What is the goal of most bloggers these days? For me and other bloggers I know it’s all about getting more target traffic. Why? Because we need readers to earn money with our blogs.

Success with blogging is all about the marketing you do right from the get-go. Get it right and you will see success but don’t bother to research your niche and you may just be spinning your wheels like I did for a couple of year.

Ignore my warning and you will have to just find our for yourself, but you are going to find that you can not just create a blog, make a post or two and then expect to make money.

To Start Blogging You Need A Blog

Once you have a blog setup, which is so easy these days, you need to populate your blog with great content that’s relevant to your niche.

Posting regularly is what works best. You won’t be likely to find success if you just put up a bunch of articles and leave it at that. I often check the date on a blog to see how often it’s updated. If it’s not updated at least once a week I don’t bother with it. A blog that’s not updated gets old fast.

You can go with a free service for blogging but I have had bad experiences with free blog platforms. They can shut you down instantly if someone complains about your blog, even if it’s not true. Then you have to prove they are wrong.

I use Wordpress myself and also use blog themes that make my blogs look somewhat unique and then I even change the header and footer images along with the colours so that it’s all mine.

Do try to get a theme that is going to match the market what you’re promoting. I have a couple of travel blogs and took a bit of time and used Google to find a travel blog theme for Wordpress that looks great. I just popped a new header image in for both blogs and was good to go.

Get Links To Your Blog

Once you have your blog thought out and you are adding great relevant content it’s then time to start getting backlinks to your blog pages.

Don’t Only Link To Your Main Page

A big mistake I made when I started getting backlinks to my sites was linking to the main page all the time. Instead, I should have been linking to relevant pages in my site.

I use Bloglines as my RSS feed reader to keep up with related blogs.

I find blogs that are in my niches and then comment on blog posts that match my content. Once I have a blog that matches and then an article I like I will comment but not before finding a good match to link to on my related blog.

If I can’t find an article that fits I will take the time to write one and then link to it from the comment I am leaving. Don’t be in a hurry and do it right, it’s worth your time.

1. When you are going for links to your site do your best to get one-way links, they are more powerful than reciprocal links.

2. When commenting leave value-added comments and try to be first to comment. That is why having a RSS feed reader like Bloglines comes in so handy. You can see new blog posts immediately.

3. Leave your real name instead of a keyword where your name goes. I personally delete all comments now where keywords are used as their name. It looks like the comment was left as a comment when you use your name compared to seeing a keyworded phrase instead.

4. Do your best to comment on blogs that have good page ranks. It’s always better for your blog when you are commenting or linking from authority sites.

5. Hire a company to do a linking campaign for you. They are usually quite affordable and if you focus on one blog at a time you can really shoot your site up in the rankings.

Note: When you hire anyone to do a back linking campaign be sure to check them out first. There are a lot of scammers out there. Be sure you have some type of guarantee you can work with.

I used a place once that only offered 50% refund guarantee. I asked them about it and he just explained that they did this manually so labour was involved. I still gave them a try as it was less than $50 for 80 backlinks.

I was pleased with their service but we had a heck of a time with emails. I told them in the end that I was pleased with their work and they did a great job but I wouldn’t use them again because of the email problems. I would still be using them if not for that problem.

So, in conclusion, blogging is easy, fun and quite rewarding if you start right and keep focused.

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Shadow, my dog and I work from home these days sharing the what we know about our hobbies and interests. But I don’t just share this info on my blogs. I also make niche specific content available in a number of ways that make me more money.

1. Write Articles And Publish Them on Top Article Directories.

This does a couple of things for me.

• I get a backlink back to the web page I added to my article resource box.
• Other marketers use my articles but by law they have to keep my resource box which gives me more backlinks to that web page.

I have a favourite article directory which is EzineArticles.com but I also use numerous others. Just do a search in Google for ‘article directories’ and you will find the top ones on page one of your results.

2. Guest Blogging

I like to write and share content by guest blogging on other blogs. I don’t do this a lot because I usually use commenting on blogs as a way to get more of my content out there along with a link back to my site. It’s vital that you add value by staying relevant when commenting or no one will follow your link.

3. Create Private Label Rights Articles

If you have hobbies and interest that you know something about you have a great opportunity to write niche specific articles that you can sell from your sites.

Good content is worth gold in PLR format. Just look at Nicole Dean’s Easy PLR to see what you can do with your own Private Label Rights products and you will see there’s gold in them there articles.

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I work from home and have been since early 2001. I love being my own boss even though it does require a lot of content and linking to make it all come together for the 20 or so blogs I have going currently.

My blogs are in a variety of niches and need niche specific content on a regular basis, which for me is at least one article per blog every 3 days. It does tend to keep me busy so I periodically I use writers to help me with my content. That’s when I turn to article directories to find good writes for my niches.

Note: Not all my articles are publish on my blogs. I also write articles specifically to get backlinks to my blog pages. At the end of each article I add details about me and the niche I am writing about, it’s called the resource or bio box.

The Article Resource Box

The first and most important aspect of article writing is to have focused, helpful content or you won’t get anyone finishing the article. If they don’t finish it they won’t be making use of your resource box. But if you take the time to write worthwhile content then you want to make sure you give the details that will get your resource box link clicked.

I get articles at a variety of place and notice a lot of people write about one thing and link to something non-relevant. I don’t use these articles for content and I don’t bother with the author. I am a firm believer that the resource box and article content should be relevant to each other.

I don’t find it professional at all to write about a specific type of fishing or perhaps gardening but their resource box points to an insurance, gambling, meds… you get my point, right.

When I am looking for writers I look for writers that link to what they talk about in their article.

In my humble opinion when a resource box is done correctly it should give information about the writer relevant to the content.

What Should Be In Your Resource Box?

Here are a few things that your resource box should include, their important:

Include Your full name: When I publish articles I like to include a little about myself but I make it a point to include my full name, not just my first name or my initials. It never seems completely real unless the full name is there.

Include A Relevant Link

Every once in a while I see an article in the article directories that has no link in the article or the resource box. What were they thinking. It’s that link that makes it all work.

The URL you use in your resource box is a link back to a specific web page on your site, don’t waste the opportunity.

So your resource box doesn’t need to have a lot of info and should only be about 1-3 sentences. Just enough for your details and a call to action.

An article is just an article, without your resource box you really don’t stand a change in article directories.

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