This is the first post in my Blogging 101 series.

As you probably could have guessed, starting a blog is all about the preparation. Now at this point we’re not talking about choosing your domain name, and all that good stuff. We’re simply talking about preparing for your blog, and what you want to blog about.

So before you begin, you need to stop. Step back and prepare properly. The proper preparation up front will give you more momentum in the first few months than anything else.

You don’t need a domain name, you don’t need a snazzy looking site, those things will come, but first you need to prepare your content.

Content is not the be-all and end-all of your blog, but it’s super important, and critical for success.

You need to decide on what you want to blog about. Don’t decide this based on keywords that pay well, or perform well or have untapped niches or markets that are ‘HOT’.

You need to choose your focus based on your passion. This is important for a few reasons.

Blogging is hard, very hard. It’s not the sort of thing you can do for an hour here and an hour there and begin raking in the profits. You’re going to have to work very hard. Long hours in front of the monitor generating content, tweaking your theme, analyzing your stats, reading articles, implementing changes. It’s hard work.

So if you’re blogging about something that you’re not passionate about, you’re going to quit. And before you think to yourself, “I won’t quit”, I’m telling you, you will. You’ll get bored blogging about dietary supplements, and staying fit, when you haven’t seen the inside of a gym in 3 years. Trust me.

The other reason you need a topic you’re passionate about, is because you need to know your topic backwards. There used to be an old adage on the Internet, ‘Fake it till you make it’. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Internet is super transparent, and if you talk rubbish, people will see right through you and eventually end up ignoring your blog.

So pick your topic carefully. Be passionate about it, so that you can talk about it intelligently and not get bored when things get hard. Which they will.

Right, now that you’ve got your topic, and you know what you want to blog about, you need to create some content. The reason I suggest creating the content before you even begin deciding on your domain name is simple. Once you have your site up, you’ll spend a lot of time initially tracking things, testing things and trying to gain momentum.

During this initial phase of launching your blog, you’re likely to get distracted, and it’s very easy for your content to take a knock. So getting your content written and sorted before you begin will go a long way in getting your blog off the ground.

Write 90 – 100 blog posts, of no less than 500 words. This gives you enough content for the first 3 months. Once you have your site up and running, you can schedule your posts for one each day. When you initially launch your blog, being able to produce consistent content is what will give you momentum and help you grow.

If you go back to any successful blog, and you look at their archives, you’ll see that the stages of their blog, where they grew the most was when they were producing lots of quality content. I’ve written before about Quality and Quantity, and I still stand by that.

But being prepared, and having a stock of content in the wings so you can cope when you hit the ground running will be key to your success.

Of course, there are always some of you who already have a blog, and want to relaunch it. The principal is the same. Take some time off, and prepare your content. You’ve got some experience now, so you should have some idea of what works and what doesn’t. Capitalize on this, decide how often you want to post, and what you want to post.

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