Hey I've been writing for months here on DP, and recently someone suggested me to get a blog of my own. Though I have visited many blogs and heard a bit about them every now and then, I am not quite sure about blogging. Here is what I expect from my blog: 1. Expose my writing style to every visitor : thus, market my writing skills. 2. Write about something that is interesting enough, and is also popular enough so as to attract visitors. 3. Earn money, through ads on my blog. 4. Promote my blog in an efficient manner to drive traffic. Kindly guide me in the right direction. What topic to choose ? How to promote ? How to make sure its popular enough and drives traffic ? Tips to make the best amount of money I can through a blog. Whether to use blogger, wordpress etc ?
The topic you choose is up to you and no one else can decide. So choose one you know, love, and car write a lot about. You promote in many ways, such as paid advertising (private deals, AdWords, etc.) or just by any free means. You have to have unique content that is interesting. Dont use a free host (buy your own domain name if you do).
Totally agree. The theme you are to chose is up to you. To promote your blog you have to get as many backlinks as possible. I suggest you to create my sponsors or resource section for that purpose. I also suggest that you should talk to other blog owners about more sophisticated link exchange - like setting backlinks on your blog in various posts of other users blog. To get money from your blog - you should set an adsense. Try experimenting with the position of adsense blocks on different parts of your blog. I also suggest that you use wordpress - because it has many useful plugins and easily customizable.
I will try to answer them to the best I can. 1.0 Choose topic that you like most, NOT the one you think you can just make money out of it. 2.0 Make them very interesting to read, increase your network and invite them to share them to top social sites. 3.0 If you are just using it for fun you can use free blogger blogspot, but if you want to make it as a career, use WP self-hosted. But I think the best tip you can get is - read a lot! I have been a follower of these 2 great bloggers for a quite some time, and I think they can help you. CopyBlogger and Problogger Good luck!
Exactly what I would say if you pick a topic just because you think it can make money then you want have the drive to update it it takes time and it needs patience in order to make money on the internet you would be better off if you choose something you are passionate about or at least something that you wont get bored with on the first week
With the price of hosting and domain names so low now I see no reason why one would not find a decent hosting account, grab a domain name and start a self-hosted WordPress blog.
The topic you choose is very important because if you know nothing about the subject matter you will find that it takes much longer to write new content as you will have to do a lot of research.
Thank you all for your valuable suggestions. I am pretty sure in my mind now about the topic I will choose. Any more help on the "technicalities" involved is most welcome. Consider me as someone who has no knowledge about how to start etc. etc.