Ready to Be a Blogger?
I'm not really a blogger - yet. I put up a blog years ago
because I heard that it helps with search engine optimization
of my sites (by linking to them from the blog). I never quite
understood how to make money blogging until I read an ebook and
some articles by Yaro Starak. I am taking another look at this
now, and I found a couple of his articles to put on this website.
Here is one on with some really good tips.
10 Blog Traffic Tips
In every blogger's life comes a special day - the day they
first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased
someone else's blog chances are your blog launched with only
one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received
a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and
best friend about your new blog but that's about as far you went
when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques
new bloggers can use to find readers.
These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people
who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the
ball rolling.
It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each
technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum.
Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is
called "traction", which is a large enough audience
base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have
to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current
loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.
Top 10 Tips
10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles.
A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to
teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than
500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This
article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar
article since it is very practical and a good "how-to"
lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current
(it isn't news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight.
The more pillars you have on your blog the better.
9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post
has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five
pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with
a daily news or short article style post. The important thing
here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog
is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow
they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark
your site or subscribe to your blog feed.
You don't have to produce one post per day all the time but
it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you
get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming
but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down
to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical
so the more content you can produce at this time the better.
8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging
be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people
to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily
rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they
like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that's
the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need
to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your
URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to
remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords
(of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember
then you've done a good job!).
7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar
articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready
to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the
right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people's
blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar
niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely
to be interested in your blog.
Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title
linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people
find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have
something valuable to say then people will be interested to read
more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.
6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A
trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write
a new article to your blog and it links or references another
blogger's article you can do a trackback to their entry. What
this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their
blog entry - it's sort of like your blog telling someone else's
blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often
appear like comments.
This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback
leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to
follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the
attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and
read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may
then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and
if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking
to your blog bringing in more new readers.
5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful
ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show
there are other loyal readers already following your work. If
they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that
your content must be good since you have readers so they should
stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage
comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure
to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation
going.
4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A
blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection
of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The
idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given
week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and
as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival
enjoy a spike in new readers.
To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search
at http://blogcarnival.com/.
3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this
tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it's
so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it's worth the effort.
Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your
blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines
of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and
watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming
readers per day with this technique but over time it can build
up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!
2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another
tip that doesn't bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately
(although it can if you keep doing it) but it's worthwhile because
you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles.
Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit
it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to
other people who can republish your article on their website
or in their newsletter.
How you benefit is through what is called your "Resource
Box". You create your own resource box which is like a signature
file where you include one to two sentences and link back to
your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your
article has to include your resource box so you get incoming
links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article
you can get a lot of new readers at once.
1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will
help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I've
listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without
them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but
they won't stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar
article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database
of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for
you to bring in more and more readers.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and
my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring
program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income
blogging part time. More info here::
Blog
Mastermind (affiliate link)
If you have any interest in being a successful blogger, I
recommend that you get Starak's ebook Blog Profits Blueprint.
Last time I checked it was free, although it is worth paying
for in any case. - Steve
JG Wentworth Blog
- This blog from JG Wentworth provides a good example of how
to use a blog to promote an existing business (and a good place
to learn how to sell a structured settlement).
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