100’s of blogs are created each and every day. Each and every one starts with a hope to making money blogging. Alas! 99% of those blog’s are dead even before completing their first month.
Why?
It is not their blog’s fault, neither the owners. So whose fault is it?
It is their mind set. Their intellectual. Their talent and of course sincerity.
But above all they need a strategy.
Don’t Work Hard, Work Smart
The few bunch of people who succeed online are the ones who are planned. Who are armed with their blogging strategy. It seems simple and common. But majority of bloggers, don’t do it.
On the other hand, some smart bloggers plan and execute well. Those are the ones that succeed online.
So how can you make your own blog strategy?
Well, it is easy. In fact, it is damn easy.
And the best part is…
You can actually do it in the next 7 minutes. But on one condition, I will need your full undivided attention. So you can think properly and answer yourself.
If you skip any of these questions, you will be cheating yourself. Okay but before we start, can I ask you how many of those questions have you already asked?
Haha! Logically, I’ve already asked like a million questions. But hypothetically, I’ve not yet started asking the real questions yet! ;)
Before we start planning our strategy, we need to do a warm up?
Ready? Then answer the question below. Don’t move to the real question until you answer this one. If you’re not sure, then take time to think and answer.
What do you really want from your blog?
Behind every great blog there is an objective. A clear vision.
Before building every great strategy, you need a plan. The clearer your objective the faster you will achieve your blogging goals.
Are you confused or stuck on this question?
No problem, I will show you some important objectives that most successful and smart people target. If you answered this question without my help then you’re very near to success. But if you are taking my help then you need to work a little harder.
You’re not far too. You just need to ignite your fuel.
1-Making Money:
You’re right! Making money is the most common objective of blogs. Everyone wants to earn money.
Try to set a target of how much you want to earn in the next year or two. For instance, I want to make 2,000$ per month from my blog in the coming year. And by the end of the second year, I want to make 20,000$ per month.
This is how you should set your blogging strategy. Start slowly, but steadily.
Read: Interview With Neil Patel to Make More Money Online
2- Popularity:
Who doesn’t want to be popular? But you need to set a target to make your blog a profitable business.
For example, I want to be so popular that every two out of five bloggers identify me in the next two years. I am aiming even higher for the years after that.
I know that you cannot survey people and calculate your popularity but your traffic, number of comments and shares will obviously show you. If not, people trying to interview you or trying to ask you for help is also a sign of popularity.
I’ve given you two examples which are enough to get you going. Gather your thoughts, scroll all the way up to the question, think again! And answer the question now. You have a very clear view of what your objective is, right?
1- Who are your readers?
No! No! Not another confusing question. This are the real ones. The ones that matter.
Before writing content, you need to analyze your audience.
How can you write for someone you don’t know? I mean, you need to know about the type of readers you want. You can’t stuff money making tips to a person who is looking for a tutorial on buying a domain, can you?
Like, people of what age will read your blog? Which Gender? Which type? The Geeks and nerds or the common people? Think, Think and Think. And then proceed to the next question.
Read: What to Do When No One Reads Your Blog?
Pro Tip: Always talk to your readers as if they are sitting next to you on a couch. It will help you in writing a better post.
2- What action do you want your readers to take?
Now that you’ve decided what kind of people will read your blog. You need to think about the action you want your readers to take?
Do you want them to buy your products? Do you want them to buy others products using your affiliate link? Do you want them to buy your course? Do you want them to click on your ads? Do you want them to share your posts?
You actually need to think about this. As this will not only decide the way your content should be written but also the income stream you want to get into. Choose wisely!
Pro Tip: Never put all of your eggs in one basket meaning never opt for only one income source.
3- What do you want to talk about?
This is one of the most tough question. Your complete success depends on this answer. Always choose the right topic. If you choose the wrong niche your whole online career will collapse. Always choose a topic you’re experienced in.
Experience is not the only factor that should be considered. You need to have interest on that particular topic. Your answer makes the difference.Your answer will make or break your career online.
Ask your self one question. Can you write on that topic for two years?(at least) – {considering you write one post a week}?
If your answer is yes, then don’t look behind. Go for it! If you don’t think so, then think again and don’t forget choose wisely.
Pro Tip: Never ever choose a topic because a friend of yours has done so. You need to consider your interests and experience to choose your topic.
4- What to measure? And what to not?
Do you know what to measure? Oh! Come on, silly. I am talking about your success. Do you know how to measure your success? Or what to measure?
You need to know some stuff. Both Alexa and PR are important and play a crucial role in attracting advertisers. I also know that readers judge the credibility of a blog by viewing the Alexa and Page Rank.
But…
Neither Alexa nor Page rank prove your success. So you cannot judge your success with Alexa or Page Rank as criteria. You need of think of a metric that will let you know about your true success. Something that will let you know how far you’ve got.
How about traffic? Nah! Traffic can be driven in a million ways . But you can’t know how successful you are by checking your traffic stats.
How about your blog readership? Yeah! Good idea. Having a decent readership is a sign of success.
Money? Hell Yeah! Earning a few bucks online also proves that you’re successful online and that you’re not a fool spending most of your time on your PC :)
5- How much content do you have? And how much can you produce?
It all comes down to this. All of your decisions can be useless if you can’t answer this question. How much content do you have? How much can you produce?
Do you have enough content to launch your blog? Did you choose the right topic? Can you write two posts for your blog and one guest post every week?
If your answer to these questions is no, then you’ve chosen the wrong niche. Go back and do the brainstorming again! You cannot succeed online without having great content. You need to have sufficient content to launch your blog and run it without any trouble.
Read: The Ultimate Guide to Creating Epic Content
Pro Tip: Never, ever make your blog public until you have enough content to keep your readers busy. I would recommend you to write and publish 5-7 blog posts before making your blog public.
The first impression is the best impression.
If you write only one post, they’ll check it comment on it and go away. But if you have more posts, you can keep them engaged for a long time. And they won’t forget you anytime soon. You can actually convert traffic to loyal readers easily by launching this way.
Another pro tip:- Never guest post on other blogs until and unless you have enough pillar content on your own blog. What is the use of driving traffic to your blog and not having enough material to keep your readers busy? You need at least 10 killer posts before you start to guest post.
Final words
I know this post is bit long. But now, you know what to do next. Answer the questions, then create your strategy and start rocking it online.
Did this post help you? Do you have a rough view of your strategy? Of your future and success?
Good write-up by the guest blogger :)
Yeah, I used to ask questions to myself and try to find answers for it.
What is the purpose of blogging? Where are your readers? Are you providing useful content/solutions to them? Did you measure your performance and traffic? etc are the basic questions that the bloggers should ask to themselves to get popular and to thrive in blogging.
I have answers for most of the questions which you’ve listed here and will definitely try to find the answers for the missed ones.
Thanks for sharing the mindful post for us, keep writing :)
I’m glad that you liked it. I’ll be writing more here on LBT, I really love the community. Also, I’ll be sharing more stuff on my new blog when it launches, so make sure to subscribe.
Good one Ahmed :) I cannot stress more about the importance of having clarity BEFORE starting a blog. I’m recently running a series at Problogging Success (called the big picture series). The series is actually motivated by my blog audit clients who lacked clarity. It was not clear to them as to what they want from their blog!
It is very important that we ask ourselves the questions you’ve mentioned in the post, before we start a blog. We need to do market analysis, we want to know who our target audience is and how we plan to monetize our blog.
More importantly, we have to pinpoint our UVP!
Hope Rahul wouldn’t mind me adding the link to the series > http://www.probloggingsuccess.com/home-based-business-blogging-survival-tips/
I’ve already been following it Jane! You’re a prolific writer!
USP is the key to differentiate yourself from others. After all, you don’t want to be a just another fish in the sea.
Thanks for stopping by.
I like your series. I’m following it from the beginning and waiting for the next parts.
I’m sure that Rahul won’t mind sharing this. It’s yours Jane.
These are basic things which we should keep in mind while starts Blogging.
Some says we are doing just for interest but the fact is everyone want earn money form their blog and want to get fame.
But it is not easy to maintain blog, Blogging needs patience, hard work as well as smart work.
Very interesting article By Guest Blogger..
Thanks
You are right Safwan that money making is the ultimate goal of every professional blogger but how he achieves that goal this is called strategy; so it all depends upon what strategy you follow to achieve your goal. No doubt setting goals for blogging is must but it is not that much difficult which you face while developing a strategy to achieve your goals. You are also right that break your goals into small pieces and then achieve them gradually or divide them in short term, medium term and long term to be clear on what you need to do right now after six months and years after years.
very well written.This article helps very much for the newbie to guide in proper way.Blogging first requirement is patience.If you can’t wait you can’t succeed.
Thanks for sharing such an important article :)
Nice work Ahmed I am mesmerized by your writing skills I am new at blogging and thinking to start a blog. Your questions were a great source of inspiration for me . Thanks a lot . And BTW you got a very loyal fan follower here !! ;)
Well .. I found this post on Jane Google plus. and this post is mind blowing for the blogging lovers. Well structured and informative article. Keep it up.
You are absolutely right Ahmed Safwan,
We need to know about the readers, what is his age who have been read our post , which gender, which type, etc. In my earlier stage I used to write on anything I wanted But now I consider my readers and write posts according to their needs and interest.
Thank you so much for sharing this post it really helps for newbie.
Obviously the ultimate objective of every serious blogger is to make money but he must define this objective in quantified terms as well. How much he plans to earn in first year, how much in second year; and after two years how much money he wants to earn per month from blogging. We don’t make the breakup of our money making objective that is why gets happy on whatever we earn. This might make us contented on what we are earning. We MUST REMEMBER THAT CONTENTMENT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BLOGGING; we must be thankless to ourselves for our every blogging work and think to do more and more and more.
Honestly, my biggest tip to working smart is making sure your content is good, not just content for contents sake! (which so many bloggers do!)
Assalam walekum Ahmed,
You have produce some insipirational content. These all are the basic questions which we should ask to ourself before starting or choosing a niche for blogging. Great tips!
Greate article, I will need to look in to squeeze pages soon. Interlinking pillar articles has always been a good idea as many of the top blogs do that.
I liked your point of talking as if your readers where sitting right next to you. Great information as always.
Wonderful post. I am in plan to start blogging. This post helped me a lot and cleared my vision in the process of blogging. I would surely find the answers to these questions before starting blogging. Nice post. Must say!!!
Great post Ahmed,
I would really say that working smart is a better thing than working hard. If you work hard but without a proper goal then you won’t be able to achieve anything in blogging or in any field.
And you wrote an exceptional post on tips and strategies that can help us take our blog to a whole new level.
Thanks for sharing the article with us.
Cheers :)
Great article! But I agree with some other people, it is about quality of content more than just writing loads and loads of blogs. 1 quality article could be much more use to it’s audience than 10 quickly-written articles that lack any use to it’s readers.
hi Rahul,
Nowadays SEO depends on high quality content and industry demands high quality and informative contents. Your blog is awesome. At last answer your question is its help SEO community too.
Thank You Rahul. Iam very impressed and Excited after reading your article. i have so many doubts on blogging after following your blog my doubts will be clarified completely. Iam waiting for your upcoming articles on blogging :-)
Here you provided the blogging tips to make a better blog are very nice. All the points are very well described and informative too. Thanks for sharing such nice information.
Great tips. I visited your blog for the first time and found this great post. All the points mentioned above were helpful and explained in complete detail. I hope to learn a lot from this post.
Thanks for the write up.
I have always been a huge fans of this wise word: “work smart and not hard” that’s it.. you can publish more than 20 articles a day and get some little traffic, (that is working hard) but a smart blogger can publish just one and get a huge spike in traffic (that is working smart!) Thanks for the tips Ruhul, i really appreciate it,
Hello Rahul,
This was an excellent post which would clearly explain on how to take our blog to next level.
Yes, the one thing which I’m following is writing useful information for readers which would fetch us more traffic, because we bloggers are here to write and give solutions for people. It is the people or the readers who are going to be our visitors when they are in need of some things to get clarified or solved.
So always write for people. Think for them and write for them and the traffic will automatically follows you.
Thanks for sharing a nice post.
You are doing nice work on your website .. I really enjoy and get more and more information’s from your blog….
I have one question , I am not getting that much traffic from google search engine , When i submit my sitemap then after some 1 day it will be indexed in google search engine but i am getting rarely low traffic on my website…
Help Me Bro …
Also give me some tips for How to increase Adsense earning … Also recommend me good links for learning adsense :) …
Thanks brother … Have a nice day…
Sharing blogs tips is one of the most popular along with efficient methods to ask blog readers. That subject is actually unlimited along with staying upgraded every so often. Also this assists new bloggers who would like to sign up for that industry of blogs. There are lot of authorities which do this totally free despite the fact that there are many who definitely are getting some thing in return. But no matter just how efficient ones blogs tips are, they shall be unproductive should your readers will not recognize these people.
Thanks for sharing a greta and inforamtive post…i like it :)
The points mentioned above are absolutely very true. One should have a proper plan before starting a blog. I think the most important thing in any blog is quality content. Then comes the tricky part of driving traffic to your website. Once the traffic starts ticking in, it gives a major boost to blogger which in turn further improves the quality of blog.
This is very informative as i get some useful tips to write a blog and i will use it in future. thank u for sharing your experience .
thank u :)
well, this post is like a motivational post for me. and the one point “who are your readers?” quite interesting point.
Hey Ahmed,
Excellent post.Thanks for sharing such great blogging tips.Your writing skills are really impressive.I totally agree with the smart work because “Hard work” means knowing what to do but “Smart work” means knowing what not to do.So a blogger should always know what is good for him and what not.Keep updating!!
Good Luck :)
it was very awesome tips.and it give me a great confident about making a blog and how to create more traffic to my website.you aredoing a great job.thank you.
I am working on my blog from last 3 months and i was thinking how to promote my blog and finally. I come to know that how i make my blog more popular thanks for the article….
Really an awesome article and i learned that how i have to further work on my niche.
I wish that now i will provide my viewers best articles.
I will come back for read more article like this.
Hey Rahul,
I must say, great blog and fantastic content. I’ve learned so much from reading one of your posts.
What do you really want from your blog? Behind every great blog there is an objective. A clear vision.
This has really helped me with clarifying my blog objectives, I have a structure and strategy now,
whereas before i was just blogging.
Your blog has influenced me in many ways Rahul.
Adrian chanthavong of imlistbuilding.com