For many, blogging is a “dream career”. You can work whenever you want, control your income (to some degree), earn money passively, etc.

However, the vast majority of bloggers never reach their goals. Most bloggers don’t make money and the ones that do generally don’t share exactly how they’re doing it. But there is a specific formula for blogging… one that’s been used by blogs like SEOMoz.org and IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com.

And there’s a lot to this formula, but it can all be summed up into the most important idea to keep in mind when blogging: be consistent.

It’s a lot like weight loss. And come to think of it, a lot like everything else in life. If you stick with it, you’ll make it. If you don’t, you won’t.

Funny how the “secret” to blogging success is so obvious, yet very few people actually go through with it. But if you do go through with it, realize that you can and will have success with your blog.

What I Mean By “Consistent”

Simple. Publish a lot of articles. And publish them regularly, on a schedule. Some bloggers recommend publishing one blog article every day. This is what Rand Fiskin (of SEOMoz.org) did to kickstart the SEOMoz.org blog. It clearly had beneficial effects.

Suffice to say, publishing one blog article a day is probably the fastest way to get success with your blog.

Now, your posting volume doesn’t guarantee success. But it does make it a WHOLE lot more likely. Here’s why:

SEO

We’ve shouted this one from the rooftops – consistent, fresh content is fantastic for SEO. Google loves sites that are churning out content on a regular basis and has consistently ranked these sites over sites that have stopped producing content.

Additionally, the more content you have, the more exposure is possible in Google. Because for every article you write, you’re likely hitting on long-tail keywords you never even thought of. 

So the more content you’re churning out, the more long-tail keywords you’re hitting, and the more traffic you’ll be getting from Google. Obviously, the more traffic you get, the greater the odds that someone will enjoy your content and subscribe, leave a comment, like you on Facebook, etc.

Engagement

People love blogs that are updated regularly. This is another reason why the “once-per-day” rule is so great. I know for a fact that if my favorite blogs could produce incredibly valuable content every day, that’d be ideal. I’d read it every single day and love doing it.

As is, I’m content with waiting a week or two to get a new piece of content.

But if you’re able to produce content once every day, people are going to love reading it. They’ll start visiting your site regularly. It’ll be added to their “daily checks” they perform on the web. 

Facebook? Check. Email? Check. Your blog? Check!

Practice Makes Perfect!

And lastly, let’s get down to Earth here. No one is good at blogging the first go around. Sure, some people may gain popularity faster than others, but that could be due to their past experience. In other words, if they have a lot of great experiences, they’ll gain popularity even if their blog is poorly written, not set up correctly, etc.

By consistently publishing new content, you’re going to get a lot better really quickly. And as soon as you start getting a trickle of new readers, you’ll have an audience to do some trial and error with. What posts do they like? Which ones do they dislike? Now you can refine your style to publish more articles that everyone enjoys reading and sharing, leading to increased engagement with your audience.

Consistency really is the key to blogging success. And it’s within reach. It’s not easy… it can be very difficult to write a blog article when you’re not feeling it.

But it’s really not that difficult. And if you can do it regularly, just like with weight loss, you’ll get consistent success.

Start Blogging

Setting up a blog is easy. It takes only a few minutes, and WordPress is probably one of the easiest methods.

Select a Domain Name

You can visit Psychicwhois.com to search for available domain names. Enter the name you want, and if it is available it will be displayed in green, if it is not, it will display in red. Keep in mind when selecting a domain, you should have at least one of the keywords you want to be found by the search engines in your name.

Once you have selected the domain name you want, purchase it and a hosting plan to get started. Hostgator is an easy hosting site to work with and allows you to create an amazing blog site, even with no experience. Select the “Hatchling” or “Baby” plan and do not forget to REGISTER your domain name.

Install WordPress directly from the hosting site. If you have any trouble, the customer service representatives at Hostgator will walk you through the process step-by-step.

Customize

Login to your WordPress and start customizing the way your site looks. You can import all of your old blogs from a previous site, add custom themes, colors, and brand images with just a few clicks of the mouse. If you want some help, One-Day-Website can set you up and customize your site in just one day for a fee.

Other Blogging Platform Options

WordPress is one of the easiest blogging platforms, and it is free. But, if you are planning on making serious money with your blog, You can still use WordPress, you will just move from the WordPress.com site to the WordPress.org site, which is a self-hosted blog setup. Hostgator and other hosting sites can set up the self-hosting sites through WordPress.org without you ever having to actually visit the site directly.

Ad Networks

Ok, so how do you make money? There are actually several ways you can make money with a blog, but one of the best ways is through AD networks.

Google Adsense – Google Adsense looks at each article you write and then finds relevant ads to place next to it. So, if you write an article about how to groom dogs, ads like pet shops, dog groomers or even pet health may be displayed. Other ad programs include:

Affiliate programs can be a great source of income. If your blog talks about cooking, then signing up with sites that offer cookware would be a great affiliate match. When someone from your site clicks the link to purchase the cookware from your affiliate, you get a percentage of the sale. That is great, especially since you did not have to do anything to make that money.

Do not expect to make money fast, it does take time and hard work. You have to adhere to all the SEO rules, just like the big sites and you have to create effective strategies for getting traffic to your site. 

Want More Blogging Tips?

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