggers who think of blogging as a community activity.

2. Tumblr

Serious bloggers who pride themselves on their ability to write lengthy, substantive blog posts tend not to take Tumblr very seriously. That’s because Tumblr has become the go-to platform for social bloggers who value brevity. Some people use Tumblr to type out their thoughts and experiences, but many people use it as a platform for web-inspired hodgepodge. Whenever you find something worth sharing—whether it’s a picture, a quote, a link to an interesting article, or anything else—you just post it to your Tumblr page, with or without your own thoughts. It’s like Facebook with more user control over design. Or it’s like Twitter without the pesky limitations.

Tumblr is perfect for anyone who wants to get creative with their blogging. And the best part is that it’s free and fully hosted.

3. Blogger

Blogger—which swallowed up Blogspot and then was swallowed up in turn by Google a few years back—is the granddaddy of the blogging platforms. It’s one of the oldest and most widely used, but along with its age comes a bit of stodginess. It’s not as flexible as some of the other platforms, and it’s relatively rigid in its options despite having a good selection of themes. Still, it’s good for anyone who wants to have their blog integrated with their Google account, and it’s free and simple to use.

4. LiveJournal

LiveJournal is often maligned as a sort of disreputable younger sibling of platforms like Blogger, and the fact that it’s the preferred platform for children and teenagers around the world also tends to hurt its reputation. Nevertheless, if you want a free, easy-to-use, highly social-friendly blogging platform, LiveJournal is not a bad choice. And despite its reputation as a fading entity in the blogging world, LiveJournal has actually gained some interesting new features over the last few years. In any case, it’s worth checking out.

5. Posterous

Posterous is very similar to Tumblr in that it is often used as a platform for people to gather up all the things they find and put them in one place. But according to the folks at Posterous, it’s not a limited platform at all. People often use it for microblogging and for sharing pictures and links, but there is actually no limit to how long your blog posts can be. You can use it however you want. If you want it to be a traditional blog, there’s nothing stopping you from using it that way.

What really recommends Posterous is the fact that it’s so easy to use. There’s no signup process and very minimal fuss on the technical side. It enables you to send in your posts via email, which means you don’t even have to log in when you want to post something. That makes it a great platform for spur-of-the-moment, on-the-fly blogging.

6. SquareSpace

SquareSpace is a blogging platform with much in common with WordPress and Blogger, but it has many innovative design and posting features that make everything easy for the nontechnical user and add some interesting new elements to blogging. The only catch is that it’s not a free service. But before you skip to the next item on the list, keep in mind that SquareSpace’s innovative fee system bills people based on usage. This means that people who only blog a few times per month pay less that people who post a few times per day. It’s a smart system, and the platform is well worth checking out.

7. MovableType

MovableType is well worth including on this list, but it’s difficult to describe because the platform has been undergoing some rapid and interesting change over the last couple of years. As of now, it is the preferred platform for many large websites that contain multiple blogs. It’s similar to WordPress in many of its features, and its growing collection of add-ons is making it more customizable than ever. The only drawback for beginning bloggers is that MoveableType is not associated with any hosting services and can only be installed on a self-hosted site. But if you plan to have a website that contains multiple blogs from several people, MovableType may be your best choice.