I actually wrote this as a PM to a newbie that asked me to critique his blog, and to be quite frank...he needed to know the basic ideas and concepts behind a quality blog. I thought it might be some good, basic info for other newbies out there or for anyone who'd like to start a serious effort with blogging. A good blog should: * Be updated daily (literally daily) with content, whether it's original writing contributed by you or others, or if it's cited work (just be sure to cite the source). Two postings within the past 5 months will get you nowhere. If you're serious about wanting to make money online, you'll need to dedicate at least 30 minutes to an hour daily for writing/updating your blog. * Have enticing site design...or at least a design that seperates it from other stock designs that sites feature. I don't know how customizable Blogger is, nor blogs hosted by Wordpress...but reading black font on white paper with nothing else around is pretty boring. * Hold relevancy towards a particular subject. What do you want to write about? Are you planning to write in a particular subject of interest? What's the intent of your blog? State a clear objective / mission statement for your blog and stick with it. Even if you have only 200 dedicated readers on your blog for your 1st year, it's much better than having hoards of random people visit your site and vanish away, never to take a look at your site ever again. * Be more focused on site content rather than brainstorming ways of monetizing itself. Again with having dedicated readers -- by definition, they will visit your blog repeatedly out of interest of what you're saying, and are more likely to subscribe to your services/products. Believe it or not, Adsense isn't necessarily the best method to monetize your blog -- when people click on an ad, they're off into another website. This could mean that first time visitors to your site could click on an ad and forget about you completely! Just concentrate on providing interesting information to your niche audience and from there gauge what they'd be interesting in buying/subscribing to. Please feel free to add to this! The more pointers we can give out about starting a blog, the better!
* Don't blog to make money. Most will get impatient and quit before you make a dime. Blog because you feel you have something to say about a topic.