How to Become an Elite Blogger

Posted by EightNine at August 16, 2010

Almost everybody these days is familiar with blogs; in fact almost everybody these days has a blog. While most people would like to become successful bloggers the truth is that very few will. Knowing what separates the elite blogger from the large number of bloggers who never get a visitor will increase your chances of success.

The first thing that you need to do if you are planning to become an elite blogger is decide just what that means. There are many different versions of success when it comes to being a blogger. Do you want to make a lot of money? Or do you want to become famous? Unfortunately doing both is nearly impossible so you are going to have to make a decision on what kind of blogger you want to be. This decision is critical since you will need to take a different approach depending on what your goals are.

Once you know what your goals are you are going to have to come up with a plan for getting there, this is what separates the elite blogger from the huge number of failed bloggers. Most bloggers never really think about what they are trying to achieve and how they plan to get there, they just kind of make it up as they go. That old saying “failing to plan is planning to fail” is as true of blogging as anything else. If you don’t have a plan it is very unlikely that you are going to be a successful blogger.

Of course your plan will depend on your goals. If you are blogging to become famous you are going to need to get a large number of people to visit your site on a regular basis, this is easier said than done. On the other hand if your goal is to make money you need to be able get people who are willing to spend money to visit your site, you don’t necessarily need a lot of visitors but you do need the right kind. This is something important to keep in mind, the key to success is getting visitors, and your plan needs to address this. Most bloggers never consider how they are going to get visitors until after they have their blog up and running, this is a mistake. Elite bloggers know that you need to start planning your traffic strategy right from the start. Most blogs fail because they don’t get any traffic; if you want to be successful you need to know how to get traffic.

The traffic strategy you choose is going to depend on your goals, if you are trying to make money you need to get the right kind of visitor and that kind of visitor comes from search engines. There are a lot of ways to get traffic to your blog but if you are trying to sell something it is critical that you get search engine traffic, they are much more likely to buy than any other type of visitor. On the other hand if you are blogging with the goal of becoming famous it doesn’t really matter where your visitors come from, as long as they read your blog and find it interesting they are likely to come back.

Once you have your traffic strategy in mind you are going to need to decide what your blog is going to be about. Most bloggers start with this, but the elite blogger knows that you have to consider how you are going to get visitors first. The standard approach to choosing a topic is to pick something you are passionate about and write about that. In some limited cases that can work but usually it fails. If you are trying to make money from your blogging you need to make sure that you choose a profitable topic for your blog, usually this is not something you are going to be passionate about. It is far more likely that you will be blogging about clearing acne if you want to make money. If your goal is to be famous you will have a little bit more latitude when it comes to choosing a topic but you still can’t just make a choice without putting any thought into it. Just because you are passionate about a topic doesn’t mean anybody else is. A far more likely problem is that you will choose a topic on which there are already thousands of other blogs. This isn’t necessarily a problem if you can create content which is truly unique and interesting; the problem is that most bloggers can’t.

Once you have decided on a general topic for your blog you are going to want to do some keyword research. There are a lot of schools of thought on doing keyword research but they all come down to figuring out how many people search for a keyword phrase, how profitable that phrase is and how much competition there is for the phrase. This is especially important if you are trying to make money with your blog, you need to know that you can rank well in the search engines for profitable keywords. It is less of an issue if you are blogging for fame but it should still be considered. Whether a keyword is profitable and whether you can rank for it will depend on your goals and your experience but you should be able to find at least a couple of dozen good keywords for your topic. If you can’t you will want to choose a different topic.

The next step is to decide on how you plan to monetize your site; this is especially true if you are blogging for profit. Even if your goal is to become a famous blogger you will probably still want to think about this, most people want to make at least a little bit of money from their blog. There are a lot of ways to monetize a blog and the best option for you will depend on the topic you have chosen for your blog as well as your experience and skills. Most bloggers don’t think about monetization until they have their blog up and running but the elite blogger knows that it should be decided on before you start actually blogging.

The next step is to decide on a theme for your blog, again this will depend on your goals. If you are trying to become a famous blogger you will want to choose a nice looking theme that your visitors will find attractive. The opposite is true if you are trying to make money, elite bloggers know that the best way to make money with a blog is to choose the ugliest theme you can and put as many ads as you can fit on it. While choosing a theme you are also going to want to decide on how you are going to host your blog. Most bloggers use self hosted blogs but there is no reason you can’t use a free blogging platform if you want to.

Now it is finally time to start blogging, this is where most bloggers start, but the elite blogger knows better. Planning your blog out before you start posting content will give you a far better chance of success. The key to being a successful blogger is to provide good quality original and unique content. This is where most bloggers go wrong; they simply say the same thing as a hundred other bloggers, which will do nothing to attract visitors. If you want people to visit your blog and especially if you want them to come back you have to give them something they can’t get anywhere else, if you can’t do that you need to choose a different topic for your blog.

Promoting your blog is critical if you want to be successful. Elite bloggers know that they have to spend more time promoting their blog than they do writing the posts. This is another thing that separates them from the thousands of bloggers who get no visitors. There are hundreds of ways to promote a blog so you certainly have options, but by far the most important is search engine optimization. No matter what your blogging goal you will definitely want to put the effort into SEO.

After doing all that there is one last secret that the elite blogger has that separates him from the herd, he starts another blog. The elite blogger knows that success on the internet is largely about volume, the more blogs you have the better your chances of success. Most successful bloggers have more than one site often they have dozens of them. While it isn’t impossible to be successful with one blog you will have a much better chance if you start more than one blog.

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