HAVE you ever set blogging goals that have the staying power of a New Year’s dieting resolution? You’re not alone. Many of us fall into the trap of setting lofty objectives at the height of inspiration, only to be derailed later by unforeseen pitfalls.

This is why so many promising blogs fail: the goals are not realistic enough. Most of this stems from lack of preparation and flimsy understanding of one’s capabilities and limitations. However, with careful planning and a more grounded view of what one can achieve, these drawbacks can be avoided.

Remember that seemingly impossible goals can always be revamped and reached with a change of perspective and a solid action plan.

After listing down what you want to attain for your blog, consider asking yourself the following questions:

What do I specifically want to achieve?

Having a clear and straightforward vision of what you want to attain makes it easier to formulate and execute your strategy. Instead of saying ‘I want more subscribers,’ you can try going for ‘I will get at least 5 new subscribers every month.’ This way, you can take concrete steps towards gaining and monitoring that desired number of subscribers.

Are my goals realistic?

Setting high standards for your blog is ideal, but if you do not have the means or the ability to reach them, then you will only be disappointed. Likewise, if your objectives are far too easy to achieve, then you will only sell yourself short and your blog could stagnate in the long run.

Keep your goals achievable within your level of difficulty, then strive to surpass that level.

Can I expect measurable results?

Whether it’s increasing your subscribers by a certain percentage or gaining a higher PR ranking, tracking your progress is much easier and better with quantifiable results. Simply pushing yourself to be more creative with your content doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have a solid yardstick to measure it by.

Make sure that at least one of the listed goals yields results that you can monitor and analyze over time.

What is my action plan?

This is where preparation and strategic thinking comes in. If you want to increase your blog traffic, you need to know how to attract it. If you wish to increase your output, you need to set up a consistent working schedule. Whatever your goal is, it requires a plan with a detailed and workable strategy backed up with sufficient research.

Reaching difficult goals becomes more satisfying if you’re well-prepared for it. Aim high with your feet on the ground.

Are my goals attainable within a reasonable time frame?

As mentioned earlier, aspiring to achieve too much too soon may result in wasted effort. Not setting clear deadlines, on the other hand, stems from and results in lack of commitment.

Try to set a clear time period for meeting each objective. Breaking your schedule down into a series of smaller tasks may help you manage your time better, and will make the overall project easier for you to complete.

Should you run into unexpected difficulties, make room to rework your schedule so you can still meet your original deadlines — or at least adjust them accordingly.

How will my goals affect my entire routine?

There are other matters outside of blogging that need to be taken into consideration. Will the whole blogging process take up most of your daily routine? If so, what areas of your life will be affected and how?

If meeting your blogging objectives will cost you more than you initially hoped, then you may need to reevaluate your plans. Blogging should enrich your life, not consume it.

Can I expect rewards from meeting my objectives?

Meeting your goals in the form of more readers or revenue may be rewarding in itself, but sometimes you need to provide yourself with a little extra incentive to keep plugging away. One good way to keep yourself motivated is to evaluate and analyze your daily and weekly progress, focusing on the highlights. Another way to inspire yourself is to read on other bloggers’ success stories.

Meeting and maintaining your blogging goals require plenty of self-motivation, so keeping track of your achievements, failures, and areas of improvement is highly critical to your blog’s growth. When things get difficult, sometimes seeing your flubs from a humorous point of view can put matters into perspective – and could serve as great material for your upcoming posts as well.

Photo credits: eecs.harvard.edu, www.careerbuilder.com

Related posts:

1. Your Blogging Goals: What Are They? (Part 1)

2. Marketing the “You Know What” Out of Your Blog, Part 1

3. Renewing Blogussion – New Commitments, Goals & More + A Farewell to Seth

I was first enthralled with the idea of earning passive income online when I discovered Clickbank products about five years ago. So I created my first information product and started buying pay-per-click traffic which was directed to an awful landing page that I had created.

I lost money.

However, I had glimpsed the power of the internet, and knew that I could create a system to produce income. I want to show you how I created a profitable website, and how you can do the same thing.

Get-rich-quick schemes hardly work, if at all. It takes time and effort to build a successful income online.

Can you really make money with this stuff?

At first I had doubts about my online business’s lucrativity. Then some income trickled in from a website that I was working on. I was running advertising on the website and I got a click that paid me over a dollar.

It was then that I had my “Aha moment” and realized two things: that if I built a website of sufficient volume, I actually could make a living out of it, and if I could get a single click for a dollar, then I can get one hundred clicks and make one hundred dollars.

The only thing holding me back was volume. I needed to expand my website so that it would earn more income in shorter periods of time. Eventually my flagship site grew and thrived, perhaps due to the following factors:

* Varied article length – I mixed long with short articles.

* Varied content type – Aside from text, I also posted videos, pictures, free eBooks, etc.

* Community – My site had an active user forum with lots of returning visitors generating thousands of words of new content.

* Premium quality – I made sure that my articles were genuinely helpful to the site visitors. No fluff.

* Link diversity – Not a ton of links, but quite a diverse backlink profile. A couple from “real” websites in the same niche.

* Age – My site has been growing for over 5 years, building more trust with the search engines.

If you want to build a similarly lucrative site, review this list carefully. The idea is to build a “real” website that actually helps people, rather than just a bunch of text that is spam for the search engines.

There is plenty of time and room online for a one-website approach

Some topics online are probably out of reach for most people due to their competitive nature, such as “insurance” or “credit cards”. Those topics are off-limits, and other hyper-competitive topics should also be avoided. As for “real world” topics, it’s all about search volume and casting a net wide enough to bring in plenty of searchers.

One of my most important suggestions is to concentrate on one website then work on it every day for at least a year or two. If you try to run five or ten websites in the hopes of “diversifying” then guess what? None of them will go anywhere. Instead you will be stuck with ten worthless websites.

Profitable topic, sufficient volume, expert knowledge

You need an intersection of three things in order to chose a topic for a website:

1) Profit potential – The topic has to be able to generate decent income (avoid “free sewing patterns”, etc).

2) Sufficient volume – How many people are conducting searches about your topic in Google each month? Can that amount support a business?

3) Expert knowledge - Can you talk for two hours about your topic with some authority, without running out of key points?

You have to find a topic that fulfills all three requirements. Just having one of those things is not enough.

Don’t go after a topic that has profit potential, but of which you know very little. On the other hand, if write about what you just love, there may be no money in it. Instead, brainstorm a list of topics of which you have some working knowledge, then investigate to see if any are potential money makers. Qualify each topic, and see which ones have the potential to be lucrative.

One quick way to check for profitability is to search for you topic in Google, and see how many ads are displayed on the first and second result pages. Generally speaking, the more ads shown, the better. If the ads are “thinner” on those first result pages then you might consider a different topic.

Premium content sets you up for success

The web is full of spam. New articles are churned out by the hundreds of thousands each week in order to try to game the search engines and make a few cents off random clicks.

Building a real business online relies on standing out from the sea of web spam. In order to do that, you have to create amazingly useful and high-quality articles and not just a bunch of 400-word articles that are all perfectly optimized for different keywords.

However, volume is still important, being a key factor in netting plenty of long-tail traffic that will result in passive income. So one of your goals should be to have at least one thousand interesting, outstanding, and useful articles published on your website.

That is the real challenge in producing content: you want quantity and quality.

How to do it?

Start slowly, publishing one quality article each day. Push yourself to create better articles, while testing for responses to measure what your most useful and helpful articles are. Useful metrics for this include comment counts and bounce rate.

As you progress, your publishing speed will increase. Your goal is to publish three quality articles each day. Any more than that and you risk burnout.

Publishing three articles per day will result in more than one thousand each year. If you can maintain a high quality then this is more than enough volume to build an amazing business.

Two more tips about quality content:

1) Check out competing websites and see what content is behind their pay wall. That is the level of quality that you want to give away for free on your website. Don’t copy them, but use their paid content as a benchmark for your own free content.

2) Marketing and promotion are so tough that the shortcut these days is to create such amazingly good content that it sells itself. Take the energy that you would have spent on promotion and refocus it on creating high-quality on-site content instead.

Focus on building income and passive traffic rather than readers or social followers

It is so easy to get a quick burst of traffic from social media sources — such as Facebook or Twitter — that many people end up focusing all of their efforts on chasing more and more of that type of traffic. This is a notorious trap and if you fall victim to it you will likely never make much money at all.

In contrast, growing your daily search engine traffic creates a powerful foundation for your website. Social media promotion pretty much takes care of itself when you have amazing content and several hundred search engine visitors per day.

Let your audience handle your tweeting and Facebook sharing. It’s better to focus on building precious search engine visitors.

Why is search engine traffic so important? Because it shows up every single day. Once you build it, once your site has established authority with quality content, the search engines tend to send you a steady stream of traffic with no further effort on your part. Your work ends after you build an amazing website and gain authority through incoming links.

Live on monthly earnings or cash out for a huge windfall

When my flagship website went over $1,000/month in earnings, I seriously entertained the idea of quitting my day job. A few months later the earnings had risen to $2,000/month, and so I turned in my two-weeks’ notice.

Then something completely unexpected happened: Someone offered me $200,000 dollars for the website. Since I can always build another website, I decided that this was a good deal for me, and I sold the site.

Now I am busy building my next business online so that the monthly earnings can cover my living expenses.

I’m not saying that every website created will generate huge amounts of wealth. But if you are serious about building an online income, the opportunity is certainly there for anyone gutsy enough to pursue it.

To recap, the most important points of this article are:

1) One website approach - Concentrate your effort into a single website. Avoid diversification.

2) Topic selection – Brainstorm workable topics and then screen them for profit potential.

3) Quality + volume – Build a highly useful website. Make it big by publishing multiple articles daily.

This is a plan for building a large authority website. Anyone can do it, but very few will have the drive and discipline to actually make it happen. So if you want an amazing six-figure payout then you have to build something amazing!

Photo credits: www.techfilipino.com, www.fivequidexpert.com, http://3.bp.blogspot.com

PATRICK MENINGA of Make Money With No Work has recently built and sold a flagship website for $200,000 dollars, and is eager to share his insights with you.

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2. How to get your site indexed fast?

3. Our New Site Proves Creating a Unique Blog Isn’t As Hard As You Think

AS fellow blogger Amanda DiSilvestro mentioned in a previous post, anyone can start a blog. But without clear-cut goals, your blog will reach a point where it will stagnate.

Whether you’re running a personal or a professional blog, setting action-oriented goals for it will help it grow and reach its maximum potential. If you aren’t sure as to what kind of blogging objectives you need, you can explore the following list of easy guidelines in determining what you want for your blog.

The first step in goal-setting is knowing exactly what you want to happen. From there you can figure out how to make it happen.

These are just a few goals and objectives that you can set for your blogging process. You don’t need to aspire to achieve all of them in one fell swoop; just choose the target that will meet your needs for now, then focus on attaining it before moving on to the next one.

Photo credits: www.ksuccess.com, kasadawai.blogspot.com

CARMELA MARAAN has written on various topics ranging from marketing, advertising, blogging, and creative writing to adult material. She is enthusiastic about expanding her repertoire as she views the world as one huge library. During her free time she is also a voracious reader, an irrepressible singer, and a mom who hardly sleeps.

Related posts:

1. Renewing Blogussion – New Commitments, Goals & More + A Farewell to Seth

2. Let’s face it, blogging with age makes us better at blogging

3. I Don’t Feel Like Blogging Today

AS a blogger, I’m sure you’ve already come across advice that extols the merits of using SEO. Since it’s one of the quickest and most effective ways to drive traffic to your web site, SEO is now considered as one of the most essential site maintenance tools. Properly applied, this can empower your website and make it much more appealing to your market.

Black hat, white hat: It only takes a devious or uninformed move to turn an innocuous SEO technique into something unethical or downright illegal.

Now you can easily find lengthy online lists and discourses on what SEO practices can benefit your blog the most, and you may have relied on a few of them. But have you ever considered that as some point, some formerly recommended SEO techniques may inadvertently turn you into a spammer?

Here are a few common SEO practices that have turned ugly.

Let’s begin with outright spam activity. First off, promoting your business via email and blog comments is encouraged and practiced by plenty of professional online marketing companies. If you do this the right way, you can generate widespread interest in your website quickly and very easily.

On the other hand, when your email or comments degenerate into a one-size-fits-all one-liner message + link, then that’s pure spam. Check out online regulations regarding spam, such as the CAN-SPAM Act. If your SEO techniques fail to comply with its rules, then you better find other ways to market your blog.

Flooding a comment box, forum post, or article with links to the same site is automatically considered as spamming activity, but sometimes it also takes just one badly placed link to create spam. I’ve seen this mostly in forums and comment boxes, where one-time posters leave one link in a remotely related discussion and never return.

IT DOESN’T WORK. Whenever Google detects spamming activity, it will simply send the site to the Google Sandbox for up to several months, and later remove it from the search engine index. If that happens, your site is doomed.

Keywords are the foundation of SEO. However, many misguided posters, writers, and webmasters simply incorporate random and usually irrelevant keywords throughout their content in the hopes of attracting as many visitors as possible.

If the keywords that you use are not what your market needs, then they won’t serve you at all. You can beat this by doing research first on what resonates well in your market so you can adopt the most effective keywords for your website.

Related to wrong and random keyword usage is keyword stuffing. How many times do you expect to see the keywords ‘web development’ in a single paragraph of 200 words?

Bad SEO practitioners liberally pepper their statements with the same or similar keywords, sometimes to the point that the entire thrust of the message is lost. It only makes the content sound forced. It’s much better to trim down your keywords and apply them strategically at the strongest points of your content, where they matter.

Once considered effective, this is now a highly dubious practice. Buying links to generate better online exposure poses more risks than returns because it is easy for your competitors to keep up with you and leverage their other assets against your business. At best, link buying can be used to support your entire marketing strategy.

As the term implies, cloaking is presenting different content to a search spider from what you show to your readers. What happens is that the search engine receives a set of scrambled but targeted keywords to increase the site’s ranking. It is also used by some webmasters to trick users into visiting their site.

For instance, a user will click on a website based on a search engine’s results and description, but will be redirected to another site different from what was described in the SERP’s. Obviously, this method is highly deceptive and could quickly get you banned.

Have you ever tried any of the methods listed above, and how did they affect your blog or website? Have you encountered anyone attempting to spam your website with these and other tactics, and how did you deal with them?

These practices may increase blog traffic at first, but in the long run they will drive more potential traffic away.

In the end, it is still much better to create substantial content, products, and services that will offer your target market specialized value, then promote it in a systematic, strategic, and ethical manner at a slower but steadier pace. And it only takes one false move to destroy months or years of building your brand’s integrity, so protect it at all costs.

Photo credits: asdfing.com, artdriver.com

Carmela Maraan has written on various topics ranging from marketing, advertising, blogging, and creative writing to adult material. She is enthusiastic about expanding her repertoire as she views the world as one huge library. During her free time she is also a voracious reader, an irrepressible singer, and a mom who hardly sleeps.

Related posts:

1. How to get your site indexed fast?

2. 6 Powerful SEO Tips for Beginners

3. Don’t Let SEO Kill Your Content!

FOR every performance, there should be an audience. The same applies to blogging. Without your audience, your blog won’t survive. So what do you do in order to increase your traffic? Simple –- by promoting your blog.

Your blog will only take off when you know and understand how to sell your ideas to your target audience. The key is in finding out which strategy works for you best.

Sounds easy, right? Yes, but take heed — so many bloggers tend to cut corners by resorting to sneaky promotional methods (eg. spamming) in the hopes of gaining overnight success, and they end up compromising their own credibility and integrity. Those tactics hardly ever work in the long run.

Although increasing your blog’s popularity and hits takes time, it is well worth the effort. There are several sure-fire and legit ways of doing this, and the following are only a few tried-and-true methods employed by professional bloggers. Best of all, these techniques are free and can be immediately implemented.

1. Blog Commenting

While posting links in your comments is frowned on these days, it’s still a favorite promotional tool. The key to making this work is to post relevant comments in blogs that you actually subscribe to. Find a topic that is in the same niche as your blog, and post your comments there. This way you will attract the attention of the blog’s readers AND owners. It also will lessen the chances of your comments being deleted. Trust me, I am one of those who actively deletes comments that sound spammy or even remotely off-topic.

2.Email Marketing

This is another fast method for driving traffic to your site. If you have an email list – and you should – you can regularly send out messages telling your recipients to check out your latest blog post. It’s that simple.

3. Social Communities

Plenty of bloggers swear by posting scheduled tweets on Twitter, creating Facebook fan pages, or posting links in LinkedIn. This is an extremely fast way to create a buzz and get both traffic and backlinks. Facebook fan pages also allows you the opportunity to interact directly with your fans and readers.

Aside from popular social networks, you can promote your blog in forums, blogging communities, and general directories. You can also post your own linked articles in a blog carnival. However, promoting your blog without any other active group participation is considered distasteful by many and could get you banned or even blacklisted as a spammer. One obvious example of doing this is posting your blog link in your forum signature.

The best way to go about this is to actively participate in group discussions on topics that are related to your blog. Build a community of like-minded people, and you don’t just get traffic, you may even establish yourself as an expert in your blog niche.

4. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites are a tad different from social networks, in the sense that the former is used more often for link building. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of bookmarking sites, including Del.i.ci.ous, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Digg, where readers sign up to bookmark links to their favorite sites.

The upside to promoting your blog in these sites is that your blog can quickly go viral and can receive a huge amount of traffic in record time; however, you don’t get much backlinks from bookmarking, so save this tactic for getting more hits and readers.

5. Direct Interaction

This is an oft-overlooked promotional tactic. With the sheer volume of bloggers cropping up, personal interactions with readers go down. Many blog readers find it flattering to be the subject of a blog author’s attention, and this ultimately helps create a buzz through their testimonials.

Frequent interaction with your readers also allows you to encourage them to keep on reading, participate in your contests, subscribe to RSS feeds, etc. As with real-life businesses, this kind of personalized service inspires loyalty and attracts new traffic.

These are only a few strategies for putting your blog out there. Remember that success isn’t instant, and you’ll have to deal with plenty of rejection as well. You will have to resist the urge to take underhanded shortcuts, but if you apply the aforementioned methods strategically and consistently, chances are your blog will eventually double or even triple its readership without sacrificing your reputation. Good luck!

Photo credits: dressful.com, tipsblogger.com

Carmela Maraan has written on various topics ranging from marketing, advertising, blogging, and creative writing to adult material. She is enthusiastic about expanding her repertoire as she views the world as one huge library. During her free time she is also a voracious reader, an irrepressible singer, and a mom who hardly sleeps.

Related posts:

1. Marketing the “You Know What” Out of Your Blog, Part 2

2. Marketing the “You Know What Out” of Your Blog, Part 3

3. Marketing the “You Know What” Out of Your Blog, Part 1

Over the past several years, blogging has become a new source for generating money online. Early on it was a major focus on creating web sites and e-commerce platforms.

However, with the advancement of WordPress — it’s just been way too easy to create a blog, and get a site up and running in a few minutes.

The majority of blogs out there are literally garbage floating around the Internet, while a select few soar above the rest by providing quality content and resources for their readers.

If you’ve created an authority blog and still haven’t figured out a way to make money or are too afraid of alienating your readers, this post is for you!

Let’s go over three different methods you can use to generate revenue without scaring off your blog readers and looking like a sell out in the process.

1. Sell Yourself Through Consulting

Depending on the type of blog you run, you can offer consulting services.

Setting this up is as easy as adding a new post category called “Consulting.” This option isn’t limited to just marketers and entreprenuers, however.

If you are a web designer, you would offer design services, which would fall under the same category.

Your consulting page should include a contact form, email and phone number, along with your past work experience and what services you are offering.

Don’t expect a massive flow of clients running your way, but even if you bring in one or two jobs a month, this could still generate a few hundred or thousands of dollars a month.

2. Recommendations & Referrals

When you have a big authority blog that lots of people are reading, your recommendation goes a long way.

There is nothing wrong with recommending a service, especially when you are using them yourself (that’s actually the most profitable affiliate marketing technique out there).

Through affiliate marketing and partner programs, there are many ways you can start earning commissions on all referred customers.

Services like Aweber, which many blogs use to power their mailing lists, pay 30% for every referred customer. The same holds true for web hosting and hundreds of other services.

Now that you know you can start earning money through referrals, listen up:

DO NOT start posting articles for the sole purpose of promoting these products.

This will be seen right away by your blog readers as a method for generating money.

Instead, simply link to these recommended partners in any posts on your blog where you may have already mentioned them.

3. Sell Your Blog for Massive Profits

The last and most profitable way to make money from your blog is to look down the road at a potential sale for your site.

If you have already created an authority blog that has lots of traffic, inbound links, readers and a source of revenue — you don’t need to be generating thousands upon thousands of dollars a month for a big site sale.

Through Flippa.com, hundreds of web sites and blogs are selling for multiples of more than 50 times their monthly earnings.

I’ve personally purchased a huge blogging site, BloggingTips.com for over 60 times it’s monthly revenue, simply because it’s an amazing authority web site that I know has a ton of value in it. Depending on your site’s authority and niche, you can get more or less.

Using these same methods mentioned above, I’ve created many successful blogs than rank very highly in the search engines and top 20k in Alexa.

Through the process of creating great content and establishing yourself, then focusing on a revenue generation model, your readers will continue to appreciate the value in your web site and keep coming back for more.

This guest post was written by Zac Johnson, an internet marketer with over 15 years of experience, and blogger at ZacJohnson.com and BloggingTips.com. Zac also just wrote a complete guide book on how to make money through web site flipping called, “Flip This Web Site: How to Buy, Improve and Sell Web Sites on Flippa“.

Related posts:

1. Little Known Ways Darren Rowse Makes Money Blogging

2. 30 Real Ways to Make Money Blogging

3. How Making Money Blogging Has Been Looked at the Wrong Way by Thousands of Bloggers

Has your blog gone mobile yet? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but ever since smartphones were introduced, mobile web browsing has exploded. More and more people are visiting your site on their phones, and you may not be prepared to satisfy them with a great experience.

Without any effort on your part, your visitors can try to load your site up on their mobile device and will get directed to your normal site. That seems fine, but it’s actually a bad thing.

Why? Well, from a designer’s perspective: you are trying to browse a site that was built to be viewed on large screen computers. You think a horizontal scrollbar on your laptop is annoying? Imagine one on a tiny iPhone screen.

That’s Kolakube on my iPhone, and definitely not optimized for mobile viewers.

The #1 Forgotten Aspect of Mobile Blogging

Something we pay attention so closely for our regular websites is something that is forgotten when it comes to mobile sites.

What’s one of the most important elements of good design? Navigation.

Just because your navigation works on your regular site doesn’t mean it will work on your mobile site. Have you seen the navigation bar on Blogussion? It’s a great system for someone with a mouse and a 15″ screen. But try using that on a smartphone – it’s a little harder.

Navigating a site on a mobile device is tougher, and is something most site owners haven’t thought about. People read off of a mobile phone more than most people think. I do at least 80% of my online reading on my iPhone and there’s nothing worse than going to one of my favorite site’s and seeing they haven’t optimized for mobile devices.

Mobile Browsing Options

It is very easy to set your site up for mobile viewing. There are plenty of services that generate a mobile site for you, and if you use WordPress – plugins. Here are some resources for getting a mobile site together:

• Noupe’s Massive Mobile Resource List

  Noupe has come up with a huge list of some great mobile resources such as plugins, services and tutorials on how to do it yourself.

  Read More →

• WP Mobile Detector

  This is what we use on Blogussion, and it’s definitely the best mobile plugin out there. It comes with some great options and themes, as well as a premium version which gives you just so much more control.

  Learn More →

• Mobify

  Mobify is probably the best service out there that will turn your site mobile. You can even personalize your layout pretty in-depth too…for free!

  Learn More →

• Cameron Moll’s Mobile Design Tips

  I found this great article by Cameron Moll who shares a ton of great techniques for designing a mobile site, as well as some great perspective at the best practices. Definitely a must read.

  Read More →

With such great services and resources out there, creating your mobile site can be really simple, or really complicated. Tools like WP Mobile Detector are more automated, whereas something like Mobify will put more customization into your own hands.

If you don’t understand what a mobile design should consist of, then you may want to turn to something that creates one for you entirely.

Like minimalist web design, just because there isn’t a lot on the page doesn’t mean a mobile site is easy to design.

Remember these 4 things, and your mobile site will turn out great:

1. Make it easy to read. Try to stick to a simple, light design with dark text. Not every phone has a sexy display like the iPhone, and you have to keep a high contrast between the text and the rest of the site.
2. Keep it simple. Don’t try to add flashy graphics everywhere, or go over-the-top with jQuery and all of that fun stuff. There is nothing wrong with a mobile site that is plain text.
3. Keep your main content in focus. If you write for a blog, make sure you implement a theme that will focus on content above everything else.
4. Brand it. Even if it’s just a logo, brand your mobile design. You can usually customize the colors, so get the colors that represent your non-mobile site.

Venturing into the App World

This is a concept that I have been reading up on a lot lately, and personally can’t wait to try and do. Have you ever thought of developing an app for your site? Even if it’s just a simple RSS reader, having your own app would be pretty awesome. I personally love the Cracked.com Reader for iPhone.

Have you ever thought about developing an app for your site?

What are your Thoughts on Mobile Browsing?
They say mobile computing is the future. If mobile innovations like the smartphone and tablet computing keep springing up like they have been, then soon the desktop will be near obsolete. How have you prepared for the mobile takeover?

Photo by Ricky Romero

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2. 5 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Blog While Away From Your Computer

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During the creation and expansion process of our blog we tend to focus on what our competition is doing or not doing. When it comes to creating a blog you have a set mission or vision that fits your inner thoughts and voice. Instead of solely focusing on your competition, focus on and compare with their talents, skills, and perspectives.

When you think of the content that is present on Blogussion what other blogs do you think of? This is what Alex and I have been thinking about when working on the redesign for all of you.

When looking at the competition of blogs about topics related to the practice of what bloggers do the obvious few competitors are ProBlogger, CopyBlogger, Daily Blog Tips, How to Make My Blog, and Blogging Tips.

I’ll be focusing on what we truly need to look at when it comes to our competition. We can compete with or against them by doing something better or just making slight changes. Instead, let’s just look at the overall feel and movement our competition is going or has been going. As I said before, “focus on and compare with their [competitors] talents, skills, and perspectives.

To do this we will analyze our own blog, then the competitors, and bring it back to our blog for improvement and a better overall continued focus.

I’ll be using Blogussion as a case study, but please think about your blog of course.

Find the True Differences

When looking at your competition begin to find the true differences. These true differences are not just your voice and unique community but deeper. Why is your voice (content) and community unique?

Asking and Reading What Others Think

Surfing the web I found the following words on Blogussion:

• Blogussion is run by 16 year old Alex Fraiser and his blog serves differently to most “make money online blogs”. He offers great how to advise to customise and improve your blog as well as offering a great insight into how other blogs make it big. -Michael Dunlop
• I’ve always been a huge fan of blogs, namely up and coming stars. Blogussion caught my eye a few months ago, and I’ve been following their articles ever since. Jam-packed with blogging and internet traffic-related SEO articles, Blogussion is one of the top blogging resources on the web today.- Jake Rocheleau
• For a beginning blogger trying to figure out where to start, there is probably no better blog to read than Blogussion. -Blake Waddill
• I strongly suggest that you go and have a look because it really is great and gives loads of fantastic tips on blogging.-Genevieve

Additionally, you should ask your readers via Twitter or Facebook what they think of your blog’s content and overall feel.

Taking a Quick Glance at Your Competition

Now that we know what others think about us and why we stand out we can look more into why our competitors are standing out.

The following thoughts are of Michael Dunlop and will be used to get a general sense of the difference Blogussion has from competitors mentioned at the beginning of this article.

• Problogger: Problogger offers all the advice new bloggers will need to improve their newly created blog. With subjects covering almost everything anyone would ever need to know about, there is little reason to use Google to find it.
• CopyBlogger: Copyblogger offers some great tips, tricks and advise on how to write better blog posts, create better blog copy and all in all, a better blog. A definite recommendation for the more advanced blogger taking it up a notch.
• How to Make My Blog: They teach everything you need to know about starting your own blog (if my eCourse wasn’t enough) – a great resource for anyone wanting to set up, customize and launch there blog.
• Daily Blog Tips: Daily blog tips to creating a better blog, covering all the new blogging guidelines, updates and tricks as they come out.

Doing a Compare, Not to Just Contrast Yourself

What does that mean? Compare your blog with the competing blogs with the intent on not just being different or better than them.

Reflecting on Your About Page

Know that we know what readers and other views think about our blog and our competitors’ blogs we can see if that matches up with the about pages when looking at the story and/or overall mission. This is usually when we have to make improvements to our blog to either make it more known to the readers what your blog is truly about or to improve your content, design, and community interaction.

First look at the chunk of your about page that would strive to sell you blog over your competition.

This is what is currently written in our about page:

We are a blog about blogging that provides outstanding tips for excelling your blog in a variety of topics. Whether or not you are someone who earns an income from blogging, or someone who wishes they were – we will teach you how to create a blog that truly stands out from the crowd.

Established on the turn of the New Year of 2009, Blogussion has proven to be one of the top blogs in the whole “blogging tips” niche. With a consistently updated blog, a rapidly expanding community and much will to continue on and expand – Blogussion is a blog that should be in any bloggers feed reader.

After looking at your about page and what people say about your blog you can start to compare with your competition. Remember we are not comparing to just contrast ourselves. We are trying to establish the better thought of what to focus on when it comes to our blogs and our competition.

Also think about visiting your competitors’ about pages and see how their message is either working or suffering. Also consider looking at these about pages.

Adjust & Improve to Compete Better

Yes we can all have different stories, prove to be better than our competitors, or establish different overall missions. What we need to do on a constant basis and will be more beneficial to our blogs in both the short and long run.

• Focus on continually matching with your reader’s thoughts and growing those same thoughts.
• If your reader’s thoughts are missing your true importance or distinction this is your fault. You cannot benefit from your community helping you out against your competition if they are misguided.
• Don’t just make changes to be different. Make the changes that you want to make that go in favor of your strengths and your passion.

The Beneficial & Continual Focus

Don’t compare and contrast with your competition to be better

Building our blogs is put on our own time schedule. This usually correlates with the purpose of your blog and how bad you really want it.

I’m focusing on the bloggers that want it really bad and want to really stand out from the crowd in their niche and their competition. To do this you need to obtain that beneficial and continual focus with your competition.

In this article we looked at the importance of the relationship between your readers and the mission you are actively pursuing which is shown through your community interaction, content, and design. This relationship is the focus we need to have and observe how our own personal talents and skills will strengthen our blog’s mission and community to compete.

Our competition did not just create their blog to compete or be different. They created because they knew what they were good at and just strived to only get better. If I were you I would give this focus a shot otherwise you could be running into a passive failure. But, you are not alone we all make mistakes. Having a better focus always helps though.

Photo by Adrian Boliston

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Warning: I’m not telling you to do any unethical or unlawful activity. Hear me out for at least a few seconds. If you see an opportunity where someone has already started something but hasn’t taken the right direction, please act upon it and deliver.

“Stealing” is merely innovation. You didn’t invent it, but you are innovating and stealing in a good way.

The best inventions are ones that become inovations.

The number one example I can think of is how Apple is know as innovators. Many people in the tech and developing industry know that Apple is very strict and somewhat harsh to inventors bringing their inventions into them. They are strict and harsh in the ways that they are very willing to turn down many requests or inventions that they’ve received. Why? Many inventions are just too outlandish or Apple doesn’t see their invention being right for this specific time in society.

So many bloggers say how they wish they would have done what others are now doing. Be that blogger that takes a risk and “steal”.

The True Importance

We need to be in the mindset of observe to steal and not follow.

I want to talk to you why it’s important to “steal” that idea or invention from the artist, inventor, or initial person who came up with it. When looking or reading successful blogs or places on the interwebs you begin to admire their work and go down “their” path. Why do we go down “their” path and why am I using quotation marks around “their”?

We go down the path of these successful people because we see them making money, gaining popularity, and/or we want to see the benefits sooner rather than later. When referring these successful people and “their” paths, it’s merely us following them. We retract their footsteps because we want them to lead us down the right or exact path as them.

Is this right? No. I’ll tell you what is right… It’s important to see how these successful people get to where they are and take advice or tips from them so we don’t make “stupid or dumb” mistakes.

These footsteps are for merely us having to learn not follow. It’s time to observe to steal from an artist.

We can always change our plan of action into becoming successful. We just need to adjust now rather than later.

Plan of Attack

On the Same Page

Remember as I’ve said before, “stealing” is merely noticing the potential of something and acting upon it before they or others do. This will involve risk, planning, and execution.

Discover the Opportunity

What happens you see an opportunity? I’m not talking about the opportunity of taking the advice from the followed footsteps and add your originality to it as basic as your own voice.

The true opportunity is when you see something not being done and truly feel there will be great benefits to a group of people. Sometimes this opportunity is not one you invented but one you discovered and feel it’s not being done correctly.

Put it in Your Name and Roll

Don’t be afraid to take credit for either coming up with something awesome or discovering something awesome and implement it in ways that you deem would be better.

When I discovered something that someone intially had but thought about it in a different way on how it would be implemented and adopted it felt strange to take credit. But, I knew if I would take credit I could roll with the idea and not be bogged down by the thought of whether to continue or not. The inventors might be frustrated if they discover what you have executed, but don’t have their frustration effect you and your idea.

Inventors are rarely innovators because they are focused on creating something new. They aren’t focused on it being adaptive or fitting with society at that moment or in that form. Be the innovator.

Review and Execute

Brainstorm, imagine, discover, observe, and execute.

Those five words pretty much highlight and sum up the items needed to be completed to steal and conquer and not follow in someone’s footsteps.

The key one though is executing. I’ve personally struggled with this. I’ve brainstormed, imagined, discovered, and observed so many times and during my time I’ve helped out so many. I’ve helped people with my ideas or innovative ideas instead of executing them in the a creation of mine.

Be an Innovator and a Leader

Once you execute you can begin to lead this thought of what I failed at doing in the beginning. Go out and lead the thought of not following people in their footsteps. Successful people want us to know of their footsteps and to not go down the same ones that they totally found as mistakes. We have every reason to go down their mistaken steps to prove them otherwise, but what is important is to not strictly follow them.

If you and I could be more innovative with our thoughts and passions we can not only lead others but we can feel a much larger amount of gratitude.

Innovate and lead instead of following footsteps striving to just break into the market and make some success with a lower amount of gratitude. Not to bring up debate, but think about the ways of Apple instead of Microsoft when referring to music. Sorry, I had to.

You will ultimately stand out and get noticed and make those inventors and other innovators jealous.

Photo by Kenny Louie.

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Bloggers are transforming their blogs into and offering many different platforms to please many. These different platforms are writing, audio, and video. Surely there is a trend of going to audio and/or video. But, do you really need to expand to these platforms? Do you just need to up your game and market your platform better?

We are not talking whether to be on WordPress or Tumblr. We are talking about your platform in terms of your content.

Starting a blog has many different thoughts and elements involved where you have to make a choice. The big one being of course what niche you are going to cover or if it’s just going to be an ongoing journal of your thoughts. Another key element is choosing the right platform your blog.

Are you going to be writing, recording audio, or going in front of a camera?

Yes, we could do all. This is certainly the trend to do all to apply to many different audiences. Heck, I talked about how internet broadcasting is the next big wave, but this doesn’t mean you have to listen to me or apply your blog to this platform. Yes, others are doing so but that is because they are either determined or feel comfortable expanding, recording, and/or being in front of a camera.

Going to talk about why you should stick with your true platform and think twice about expanding into multiple platforms.

Thoughts Behind Expanding

Expanding leads to newer and better possibilities, right?! This is of course when the process or idea is smart and fits with your expansion plan.

We choose to expand our blogs because either A we see others doing the same and feel we need to compete or B we want to adapt to the new changes or follow any trends. Remember we are talking about expanding into other or different platforms on how we offer our content to our readers, listeners, or viewers.

Instead of thinking either A or B, above, think about why it would be in the best interest for you and your blog’s future to expand or to not expand.

I know I tell you to stick to one, but the true importance comes down to you not expanding just to expand.

Do You Know What You’re Doing?

Play to your strengths. -Sonia Simone, CopyBlogger

A humorous but very honest and true question. Many of us think we know what we are doing but a majority of the time we find ourselves following trends, do what our competition is doing, and not looking back on where and why we started our blogs.

I’ve heard podcasts that are boring and suck. I’ve seen far too many videos by bloggers that are frankly exhausting to watch and would rather just read the transcript or at least just listen to the audio.

We need to know what we are doing. If we know what we are doing and suck in the beginning, please learn and improve. But, if this continues to suck or not go the way you imagined go back to start and see what got you there. I’ve told so many people to think about what they stand for and why they truly want to accomplish. Don’t think about how to do something, think more in terms of why and the how will become clearer.

Don’t worry if you can rock out in writing, audio, and video or whatever you expand to. You rock, but still think about the “why” for the expansion.

If You Could Only Pick One

Decision time!

Ask yourself:

If you could only pick one platform (writing, audio, or video) what would it be for your blog?

• Would you just write because that’s where you started out or is that what your readers find the best? Offer a survey to your readers to find the underlying truth.
• Would you just record audio because you see a trend or do you see more benefits to offer this platform to your community? Surely you can offer transcripts but that’s not the point.
• Would you just go in front of a camera and press record because video is becoming very popular or are you entertaining/enjoyable to watch and video just fits with your kind of content/message? Won’t know until you test it out and gather the responses.

I ask to only pick one to get your mind focused on what platform is your true platform for yourself, your blog, and your community.

Being the Best

Ultimately it comes down you portraying your content in a way that best fits with your DNA (thank you Gary Vaynerchuk).

We want our content to be understood, full of thought and good takeaways, and be shared and spread to others. This will only succeed if you be the best in whatever platform you do choose. As I previously mentioned, you can rock out in all platforms but the purpose of this article is to get you thinking about the true why of why you are on the platform(s) you are on or plan on expanding to.

Instead of expanding to other platforms you probably just need to make the platform your working with better.

Truly think about how your DNA, message, and community will have the greatest advantage. That’s your true platform. It doesn’t hurt to experiment, just know why.

Over to You

• Why did you start out writing, recording audio, or being in front of the camera?
• Is your current platform truly working?
• What platform do you believe would be the best for you if you could only choose one?

Photo by Ubo Pakes.

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