Make Your Blog Count in 2010

I have already written down my New Year’s Resolutions for 2010 (cunningly disguised as a set of business goals to achieve by the time the year ends) and I know the direction I want to take this year.

If I am being totally honest, it’s about bloody time I started take my online business seriously and stopped coasting from one half-assed project to the next… but I know there will be some people reading this who make exactly the same mistakes I made for years.

I don’t want this to happen to you – go back and read my first post if you are visiting for the first time. Trust me, you don’t want this to be you when we are getting ready to ring in 2011!

I want my blog to go from strength to strength this year and I want that for you too, so here are my best tips for making your blog count in 2010.


(photograph attriubuted to epc)

Register Your Domain Name

If you are going to be taken seriously online and turn your online presence into an authority blog then you need to get the basics right.

Get into the right mindset starting from now. If you are going to become famous online, then at the very least you need your own domain name so you can brand yourself around it!

That means ditching your free Blogspot or WordPress.com account and investing in a memorable domain name. If you are in the internet marketing niche, try and get the .com version of your name. If that’s not available, get as close to it as possible, even if you need to use hyphens or a different suffix.

I have a common name (around 23 million competing web pages in Google for David Walker) but the .tv suffix was still available with .com, .net, .co.uk etc. already taken so I had to make do with that.

However, I have got used to it and now actually quite like it – ALL of my personal branding in 2010 is going to be focused around DavidWalker.tv. You will be seeing a LOT of me in the next 12 months.

If you are involved in a different niche, such as dog training, register a domain name with your most important keywords in them to help with branding and search engine optimization. You can then brand yourself as an expert figure within that niche from the start.

Look, I know we are in a recession, but there is no excuse to use free blog services if you are serious about running your blog as a business – start treating your blog like a serious business!

You can register your domain name with GoDaddy for around $10 and a more than satisfactory hosting package from Hostgator for less than $5 a month.

You’d spend more than that on coffee breaks or a couple of beers in the bar at the end of your working week, so don’t tell me you cannot afford it!

(photograph attributed to Mike Schinkel)

Build Your Email List

One of the BIGGEST mistakes I ever made was NOT building my email list sooner.

Even when I was making a ton of money online I wasn’t building my list along the way – if I did, I could have made 10 times the money. That’s a real sickener.

Start building your list as soon as your blog is online, you can never start it soon enough!

If you take just one tip from me in the whole of 2010 then it’s this – your blog alone will not make you that much money. It’s the subscriber list you build from that blog which will earn you a substantial income.

OK, so you may be able to generate a few hundred dollars per month from advertising banners and Google Adsense, but that’s not going to happen until you are established and even then that amount of money is chicken feed.

Think about it this way. Every subscriber on your email list is worth, on average, $1 per month to you.

I thought that may get your attention. That means as long as you keep building your list, your income will increase month on month and will far outweigh what you can earn from blog advertising (incidently how much advertising do you see on my blog? You can be sure as hell I am making money from it, though!)

The mailing list provider I use is Aweber. I have had an account with them for several years now even though I only started using them properly last June when I started this blog.

For the sake of $1 you can set up a trial account and then it’s a small monthly subscription to enable you to send out unlimited autoresponder messages, broadcasts and RSS newsletters.

If you cannot make this pay for itself, then perhaps you shouldn’t think about quitting your day job!

(image attributed to Kristina B)

You Have a Blog – Now Actually Post On It!

The key to succeeding with your blog is to decide on a posting frequency from the very beginning and stick to it!

In your very first post, tell your story to position yourself as an expert and inform your readers how regularly you are going to post. That way, you keep yourself accountable to other people and you will be under a favourable amount of pressure to stick to your promise.

I have been a bit slack myself with posting to my blog but 2010 is the year people will take notice of it. I wrote in my resolutions post that I’ll write two new posts per week so that the content remains fresh.

The worst thing you can do with a new blog is go at it like a bat out of hell for the first few weeks, posting daily until you run out steam and stop posting altogether.

Let’s make this clear – you are NOT going to become an overnight sensation. It took even the really famous bloggers around a year of consistent posting before they started making any sort of income so just relax.

If you are passionate about the niche you are blogging about then you will be able to come up with some great content – you don’t need to post everything all at once! Just be consistent in your posting and work on other areas of your business at the same time, such as building your list and product creation.

(photograph attributed to P Kinski)

Build Relationships & Personal Branding

Blogging has and always will be about forging relationships between both your readers and other bloggers in your niche.

No matter how great your content is, people are not just going to “find you”, think you are wonderful and buy anything you shove in front of them. There is a little more work involved.

Make sure you enter your niche as an expert from the very beginning. This will save a lot of time and encourage people to want to get to know, like and trust you rather than just view you as merely more noise in a crowded marketplace.

Start branding yourself on other people’s blogs by leaving comments on their blog posts (you can leave me a comment below!) but make sure they are thoughtful and add value to the conversation – none of your “great post – keep it up” type drivel please. This will drive traffic back to your blog and when people comment on your posts, be sure to leave an appreciative reply.

Once you pick up a bit of steam and really enjoy posting new content on your blog you can start offering to write guest posts for other people’s blogs. This will increase your credibility, open you up to a whole new audience and add valuable subscribers to your mailing list!

(image attributed to Matt Hamm)

Brand Yourself on Social Media Websites

It’s also important to secure as many “outposts” as you can with your own personal brand in order to reinforce it and drive traffic. By “outposts”, I mean social media websites – the hugely popular and highly trafficked websites almost everyone has an account at.

To give you some ideas, I am branded at the following places among numerous others:

• Facebook personal page (and now Fan Page too!)
• Twitter account
• Youtube account
• Flickr account
• Sphinn account
• Warrior Forum profile

If you haven’t done so already, brand yourself on all of the major social media websites and make sure you link back to your blog on each one. Try to use the same photograph and the same information where possible to so you can reinforce your brand as much as possible.

The year has only just begun and it is absolutely the right time for you to start blogging and reinvent yourself as an authority figure in your niche. You can get your blog up and running in just a few minutes, so don’t put it off until tomorrow.

Tell me what you intend to do in 2010 to make your blog count in the comments below!