Tracy's Internet Marketing

Internet/Affiliate Marketing and Blogging Tips, Tricks and Advise.

Blogging Pitfall Part One

October 21st, 2009

Tracy Wheeler

I am going to do a series on blogging pitfalls and what you can do to avoid or fix them.

The pitfall we are going to discuss today is jumping into blogging without a plan, as this is not uncommon amongst new bloggers. To be honest, even I fell into this pitfall when I first started.

A blog is the easiest way to get started online but it is not as simple as just throwing up a blog and adding content. This is fine if you only wish to have a personal blog but that is not what we want.

Step One

Before starting your blog you need to sit down and work out a plan and get prepared. It goes without saying that you need to pick a niche first and foremost. This may seem like a simple step but it really needs a lot of thought before you get started. Here are some things you need to consider when picking your niche.

How much do you know about the niche?
How quickly can you expand your knowledge?
Are you going to be able to produce good quality articles several times a week?
Are you committed to this niche or will you get bored quickly?
Will the niche you picked make you money?

These are all things you need to consider and research carefully before starting a blog. A blog takes commitment and devotion if you want to get anywhere with it.

With that being said there are a few things that can help you with your articles once you decide you have picked a good niche that you know a bit about.

Hire a writer to supplement your articles. You can of course hire a writer to do all of your articles but I personally do not suggest that as it can get expensive over time. You can hire a writer for around $5 – $20 per article. That doesn’t seem like much until you start looking at the long term. If you hire a writer to post one article ever day at $5.00 a day that is $35.00 a week or $140.00 a month. You can do the math for the longer terms.
Use an article service to receive articles. I personally use Unique Article Wizard and My Article Network. I will admit that I am not the best writer and sometimes I just don’t have the time to sit down and work on articles. When this happens I pull an article from one of the sources above, edit it and post it. You can read more about these services as well as the pros and cons of each in my previous article Keeping Your Blog Content Fresh.
Use PLR to create your articles. You can find free PLR articles all over the net. Here are a few examples I use: All Private Label Content, Private-Label-Club, Extreme PLR Makeover, PLR Wholesaler. (All links open in new window).

Just be careful when using PLR. Don’t publish them AS-IS. Edit them to make them your own.
Research. Read other peoples articles and use the information to write your own.
RSS feeds are another way of getting content for your site. It is not something you want to rely on all the time but combined with the other methods there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to update your blog regularly.

Just keep in mind that having a successful, profitable blog takes a lot of hard work. You need to post new articles at least three times a week just to keep the search engines happy but you have to have good quality content to keep your readers happy as well.

One thing you can do to help with posting new articles and keep yourself from getting bored is to set aside maybe one day a week and write all of your articles for the coming week. Then simply set them on a schedule so they post automatically.

If you are really good at churning out articles you could even do this for an entire month so you can spend that time working on other streams of income.

Now you know what to expect and how to start preparing for your blog. Tomorrow we will talk about the layout and why it is important to your blog.

Until next time,

Tracy Wheeler
http://www.tracywheeleronline.com

Community – Principles of Successful Blogging #4 (problogger.net)
Zemanta Helps Bloggers Gain Traffic (mwd.com)
Attract Blog Comments (cathystucker.com)
How to promote your blog by networking (integralwebsolutions.co.za)

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