Starting a blog from scratch, building traffic and making money out of it has never been an easy job for bloggers. Building the first hundred visitors is one of the greatest milestones in a blogger’s career. Sometimes bloggers can’t even resist the first few weeks of blogging because it’s going to give lots of failures and disappointments if your blog launch wasn’t right.
To most of the new bloggers launching a blog is just installing WordPress. I’m here to say launching doesn’t mean installing WordPress. Installing WordPress and applying themes are one of the processes of setting up a blog. So, how to launch a blog properly so that you can reduce the chances of facing the early frustration and blogging stress?
Way of launching a blog differs from person to person, so it’s quite impossible to mention the exact right way of launching a blog, but in general there are certain essentials your blog must have to be launched properly without which it will be quite difficult to survive through the initial stages of your blogging career.
1. Choose The Right Niche
Only to new budding bloggers choosing a niche seems to be a difficult task, but actually it’s an easy decision to make. Just find out what you are interested in and whether you have knowledge about it or you have the passion to learn about it.
Choosing a niche is very important because once you publish a post on one niche, you can’t change your niche the next day. If you do so, it’s just like starting over again and again. So make the right decision that’s important.
2. Have A Nice Introduction About You And Your Blog
You may introduce yourself to your visitors by creating a neat About Me/Us page in your blog, let people know who is behind the blog. Also, you may tell them what the blog is about and who you are trying target (Webmasters, Gamers, Programmers, Tech Maniacs, etc).
3. Register In All Top Social Media Sites
In the initial stages of blogging you can’t expect search engine to send traffic to your site. It’s usually the Social Media sites that give traffic to the new blogs, so it’s very important that you have account in all top social media sites like – Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and of course Pinterest. Whenever you publish a post make sure you share your link in all the social media sites.
4. Make Some Completed Draft Posts
Prepare enough number of topics to write a blog post and have it as a draft. Once you launch your blog you must be consistently updating it so it will be easy if you have some posts in drafts which are ready to be published.
Once you have them you are all set to publish your first post (better if it is a very high quality and attention grabbing post) and remember you do it consistently everyday or everyday two/three days, or every week but it’s better if it’s everyday. Always maintain optimal blogging frequency.
“Blog Post A Day, Will Keep You On The Success Way.”
5. Go Out And Bring Them In
It’s the time to start promoting your blog posts. Go to some forums try to bring in some traffic (not by spamming), try to write some guest posts for other popular blogs (don’t forget to add your link) on your niche, leave comments on other’s blog and share your link in all social media sites. This will bring some traffic to your blog.
6. Build Up A Fake Conversation
It’s a simple strategy! To make your visitors to participate and start a discussion you just have to show as if there are already discussions going on, on your blog. You may have to build up a fake conversation in the comments section. You can ask your friends to do it for you. Good way to make your blog more interactive right? There are some cool WordPress plugin can be used to increase the comments.
Let be little bit blunt in this case your point no #6 Fake conversation, i am totally disagree with you in this case. You can deceive some one once but can not deceive foreever. Bloggers always try to establish a raport with their readers.
Besides these i would like to add something more.
1. Blog Theme and how you will monetize your blog and placement of the ads on your blog.
2. How would you Manage the SEO of your post. Whether these features will be embeded inside the theme or you want to install as a seperate plugin.
3. No of plugin and how many plugins.
4. Typography of the blog post and pages.
5. comment Policy, Disclaimer and Advertisement policy.
These are only few point( not all ) each new bloggers should consider before started his/her self hosted blog.
~rakesh kumar
The last point about building fake conversation doesnt seem legit , but Fake it if you cant make it right? 😉
hehehe..I really liked your fake conversation strategy.
It is indeed a real challenge to jumpstart a blog. I believe we should put an emphasis on the visual appearance and the visual content. People are naturally attracted to nice looking pictures. They might be more eager to read the posts and engage in a conversation if there is strong visual stimulation. However, it goes without saying that content is the key. It is true that the niche is an important factor. There are a lot of blogs out there and some are so general that I simply can’t recognize myself in them.
It is very essential for new bloggers to consider these points before launching their blogs. Perfect launch will give them perfect opportunity to expand. I am planning to launch my own blog but I don’t know how to go about. Your post is very useful and informative to me. Thanks for sharing valuable post.
Choosing correct niche for your blog is very crucial decision and you must choose it carefully as by choosing wrong niche can result in waste of your time and efforts.
These are good tips to build up a new blog. Social media sites are definitely great in bringing in some traffic, before your new blog gets its ranking in Google.
Awesome post my friend. I like the #1. I realize how important it was to have a target niche that is unique and packaged in a specific way that fits your viewers wants and needs. Great post I loved it!
Very good compilation mate. But I disagree with the sixth point.
We shouldn’t cheat our readers, readers are smarter than us ! 🙂
nice are article , thanks for sharing .. I agree with all your points except for the last one .. I don,t think building up fake conversation help. No matter what you do . every blog need time to build followers and get conversation started .
great content and social media will help you promote your blog faster
Nice pointers you have listed here. I think When i will start a new blog then These will help me. Strongly agree with your #1 point.
Thanks Praveen.
Good post Praveen. I think the sixth one is really useful , if you want to show that your blog is live. Though, it’s not ethical , it will work for sure 🙂
Great post, the best thing to look for is right niche, but I don’t like the idea of starting the fake conversations, that’s just not the way to build up the reputation, really good post, thanks for sharing.
One thing is sure if you will show something attractive in your blog post only then readers will come on that and do commenting and first of all you should understand what is the niche of your readers.You should target that kind of readers which also gives you some quality backlinks for your site/blog as well.
Good information you have mentioned. I was planning to launch my own blogs but before that I will consider the 6 essential before launching my own blog. Making your blog unique is the most important thing to make your blog hit. I hope this essential will prove helpful to my blog. Thank you for sharing the informative post.
In Starting write daily quality post and comment daily on same niche blogs.Social Network help alot in starting to grew up blog.
Very useful for beginners
submitting on social media and social bookmarking sites help you in SEO
easy to go viral
Yeah Praveen i am agree with your all points specially #4 which i missed when i launched my blog and faced some issue too.
BTW What about #6? Not good Tactics. 🙂
Hello Amit, i completely agree with you. Building Up A Fake Conversation may bring some visitors as suggested by Praveen but when the reader will not find anything such, he might feel cheated and may not visit your blog any other time. I may be wrong Praveen, you can correct it if i am. @other knowledgeable bloggers here, what do you think is faking a conversation good?
Yes Saha, it is not a *real* good practice, but people often do such things to make other commentators and readers engage. Bittersweet!
Jab sabut nai to gawah nahi (No victim when no proof) Making up a fake conversation is good for a blog just started. You may do it for a week, and it will increase comments to a high number.
Usually people read a blog post by seeing number of comments on it.
The idea of using plugins like commentluv is also good.
Regards,
Darshan