Bloggin-Ads.com's Blog Reviews and Ramblings!

Posted: 28 Feb 2008 04:13 PM CST

A lot of bloggers still don’t understand the whole point of blogging. Bloggers are jumping into the blogosphere with opened hands to receive money, but that is a mistake. Many blog owners usually realize this mistake after a couple weeks or a couple months of blogging with advertisements up on the blog. The result is usually making a few cents to a few dollars with an exception of some that receives money in the 10s to 100s, but that is not the point. The point is should you know the correct way of blogging or should you just throw it all away?

If you run a make money online blog, but don't know how to make money… delete it.

The average quality of the blogosphere is suffering… it is spread across the board, but the make money online niche is one of those that is being hit hardest, mainly due to the influx of poor quality blogging in recent times.

Sure, you may have started out with good intentions, but the problem is that most do not – they see John Chow making $30,000 a month and they feel that they can do the same with no problem, and so a new make money online blog is born.

Maybe they start out well, posting content once a day or even more, but when the end of that first month (or even that first week in some cases) comes around and they haven't made a cent, people not just leave their blog hanging, but also are left with themselves feeling like failures… a feeling that is not good at all.

My advice to you today is blog about what you know. Sure, what your specialty is may not be one of the most popular topics around, but if you write in an engaging style, you will get readers.

Writing in the niche you know best about will leave you with much better content than if you just jump on the bandwagon and try to make a dent in one of the most competitive niches out there… generally, when you have passion for something it will show in your writing, and there's nothing better to read than a blogger who loves his topic.

Passion aside, you writing about something you know more about than anything else will leave you with blog posts that are informative – again, it's easier to speak about something you know – and you'll be starting off with a much better chance than you would be if you were in a different niche you had little or no original content to write about.

What tips do I have for you otherwise, to make your blog stand out apart from the rest?

1) Use Wordpress

This probably goes without saying for a lot of you, but those that are still pondering – use Wordpress.

Wordpress is the most popular blogging platform out there for a reason – its ease of use makes it possible for even the biggest newbie to setup his/her own blog, and the variety of ways you can customize a Wordpress blog with the various themes and plugins out there is nothing short of amazing.

Sure, other solutions exist, but none as good; Blogspot is a bit amateurish, (how many big blogs do you know that are run on it?) while Typepad costs money… money you may not have to spend at the start of your blogging career.

2) Get a kick ass theme

Having a theme that looks better than the rest is one thing that can help set your blog apart from rest of them; Wordpress has enough free themes lying around that you can be unique without having to spend a dime. Here is a site providing tons of free themes for Wordpress and most of them allows you to preview before you download.

Eventually, if your blog grows you should be able to fork out for your own custom theme, or maybe even just a premium one, however the wealth of free themes available will have you browsing for ages.

3) Customize it

Having a basic Wordpress theme is one thing, but there are quite a few simple things you can do to make it look totally unique – moving around items in the sidebar and tweaking a few colours can leave you with a theme looking like one of the pros.

Remember to use some of the common plugins around to 'soup up' your blog – things like All in One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps help your blog gain a foothold in the search engines while other plugins like the Top Commentators Widget and Subscribe Remind can help enhance the reader experience.

4) Spell check it, and linkbait!

If you are targeting the English market, yet can't write in English to save your life, you're making a grave mistake. If you are already an established name in the industry that may not be a problem, but for a total newbie blogger starting out, poor spellings and grammar can kill your blog.

Firefox has a nifty little tool that automatically spell checks your work and as for the grammar – reread your post five or six times before it goes live, and then ask a friend or two to read over it for you. If I come across a blog that typze lke this , nd have ccrp grmmr 2, the first thing I click is the small X at the top right of the screen, and others will do the same.

After you've setup a basic blog, remember to promote it! Sure, you could be writing the best content in the world, but if no one sees it it's not of much use. One of the best ways to get your blog out there is to write posts that qualify as genuine link bait – put up quality consistently, or even write a controversial one and then promote the post by doing the normal social bookmarking and you'll be linked to by other blogs in your niche.

If that doesn't work, you could always ask the blog owners to give your post a short mention – if it's good quality, they won't have a problem – you could also become a Top Commentator on various blogs by leaving genuine comments; if people see you writing like you know your topic, they are going to click through to see the blog behind the name.

This is a guest post written by Jason Pereira who blogs at The University Kid and is currently having a RSS contest, where he is giving $150.00 in prizes – check it out!

Want to join the many Guest Posters here on Bloggin-Ads? Check out my Guest Posters page and see if you qualify for free traffic!