OK, so it's been a while since I started this blog up and I now intend on posting regularly on my experiences with my main blog, Everyday Finance: http://www.everydayfinance.blogspot.com/. After researching several other sites, reading some articles and experiencing the ebbs and flows of traffic to my site, it's evident that it all boils down to content. The prevailing wisdom is that if you're going to dedicate X amount of time per week to your new endeavor, then initially, the vast majority of it should be dedicated to the development of content. Once you have a few posts up and you see some returning traffic and navigation throughout your site with monitoring tools (will discuss further later), it's time to get linked, get ranked in blog ranking sites, etc. An initial move though, should be to get indexed in all the major search engines (more on that later as well).
What is the Intent of your Blog?
First, you have to ask yourself, what are you getting into this for? Is it solely to make money, regardless of whether you enjoy or even know anything about the topic you're targeting? Amazingly, some people actually outsource content generation, build a site to target high pay keywords. These people are known as Giga Adsense earners, raking in several hundred thousand dollars per year. Some of this might be lore and I'm sure it's few and far between or everyone would be doing it (markets are efficient and so is easy money). Since this isn't my area of expertise, I won't be going into it much here. I will, however, research it a bit further and may give something like that a try on a smaller scale if I can demonstrate some limited success with my initial startup.
Should I use Blogger or something else?
So, the focus of this post will be on getting started with Google Blogger. Before moving on though, a word on this. I like it. It's real easy, and for now, I intend on staying with it since I've already started here and don't want the hassle of migrating all my content somewhere else. If I can continue to increase traffic and revenues and Google continues to add additional features, they've got me. For instance, this past week, they added video links to YouTube based on key words you hand-select, as well as real-time news links. In my finance site, I input some relevant financial terms and the news comes rolling in, which is an additional feature that visitors of the site enjoy.
Over Easter though, my brother in law showed me his site he's building on SiteBuildIt (link on the left, check it out). It's slightly more advanced than simply moving some boxes around like Google, but is much more effective. He showed me the setup screen and it's still pretty straightforward, limited HTML learnings required, but it's much more customizable. For a flat fee each year of $299, the site takes care of everything from hosting to helping you develop your site and get top rankings (which in turn translates into massive traffic and increased profit potential). SBI claims to get top 3% rankings for sites built using their system. There are several highly successful site owners owing their success to the system, including twelve year olds and senior citizens, each raking in thousands per month. The site has a good visual tour and the story's quite compelling. I'll report back on my in-law's success and perhaps, my eventual test of the site as well. But, for now, more on Google Blogger. Another cheaper option is to go via Go-Daddy or one of the other less formal sites; link on left as well to check out that option.
Starting your own Blog in Google Blogger
Immediately after reading this post, if you click on the blogger button, you can have your first post up on your own blog in under 5 minutes. It's the content and what you do with it that is time consuming and requires considerable work. Some tips for getting started are the following:
1) Pick a name that will stick. It shouldn't be something you'll think is cheesy later if your blog takes off. In many instances we'll discuss later, your site's name will drive particular types of traffic to your site. However, if you come up with a unique name that isn't cliche or generic, it may be a little trendier than say, money-investing-stocks.blogspot.com or something to that effect, just to try and target some popular search terms in your title.
2) Have a couple posts worth of content in mind. Once your first post is out, you'll want to keep moving and get a few posts up within your first couple weeks. I've been cutting our articles for months since I starting thinking about doing this. Then, I started a list in a notebook of topics in my notebook, ranked them, and am just now spending an hour or two each post in roughly the order I initially designated. There's an overall theme to the progression of each of my blogs. What I've found is that I may have initiated too many at once, so to stay current, I'll be primarily posting on this one and Everyday Finance. I do have some extra ones reserved for future use, but left them marked as under construction. I think the right direction is to try and demonstrate success with one or two that I have direct experience with first, rather than doing a shoddy job on several at a time.
3) Focus on your design and theme. Start off with a template you like. If you don't like the one you initially chose, it's OK, you can pick a new one later through the templates tab in blogger. It's easy to insert pictures now and then. I often hit the print screen function, edit the picture in MS Paint, then just insert via the picture function in the posting window. Decide where you want to place your ads, links, profile, archive, etc. I'm still refining my placement, but my current configuration is based on some readings to date and general observations of other blogs that seem to be pretty successful.
The next post will focus on one of the biggest drivers for even doing a blog...the revenue generation from AdSense ads. If you want to get started with Adsense now, click the link on the left and go from there or check back next post. I will delve into placement, size, how to target your content to draw the right ads, and which types generate the most clicks/earnings.
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