I have found myself asking this question a lot lately. Am I providing purpose to the world?
Your blog can effect humanity in one of three ways:

• Make the world better
• Not change the world at all
• Make the world worse

How your blog can make the world a better place

Simply put, provide solutions. Every single person who comes to your blog is there for a reason, even your most avid readers, mom and dad. If you can provide even one person with a solution to their problem, then you’re making the world a better place. However, providing solutions without making money is not good business for a Problogger.

Capitalizing on the solutions you are providing to readers with products and services that will support your purpose or add to your readers lives can take you from hobby blogger to Problogger.

How your blog will not change the world

Ineffective blogging will likely never change the world. I read a lot of blogs and come across several that are just ineffective. Everything from poor design and layout, making it harder for your readers to navigate, to bad customer service will kill the entire purpose of your blog.

Designing the blog for your readers and using every social networking platform available, such as Twitter and Facebook, to communicate with your readers will take your blog from blah to world changing.

How your blog can make the world worse

I’m going to assume none of you fit into this category so I’ll speak freely here. If you’ve set up a blog as a personal platform to get attention or only make money from scammy products, then you’re making the world worse. You’re not providing any value to the blogoshpere or humanity.

Stop right now and find a career path where you can provide value to the world. It’s not all about money. I’m a firm believer if you offer real solutions and care about your readers the money will follow and you’ll have fun in the process.

So, What Would Happen To The World Without Your Blog?

Leave a comment and let me know, and what you can change to add even more value to your readers.

Jason Ulsrud blogs at forty2fifty, which covers life’s journey into mid-life.  Jason’s also putting together his next blog at guyknowledgy.com to talk about “everyday guy” things from chicks and chrome to wine and love.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. What Motivates You To Blog?
2. A Perspective on World Events [#21]
3. Starting a Blog In Order To Make Money – Lost Cause?

What if I didn’t have it? If you take all that I’ve learned over my last 12 years of blogging and told me to start over again from scratch, how would I go about it?

Let me walk you through what I’d do. In fact, this is very similar to what I did when I launched this very blog a couple of years ago.

Establish Your Platform

In order to begin reaching out in your market, you need to have a home base – your blog. So, set up some hosting and install Wordpress. Then, I would look around the available themes and pick one I like. It is OK to get a pre-designed theme, but I’d recommend getting one that is close to what you want – with plans to have some modifications done to it.

Don’t get too bogged down in theme selection. This is something you can always change at any time, so there is no need to get paralyzed at this step.

I would also plan to cheaply hire somebody to get a few things done design-wise:

1. Set up a contest for logo design on 99Designs.com. Get a logo designed for your blog.
2. Hire somebody on Elance.com or 99Designs.com to perform whatever theme customizations you may want. Be as specific as you can when posting your project.

The costs of doing the above are pretty minimal and, quite frankly, you shouldn’t try to avoid those costs if you are at all serious about your blog. It beats the hell out of spinning your wheels and trying to perform technical feats on your blog when you have no idea what you’re doing. Too many bloggers bog down on the technical stuff and it is completely unnecessary – especially when you have an army of designers and developers around the world who can do this stuff for you for peanuts.

Create Your Pillar Content

Even while your blog’s design is being worked on, create your blog’s pillar content. This is 5-10 really good posts on your topic. Don’t hold back. This content is going to show people you’re worth reading when they arrive on your blog. Make it really good.

While you’re at it, create your idea file so that you have a BUNCH of post ideas waiting in the wings. You want to make sure you won’t run out of things to talk about.

Connect Your Blog

Set up your mailing list (preferably with a quality company like Aweber). Get that opt-in form onto the blog from Day 1.

Also, be sure to connect your blog up to social media so that your readers can share your stuff across the net. Make it extremely easy and attractive to do so.

Branch Out

Now is the time to begin establishing yourself. Spend some time and track down the major players in your market. The top blogs and authority sites. Then, get in touch.

Contact these bloggers and quickly introduce yourself. Be personable, comment on their blog, be a member of their community, join their list. When you contact them, comment on their stuff and offer any services you can provide (for free).

Then, offer to guest post. You want to begin guest posting on authority blogs in your market as much as you can. Combine this with active commenting and active social media participation.

Find Out What Is Needed & Wanted

Through survey of whatever audience you are developing as well as active observation and participation in the community, find out what they need and want. What are the goals of the market? What are they missing? Frustrations? Fears?

Once you find this information out, you deliver. Provide content which helps the market with what they need and want. And develop potential product ideas along the same line for future monetization.

In addition to blog posts, explore delivery in other mediums. Video? Webinars?

When To Monetize

In the beginning, it is more important to build an audience than to try to squeeze juice from a turnip. Putting banners on a low-traffic blog doesn’t earn you much at all, and if you’ve chosen your market properly, you’ll have better monetization options available to you than banners anyway (affiliate promos and your own product offerings).

What I would do is have plans for the first product. Work toward it. You may even explore offering a consulting option on your blog for personal assistance in your market. Even if nobody buys, it still establishes with your growing audience that you are a person who is engaged in business. Combine this with your mailing list and you should be well setting the stage for a future ramp up.

As you build the list, stay in steady contact. Don’t let the list go cold. Maintain your personal brand and, as much as possible, a 2-way interaction with your growing tribe. Use the list to bring people back into your blog and ask them to post comments.

Pitfalls

Some traps I see bloggers fall into that you should avoid are:

1. Not connecting with other bloggers. The key to growth in any niche is forming connections with the people already in that niche. If you just start blogging and hope people notice, you’ll probably get frustrated.
2. Not starting the mailing list. I can’t overstate the importance of this. A mailing list is going to prove invaluable in your future monetization plans, but it is also going to help you immensely in growing your traffic and keeping your tribe intact as they come by. Without the list, you have no ability to mobilize your audience in any particular direction.
3. Getting bogged down in technical crap. When your car breaks, chances are you don’t try to fix it yourself unless you know what you’re doing. So, why do it with your blog? Why is it that most people attempt to set up their own blogs and designs when they have no earthly idea what they’re doing? Just hire somebody! It is so cheap! And if you’re not willing to fork over a couple hundred bucks or so on this, perhaps you need to question how serious you really are about this whole thing to begin with. Blogs are a commodity, and the people setting them up are, too. So, don’t approach this any different than you would other things in your life. If you want it and don’t know how to do it, outsource.
4. Not Thinking Ahead. What’s your plan to monetize? Do you have a general strategy on how you plan to grow the blog? There isn’t anything complicated about this stuff. It mostly comes down to just doing it. Everything you’d ever want to know how to do can be found online, so don’t let little things bog you down.

Honestly, I don’t think getting a blog off the ground is that difficult. I think the reason people get mired down with it is because they get distracted by shiny objects and all the info overload out there, drawing in different directions. At the same time, they try to do everything by themselves.

It is important to think with the goal in mind. The most successful people out there are goal-oriented and will just do what is necessary to get there. Things like blog setup are just little hurdles to the larger picture, and they treat it as such. When you realize that there are a myriad of ways to get those things done FOR YOU, you’ll never let it be a stop. As time goes on, you’ll gain more experience and you’ll become more self-sufficient.

Does it take time to do this? Yeah, but not necessarily as long as you might think. It doesn’t have to take a long time to get a blog off the ground with respectable traffic. It can actually be done pretty quickly. The key lies in quality content and lots of outreach into the existing marketplace in your niche. Reach out and draw them in.

Happy blogging.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Why Bloggers Should Start a Mailing List
2. Quick Start Guide To Making Money Online
3. You Can’t Make Six Figures By Blogging

Many of the times, the conclusion ends up as follows: The people making good money online are the ones who talk about making money online.

It leads to a huge catch-22. It leads to skepticism. But, is it true?

Why Its A Myth

In my opinion, it is a myth. My own experience tells me it is. I was making a six figure income as a blogger in the technology market – WELL before I ever uttered the first word about blogging for money.

The problem is that people looking to make money often have tunnel vision. Because they’re interested in making money, they read other blogs about making money. And who is going to talk about how much money they make? Yes, people trying to gain credibility in the market. It just makes sense.

I never talked about my income as a blogger until I decided to enter this market. Bloggers in other markets don’t go around talking about their incomes, so it never crosses anybody’s radar.

The whole thing leads to a false impression that only “make money” blogs have the potential to make money. It looks like circular logic, but it is only because those are the blogs you’re paying attention to – not because those are the only blogs making an income.

If you were interested in making money as a blogger, chances are you would never read PCMech.com. And that just proves my point.

The Reason The Market Works

The “make money online” market is just one market of many. It happens to be a good one, however.

In the Six Figure Blogger Blueprint, I go into more detail about what makes a good market. In short, the criteria are:

1. An emotional push/pull toward increased pleasure in life.
2. An emotional pull away from a fear.

Any market with financial viability has to have core emotional drivers that will drive the prospect into action when it comes time to sell them something.

For all of us, making more money translates into freedom, power, ability to increase pleasure in our lives. It goes right to the heart of the matter in terms of a viable market. Same with markets like health (a pull away from the fear of having health issues), dating (the push toward a life partner, which is an emotional need), etc.

Many times, hobby markets can work well, too. Sometimes, the audience is smaller, but for people who practice the same hobby, there is an emotional desire to fulfill those goals.

News blogs don’t work because there isn’t an emotional need to help with them. Blogs on news, politics, celebrities – these types of things are inherently hard to monetize because they lack core emotional drivers into any item you can help them with.

Remember, a MARKET is any collective group of people, united by similar goals, who are looking for solutions, and are willing to pay for it.

So, it just so happens that “make money” is a good market for the same exact reasons any other market with core emotional drivers is a good market. But, it certainly isn’t exclusive.

Finding YOUR Market

Let’s look at that definition for a market one more time…

A MARKET is any collective group of people, united by similar goals, who are looking for solutions, and are willing to pay for it.

So, start out with a list of your passions, interests, areas of expertise. If you aren’t an expert in something, you can still enter the market if you are indeed highly interested in it. You will need the high level of interest to drive yourself to learning more as you go.

Now, with a prospective subject in mind, ask yourself:

1. What are the goals/fears of this market?
2. How can I help them with that?
3. Are they looking for solutions?
4. Are people buying solutions in this market?

The answers to these questions will be based on gut feelings mixed with your own research into the market.

The most common mistakes I see bloggers make is:

1. Blogging about whatever is interesting to them and then looking to magically make money from it after the fact.
2. Entering a market where there is some interest, but they’ve never evaluated whether the audience is looking for any kind of solution that they can provide.
3. Looking for a market where there is nobody doing it. In reality, if there is nobody in the market, there is probably a reason for that. Having “competition” is a good thing.

Lastly, I’ll end off with this comment…

Do not get into a paralysis over this. Market selection is not an exact science. I’ve had people email me asking my opinion of a market, as if they think its going to result in a magic payday just because I say it would be a good idea. No!

You can enter a good market and still screw it up if you don’t do the right things to get off the ground. It is also very possible that you could enter a market and not totally know if it’ll work when you start out. The trick is to do SOMETHING. You judge the market with some of the above criteria, do some basic research, and if you think it might work, give it a try. You can always change your mind. It isn’t as if you’re stuck with any blog you start for the rest of your life!

But, if you are interested in making money as a blogger, begin to think of your topic selection as a MARKET. Judge it accordingly. You’ll get better results.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Is “Make Money Online” The Secret To Traffic?
2. Quick Start Guide To Making Money Online
3. #1 “Secret” To Making Money Online

1. Not evaluating the niche of the blog before starting it, then coming in AFTER the fact to figure out how to make money with it.
2. Packing so many banner ads onto a blog that none of them work. Too often, this comes from the mistaken assumption that you can maximize revenue by simply packing more on the page. Don’t underrate white space on your blog. You don’t have to fill every corner of your theme with a visual component and it is often a bad idea to even try.
3. Not posting often enough. No clarification needed.
4. Writing in long, justified paragraphs. There is nothing harder to read than a super-long paragraph which is justified on both the left and right. Instead, use short sentences and short paragraphs. Break points up with headers and make use of bullet points.
5. Not having a real mailing list for your blog. And, no, Feedburner doesn’t count.
6. Not offering a bribe to get people onto your mailing list. Something like “Subscribe to get cool stuff” doesn’t work. Would YOU subscribe to your own list if you saw your blog? Probably not.
7. Not writing with any purpose. Some blogs are just brain dumps of the blogger. No rhyme or reason to the content on the site, just whatever is interesting that day. Doesn’t usually work for building a loyal audience.
8. Mis-using social media. Some bloggers do nothing by auto-tweet their posts to Twitter or (worse) pre-schedule tweets from their blog archives to tweet all day. That is no different than Twitter spam. If you are a blogger and are not using social media to be SOCIAL, then you’re making a mistake.

So, do you have any you think should be added? Do you take issue with any of them?

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Top 8 Mistakes Of Blogger Newbs
2. Top 5 Mistakes People Make On Twitter
3. Why Bloggers Should Start a Mailing List

I would be the first one to admit that Twitter has had a huge impact on both my blog and our business this last year. In fact, I get tremendous amounts of traffic to Blog For Profit every time I do a post when I let my twitter followers know about it. And each and every time one of my followers retweets my new post, I see a spike in traffic too.

I will also admit I love the conversations which are centered around one of my post on twitter. But, and you know there is always going to be a but. I also think twitter can take away from the conversations we like to see on our blogs too.

We would all like to think everyone who is anyone uses Twitter on a daily basis. Everyone doesn’t. And that is why I want to make sure those on twitter don’t forget the importance of the conversations which take place on our blogs. Yes, twitter is social and we do have conversations there. And yes, we can all network there and make connections. However, connecting with our target audience is so much more than just using twitter.

Blogging is Social Media

Don’t let anyone tell you blogging is not social media. Blogging was social media before social media even knew about social media. What sets blogging apart from other online social media venues is the fact we can post our thoughts or our message and provide a way for our target audience to engage in that conversation. Our audience is given a means to not only engage with us, but to engage with each other. As bloggers we have to continue to encourage and make it very easy for our readers to comment on our blogs.

Blogging also has another huge advantage over tools like twitter. Mainly we are not limited to 140 characters. Not that this is a bad thing. Usually we are more focused in our messages with twitter than we are with other tools we use. However, at the same time there are those conversations or subjects when we need to be more wordy and long winded.

We all spend such valuable time planning a post, researching a post, drafting and outlining a post and then actually sitting down to write the post. What many of us forget to do is to make sure the conversation is taken to the next level. We tend to overlook the one huge benefit of blogging and that is the two-way conversation we can have with our audience. Blogging is social because of the very fact we can have a conversation there. It is not as instant as twitter might be. But that does not eliminate the importance of blogging.

What can we do as bloggers to get more comments?

• Ask for them – Not rocket science, but it is the first step in getting comments. Invite your readers to leave comments by just asking. I do this sometimes at the very end of a blog post. Don’t be afraid to ask.
• Ask questions and seek opinion – How many people are going to ignore an opportunity to give them opinion? Very few. And asking a question is an indication you might need help. And people just have a natural urge to help by answering questions. Use this technique, it works.
• Comment on comments – Your responsibility as the blog publisher does not stop when you hit the post/publish button and send your post to the blog. If you expect to get comments, you have to participate in the conversation too. I try to make it a point to respond to as many of the comments I get as I can. If our readers have taken the time to stop what they are doing to leave a comment, I feel I have an obligation to do the same back. If you are not getting comments, are responding to the comments which do come in? If you are not, then why should your readers leave any in the first place.
• Stir the pot from time to time – Everyone of your readers have a topic they are passionate about. As you do. Don’t be afraid to get the “juices” flowing by bringing up such a topic and giving your take on it. “Often some of my best interactions come from topics that people are decidedly passionate about.” However, be careful on this one too. Don’t get carried away with what topic you might blog about. While I love a good political argument like the next guy, I would not blog about it on my blog. Some topics don’t belong on a business blog.
• Don’t require your readers to register to comment – This is one of those things people are doing which really just causes me to get angry. You are accomplishing nothing other then keeping busy bloggers from leaving a comment on your blog. And don’t use those stupid CAPTCHA spam filters either. For one thing, spammers are finding ways around them. And two, they are a pain in the butt for your commenters. There are a number of times I have attempted to put in the required letters and it does not work. If you make it difficult for your readers to comment, they won’t. It is your responsibility as the blogger to moderate your comments.
• Moderate your comments – You have a responsibility to your readers to keep out spam and nasty comments. If you don’t moderate your comments your readers are going to assume you don’t care and will not take the time to leave a comment.
• Allow your readers to subscribe to comments – One of the keys to getting your readers involved in the conversation and engaged is to give them a way to keep up on the conversation. Give them a way to subscribe to the comments in a post and hopefully they will come back and comment on the comments. On Blog For Profit, we use a WordPress plugin called simply Subscribe to Comments. And readers do subscribe to comments to see what is being said after they comment.
• Give your commenters something in return – Commenters leave comments for a couple of reasons. One, they want to leave a comment because they do want to get involved in the conversation. Two, they leave a comment to get noticed. And there are tools available which allow you to give both of these commenters something in return for engaging in the conversation. We use another WordPress plugin called Commentluv. This plugin shows a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment.

Just as important as what we can do to get more comments is, how can we leave better comments on other blogs. If we as bloggers are going to have the position that commenting is a beneficial activity of our day. Than, we as bloggers need to make sure we are participating in the conversation taking place out in the blog world in our particular niche or market. We have to practice what we preach.

Leaving better comments on the blogs you read

• Read the full post – Before you should even consider leaving a comment, make sure you read the entire post. I know this sounds very apparent. However, I don’t know how many times I have seen comments on my own blog and on those I am reading completely miss the entire conversation taking place. It is very easy to skim content, jump to conclusions and flame the other blogger. Don’t be one of those commenters who don’t take the time to really digest what the blogger was saying.
• Read all of the other comments – This may be both difficult and very time consuming. If you really want to add to the conversation and leave a better comment, you have to know and understand how all of the content, the post and the comments are moving the conversation. What you may find is the comments are actually doing a better job of taking the conversation where it needs to go than the original post. Don’t look like a bumbling idiot because you did not take the time to read the comments either.
• Add a new twist – If you feel you can add something new to the conversation, do so. As I mentioned above, a lot of times the comments are better than the original post. Don be afraid to add a new perspective.
• Come back and respond – Just because you left a comment, doesn’t mean you should forget about it and not come back. Whether you can subscribe to the comments or not. Make sure you come back and respond to anyone who might reply to or add to your comment. I often will leave a blog post I have commented on open in my browser. I then might refresh the page a couple of times that day to see if anyone may have replied to my comment. If they have I will try to respond or even answer a question they may have asked. Remember, commenting on other blogs is a great way to build your own authority and social proof.
• DO NOT LINKBAIT – The temptation to leave a comment for the sake of leaving a comment on a heavily visited blog is there. We all think about it. But don’t do it just to get a link. You will look like just what you are. A linkbaiter. If you can’t leave a comment with more than, ‘great blog post,’ don’t leave anything at all.

Blogging is here to stay. Twitter is here to stay. And whether we like it or not, social media and even the phrase “social media” is here to stay too. What we have to do as those who blog and who use tools like twitter is to make sure we meld them together so they both become cohesive and not separate from each other. While the traffic we get from twitter is forced by its very design to visit our blogs when we post a link. The traffic from RSS or our email subscribers is not. If we want the conversations to go further than just having someone read our blogs, we have do take the necessary steps to ensure this happens.

As bloggers, if we want to be competitive in a very competitive market, we have to go further in our actions to engage our readers and our niche. We have to be proactive in our actions and not sit around and complain we are not getting traffic, visitors, readers and subscribers. And we need to not complain about not getting comments and go out of our way to encourage them and make it easy for our readers to do so.

Please take the time to add to the conversation contained in this post and leave your comments. While I love all the positive ones we get. I certainly don’t want to discourage you to disagree. We all grow from the conversation, even if might take a different view.

About the author Grant Griffiths is founder of Blog For Profit and co-founder of Headway, a premium WordPress Theme/Framework. You can follow Grant on twitter at @grantgriffiths

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. The Secret To Attracting More Comments On Your Blog
2. Driving Behavior, Not Conversation
3. Scoble is Wrong About Blog Comments Being Dead

As you are reading this, you are probably aware by now that 90% of bloggers don’t really succeed and make money while only like 10% of them are the ones that do very well with their blog. Making money online through blogging is really cool, and there’s no doubt about it. That’s perhaps the reason why with all the other millions of ways to make money online, most of us choose blogging.

Unfortunately, success cannot take all of us. It can only take very few people and these are people who are dedicated and are doing things correctly. That being said, we can therefore assume that most bloggers are doing it incorrectly. I have been a good observer and these are some of the things I found out why they most bloggers don’t make progress:

• Blog Commenting is their no.1 marketing tactic – Don’t get me wrong, I comment too on blogs but not too many of them. I just think the days where you can leave a comment on one blog and then get 50 hits because of that is long over. People who mostly do commenting are mad people who try to leave as much comments as possible. With that being said, they don’t really care about your comments. Commenting is good, but to make it your main promotion tactic is just absurd.
• Looking at the stats everyday – Again, analyzing your stats from Analytics is crucial part on making necessary changes for the benefit of the blog and there’s nothing wrong in it. It only becomes wrong when you do it every day. Studying your own stats is good but when it’s hurting your productivity then it’s not worth doing it any more. Don’t look at your stats every day. You can do it weekly, every 2 weeks or even every month.
• No Goal, No Idea where they are heading – Goal setting is very important in succeeding in every business. When you ask most bloggers what their goals are they usually respond and say “to make more money online”. Proper goal? No! Things that are so generic like “become a popular blogger” or “get rich” can make you fail. Make sure you target REALISTIC goals and list tasks on how you can attain them. For example, this year one of my goals is to reach the 1,000 RSS mark and one of the tasks that I need to do to attain them is by guest posting. Realistic? You judge.
• Wrong Mentality and Not Understanding the game well – It’s kind of funny but most bloggers follow this process. Write, promote, write some more, write even more, hope to get more traffic, still continue writing, and then get more Adsense clicks/advertising income. To be honest, it took me some time to get that this process is stupid. If you’re still following that old process then I’m afraid you’re wasting a lot of your precious time in it.
• They are impatient – Blogging, for me is the hardest way to make money online. Why? Because you have to put a lot of work at the start! I mean I can take the PPC Affiliate marketing route and make money immediately (or lose some immediately), I can take clients and use my graphic skills and make money too w/o risking anything. As you can see blogging is really a long term work. Look at the top bloggers, it took them almost a year before they started really getting it going. I even love to say we’re very lucky by now because things are not that hard as it used to be. If you’re seeing blogging as a get-rich quick business them I’m afraid you’re not gonna last in this market for long.

With all those other millions of people trying to succeed in blogging, it’s definitely a jungle out there. But I don’t really believe there’s a tight competition because I know what I’m doing is something that can set me apart from the others. How about you? Are you in the same boat with bloggers that are doing the wrong things? What do you think?

This article is written by Melvin. Melvin is a young entrepreneur and blogger who blogs @ MelvinBlog.comMelvin is a young blogger and internet marketer who is in this space since 2007. He writes @ MelvinBlog.com where he shares all his useful stuffs. He has recently done an eBook entitled Blog Marketing for Fame which has received a lot of positive responses. The eBook is free for newsletter subscribers so subscribe now!

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Bloggers, What Went Wrong?
2. Are Bloggers Just Crappy Business People?
3. Should Bloggers Feel Guilty For Making Money?

I preface this whole post by saying that it depends on your intentions. If you want to ultimately make money with your blog, then pay close attention. If you just want to get high comment counts and some fans, then this post might rub you the wrong way. Or at least give you another way of looking at things.

So, here it is…

If you want your blog audience to do certain things for you, then you need to attract the kind of people who will be wiling to do that. To a certain extent, the content you release on your blog should be designed to cultivate the attitude that you want your audience to have.

In the past, I’ve said that you have to “train” your audience. Perhaps the word “train” brings with it odd connotations. Obviously, every person who reads a blog is a living, breathing human being with their own sets of opinions and background. The idea of “training” them might seem a bit derogatory. But, it isn’t. It is no different than releasing content designed for a certain demographic on a TV commercial.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

• If you want people to help spread your message on Facebook or Twitter, you wouldn’t want to attract an audience who doesn’t like social media and thinks it is a fad. So, writing posts which rip into Twitter as a fad would be a bad idea if you’re going to ask people to retweet your stuff.
• If you want to make money from your blog, then writing posts which bash online marketing and the offering of products on a blog would be counter-intuitive. You would end up creating an audience of jaded people who will react harshly the moment you try to make a buck.

I can name a few blogs off the top of my head where the owners have monetary aims with those blogs (to one degree or another), yet the content they publish is going to naturally attract skeptical, jaded people. These bloggers are sentencing themselves to low income from their blogs.

It is easy to drive conversation. It is easy to jack up your comment counts. It is easy to build up a clique of frequent commenters who will cheer you on with everything you post. But, high comment counts don’t make you any money. Getting lots of repeat traffic doesn’t pay your bills.

It is easy to jack up your comments by getting negative or chiming in on controversial topics. This is why political blogs can get high involvement, but often make crappy business models. In some crowds, just by taking the contrarian viewpoint, you’ll drum up comments and cheerleaders. But, it doesn’t pay the bills. And, once again, you’re building up an audience based around complaints. An audience based around negativity isn’t good for business.

Here are the lessons I’m trying to convey today:

1. Think about the kind of audience you want and tailor your content to them. It isn’t just about attracting people to your blog, but attracting the RIGHT people to your blog.
2. Don’t chase the almighty comment unless you’ve thought first about how your strategy for earning that comment is affecting the overall vibe of your blog readership.
3. Large, dedicated audiences mean two things – jack and crap – IF it isn’t the kind of audience which will help you achieve the goals you want for your blog.

This is the difference between blogging with a strategy in mind, or blogging for the short-term gratification of your stats and a few back-pats in your comments.

This also makes it clear why it is so important to know exactly what you’re going for before delving in with your blogging. Blogging for high numbers is not the same thing as blogging as a real business. High numbers and high income do not necessarily go together in this business, as counter-intuitive as that may seem.

Anyway, something to think about.

What do you think?

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Twitter is Great, But Take The Conversation Back To Your Blog
2. Top 3 Suggestions For Driving Traffic To Your Blog
3. Free Versus Paid? When Do You Charge?

It was a lot of fun being on the show. We touched on a lot of different aspects of blogging successfully and we also talked about trends. The full show is an hour long, and I thought I would just embed it here so you can have a listen.

I hope you enjoy, and if you want to subscribe to Deborah’s show, you can do that right here. She does the show every week, live on Blog Talk Radio.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Guest Appearance on Tampa Radio Show
2. Important Skill in Life: Saying NO
3. A Blogger’s Checklist for Guest Posting On Other Blogs

Many blogs accept guest posts for one very obvious reason – free, quality content is obviously appealing to their owners. And speaking as an author, it’s healthy for the ego to see your work on a high profile and well respected blog. But what are the quantifiable benefits and how can you measure them?

I will not offer any guidelines on how to write your guest post, as David has already written a full guest post checklist. Instead I’ll focus on how to monitor the results once published.

We’ll investigate the impact of a guest post I wrote on a medium size blog (an Alexa traffic rank of 30,000). The post for this experiment was related to our newly launched website, and aimed at increasing awareness. The results were measured one week after the post was published.

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll focus on 3 key areas:

Exposure Across The Web

I used Google to assess this metric. A search for an exact match of my post’s first sentence (i.e. unique to me) returned 170+ results, spread across 100+ different sites.

A random audit of 10 of these sites showed that 90% had retained my bio, and hence links back to our site.

This demonstrates the impact of new, unique content on the web – people will jump at the chance to use it. RSS feeds allow new posts to spread like wildfire, and although some of these sites were low quality they all raise awareness of your name, site or brand. Especially as their automated nature usually maintains the original post including any valuable links.

Awareness On Social Networks

As I was promoting a brand new site, up until this point there had been a deafening silence on Twitter when searching for my site name. We hadn’t yet proactively used Twitter at this point, so any new tweets would have been as a result of the guest post. This is where things got interesting.

A Twitter search returned over 20 third party tweets which directly referenced my article – this didn’t seem too positive until I looked into the senders. Between them, they had a cumulative 20,000+ followers.

That’s a decent volume of messages sent out within a week, and demonstrates the potential of guest posting to multiply via the social networks.

Direct Traffic

Finally, the old fashioned measure of success – visitors arriving direct from the blog itself. For this I used Google Analytics data to measure both basic volumes and conversion numbers using Goals. Our site has a quick registration process, and so a completed sign-up was my measure of success.

The stats showed that over the 7 days just under 400 unique visitors had been referred by the blog. Not spectacular volumes, but the key was the quality. Of these visitors, 33% completed the goal. Now that is seriously motivated traffic, compared to our overall conversion rate of between 1% and 2%.

In Conclusion

These results need to be read in context. I wrote a very targeted post, on a very targeted blog. However, this meant that the direct traffic alone justified the time spent. The other awareness and exposure factors were the cherry on the top.

So if you’ve considered guest posting but never actually submitted anything, maybe these results will give you the motivation to get writing. Alternatively, if you are a regular guest writer perhaps it’s time you monitored the results of your work, to help focus your efforts on the blogs that really deliver.

Andy Walton has over 10 years experience working for some of the UK’s biggest ecommerce businesses. He’s co-founder of Wikinut, a new publishing platform that pays lifetime royalties to authors for their writing on a massive range of topics.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. A Blogger’s Checklist for Guest Posting On Other Blogs
2. TubeMogul Offering Video Posting to Multiple Sites
3. Importance of Your Log Files

This is a guest post by TheInfoPreneur, at TheInfoPreneur.net.

I joined the military when I was 16 years old. I served all over the world in a variety of roles. I have served along side some of the bravest, funniest and toughest people (men and women) in the world. Those 10 years have given me 10 lifetimes of memories. Some bad, some good and some downright scary.

Every event I have been involved in has taught me a valuable lesson. Sometimes I didn’t realize that straight away, but it taught me the fundamentals of success in any walk of life.

Loyalty

Loyalty doesn’t mean supporting your favorite team whether they win or lose. It doesn’t even mean going to see them even if they are playing away. Loyalty means having some one’s back even if it means sacrificing something you want to do. Loyalty is the ability to drop everything when someone needs you.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Common sense plays a factor in this. For instance, loyalty doesn’t mean if your friend asks you for money and you don’t have it, you rob a bank. But what it does mean, if they need something, you are their first port of call and you do everything you can to do right by them. Making sure they get what’s right for them at that time is loyalty.

Are you loyal to your readers or customers? Do you give back as much as you take? Being loyal to my readers is everything to me. It creates an unbreakable bond. Loyalty is for life.

Integrity

A lot of people think about integrity in different ways. To me, it’s having the bravery to stand up for what you believe in and stick to it, no matter what the crowd is telling you to think.

I was a Physical Training Instructor in the military and I once failed the Commanding Officer of the camp in front of 1,500 soldiers on an annual fitness test. I failed other soldiers too, but the focus and heat was on me because I was the one who decided to take on the highest rank in the barracks by failing him.

Weeks went by where I was faced with jail and extra duties, even demoted because I had ‘embarrassed’ a Colonel. In those weeks, a different Physical Training Instructor re-tested him and he passed (which was a dubious pass). I stuck to my ground and in the end all the other officers, new and old, were training like mad to make sure I didn’t fail them, too. After the C.O realized I was the only one who would stand up to him and say ‘The rules are the rules, no matter who you are’, he was cool with me. He even gave me a bottle of champagne ‘for having the biggest balls in the regiment’.

Believe in what you write. Sell and promote. If you don’t believe in it, no one else will.

Dedication

Dedication comes in two different strands. Dedication to what you do and to your readers or customers. Whether it means you writing consistently so people can rely on you for content or advice or making sure you engage with your visitors, make sure you do it.

Some people are dedicated gym users. They go to the same gym at 0630hrs every day before work without fail. I’m dedicated to publishing fresh daily content to the site and to replying and helping every visitor who takes the time to read my site. They are the very people who put me in this position. So they are the very people I’m dedicated to.

Tactics

I have a military approach to everything I do. It’s no surprise, since I joined as a boy and spent 10 years doing it. Tactics are vital, but don’t have to be complicated. I’ve employed a mission statement since I started my site 10 weeks ago: ‘The route to success is write and promote, write and promote’.

I’m over the moon about where the site is at the minute in terms of popularity, but I’ve still got a long way to go. Tactics keep you on the straight path and stop you from getting distracted. I employ the same tactic today as I did on my very first day:

1. Write new content for the site (every day at least once a day)
2. Comment on a lot of different sites, but only if I can add value to the post.
3. Help everyone I can and guest post a lot.

Simple plan’s are often the most effective. Military training or not, how do you approach it?

Guest post by TheInfoPreneur, James started his site TheInfoPreneur.net 10 weeks ago, since then it has had over 150 posts published, over 1,700 comments submitted and reached a top 1% Alexa ranking.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

1. Do You Have Any Blogging New Years Resolutions?
2. When Blogging Isn’t Blogging Anymore
3. 9 Power Blogging Strategies from a Master Programmer