Blogging Tips

If they say “Content is King” then I shall say “Traffic is the Queen”. Traffic is essentially the engine of every successful blogs. As such building an audience to your site is one of the most important aspect of blogging. In fact, it is the most difficult one to achieve. Agree? Gone are the days when you could just write and expect people will come.

The truth is a considerable portion of my blogging time has been spent on building that desired audience. So let me share with you a quick list of what I have learned and the 50 steps I have taken – and will be taken – to boost my blog traffic. Hope you find success with any of them as well.

1. Everything begins with contents people want to read.
2. Post often, not necessarily on daily basis.
3. Use a catchy post title.
4. Write a controversial post.
5. Link to your own post – internal linking is good from SEO standpoint.
6. Tag your post with keywords.
7. Use list on your post for better readability.
8. Buy your own domain. Sad to say, many still take it for granted.
9. Tweak your site design for better users’ experience.
10. Do away with widgets. It just drives away your visitors.
11. Unclutter your sidebar and footer.
12. Make your blog title SEO-friendly.
13. Ask your readers’ opinions and thoughts on what you write.
14. Place your RSS button in prominent place.
15. Invite and remind your visitors to subscribe in any possible way.
16. Optimize your RSS feed with Feedburner.
17. Submit your RSS feed to RSS directories.
18. Offer email subscription.
19. Experiment with email marketing.
20. Join social bookmarking sites. StumbleUpon is good.
21. Submit your articles and let others Digg and vote.
22. Submit your blog to niche directories.
23. Commenting on other blogs in your niche. Please don’t spam.
24. Response to each comment and feedback.
25. Don’t moderate negative comments. Let users have a say.
26. Learn to use trackbacks.
27. Enable DoFollow. Disagree?
28. Always thank your commentators.
29. Show appreciation by visiting your commentator’s site.
30. Create an Archive page. Show your old posts.
31. Create a Sitemap for search engine.
32. Use Google Webmaster Tools.
33. Statisticize your site with Google Analytics.
34. Know where your visitors well.
35. Join BlogCatalog & participate in its community.
36. Participate in Yahoo! Answer.
37. Use Twitter to promote your post.
38. Offer to exchange links with other blogs in the same niche. Do it moderately.
39. Participate in related forums.
40. Optimize forum signature with your link.
41. Offer help to other first-time bloggers.
42. Share your knowledge and experience generously.
43. Write an e-book.
44. Write about Google. We all loves it.
45. Hold a contest with giveaway prizes.
46. Guess blogging.
47. Do a review on other blogs.
48. Interview other bloggers in your niche.
49. Use images in the post.
50. Start a pool on your blog.


Get to know which blogs rank high on Google for your keywords and leave your comment there.
Use Entrecard to promote your blog.
Ensure internal links use keyword anchor text, and point to each other.

What’s your idea?
The preceding list is never meant to be an exhaustive and ultimate list but it should give you a good start to building your blog traffic and bringing it to the next level.

I am hoping that I could make a 101 list on How to Build Blog Traffic but without your participation it would not be possible. So do feel free to post your ideas below, if you have any. I’ll pass the link love back to you. How about it?

Although the common perception is that blogging is just a personal diary of writing mundane facts and personal trivia, blogging in fact can help raise a lot of fund if one can maintain a blog with topics and events of consequence, a blog from which readers can benefit.

Yes, you need to present your blog well, structure the information such that it is easily relatable and it is up to date for people to use. However even before your presentation, the most important step is to decide on the topic for your blog.

It must be relevant, you must have enough content to keep the blog up to date, you must have a fair idea on what you are talking about, you must have sources to keep the blog up to date and your topic should create a niche audience such that they are loyal to your blog and may also drive new traffic to it.

It is strongly advised that you choose a topic for your blog that you think is most relevant to you and suits your background. Let’s look at some blog topics that have been successful over time.

Cooking and Recipes

If you enjoy cooking and food, you have a great opportunity to kick off a blog with great personal recipes, reviews of best restaurant and your tips that may fetch a lot of traffic to your blog and in turn revenue. Add a little bit of a history about the food item you are discussing, the calorie information, how you created the recipe, personalize it a little bit and if possible add an image too. Remember to add relevant links for the readers and discuss their comments actively. This ensures that you are involved with your readers.

Reviews

If you are good at observing and analyzing things, then you can make a good living by writing a blog on reviews. You can review a new product on market, a new film, a new compact disc, or a new book. People always want to know about things before they spend their money to buy it or watch it. Good reviews can earn loyal readers from everywhere and a steady traffic is always a boon for any blog. Consider writing reviews as a topic for your blog.

Hobbies

Statistics show that gardening is one of the most common hobbies for people all across the world. They all need tips and suggestions on how to have their garden ready before spring. They need to know the best stores to buy the products from and how to maintain it. Consider keeping gardening as a topic of your blog if it interests you. For that matter you can even consider writing blogs on other hobbies like cross-stitching, knitting, etc. Remember to pep it up with links and tips.

Technical Topics

You can choose from a series of technical topics if you are confident and have knowledge of the same. From using different software, tools, playing golf to DIY or photography or cameras or business ideas, sales etc. there is a wide range of topics to choose from and you can easily have a dedicated audience for your blog.

Words of wisdom are from people who not only knew what they were saying but who also knew how to say it well.

Quotes from the world’s greatest thinkers are timeless. Not only they are still relevant today, they can be aptly applied to blogging as well.

I have recently discovered a few gems of wisdom that I’ll like to share with you for a bit of inspiration and motivation for your daily blogging.

Timeless Blogging Tips from Non-Bloggers

1. They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Carl W. Buechner
2. My opponent can compress the most words into the fewest ideas of anyone I’ve ever known. Abraham Lincoln
3. First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak. Epictetus
4. What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. Samuel Johnson
5. To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. Anthony Robbins
6. What is the shortest word in the English language that contains the letters: abcdef? Answer: feedback. Don’t forget that feedback is one of the essential elements of good communication Unknown
7. Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. Plato
8. To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to achieve in the art of conversation. François de la Rochefoucauld
9. You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. Naguib Mahfouz
10. Nothing gives an author so much pleasure as to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors. Benjamin Franklin

The quotes above is the work of Sueblimely’s 50 Timeless Blogging Tips. It’s another masterpiece I couldn’t help but to respectfully quote and reproduce it here and I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of the 40 timeless blogging tips from the greatest people the world has ever seen.

If there is one wisdom which is the mother of all wisdom, let it be this one

Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.

What’s your favorite quotes?

Your blog is a piece of your virtual real estate in the online world. It’s natural that you’ll make every possible effort to make it more comfortable for your readers and subscribers to hang around.

Your readers and loyal subscribers are the life blood of your blog in my opinion. Without them, I see no valid reason why a blog should exist in the first place.

20 Possible Ways to Optimize Your Blog

In this article I’m presenting to you 20 possible ways to optimize your blog in the hope that by implementing them, you will see an increase in traffic and ultimately gain a few more subscribers as a result. In the spirit of giving back to my readers, I’m sharing with you some of strategies I have adopted and what has worked well in my favor.

#1 Link Out to More Bloggers

Make an effort to link out to other bloggers by finding relevant and useful articles that may be of interest to your readers. You could either write a Sunday Link Loves, a trend I believe started by Jim from The Net Fool or find an opportunity to include any relevant topics from other blogs into your post which is exactly what I’m doing it here.

#2 Do More Internal Linking – Rejuvenate Your Old Posts

Linking out to other bloggers is just as important as Internal Linking. I can’t think of a better way to reactivate and rejuvenate the old and buried posts in your archive than to link them internally in your recent post.

You shouldn’t underestimate the power of internal linking in the distribution of your Page Rank – if any, to your internal pages and in helping to improve your search engine results. Link building is never enough without proper internal linking.

#3 Hold A Contest

One of the common yet effective methods used by many bloggers to attract new subscribers and generate more buzz around the blog is by holding a contest where participants are required to perform specific tasks in order to win certain prizes. You can either offer your own prizes or you can contact other bloggers to sponsor your contest in return for some exposure and publicity.

In case you aren’t in the know, to celebrate my super 3 months blogging, I’m running a ‘thou shall win’ Contest with up to $2500 worth of awesome prizes to be won. The contest will runs till August 31, 2008. So if you think celebrating Christmas in August is just a myth, I’ll promise you this is one contest you’ll probably wouldn’t want to miss.

#4 Dedicate A Post to Your Reader’s Question

I’m sure there are times when your readers will email or contact you to ask some questions that you think may be worth writing a post to address them. I have recently converted a simple question from one of my loyal subscribers into an article titled Post vs Backlinks . Here not only I had the opportunity to express my personal opinions, I was able to hear different version of viewpoints on the subject being discussed from my readers.

When you are experiencing writer’s block, this method not only present you with an idea to write your next article, more importantly your readers will feel appreciated with your effort. Such a gesture of appreciation is most welcome and helps to enhance a better community around your blog.

#5 Invite Guest Bloggers

Guess blogging is a win-win situation for both bloggers involved. On one hand, it gives your readers fresh perspective and different style of presentation. On the other hand, the guest blogger will gain some exposure and permanent link in his guest post. I have so far invited 3 guest bloggers as part of my experimentation to gauge how well my readers are accepting another blogger running the show for a day. I’m yet to receive any negative feedback so I presume it’s been good so far.

#6 Write a Guest Post

In the much the same way of inviting guest bloggers, writing a guest post on other blogs is yet another powerful way of networking with other bloggers and gaining some extra exposure to drive traffic to your site. Writing guest post on other blogs certainly helps to increase your online profile and credibility.

Imagine if you have made several appearances on Problogger, John Chow or other authority blogs, however the more popular the blog is, the higher the barriers of entry are. That said, I still believe there are many bloggers out there who are more than willing to publish your articles. All you need to do is to sell yourself well.

I have recently made a special appearance on BradBlogging.com writing a guest post titled A Guest Blogger On Guest Blogging on why guest blogging is good for you and why you should start today.

#7 Optimize Your ‘About Me’ Page

I’m not sure if it is the same with you but I do notice that many of the first-time visitors will tend to check out my About Me page. If your ‘About Me’ page is out-dated or worst still, non-existence, it’s time you let the world know who you are and what they can expect from your blog and in such an impersonal world of blogging, your photo does make it more personal. If you haven’t done so, it’s time to procrastinate no more.

#8 Automate Daily Backup of Your Blog

They say, “Prevention is better than cure”. Regardless of how old is your blog, you shouldn’t put off till another day to backup your blog, lest you’ll cry over spoilt milk. It’s one of those things you shouldn’t risk it till too late.

If you are on WordPress, there is an easy way to automate the daily backup using a WP Database Backup plugin. I have opted to back up my blog and send it to my Gmail on a daily basis for safekeeping. In this case, procrastination is never an option.

#9 Remove Unnecessary Plugins

As time goes by, you may have installed and collected a lot of plugins in your plugin folders of which you may not be using at all. Due to compatibility issues, some of the plugins may cause some problems to your blog so it’s best to filter what you need and remove what you can do without.

Moreover, excessive use of plugins tends to slow down your blog’s loading time. Do your spring cleaning once in a while and remove unnecessary plugins off your blog. Here’s 5 Possible Ways You Can Speed Up Your Blog for your reading pleasure.

#10 Unclutter Your Sidebar

One of the common mistakes I have discovered in most newer blogs is the clutter of unnecessary widgets that get in the way of content and the blog as a whole. Those clutters are what distract your readers’ attention the most. Isn’t it time to de-junk your sidebar? Here’s 50 tips to Unclutter Your Blog to enhance the simplicity and usability of your blog.

#11 Offer Email Subscription

While RSS subscription may be a trivial matter to most of us but the vast majority of your readers may not be tech-savvy and familiar enough to use it. So offering an alternative and easier option to subscribe and get updates via email can make a whole lot of difference to your readers’ experience.

As a side note, I would recommend that you write a simple page explaining What RSS Is? for the benefit of those not in the know.

#12 Install Top Commentators Plugin

One of the most effective way to encourage more comments from your readers and reward them for their active participation is to install a Top Commentator Plugin. The most active commenters will have their names and links shown on the list. Isn’t it time you show appreciation to your readers?

#13 Separate Trackbacks from Comments

Most theme will display trackbacks and pingbacks along with comments from your readers but I personally find that separating the two is better to keep the flow of the conversation and keep tracks of how many trackbacks you receive. With WordPress, it’s relative easy to separate one from the other using WP Comment Remix plugin which will save you time and effort.

#14 Add Subscribe to Comment Option

How do you get you readers coming back for more comments? You can offer an option to your readers – your commenters – to have the latest response to the comment emailed to them using Subscribe to Comments plugin. In my opinion, this is the most effective way of encouraging your readers to come back and stay engaged in the discussion. I can’t think of any other better way to do it. Do you have it on your blog?

#15 Get Your Blog a Makeover

Get your blog a well-deserved makeover every 3 to 6 months to satisfy your readers. With thousands of WordPress themes available for you to use, you’ll be spoilt for choice. Pick the one that suits your personality and relevant to the theme of your blog and if you have a little budget to spare, invest on a premium theme to differentiate yourself from the rest. Why You Should Invest Your Time or Money For A Custom WordPress Theme.

How about a new logo design? Hugo from BloggerVenue.com is one satisfied blogger who has just got himself an awesome-looking new logo as part of his branding process.

#16 Study Your Stats

Do you know where your readers come from? On what keywords, do they find your blog? What are your most popular posts? By the way, when was the last time you check your stats?

You can make use of tool such as Google Analytics to analyze your stats. It all boils down to the importance of tracking and learning how people find your blog. With all these data at your disposal, you will be able to see which area you should optimize and which can be improved further for better performance and improved traffic.

#17 Join Affiliate Marketing

In monetizing your blog, apart from Adsense and other PPC programs, Affiliates Marketing can be used to diversify your online income, thus not putting all your eggs into one basket. Not only affiliates do give higher payouts, they are pretty handy to fill the voids on your sidebar before your manage to sell all your direct ads. Don’t leave it empty, maximize the empty slots with some good affiliates.

#18 Track Your Adsense

Is your Adsense getting enough clicks? How high your CTR is? Are your ads getting in the way of your contents and distracting your readers? There is no sure-fire way when it comes to monetization. Every single method is being tested through trials and errors to see what works and what’s not.

If you are using Adsense, assign different channels to track which ads format gives you the optimal result at which position on your blog and rearrange those that are not giving you enough clicks.

#19 Drop Entrecard

Entrecard – a 125×125 image which represents your blog. It’s part advertisement and part business card that you can drop on other blogs to drive traffic to your site and to earn EC credits where you can use to advertise on other blogs. It is a unique platform of social networking with other bloggers and an effective method of blog promotion.

#20 Spin Publicity Wheel

Publicity Wheel works almost in the same way as Entrecard and basically serves the same purpose. However, the mechanism of it is different in a sense that your chance of getting the publicity and exposure will largely depend on whether you win the wheel spin every 5 days. To see how it can spin some traffic your way, here’s an article on how Publicity Wheel Can Boost Your Blog’s Traffic In a BIG Way.

What’s Your Thoughts?

What have you done to your blog lately? Share your experiences and success methods with us for the benefit of others.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about optimizing your blog to rank high in the Search Engine Results and thus increase overall visibility. Apart from unique contents and site design, it’s one of the most important aspects of blogging.

Basically, what you are trying to achieve here is to figure out On What ‘Keywords’ you want the visitors to find your site and how to optimize the said ‘keywords’ to rank high & relevant in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

Simply put, everything begins with what you have carefully chosen as “Your Keyword“. An example of mine are Blogging Tips for Beginners and Blog for Beginners which currently ranks #2 and #1 respectively.

15 SEO Tips for Beginners

If you are new to blogging concept and SEO in particular, I’ll like to share with you 15 SEO Tips to help improve your site’s ranking in the Search Engine Results, all without the usual jargon.
1. Keywords in title tag

One of the most important factor to rank high in your chosen keyword is to have it – your keyword – inside the title tag. The title tag is what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page. In what I have came to learn is that what appears in the beginning is more important than what comes next.

To give you an idea, let’s take a look at 2 of my chosen keywords – Blog for Beginners & Blogging Tips for Beginners, as the former appears first follows by the latter, naturally Blog for Beginners appears higher than Blogging Tips for Beginners. However, this may not always be the case as other factors such the competitiveness of the keywords are equally important. What I’m trying to say is that you always put your Primary Keyword first.

Now if you are on WordPress, I’d recommend use of an indispensable Platinum SEO plugin to help you optimize your title without messing up your theme code.

2. SEO-Friendly URL

By default, WordPress set the permalink structure as www.domain.com/?p=12 which is a big NO NO for Search Engines Optimization (SEO). It doesn’t actually gives any indication to the robot what the url is all about.

In what I have came to learn, the optimal URL structure, according to Matt Cutt with his SEO tips, would be to use only the post title as part of the URL and don’t include the post date in your URL. Not only it is human-readable, more importantly it gives the maximum SEO benefits. How to Optimize Your URL For Search Engines.

3. Proper Use of Keywords in (h1, h2, h3)

Don’t expect the search engine to figure out which are the headlines – it won’t. Instead, use your keywords in the h1, h2, and h3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. A good buddy of mine, PB has revealed The Best SEO Tricks Ever that shows you how to optimize your keywords within those headlines.

4. Keywords in Image tag

Indeed images speak a thousand words but Search Engine Spiders don’t read images, they only read the tag which is the textual description of the image. Hence, it is important to always provide a meaningful description of an image with your keyword within the tag. Why you should care with the image ALT attribute.

5. Anchor Text of Inbound & Outbound Links

What is Anchor Text? It’s the word within a hyperlink. Here’s an example, About Yan Susanto, in which “About Yan Susanto” is the anchor text. Not only it gives your readers an idea of about the content of the page you’re linking to, more importantly it tells search engines what the page is about. Used it wisely, it will boost your rankings in search engines, especially in Google. As a rule of thumbs, avoid using “click here” for an anchor text. (See the outbound links on #2 and #3)

6. Origin of Inbound Links

Besides the anchor text, it is your duty to ensure that the sites that link to you is not from bad neighbourhoods. The theory is that it’s better to have one inbound link from a reputable site (generally speaking, sites with greater Google PR are considered reputable) than to have one hundreds links from untrusted sites. Simply said, who links to you does matter.

It’s also important to note that inbound links from sites of similar niche has far more credibility in the eyes of Search Engine than that of unrelated ones. Where Do You Get The Best Quality Inbound Links?

7. The Power of Internal Linking

One important element of SEO that is often overlooked is Internal Linking which, in layman term, means the process of linking to other pages of your site within your archives. I can’t think of a better way to reactivate and rejuvenate the old and buried posts in your archive than to link them internally in your recent post.

You shouldn’t underestimate the power of internal linking in the distribution of your Page Rank – if any, to your internal pages and in helping to improve your search engine results. Link building is never enough without proper internal linking.

8. Links from Directories

I’m not a fan of free directories as IMO having tons of links from PR0 directories is useless and it can even be regarded as link spamming, but being listed in DMOZ Directory, Yahoo Directory and similar directories will certainly boost for your overall ranking. However, it is almost impossible to get into DMOZ without much of a credibility – and some says ‘certain form of connection from biased editors’. Still it’s one of those things that is worth your while.

9. description metatag

Though metatags are becoming less and less important, there are two metatags that still matter in SEO, these are the description and keywords metatags. Both are still important from a human and search engine perspective. description metatag is what you use to describe your site. In fact, this description is what the visitors see when your site appears on the search results. How to Create The Perfect Meta Description For Google (& Searchers)

10. keywords metatag

While you are it, fill your keywords tag with relevant keywords. Relevancy here means that every word within keywords metatag must somehow appears somewhere within the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance and considered bad for your ranking. What’s The Best Keyword Meta Tags Formula?

11. Use of Robots.txt for Duplicate Content

Basically the purpose of creating a robots.txt file is to improve site indexation by telling search engine crawler to only index your content pages and to ignore other pages (i.e. monthly archives, categories folders or your admin files) that you do not want them to appear on the search index because it may lead to duplicate content issue.

If you are using WordPress, Syed Balkhi wrote a must-read Robots.txt Guide for WordPress – Avoid Duplicate Content.

12. Use of Sitemap

While Robots.txt instructs search engines which parts of your site to exclude from indexing, a Sitemap tells search engines where you’d like them to go. From a search engine perspective, sitemap is useful for better and faster indexing while a plain HTML sitemap with the use of plugin provides ease of navigation for your visitors.

As such, it is not uncommon to have 2 sitemaps of which one is created for human – your visitors and the other for search engine robots.

For Search Engines – You can create a Google Sitemap online and add your Sitemap to your Google Webmaster account or if you are on WordPress, install Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator which will generate XML-Sitemap supported by most of the search engines.
For Your Visitors – Clean Archives Reloaded generate a list of your posts sorted by months for better navigation. To see an example, have a look at my archives page.

13. Site Accessibility

Another fundamental yet often neglected factor that might affect your site ranking is the issue of accessibility. Often your site may be unaccessible due to broken links and wrong use of robots.txt that may cause your pages not indexed by Search Engines.

The solution: Broken Link Checker for WordPress will check and detect both internal and outbound links that don’t work and notifies you on the Dashboard of any broken links.

14. Keywords in First Paragraph

Put simply, search engines scan and expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the article. Make sure your keywords appear in the first paragraph of your content. If you do notice, in the first paragraph of this article, I place two primary keywords, SEO and blogging as part of my keyword optimization.

15. Keywords in Footer

Well, the first impression and the last impression usually makes the most remembered impression. A simple SEO trick of placing a link to your main page with your keyword as an anchor text could have a positive result in your search engine ranking.

Final Say

SEO is never intended to be a one-time effort. No success can be achieved overnight. It takes a lot of patience, commitment and the know-hows to succeed. All the above tips when applied may not push you into #1 but it will surely bring you one step closer to #1.

The key to SEO success is persuading search engines that your site is relevant in any search query. There are no hard and fast rules to SEO, it all boils down to the right mixture of quality content and quality inbound and outbound links with proper keywords optimization.

Good luck with your SEO. If you have any opinions or feedbacks, send them my way. I’m all ears.

You have several different ideas for possible blogging topics. But how do you choose the right one?

When you are first starting your monetized blog, a lot of the decisions you make early on can determine how successful it will be. Choosing the right platform is pretty important. So is choosing a good title. Even choosing which affiliate products you will promote can make a huge difference.

But it all starts with your topic. It’s easier to maker profits with some blogging topics than with others. My win a mercedes or empowerism blog are quite profitable but some topics will be extremely difficult to make money with, especially for a new blogger.

Here are some tips on choosing blogging topics.

Choose a Profitable Niche

One of the big draws of running a monetized blog is that you can make money while writing about things that really interest you.
But maybe you really love tadpoles, so you have decided to start a blog all about them. Keeping a tadpole blog for fun might be a great experience.

But, if you want to make money blogging, you might find that tadpoles aren’t a very profitable topic.

Actually, experienced bloggers might say it’s possible to make money in any niche. But, when you are just starting out, make things easier on yourself and choose a niche that will appeal to more people. For example, instead of focusing on tadpoles, make your blog about caring for pet fish in general. That way, you can still write about tadpoles, but you will increase your blog’s money making potential.

How Do You Find a Profitable Niche?

So, how do you choose a profitable niche?

You look at the stuff people are buying. If people are spending money on products in a certain category, then niches related to that category will probably be profitable.
How many infomercials do you see related to dieting and losing weight? Quite a few. The dieting and weight loss industries are big money makers.

What books are on the nonfiction bestseller lists? What are those books about? If people are buying books about these topics, then they could make profitable niches for your blog.

It is possible to make money blogging. But choosing the right blogging topics can make all the difference in how much money you make, and how fast you make it.

It doesn’t happen everyday but when it does happen, I’m compelled to write about it to address the questions once and for all on the importance of choosing the right niche with the emphasis on the word ‘right‘.

A lot of my readers emailed me with all the nicest words I couldn’t say it better myself and for the sake of this article, I pick two of the questions posed to me,

Tom from Stand Out Blogger

You have created an amazing blog in the blog about blogging niche and I think it would be great if you could write a little bit about why you decided to choose this niche for your blog.

Junnette from Word Play

Why “a blog for beginners” instead of a “make money blog,” just as you said in your About page?

Here’s What I Have To Say

In retrospect, I didn’t start this blog with any niche in mind. I discovered it later upon clear understanding what my audience’s needs were.

thoushallblog.com was initially created with only one single purpose, that was to be my personal journal of all things I learned about the beauty of WordPress. Little did I ever expected that people actually appreciated what I did and have continued to support it till today.

I attribute the continued support to the fact that I’m passionate about what I do. It’s the single most important key to blogging success if you ask me. I write about topics that interests both my readers and myself. Yes, myself. I couldn’t possibly continue to do what I do if it doesn’t excite both myself and my readers.

Why I Choose This ‘Blogging for Beginners’ Niche

Every minute a new blogger is born and they need a one-stop place to find all the elementary blogging resources and I see the need to fill in the gap. The fact that I’m a beginner myself, I know what’s best for beginners and I make every possible effort to speak in the language they could easily understand.

Just in case you aren’t in the know, thoushallblog.com is not a blog that teaches you how to ‘make money online’. I simply can’t bluff my way into that MMO niche.

What I’m blogging sharing here is what I have personally learned, experimented, applied and experienced first hand as a beginner. As such, everything is written by a beginner, for beginners and with beginners in mind and it will stay the same.

I aim to be the best in the ‘blogging for beginners’ niche and I wouldn’t trade it for any other niche – at least for now. Also, this is the kind of niche I could stand tall among the pack and to be a stand out blogger.

That said, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of sharing what I learn about ‘blog monetization’ at a later stage but that will only come in later when I have found greater success with what I’m doing.

Yes, I did make my money through private ads, affiliate sales, sponsored reviews to have a decent living in the third world countries but that’s not the kind of stuffs my readers are interested in – I presume.

Choosing The Right Niche

It’s true that one of the first things you’ll be deciding when you start your own blog is the niche you want to be in. What kind of target audience you’re writing to? A niche gives you a sense of purpose, yet many is good at failing to choose the right one.

Sad but it’s true, a lot of new bloggers are happy to be part of the ‘make money online’ crowd without realizing that one has to go above and beyond the ‘average’ to succeed in such super competitive niche. In most cases, when the money is no where to be seen, they are quick enough to find the next exit door.

The MMO Niche is a victim of its own success. Here’s why Jason from TUK reasoned out that Make Money Online Blogs = Fail which makes an interesting read.

My Thought on ‘Make Money Online’ Niche

Let me hold your hands and show you how to be the next millionaire…

Sounds familiar? Oh yeah, I’ll let you hold my hands once you decide to change your default WordPress theme. I could perhaps give a couple of good recommendation if you need one. If a million of people like you buy premium themes using my affiliate links, I’m on my way to be a millionaire.

My point is ‘stop telling others how to make money online’ when you are still a distance away from cashing your first adsense check. Switching out of the MMO niche will probably make you more money and how about getting off the Make Money Online bandwagon & make your fortune from John Cow who is considered the authority in the MMO niche.

If that isn’t enough, please allow me to quote one of my favorite words of wisdom on the MMO niche

“Those who know SHOW while those who don’t TEACH”

You have to be seen as a master in your chosen niche to stand out from the crowd and aim to become “a big fish in a small pond rather than a small fish in a big pond”

Passion is The Key

Choose one that you are passionate about and it’s not time-sensitive, which stop appealing after a few months. Apart from MMO niche, there are still plenty of gold mines yet to be discovered.

Once you have decided your niche and target audience, your blog should be a one-stop solution for them or at the very least, try to be one.

That being said, if the passion and enthusiasm runs dry, it’s time to move elsewhere. You can’t excite your readers without a drop of passion in what you do or write. The key is being aware of who you are and what you are passionate about, and use it to leverage your success

….and be a winner.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this and why you decided to choose the niche you are in. Are you a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond?