The First Few Steps to Getting Your Blog Established - And Then Making Money

Professional Blogging

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It’s time for a little shameless self-promotion. Not in this post, but the next several posts to follow will be reviews of other sites I’m hoping will generate some link love, google juice…whatever you want to call it.

But therein lies the point of this post, and it’s title. If you’re in the early stages of developing a blog for some purpose beyond the intangible joy of sharing your musings, there are in fact a few worthwhile actions to take to get you on your way to blogging for money, maybe even to make it a full time vocation.

I am convinced, and I’ve put a lot of time and energy and even some money into studying this, that anyone with a passion and some ability to express that passion in written words can use a blog to make money.

Start with a subject you care about, have something like a plan for how you’re going to develop a blog around that subject, but maintain real flexibility in executing that plan. Then mix in equal parts patience and perseverance, be willing to actually work at it, and then…consider the following ideas.

I’ll start with the assumption that you already get the part about generating real, valuable and frequently updated content…a blog (or any other serious web site) doesn’t really exist without content…that’s why you’ll see “content is king” all over the make money blogging sub-sphere.

But even as you fill a site with great and wonderful content if nobody sees it your on a very slow track to success. While your site is still new, you probably wont have that much content to present to the world for a while anyway, that’s where the patience comes in. But even at the early (and like anything in business, critical) stages, there are tools you can take advantage of that will get you going faster than just writing posts and placing a few comments here and there.

Just a quick aside here…I’m not exactly an expert on pro blogging (yet), but Yaro Starak is…and he’s just launched an ongoing program, The Blog Mastermind, that will really light a fire you know where! You can check it out here, or get a free copy of his book… The Blog Profits Blueprint… which forms the core of his approach to pro blogging, this is must read stuff!

Yes do post comments on other bloggers sites, that’s a nice and easy beginnig with some low yield results. But then add in two other fairly simple activities with considerably higher returns.

First is participating in Blog Carnivals. Blog Carnival.com is a great place to start. Go there and have a good look around, their faq’s will give you the info you need on “how to.” In a nutshell though, you post articles that relate to the subject of a given carnival. In return for your post you get a link back from the blog that hosts the carnival. Do this at least a few times a week…some who know about this say daily…and you’ll see the activity heat up pretty quickly.

The other activity, to come full circle back to the beginning of this post, is to do review posts about the blogs of the powerful and famous of the sphere. Some of them, quite a few actually, invite reviews in exchange for links. This, you may or may not know, is worth more than just the brush with blogging celebrity feeling you get when you get a link from, say, John Chow.com. Maybe even more important, big brother google is watching, and incoming links from highly ranked sites are worth their virtual weight in gold…especially to a developing blog. Google weighs these links, by quality, and adjusts your ranking accordingly. This can be powerful, something of a double-whammy google juicer.

I’m ready to begin the shameless begging for links from the almighty of the sphere. Though in reality, I wont be, and you never should, be reviewing any sites that I haven’t spent a great deal of time following…which in turn probably means I have a certain affection for them to begin with. So while I’ll strive for objectivity, and actually look for something to complain about ( I already have something in mind for Mr. Chow!), you can consider these blog reviews glowing endorsements, really.

Someday, when I have the authority to command money to review sites less developed and sucessful than mine…that will surely be a different story.

Do these ideas make some sense to you? Got any other/better input? Leave a comment here.

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tcs @ June 24, 2007