The Unique Factor

Before you launch your blog and make it available to the public, you will want to customize the way it looks as well as the way it functions, so that it’s unique and different from every other blog out there. While many bloggers choose to purchase the services of custom blog themes, it can get expensive especially if your blog is new and not yet generating an income. Still, if you can afford to go this route, it will truly help set your blog apart.

For the rest of us, we can take advantage of the many premium themes out there that are affordable as well as easy to customize. This very blog is based on a Revolution theme, however with the help of my designer, I was able to take that existing theme and modify it to include a new look and feel, without having to fork over the hundreds of dollars typically required for a custom theme.

You can also customize free themes available online (and there are many to choose from). If you are decent with HTML or css editing, it won’t take more than a few hours to modify the themes color scheme as well as add in a handful of custom graphics such as a logo or a banner – anything to give your blog a look all its own.

One of my favorite places to look for themes is on fellow blogger sites, rather than the popular theme directories.   The reason I tend to seek out smaller networks showcasing free templates is for the obvious reason, that fewer bloggers are likely to be using these themes than in the more popular theme based directories.

Here are a few of the places that you can scout for new blog theme releases.  Some of these sites offer affordable license based themes as well, which can be a wise investment and a lot cheaper than paying for a custom design.

http://www.BlogOhBlog.com

http://www.WPSalon.com

http://www.BloggingPro.com

http://www.BlogsTheme.com

If you are interested in the Revolution series, you’ll be happy to know that they changed their business model over to offering free themes with the option to upgrade for support options. You can check out their current themes by visiting: http://www.RevolutionTwo.com

Keeping On Track

For optimal performance, a blog should be updated on a daily basis. The information uploaded should be unique to that blog and simply not rewritten content from other websites and pages.

Content that is added to the blog should be relevant to the entire topic. If someone is visiting a blog about Internet marketing, they expect to receive tips and advice on starting their journey into that industry.

The last thing they want to read are posts relating to baking, or something completely off topic, so keep that in mind when creating your blogs and try your best to always stay on topic. IF you wish to create posts that aren’t relevant to your blogs primary theme/topic, then create an “off the beaten path’ category and stick your posts in there.

It is important to stick to a posting schedule!

Here are some ideas on when to post:

Updating the blog is necessary to maintain readers. Content should be updated on a daily basis, preferably in the morning or evening before of the area that most of the demographics are in.

In order to keep your blog filled with fresh content, consider using WordPress’s built in “content drip’ system that enables you to write a bunch of posts today, and have them appear one day a time (you can set up the date and time from within your WordPress admin panel).

That way, you aren’t restricted to posting every day and can still ensure that your blog is maintained.

Consider monitoring the traffic of the blog to view the most active times as well as the pages and posts that are receiving the most attention. This will easily give you an idea on what your visitors are interested in and you can then create additional posts or provide extensive coverage on those topics.

As for the length of your blog posts, there isn’t a minimum or maximum rule, you simply blog and once you feel you have covered the topic enough, save it, and post it. If you want to keep your blog posts trimmed down but wish to still cover a topic in great detail, you can always create a series of blog posts and link to each other so that your visitors can navigate through a series of posts on each topic.

Above and beyond everything, have fun blogging and keep in mind that even if your blog is focused around an online business, it should still be enjoyable and not something you dread keeping up with. If you end up with blogger burn-out, take a break and when you feel inspired to post again, create a weeks worth of content in a single sitting so you are free to work on your other projects.

Required Skills

You will need to learn the basics of Internet Marketing, train yourself exactly how to set up and manage your blog, utilize search engine ranking techniques, and implement tools and plugins to beef up your blog and promote interaction with those that visit.

These skills are the minimum required to make money from a blog, advanced programming and marketing skills will help the blog excel. Of course, even basic to intermediate knowledge of these processes and programs can create a blog that can easily become monetized.

Forums can be a great way to learn about creating a blog. Webmaster forums are full of information regarding SEO marketing and content, as well as gaining contacts in the industry, offering advertisements and obtaining help writing content for the blog.

This is a great way to learn the business. Some suggest joining the forums, and learning and listening before launching the blog.

The truth is, there is much money to be made from the internet – and a minority of people who know the secrets about how to make this money. Working a day-job, at home – can yield a high five figure income for those who put valid effort into their endeavours.

Ninety percent of blogs have the capability to have become a valid source of income. Blogs have the capability to earn hundreds of dollars per month, based on revenue from page views alone. Of course, there are other ways to use the blog as a means to create income, which will be discussed further.

There are many other ways that a blog can be used to develop a lucrative income, these include:

• Selling Graphic Advertisements to Consumers
• Selling Text Advertisements
• Hosting Links
• Paid Posting Services for Companies and Businesses
• Reviews of products and website
• Sponsored products and services
• Donations

All of these means of income can increase the blog’s revenue up to fifty percent. Further in the text we will discuss the methods of implementing these income boosts, into the design and function of the blog.

Blogging 101

WordPress is the premier choice for beginner bloggers hoping to monetize the blogs in the future. The interactive features and user-friendly setup make the blog creation process easy. WordPress allows the most freedom and has the best tools that can be used to easily transform the blog into a money-earning machine.

WordPress allows the user to monitor traffic, have integrated themes as well as use themes created by designers to personalize the website.

Tags are integrated into the posts, which allow other uses to find the blog based on the subjects that they are interested in. Tags for the website should be chosen for relevance to the content found within the blog.

Upgrading to a wordpress premium account has many available features that are beneficial to the user as it can be customized with a domain name, creating a memorable brand and comes with the added bonus of extra storage and ad-free sites.

WordPress allows the user to code pages in a variety of formats; html, css or php. Using wordpress allows the blog owner to have control over the blog – as the blog is an asset and should be looked upon as such.

When beginning your first blog, it is important to start with at least ten blog posts to ensure keywords are abundant within the text and visitors have enough information for reference to stay longer than the few moments that most visitors spend on a website.

The content posted to the blog should be engaging. It is important to remember that the first paragraph of each blog entry should capture the attention of the reader, and spark enough interest to continue reading the entire post, as well as visiting other pages – or following the internal links that are embedded in the post.

Ensuring that the blog is being created with a sufficient amount of content, and traffic is being directed to the blog from a variety of sources will help the blog to become a success.

After you have been blogging for a period of time, and regular traffic has been developed for the website, it could be time to turn the blog into a small business.

Remember, creating a moneymaking blog takes hard work and dedication; it must be treated like any other job in order to become a success.

SEO Plugins For Your Blog

If you have been trying to make your blog search engine friendly, you will want to install some of the better plugins focused on making your blog more user friendly as well as ranking higher within search engines like Google or Yahoo.

Here is a list of handy plugins that will help you with blog based SEO:

1) SEO Title Tag

Title tags are arguably the most important of the on-page factors for search engine optimization (”SEO”). It blows my mind how post titles are also used as title tags by WordPress, considering that post titles should be catchy, pithy, and short-and-sweet; whereas title tags should incorporate synonyms and alternate phrases to capture additional search visibility. This plugin provides a simple solution.

2) Related Posts Plugin
Features a listing of related posts at the bottom of each page or post, keeping visitors on your site longer.

3) Ultimate Tag Warrior
You can easily use categories and the tag system within one blog making it easier to search through specific tags you have created for previous posts and pages.

Ultimate Tag Warrior is a multi-headed hydra of a plugin. It allows you to add tags either through the Write Post page in wordpress in a tag box, on posts using an AJAXy box, and in posts using special syntax from external editors (or internally, if you’d like).

From the write post page, you can also get suggestions for tags using the Yahoo! keyword suggestion service.Once you’ve got your tags entered; you enter a realm of interesting ways of doing things with your tags. At the complicated end, AJAXy search is included with the download (it may need some customisation to match your theme). At the simpler end, you can automagically have tags included at the top and bottom of your posts without making changes to themes.

4) Head META Description Plugin
This plugin offers an automatic meta description tag for your blog by attaching a description depending on the request (query)

Head META Description provides four user-configurable variables.

These are:

$default_blog_desc
Setting this overrides the use of the tagline (Options > General in WordPress) for the default description on your blog. If you don’t use the tagline, edit this line. Default value is ” (empty).

$post_desc_length
Length of the description in words for post and Page descriptions (the first # words of the excerpt, or post content). Default value is 20.

$post_use_excerpt
This tells the plugin to use the excerpt for description on posts, if one exists. Set this to 0 (zero) to force post content as description. Default is 1.

$custom_desc_key

Name of the custom field key used to override post or Page excerpts for descriptions. Default is description.
You can change these variables by editing the plugin file online through the plugin editor (Plugins > Plugin Editor, then select the plugin file), or offline in a text editor.

5) Google Sitemaps
This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.