Do you blog or are you thinking about starting a new blog? No matter who you are and what you blog about, here are 51 essential tips for your success.
- Stick to Schedule: Sticking to schedule is very important. Once you build a schedule, it will become like a habit and you will find it easy to post. It is not necessary to post everyday, just find a good schedule and then follow it.
- Avoid Too Many Ads: Too many ads may put visitors away. Have ads at important areas like near posts and navigation bar. If possible, rotate them. Regular visitors tend to become ad-blind but at the same time do not add too much ads.
- Use Article Marketing: Write quality articles around the web. Try to keep the quality equal to if not more than your blog posts and mention your blog address in your bio. At first, traffic may seem very less but soon, it will grow.
- Organize Contests: Organize contests for your blog’s promotion. This method is best if you offer some money too. Dollars attract more people than anything else!
- Leave Comments on Other Blogs: Comments are a good source of traffic. Leave comments on other blogs. These days, most blog services let you enter your site address. So, if you leave something really useful or interesting, you can get good traffic.
- Respond to Comments: In starting, when people leave comments on your blog, they should not feel like writing on a dead blog. Respond to their comments personally. This will help you retain the regular visitors.
- Add your Profile: Add your profile or atleast some information about you. This is very important for new blogs. People should know something about you.
- Use Contact Form: Contact forms are a good way to interact. While giving your e-mail address may send you spam, contact forms keep your e-mail address private and at the same time let users respond. One such good service is Kontactr ( www.kontactr.com )
- Give Full RSS Feeds: Readers do not like partial RSS feeds. Give full RSS feeds. You can always monetize the feeds.
- E-Mail Subscriptions: E-mail subscriptions are also useful. Do not miss them.
- Keep Layout Clean: Do not add too much widgets to your sidebar. Try to use only the essentials like Categories List, Blogroll and Recent Posts.
- Use a good Template: “First impression is the last impression.” So, use a good template. Your blog should look attractive. A good website for free Blogger and Premium Wordpress Templates is eblogtemplates ( www.eblogtemplates.com ). Unlike other sites where templates are not good quality or not compitable with some browsers, this site has very professional templates. See one of their templates in action at Blog of an Unorthodox Loyalist ( www.i-blog-ul.blogspot.com )
- Call for Action:If you want comments, ask for them. 99% of the visitors do not contribute. So, ask for whatever you want them to do.
- Avoid Large Images: Anything over 72 dpi is overkill for web. If you have to use large images, use small versions of them on home page and link to large versions. Do not use HTML to resize the image because if you use this method, first big image will be downloaded and then resized. There are many free softwares like Irfan View( www.irfanview.com) that let you resize the images.
- 4 Second Rule: If a new visitor can not figure out what your blog is about in 4 seconds, you have failed to do the job. Stick to the topic you choose and use a subtitle for introduction.
- Give a Personal Touch: Your readers should not feel like reading the content written by a ghost. Give a personal touch to your posts. If you are explaining something, add your personal experiences. they add extra depth to posts
- Wait before you start Affiliate Marketing: Do not start affiliate marketing from the word go. First, build yourself a name. People will trust someone whom they know about.
- Permalinks: If you use blogger, then do not worry about this. Wordpress users, change the default permalink format to something more useful like the blogger one.
- Submit: Do not wait for search engines to pick up your site. submit your site manually to the major three. Also, submit your blog to major blog directories like Blog Catalog ( www.blogcatalog.com) and My Blog log ( www.mybloglog.com )
- Maintain Quality: Maintain a standard in your posts. Proof read to make sure that there are no minor mistakes left.
- Quantity: Do not focus entirely on Quality. Keep posting regularly.
- Spend Time: More time you spend writing a post, more better it will be. Spend some time writing your posts and check twice for mistakes.
- Be a part of Community: Do not be a loner. Join blog communities like Blog Catalog ( www.blogcatalog.com ) where you can promote your blog.
- Best Things are not always Free: While free hosting is good option at first, you should get your own domain name once you start earning regularly. Own domain reflects that you are serious about your blog.
- Read More: More you read, more you learn. Subscribe to blogs about blogging and learn from them. Here is the list of top 25 blogs about blogging: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/top-25-blogs-about-blogging/
- Make Fonts Readable: Make your blog readable. If people can’t read it properly, they will never bother to visit again.
- Participate in Blog Carnivals: Submit you blog to the carnivals at http://blogcarnival.com/ . If you get featured, you will get some traffic and authority.
- Avoid Badges: Avoid adding badges to your blog. They are images, so they increase load times. Secondly, what use are they for readers?
- Check Blog with Different Browsers: Download all the popular browsers and check your blog with them. Sometimes templates may have problems with browsers.
- Participate in Forums: Participate in blog forums and use your blog addresses in your signatures.
- Yahoo! Answers: Answer questions related to the topic of your blog and leave the blog link at the end of answer. There is a lot of traffic at Answers, so you might get good traffic for free.
- Do not Cloak Links: When you link to some affiliate product, clearly state this. Do not mix these links with regular links.
- Make Ads a part of Design: Ads should not look much different from the blog design. They should feel like a part of template. Take a look at this blog here: Blog of an Unorthodox Loyalist ( www.i-blog-ul.blogspot.com ) and notice how image ad is merged into header and the text ads feel like a part of template.
- Do not Cloak Ads: Do not use headings like “Click Here” or “Related Links” above ads. State clearly that they are ads by using “Sponsored Links” or “Sponsores” heading at top of contextual ads.
- Analyze your Visitors: Use free services like Google Analytics ( www.googleanalytics.com ) to get information about your visitors. Analyze which sources and countries send most traffic and work upon them.
- Write a “Top x List”: This type of posts usually are more successful than other posts and also rank well on search engines.
- Give More: When writing a “Top x List”, do not stop at just 5/15 tips. Always give more. When you make a list, why not a top 40, top 50 or even top 100 list. Sometimes, numbers will do the job for you.
- Hold Tight: Do not give up easily. Be prepared to get no visitors in begining. Keep blogging.
- Learn from Mistakes: Learn from your and other’s mistakes as fast as you can. It is better to make a mistake in front of few people in starting rather than making a mistake in front of lot of people.
- Keep Blogrolls short: Do not have a long blogroll. Have links that are related to your blog’s content.
- Mention Sources: Mention the sources behind your facts and figures. Always give credit to original author.
- Use Sense of Humor: Do not be much serious. Use your sense of humor.
- Use Pictures: “A picture is worth a thousand words”, so let the pictures talk sometimes. Mix text and pictures.
- Give Your Opinion: If you have had some experience with the thing you are writing about, give your opinion. Tell about your opinion and then ask for their.
- Use Tags and Categories: Tags and Categories make posts more accessible. Always use them.
- Write Interesting Headlines: Headlines are what visitors from search engines notice. So, try to write something interesting.
- Provide Useful Information: Provide useful information to people that they do not know much or very less.
- Link with Caution: Do not link to everyone who asks for a link exchange. First check whether he deserves to be in your (short)link list or not.
- Have your own Style: Do not copy someone else. Have your own style of writing. Reflect this style in your posts.
- Do not Violate Ad-Network Code: If you display ads, do not violate their code. Sooner or later, you will be caught and your online money making oppurtunity will sink.
- You choose Tip Number 51: There are not only 51 blogging tips in this world, there are much more. So, you choose the tip number 51. Write your tip in comments section! I am waiting for your tips!
September 16th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I love your topic here. I have just stumbled and reviewed this post so I hope u get some traffic love. my blog is at
http://www.wizeguyztees.com/blog
September 17th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Gave you “I Like It!” love and also gave you a Yahoo “Buzz up!”.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Very interesting topic…great work, you deserved a buzz and i like there.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I think this will be really useful to a lot of new blogger. Keep up the good work.
September 18th, 2008 at 1:42 am
That a nice tips
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September 18th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Nice tips dude…
check out my blog… let me know ur comments…
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September 18th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
one of the most useful tip post I have read so far.
I will implement some changes to http://properpants.blogspot.com at once.
September 18th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Contests are a great way to get traffic and subscribers. However they are not always easy. I am currently running a 10,000 word post contest over at my blog
http://revenuereservoir.com.
Let me tell you, it is a lot of work and I am not getting all submissions I need. I think I may have to extend the deadline out another month.
Great tips though. I have pretty much most of them and will use this guide to do more. Added this post to my del.icio.us bookmarks
September 19th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Great post. Lots to think about and do! I love your suggested websites; only thing I wish your article could have done differently is to make the links live.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:29 am
I’m glad that dofollow is starting to become a big trend.
I think it restores the natural order of the web where sites link to each other.
I understand why google initially recommended nofollow due to SPAM.
Now that there are several plugins that can protect against spam in a blog,
I no longer see the reason for nofollow.
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