Whenever we talk about earning money online, Blogging seems to be the easiest way. Everyone will advice you to start a blog, put AdSense or any other monetization program and start making money. This sounds so easy. Though, in this post, I’m going to be little Harsh on you and going to talk about few things that I have learned the hard way or things that I have learned after following pro in my field.
Blogging Lesson
When I was in college, making money online was a myth for me, and when people talk about they earn online, I see it as another online scam or find it hard to believe it. In Feb 2009, when I received my first $10 on my PayPal account for a quick Webmaster fix, I realized online money is not a scam, and people like me and you can earn from online work.
Here in this post, I’m not going to talk about how you can make online, but rather this is a post for all bloggers, who either started blogging or already running a blog for some time and waiting for next kick start to go to next level.
Quality over Quantity
When I started blogging, one of my primary goals was to publish 4-5 posts a day. Quality doesn’t matter that time and whatever interesting stuff I came across, I curated the same on my blog without any new insight. Yes, I was curating news, and this was one big mistake that I made in initial days of Blogging. Believe it, there is no shortcut to success, and if you are in the race of being a successful blogger, it’s time to find out mistakes that you have done regarding quality. If you are one of those who are publishing tons of post every day, it’s time to change the style and jump into the category of quality blogging. While writing a post, try to find what’s new you are giving to your readers. A simple way to do is find the best post on the Internet about the topic you are writing about, and your goal should be write something better than that. And, this can’t be done without research, testing and proof-reading. By the end, if you can turn a single reader into subscriber you have achieved a goal.
Subscriber over Search Engine traffic
For Adsense Blogger, search engine traffic is great, but the real win is when you are converting those one time reader into a subscriber. This could only be done, when you are giving something new and offering a quality experience to your readers. This doesn’t only limited to quality post but also consider another aspect like site loading time, no. of advertisements and so on. If you consider this blog or any other blog as a quality blog, try to find what is your blog missing regarding quality. What made you subscribe to that blog and in most of the cases it’s quality of the articles. Stop reading about unlimited WordPress tricks, but work on basic of a blog and that is placing ideal subscription box and offer popular subscription options. Don’t forget to leverage the power of Facebook, which is Google itself in term of traffic.
Maintain Email list
Again, it depends upon your Blog niche but having an Email list is always a plus point. From the Branding and from sales perspective. Now, most of you are thinking why do we need Email list when we have Feedburner and other free options, but have anyone told you about the limitations of Feedburner. Email marketing services like Aweber, Mailchimp offers feature like Instant delivery, double opt in, spam control and that too at minimal cost. More over, think about the time when Google might become your biggest enemy, how are you planning to drive traffic then? Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Email list will be your biggest asset. One of the biggest mistake which I did here is, despite of reading about Aweber and Mailchimp advantages, I delayed integrating it into my blog.
- Why your blog need a Mailing list
- Start Aweber Email marketing for $1
Stick with Positive people Only. Period!
When we talk about serious Blogging, it’s a creative work. I consider Blogging as a Job of journalism and artistic work. For an artist, it’s important to have positive energy around you and it only comes when you have people with lots of positive energy around you. Follow the entrepreneur, creators, and market leaders. By the end of the day, you will have something new to gain. Get rid of people, who talk negative, see the glass half empty all the time. This will give you more positive approach and seeing people who believe in creating something new, will help you to boost your productivity.
Reading should be a part of your life
When I was 14-year-old, one of the best tip which I got from a wise man is “reading should be an integral part of your life and everyone life”. It doesn’t matter you are 10 or 100, reading is one habit that you should never ignore. Reading habit gives you a new way to see things, you learn a new thing every day, your vocab will improve, you can talk to people about new things and reading something in your niche, will slowly enhance your knowledge and will help you to be an expert with time. Still not convinces, read how reading makes you better.
Avoid useless comments
Every blogger love comments, even a small comment like “nice post” “useful post”, is an ego boost for us. But, let’s see from SEO and value perspective, a comment like “useful post” doesn’t add any value to your readers and your post. Moreover, one backlink will be going to a Website, which doesn’t even deserve it. And since, SEO is all about linking, how can you give a link back to a blog which doesn’t even earn it.
Moreover, linking to an irrelevant domain is a bad idea. See the image below and most of these links are coming because of commenting. From SEO perspective, it would be better it Google is showing related links to the blog that I often link to. Related links, should show blog which are relevant to your niche, and such comments link might dilute the value of your domain. Accepting feedback from irrelevant domain is not bad, but make sure they earn it. You can check for your domain by typing related:domain.com in Google search.
Don’t be afraid to linking out
This is most common newbie mistake, as Blogger afraid that adding links to an external domain will let your reader jump out from your domain. Which is true, but at the same time you are letting your reader go without adding value. Either you should be a wiki, where you can link to your domain for all stuff or start linking out to useful and best post from the internet. Though, if you are worried about bounce rate, use “Open in new tab” for external links. Also, adding a useful link within your post will help you to create a better relation with other bloggers and also people will find your post more valuable. Don’t you believe so?
And the last but not the least tip, when you read any tips on Blogging, don’t just read it but implement it too.
Hey Harsh,
Being a Newbie all the above points very really helpful, especially the first one to maintain quality over quantity. I am also one of those blogger who wanted to succeed fast and tried to create so many post in one day, but that doesn’t pay well in long run
Thanks for the post.
Great lesson on Blog writing. I’ll surely implement in my own blog too.
Quality writing is obviously an important factor
well good tips as i am newbie i alway like some tips about online earning….and i found some here i guess!!
Such type of post always motivates the newbies bloggers like me to keep blogging.thanks for sharing it as after reading this post i realized some of my mistakes.
Content is always the King. Thanks Harsha for sharing such a Nice points which helps Newbies in their blogging career.
Though I am not in to blogging, I maintain a website. I just started reading about SEO etc and seems like your website have tons of information.
You did a god job here and would like to appreciate you for that.
Regards
SiRu
4 to 5 posts per day is a little too much in the eyes of some people. I guess it all depends on what your blog is all about. If it's technology based, then we know tech changes everyday and there is always news about that.
Typical “Harshism”. I was thinking at the middle of the post, who would be the author of this post. My guess become true. What a source? Outstanding Harsh. You rock as always at SML.
Harsh its yet another highly worthy post to read, also to get essential lesson for blogging. and totally agree with you notably on "Reading should be a part of your life". "Blogging as a Job of journalism and an artistic work." i really want to thank your for this post with potential tips.
While linking to other websites which one is the SEO friendly attribute, either follow or nofollow.?
@Prabha
When you are linking to useful resource/Website.. My suggestion is to keep it dofollow….When linking to non relevant URL or websites..Use nofollow.
Another 'gyan' rich post from The Man…
Lots to learn from it… In the initial days of blogging, I never used to link out to other blogs which was a big mistake on my part… Now, things are better but still I have to think quite a lot before I link out.. need to improve on that…
Again, great tips Harsh…
To be safe in this Panda time we have to focus on quality articles. When I started blogging I also used to publish 2-3 posts every day, but now I only publish quality posts. Those useless articles don't get much search engine traffic anymore.
Great advice. Especially the portion in which you focused on turning your readers into a subscribers is a real achievement. Now I will try to increase my subscribers number instead of increasing adsense revenue and other stuffs.
Hey Harsh,
Nice post. I really liked the 2nd and the last lesson!! Most of the bloggers doing some SEO tweaks run for traffic as they believe Traffic = More page views = More Ad clicks… But blogging is and will be always about building readership… So quantity is good but never at the cost of quality…
Also the linking out thing, I believe if I find a great resource somewhere out there I should share with my readers by giving a link to it rather than rewriting them onto my blog… Great info buddy..
Thanks again..
Thanks Harsha for sharing your experiences. Great Read. Content is King – All newbie bloggers should follow this.
Very cool tips for new bloggers. I really like the linking other blogs one. Blogging is new world still to come.
I always prefer quality but sometime only for quantity.. but now after reading this will only prefer quality otherwise no post… Thanks for these useful tips & i implement it too.
wish i read this article when i started my blog
Great tips like it 🙂 no words to express more thanks
Really nice points,quality is always important for a blogs success.Original and good content is always appreciated by the users.
yes Abhishek, Genuine is always respected by users and search engines.
thats really nice advise… thankyou
A very inspirational post. It will definitely give a start-up thinking to new bloggers.
Best Regards!
This was a nice post harsh . I am thinking to unapprove comments containing nice one , nice share , great work etc . yes they are of no value instead you are giving a link to them . Will try to implement what you said in this post.
I've been having issues with short "spammy" comments – and you just helped me to not feel bad about deleting them.
CommentLuv seems to be a double-edged sword. It is fantastic to try and build up your links. Terrible at bringing people along who don't even read the article.
Sorry… drifting off course here. Unfortunately my mail list is currently at two. *Ahem* So I'm still working on some ideas I have to try and add some additional value to the site then I'll start "pimping" it lol.
As to linking out? You'd be crazy not to! How else do you have your proof in your article. Or make it easier for people to find what you were talking about? There is this nifty option in Word Press call "Open in a New Window" which prevents users from leaving your site – but opens up the new link in a new tab!
Thanks for the article and the reminders. My ego doesn't need a quick "thank you". It needs a mail subscriber lol!
Nice outline! Many people understand that but still it is hard to find a blog where you would like to return and always read unique information. The most sagnificant thing is uniqueness. The more uniqueness you will achieve, the mre traffic you will get.
Alex I agree… Reading same stuff on every blog is boring…That's the reason LifeHacker is so famous..Because they have variety of tips and none the less most of them are unique.. Though they curate content at times..but again they elegantly manage the quality with curated content..!! Something to learn from LifeHacker stategy.
Harsh Great Tips for newbie. Thanks for sharing your Experience with us. I think as a newbie its tough job to making list building, traffic-to-subscriber conversions, traffic-to-sales-conversion.
Amit indeed it's a tough job and the hard part is understand the right way to go about it. That's why I highly recommend every newbie to read more and specially from Bloggers like Darren, Daniel who have been doing it form ages. So that you can understand how they started and how they maintain list and what strategy they are taking to convert readers into sales.
Awesome post by blogging,seo guru Mr Harsh Aggarwal. Regards to him.
Thanks for your comment Ravi. Glad you enjoyed the post.
Hi Harsh,
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