Many people who are just starting out in blogging, especially those who want to pitch affiliate products to their readers, write for the sole purpose of earning affiliate commissions.  There’s nothing wrong with writing posts geared to earning money, but there are things you should consider before you choose a product to present to your readers.

Trust Is Key

Promoting products or services to your readers carries with it a moral obligation.  In engaging in a dialogue with your readers you are working towards one thing and one thing only: Earning their trust.

The trust of your readers is by far the most important commodity that your blog has.  It dwarfs the importance of traffic, page views or comments and search engine ranking can’t come close to the importance the trust of your readers holds to your future as a blogger.

Trust may not be hard to gain initially.  A person who randomly finds your post through a search engine has no reason to doubt what you’ve written.  They will trust your writing initially, so in that sense it’s pretty easy to gain someone’s trust. It’s also the easiest thing for a blogger to lose.

Steer just one reader wrong and he or she will begin the process of eroding the trust you’ve worked so hard to earn from your readers.  Given enough time and a few people who feel you haven’t been completely honest with them, you’ll find that there isn’t anyone left to convince.  The readers who feel slighted will have made their case all over the Internet and you will find that your readership suffers. Or worse, it will disappear completely.

One of the most widely used axioms for this is “Give.  Give. Give. Give and give some more.  Then ASK”  You’ll have to do a lot of giving, usually for no profit, before you can ask your readers to take action.  This mantra is one that should be remembered.

Don’t Sell It If You Wouldn’t Use It Yourself

Avoid promoting affiliate programs based solely on the amount of commissions that they pay.  Always ask yourself if you would use the product or service that you’re writing about. If the answer isn’t a resounding YES!; don’t sell it.

If you like a product or service, consider purchasing it yourself and give it a run for its money before pitching it to your readers.  Not only will you be able to give your readers the benefit of your experience but if you’re really excited about what you’re selling, that excitement will shine through in your writing.  This in turn will get your readers excited about the product and gives you a much better chance of making a sale.

Aside from the financial benefit of only selling what you know and love, you’ll have pride in what you’re offering to your readers.  That feeling is something you can never experience if you’re just selling whatever has the biggest payout at the moment and it will show every time you recommend a product.

More on this subject

• Create A Call To Action
• The rhythm of proper post frequency
• Why social media is your best friend

First of all, for those who may not have heard of social networking, here’s a quick definition, courtesy of Message In a Box:

A broad class of web sites and services that allow you to connect with friends, family, and colleagues online, as well as meet people with similar interests or hobbies. Popular examples include MySpace, Facebook, Linked In. Even photo sharing websites like Flickr have become places for social networking through shared interests.

So in a nutshell, social networking is a way for people with similar interests to share ideas with each other.  In this respect it is the Internet analogy to the cracker barrel in the general store of the 19th Century or the coffee shop of the late 20th century. people get together, share ideas and information and pass it along to others.

More Than just A Cracker Barrel

The main difference of today’s social networking isn’t what is said or how it’s done.  The difference is in the number of people that can be affected by the information being provided.

In the past, spreading an idea through your idea by word of mouth could have taken weeks or months. Modern social networking sites can spread word of an interesting topic to millions of people in just a few hours.  Imagine writing a post at 7:00 am and having a half-million page views by dinnertime.  It can happen.  It does happen. More often than you think.

The key is to determine the kind of information that people want to share with their friends or will find interesting enough to pass along to others in their social networks.  Once this begins it can quickly lead to traffic spike’s so heavy that servers are overloaded to the point of reset.

The Twitter Effect

If you aren’t already using twitter you are missing out on a golden opportunity to bring readers to your blog.  Occasionally tweeting about a post you’ve written will always get a few page views, but if that post is interesting to your twitter followers you may get the chance to experience what has been dubbed “The Twitter Effect.”

In a nutshell, the Twitter Effect works like this:

You tweet about your latest post, or a post you want to highlight

One or two of your followers Re Tweet your tweet, including the link you provided.

A few of each of their followers also Re Tweet your tweet

More and more people find the subject interesting and continue Re Tweeting the post to their group of followers.

And So-on. And So-on

In most cases this can gain you 20 to 30 pageviews, assuming that you have a few hundred followers and that at least one of those people found what you had to say interesting enough to send it along to his or her group of friends.  On a good run this might even generate a hundred new views to your blog over the course of an hour or so.

There are those golden moments however, when that re Tweet finds itself in the hands of someone who has thousands and thousands of followers.  That person shoots your tweet out and then a few hundred of his or her followers return the favor.  In these cases you can see hundreds of thousands of pageviews in a very short amount of time.  In some cases, enough will hit at one time to actually take your web server offline!

While this last example is uncommon for most bloggers, assume just for a moment that you’ve tweeted a bit of information along to such notables as Pete Cashmore (@mashable), John Scalzi (@Scalzi) or even Ashton Kutcher (@AplusK) in response to something that they’ve said.  One mention by any of these notables could generate enough traffic in seconds to drive an underpowered server over-capacity.

If any of your monetizing schemes relies on pageviews, you could make a few hundred dollars in mere minutes, assuming of course that your host is up to the flood of traffic that will be coming your way. You could also gain a few hundred extra daily readers just based on the recommendation of someone that people respect.

Don’t be afraid to Tweet directly to the A-Listers if you have something of value to offer them.  They are people too, and they have interests just like everyone else, just don’t expect them to respond, and never ask for a Re Tweet or get disgruntled if they don’t reply. Remember, any A-List player on any social network is flooded by comments and requests on a daily basis.  A failure to respond is not generally a slight against you, but more likely they simply didn’t have time to reply.

There Is No Magic Formula

If you were expecting me to give you the secret to creating a viral post that will immediately jump to the front page of Digg,com or be visited by everyone using Stumble Upon, I hate to break it to you, but I can’t.  I’ve written articles that generated massive amounts of traffic from both of these sites, but the reasons that they are more popular than others is a complete mystery to me.

To further complicate matters, the niche you write in will also determine what other people with similar interests find noteworthy.  To say that there is one formula that can be followed would be foolhardy at best and absolute lunacy in any other case.  The right combination of information and writing skills depends on your audience.  Listen to them closely and in time you’ll find what gets your work noticed.  Once that happens you’ll check your statistics package one day to find a pleasant surprise.

Twitter Is Not the Only Game In Town :  Use Other Social Sites As Well

While I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Twitter, it is not the only social media site you should be worried about. Twitter is  just the newest of the super-sites and the one most social-media types are talking about right now.  Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, Squidoo.com and other social media sites are all still incredibly viable ways of bringing in traffic and should not be ignored.

A front page listing on Digg can generate hundreds of thousands of visits.  Getting “stumbled” through StumbleUpon can do the same and I know several people who swear by the power of Squidoo lenses to gain visitors. The site that works for you will depend on the type of people using these services. and the type of content that you write.

Make sure you look at what topics are hot on each before pouring all of your effort into any one social media site. The only one that I have found to be general enough for just about any audience is Stumble Upon and I use it to generate a slew of traffic to those of my blogs that appeal to a wide audience.  Other social media sites are focused on their own niche topics, such as technology or design, so if you write about knitting, you  probably won’t want to waste your time getting mentions on Digg; you’ll never make the main page and you will have spent a lot of time and effort for no good reason.

The Reason It’s Called “Social” Media

When using social media to help drive traffic to your sites it’s easy to forget that the medium is called social media for a reason.  Far too often site owners that are trying to boost traffic or sell products seem to forget that to be effective, they actually have to give something freely to the community.

Social media sites are built around community.  If you fail to post replies to other people’s tweets or engage in conversations it’s very likely that you’re not going to find yourself with all that many followers regardless of the number of people you follow yourself.  Worse, you’ll find that those people un-follow or block you once they discover that all you are doing is talking about yourself without ever giving anything useful to anyone else.

In the case of media sites like Dig and Stumble Upon, if you aren’t recommending sites other than your own, you’ve defeated the purpose of the concept and most users of those services won’t give your recommendations much weight.  Th key is to Stumble or Digg other people’s blog posts and articles regularly.  Be sure to leave encouraging (and relevant) comments or descriptions when you do.  then if you point people to your own information they’ll be more likely to take a look.

More on this subject

• Be An Honest Salesperson
• Create A Call To Action
• The rhythm of proper post frequency

Get Listed

Though most blog directories aren’t frequented often by humans, Search engine robots love them. Having your blog listed in as many relevant places as possible does nothing but help you show up when people search for the topic you write in.

There are literally hundreds of blog directories for any given niche. Finding the right directories can be a difficult task if you don’t have the right tools.  While I can’t cover all of these directories in this venue, there are a few places you can start when looking for directories related to your niche:

The Weblogs Compendium

The RSS Top 55

Search Engine Journal’s 20 Essential Directories list

There are many, many more places to look, but the previous three resources should get you well on your way to getting both a bunch of free inbound links and better traffic quickly.

Harness the Power of Community

Blog directory sites were once simple lists of blogs in different topical groups, but no more.  Communities have grown around blogging.  Sites like BlogCatalog bring thousands of bloggers together with similar interests together every day and this type of community drives traffic and creates exposure.

Once your blog is listed, you have the choice of joining groups of blogs in your niche and can send announcements to other members of those groups when you post a new article. The chances of getting traffic increases exponentially when you have a large number of friends, as they will help promote your blog for you, as long as you help promote theirs.

As a community site, BlogCatalog also has a discussion forum.  posting in this forum often will also generate traffic to your blog for little more than a few minutes of your time on any given day.  It’s far too valuable a resource not to use.

MyBlogLog is another community of bloggers much like BlogCatalog and can be just as beneficial in building traffic and returning readers (Assuming it stays alive through budget cuts), but each of these resources must be actively used to have maximum effect.

More on this subject

• Forum posts drive quality traffic
• The power of free
• 5 sites to take inspiration from

Who doesn’t want to get something for nothing?  Who doesn’t enjoy knowing that they won something that a lot of other people were also trying to win?  Most people enjoy entering  contest and most people like free stuff.  It’s a sure fire way to get people to visit your site.

Contests have the potential to go viral, with friends telling their friends and so on… The word spreads and more people visit yo enter the contest.  This not only boosts traffic in the short term, but if handled correctly it can net you a large number of regular readers who would never have otherwise seen your blog.

Free For Me, Free For you

Don’t think that holding a contest means that you have to spend a penny.  A contest can be as simple as letting your readers know that the best answer to a question will have a post dedicated to the reader that gave the winning answer.

In the world of food blogs these kinds of competitions are quite normal.  The blog owner asks what his or her readers would make from a certain set of ingredients and a winner is chosen at the end of the month.  In this case the contest is very foodie-centric, but there is no reason that the concept can’t be applied to any blog.

Play around with the idea and I think you’ll find that this concept can fit your niche as well.  It might take a bit more effort than offering a prize, but it costs you nothing if your blog isn’t already generating an income on its own.

Giveaways

Giveaways are by far the most common type of contest run on blogs, and for good reason. Giveaways will almost always draw in a large amount of traffic but depending on your niche, finding relevant products or services to give away can be very expensive.

If you write about design software you could be looking at multiple-thousand dollar price tags for giveaway items in your market.  In cases like these, look for items that most people are interested in, but won’t set you back by far more than you’ll generate by running the contest.

Think inexpensive MP3 players, add-on packs for software your readers might already have or gift certificates for online stores.  people will still compete to win these things but it will cost you a lot less than full-featured items.

Put Your Dignity On The Chopping Block

Don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself!  Offer something foolish if a goal isn’t met or tell your readers that you will do something crazy if you can’t accomplish something you’ve set out to do, then post a running commentary on the process.

Let’s say you’ve decided that you could potentially generate $2,000.00 in a single month using a certain advertising method, or that you’ve decided to enter a contest yourself.  Let your readers know that if you fail to achieve your goals you will do something crazy like shave your head and post a photo of it or post a YouTube video of your hair coming off. (I don’t suggest this one for my female blogging sisters.)

I will almost guarantee that a stunt like this will bring in a lot of traffic once people hear about it. It’s off-the-wall things like this that make reality TV shows and outrageous game-shows so popular.

In the end it costs you nothing more than a little bit of your dignity and if you’re the fun-loving type it might just be the key to an explosive amount of traffic long after the contest is over… If you can tolerate the indignity of it all.

More on this subject

• 5 sites to take inspiration from
• Don’t be afraid to be controversial
• Be An Honest Salesperson

Learn From The Best

You can learn a lot from really great blogs. You can, and should, try to emulate what they do well and avoid what they don’t do as well as they could. The problem is, truly finding a great blog to replicate.

Truly successful bloggers never stop learning.  Like any other writer, they study other bloggers and writers in their niche, they share their experiences and mistakes and they make the experience of visiting their blog a social one, where the visitor is welcome to leave their own thoughts and join in on the discussion.

These A-List bloggers never forget that their readers are people and that their input is important.  They answer comments whenever possible and provide information that is useful or uplifting.  But who are they?

Blogs To Model Yours After

I could list all of the blogs that I look up to here, but honestly, the blogs you should be looking at belong in your own niche.  Look at the people who dominate your chosen subject matter, they are the people you should be emulating.

This book is far to short a venue to list the top blogs in every niche, but there are places you can look to find those blogs that truly shine in your topic of choice.  There are several websites that cover this topic, but the two best sites to keep your eye on are The Bloggers Choice Awards and the Weblog Awards.

Both of these sites showcase the very best in blogs as determined by other bloggers and the readers of those blogs. If you want to see who the people in the know think has done the best work throughout the year, these are the places to look.

In a more general sense, I’ll offer up a few blogs with shining reputations of their own and point out why I think they are worth taking note of:

Steve Pavlina . com:

Steve’s Blog is a good example  of high quality writing and timeless content.  Older articles are updated when necessary and Steve is happy to share his experiences with his readers.

Steve even took the time to write a post about how he makes money from his blogs. (This is a very long post, so make sure that you’ve got your beverage of choice handy and a good comfy chair.) He shows you how much money he’s made and how to get traffic to your blog and revenue from your own blogs if that is what you want to do with them.

The Pioneer Woman:

Though The Pioneer Woman may be best known for the recipes she serves up daily at The Pioneer Woman Cooks, the blog is actually an all-around package that hit like a tsunami in 2006.  since then the popularity of this lifestyle blog has known no bounds.

Not only has Ree taken the world into her daily life through words and photos of life on a working cattle ranch and everything that comes with it.  This blog is worth a look if for no other reason to simply revel in the expert writing, but when you’re done you should take notes, you might just learn something about writing and allowing your visitors  a little peek inside what makes you tick.

Lifehacker:

Lifehacker is the blog to watch if you plan on covering late breaking news, events or review the newest products on the market. The key to this blog is clarity.  posts are short and to the point.  Just the necessary information is covered so that the reader can get the information they need and move on with their day.

Please remember that Lifehacker is a multi-author blog, so if you plan to model you efforts after theirs, you might want to think about having a team of like-minded bloggers handy to keep the volume up.  If you’re posting on your own, keep the post count down to two or three a day to avoid burning yourself out.

Dooce:

If you’re planning to write a personal (or Mommy/Daddy) blog, you have to check out Dooce.  This irreverent romp through one woman’s life will have you in stitches, crying or just wondering what in the world was going through the authors head at the time she was writing her posts for the day.

This blog was voted most popular blog overall for 2008, quite a testament to the power of being personable.  The fact that the author is irresistibly funny and nearly terminally honest doesn’t hurt any either. You should definitely look here for tips on keeping your readers interested.

Television Without Pity:

I’ll finish this chapter with living proof that you can cover any topic at all in a blog and become popular.  You don’t even have to be nice doing it!  Television Without Pity shows once and for all that having an opinion, and a rather strong one, will get you everywhere, but flattery will get you ripped to shreds.

The premise of this site is simple.  Tell everyone what you absolutely despise about a particular television program. It doesn’t matter if every other person that you know loves that particular program, on TWP you’ll find a very large and vocal group that agree completely that it’s complete cr*p.

The moral of this one is that you don’t have to be nice to have a lot of people read what you write.  You may however, want to be a bit judicious. (and carefully study libel laws)

More on this subject

• The power of free
• Don’t be afraid to be controversial
• Be An Honest Salesperson

Disclaimer

The tips in this chapter come with a price.  While I can personally guarantee that following the tips presented here will increase your traffic tremendously, you might want to ask yourself if you can handle the repercussions that come along with them.

Sitting in the center of a war of words will almost surely lead to a lot of negative commentary directed at you. You’ll need to quickly develop a  thick skin to handle the storm that this type of writing can cause.   Sure you’ll get visitors, but you’ll very likely make a few enemies in the process and the Internet has a very long memory.

There’s Traffic In Controversy

Controversy will bring in visits in a hurry. whether it’s because you’ve posted your view on a controversial subject or because what you’re writing is making people stop and ask “What did she just say?”, being in the middle of a controversy is a sure fire traffic builder.

There are several ways to approach this type of blogging, one aggressive and one passive:

The Aggressive Method:

In the aggressive form, you would poke around other blogs in your niche and find a topic that is being actively discussed, and which many people are discussing passionately.

Write a post on that topic that disagrees with or pokes fun at the popular opinion.  Then you go post a comment on a popular blog telling them that you disagree or think they are overreacting and add a link to your own post so that you can back up your comments.

Note: Don’t tell the blog author that he or she is an idiot for posting their opinion.  This is slander and is not tolerated well in the blogging community.  People who run around posting only inflammatory comments are known as trolls and will quickly be banned from posting comments at all.

While this will definitely drive traffic, it will also most definitely get you labeled as a troublemaker unless your posts are written extremely well.  If you’re going to go down this path, make sure you’ve done your research.  Failing to do so will make you a laughingstock.

The Passive Method:

The passive form of this method is less likely to get you branded as a nut-job or troublemaker, but may take a little more time to get traffic coming in.

In the passive form, you still write a post on a controversial topic.  That post must still be well written and you will still link to it in comments on other blogs, but you must take care to make sure that you are simply stating that there is another side to the discussion.

Remember; Going the passive route means that you are not trying to anger anyone with your actions.  The goal here is to stimulate discussion, not start an argument. (although that will probably still happen if your post is written well enough and people are passionate about he subject.)

Whether you choose to be passive or active, you have to be careful never to cross the line and personally attack or slander another blogger. The topics you go after depend on your niche, but make sure they are topics that already have heated discussions going on around them. the goal is to get some of that passion directed at your blog, not to make everyone so angry that they avoid visiting.

The Power Of Pomposity

Another way to bring a lot of scrutiny your way is to make claims that fall just short of impossible.  There are several very notable bloggers in the blogosphere right now that started this way; some by claiming to be the smartest guy on the block, others making outrageous claims as to their intelligence.

Be warned if you choose to go this route.  You will quickly be required to either prove that your claims are the absolute truth, or make it well known that your claims of being “the most intelligent person on earth” are just a catchphrase that you use to make your readers smile.

In either case, make sure that your posts are well written, extremely informative and researched to death.  Sub-par posts will get you labeled as a comedian at best and a fool at worst.

Snark Sells Almost As Well As Sex

If you are really interested in driving traffic to your blog and are willing to suffer a barrage of hate mails and unflattering comments, this last method may be for you.  Pick a celebrity or well known figure in your niche and rip into them on your blog.

Be vicious.  Point out their flaws, rate their wardrobe, comment on their mannerisms.  Be spiteful and hateful.  Stop just short of having legal action taken against you; then sit back and wait for the hits to roll in.

This method works.  I have personally used it in periods of slower traffic on my cooking blog.  In these instances I picked a television food celebrity whom I personally find  particularly annoying and simply laid into her every move.

Did it bring in traffic?  You bet it did!  it also brought out a slew of this particular celebrity’s rather rabid fan base who summarily vilified me in every venue they could find.  Damage control was a bit of an issue, but I eventually survived the fallout.

In total, that series of posts netted me upwards of 20,000 page views and about 100 comments, some of which had to be deleted in their entirety.  I can tell you with complete authority that this tactic does indeed work, it can also be the source of a lot of negative commentary directed straight at you.  You’ve got to be thick-skinned to weather it.

More on this subject

• The power of free
• 5 sites to take inspiration from
• Find Your Niche And Stick With It

One of the most effective ways to generate targeted traffic to your blog is to leave comments on other blogs in your niche.  Unfortunately it’s also one of the most overlooked tools in a bloggers arsenal.

After all, it’s easy to forget to drop by other blogs in your niche and even if you do, the pressure of getting your own posts published can detract from the courtesy of leaving a comment when you’ve found another post that you find interesting.  This is something that should never be forgotten. In fact, it should be a regular part of your daily routine.

I’ll lay bets that if your blog is receiving regular comments, there is a group of core people that are doing so.  Most of these will be other bloggers in your niche that have not underestimated the potential of community driven traffic.  Check out their blogs for yourself and you’ll see what I mean.

Get Out There And Comment!

Make commenting on other blogs a part of your daily routine. Comments build community  They also allow you to form relationships with other blog owners, which can lead to a wondrous variety of opportunities for your blog and the bloggers you’ve built relationships with.

Remember that comments should be more than “hey that’s great” or “love the blog, keep up the good work.”  Comments such as these leave the blog owner or spam filter ready to simply delete them when seen. (I know I do.)

Instead, be sure to comment specifically on the post topic at hand.  If you’ve written a post that answers another commentators question, feel free to leave a link, but only if it is relevant. Comments should not be used directly to drive traffic to your blog, but rather to entice the readers of another blog to come check your work out for themselves.

Leaving comments on a subject you are familiar with not only lets potential readers know that your blog exists, but it gives you a chance to help out other bloggers in your own niche.  Most bloggers find that as their blogs become more popular, time becomes a very limited commodity.  If you can answer a question for a reader on their blog, you’ve done them a favor. If you’re dropping a link in every comment, you’re being spammy and will most likely be blacklisted.

Know When NOT To Comment

From the advice given above you might think that you should make a point of being the first to comment on very popular blogs each and every day. While this will drive traffic, the result will probably not bring you the results you’re looking for.

Comments are only a tool to get visitors to your own writing.  If that writing is substandard or infrequently updated, you are going to end up losing most of the visitors attracted by comments the minute they arrive at your blog.

Also; focusing on comments may lead you to leaving comments that are not entirely relevant to what the writer intended.  This simply makes you look a fool and does little to attract traffic.  Do leave comments, but always ensure that they are relevant to the post, well written and have something to offer the blog owner and the readers of his or her blog.  Failing to follow these simple guidelines may do more to harm your traffic than to help it.

More on this subject

• Blog directories are your friends
• Forum posts drive quality traffic
• The power of free

What Is A Niche?

The buzzword of the blogging world is “niche”.  Every blogger is supposed to find his or her niche and then move on to hold a substantial amount of the readers in that niche.  But what exactly is a niche?

The simplest definition is as follows:

a position particularly well suited to the person who occupies it; “he found his niche in the academic world”

As applied to internet marketing, Wikipedia defines Niche blogging as:

Niche blogging is the act of creating a blog with the intent of using it to market to a particular niche market. While it could be argued that all blogs are, in some form, a niche blog, the term as it applies to marketing refers to a particular kind of blog.

While Wikipedia is correct as far as a blog designed to make money is concerned, I find that the first definition is more accurate for most blogs. Making money is not the primary goal for most bloggers, but sticking within a niche is imperative if you want to attract regular readers.

To state it plainly, your blog should cover one topic and one topic only.  The topic itself may be broad and cover a range of subtopics but your writing should always stay centered on the subject matter that you began writing about in the first place. That’s your niche and you should always stay true to it.

If you really must write about more than one subject, it makes sense to write more than one blog.  That way all of the content on each blog will interest the people that decide to see the other posts you’ve written on that topic without being forced to filter out the other subjects that don’t interest them.

What’s My Niche?

A lot of people struggle with the concept of finding their niche, but the reality is that it’s probably staring you in the face right at this very moment. you already have everything it takes to jump right in to your niche, you just might not know it.

To find your niche you simply have to define your interests and experiences.  Whether you love to quilt or have been working in the food service industry for years, there are people out there that are interested in the same things that you are.  If you know it and you love it, then you’ve already got  your niche, you need look no farther than the things that interest you.

Find A Niche Within Your Niche

Although it is completely acceptable to create a blog that covers all aspects of a topic, you’ll find that if you narrow down your focus you’ll be more likely to drive more targeted traffic to your blog than you would if your writing is more generalized. writing in a sub niche will guarantee that the people reading your blog are looking for exactly the kind of information that you are writing, rather than trying to find that one gem of information in the proverbial haystack.

As an example, let’s say you have decided to blog about Internet marketing.  Internet marketing itself is a very broad topic, so you decide to narrow your focus to only affiliate marketing strategies.  You are now writing in a niche within a niche on a very focused topic, this will keep readers coming on a more regular basis and keep your writing on topic because the focus of the blog helps to keep you from drifting off-topic.

Becoming An Expert In Your Niche

Now that you’ve got your niche, you have to try to position yourself as an expert on your chosen topic.  How exactly do you accomplish this?

First of all, do your research!  Even if you know the subject matter, make sure to brush up on the specifics from time-to-time.  There’s nothing that will hurt your credibility more than posting incorrect information.  It will probably happen, but if it does, quickly correct it and post a retraction.  Let people know you’re honest.

Write with authority.  Never make it look like you “might” know what you are talking about.  Always write as if you’re absolutely positive in your ability to cover the topic. This is not to say that you should be arrogant.  you should always be sure to remember that the people reading your blog are just that, people. You definitely don’t want to be insulting.

Post often and stay on topic.  Visit forums and comment. Visit other blogs in your niche and leave relevant comments.  don’t ask to be validated, simply do what you do and make sure that other people know that you are doing it… Politely.

If possible, set up an opt-in newsletter and maybe even write a few short ebooks on your chosen topic.  You can either sell these or give them away, but in either case it goes a long way to show that you actually know what you’re doing.

Of course there are many top-notch bloggers who have neither an opt-in list or have ever written an ebook.  If you’d rather focus your time on content, feel free to do so!  Even if you initially get little traffic, keep writing.  It takes time to get readers, especially returning readers.  If you keep writing it will happen.

More on this subject

• Don’t be afraid to be controversial
• The power of free
• 5 sites to take inspiration from

If you want your readers to buy something you are promoting or to visit a site you’re affiliated with, you have to tell them that is what you expect them to do. They aren’t going to take action on their own with any kind of consistency, but if you give them a good, polite nudge in the right direction you’ll be surprised at the number of people who actually follow through with the action you’ve suggested.

Asking your visitors to go do something specific is known as a call to action. This is especially important if you are pre-selling a product or service that you are affiliated with through your blog.  Your post will get them interested, the call to action will get them to go take a look at the actual sales page and hopefully, a good number of your readers will buy the product or subscribe to the service, thus making you a few dollars along the way.

A call to action should always point the reader to the page that you want them to get to.  If you’re asking them to buy a book you’ve written, send them to the sales page, not your site’s home page. Likewise, don’t try to oversell a product or service that has an aggressive squeeze (sales) page. Recommend the product and let the sales page do the selling.

Each and every post that you write about a product or service that you are promoting should include a call to action. Let them know why you stand behind this product, show them the benefits of the product and then tell them where to find it for themselves.

Show, Don’t Tell

Instead of focusing on the features of some product or the bullet points of a service, focus on the benefits of that product or service to your readers. Let them know how it can help them achieve their goals or increase their sales.  Make the focus of the article about what the thing does in practice, not just as a list of facts on a page.

By showing your readers what a product can do for them, you make that product more desirable.  If they see that it can help them accomplish what they need to get done or save them time in doing it, it’s a good bet that they’ll go out and get it, or at least come back to your blog when they do decide to purchase. this lends you both credibility and income.

Map Out A Plan of Action

If your post focuses on a product or service that you’re hoping your readers will buy or subscribe to, show them how they can use this product or service in their every day lives.  If they know the benefits and you map out how some or all of the product can work for them, they are more likely to run out and grab their copy.  you’ve already told them how to use it to make their lives easier.

Make sure that they understand how they can leverage what you’re selling in their business or personal lives right now.  Just expounding on how great something is will not necessarily translate into sales.  Showing your readers both the benefits and a concrete example of how they can implement this product in what they are doing gives you a much better chance of success.

This concept applies to posts that are not geared at selling something as well.  If you are writing a post about how you used a spreadsheet to create a better method of tracking your ever-growing widget collection, give your readers an example or a free download. For every idea you give the reader, they should be able to go and implement it in a positive way immediately.

Many people have written ebooks or articles hat are very informative but do not implement a call to action or plan of action in their writing.  This lack of pre-selling ensures that their sales, if any, are low. Giving people a plan they can follow straight away after reading what you wrote would give them that incentive to buy that recommended product from you instead of another affiliate.

More on this subject

• Be An Honest Salesperson
• The rhythm of proper post frequency
• Why social media is your best friend

When people type in your domain name are they wondering what it’s going to show them?  If so, the search engines will probably be just as confused. Your blog’s domain name should say something about what your blog is about. This one tip is often overlooked, but is incredibly important.

When I created cookingbytheseatofmypants.com I knew that the domain name needed to reflect the fact that the blog was primarily about recipes and cooking.  The search engines have happily responded with good placement for many search terms that include the word “cooking”, regardless of what someone wants to cook.

Post titles are equally important.  If you are writing a post that’s primarily focused on the methods you used to restore an antique deck chair, make sure that the title of your post states clearly that it is about restoring antique deck chairs.  You will find the search engine spiders are quite happy with this practice.

Use Keywords In Your Post

When you’re writing your posts, try to keep the words and phrases that best describe what you’re writing in mind.  These keywords should be repeated several times throughout the post, but not so heavily that they affect the readability of the content you are writing.

Balancing keyword density and actual content is something that takes practice, so don’t be afraid to experiment with the process until you feel that you are getting a decent result for your efforts. (You are using a statistics package that allows you to see what search terms your visitors used to find your posts, aren’t you?)

Is Your Blog Linking To Itself?

Search engines love links.  If your blog posts aren’t actively linking to each other (deep linking), you’re missing out on a chance to make the spiders happy.

Any time you have the chance, drop a link to a post you wrote in the past. If the post is still topical and relevant, link to it as an example of what you are explaining in your current post.  If the information in the older post is dated, link to it as an example of practices that have changed.

This practice is called deep linking, and it helps search engine spiders find and re-index older pages in your blog.  The more often those pages are indexed, the more likely they are to show up in high positions in search results, which gains you traffic.

Site Maps Guide Spiders

Adding a site map to your blog will help the search engine spiders crawl through all the pages in your blog more easily, thus ensuring that your newer posts show up more quickly in their results.  Adding a full map of every post on your blog may sound daunting but have no fear, adding a site map to all three of the major blog platforms is relatively painless.

It is beyond the scope of this book to give full instructions on setting up a site map for your particular blogging platform.  The explanations for doing so can be lengthy and are already thoroughly covered by other sources.  Below is a list of just a few of the resources I have found.

• Add a Site Map to a WordPress.com blog
• Add a Site Map to a self-hosted WordPress blog
• Adding a Site Map to your blogspot.com blog
• Add a Site Map Template to a movable Type blog

**Please note that I have not verified the methods listed for blogspot or Movable Type, as I do not use those platforms.  the information was pulled via search results and compared with other results, so I am fairly confident that these methods are correct.  If in doubt, visit the forums for your particular platform.

More on this subject

• Blog directories are your friends
• Forum posts drive quality traffic
• The power of free