Successful Blogging

I just started my blog, and to be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it. For the second semester of my high school creative writing class, we’re writing a blog. The assignment is to post once a week and sometimes the topics are assigned too; like this one. I’m learning about how to write a successful blog by using a book called Publishing a Blog with Blogger. I like it; it's uber helpful.

There are two types of people who start a blog: those who want to make money, and those who just want to write.  I’m the latter.  Maybe in the future I might want to monetize my blog; who doesn’t want to make a little cash?  But don’t buy into thinking you can just write a blog and be successful and rich right away.  It’s not that easy.  It takes time, motivation, and research.  It’ll be awhile to write enough content to get regular visitors other than your friends and family.  Writing a blog that’s successful is so different than what I thought.  Right now, I don’t have a “niche” for my blog; one topic that I always write about.  I didn’t want to limit myself in case I have a period of major writer’s block.  I always thought blogging was writing whatever pops into your head.  And that’s exactly what I’m doing right now, writing what pops into my head, (just random things that people can relate to) or whatever I’m assigned.  Right now, I only have time to post once a week.

For my blog, my success is achieving a personal goal: to write consistently.  In fact, I don’t even care if anyone outside family and friends reads this.  It would be cool, but it’s not my priority...for now.  I’m no where close to having a “successful” blog (as in having many readers and earning money from it) so I did a little research on some tips that myself and other fellow bloggers should read. 

How to Write a Successful Blog

Make a blog.  No duh.  Obviously, I’m using Blogger which is considered the best because it’s free, works with most browsers, and easy to use.  Once you make your blog, immediately explore the design aspects of the site and change how your blog looks.  Blogs using one of the starter templates.... well, it’s a dead giveaway that you’re a beginner.  Definitely use a website that will host your blog for free.  You don’t know if your blog with become popular; you hope it will, but you don’t really know.  Face it, you have millions of competition and it’s hard to get on the first pages of a search engine.  So don’t spend the money.  After your blog becomes popular and you want to appear more “pro” to your readers, buy yourself a domain name.  This allows you to change hosting companies, customize your blog even more than before, and in case your hosting company (like Blogger.com) shuts down, you still have your web page.

To me the top priority is to get readers first and then to make money from your blog.  So write posts consistently and frequently so that readers get to know you.  I feel like I can’t advise people on what is interesting content or even say “don’t make it boring” because everyone has different tastes or views on what’s important and readable.  Make it unique so that no one or very few other people are writing about your topic.

Make your blog pleasing to the eye.  That, again, is about your preferences, but try not to clutter your blog or make it hard to read.

SEO

If you want traffic to your blog, you need to use SEO (search engine optimization). Unfortunately, you’re not just writing for average people, you’re writing for search engines.  Use keywords in your headline (title) and top third of the body of your post.  Always write the headline with this going through your mind, “What would someone type into a search engine if they wanted the info I’m writing about?”  Also, your headline is very important; it determines whether a potential reader will actually read your post or pass.  Keep it short and to the point for search engines, yet intriguing for your readers.  There are all kinds of stragedies to writing headlines or even the first sentences of your post. 

Try different methods and techniques and see which produces the best results: more hits.  There are all kinds of simple things that can be done to make your blog readable and search engine friendly like putting labels to you posts and using HTML codes.    If you’re unsure about HTML get your hands on a book like HTML For Dummies.

Link to popular websites when possible, but don’t over do it.  You want people to stay on your blog.  These things rank up points with search engines.

Look at other blogs and see how they have there’s set up.  Compare your blog to the most successful blogs and try to find things they’re doing that you’re not.  Problogger and Copyblogger are successful blogs that are actually helpful for beginner bloggers.  Yes, there are blogs about blogging.

When you want to monetize your blog, check out Google AdSense which puts ads on your blog.  Every time someone clicks on an ad, you get paid.

This is just the basics of expanding your blog into a successful one.