How To Create And Maintain A Blog To Earn Income?
This article is about earning through your blog and the tips to make more money from the blog. It tells you how to start a blog, how to select a topic and arrange your blog, how to get a large reader base for your blog and finally, how to earn through your blog. Read on.
Blogs are not a strange name to us in the 21st century. Many people use blogs as an outlet of thoughts, a platform for opinions and so on. But only a few seems to realise the wide reaching opportunity to earn through a blog. If you have a well created blog, and if you would like to know more about earning through blogs, you are in the right place. If you don't own a blog till now, don't worry. Let us take a look at how to create and maintain a blog, and how to use it for earning opportunity.How to start a new blog? – Blogging websites
It may look absurd, but the first step in making money through your blog is to create a blog itself! When we think of starting a new blog, the names which come instantly to our mind in Blogspot and WordPress. Blogspot, more popularly known as the Blogger, is a very popular blogging website maintained by Google. WordPress is also quite popular, and this too allows you to maintain a blog under their domain. For creating a blog with either Blogger or WordPress, you have to register with them. In Blogger, you don't need a separate new registration if you already have a Google account. You can start a new blog and easily attach it with the existing Google account. To start with WordPress, however, you need a separate registration. You can go to Wordpress.com and start a new blog from their homepage. Congratulations: you are the proud owner of a blog now!What should I write in my blog? – Selecting a topic
If you are keeping a blog for mere satisfaction, then you don't have to bother about what you write. But if you are planning to write blogs for earning money, then you must pay attention to what you write in your blog.
Most often, the new and inexperienced writers do the following things while writing a new blog: They mix up every category available on earth and make a khichdi blog. They sometimes keep their blog like an online diary. They sometimes write hard-to-crack philosophies and creative writings in their blogs. There is nothing wrong in doing any of these – you can make a khichdi blog if you can write about anything. If your Twitter account is not enough to announce your coffee time, you can keep an online diary. You can also write philosophy and creative literature. But not if you want to earn dollars from your blog.
Blogs fetch you money only if they have a very large reader base. And remember, people are not going to search for the online diary or philosophies of a stranger. If you want to make money, you need to write the type of content which will attract readers and search engines, i.e. the content which people like you and me would search for. There is a wide variety to choose from. You can write about technology, fashion, cookery, lifestyle, career, home tips and what not! It is always better to dedicate a blog to a specific theme. Stuffing all these to a single blog will look congested. If you are so interested in writing different things, you may choose a lifestyle blog, and include these elements as different categories. Kudos – you are now aware of selecting a topic for your blog.Naming your blog and titling your posts
Now comes the next big question. You want a good name for your blog. You may have given a domain name, a name and a tagline for your blog when you registered it. Now that you have decided your topic, it is time to rethink your name. Many experts speak about instilling too much keywords to your blog name, and keeping it simple and informative. Personally, I agree with the simple part, but not with the rest. The blog name does not count much when it comes to SEO. You can reserve your bunch of keywords for post titles. In my opinion, a classy and catchy blog name does a lot of good, especially when it comes from non-search engine traffic. At the same time, the name must relate to what you are writing, and readers should grasp your topic from the name of your blog. Yet it should be catchy. There lies the power of your blog name. Take one of the popular book reviewing site, Goodreads, for example. The name 'Goodreads' have no specific keywords in it. Yet, when we see the name, we can assume it is about books and reading. Plus, the title is catchy. And guess what, it is one of the book sites that gets the largest hits per month.
Blog names do not have much to do with SEO, but on the contrary, post titles have a lot to do with them. So, whenever you write a new post, make sure that the title is keyword rich, and plain and simple. How to design my blog? – Choosing templates and widgets
Many blog writers avoid this aspect, but the truth is that a good and pleasant looking blog compel the reader to come back, compared to a dull or eye-straining blog. Ever wondered why Facebook, Twitter and many other social networking sites are so obsessed with blue? It is studied that blue settings give cooling to the eye and netizens prefer it. This very study shows the impact of the blog/site design upon the audience. Both Blogger and Wordpress have umpteen numbers of themes, templates and backgrounds ready. Some are unalterable, some can be customised. When you choose a theme or a template for your blog, remember this formula:
Widgets are small features installed on either side of the blog, to make surfing easy. The search facility, the recent post box, tag cloud all are examples of widgets. You must choose widgets that your blog has the most use of. A search box is a must. If your blog is sticking on to a single category, there may not be much need of a tag cloud. Altogether, the blog must not look congested. At the same time, all the useful widgets must be there.How to attract more audience to my blog? – Getting a reader base
Every blog writer asks these questions: how to get more hits and commends on my blog? For some, it is a matter of prestige that their work gets appreciated. But if you are planning to earn money from blogging, then it is not only your prestige but also a necessity that you get many readers. Readers are very important. The more people visit your site, the more chances are there to earn a good income. And let me tell you, getting a large number of hits is not an easy task. Here are some tips that will help you get more readers for your blog:Writing popular content
As I said above, you need to write the content which people usually search for. Find such topics to write that many people search for them, but there are not much good articles on that topic in the net. If you write on such topic, you will have less competition and more hits. Also, make sure that the content is organised in an easy-to-understand manner. If the audience get all the necessary information in a comprehensive way and in a simple language, they are bound to return to your website when necessity comes. For example, if you have a good tech blog organised in this way, people will sure check out your site when new items like Aakash Tab gets released. Organising the content for search engines – Search Engine Optimization
You have to keep in mind that it is the search engines which bring audience to your website. Search engines most often do not go through your whole content when it searches for a topic. The search engines usually limit their search to some important aspects of your article like the title, subtitles, summary, highlighted phrases etc. In some cases, they may look in the whole text, but the former happens usually. If you make these mentioned areas keyword-rich, then you are sure to optimise the article well.Understanding the mindset of audience and readers
If you want to optimise your content successfully, you need to understand the mindset of the readers. This is very important when you think of the keywords they may search for, the phrases they may look for, they content they would like to read, the way they like it to be presented etc. Understanding the mindset of the readers is a very simple task – all you have to remember is that you yourself is a reader when you search for material! Think from the perspective of a reader – if you were searching about aakash tab, what all would you like to know? How would you like the information? What all phrases and keywords will you search for? If you feel that your mindset may not be similar to that of your audience, you can seek the help of SEO tools like webstatschecker and Google Stats.Promoting your content
Search engines are not the only ways through which you will get the traffic. Links from other websites also help a lot. For this, it is necessary that you may promote your content. You can do this in various platforms. You can post the link of your blog posts in social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. You can bookmark your site in social bookmaking sites. You can give refer links to your posts at platforms like Yahoo answers. The more links you generate, the more readers will come to your sites.
All of these methods will ensure that you will get a good reader base to begin with. Once you start with some audience, they will share the news with their friends and the circle of your audience will grow. You must also take care to maintain the audience you once got. You must not reply rudely to their comments. You must not post matter that may offend some. You may encourage comments and provide a warm atmosphere for readers so that they come back to your site. All the best with your blog!
A very well written article on blogging. I found it comprehensive and informative.