How To Blog Successfully

Ostensibly, How to Split An Atom is about Web 2.0 and its surrounding technologies. In reality, since Web 2.0 is such a loosely defined and all together useless buzz-word, I pretty much have the freedom to write about anything. Today, I am going to answer the question that has been on all of your mind since you got on the interweb. How do I become a Web 2.0 Millionaire, or How to Blog: A Definitive Guide.

This is not a guide for your casual blogger who wants little more out of the experience than to create a platform to share opinions and maybe attract a reader or two in the process. If you fall into this category, the guide can be summarized as such:

• Go to Tumblr.com.
• Sign up for an account.
• Add content until you are blue in the face.
• Get bored.
• Retire from blogging.

For everyone else with the dream of becoming the next John Chow or Mike Arrington (famous bloggers, for those who have just stepped onto the internet), then read on.

Assess Your Skills

Here is a quick checklist to see whether or not you have what it takes to become a famous blogger. The more of these that you can answer yes to the better your odds are going to be. If you score less than two on this impromptu quiz, might I suggest going into a different industry. I hear Oil Futures are really hot these days.

• Do you like to write?
• Do you know how to write?
• Do you have a working knowledge of a specific subject matter or the willingness to learn?
• Do you have a lot of free time on your hands?
• Are you patient?

Number three and number five are by far the most important. The most important skill a blogger, especially a blogger who wants to make a living at this, can have is the willingness to learn. Sometimes, you’ll find yourself reading your 500th guide to increasing your traffic, ready to kill the next person who links you the list of free directories that you must submit your site to when you’ll stumble upon a really exciting tip that you can put to good use.

Patience comes a very close second to the willingness to learn. For a while, unless you are some kind of SEO superstar or you have enough insider information to draw crowds to come read the latest fruit to fall from your grapevine, your traffic is going to be bad. No, let me expand on that, it is going to be really bad. You need to know how to accept this and keep chugging away.

Tip: Blog Carnivals are places where you can submit articles. If you are accepted, links to these articles will be posted on the host site. Not only does this generate traffic but because of the number of carnivals that are syndicated, it will also generate quite a few links back to your site.

Find A Niche

So you are sitting at home wondering: what can I write about? Well, the answer is anything really. As long as you are passionate about the subject matter and know enough about it to write fresh content everyday, the skies are open to you.

Now, lets say you are trying to make money. Then, your options are more limited. Let me tell you a little story about how keywords are sold which might help you choose your niche more wisely.

Advertisers pay the most money for keywords that are going to generate the most profit. Thus, if you write a blog about cutting edge technology like High Definition Television or Premium Stereo Equipment then you are much more likely to generate revenue from the major contextual advertising networks than if you wrote a blog about cheese graters. A few more high yield subjects are:

Law
Real Estate
SEO / Online Marketing
Consumer Electronics

Just think about any blog you have ever seen that has made you want to cringe, either because it looked like it was slapped together from a child’s Make Your First Website kit, or because the content managed to be both mindless and repetitive at the same time. Chances are it is only one of 50 other sites that someone created simply to host Adsense because they knew that the keyword that this site was optimized for would generate high paying contextual advertising.

For all of you who are thinking of taking this route, don’t. Google is taking a pretty hard line against Adsense Arbitrage (see above) and there is no reason to waste time trying to game the system, when the real long term benefit comes from writing about your passions.

Tip: Use mod-rewrite to change the way that your permalinks are presented. Having your articles labeled with www.domain.com/?p=111 is a great way to ruin your search engine placement. If you’re using WordPress go to Admin->Options->Permalink to change how your permalinks are displayed to something prettier, I’d suggest /%category/%postname/.

Pick A Domain

Tip: The most important SEO tip that you can possible get: make sure that your domain name contains the keywords that you want to be found in search engines for.

Buy Your Domain

Now that you have a subject matter to write about, it’s time to pick a domain name. Since this is a definitive guide, I’m going to make your job easier. Use www.GoDaddy.com 
 (this link has my affiliate id in it, share the love). Not only does it provide some of the best service when it comes to domain name registration, but you can also find coupon codes just littering the internet. Most of these codes will save you about a dollar.

Tip: Use code gdbb776 to save 10% off of your next GoDaddy purchase.

Also, on GoDaddy’s website they have a tool that allows you to see whether your award winning name has already been taken. Chances are good that it has been, but here are a few hints to picking an alternative.

• Try to pick a name relating to your subject. If you are writing a Tech Blog, pick something techie.
• Try to pick something that is easily brandable. If you can’t get a keyword into your domain, at least pick one that you can generate a coherent brand around.
• When in doubt, use your name. John Chow did it, and he certainly isn’t complaining.
• Do not use numbers, obscure references, or anything that looks like the subject line to your last spam email.
• Finally, .com is your friend. When you are worrying about building traffic, you will find that it is the most well known and thus the easiest to build around. If you have the option between a slightly less ideal .com name and the perfect .tv name, I’d suggest picking the .com.

Now, as far as their hosting is concerned I am less thrilled, but for hosting you should be using Steel Pixel (hint, hint) anyway.

Choosing Your Platform

VideoJug: How To Set Up Your Own Blog

Tip: Download the All in One SEO Pack to help get your basic WordPress install ready for the search engines.

There are just about as many blogging platforms as there are ways to fail at blogging. I would go through them all, but the only ones that are worth mentioning are WordPress, Typepad and Blogger and if I were to choose hands down which platform that you should pick it would be WordPress.

WordPress is your friend

Why WordPress? That’s easy. It has a thriving community, a constantly updated codebase, and more plugins than you can shake a stick at. Not only that, it is so easy to install that even if your last big internet project was setting up Aunt Myrtle’s AOL account, you probably will be able to figure it out just from reading their guide.

Before even trying to install WordPress you should pick up an FTP Client. Refer to the guide I linked to above for more information about how they work.

Tip: For anyone still intent on using Blogger, check out the video in beginning of this section.

Picking A Template

Tip: Find piles of WordPress Templates here and some substantially more interesting ones here
For me, this is the most important part, primarily because a lot of it is a stylistic decision. Some general tips when picking a template are:

• Pick something that makes your text stand out. People are going to your site to read your content. You want to put that content at center stage.
• Keep it simple. There are a lot of very complicated themes out there, again it is important to remember that your product is text and you don’t want to distract from that with a lot of flash.
• Two columns or three columns? This a difficult choice. The two column look is classic, simple and usually provides amble room for anything you might want to place in a sidebar. Three columns has the advantage of giving you more room for ads at the expense of looking more cluttered.
• A theme is like a marriage, once you pick one you should stick to it. People become used to a certain look and feel from your site. If you dramatically change your theme, be sure to warn your readers ahead of time. Also know that changing your theme is like a divorce and chances are there will be fallout (in the form of losing all the tweeks you made to the old theme).

So that was easy. Now that you have your blog set up the next question you may be asking yourself is how to get people to actually start reading your work. There are books and books worth of advice on how to increase traffic, promote yourself and otherwise become a blogging superstar. For this guide, I am going to avoid talking about PR and instead focus on content and distribution.

Social Bookmarking

Tip: Stumble Upon is a great source for free traffic, find your best material and stumble it. If you don’t know what stumble upon is, read this.

Your best bets when it comes to social bookmarking are Digg, Stumble Upon and Reddit. Chances are most all of your posts will never make it to the front page, but don’t let that discourage you. Simply submitting these posts will likely get you some traffic.

To maximize your odds of getting any particular article picked up by a social bookmarking site, make sure that you do the following:

1. Submit using a catchy (but appropriate title).
2. Only submit your best content, containing original, interesting material.
3. Try to submit to categories that are most appropriate for your content.

Writing

Tip: Add the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin to add tags and make your site Technorati friendly.

In order to submit anything, anywhere you need content. I’ll bet you an iPhone that you think that you know everything there is to writing for a blog. Chances are, if you think it has anything to do with traditional journalism you are pretty solidly mistaken.

When writing a blog post the most important thing to understand is your purpose, and write to that purpose. Generally, posts come in three flavors.

• Sticky
• Summary
• Throw Away

Sticky posts, or “Authority Posts” are the cream of the crop, “this is why you are here” type of posts. For the more pedantic among you here is a description I wrote up a while ago:

These types of post are what they call “link bait”. By providing original content with the “feel” of true authority, it is as likely as not that your articles will naturally be picked up by those searching for the information that you are writing about. The principle is that most blog posts are little more the rehashing of another people’s material, if you can provide original content (or at least good content around a subject that has not been covered in depth) you are better able to draw links organically. Also, since you are writing a large body of text, this gives you more room to do good SEO, internally link to other content and promote the software.

When writing about your subject of interest, you should position yourself as the warm, glowing center of that universe. Where possible, produce content that shows you know what you are talking about. This is the content that users are going to come back for and thus you should put most of your time and effort into ensuring it is as good as possible.

Summary Posts

This is a rehashing of events. This will be the majority of you content unless you have a topic that doesn’t generate news, or you happen to have the type of insider connections necessary to generate original scoops. You really should not be afraid of writing summary posts. What you should do, where possible is to elaborate on these posts as best you can.

If you are talking about a startup, don’t just restate what everyone else is saying — give the company a look, try out their product and then write a article with everything that you have learned independently in mind. Where you once basically had a copy and paste piece, you now have what will pass for unique content.

Tip: Techmeme and sites like it, that aggregate the most “talked about” subjects of the day are good sources for inspiration if your niche allows for it.

Throw Away Posts

These are video clips, pictures and other detritus that you use when you honestly have nothing better to write about. While it is always better to write something than nothing at all, you should try to limit these. Throw away posts are like sweets, they seem great in the short run but if you rely too heavily on them they can be a real toothache.

General Traffic Building

Here are a few tips you might not have known about that might help you drive traffic to your site and generally enjoy the blogging experience more.

Use the top sites in your niche. Find the top blogs in your niche and comment, comment, comment. If you provide constructive comments you can help to draw people to check out your own site. Remember, these are people who are already interested in your niche — they just need a push in the right direction.

Always follow up. Did someone new come to your site? Are you using Blog Catalog or MyBlogLog? If you answer yes to both of these question, then you should always, always be following up with your new users. If you don’t care about your readers then there is really no reason for you to be blogging. Send them messages, send them emails, visit their sites — it’s honestly the least you can do.

Stay focused. Above all else, stay focused on your subject. If you write a blog about Technology, try to avoid unnecessarily delving into your personal life (unless that’s a part of your blogs allure).

And The Most Important Point…

Here at How To Split An Atom I don’t write about SEO too often, nor do a particularly care about the real alchemy behind it (you should do what you can, but don’t stress over every outbound link). What I do know is that if you keep writing, people will keep coming back to your site. The most popular blogs are always those where the content is constantly being updated.

Look at it from the standpoint of the readers. Are you more likely to revisit a site if you know that you’ll have something new each day or one where you can never expect an update.

You don’t have to write all day long if your schedule does not allow. What you should do is to write consistently. Staying consistent is the best way to keep your audience happy.

A-List Blogging

Let me begin by saying I am not by any means an A-List blogger. One of many reasons for this is that I have a day job, and thus am not able to devote a sufficient amount of effort to the task.

In order to make blogging your career, the first thing that you must keep in mind is that it is an uphill battle and no one is going to hold your hand. Now that we have made it this far, lets look at another skills checklist. Are you ready to vie for the A-List?

Skills

• Do you understand that a blog is a brand and you have to be a combination advertiser, marketing firm, programmer and PR representative for this product?
• Do you understand that trial and error are your bread and buttter? You are going to fail far more than you will succeed, and even when you do succeed in one aspect, chances are you have still failed in quite a few others.
• Do you love to write and can you write posts that really add value for your reader? Can you inspire them to be better or give them information that they could not find anywhere else?
• Do you have a unique voice, a unique message, a unique style that is yours and yours alone?

You can go a long way in blogging without any of the above, but without all of them you will never see the kind of overwhelming success that bloggers like Mike Arrington or Steve Pavalina have. It’s a hard fact to believe in, but no one said the truth was easy.

Enjoy What You Do

Before I scare you away, I have to mention a final point that is not on the list. You have to enjoy what you do. If you are writing about a subject for years, it better be a subject that you are excited about, a subject that is expansive enough to allow you creative freedom. I know I have told you that you should choose a niche, but you should ensure that the niche you choose gives you room to breath. Just think about how excited you would be to have to wake up every morning and write a post about Dog Grooming and you’ll see my point. If you aren’t excited about writing it, no one will want to read it.

Generate Great Content

I did not say good content, I did not say OK content, I did not say rehash the best articles of the blogger next door. I said, you must generate great content. If at the end of your post, you read it over and realize that someone, somewhere might have their lives changed (even slightly) by what you have written, then you know you have created compelling content. Now, even if your subject matter is not necessarily the most important thing in the world (Web 2.0) you can still generate fun, interesting and readable content that gives your audience a call to action.

Instead of just skimming the headlines and posting a link to someone else’s work, next time you are thinking of “what I should write” reflect on your own life experience. Honestly, if I wanted to know about the latest in technology news, I’d go to Arstechnica. I read my own blog because How To Split An Atom digs into subjects in a way that many of these blogs do not.

If you want a homework assignment, here it is. Take a look at your subject matter and for an entire day write content without referring to your RSS feed. See what you can come up with on your own, see what you can create that will truly provide a original spin on your subject of interest. Write a few posts and see how it feels not to just be summarizing the latest buzz. When you’re done with that, continue reading this article.

Eat Your Own Dogfood

This is an old saying, popular among the product development set. What it means is that when you create something, you should be your own best user. If you look at your blog objectively and cannot find a single thing in it that you couldn’t find in a more interesting form somewhere else, how can you ever hope for your audience to? The acid test that separates good blogs from great blogs is the question, “what is your featured content?”

Of course, unless you are the greatest writer on the planet, everything that you turn out will not be gold. However, there should be a set of posts that truly represent what your blog stands for. These are the posts that you want to drive readers to.

Every “Authority Post” that you write should have your branding all over it. These posts are your voice, your message, your little window to the world. Make them as perfect as you possibly can.

Community Building

Bloggers cannot exist in a vacuum, just as we rely on ourselves to wake up every morning to write, we rely on our readers to turn on their computers every morning and look at our articles. If you operate as if you are writing to the void, then only the void is going show up to reply. Your next homework assignment, my dear readers, is to really step out of the bubble and explore the blogosphere. Use services like MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog and find other writers in your area of expertise. Talk with them, network with them, form relationships and trade information.

Bloggers are, in general, a kindly bunch and we are very willing to help those who approach us with integrity. You are not going out there to spam the world with your URL, you are going out there to add value to potential contributors. In the last week, I have visited more blogs than I can think of and the point of all these visits has not been to hand out my link, it has been to see what else was happening in Web 2.0. Too often we get myopia, thinking that the big bloggers are the only ones that could possibly have content worthy of writing about. When we forget that one of the reasons that blogging began was as an answer to institutionalized journalism, we can clearly see our error.

Build your blog one reader at a time. Not only will this help you form a more committed user base, but it will also make you feel better about the task that you have decided to undertake. What is nicer, to write to 500,000 nameless faces or to write to 50,000 people who you know truly find your content valuable?

More On Social Media

Digg, Reddit and the rest are not a one stop solution to your traffic problems. On the off chance that you do get one of your articles published on these networks, you have to be ready for it. If the only other thing on your blog are pictures of your cute kitty, then chances are no one is going to come back to see the rest. Use every traffic influx as an opportunity to retain new users.

What I want you to do today is to come up with a list of things that you would like to change about your blog. Maybe you want to alter the font so that it’s more readable, or take out a few of the less useful sidebar widgets. Maybe you want to draw attention to your “Authority Posts” by moving them up, or improve your layout to maximize the visibility of your most important content. Regardless of what your final goals end up being, compose this list. Then, as soon as possible, begin acting on it.

You never know when one of your stories will be picked up by one of the major bookmarking sites, and you certainly don’t want to get caught with your metaphorical pants down when it does.

A final word on social media. The traffic you drive from Digg (just to use an example), is not nearly as valuable as the traffic that you generate from your community building efforts. Digg traffic is often in the market for one shot entertainment. There is nothing wrong with this, but only a small fraction of them will become regular users of your blog from a single Digg article. What Digg does allow you to do is play the law of averages. Since so many people are flooding your site all at once, you can be pretty certain that some small fraction of them will stick around for the ride.

Monetize

Why do you blog?

If your answer is to become filthy rich, might I suggest you consider a lucrative career as a consultant in your field of interest. I am not saying that you can’t become fairly wealthy blogging, I am merely pointing out that chances are unlikely that you will. What your blog can be, however, is a source of a good amount of discretionary income. If you look at it like this, you never know, one day you might wake up and find that your “discretionary income” is now your major source of real income.

There are a lot of other fine places to learn the ins and outs of each of the major Ad Networks. Might I suggest hopping over to John Chow’s site and giving some of them a look. What I will give you, however, is a brief overview of how to monetize at particular traffic levels.

Low Traffic

If you are pulling in a few hundred uniques per day, your major source of income will come in the form of Google Adsense. Adsense revenue is a function of scale. The more pageviews you get, the higher your income is going to be. If you happen to write about a “lucrative topic” that generates high paying ads, then lucky you. Everyone will tell you that for a good long time, Adsense is going to be your primary source of income. Everyone is right.

Another really interesting strategy for monetization is Kontera. They are one of several companies that use in-text, contextual advertising. If you have seen a double underlined piece of text floating around a blog, then you’ve seen Kontera in action. I mention them, instead of IntelliTxt, because they require far less traffic in order to accept you into their network.

Medium Traffic

When you hit PR 5 or 6 and are pulling in a few hundred thousand pageviews a month you should really start looking into Text Link Ads. Basically, advertisers buy a text link on your site and you’re paid a residual every month for the privilege of hosting it. The actual compensation is entirely dependent on the vital statistics of your blog. If you have a high PR, Alexa Score and Technorati rating you are going to receive more cash than if these numbers need a bit of work.

High Levels Traffic

Federated Media is the company that handles sites like TechCrunch and Digg, they broker ads for you and you receive large amount of revenue per thousand pageviews. At this point in your career, you are probably able to sell ads on your own and work out deals with interested companies. Use your discretion, keep on your guard and use some of the income to hire someone to manage your wealth. You’ll thank me later.

What About Sponsored Posts?

This is a choice you’ll have to make on your own. I am not personally against sponsored posting, traditional media has been doing the same sort of thing for years now. I don’t do sponsored posts on this blog, at the moment, because I feel it distracts from my content. Take a look at PayPerPost for more details on sponsored posting.

Another form of sponsored posting that you may have less of a moral aversion against are sponsored reviews. ReviewMe offers a service where people can purchase reviews from you for a set price. This price is based on the same traffic and PR metrics that advertising is.

Take The High Road

There are a lot of people out there who are going to give you advice on how to “explode your traffic”. What I will tell you is that there is just no substitute for good content. With the right SEO, you can make it to the top of Google’s search results page for whatever you want, but if people go to your site and find nothing but garbage they won’t be coming back.

Look at this from a business perspective. It is a lot cheaper to retain customers than to have to constantly go out and find new ones. It’s a lot more effective to use your time generating compelling content than to waste it looking for every new trick that someone is trying to sell you on.

Innovate

Whether it is coming up with great new topics to write about, changing your layout to be more user friendly or establishing new vectors to communicate with your readers, the single most important part of any business venture (which is what you should see your blog as) is to innovate. If you want your traffic to grow, you have to grow as a writer. It’s easy to believe that you are doing the absolute best that you can, but until you are impressed with every aspect if your site you know there is room for improvement.

You have to be willing to get rid of things that aren’t working and to highlight things that are. Did you discover that readers just aren’t clicking on your ads? Or maybe that they are only reading one article and then leaving? Find out why, use tools like MyBlogLog and Google Analytics to trace your problems back to their source and fix them.You might discover that one article is responsible for the majority of your traffic or that moving an ad unit up a little, substantially increases the click thru rate. Blogging is about being willing to be completely wrong and much like Google, being able to know when you’re right.

Be Honest With Yourself

After a while you’re going to have to realize that some blogs simply will not make you a million dollars or make you rich and famous. Either the topic is too narrowly focused, or the format you have chosen simply does not leave you room to write your best. As an “A-List” blogger to be, you have to be willing to use your resources in the best way possible. Even if your blog will never be the “best” in its field, you can still use it as a platform to generate contacts and network with people who may help to make your next venture all the better.

You can also use one blog as a springboard for your next blog, using everything that you have learned to assure that you don’t make the same mistakes twice.

Homework

Take an entire day to write content without referring to your RSS feed, see how it feels to be plucking something completely original from your brain.

Go and visit ten blogs you have never heard of before. See how they do things, take notes, comment, talk to these writers and see how you can help each other.

Come up with a list of features that you would like to change about your blog, be critical.

Summary

• Content is king, if you don’t believe that your content is better than your competition then no one else will.
• Go into the community and use other sites like your own, participate and communicate with other blogger.
• Social bookmarking sites are only one very small vector in an overall blog marketing strategy.
• Develop a monetization strategy, and design your blog to be ready for each new step.
• Innovate, do not speculate. If you want to build traffic you should grow as a writer, not try to trick users into visiting your site.
• Be honest with yourself, this holds true on all aspects of your life.

Web 2.0 Round

You have reached the end of the How To Split An Atom guide to blogging. Here is some required reading to get you through the rest of the day.

Posted in: tips n trick, Webmaster Tips

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