Blogging for Beginners: Tips for Starting Your Blog

Starting a blog is no longer enough. 

There are millions of blogs out there, and most of them get nowhere because they don’t have a strategy in place.

In this post, you’ll not only learn blogging for beginners, but you’ll get 17 concrete steps you can take to dramatically increase your chances of success.

It doesn’t matter if you haven’t started a blog yet, or if you’re a veteran, because just one of these tips can make a big difference in your life and in your blogging.

With that said, let’s start with the first tip.

Why blogging is incredibly Awesome

I was surfing through the web last night and I found this blog post which clearly describes the awesomeness of blogging. So, here I have it for you.
The previous post dealt with some of the hidden challenges of blogging.  Now it’s time to get super positive, and discuss why blogging is incredibly awesome.  Blogging entails a great amount of work, but with that you get back a myriad of worthwhile experiences.

Hitting Publish

The act of hitting “Publish” is simple in itself, but the work accomplished to be in that position always tastes sweet.  Each post you publish has some background and a story.  Putting the words and pictures together to bring it home and share with the internet is extremely satisfying.  There is always a sensation of accomplishment and relief.  I usually take a walk around the room to enjoy them moment before the promotion begins.

Providing Value

Providing value to your readers should be a leading reason to create content.  It’s a huge part of what every blog should be about.  Share your experiences and knowledge.  Make it clear, and your readers will come back. Most readers are just looking for a valuable takeaway.  If every reader exits your blog with something new then you’ve done your job.  The immediate payoff of praise is usually found in your comments and tweets.

Connecting

Connecting with people from all over the world is arguably number one.  Between blogging and social media the amount of people that you can build relationships with is daunting. Google Hangouts and Skyping (should be a word) with people from India, Australia, Japan, Philippines and countries you can barely pronounce.  Very few outside of this space have had the good fortune of this experience.  You can’t put a price on it.  Listen, nothing beats meeting someone in person.  However, technology has made this possible, and blogging is the catalyst.  Yes, they were all extremely fortunate to connect with some guy from New Jersey.  Smile.

Always Learning

You can spend 24 hours a day for the remainder of your life and not know it all. This holds true even if you’re an expert, guru, or ninja.  There isn’t much that is static.  Blogging itself is always evolving.  SEO which is a spoke in the blogging wheel seems to change almost daily.  Social Media, another spoke, continues to grow at incredible levels and each network has its own quirks and idiosyncrasies.   Putting this all together is ongoing challenge that can never be mastered.  The learning never stops.

Opportunities

As your blog grows you may land on the map.  Time and consistent solid content generation can lead to opportunity.  There are writing opportunities out there, both paid and free.  Consulting, contract work, speaking engagements, and book publishing are some of the opportunities that have found bloggers.

Money

There is so much for free on the internet that we’ve become somewhat tainted.  Even talking about generating income directly or indirectly from your blog is taboo in some circles.  Well, you can make money through your blog.  It’s not simple, but it can be done.  Now you may not make $40K or $50K per month like powerhouses Pat Flynn and John Chow, but there are plenty of ways to generate income.  Generating income includes: Adsense, selling advertising on your site, affiliates, writing gigs, E-Books, or your own products.  That just scratches the surface.

This list could have been closer to 50, but I didn’t want this piece to be bookmarked.  If you blog, we loved to hear why you find blogging to be so awesome.  If you found this to be of value, please share with one of the networks below.

from geeklesstech.com

How to add META tags to your blog (Increase SEO)

If you don't know what meta tags are, and the importance of adding meta tags, here is the detailed article on how to add them to your blogger(blogspot) blogs or any website.

Adding meta tags is very important if you want to get some good traffic from search engines like google,yahoo,msn,etc,especially the meta description part is the most important one.

If you don't know what meta tags are,Meta tags are the tags which describes your site and tells the search engines what your site is all about. Adding meta tags is an important factor in Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Meta tags allows search engines to index your web pages more accurately. In other words,Meta tags communicate with the search engines and tells more information about your site and make your webpages index correctly and accurately.

Here is an example. This is what I got when I typed 'Techoyo' in the Google Search Engine. 

Tweak title tag in blogspot for better SEO

Are you a blogspot blogger? In order to increase your blog's visibility to the search engines, you need to have keywords in the title. (That is SEO basics)
In this tutorial I'm going to tell you how to do this in your blogspot blog.

Get Approved by Adsense FASTER

Every blogger dreams of making a lot of money online and most of them want to make a lot of money online particularly from Google Adsense, because it’s simply the best and the most reputed ad network around which also offers the market best CPCs. But dreams of several newbies are shattered because Google Adsense has strict approval rules for obvious reasons like to reduce fake accounts, to reduce spam, to  prevent frauds from happening and some more reasons. And this is why some times even genuine Adsense applications get disapproved. Here are some things you should work on before applying for Google Adsense program.

8 Steps to Building a Strong and Fulfilling Blog

1. Build Content that is interesting and attracts eyeballs. It should generate comments and conversation. Ask for feedback and don’t be afraid to be controversial. Keep writing every day, even when you think no one is reading it. This is paramount to a successful blog/site.

2. Track your traffic. Seems elementary, but do you do it? Google Analytics is great for tracking traffic and free. It will also give you a mental boost to know that people are visiting even if they are just lurking for now. Controversy and questions helps them make the step from lurker to poster which will help bring in more visitors who engage you.

Make your blog stand out

3. Subscribe to Google alerts for your keywords. If you keep writing daily, and your articles are fresh and original, Google may pick you up as an authority. This increases your chances that Google will send out your blog posts to others who subscribe to alerts for your keywords.

5. Host contests, and other giveaways as you progress and your blog matures to generate buzz and more subscribers. You want a list that makes money for you when you hit the send button.4. Have something to give away. That can be a newsletter or an eBook on a topic. Send communication to your audience once or twice a week, not daily. The key is that you build a list of subscribers. Later on you will use that list to monetize what you are sending with money generating offers.

6. Go to authority sites in your niche and become an expert commentator and put your link in your signature. Most blogs and forums allow this. Once the people on those sites get to know and like you they will click your link and begin to visit your site.

7. Try to stand out in some way, be unique. Take a different angle/view from the herd. Don’t manufacturer this mindset, but certainly there are areas where you disagree with the masses. Go for a niche within a niche sort of thing and then expand to be more general from there. You have a better chance of getting to the top of search with topics and keywords that are not so saturating, but good content generated repetitively will help a great deal.

8. Monetize, but wait until your content is progressing nicely. Don’t be afraid to put product and services that you find valuable in front of your audience. In some circles it seems to be taboo to make money from your site. Baloney. Promote quality and you’ll be doing your readers a favor. Google will see you as an authority if you are a content first person.

AuthorKen Chiarella is a successful veteran in the internet marketing space, and the founder and CEO of e-commerce site Wormman.com Ken has built dozens of revenue generating sites over his career, and has a strong grasp on the processes of building a winner. From geeklesstech.com