Prerequisites Before Starting a Blog As To Guarantee Success

• Subject Knowledge. You must have a good knowledge on any topic or any subject which interests you a lot.
• Creativity and focus on writing are important. Proper formatting is always required so that your content becomes user friendly and should hit the real goal of writing.
• You must have a learning attitude. This activity requires lot of research in order to provide the quality and real content to the readers.
• Need investment of good amount of time to built a network. You are going to share your knowledge with the people so that they can take advantage and appreciate your ideas.
• Never start blogging keeping money in your mind. Your focus should always be to provide a quality content to the reader. If you are able to do so I am sure money will definitely follow you.

Lets Start a Blog

There are two ways you can start your blog

• Free Blog
• Paid Blog

Free Blog

This is the best option for the beginners. There are many websites like wordpress.com or blogger.com which provide free blog service. I would recommend Blogger to start with your first blog. When you signup to this website you will receive a sub-domain for your blog page. Using that sub-domain address into the browser readers will reach your blog page. This sub-domain address will start with your blog name and will look like this yourblogname.blogspot.com.

Paid Blog

After trying your hand at Free Blogging switch over to Paid Blogging to enjoy several advantages. To start with, you need to purchase a domain name of your choice and the hosting plan to make your blog active on internet. There are several brands like Godaddy.com, BlueHost.com, Hostgater.in etc. which provide these services. Good thing is that these companies have a very good cutomer service to provide all the information to the beginners.

Below is the list of advantages of Paid Blogging

• Major advantage of Paid Blogging is that you can personalize your blog wiithout any restrictions. Free Blogging has many limitation as compared to Paid Blog.
• You can change your blog theme any time from the 1000s of free themes available.
• Domain name will be a unique name of your choice without any sub-domain system.
• From earning perspective paid blogging will give you complete access to show any ad on your blog. You can earn good money with these ads.
•  Hosting companies provide better security.
• There are several plug-ins which are availbale to install directly into your blog page. These plug-in serve different purposes as per the need. For example there are plugins to boost the performance and to analyse the progress of your blog.

For detailed comparison check Free vs Paid Blogging

The Importance Of Blogging

With the rise of self-publishing companies all over the world, budding writer’s are seeing their dreams fulfilled of being a published author at their own cost, however, the challenge begins from the next steps… which are

• Quality of Content
• Reach
• Awareness
• Sales.

Last year alone, close to 800,000 books were published, however, only a few may have been declared bestsellers but what about the rest. The dream of a writer to create an epic that could enthrall readers is lost in that soup. The world is not even aware that such an epic exists, growing cobwebs somewhere in the corner of a book store.

However, something clicked while continuing to promote my work. The quote – Don’t judge a book by its cover – becomes clearer. Book covers don’t tell stories. We, as writers, want people to read our books, talk about our books be it good or bad and to make the readers dive into our work the only way possible is BLOGGING.

To a lot of people, blogging has made writers realize their dreams what even publishing a book couldn’t do. There are people out there who have published 1000s of articles on their blog post or as a guest blogger. Their works have garnered fame and recognition.

Blogging – A Real Income Generator

Blogging has also been an income generator for so many people. The amount of traffic blogs create has resulted in many businesses approach bloggers to have their products or brands displayed on their sites.

What’s more, going by the immense control people have in their blog post, many business entities have also started their own blogs or vlogs (video logs) that aim to make people aware of upcoming news, new products or services.

It is always a humble beginning for all of us, however, all it takes is to keep our passion alive, be persistent towards achieving our goals and never give up while showing off our talent.

To all my fellow writers out there, don’t lose hope and don’t think twice. Start a blog, create a Facebook or a Twitter page and connect it to your blog page.

If it is the horizon that you need to reach… you need to start now, either walk, run or get a ride but whatever it takes, just keep going and one day, you will reach your destination.

How to earn from your blog

We have numerous options to generate a passive income from a secondary source and blogging is one of them.

Of course, it goes without a saying that there are people out there who have built a career in blogging alone but that is a reality that involves months of hard work to get recognition.

There are multiple ways where you can make your blog not only earn credibility but also create a source of income. Let us find out how.

• Monetizing through advertisements.

Due to the continuous traffic the site generates, placing ads on your site can help earn money from your blog. People are inclined to click on the ads if they see something of interest.

The most common ad network is Google Adsense. After you register your site, there is practically nothing you need to do, Google will do it’s job to place their ads on your site and you will be paid for it.

There are 2 types of ads –

• CPC (Cost per click) – they are placed between the contents or the sidebars. Every time someone clicks it, you will be paid for it.
• CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions) – you are paid a fixed amount based on how many people saw the ad.

Apart from this, you can also sell spaces on your site for 3^rd parties to advertise their products or services. 3^rd parties can provide banners or links to their website which can be placed on your site and you can charge a commission for it. This is where marketing comes into play and you will have to advertise your site for this.

• Use your site as a marketing tool

You can get in touch with business entities or people related to them and learn about what they offer. You can not only ask them to advertise their products on your blog but also use their product and write a review about it. People get paid for reviewing products or services and you can cash in on it.

You can also use your site to sell products for others like a new book, e-book, images, videos, etc and you can charge a commission or a part in the revenue generated from the sale.

How to increase awareness to your blog

Imagine yourself looking for information on Top Investment Options or a review to a latest Bollywood flick, what do you do? You go to Google.com, type in what you require and viola, what comes is numerous blog posts from different sources with every one of them writing in their own style.

Now, imagine that you have considerable knowledge on a particular subject and people, be it your relatives or your friends love to hear about it from you… you may be a hero to them but what have you gained from it. Somewhere, in a different part of the world, someone has written a blog about it and is minting money out of it.

It goes without saying that sharing is caring, therefore, why not spread the knowledge to millions and make this work an extra earning for you.

However, before you jump in… understand that this is not a get rich scheme where you will become a millionaire overnight. Spreading knowledge is good but spreading it to the right people requires targeting, planning and hard work.

First, decide on your target audience – who should or needs to visit your site. Stories or poetry has a different audience and so does a blog post on investment options. Your choice of content leads to the right people looking up your site.

The next step is to promote your work. Now that you made your blog live, it is time for the world to see it. However, remember, there are 6 (or 7, maybe) billion people on this planet and you are one among them.

Google will do its job to list your blog but it cannot guarantee that it will on top of the charts. To make your blog a hot topic, you need to drive enough traffic to your site.

To know another way of making money online read this out AMAZON MECHANICAL TURK

Ways of Promoting Your Blog

• I created a Facebook page to promote my work and I found out that it has the option to boost your post to a maximum number of people based on your budget. The same is also available on Twitter and Instagram. Make social media work for you to garner maximum traffic. You can start investing in ads with a very small amount and that can guarantee a reach of close to 2000 people.
• Another option is SEO – search engine optimization. SEO also guarantees maximum traffic by seeing to it that your blog or site is on top on all search engines.
• It is not just about reach. It is also about what else you are doing with your blog. Writing or publishing just one post cannot guarantee that people will keep coming back to your blog site, you need to start making it a practice.
• Research and add more content, connect with your readers or visitors by linking your Facebook or Twitter page to your blog. Don’t be shy, tell your family, friends and relatives about it to increase reach. Your wisdom deserves maximum shares and likes.

Once there is awareness that is when you enter the big league. You gain recognition, leading to a lot of people especially businessmen, corporate, fellow bloggers or writers taking note and they wouldn’t think twice before contacting you for promotional work.

You may get invite as a guest blogger. Corporate entities would contact you to have their brands or products displayed on your site considering the traffic it is garnering.

I can’t say how long it would take for all this to happen but one thing is certain, Rome was not built in a day.

The secret to success is to not stop until the goal is reached but to keep moving forward. Keep your passion alive for once you give your passion wings, the rest will fall in place to achieve ultimate success.