Building A Successful Blog

[_brazzO]

I want you to know, i did not write this article, i got it from another site & just thought i would post it up for people that are thinking of starting a new blog.

My experience in running a blog has been somewhat successful, a couple of months back i sold my very first blog HV-Designs. HV-Designs had nearly 4,000 RSS Subscribers and 3,500 Twitter follows with over 300 posts and over 6,000 comments made. I was running the blog for about 3 years but only really pushed the blog 2 years prior to selling and i think i done a good job considering i had no help from anybody and was a one man show.



I think most people intend to start/run a blog for financial gain but think this shouldn?t be your main goal. I only really started making money from my blog within the last year of running it, the money earned wasn?t no where near as much for me to give up my day job, although this can happen and you?ll need some killer content to make it happen.
In this post I?m going to share my blogging tips and lessons in which I?ve learned from running a blog.
Provide Value To Your Audience

The most important factor of creating a successful blog and something that should be at the very top of your list is providing your audience with good quality content. You have to provide good quality content for your readers to keep coming back and wanting more.

The more value your content holds the more popular your website will be and the more noticed it will get. If a post has value to one of your readers then more than likely they will suggest it to other people or maybe tweet about it which in turn will bring in even more readers, it will just be one never ending spiral. Remember a blog with a lot of visitors and readers will open many other doors for your blog.
Getting Your Blog Out There

Not a very easy task to do. When you first publish your website online you wont automatically be flooded with visitors, search engines wont have you listed down straight away in there search results. The only people that might know of your blog will be close friends and family.
Don?t publish an empty blog with one or two posts, this may provide first time visitors with a bad first impression. In the months leading up to you unleashing your blog onto the World Wide Web create a couple of posts. Using this extra time will be more beneficial than you think, you could have 10 ? 20 pre-written posts ready to go online. Having content ready to be released free?s up your time to work on promoting your blog. You don?t want to launch a new blog then struggle to fill it with content.



The steps i took to get my blog ?Out There? was to have plenty of content to go online ready then gradually make one or two posts a week. If your on forums or visit other blogs who are in the same niche as you then leave a link to your blog in your signature or comments.
Another way which will guarantee more visitors is to submit the articles or tutorials you post to article or tutorial submission directories. Just to name a few off the top of my head ?Good Tutorials? and ?Pixel2life? they provide great traffic. Other methods of getting your blog out there is to setup your own social network, twitter, facebook and even digg is a good place to start. Your fans will follow you and submit, retweet, like and digg your content?.. the spiral continues.
Success Doesn?t Happen Over Night

Be patient, new bloggers often miscalculate how much time is needed to reach your first milestone. Study other bloggers/blogs and learn how there audience has grown. There?s no such thing as quick success so don?t start reading books which teach you how to make it within the first month of blogging. Be patient!
Turning Visitors Into Returning Visitors



Keeping people coming back for more all boils down to one thing again ?Content?. Think about your readers first impressions. People are more likely to read your post if it has a catchy or meaningful heading, something in which captures your readers eyes.
Another tip which helps readers is the formatting of your posts, don?t just publish one big screen of text (which i first did). Break your post down into sections/steps, give each step/section a title (like i have). Add images into your posts, your posts will look a lot more better with abit of color and something for your readers to look at.
Format your posts with clean white space and fancy lists, your content will look so more attractive. The most important tip i can give you is to spell check your post, even get someone else to read it before publishing it, at least then you?ll know people will understand you more.
Staying Motivated

Now that you?ve started your blog and you?ve received your first couple of hundred visitors, you need to stay motivated and by staying motivated i don?t mean chain yourself to your desk until you?ve made that all important post. By motivated i mean ignoring ignorant feedback from your readers, you?ll always get someone who will rip into your skills and your blog. When i received messages like that it did make me feel very de-motivated the important thing to remember is your blog is just for fun and the nice comments will always out-weigh the nasty ones.
Don?t post excessively, people wont just disappear if you haven?t made a post in a day or two, if you need a break then take one. The world wont crumble around you but you and your motivation might if you push yourself to hard.
Inspiration

After about 4 or 5 months of blogging you will notice your flare of creativity slowing down, slowing down so much that you?ve ran out of ideas for new content. This happened to me when i was running my old blog. The only way to overcome this is to find new idea?s, maybe ask your visitors for ideas. I opened up a discussion area where people could post there idea?s and inspiration, when ever i got stuck i always referred to the discussion area.



Another way to fuel your creativity is to keep a folder on your desktop full of ideas, carry a pen and note pad around with you incase something inspires you on your travels. If you come across an article or a few articles that inspire you then create a new bookmarks folder full of these great idea?s.
Finally, Monetization

Most bloggers wont delve into the money side of there blog but in this case i think i will.
Eventually after a few months you will want to start making abit of pocket money from your blog. I started with google adsense, and to be fair you can make a lot of money from google but you need to cleverly position your ads to gain the clicks you need. After about two or three months of running google adsense i made about $360, RESULT!?
The money from google soon stopped though as positioning ads next to images and things like that violated there terms and conditions, so i got suspended. Haven?t used google adsense since. After my experience with google adsense i started searching for an alternative and came across buysellads.



buysellads has got to be one of the best advertising platforms I?ve used, it truly is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest and its getting better every time. I can safely say i made a decent amount with buysellads more than I?ve ever made before. So if your looking to make money from your blog which you eventually will then check out buysellads.
Conclusion

Thanks for reading my experience in creating a successful blog. There?s some good tips to be had and plenty for someone to learn from. Don?t use my experience as a guide though as it may not work the same for everyone, after all every website is different.
If you feel that the article has helped you then please think about Tweeting About It, Digging It and sharing it with the rest of the world.

Remember, i did NOT write this !

_brazzO Reviewed by _brazzO on 30th Jan 2011. Building A Successful Blog I want you to know, i did not write this article, i got it from another site & just thought i would post it up for people that are thinking of starting a new blog. My experience in running a blog has been somewhat successful, a couple of months back i sold my very first blog HV-Designs. HV-Designs had nearly 4,000 RSS Subscribers and 3,500 Twitter follows with over 300 posts and over 6,000 comments made. I was running the blog for about 3 years but only really pushed the blog 2 years Rating: 5

[JasonJunction]

Thanks for sharing this. I have a blog of my own, Reversedgfx.com. Mabey this can help.

[Daniel]

It is a nice read,

Thank you.

[QuickSand]

this is cool
thanks

[filesonic1]

Thanks for the post, I will read this soon.

[CuraHack]

Great post man! Well done!

[xlxexgxnxax]

Thanks for the sharing, nice to read it.

[faku]

it was total bullshit tutorial, waste of time!