3 Must Do Things For A New Blogger

Blogging is a great way to earn money. But it can’t make you rich over night. This is not a “Get Rich Quick Program” which you buy for $7 or any money ending in 7 (7 is a magical number which can get you more sales). You may ask, “Then why do people blog?” It is because blogs can earn once you are get to a stable position. Most of the great bloggers, like Darren, started blogging not to earn money. They attained a stable position and got a better place (in fact the top position) in their niche. Few people have a misconception that they can earn good amount of money from first month. And we know this is one of the main reasons why most blogger’s fail. Though I’m not a Pro blogger or even an intermediate blogger, I can still give a few tips for the new bloggers. So here are the 3 must Do Things For A New Blogger:

1. Blog With Your Domain Name:
When people start blogging, they choose blogspot or wordpress.com (or any free service like me. For me there is a financial problem.). If you are serious about blogging, you better blog with your own domain name. You can use the free services, if you are totally new to blogging and don’t know any thing about it. You can learn using the blogger and then get a domain name. Now blogging with your domain name must remind you of the following 3 things:

(i) Choosing A Domain Name:
While choosing a domain name, make sure that the name is easy to remember. Avoid getting a name with hyphens and underlines. Prefer getting a “.com” and not any other. You can have the domain on your name or any search term of your niche.

(ii) Hunt for a better Host:
There are many hosts available. There are free ones and there are also paid ones. If you get many visitors to your blog, it is better to go for a paid host. When you choose a paid host, be sure to check whether it is Digg proof, Netscape proof and other social book marking sites’ proof. The traffic you get when your article hits the front page of Digg will be enormous. You blog cannot be down when the visitors wants to visit your blog. So go for a good host.

(iii) Don’t Show Your Stats In Your Blog:
Once your blog is setup, don’t show the stats of your blog like technorati rankings or alexa rankings. It gives the visitors a bad impression about your blog. If they find that your blog has a less alexa rank than their blog, they might stop visiting your blog. In my opinion, you should show your alexa rank only after you reach a 5-digit number. You can tell your technorati rankings once you get below 20,000. So be careful when displaying stats.

2. Getting Recognized In Your Niche:
If you want to be successful in your niche, you should be popular and recognized. Achieving this feat is not as easy as it sounds. If it were that easy, then there would be 1000’s of Darren Rowse and 1000’s of Steve Pavlina. To become famous, you should have a good number of subscriber base, huge traffic, very good content and many link backs. To achieve these, you can follow the following 3 things:

(i) Use The Social Book Marking Sites To Your Advantage:
Social Book Marking sites can get you a huge number of traffic. You ought to have a great content to hit the front page. Not only content will get you to the tops but also the heading you have. Use a catchy headline and give the content that they expect after reading the headline. If you hit the front page of Digg or Netscape, you will have a good time seeing visitors flow by your site. Stumble and Del.icio.us can get you traffic in long term.

(ii) Participate In Blog Carnivals And Blog Contests:
Blog carnivals are the best place where you can get good number of traffic and link backs. Link backs are very important for a blog. Make sure you don’t spam the place. Blog contests and group writing projects are by far the best way to get link backs. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to participate in the Darren’s Group writing project because I wasn’t blogging that time. BTW, the group-writing project took place only few months ago. I didn’t want to miss the group-writing project held by Daniel of Daily Blog Tips. So I wrote this post, which you might or might not be enjoying. Group writing projects will get you a good number of visitors, link backs and subscribers.

(iii) Hold Contests And Give Away Cash And Prizes:
If you want to get more link backs and blog readers, organize a contest in your blog. This is the latest trend. The cash or prize you give away is surely the worth. You can also give coupons and other items. Many bloggers have started to follow this method. If you have $50 or a good product to give away, then you can expect 50 link backs for sure. Not only link backs, but also you will get more blog readers and subscribers.

An extra tip for getting recognized is to do guest blogging. Guest blogging will get some exposure for you and your blog. But don’t guest blog unless you have something useful to say.

3. Monetizing Your Blog:
Every blogger should monetize their blog. It is a reward for your hard work. When it comes to monetization, few bloggers over monetize and few bloggers monetize less. If you want to know how much you can monetize, you need to read this line carefully:

“ Have advertisements in your blog and not blog in advertisements”

You would have most probably got the meaning of the phrase. I designed it on my own. So it might be little confusing. You can have advertisements on your blog. But your blog should not be created especially for advertisements. You need to look upon the following 3 monetizing tips:

(i) Having AdSense In Your Blog:
Though few bloggers say that having AdSense will make your blog look unprofessional, it is the best way to monetize a blog. You can’t earn much with AdSense if you don’t have good amount of traffic. But it can earn you few dollars. It is the best way to monetize a new blog. You have to embed the AdSense ad within your content to earn more.

(ii) In-Text Advertising – A Threat To Your Blog:
In-Text advertising is the one, which is used by few bloggers. In-Text Advertising can be found by a Double Underline, which shows an advertising box when you move the mouse over it. Though it will earn you few dollars, you might lose some of your blog readers. Once you get known and have a large number of people reading your blogs, then you can have the ads if you wish. The reason why you should not have this type of ad is that, the readers get confused between you normal links to the In-Text links. Avoiding these type of ads can get you more readers and also you will not lose your regular readers. Daniel of Daily Blog Tips has more on why you should stay away from In-Text Advertisement.

(iii) Don’t Throw Banners On The Face Of Your Blog Readers:
Few bloggers have the bad idea of decorating their blog with advertising banners. If you have more of these banners, then you are going to lose some of your readers in near future. As I mentioned a Phrase above, you should not have a blog in ads but ads in blog. Having banners also rely on your way of placing them. If you place the banners in the right way, then you have no problem. There are blogs, which have many advertisements. But the readers won’t mind them because the ads don’t bother them. Place less ads in your blog.

I hope that “The 3 must do things for new bloggers” interested you and also provided you with some useful information.

This entry is a part of Daniel’s Blog Project: Three.

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