5 Ways to Successful Blogging : Part 1

Starting a Blog or Struggling with one? Have you been browsing the internet for the past 2 months to find new ways to improve your blog. I guess you must have found a ton of sites who teach you how to blog and how to be successful But have those sites really helped you? Ask this question to your self. If yes then you’d probably be searching some other topic on google. With over a million blogs today , how many are actually successful ?.

Exactly, what is the definition of a ‘’Successful Blog’’ Probably for some a successful blog is earning their livelihood , for some its more than that, probably going on two  international holidays in a year with the  blog’s  income. So first you need to decide whats your goal and what do you want your blog to do for you . Do you want it to support your family, holiday trips, or is it just your passion.

On a recent poll on a popular blog , I came across, I found that over 70 % people blog for money. So I guess, probably you too blog for money. The other people who selected blogging for passion on the poll , would have given up and now blogging for them, is no more than just a passion.

Most people start a  blog out of passion and eventually turn in to money oriented activities. The blogging environment will always remain challenging due to new reforms made in the field of CSS, PHP and everything related to programming, search engine optimization , graphic designing etc almost every 3 three months. You don’t need to be a mechanical engineer to drive a car, similarly you don’t have to be a programmer to be a successful blogger. Just just need to know the key factors with which you can speed up your blog in every possible way, traffic wise, income wise, ergonomics wise and search engine wise.
We will be coming up with a series of this topic in ascending parts. You can subscribe to our RSS to be informed about updates and new posts.

Way no 1: Content.

Are you spending hours writing content that dont interest readers or some topic which they already know about .Choosing a topic for your content can be a rocket science for some and piece of cake for some. Identify your niche area of expertise and then select the most happening topic in those areas. The point is not how much you know about that topic. The important thing is that you need to choose the topic.

For example , if your niche area is web designing , then you could probably try writing some content on CSS3 or HTML5 , some photoshop to HTML tutorials etc. Probably you may not be an expert in Photoshop , but its ok. Write what ever you know. It could take a while for your to get accustomed to the writing thing but once you do, then you’ll start writing as as fast as you think. You might have to do a little bit of research on the topic you choose, but thats ok, every one does.

If this is out your reach then try writing some reviews about a newly launched product, what you think about it, what are your experiences with the company and stuff like that. Its just like gossip. Every one can gossip. Write as if you are talking to your old friend about the product. As long as you make sure that it is your opinion only , reviews are potentially harmless. There are a lot of companies who pay you to write reviews. If you happened to write for money, then make sure the review is genuine and what you are writing is actually true. Wrong reviews can mislead and create problems for people who read them and follow them.

Way no 2: Dig your treasures out.

If your blof is a few months old and some of your best blog posts are just lying in the archives section, its time to dig our the old treasure . Try reposting the best articles or old articles which are long time forgotten by your visitors. Instead of just reposting try making an update to it  or making a squeal to it, add new pictures to it, that way you are making a valid reason for reposting it. By reposting the articles you are not only going to bring in new visitors , but also increasing your chances of getting back your old visitors and also boosting that particular pages’ ranking in the search engines. Although you may get some search engine traffic to your older posts, but the new visitors have no clue of your older content. One more way of getting more clicks is create a ‘’Best of the Best ‘’ section  or just make a Further Reading link. You can use a plugin for ‘Recommended Reading’.

Way No 3: Analyze you analytics.

I assume you have Google Analytics installed and if you have not, then do it right away. Once installed , monitor and track your analytics every day, and every hour. Study the visitor behavior and statistics . Monitor your top landing pages and make more content like it. Change the look and feel of your top exit pages or even some times you might have to get rid of it.

A few months back , after a detailed analysis of our metrics , we found that we drastically reduced our bounce percentage by actually deleting one of our top exit pages. You never know whats eating up your site until you analyze it thoroughly. If you are getting relatively low traffic on the week ends compare to the week days, then you need to add some of your content on the week end or just a day before. In that way, search engines might just push some traffic to your site  on the week ends.

Way No 4: Be Patient.

If you are wanting to make thousands of dollars right from the first month or two , then forget blogging. Because blogging is like planting a tree . You need to wait for it to grow and mature,  to give fruits. You need to pour content to it every day, if not you could hinder it growth. There are lot of time when you will feel like quitting the game. Just hold on.
Dont push your self on posting articles just for the heck of it. Its ok to NOT post any article for a week or two. Quality posts is what you should be looking for. Remember you visitors dont care how many posts you have on your blog, they just need quality and thats what they are looking for. One quality post can bring you traffic for life.

Remember Just Be Patient. Ideas are meant to come automatically. Make drafts or ideas in your posts section on the weekend and work on them the next week. If you work on a Mac the use ICAL, its the best application to plan your week and month and it even reminds you of the upcoming   event something like the Google Calendar, but then you need to be online for google.

Way No 5: Be Unique.

In a world of 100 + million blog, it could get real tough to stand out of the crowd. But you got to do what you got to do. Its always better to buy a theme rather than going in for a free one. There are many advantages for that. Firstly, paid themes have error free codes and are compatible with many plugins available. Also you get the option for changing the look and feel of your theme  within the admin panel. Free themes may look good and also function well , but if you are looking  long term, then here’s what you will pay indirectly, No support, No Updates, limited customization options .

Also, you need to choose to buy those theme which are optimized for search engines. This is a very important factor which , if overlooked, could be fatal for your blog. Although there may be many Websites  who offer search engine optimized themes , you can never tell unless you try them for a week or two. You could hurt your blog’s impression, if you keep changing your themes every two weeks. Its also very frustrating. All the countless number of hours which you have spent in making content and articles for your blog could go down the drain if your theme is not optimized for search engine.

Personally we recommend Woo Themes as the best search engine optimized theme. Their themes have the most number of variations and styles you could ever think of. Lastly, if you know a little bit of CSS, try tweaking up some colors or image sizes in your theme to give it a more personalized look. Woo themes have very simplified type of style sheets which are very easy to tweak.

This post was not meant for enjoyment so I won’t say ‘ Hope you have enjoyed Reading this Post’ Rather I must say ‘ Hope you have found my article inspiring and informative’. The content is purely derived from experience and hour of hard work on blogs, both mine and others. Therefore there is no chance that none of these ways will work for you. If you have any comments or suggestions , do write a comment .

Coming Soon:

1. 10 Ways to Boost your google ranking
2.  5 Ways to successful blogging Part 2

Recommended Reading:

1. WordPress Tutorials

2. Web Design Tutorials