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Becoming A Professional Blogger Was Never As Easy As Today

Submitted by Administrator on February 17, 2007 - 1:52pm in

One of the most frequent questions I'm ever asked by people who are unfamiliar with blogging is 'You make money doing this?'

It's a rather frequent question, at first it was hard to explain what I do. But now its getting easier. It's also getting easier and easier to build high quality sites. Mostly because I understand how to do it. My biggest mistake when I ventured out was to create a bunch of little sites and then losing focus on all of them and getting overwhelmed and giving up.

No need to panic though I tried and tried again. The best way to go about professional blogging is very simple. Find a niche you love.

I can't stress it enough. No need to fear there are plenty of untamed niches to be conquered. You just have to be creative. I'd love to share with you how to find your niche but I really can't so let me explain to you the tools I use to create a killer website that will elevate me from the status of blogger to professional publisher.

1. Instant Domain Search
This is easily my favorite tool for branding. It's great to find catchy domain names that are short. I recently used it to pull a 5 letter domain out of the hat and a few months later I have a growing strong brand.

My biggest piece of advice is don't build a website based around a popular adsense keyword. Build a website around a niche that you love that you can create a brand around. If your looking for advice on building a site to monetize with adsense you are going to want to find someone else to get advice from. I make some money with adsense but in all honesty. It's not even close to being my number one income provider.

2. Pick up an industry related magazine

Go to the supermarket or a local bookstore. Find the closest magazine you can to your niche. Devour this magazine for a week before ever making a single blog post.

3. Learn how to craft good headlines

There are some great tutorials on how to craft good headlines. Many great books have been written about crafting headlines. My favorite way to learn how to craft good headlines is to pick up the magazine you just bought at the bookstore or supermarket and emulate their style.

Personally when I think of headlines the one person I consider an expert is Brian Clark .

4. Create Flagship Content

I can't stress how important it is to create flagship content . Chris Garrett has been my biggest inspiration on this. I've personally seen how valuable flagship content is to a new website, and to pushing out and growing an old website.

5. Marketing Your Website

Creating flagship content, crafting great headlines, and creating a powerful brand isn't good enough. You have to make a positive effort to market your website. Marketing your website is one of the most important things you can do. And to be honest its time to start asking yourself why are you writting. If you are writting to become a professional publisher than you need to spend about as much time marketing your product as you do producing it. This is smart business practice. Your blog, or website is your product. Don't waste it. Start marketing now. The leading SEO's in the industry have a huge leap on you. They have all marched over and created power accounts on all the leading social media websites. The reason they have done this is because they understand the importance of strong marketing. I'd love to share with you all the secrets to marketing your site but we will have to save that for another day. Instead take the time and read Lee Oden's 25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog.

I'm sure I have more ideas but this is a great start to becoming a real publisher not just an adsense money maker. Feel free to ping me via private message and get a conversation going.

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Flagship content and online

Submitted by Ahmed Bilal on February 17, 2007 - 3:55pm.

Flagship content and online networking / blog marketing are the two biggest keys to this. In fact, you can even say that writing headlines is part of flagship content, and doing research (on niche and domain) is part of marketing.

So basically, it all boils down to creating value and then doing your level best to spread the word.

Of course, it's not as simple as saying that :)

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Yeah it takes work and I

Submitted by Administrator on February 17, 2007 - 4:06pm.

Yeah it takes work and I believe there is a misunderstanding about it. I mean its easy to publish a blog. It's harder to publish a great blog.

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Hello David, Excellent post.

Submitted by trieditmyself on February 17, 2007 - 5:20pm.

Hello David,

Excellent post. I am a new blogger, and I think that 'flagship content' and marketing are very important to the success of any blog, and as a new blogger I think this is where I should focus my attention. What are your thoughts?

Jose
blog.trieditmyself.com

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As a new blogger absolutely

Submitted by Chris Garrett on February 17, 2007 - 6:52pm.

As a new blogger absolutely concentrate on what David writes above but especially creating a good store of valuable content. When someone visits a new blog they will decide if to subscribe or not based on what they find there. A "coming soon" post is not going to cut it ;O)

I recently updated the killer flagship content article into a full ebook because while the original article caught peoples imagination I got asked a lot of questions in the period since it was published, and now flagship content is even more important than ever with more and more blogs launching.

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this is a great start to

Submitted by Ahmed Bilal on February 17, 2007 - 7:26pm.

this is a great start to becoming a real publisher not just an adsense money maker

Just want to point out that there's nothing actually 'wrong' with being an adsense money maker - yes, many of them are scrapers and spammers, but there are plenty of honest people too who are trying to set up a passive income system.

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David -- good post... just a

Submitted by allen074 on February 17, 2007 - 8:04pm.

David -- good post... just a note... in life we should always do what we love not just for blogging right?

Years ago I went to a leadership workshop by John Maxwell (hes awesome), and he told everyone... do what you love. Well, I always thought that you should do what makes you money. But it's true, when you do what you love, it makes life better.

Of course, you have to be able to earn a living too.

This is what I am trying to do with CenterNetworks.

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I agree Ahmed. I just know

Submitted by Administrator on February 17, 2007 - 8:11pm.

I agree Ahmed. I just know from a personal standpoint I'm not a great adsenser.

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Allen absolutely if we

Submitted by Administrator on February 17, 2007 - 8:11pm.

Allen absolutely if we aren't doing what we love we shouldnt be doing at all. I'd rather be a poor man doing what I love than a rich man doing what I hate.

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I'd rather be a poor man

Submitted by Ahmed Bilal on February 17, 2007 - 8:39pm.

I'd rather be a poor man doing what I love than a rich man doing what I hate.

The grass is always greener on the other side, ainnit?

If you're poor, you'd do whatever it takes to improve your condition. When money stops being an issue, you focus on other ways to improve your condition.

Having said that, this is not a place for philosophy :)

Just to add to the post - people often talk about not knowing how to do certain things, such as writing 'pillar articles' or getting traffic to their sites.

There's hardly any excuse left now, is there?

Chris G's flagship content ebook, plus Lee Oden's marketing tips mean that all you have to do is follow the instructions. Even if you focus on one of Lee's tips every day, at the end of the month your blog will be far better placed in its niche, in search engines and in the blogosphere than it was when you started.

Actually, if you need more blog marketing tips, here another list - 30 traffic generation tips . One a day gets you through the month and will do wonders for increasing traffic to your blog.

You've got the tools, you've got the instructions, all that's needed is action.

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David, As you first made

Submitted by Micah Sparacio on February 17, 2007 - 11:53pm.

David,
As you first made clear to me, one of the greatest things about being a blogger today is the fact that when you write great content, you always have an audience at a site like Reddit or Digg. Plus, with social voting tools like Digg and Reddit, there's a motivating force for writing better content since one can self-generate traffic. In the past, when you had to rely on the (and slow) search engines, it could be discouraging to write a great piece and not get readers.

We shouldn't underestimate the tools that enable new bloggers to stay motivated while building a subscriber base. It's those first couple months that can be the loneliest, but with the right mix of tools, you can make them a lot less lonely.

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@David: what a beautiful bit

Submitted by Raj Dash on February 18, 2007 - 12:11am.

@David: what a beautiful bit of philosphy. I agred, and it's how I've tried to live, for the most part.

@Ahmed; why not philosphy, provided it ties into being a better blogger?

@Allen074: Dr. Marsha Sinetar wrote an amazing book that I live be: "Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow". I've referenced here at Performancing several times, and I reread it whenever I hit a slump or get discouraged that what I'm doing isn't worth it.

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