3 Keys To be a Successful Blogger

Blogging is a powerful tool that can help to build your reputation within your niche, strengthen your customer relationships and drive traffic to your own product sales page or affiliate links. Here are the three things you need to know to become a successful blogger.

1. Choose the right blogging platform

The great thing about blogs is that they are easy to set up and you don't need to know anything technical about building websites or HTML. This makes them very beginner-friendly. Once you have gone through the set up process updating your blog is as simple as writing an email.

There are several platforms you can choose from to get started. The two most popular are Blogspot and Wordpress. Personally I prefer to use Wordpress as it has lots of customisation options and plugins that you can use to make your blog unique. For example there is a plugin that will add a list of related posts to the foot of each post you write; this makes it easier for readers to navigate your blog and find other useful content.

If you are serious about using a blog to make money online then you should consider a self-hosted Wordpress blog which allows you to customise it to your heart's content.

2. Create lots of fresh content

The great thing about blogs is that the search engines love them. But in order to remain in favour you need to post new content regularly. Most successful bloggers update their blogs three or four times a week; once a week is the absolute minimum.

Create an editorial plan so you have a variety of topics to choose from and won't ever be stuck for ideas. For example, let's say that you want to start a blog about gardening. Just make a list of all of the things that have to be done in a garden during the year; you might note down seed planting or hedge trimming. From here you can create your editorial calendar.

If you use Wordpress as your blogging platform you can load up posts and set them to publish over time. If you are going to be away on vacation then you can schedule posts so your blog updates without you even being there!

3. Make money from your blog

Once you have established your blog and encouraged people to come and read your content you can start making money. There are several ways to do this. You could insert some advertising so that you get paid when a reader clicks on your adverts. You might also consider signing up as an affiliate to promote other people's products that relate to your content. If you use an editorial calendar to theme your posts then after a period of time you will have enough content to create an ebook which you could sell to your readers.

by Lord Alio