1000 USD 2011 Best Guest Blogger Contest Article Approved
With the growing popularity of the internet, more and more people are using as a way to share their knowledge and experience with others. Although, there are many widely popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, many people still prefer to use blogging.
Although, for many blogging is just something they do for fun, for the other part is a way of life. When you search the internet, you will find thousands of people, who work as bloggers and make pretty decent income from something they do for fun (sounds like a dream job). If you want to become one of them, but you are not aware what exactly makes a professional blogger, let’s get started with my guide.
Professional vs. Hobby Bloggers
First, I would like to start with what exactly makes the difference between professional and hobby blogger. The biggest difference as I can think of is that the professional bloggers actually make their blogs in order to make some money out of them. When reading this you probably think, well some of the people, who just blog for fun also make some money out of their blogs and you, are absolutely right. The difference is that the professional bloggers are already established as experts in a particular niche and their blogs receive a lot more targeted traffic.
Choosing Your Niche
In order to start being a professional blogger, you have to determine for what problems you are willing to write. This is the place where professional and hobby bloggers actually meet, so it is very important to choose a niche that you find interesting. This is due to the fact that once you become professional blogger, you will have to dedicate a lot of time to create compelling content on your blog. In order to make the right choice, just take one of your main interests and use it to create your professional blog.
Starting Your Promotion
Since you want to become a professional blogger and make all your income online, you should find ways to drive traffic to your website. Although, there are a lot of blog posts where you can read all kinds of techniques to drive traffic to your blog, but here I would rather talk about those I use and I can assure you that by using them you do not risk your website to get excluded from Google’s Index.
- Social Media Promotion – The easiest thing you can do to drive quality traffic to your website is to share it with all your friends. For that purpose, simply post it on your wall and tell all the people that are connected with you to vote it. If you don’t know from where to start, you can start with your family…
- Enhancing WordPress – A great plugin I recommend for all professional bloggers is Zemanta. It will allow you to exchange links with bloggers from your niche. In addition to that other bloggers can link back to you and this ensures that you will exchange links with people from relevant niches. Sounds great right!
- Engaging in Discussions – There are a lot of forums where you can engage in all kinds of discussions related with your niche. There you can also meet a lot of people and also is great for reputation management. This is probably the best way to establish yourself as a niche authority. In order to find such forums, you just have to try searching with some niche related keywords combined with “Forum” in Google.
- Guest Posting – Since you are trying to establish yourself as a true professional, you have to start engaging with fellow bloggers. There are 2 main ways I use to find such blogs. The first one is by using custom Google queries like keyword+”write for us” and with them I usually get a pretty decent list with niche blogs. After that I usually select the blogs I want to contact and send those mails. The second easier way is by using My Blog Guest. It is a pretty cool place, where you just add your article in the gallery and you get offers from fellow bloggers ready to publish it. You can also allow the others to make guest posts on your blog.
- Answering Questions – It seems that in the past couple of months, the big communities like Focus and Quora are becoming really popular. In them, you can meet some of the brightest minds in each industry and engage with them. Also you can ask all kinds of niche related questions and engage in discussions after that. While doing this do not forget to link back to your blog as a source of information. Even mentioning your blog with some of the authorities in the particular niche can help a lot, so please do so.
After reading all those tips, the only thing left is to find some advertising program to participate into. This the best way to monetize your traffic. For all beginners, I recommend using the good old Google AdSense, since it is pretty easy to use and setup.
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Twitter: Mazzastick
My understanding is that many Probloggers started off learning the ropes slowly and then after some time, like two years for some, finally hit it big.
It takes time, patience and know how to be a problogger, but I believe that virtually anyone can do it if they stick with it long enough.
Justin | Personal Growth recently posted..Mazzastick.com’s Guide 4 New Bloggers eBook
Twitter: lyuben88
You have a point Justin, in order to start making decent income from your blog, you have to be patient. It usually takes a couple of months to start driving enough traffic just to start making any income.
wursti recently posted..Gain Exposure with Guest Blogging and Even Earn $1000
Excellent guide. Although I consider myself as a hobby blogger, I think this could also help me improve my blogging skills. I also agree with Justin. It takes time to really “master” the art of (professional) blogging.
Twitter: richescorner
I think that these days the line between professional blogs and hobby blogs are blurred. That’s becaue there are so many resources now that help people start up blogs and make money online, that they can start one as a hobby and grow it over time to almost professional status. The big difference these days I think is how much time one is able to put into their blogging activities on a daily basis.
Richard recently posted..My Lending Club Investment Performance
Twitter: kirapermunian
If there’s such thing as pro and hobby, then I belong to a hobby blogger. But whatever it is, my blog have helped me a lot in terms of experience, knowledge and of monetary values. Blogengage is one of my witness on my blogging journey as this is the community I stick into with.
I liked your promotion tips. You have somehow contributed new words to me today!
SEO Blogging | Kira recently posted..“Keep It Simple Stupid” Blogging Updates
I think the whether you are professional or it is only your hobby, you can be a professional blogger. Remember that if you love the things you do, you will become successful. Many bloggers today become successful in the field of their interest. If some can do it, you can too!
TracyAnn0312 recently posted..ייעוץ שינה
Twitter: lyuben88
Hi Tracy,
It seems yuou got the main message from my post – the more you like blogging about a particular niche, the higher chances for success you have. However, do not forget to promote your blog where possible
Hi wursti! The reason I got the point is because you share great opinion to us. I must agree that we must not forgot to promote our blog so that we can generate traffic.
Tracyann0312 recently posted..הדרכת הורים
It is possible to build a good and popular blog just by using the guest blogger. See how Hesham has done with his famousbloggers.net and a few others has done. Find your niche invite great guest bloggers in the niche can be half the job done.
Twitter: CreditDonkey
Hi Lyuben,
I agree that it’s really important we choose a niche and blog about the things that we’re passionate about because we’ve all heard of many bloggers who lost interest after just a few months.
It’s an ideal situation if we blog for fun and eventually earn from it. If we love what we do, we won’t be easily discouraged if there’s a poor showing at the start. We just keep on and by consistently providing value and by using techniques like what you suggested to promote the blog, we’ll eventually find success as a professional blogger.
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I think that the most important about blooding (and not only) is just devotion, spending a lot of time doing it:) It requires a lot of attention and practice also:)
Twitter: adrhomes
Thanks for the tips. I just started my company real estate blog and can use all the help I can find. I’m finding out its not quite as easy as I thought it was going to be. I think the “engaging” portion was a great point. It seems that many bloggers loose sight of this concept. Thanks again
I agree with you guys. If our blog gets to the point where it is generating more income, then this will be our dream job. We got income and we enjoy what we are doing, what more can we ask for a job. Professional and Hobby bloggers, all happy bloggers.
Thanks and best to all,
Val Adams of pawn shops online
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