there is a mistake like choosing the wrong topic, choosing the wrong market, the wrong blogging platform, forgetting the backup system so they lost everything when the server crash. but first, let start why blogging is soo awesome.
What You Will Learn From This Tutorial
* 8 Reason Why Blogger Will Enrich Your Life
* The Biggest Mistake Any Blogger can Make... And How to Prevent it.
* How to Make Your Post Irresistible to Read!
* How To Cash in And Start Earning Money by Doing What You Love!
* Practical Steps on Creating a Blog
Let Get To Work
1. Sharing Your Experience/Knowledge:
this is the most obvious one, you can share your life experience and knowledge with the world.
2. You'll Live a More Meaningful Life:
once you start blogging you will notice that your thought on something will start to change, blogging will make you stop and think deeper about who are and what you want to get, out of this life, you will start to change your habit to what you really want to active.
3. You'll Become A Better Writer:
blogging wouldn't ever force you to become a better writer expressing your thought through words, it just happens automatically and being a good writer will open a lot of new door for you later on.
4. You'll Focus More On The Meaningful Events In Your Life
you will notice that as you start blogging about whatever you want to blog about, you will start to create a filter for your mind. a filter that only let things through Rudy enough to blog about. and this event are usually the ones that make you happy, sad or curious etc.
again, blogging wouldn't force your mind to do this, it just happens.
5. You'll Meet New People!
you will surprise how quickly you will make your first online stranger and as your blog gain popularity your circle will grow, you will develop a friendship, partnership, you will start to blog for another blog. you can create your own community.
6. You'll Inspire Others!
this's one of my personal favorite reason to blog, the power to inspire other to do something, helping people to active specific goal or mindset, there is no greater sense of a compliment than doing just that.
7. You'll Earn Money!
this shouldn't be a reason to start a blog, it could be a great motivator to keep growing. the prospect of earning a full-time income by writing about your life, I mean who doesn't want that.
8. You'll Become More Confident!
you will become way more confident and who you are as individual on things planet, you will discover that you actually can make a difference in this world.
now, the biggest mistake any blogger can make is choosing the wrong topic. and that can be the topic that doesn't really interested them or topic that is way too broad and makes their blog drown in the sea of other blog.
Here are Three Guideline to follow when choosing your blog topic
1. What Will You Blog About
the first thing to consider is what are you passionate about, what drives you in life, is there something you are good at? I mean what would want to read about, even if you want to start your own blog about the topic because you actually like another blog about the same topic.
* keep in mind you just don't want to copy another blog
* you need to add your personal touch and set yourself apart from the park.Here is a good tip on how to do these
if you are already read other blog make, a list of the things you like about them, then create another list about the thing you want to see then add it to those blogs. now simply combine those two lists then you got your topic
2. Target Audience?
Is important to choosing a topic that is not too broad or too specific
* too broad and you will just be another blog in that niche
* too specific and you will have trouble finding an audiencefor example, a blog about photography is too broad and a blog about underwater portrait photography is too specific.
but a blog about portrait photography is ok, that way you still have the option to create underwater section on your blog. you need to leave a enough room so you can always branch out.
3. Plenty To Blog About?
you don't want to run out of content, you want to write often every week,
try to find a topic or sub-topic that constantly evolves, let go back to my portrait photography example.
is a really good topic because it always evolving and there are always been a new way doing portrait, new photos, a new camera to reviews and so on.
think about your topic and see if there is at least one ever evolving element or sub-topic in there.
Tip: most topics have books writing about them and there are books coming out all the time. maybe you can review books when you are running low of content.
you could even link to Amazon from your review and earn commission on every book you sell through that link, that is cool right.
A lot of people get stuck on this stage for weeks, they can't see to choose a topic, so don't be one of them.
nothing is worse than doing nothing at all, so take the jump and start blogging
GuideLines!
Choosing Your Blog Name: What To Call Your Blog
* Make it short! people these days are pretty lazy so don't let them type too much to get to your blog.
* Make it easy on the ears! try to find something that just rolls on the tongue, so people will not think about how to pronounce or spell it.
* Real Name? Nickname? Combine with your topic? if your name is easy a enough to pronounce and not that long then go for it, even a nickname might work, you can also combine it with the word related to your topic. so be creative on that.
Expandable? also look into the future, does the name still work if you expand your business, let say you use portraitphotogrphyhome.com. now, what if you start taking landscape pictures. now your name doesn't work anymore and you can't just change your blog name. so think about it, is your name future approve.
Everything Take? Be Creative! What to do if all the good name are taking, be creative here. try different combinations may be simple words, mix it up and am sure you will find something.
Similar to choosing a topic, the most important thing is, DON'T over-analyze! don't get stuck, just choose something.
Free Or Hosted?
once you know your topic and your blog name, the next step is to desire if you want to go for a free blog or a self-hosted blog. example, a blog owned by a third party like Google vs Blog that YOU own!
this is something most people have thought about going for a free blog or buying your blog.
now, I will eliminate those thoughts.
personally, I never recommend going for a free blog and here is why.
it looks unprofessional, for example, if your blog was named formatpainter.com then your web address with a free blog would be formatpainter.blogspot.com or formatpainter.wordpress.com. now, what looks more legit. formatpainter.blogspot.com or formatpainter.com.
there is really only one upside to free blogs is that they are free and easy to create.
Here is why I don't recommend free blog
* you don't own the blog at all, not the site, not the domain name.
* this means they can erase your blog and you can't do anything about it. in fact spammer sometime set-up hundred of free blog to spam the internet.
* They are not that flexible. you can't customize them as much as self-hosting blog which means that you are limited if you want to brand yourself.
* also free blog doesn't really rank easily in the search engine, which means you will have a low small audience than you would have if you have a self-hosting blog.
* Most people don't take free blog that seriously, is way harder to establish yourself as a professional or as a good blogger if you are blogging on a name with a dot Blogspot or dot WordPress attach to it.
Luckily for Us
Owning your blog is extremely cheap this day! I mean to own a blog name is about $10 a year and to own the online space to put your blog on it is about $0.10 in the first month and $4 for every month. is very cheap. you can use Namecheap for your domain name and HostGator for online space for $0.10 which you can get in your first month.don't worry if this confuses you a little bit, I will explain the practical details of installing a blog later in this tutorial, so for now, let move on.
now we got our topic, we the name and we got our free blog or self-hosted blog.
Optimum Post Structure! How to write your post
there is a specific way of writing post that get the most visited, every post or article on your blog should be specific to grab the whole reader attention until the end. a bad reading post can make the visitors getting bored and leave your blog often the first paragraph.
So Here is How to Write The Perfect Post
every single post you write should have 4 sensitive section, it should have headline, an introduction, a body and a call to action.
let start with the Headline: this's basically the door to your post and in other for people to walk through it, it better to be a very attractive door
The Intro: if you got them to click on the headline, congratulations, now you need to hold their attention for a little bit longer to reach what I like to call the reader's stretch hold, the moment where the reader desired they have sticking with it and want to read the whole article. this's purpose of the introduction, keeping in mind that online readers usually just scream the intro, make sure it interesting. you can do this by throwing in some mind-blowing statistics or just asking a controversial question.
but whatever you do, get to the point quickly and of course, make sure it relates to the article itself
Article Or Post: gave them what they came for! just remember to use white past and paragraph to make the content easy on the eyes.
Body: try to always have called to action! think about what you want your reader to do here, do you want them to comment, do you want them to buy something, maybe signup for a newsletter, make it clear and powerful because that is the purpose of a call to action. that is how you can get the most at of every single post you write
Monetizing Your Blog!
let talk about a bit one of my favorite topics, how to start earning money from your blog. you will be surprised how straight forward it can be, there are a lot of ways to create some residual income from a site but I will covering the two easiest method
Method 1: ads. the most straightforward one is putting ads either in your content, or sidebar or both and then when someone just clicks on your ads you get money, is very simple. people don't even have to buy something all you need is a click, you can signup for free and no investment needed. the most popular ad network to work with is still Google Adsense, you can just signup and create some ads and start making money.
Method 2: Affiliate Marketing. this one is still very easy but requires a bit more work, this method is all about promoting other people product and getting a commission on every sale you make, it call affiliate marketing and it can be extremely profitable.
Remember when I said you could always start to review books on your topic when you are running low on your content and that you could even link to Amazon from your review and earn commission on every book you sell through that link, that is affiliate marketing. and just like Method 1, affiliate marketing is completely free.
I recommend starting with Amazon for two Reasons.
Reason 1: The amount of product on Amazon and the amount of product you can actually promote is practically limitless. from simple books to 2000 cameras is your choice on whatever you want to promote.
Reason 2: People are familiar with Amazon and they are trusted, which is very important because nobody is going to buy from a natural site or site they don't trust. the only downside with Amazon is that your commission rate starts at the low 4% of the price.
luckily once you start selling, it goes up to 6% quite fast, there are a lot of affiliate program out there that pay up to 75% of the price. but if you planning to do any type of affiliate marketing, Amazon is definitely the place to start and get familiar with the system.
that is how you can monetize your blog, it really easy
Practical Step On How To Create a Blog
if you desired on going with the free blog definitely go for a dot WordPress blog, you could create one at wordpress.com but keep in mind that there is a way less flexibility, you can't use any plugin or extra features. of course your URL or web address who be something like yourname.wordpress.com instead of a clean and professional .com.
for those that want to go all the way, here is how you install your own blog. don't worry if this sound complicated I will show you exactly how to do this step by step.
Don't worry I will have another full step by step article on this, but those below can also be helpful.
Step 1: Register your blog name, so that you own the name and you can do this at Namecheap is only $10 for a year.
Step 2: Get Hosting space. hosting is actual place online where you can put your blog on, the best hosting site is Hostgator is only $0.10 for the first month if you follow my link, but if you go to hostgator.com directly you will have started with $4 in your first month with other expenses.
Step 3: Link you Name to your Hosting space.
Step 4: Install Your Site on That Hosting Space.
Step 5: Start Blogging
The End..............
Conclusion
The reason why a lot of people never even start blogging is because they have no idea what to do or how to beginning in the first place, they think they lack the required technical skills, they think is too hard and they give up quite quickly. I see no reason why you should not start your own blog right now after reading this article.
that is it, folks, I hope you learn something new from this article and if you have anything to say you can use the comment box below
