Navigating the Wide World of Blogging

Written by Sydney

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past decade you’ve probably seen at least a few hundred blogs in your time surfing the web. But what once started as a way for fan girls to rave about Justin Timberlake has turned into big business. The top 3 blogs on the web make approximately $60,000 a day combined! Now that’s an income I can get behind.

Granted most blogs don’t make as much as Huffington Post and Mashable, but a decent living can be made from blogging if you have the right strategy. But, with so many examples of blogs gone wrong, what exactly is the right strategy?

Think about the most successful blogs on the web. What do they have in common?

For starters, they all have a specified niche they work with. If you have a bit of news, a few jokes, an article about how to make paper snowflakes and a recipe for peach cobbler, viewers might look at one article they are interested in but they will be unlikely to return to your blog. When they know they can return to your site to get the latest news, or the perfect recipe for their Sunday dinner or a laugh on Monday morning they will keep coming back. Make sure viewers know what to expect when they return to your blog. 

This next step involves a bit of a balancing act. Keep blog content fresh. If your content isn’t updated frequently or becomes predictable your viewers will stop checking in regularly and eventually abandon your site altogether. The trick is to keep your content engaging and exciting, keeping your readers guessing as to what you’ll write up this time, without stretching too far outside the previously mentioned content parameters. Granted there are blogs that manage to evade this rule, but they usually fall into a very specialized niche that can keep readers coming back on its’ own.

True or false: If you write it, they will come.

False.

Simply having good content in an appealing niche will not bring visitors to your site. Which brings us to the next step. Promote your blog on social media. Blogs and social media go together like milk and chocolate chips cookies, they can be okay by themselves, but they go best together. Once you get your blog up and running, create a Facebook page for it as well, gaining likes for your Facebook page and spreading the word when new content goes live can translate into more views for your blog. Twitter can be used the same way, with the added benefit of hashtags to draw people interested in your subject of choice who may not otherwise have found your blog. Social media can be your blogs best friend if used wisely.

So now you have some pretty loyal viewers, how do you capitalize on that? The next step in blog success is actually easier than it sounds if you have reached this point. Monetize your blog. There are a few different ways to do this, the simplest being Google Adsense PPC advertising. Pay per click advertising is exactly what it sounds like. Google sends you a code to insert into your site to create an advertisement and every person that clicks on that ad makes you money. If you have a large amount of visitors to your blog, cost per impression advertising may be a good option. Ad providers let you choose where you want the ad and how large it will be, then record the page impressions, basically how many people saw the ad. Normally you get paid for every 1000 visitors, which is referred to as CPM. While there are many other options to explore for monetizing your blog, these two are the most popular and simplest to implement on your site.

Let’s recap. The steps to blog success are as follows:

1. Find your niche. 
2. Keep content fresh. 
3. Use social media as advertisement. 
4. Monetize using PPC, CPM or another advertising strategy. 

So now you have a map to navigate the wilds of the blog jungle, from the first brainstorming session to getting your first paycheck. Best of luck! Now get writing!