Advertise

If you plan on getting anywhere with your blog you should really consider advertising. All business should advertise and if you want your blog to be a business that you can make profit out of. Imagine for a minute: A business in London starts in a small street where there are no people and they dont advertise at all. Even though they might have the best prices or the best products they wont make a cent. But imagine the same shop puts a sign outside and advertises in newspapers and relevant places with those cheap prices. If the prices are really good people will go out of their way to come to buy whatever it is he sells. The same counts for blogging. You might have great content and useful stuff for just about anybody that comes to your blog. But the problem might be that you’re just not getting the traffic you deserve until you advertise.

Buy Social

Some of the biggest blogs in the business buys their Digg votes, stumbles, reddit votes, del.ico.us votes and the list goes on. I have prove of many of the biggest bloggers paying for people to stumble their sites as I mentioned above. The point is if you want to succeed in your blog being a your full time business you might have to do the same to get noticed. Hey if the top bloggers do it why cant you do it. You need to get noticed by those who can change and contribute to your blog’s growth. ( I dont do it though so if this post gets on some social site it’s not because I payed for it.)

Comment like you mean it

Dont just go from blog to blog and comment. You need to comment where you mean it and where you can help other’s blogs grow with quality. That will make your blog grow. But just commenting for the sake of commenting to get traffic might work but it wont build a community. You wont make the friends that can stand with you and turn your blog into something that makes money online.

Make friends

Without friends with whom you can grow your blog you would be a lonely stranger in a very big playground. You need other bloggers to support you just as they need support. As I mentioned above with the comments.

Do SEO

Usually I wont care much about Search engine optimization but if you want to be serious about making a income from your blog you really need to give search engine optimization a bit more attention than a usual blogger who does not need the extra money. Search engine optimization is one of the most important things for a online business.

Care about stats

If you enjoy blogging you wont really care if a thousand people or one hundred people see your post, as long as someone reads it. But if you want to turn your blog into your business you need to check where traffic comes from and how you can improve them coming from the sources where they are coming from. If your greatest source of traffic is search engines try a bit more social networking and the other way around. Get the best of both sides.

Niche

Before starting your blog as a business you need to figure out how you are going to use your niche to make money online. Some niches are just not good enough to monetize. Choosing a great niche will get you much further than choosing something that wont bring in much money. The point I am trying to make is choose your niche and make sure it’s something that you can monetize.

Dont teach where you have not been

Sometimes we give tips about something that we have not really managed to get right ourselves. Doing this might be a bit embarrassing especially when you actually get there and you see what you have been telling people and how they should do it but it just dont work like that. Teaching others where you have not been can make you look a bit unprofessional yourself if you are not there yourself.

For instance: Teaching people how to get a PR5 if you have a PR1 might be a bit unconvincing.

Share where you want to be

The best way to get help from friends and blogging friends is to share your goal with them. That way they can give input best to help your blog grow in that direction.

Get advertisers for your blog and use the money to advertise

Using the money you make and putting it back into your blog is the same way as you would grow a business. You should not take all income from your blog as spending money if you want to make a living from your blog. If you want to treat your blog as a business you should put back at least 3/4 into advertising. Finding the right place to advertise is sometimes a hassle. But if you keep on looking you will find some great places that gives you back quality traffic for your money.

Go local

Its a lot easier to advertise and sell stuff if you do it locally. You can advertise for cheaper as well if you do it locally. Local advertising in newspapers and magazines might get you double the result and cheaper packaging for less. It’s way easier to sell locally.

Planning

Planning your blog and maybe what you will do on certain days, for instance Mondays is social networking etc. Or you can say in the mornings you will do something specific that will add value or visitors to your site and in the evening something else. Planning your spare time is also a great idea, it makes you stress less while you are relaxing to know what you have to do tomorrow or after your relaxing time.

Steps

Lay out steps you need to go through to get to your goal. Maybe how long you will get there as well. laying out steps can be easier to watch how you are advancing. If your goal is to make $1000 a month, work out how much you have to make a day, I think $1000 / 30 is something like $28 so if you make $28 a day that will be your target. Its then easier to plan how you will make $28 a day. Also divide the amount you have to make daily by how you would make that money.

Take time off

You have to take a break. Whether is watching movies or playing games or just sitting outside.

Trademark

Whenever you can, if you plan on using your .com or domain to build your brand you should register the name as a trademark. It cost around R5000 / $750 / 400gbr which I think is not that expensive considering you dont have that many other expenses except your advertising and some site costs.

Get a office

Getting a office will give your the chances to have office hours and working hours. It will also give you a different atmosphere than working at home. Where you dont hear the noise of the tv or children playing. Getting a office can also be a great place to receive customers if you do designing and work closely with your clients.

Learn more

There are always new ways of making more money on the internet. You can sell on ebay or make money working for Amazon. There are loads of ways to make money online.

Start a shop

Starting a shop you can sell your own products or services instead of depending and sharing in the profits people can come to you directly which makes it also a bit more professional.

Extend

As soon as you can extend your blog with maybe a niche subdomain or another domain. start working on that blog in your spare time. It’s always good to have more than one source of income. Especially when working on the internet. If you extend enough you’ll have a online empire one day. Look at Sugar inc. They are a great example of this.

Procrastination

Dont plan on doing things later, if there is something that needs to be done, like emailling someone or commenting back to those who commented on your blog. Especially those things that might be a bit of a hassle like registering at a new affiliate marketing company. Do it while you’re thinking about it.

Thank you for reading “Treat your blog like a business if you plan to make a living online”.

I hope you leave some comments and please stumble this post if you found it interesting.

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