1. Choose your niche

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Choosing what your blog will be about is the first thing you should do. It’s important to not choose too many topics to cover, at least to begin with. Visitors have to be able to know what they get and you need guidelines for yourself to stay within. If you write too much outside of what the website is supposed to be covering, you will get no readers or the wrong crowd.

2. The look

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Make sure that your blog looks professional. There are thousands of available themes available if you chose an easy CMS like for example WordPress. Put some thought into this and go for something that looks professional and fits what you want to put in it. Make sure it is easy to get a good overview and navigate to avoid people getting lost and leaving your site. It’s also a good plan to get a plug-in that helps you with SEO.

3. RSS and Social Media

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Make sure your blog has the option for people to subscribe to updates via RSS, its a popular way to stay updated without having to check on your blog daily. You should also have options for people to re-tweet your posts and share them through other popular Social Media. This way they can help you get the word out there.

4. Great Headlines

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Think through the headlines of each post to make sure it sounds like something people want to read. If your post is for example being shared through social media or people see it in the list of previous posts, it has to be written in a way that makes them want to read it.

5. Pictures

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Make sure to use pictures and illustrations to break up the text. These can be a great addition to get your points through. If possible you should also have pictures as headers for posts and/or thumbnails. It usually gives a more professional feeling and makes readers want to check it out further. Name the pictures in a SEO -friendly way.

6. Write quality

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Choose topics that you master and go for quality instead of quantity. Stick to the topic and get your points through clearly. Don’t use too many difficult terms or long sentences. People want to read articles where you know what you talk about and have thought through the content properly. You also have to make sure there are no typos and that the grammar is correct. People can easily be stuck up on details like typos and such. Avoid that.

7. Update regularly

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If you don’t update with new articles for a week or two, you will quickly start to loose readers. Writing a new article 2-3 times a week is usually a good way to start. Make sure to not update too often either unless you have many loyal readers.

8. Use Social Media

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Social Media has great powers when it comes to advertising for your own blog. Share new articles with your friends when you can, and remember to also refer to your blog in your profile where it’s possible. If you manage to get a decent number of followers on Twitter along with good headlines, you can get many new readers this way.

9. Read other blogs

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By reading other blogs/websites in the same niche as yours, you can gain a lot of new knowledge and also get new inspiration on what to write about. Try to evaluate other blogs to see what you like and don’t like about them and use this to your own advantage.

10. Write for other blogs

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This is the one tip that has worked the best for me personally. By writing articles for other and bigger blogs in your niche you earn enough to pay for the costs of your own website along with getting great exposure to new readers. Most serious websites offer you an author bio where you can link to your own blog. This is a very valuable way to advertise for yourself. My experience is that many people click those links to go see what your website is like, as long as the articles you write are good quality.

11. Comment!

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By commenting on other blogs you will for sure get people to visit your blog as well. Give the authors constructive feedback and if it falls naturally, you can also refer to similar articles on your own blog. Most comment-forms let you fill in the address to your own website for other readers to see. This has given me many new readers from the right group of people.

12. Listen to feedback

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If you want to get better, you need to listen to the feedback you get with an open mind. Ask your friends to read your website and give you constructive feedback. Listen to the comments you get as long as they are serious. This way you will be able to give your readers what they want. By doing this you will get readers who keep coming back and help you by sharing your articles via their own contacts in Social Media and so on.

Picture by Svilen Milev

These were 12 quite simple tips that can be followed by everyone. There is no guarantee you will succeed as blogging is hard, but by following these points you will have great conditions to get readers. If you want to earn money from your blog you could after a while start including ads. Make sure to read up on available programs before you choose one.

Good luck!

This guide is mostly to be used when buying traffic from forums, from individual websites, and from “plug” type packages, yet there are many things that transfer over to more traditional PPC outlets. Without further ado, on to the guide:

1. Know what they are sending. Get 3rd party tracking software and use it. I use LinkFacts.com. I’m sure there’s TONS more. The great thing is, this tracks in real time and tracks BEFORE ANYTHING LOADS… It also tells me uniques vs. raw and countries that traffic is from.

I use this to track links FROM my sites for most larger campaigns (mostly just to check my system numbers and give a 3rd party view of what happened if there’s problems). Often times you will find that it’s not the traffic, rather it’s the way you track it.

2. Don’t buy out of your means! If you need the profit for paid traffic to buy your next meal, you’re probably going to get burnt. Remember, the return for your traffic isn’t always going to show up right away. As you grow, you also have more opportunities, more places to trade with, better sponsor opportunities, etc. Also, don’t buy HUGE packages from BIG sites just because they are big.

3. Understand that traffic is only worth what you can make on your site. This is where too many sites get in trouble. You don’t have any idea what traffic is worth on your site. You should know exactly how much every visitor on your site makes. You should know exactly how much you can spend to break even.

You should know how much a homepage visitor is worth and how much a plug visitor is worth. You should know exactly how much you make every single day and how much visitors are worth to you every single day.

Once you start buying more traffic, you will see the X,XXX amount of traffic from one day to the other and see exactly how that affects every single aspect of your income and see if that traffic is better or worse than the average. If you know you only make .01 cents a visitor, don’t buy traffic for .015 a visitor and “figure something out later” unless you can take a hit.

4. Learn how to test traffic. This is similar to my last point, but vitally important. Buying one plug or one day of traffic doesn’t mean anything. Buying traffic from 10 different sites all on the same day also is very hard to track. All sites have ups and downs.

Testing for one day does no one any good… If you get a slow day, it looks like they under delivered. If you buy on a great day, you will assume more than you are going to get. Remember, even the big boys have traffic swings of up to 20% or more.

5. Create a plan and stick to it. Budget for multiple months. For most people, the key is to grow gradually… Over a month, maybe advertise with 10 new companies and have them start your campaigns 3 days apart. That way you at least have an idea how that new traffic is affecting things for 3 days before you jump into something new.

This not only allows you to see what’s going on, but also helps spread out your budget and puts your site on an upward trend. Too many people buy TONS of traffic to start… get all these trades rolling, etc. and then when at the end of the month find out they didn’t make enough to renew, don’t have money to buy more traffic, which in turn hurts all your trades and suddenly you’re back exactly where you started down money.

Unless you have a big budget that you can throw money at a site while you test, you need to take that above approach.

6. Remember who you buy from needs to make money too. Personally, I sell my traffic for what I would make off it by keeping it, on average. The big advantage to direct sales is you get the money upfront rather than net 30 or net 60.

If you are buying traffic to make money right away, USUALLY you’re going to fail. Think logically about it… If the traffic I send is making $.02 and i’m selling it for $.005, I’m an idiot! If I sell it for .005 and you make .007 that’s probably a good deal for both of us…

You get more traffic, more exposure, ability to increase trades, potential to get bookmarkers, etc. I get my money up front. Too many people think buying traffic is the magic formula… It’s ONLY a tool… Don’t expect more than it is!

7. Do Your Homework! This is my biggest pet peeve. I sell plugs. You can go to my homepage and see EXACTLY how much traffic every plug is sending and the date it’s submitted. If that information isn’t available publicly, find out. You can see that one plugs gets 5,000 visitors and the one next to it gets 1,500. GO FIND OUT WHAT WORKS! It’s all right there for you! If you buy a plug and it under performs, it’s USUALLY your fault.

I track all my 100×100, 300×250, & 120×120 banners… Some of them send 8,500 a day… some send 700. And I was often surprised which ones did the best. Do some research. Test and track on your site (even if it’s a small scale) and use those banners or content when you buy.

The BEST way to make money with bought traffic is to OUTPERFORM the averages. For example if you buy a plug for $15 and it send me 6,000 you’re getting a GREAT deal. If EVERY plug got 6,000 visitors, the price would go up… That’s the law of averages. If most plugs get 2,500, that’s usually what they will base the sale off of, so in essence, writing a great ad, using a great image, or using something creative could get me a HUGE discount.

Most of the time it’s up to YOU to get a great deal…

8. Be professional. If you have a problem with someone, be professional about it. If you go and start accusing them of lying, cheating, etc., you aren’t going to get anywhere. It can be very frustrating, especially as a small site who thinks they are being taken advantage of. It’s especially hard when you’re depending on that traffic to pay bills, etc.

But just come to the person in a nice, calm demeanor, explain the situation, ask for clarification, ask what can be done and what YOU can do. If you are on top of things, you’ll notice it isn’t working in 3-4 days and can go talk to them rather than waiting a month, checking your stats, and being SHOCKED you didn’t get what you paid for.

Another note… BE PATIENT. If a plug/advertising has been up for 2 hours, don’t come asking me what’s wrong… Most people will make time to help you, but it doesn’t always have to be on YOUR terms.

With the cost of quality traffic rising and reaching and maintaining top search engine position becoming more and more difficult as EVERYONE is moving to the net, viral content blows up one of the most spouted off cliche of all time… “NOTHING IS FREE”. The exposure and added traffic that an amazing piece of content can generate is free. That’s the beauty… with a truly viral piece of content, everyone else does your promotion for you, letting you sit back and enjoy the ride.

While some viral content has much more “exposure power” than others, every type of site in nearly every niche can produce some type of viral content. Different sites offer different ceilings, with humor, video, entertainment, and gaming sites offering huge platforms for amazing amounts of viralness. But even if you own something more, umm, boring, you can still reap the benifits of everyone else promoting your site.

Here’s a few tips for creating viral content and an example of each:

1. Give your visitors tools to download or use that relates to your content. If you own a financial blog you might use a microsoft access spreadsheet that you keep your budget with. It would make sense to brand that spreadsheet with your logo, create a link or two on the sheet, clean it up really nice, and release it with your post on balancing your budget. If your visitors download and use that, they’ll see your logo and have many opportunities to continue visiting your site.

2. Consider what tools you use daily in your niche and/or are asked for by your visitors and offer them to your visitors. Say you have a baseball blog and everyday write articles using tons of numbers and stats… from OPS to OBP to ERA to WHIP. Why not create a feature that shows what those numbers are, how to figure them out, and give a calculator that they can add to their site that will do the work.

3. Think like a chain letter! I’m sure you get them still. Those stupid letters that say “if you don’t pass it on, you will die or have bad luck or lose your hair… And if you do, you’ll find your love, millions of dollars, and happiness.” Now, everyone in the world knows these are fake and stupid… Yet people still pass them on because, well, maybe they aren’t fake. And it can’t hurt right? The power of suggestion is a VERY powerful thing indeed. Use it to your advantage!

4. Use Guides, Lists, and Humor! People love top 10 lists, they love bullets, and they ADORE humor!

5. No matter what you decide what type of viral content you create, MAKE IT EASILY SHARED! While this seem blatantly obvious, this is definitely the most important and least considered part of creating viral content. You want to promote emailing the link to your friends, sharing your branded file with everyone in your office, adding the content to every social network available, and adding the tool (with a link to your site/the original tool) to their site, myspace profile, forum signature, and everywhere else! Don’t ever assume that they will do these things on their own… Promote sharing.

• Give them a quick form to fill out to send to their friends
• Create a bookmark link on every page and every piece of content
• Put the social bookmarking icons that related to your site and content in a prominent place
• Give them the code to add a snippet of code to their site, profile, etc.
• Give them links to forums which are discussing the content and push them to join in
• Create an incentive program (or affiliate program) that compensates them for sharing your content (whether monetarily or prestigious on your site)
• Have them join your newsletter and ACTUALLY SEND OUT A NEWSLETTER

There are tons more ways to promote, but this should at least get you thinking! Viral content can be free money for EVERYONE! So stop reading this and start sending it to all your friends!