While most posts in a blog should be targeted to the niche you are writing about, before opening the blog to the public there should be 2-3 posts that are targeted to a very specific part of your niche and are very high quality. These posts should be the base that the rest of your blog is going to be built on. 

Now that you have started to post content it is important to build a brand for your blog. Not only is it important to have a consistent look for your blog (using graphics and color schemes) but also it is also important to have a consistent feel to your posts. One of the most important factors in keeping readers and converting visitors into subscribers is to have a consistent brand. This does not mean that all post should be the same, but almost all posts should have a consistent flow and feel.

A great example of branding is JohnCow.com. This blog has a great graphical brand as well as contextual brand. The writer(s) is very constant and most posts have a very John Cow feel to them. The readers of this blog always know what to expect from them and are hardly ever let down!

Once you have a good base of content it is time to release your blog to the public. Having good content alone will not attract visitors; you will have to promote your blog. There are many ways to get first time visitors, some are very easy and free, and some are complicated and expensive. It is important to figure out what your promotional budget is in terms of money and time.

Using Pay Per Click advertising can attract a quick surge of visitors, but it can also be expensive. If you feel like you will be able to convert those visitors into some sort of income right away this is a great way to go. On the other hand if you want to build up your readership before you try to monazite your blog (this is the method I suggest) there are many free methods.

Social Bookmarking sites have become one of the most powerful ways to gain free exposure to potential readers. Websites such as Digg, Stumble Upon and Del.icio.us allow you to show off your bookmarks and other users will visit the websites you suggest. When starting a blog I would highly suggest looking into social bookmarking and using them to their full potential.

Another way to promote your new blog is to leave comments on blogs that are related to your niche. Most blogs will allow you to leave a link to your blog when commenting. This will not lead to a large amount of traffic, but the small amount of traffic that it will lead to could lead to even more traffic. If those readers like your site, they may blog about one of your posts and traffic could grow from that as well.

It is also important to make sure that your blog is search engine friendly. One of the most important things to do is create an XML sitemap and let the search engines know about it. You can use a plugin to accomplish this, such as “Google XML Sitemaps”. Getting a high listing in search engines can often take a long time, but it is important to be set up to allow it to happen!

Using these methods to promote your blog will lead to traffic growth and the more your traffic grows the better the chance is that you can attract advertisers and start to make money on your blog. At any time you can place PPC advertisements on your blog, like AdsSnse, and you may even make a little bit of money off these ads.

The problem with CPC ads is you have little control over what is shown. When you have a decent amount of traffic I have found it is best to sell advertising space on your blog for a monthly fee. This type of advertising guarantees you income and gives you full control over content. If your blog has a lot of traffic, finding advertisers in your niche should be easy. Allow the market to set the price of your advertisements, and do not place so much advertisements on your blog that they become distracting!

Of course there is much more to advertising than this brief overview, so keep an eye on this blog for our Creative and Effective Advertising series!

Now get out there and BLOG!

Now that you have a great plan in place and have set up your blog it is now time to customize it.  Since the most popular blog management system is WordPress I am going to focus on it.  There are 3 major ways to customize your WordPress blog; themes, theme customization, and plugins. 

The appearance of any WordPress blog can be extremely easy to alter and there are nearly endless options for its appearance.  WordPress has built in a function that allows themes to be added to a WordPress blog and it will quickly and easily alter the appearance and often times the functionality of the blog.

There are many free WordPress themes available on the Internet and there are premium themes that you can buy as well.  Doing a quick Google search will find themes that work for just about any niche.

Once you have found the theme that you want to use follow these instructions to set it up:

• Download theme
  • If the file is zipped, unzip the file
• Upload the files to the theme folder
  • Main blog folder > wp-content > themes
• Log into your WordPress Blog
• Click on the Design tab
• Click on the theme tab
• Select the theme you just uploaded

Thats it!  The theme is now set up and you could begin to post on this new theme, but many people like to customize their blog even further.

Each theme can be customized to fit your needs.  Some people like to change the colors of the text, the links, or get very deep into the coding of the theme and heavily modify the theme.  To do this type of customization you need to be familiar with HTML, CSS and PHP.  These tasks are beyond this post, but there are many references you can find online to help you with that.

Once you have your blog looking the way you want it to, it is time to install some plugins.  Plugins are programs that add, or even remove, functionality to WordPress.  They range from adding a top commenter section to the blog to filtering out spam.

Some of the plugins I use on all my blogs are Akismet (a spam filter), Crawl Rate Tracker (tracks how often your blog is visited by a search engine spider) and FeedBurner FeedSmith (a plugin that helps track and organize RSS subscriptions).  There are far more plugins than this that are very useful and many can be found by doing a simple Google search.

The installation of a plugin is very similar to themes:

• Download plugin
  • If the file is zipped, unzip the file
• Upload the file to the plugin folder
  • Main blog folder > wp-content > themes
• Log into your WordPress blog
• Click on the Plugin Tab
• Select the Plugin you just uploaded
• Activate it and follow instructions included with activated

Now that you have you blog looking and working the way you want it is time to start to add content and promote it!  Stay tuned for part 4.

Now that you have sat down and figured out why you are going to blog, what niche you are going to blog about, what you are going to write about in that niche and what is going to make your blog unique it is time to set up the blog! When Setting up a blog there are 3 major things to consider, the domain name, the web host, and the Content Management System, CMS.

The first thing you have to be concerned with is your domain name.  The domain name is what your entire blog is going to be centered around and is how people will remember your site.  It is important that the domain name be relevant to the niche, memorable, and even catchy.  Once you have you domain name picked out you have to register it.

I recommend, and use, GoDaddy.com for all domain name registrations.  All you have to do is type in the domain name and see if it is available.  If it is, the registration process takes less than 5 minutes!  If you use GoDaddy.com  the promo code OYH3 will make each .com domain name $6.99 a year.

Once you have your domain name registered the next thing to consider is your web host.  There are thousands of host out there and many of them are quite good.  When picking a web host the things that are important to look for are the following:

• Amount of Ad-On domains allowed
• Amount of databases allowed
• Amount of bandwidth allowed

These are the most important.  Ad-On domains allow you to use the same hosting account for multiple domains and websites.  This is very useful because once you start one blog, many people want to start another.  And if you are starting multiple blogs, it is best to have the ability to use multiple databases.

Bandwidth is usually not that important to a new blog, but as a blog grows bandwidth can become very important.  If a blog becomes very popular and exceeds its bandwidth allotment substantial charges can be encored.  

The web host we use and recommend is HostGator.com.  We have found them to be extremely reliable and meet all of our needs.

Once you set up your hosting account (takes about 5 minutes with HostGator.com and most other web hosts) you have to set your domain names DNS servers.  This is a very simple process and, again, should only take about 5 minutes.  If you are using HostGator.com as your web host and GoDaddy.com  as your domain registrar here is how you do set up your DNS servers:

• HostGator.com will email you your DNS server names
  • Usually something like NS80.HostGator.com
• Log into your GoDaddy.com account
• Click on the My Domains Tab
• Find the domain you are setting up the DNS Server for
• Click on the domain, then click the Name server icon
• Input the DNS Server into the supplied field

If you don’t not use your recommended web host and domain registrar the process is fairly similar for all of them.

Now that you have your hosting plan and domain name set up it is time to set up your Content Management System (CMS).  For blogs there are 3 main CMS systems in use, Joomla, Blogger, and WordPress.  WordPress is by far the most popular and it is the easiest to use and easiest to customize so I will focus on it.

Many web hosts, HostGator.com included, have a program that will automaticly install WordPress for you, but if you do not have a host that will do that or you want to install it yourself I would highly suggest reading the instructions that come with WordPress. 

The basic method of setting up WordPress on your server is as follows:

• Download the most recent version of WordPress ( http://www.wordpress.org/download)
• Unzip the file onto your hard drive
• Set up a database on your server (see instructions provided by host and WordPress)
• Edit the Config.php file to reflect database settings
• Upload all WordPress files
• Goto your domain name and follow on screen instructions

On average the setup process takes about 15-20 minutes. 

Now that your blog is set up, it is time to customize it!  Stay tuned for part 3!

When starting a blog planning is essential to success. A potential blogger must first ask themselves 3 questions, and the answers to these questions will help build a long term success plan. Write the questions down and answer them.

The first question a potential blogger must ask their self is “why do I want to start a blog?” Do you want to start a blog to make money? Do you want to start a blog to share your opinion? Is your blog going to be your artistic outlet to the world? 

Next question is “What subject do I want to write about?” Finding a niche to write about is important. Blogs that discuss anything and everything are very rarely successful. It is important to have focus and it is important to keep your blog in focus.

Now that you know why you are starting the blog and what niche you are going to blog about “What am I going to write about in this niche?” 

Finaly, “What is going to make my blog unique?” There are tons of blogs on the Internet right now, what is going to make yours unique?

Now that you have these questions answered it is time to put the answers to work to build a plan. I will give an example of a blog I built for a specific subject that has become quite popular in its niche.

Here where my answers:

Why do I want to start a blog: To share my experiences traveling around Florida.
What subject do I want to write about: Florida Travel
What will I write about: My personal experiences traveling around Florida on the weekends.
What will make my blog unique: Personal experience with recommendations and reviews that are not sales pitches.

I sat down with the information above and built a plan around them. I already travel around Florida on the weekends so that part of the plan was covered, but I planned to document everything I did, review places I went, and share my opinion on everything I did.

The blog has focus and is unique in the travel related blog niche. Now using the same 4 questions I answered sit down and formulate a plan for you blog. In the next part of this blog series we will discuss setting up the actual blog.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!

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