Many new and upcoming bloggers struggle when they are building their blogs. The purpose of this article is to help new and upcoming bloggers to build their blog, write content, promote it, monetize it and track their performance. 

Enjoy and ask any questions in the comments section if you are not clear with something.

Blog setup:

1)      Is there any room for new bloggers?

Yep, there are thousands of untouched niches and new niches spring up every year as things change.

2)      How can I find my niche?

Find something that does not bore you and that you have some insight about and do some research to see if there is a demand for it. You can learn how to do that by reading this article.

3)      What blog platform should I use?

I will recommend Wordpress because it’s the most popular blogging platform for professional bloggers. Wordpress blogs rank well in the search engines and there are millions of plugins and other extensions that you can use to add some more features. You can test-drive the free version by signing up for an account at http://www.wordpress.com or download the commercial version (which is free) at http://www.wordpress.org

4)      How do I start blogging?

• Find a niche,
• buy a domain,
• buy hosting,
•  install Wordpress,
• buy a Wordpress theme or use a free theme and
• start blogging.

Easy as A,B,C.

5)      Where do I buy my domain name and hosting accounts?

I will recommend buying your domains at Godaddy and your hosting at Hostgator.

6)      How do I choose a domain?

Choose a domain that will blend well with your niche or what you want to blog about. You can also choose a random brandable or pronounceable name. It will be best to choose a domain without a hyphen and below 16 letters long. You can read more about choosing your domain name here.

7)      Should I use a free hosted blogging platform or host my own blog?

If you want to brand yourself better as a professional or get recognized, you have to get your own domain and hosting account and run your blog on your own domain and hosting accounts.

8)      How do I install Wordpress on my hosting account?

In Hostgator, you will find a widget called “Fantastico” that makes installing wordpress easy. It doesn’t require you to download Wordpress first. It will do it for you.

9)      Should I use Free themes or premium themes?

Using a free theme will not be an issue if you understand and can work on the theme’s code. You will need to fix all problems that the theme faces all by yourself and it can get frustrating. Your best bet is to use a premium theme. Premium themes are updated by the authors and if any bugs pop up in the theme’s code, they will be fixed when you send an email to the author.

10)  Where do I buy premium themes?

You can search Google for the term, “buy premium wordpress themes”. However, I will recommend buying your themes from Themeforest, Woothemes, and Elegantthemes.

11)  What do I do if I need help with setting up my blog?

You can ask for help from web developers and other techy guys on the Freelance Switch Forums or make a job posting for professionals to contact you about what they can do for you.  You are sure to get help from there.

12)  How do I add RSS to my blog?

You need to go to Feedburner, create an account and then add the RSS feed URL to your blog. This article explains more this more.

 13)  How do I collect email addresses on my blog?

Create an account on Aweber, watch their “How to” video that explains how you can get your account set up and configured properly and start collecting those email addresses on your site. You can go to the Freelance Switch Forums if you are having any problems.

 14)  How do I add a ‘contact me’ form to my blog?

Download contact form plugins from the Wordpress plugins directory or create your own forms on wufoo. Read their “How to” articles to help you configure it.

 15)  How do I upload my logo to my blog’s theme?

Replace the default logo image file from your theme’s “images” folder with your logo. Sometimes, it is better to use the default logo’s dimensions (size) for your own logo. Some themes come with an “upload your logo” feature that makes it easy to upload your theme in your theme’s administration section after it has been installed.

Blog Promotion:

16)  How do I promote my blog online?

You can use any or all of these forms of promotion:

• Submitting articles to article submission directories like Ezinearticles and GoArticles.
• Guest blogging on well established blogs related to your niche.
• Submitting your blog to the search engines. You can use SubmitExpress to submit your blog to the search engines for Free.
• Linking to other well established blogs related to your niche. This helps you in your search engine rankings.
• Sending out press releases. Write a press release and send it to PRWeb.
• Write reports or an ebook and share it on ebook directory sites or let people download it for free on lulu.
• Promote your blog on forums.
• Promote your blog by leaving ‘strategic’ comments on other blogs that will make people curious enough to visit your blog.
• Promote your blog by buying advertising on other blogs related to your niche or buying PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising from Google, Facebook, Yahoo or Myspace.
• Promote your blog on your social media profiles and status updates.

17)  How do I promote my blog offline?

Offline promotion is mostly expensive but you can go with these ideas:

• Attend entrepreneurship events
• Share business cards and flyers with other bloggers or entrepreneurs. You can also share it with club related to your niche and ask them to give it to their members so that they can learn more about that niche.
• Try and get clubs and organizations to allow you to talk to their members for free to provide some advice. Do it for free and they are sure to allow you after they have reviewed your blog articles.
• Write articles related to your niche and get it published in magazines or newspapers.

18)  What will make my blog readers come back?

• You need to have an RSS feed widget on your blog and ask your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed.
• Email list subscription forms
• Reply to comments and answer your reader’s questions.
• Write solid (quality) content.

19)  How do I get my blog’s readers to comment on my posts?

• Write thought provoking articles
• Ask questions and request readers to leave their answers in the comments box
• Just ask them. Sometimes people want to be told what to do.

20)  How do I get people to subscribe to my email list?

• Write awesome articles on your blog to trigger their interest in staying with your blog.
• Bait them with a gift; eBook, report, e-course, web graphics, etc.
• Just ask them to do so.

 21)  How do I get people to subscribe to my RSS feed?

• Write awesome articles
• Promote your articles to your target audience
• Write content regularly so that people can subscribe to your RSS feed.
• Just ask them to subscribe to your RSS feed.

22)  How do I beat my competition?

• Link your blog to them. You can read about how to do this here:
• Visit their blog and determine what they are not doing on their blog that you can do. When you find something, add it to your blog.
• Interact with their readers on the comments section and forums.
• Add a category they are not blogging about.
• You can beat them by not focusing too much on them so that you don’t lose focus.

23)  Which geographic location should I target?

The web is a global market and I will not advice targeting a specific geographic location unless it’s a blog targeted to only your local market or another specific location.

24)  How do I do guest posting?

• Write 2 or 3 quality articles.
• Search for top blogs related to your niche. You can search them on Technorati’s blog directory or Google’s blog search feature.
• Contact the owner(s) of the blog and tell them a little bit about your blog and the articles you want published on their blogs.
• Add a little Bio of yourself and add your blog’s URL so that people who read your article can visit your blog and go take a look.

You can see whether a blog is a top blog by checking their authority on Technorati or checking their web stats (page rank, web traffic, age, etc) at Cubestat or Alexa.

25)  How do I use Twitter to promote my blog?

• Create a Twitter account with your blog’s name as your handle (username).
• Upload your blog’s logo as your Twitter profile photo.
• Complete your bio and add your blog’s URL
• Create a Twitter profile background with your logo and maybe some more bio info.
• Follow other bloggers and blogs in your niche who are already on Twitter and follow their followers.
• Start tweeting your blog posts (articles) and some random useful thoughts and ideas.
• Get your tweets retweeted by adding a “Tweet this” widget to your blog posts. You can get this at Tweetmeme.You can also get retweeted by using Retweet.it

26)  How do I brand my blog?

Add your tag line and logo when promoting your blog online or offline. Social media websites like Facebook and Twitter makes online branding easy. Be consistent with your tag line and logo. Don’t change them often.

27)  Should I use paid advertising or free advertising?

It all depends on your budget or how much you want to spend. Free advertising or promotional techniques go a long way to bring you long term organic traffic. Paid advertising can bring you a ton of traffic but it only lasts until your advertising budget runs out.

28)  How do I build my blog’s brand on Facebook?

• Create a Facebook Fan page for your blog and upload your blog’s logo as the Fan page’s photo.
• Join groups related to your niche and contribute on the wall postings.
• Join Fan pages of blogs or bloggers in your niche and contribute on their wall posts.
• Be friends with bloggers in your niche and comment on their status updates. It helps you to get recognized by them and maybe they can link to your blog if they come to like you J.

29)  How do I build my blog’s brand on Youtube? 

• Talk about your blog in your Youtube profile.
• Share How-to videos related to what you blog about.
• Share it on your blog, Tweet the link to your Twitter followers and share it on Facebook.

30)  Why should I add my blog to Technorati?

It helps build traffic and blog authority.

31)  Where do I submit my blog to Technorati?

You need to create an account and ‘claim’ your blog.

32)  What about Dmoz?

Dmoz also helps your blog to rank higher in the search engines. You have definitely got to get listed in Dmoz.

33)  How often should I submit my blog to search engines?

You can read about this over here.

34)  What is social bookmarking?

This article from About.com explains it best: http://webtrends.about.com/od/socialbookmarking101/p/aboutsocialtags.htm 

35)  Which social bookmarking websites should I use?

There are hundreds of social bookmarking websites. I will however recommend these 4: Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit

36)  How do I get interviewed on top blogs?

• Build your blog post, comments, traffic and revenue. In general, make your blog popular.
• Write a review of the blog you want to be interviewed on and share it on your blog.
• Be friends with the bloggers on their personal social media profiles and interact with them.
• Interview the top blogger first.
• Contact the blog you want to be interviewed on and tell the owner(s) of what you have achieved with your blog and ask them to interview you on their blog. Don’t forget to tell them about the review you wrote about their blog.

37)  How do I write an ebook or report?

• Prepare what you want to write about.
• Use Microsoft Word to write your eBook.
• Use a graphic design software like Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw to create the cover image.
• If you want to add photos in your pages, you can buy some on iStockPhoto or Fotolia.
• Use NitroPDF to compile your eBook into PDF format.
• Outsource it to professional writers on Elance or the Freelance Switch Job Board. Let them do the all the work for you.

Blog Content:

38)  Should I start a Video Blog or Text blog?

It all depends on you. It depends on what you want and also depends on what you will be blogging about. Movie and Video game review and trailer blogs could use Video blogs. Do It Yourself (DIY) blogs like carpentry or plumbing blogs can also use video better than text and photos.

39)  How do I get article ideas?

• By following blogs related to your niche.
• By discussing some topics in your niche with your friends and family. If they hate to talk about it, you can even turn that into a blog post like, “why my family hates (your niche)”.
•  By searching for keywords related to your niche on Twitter search to see what people are saying about your niche and write a post about them.
• By reading eBooks and reports related to your niche.

40)  How do I write great content?

You need to look at what kinds of articles gets the most traffic and comments on other blogs. The truth is, your content needs to provide some kind of value to your readers. It should help them fulfill a need or it should help them make decisions. Mostly, list articles like this one, review articles and articles with tips and ideas do well. After writing, you need to proof read to correct any mistakes in the text. Read this article by Chris Brogan will teach you more: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/40-ways-to-deliver-killer-blog-content/

41)  Default commenting or third party comment?

Default commenting is good when you already have a “sharing button”. If you already have a plugin installed that allows your blog’s readers share your posts on other parts of the web, then of course, you won’t be needing a third party comments plugin.

42)  How often should I post articles?

It depends on what you want to achieve with your blog or your main aim of blogging. If you are blogging for money, you have to blog consistently. If you don’t have enough time to write articles, outsource them to professionals on Freelance Switch.

43)  How do I get people to interview on my blog?

• Make sure your blog has some articles and comments first. You don’t want them thinking you are not achieving anything with your blog.
• Send them an email and Acknowledge their success, tell them what you blog about (you can add your blog’s stats if you want to) and then ask them for an interview.
• Make sure the interview will be relevant to your blog’s audience.

44)  What pages can I create for my blog?

• Disclaimer page
• About page
• Archive page
• Competition/contests page
• Contact page
• Pages for externally hosted service extensions (for example, forums, job boards, directories, etc)

Blog Monetization:

45)  When do I start monetizing?

When you have enough web traffic. You have to be patient and work at building some traffic by writing content and promoting your blog first.

46)  How can I make money from my blog?

The common blog monetization methods are:

• Sell advertising
• Write reviews
• Sell products and services
• Affiliate marketing

47)  How do I sell my blog if I want to?

You can list it on a web and domain selling and buying marketplace like Flippa and Sedo. You can also contact businesses and other entrepreneurs in your niche to let them know you are selling your blog.

48)  Where do I find advertisers for my blog?

You can join an ad network like BuySellAds or contact businesses who advertise on other blogs related to your niche to let them know you are selling ad space. You can also run a search on the search engines and contact the premium advertisers..

49)  Where do I find affiliate programs to run on my blog?

Depending on what type of programs you want to join, you can look through Clickbank, Linkshare and Commission Junction.

50)  How do I get premium products to review? (send email or use payperpost)

You can contact the product manufacturers or distributors directly and tell them you want to review their products or services. You can also use PayPerPost.

Blog Performance:

51)  What are the most important plugins to optimize my blog’s performance?

Configure Akismet to stop spam, use WP cache to help in faster page loading. You can also use Yoast’s plugins.

52)  How do I check my blog’s performance?

You can use blog grader from Hubspot to check meta info and SEO related performance and you can also use Google Analytics and Alexa to track traffic. You can also use this plugin to track article page stats like number of comments and number of posts.

Conclusion:

Thanks for visiting Sociatic. If you are a new blogger, you need to bookmark this page and savor the content for one or two weeks. Use it as a guide. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment box and I will reply to them.

If you loved this post, bookmark and share it on other parts of the web. You should also subscribe to our RSS feed to get updates on new awesome articles from us.

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