How to Start a Blog ↓

You hear everyone talking about how cool their blog is. Better yet, everyone knows someone making a lot of money online, just from writing articles on their blog or making an eBay store.

Yeah, the whole "make money with eBay" thing was and still is a great opportunity for some, but it’s become more of a fad. Starting a blog is a solid way to make long term income - just for doing some writing on stuff you actually like and care about. Imagine that! 

Between Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, sponsored reviews, and the dozens of other site monetization options, you can make a lot of steady, passive income with a blog.

That means you’re making money while you sleep. Seriously, how would you like to make money 24/7, not just when you’re selling your time to an employer?

What’s even better, every blog post you make will be making you money for years to come. Search engines find and cache those posts, and over time each post is "worth more" to the search engines. That means they’ll be sending you’ll get more web site traffic with every passing month.

So what’s stopping you? We did it, and so can you. In just a few months, we went from making $200 per month to $2,000 per month from our blog.

And if you do this right, you too can walk away from that job and be free! Or just make a bunch of extra money. :-) 

Hang on tight and let’s do it together!

Here are 10 EASY steps we’ll take together to get your blog started, and make your blog Ultra Successful.  

Decide to start today

TODAY. No, not tomorrow, not next week, and not next month. Tomorrow always feels "safe" because you’re not having to make a decision. The power of today is that you make that commitment to yourself. And that is the first step to success.

This step is the most critical one, and it’s where most people get stuck. Don’t dream about doing something. Just get up and do it.

"The best way to live the life of your dreams is to start living the life of your dreams Today, in every little way that you possibly can".

Choose a niche for your blog - the niche that YOU will dominate

Choosing the right niche for your blog is perhaps the most important choice you can make BEFORE starting a blog. Choose the wrong niche, and it’s very unlikely you’ll ever succeed.

Some questions to help you choose the right niche

• The most important question you have to ask yourself is this: What are you passionate about?
  It’ll be very hard for you to write regularly and authoritatively and be a go-to industry expert on a topic you don’t really care about. Passion tends to make the difference between amazing success and quiet failure.
• Do you intend to make money with this blog? Would you like it to be your primary income source?
  This makes a big difference. If so, you’ll have to choose a nice that is not overly crowded. Regardless of the crowding, you’ll need to research your niche thoroughly and develop your own value proposition.

Research your niche and learn the landscape

Find the popular blogs and websites in your niche, study them closely, and visit them regularly.

Get to know the authors and regular contributors. Comment on these blogs regularly so they can get to know you too.

Find the right keywords to target with your blog

Once you choose your niche, it’s crucial to find just the right keywords to target. This is a delicate balance between finding keywords that get enough search traffic and keywords that don’t have too much competition.

Don’t wait until your blog starts getting popular to figure out which keywords to target, or you’ll waste a lot of time and effort and end up starting from scratch.

While you can do a lot of research the manual, old fashioned, and time consuming way, we recommend you get a proven keyword research tool to find your keywords quickly and accurately.

Get a web hosting account for your blog

Your blog host should be reliable, responsive if you have questions, and inexpensive. $10 per month is reasonable for a reliable host; less than that and the service tends to go down a lot.

Many people try to save those few dollars and instead start with a free blog platform like Blogger.com. But we strongly advise against it. It’s virtually impossible to get free search engine traffic to those free blogs, and support is completely nonexistent. If your blog disappears overnight (as we had happen once on Blogger.com), there’s nobody to call and ask for help. Your work is all lost. You’ll also have a hard time every moving away when your blog takes off. And you’ll lose all the search engine value that you’ve built up.

Take this seriously and go with a proper web host that actually has competent support people available to help you. Spending $10/mo for a proper web host will also help you realize that you’re serious about your goal. Do it.

We use and recommend HostGator. The fact that their email support replies to most issues in literally minutes certainly doesn’t hurt. Find out why in our web hosting review of HostGator, and go set up an account with them today.

HostGator is great because it JUST WORKS, they offer a lot of great features, and you can just sign up for an inexpensive monthly plan, month by month.  

BUT, if you’re really serious about your web site or blog, and are willing to sign up for a yearly plan, there are a couple of options that offer better service - and they’re worth considering seriously…

MidPhase - Reliable, Great Support, Unlimited Domains
AN Hosting - Think of this as MidPhase, same excellent service, but at a discount. In fact, use coupon code ANHOST911 when you sign up and get 2 months of free hosting.

If you’re OK with a yearly plan, AN Hosting is definitely the way to go.

Install WordPress to run your blog

After you choose a reliable blog host , you’re ready to install your blog software. The most flexible choice available today is WordPress. It’s also free, and easy to setup and maintain.  

Yes, this is a little more involved than setting up a free blog somewhere, but it’ll be well worth the effort when you get more web site traffic in a month then you would have gotten in a year on a Blogger.com blog.  

Make a great first impression with a great theme for your blog

First impressions always matter. On the web, that’s even more important. A web visitor’s first impression about your site determines if he clicks away in the first 5 seconds, if he stays on to read what you have to say, and if he will ever come back again.

So it’s very important to put your best foot forward. Make your site interesting, distinctive, and engaging to your readers by using a great "theme". WordPress themes are basically website designs that you can just download and enable for your WordPress blog.

Find the best theme for your blog, and when you have the resources, consider having a custom theme made for just your blog.

Configure WordPress and it’s plugins to get the most search engine traffic

What good is a blog if nobody is visiting? One of the great advantages of WordPress is the vast array of options to make your blog very yummy to the search engines. This is all about understanding what Google wants and giving it to them in the way they want it. Simple.

The most powerful SEO trick of all: "work with Google to give them what they want instead of trying to trick them".

Make your blog welcoming and engaging to every reader

To make your visitors stick around and come back for more - day after day - use the power of WordPress and make your blog fun, engaging, and interactive.

Use polls to get readers involved and ask their opinion. Feature the latest posts and comments. Show off your most popular articles. Get readers truly involved by getting them to comment on your posts.

Write your first post

OK, at this point you’ve chosen THE best niche for you, you’ve become very familiar with that niche and it’s most popular sites, and you’re basically what could be considered an "authority" on your topic.

So now is the time for that all important first blog post

Off the top of your head, make a quick list of all the issues in your niche that people care about. What problems do they have, what questions do they have? What keeps them up at night?

Now pick ANY one of these and write a quick article on it. This "article" can be just a simple Top 10 list, with a supporting sentence of two for each bullet. That’s it!

Get feedback

Get this first article out there and see what people think. Email it to your family and friends, and ask them to help you make it better.

All the planning in the world is no substitute for Action. It’s time to go forth and do those good and powerful things.

Set up your RSS feed

Not long ago, RSS was the domain of the super-geeky. But today, millions of mainstream internet users are subscribing to RSS vibes every day.  

Get your blog set up with full blown RSS support by setting up a free account with FeedBurner. They’ll pull a feed from your blog, make it pretty so everyone can actually read it, and they’ll even give you accurate stats on your readers. Yes, it is nice to know if anyone is actually subscribed to your feed. 

WordPress also has a simple plugin that you can enable to support your shiny new FeedBurner RSS feed service.

Register your new blog with the top website and blog directories

Once you have a few posts on your blog, it’s time to start getting the word out. Search engines want to see links coming back to your site. Those links show that people other than just you consider your site to be important.

Well, at first you have no links. So you have to start somewhere. One of the best places to start is the endless list of web site directories and now blog directories which are just begging to give you a free link.

Here are a few to get you started: BlogCatalog, Blog Flux, and the Connected Internet Directory. DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory are also very important, but your submission to them is considered just a "suggestion", and you may never hear back or get included.

Blog Catalog has turned into a social community of bloggers, which makes it significantly more valuable than a regular blog directory, largely because of the relationships you can forge there.

Promote! Social Media, Internet Press Releases, and more

If you don’t tell people about your new site, they’ll never know about it! Stop hoping someone will accidentally stumble upon your site. Take matters into your own hands and get the word out there! 

It’s never been this easy to promote a brand new site, and to explosively grow your traffic and readership. 

Social Media - Digg, Netscape, Stumble Upon, and more

Did you just publish a great article on your site? Let people know! Social media provides a great way to share your stories with others who WANT to know about it.

Post your great article to Digg, Netscape, and Stumble Upon. But tread with caution. Don’t "spam" these sites with everything you write. 

To be truly successful, it’s VERY important to follow the rules and participate in these communities.

There are even some great tools like Web2Submitter to automate the process and submit your stories to tens of social media sites! This means you save countless hours AND actually get your story out to dozens of sites instead of just one.

Check out this video to see how to automate this process with Web2Submitter. 

Article Marketing - Establish yourself as an expert by publishing your articles

Time to get more visibility for your hard work. Article directories take your articles and provide them to the countless webmasters and eZine publishers that need what you have: good, useful, and informative content.

You’ve already spent the time and written your excellent articles for your blog. Now publish those articles on the top 10 article directories and get lots more readers coming to your website.

This is the first article in the "How to Start a Blog and Make Money Online" series. Be sure to subscribe by RSS or email so you don’t miss the follow-up articles, with all the juicy details.

Then check out the Top 10 Must Have WordPress Plugins Every Serious Blogger Should Know About 

Tags: article marketing, BlogCatalog, DMOZ, make money online, social media, start a blog, web hosting review, wordpress, Yahoo Directory

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Choose a niche for your blog - the niche that YOU will dominate

Choosing the right niche for your blog is perhaps the most important choice you can make BEFORE starting a blog. Choose the wrong niche, and it’s very unlikely you’ll ever succeed.

Some questions to help you choose the right niche

• The most important question you have to ask yourself is this: What are you passionate about?
  It’ll be very hard for you to write regularly and authoritatively and be a go-to industry expert on a topic you don’t really care about. Passion tends to make the difference between amazing success and quiet failure.
• Do you intend to make money with this blog? Would you like it to be your primary income source?
  This makes a big difference. If so, you’ll have to choose a nice that is not overly crowded. Regardless of the crowding, you’ll need to research your niche thoroughly and develop your own value proposition.

Research your niche and learn the landscape

Find the popular blogs and websites in your niche, study them closely, and visit them regularly.

Get to know the authors and regular contributors. Comment on these blogs regularly so they can get to know you too.

Find the right keywords to target with your blog

Once you choose your niche, it’s crucial to find just the right keywords to target. This is a delicate balance between finding keywords that get enough search traffic and keywords that don’t have too much competition.

Don’t wait until your blog starts getting popular to figure out which keywords to target, or you’ll waste a lot of time and effort and end up starting from scratch.

While you can do a lot of research the manual, old fashioned, and time consuming way, we recommend you get a proven keyword research tool to find your keywords quickly and accurately.

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