I have noticed from my personal experience that having a strategy and being prepared ensures that I am more successful with that venture. I believe that blogging is no different. You can either just dive into it and go along with the flow where ever the road takes you. Or you can be strategic about it and plan ahead. I put together a list of articles to read along with some things that I feel that you need to know that will put you in a better position to have a more successful blog.
Education and Research
My biggest issue when it came to making money online was that old saying.
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. – Donald Rumsfeld“
After I realized what I need to know the hard part was over with and then I started focusing on education and research. Please be aware that when you decide to blog you are stepping into a whole new field of study and that it requires education. My advice would be that you take notes as you read this article along with the articles mentioned in this post. I truly believe that if you were to dedicate a few hours for researching and taking notes you would gather enough information to start your blog off on the right foot and increase your chances of making money from your blog.
Your Blogging Niche and How to Find It
Finding your blogging niche is one of the most crucial elements when it comes to blogging. You have a lot of blogs out there that have several different niches on them. The best way to go about is to pick one niche based on your interest and knowledge. The following article talks about how to pick a niche.
List of 100+ Niches and a Method on How to Pick One
How to Set up a Blog
How to use the dashboard of the blogging platform of your choice is really important. The following articles focus mostly on WordPress since I feel it is the best one out there. But here are some tips on how to set up your blog.
How to Launch a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog in 20 Minutes Or Less
WordPress Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips
How to Write Effective and Professional Articles
Writing unique and effective articles from day one will save you some time in the future where you won’t have to go back and rewrite them as I did. I had to go back in my archives and rewrite some older posts once I got better, including this one. The following article talks about how to write truly unique articles that Google and other search engines love.
How to Write Great Articles From Your Own Unique Perspective
Things You Should Know About Today’s SEO
I threw the word “today’s” in there since some of the old methods either don’t work anymore or can go as far as harming you. Rest assure that the following article gives tips about what SEO is as of 2015 and what to take in consideration.
SEO Ranking Factors and Rank Correlations 2014 – Google U.S.
Creating a Business Strategy
Here is the fun part. Creating strategies for yourself. These don’t have to be professional since you are not presenting them to anybody. Just having a clear understanding of your goals and how to get there is enough. The following articles talk about what steps and precautions to take to ensure that your blog is launched on the right foot. If you have a good business strategy that knows what can happen, you can get traffic from day one, you might even make money. It all depends on your blogging business strategy.
Let me give you an idea of what I mean. If you have a product in relation to your niche that you put up as soon as the blog is launched you can make money the same day, assuming that you have made your blog highly anticipated before it’s even launched. This is possible; it’s just up to you to come up with the strategy. Below is an article that gives some insights on the topic.
5 Steps to a Successful Blog – A First-Time Blogger’s Business Plan
Finding Your Target Audience
Here is one that I thought of recently. I have never taken this consideration for myself before and realized this as writing this post. Who do you write for? Something I need to be asking myself. Experienced bloggers or rookie bloggers? My blog contains both but honestly I don’t get to many rookie bloggers unless I send them to my blog myself and want to give them advice. Asking yourself who you are writing for is important. Below are a few articles on how to find your target audience. More so directed if you already have a blog, but you can still get some juicy info out of them.
How to Define Your Blog’s Target Audience
Things to Avoid
We went over majority of the things you should do but none of the things you shouldn’t; below you will find some articles on the things you should avoid when it comes to blogging.
34 Expert Bloggers Reveal the Biggest SEO Mistakes to Avoid in 2015
What to Do Before You Start Your Blog
I’m sure that this post might have left some things out so I went ahead and added some articles that share a different perspective. Below you can find additional advice on what to do before you start your blog that may not have been mentioned here.
11 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My First Blog
The Blog Editor’s Cheat Sheet: What to Do Before, During and After Your Post Goes Live
Summary
Some of the things that I feel like a blogger has to know before they create their first, or next blog have been outlined in this post. Here is a quick overview.
- Figure out your niche.
- Learn how to use the dashboard and set up your blog effectively.
- Learn how to write effective articles.
- Learn today’s SEO.
- Create a business plan.
- Find your audience.
- Things to avoid.
The a hardest part for me was not knowing what I need to know so therefore I went ahead and put together a list of things that I believe you should know before you start your first blog and keep you from making the same mistakes I have. But this resource list is not just for new bloggers, some more experienced bloggers might be considering starting a new blog in a different niche. If you are experienced it’s true that you might skip some things in this post but there also are some information that you might find useful.
This concludes my resource list of the things you need to know in order to give your blog a good start. Be sure to check out my other posts on how to get some free content in order to be even more prepared.
How to Get Free Useful Content without Getting Penalized by Google
Now it’s time to hear from you. What is some of your advice that you think I might have left out and what are some of your experiences? Let me know in the comment section.
This is a very comprehensive set of guidelines. When I started blogging 4 years ago, I just jumped right in without knowing what I was doing. Thanks for sharing.
Not a problem, the same was the case with me. I tried set a game plan but I was limited on knowledge back then and when I look back at it those are the things I wished I knew and did before I launched my blog.
Thank you for the comment.
Nice write up. Well, I guess we all did the same mistake right? Dive straight into blogging and think that we know it all. And maybe a few weeks or a month later, we realize we are all wrong 🙂
But again, we learned from our mistakes (hopefully).
Thanks for summing that up!
Reginald
Hi Reginald,
I can’t say that I regret how things turned out since I learned from my mistakes. I tried to be prepared before I created my blog but I didn’t know nearly enough as I do now.
That’s the reason I’m going back now and editing my older posts. Not only to provide correct up-to-date information, but also edit my writing.
I’m aware it still has grammatical errors but at least the post doesn’t mislead you like my older one would have.
So yes, I rewrote that so people don’t go and make the same mistakes as me.
Thank you for your comment.
Hey mate,
Glad you are doing and thank you for your reply.
Talking about re-editing, that is a pain in the ***! Haha
Been there, done that. Crazy job but fun!
Reginald
It is a pain, and fun as you say. But I feel like I can’t move forward till I handle things in the past. Since I know more now, I don’t feel comfortable having misleading information on my blog. Not on purpose or anything, just ’cause I didn’t know better. As of now and me replying to you I have 3 more revisions to go! Once they are done all the info will be up to date. 🙂
Thank you for your comment.
Hi Bernard Z,
This post is really helpful for all those who are thinking to create their own new blog. Research study will help you to reach your target market. Thanks for sharing the points.
Hi Sarmista,
I think the issue is that some people feel as if blogging is a hobby while in reality in order to make money from it, it needs to be treated as a business.
Thank you for stopping by.
Hi Bernard!
I can be added to the list of people who’ve “dived in head first” into blogging without prior education nor Research. Looking back I think that at the time I was too excited about the prospects of starting my own website and didn’t spend time to set up the necessary foundations.
Hi Nicole,
I hear this all the time. Haha. Well hopefully this will reach the right person. If I can prevent one individual from making the mistakes I’ve made then I will feel accomplished.
Thank you for your comment.