We can all name a few blogs that would be categorized as huge successes.  But they didn’t get that way overnight.  Each blogmaster was very deliberate when it came to the steps they took that eventually got them to where they are now.  So, what can you do to put your blog on the path to future success too?  Use these tips to begin building a successful blog today.

1. Be true to yourself
 Write posts from your heart.  Be personal.  While a lot of posts are meant to be informative or instructional, that doesn’t mean you can’t put your own touches on them and use first person language (ex. I, me, mine).  The most successful blogs are those that are both professional and personal.  Let your readers get know you through your blog and you will have a better chance of success.

2. Make it useful
 Most of the popular blogs are popular because they are useful.  Yes, there are some phenomenons, but for the most part readers subscribe to a blog because the posts are helpful and increase their knowledge on a topic that they are interested in.  Approach every post from the reader’s perspective.  How realistic is my how-to post?  Is this new information that readers haven’t heard before?  Your goal is to be the know-all, end-all blog in your particular niche and the way to do that is to post dangerously useful content.

3.  Social media-ize your blog
 Bluntly put: you can’t afford to NOT take full advantage of social media.  It’s so simple to use and can have a good return on time-investment if you regularly use it.  Use Twitter to push your posts and interact with readers, and get on Digg, delicious, and StumbleUpon.  In addition, the power of networking with other bloggers should not be underestimated.  Find the big, well-established blogs in your niche and send them a link to a post of yours (only if it’s AMAZING and their readers will find it very interesting). Keep in mind, that 99% of the time, you won’t hear back from them because they get hundreds of spam messages and emails like yours every day.  However, you may just get lucky once or twice which is all you need!

4.  Use attention catchers
 Attention getting images and titles should become best practice for your blog.  Usually your image and title is what the reader sees first.  If they aren’t compelling enough, they won’t read any further and perhaps move on to the next blog that’s similar to yours.  However, if you have a great image and title, that brings you one step closer to winning over a new reader.

5. Interact with your readers
 When a reader takes the time to read your post, digest it, and leave a comment, that’s pure gold.  You don’t want to leave them hanging out to dry!  Since a blog is really just a big conversation, take the time to read your comments and respond to them.  Whether you reply with  a quick “thanks for your input!” comment or answer any questions, this goes a long way with readers and will keep them coming back for more.  In addition, don’t forget to respond to those following you on social media channels.  If a follower replies to one of your tweets, make sure you respond.  People want to get to know the mastermind behind the blog, so show yourself through your interactions!

Now that you have these important tips under your belt, you can begin your journey to a successful blog now!  The best way to learn is to try these steps and see which ones work best for you and be ready to tweak and hone them to fit you and your blog.  You too can create a popular blog.  All it takes is a little discipline and deliberation.  Happy blogging!

About the author:  Julia is a writer passionate about health, fitness & blogging. When she’s not running her dog she can sometimes be found writing about Smartlipo, cooking and a myriad of other topics.

This is the first time that I am sharing the monthly traffic report for CollegeFallOut. I have seen that for some reason, people really dig it. So here you go.

The blog has really improved in the terms of bounce rate. Until last month, CFO was averaging a bounce rate of 72% – which is quite unhealthy for any blog. Now it has come down to 31%.

I shared my concern regarding high bounce rate on this post earlier – 2 factors affecting Collegefallout.

In relation to the last month, October finally saw CollegeFallOut crossing the 100+ visits/day mark.  For a long time, this blog only saw a two-digit traffic. The site also scores very high on the average time – 2.05 minutes is the site average.

The site time average and pages/visit tell me that my content quality is quite decent and I should concern with getting more traffic to the blog.

So the main thing that is required now is to increase the site traffic. I am seeing a monthly growth is traffic and I hope that it will quickly snowball into much higher traffic stats.

Do blogs really need an “advertise” page anymore? This is the question which popped up in my mind after a prospective advertiser used the Contact form to get in touch with me regarding advertising.

Do We Need "Advertise Here" Page?

You should know that I do not have an Advertise page on this blog. Because, an advertise page has data that changes almost every month and moreover, I only need to disclose the ad rates to prospective clients.

Frankly speaking, having an advertise page is rather ineffective. If you think that having an advertise page can help you land more advertisers, then you think wrong!

The days have passed when all bloggers diligently placed an Advertise page on their header. Most advertisers hardly look at the page. The worst part is that more often than not, the site statistics on the page are shown outdated – which looks really unprofessional.

Some Benefits of NOT having an Advertise page:

• Complete privacy from competitors while quoting your ad rates.
• You can give real-time site statistics to your prospective advertiser.
• By not having an ad page you have the ability to negotiate your ad rates. If you put up rates on the Advertise page – it may be too much for an advertiser and he/she may not bother to contact you. Whereas, when an advertiser contacts you, both the seller and advertiser have a chance to negotiate pricing which satisfies both of them.

There is no risk involved when you forgo the Advertise page. As anyone who is interested in advertising on your site will finally use the Contact form to get in touch with you.

This is a list of blogs accepting guest posts arranged according to their PageRanks. These blogs are related to the Blogging Tips, SEO, WordPress etc. niche. These high PageRank blogs accept guest posts. So if you are interested in contributing guest posts to blogs then you will find this list to be useful.

I have not included the Alexa Rank of these blogs as they are extremely fluctuating in nature. However, it is assured that the blogs listed below are all high traffic blogs and have excellent authority in Google.

The blogs are divided on the basis of their PageRank. Here is the list:

PageRank 6 Blogs:

QuickOnlineTips – Guest blogging

DailyBlogTips – Guest post

PageRank 5 Blogs:

BloggingTips - Write for us

Techie-Buzz – Write for us

ShoutMeLoud – Join ShoutMeLoud

Men with Pens – Guest post

Blogussion – Write for us

PageRank 4 Blogs:

SmartBloggerz – Write for us

CanIMakeBigMoneyOnline – Guest blogger

BashBosh – Add Post

HowToMakeMyBlog – Write for us

DailySeoTip – Contribute SEO tip

PageRank 3 Blogs:

EBlogTip – Write For Us

FamousBloggers – Submit your article

BloggingJunction – Write For Us

BlogGodown – Write for us

MyBlog2Day – Write For us

TechnoGati – Become guest writer

Teenius – Guest post

TechnoValley – Submit Post

PageRank 2 Blogs:

ScopeForMoney – Submit post

Serradinho Blog – Submit guest post

NicheBloggers – Write for us

PageRank 1 Blogs:

Internet Geeks – Write for us

Hubspoint – Write for us

AboutWeb – Submit Post

Hope you find the list useful for your guest posting. And of course if your blog accepts guest posts but isn’t listed below then feel free to mention it in the comments.

Here are 15 tips to improve your blog instantly. These 15 tips will help you improve your SEO, design, traffic and quality of your blog in very less time. It so happens that we always have the scope to improve a blog to a level higher. No doubt, it takes time and patience but maybe these quick tips to improve your blog will be useful for you. Enjoy!

Improve Your WordPress Blog Instantly

• Keep your blog design as simple as possible.
• Use excerpts on the home page of your blog.
• Add a Facebook Like box widget on your blog’s sidebar.
• Make your WordPress blog a Do-follow.
• Eliminate unwanted trash from your blog.
• Spy on your competition‘s SEO strategy and improvise accordingly (no, it isn’t unethical!).
• Work on quickly improving your Alexa rank.
• Find a good CPC/PPC ad program for your blog.
• Rewrite or update your About page.
• Choose the correct keywords to improve SEO and remove the unwanted repeating keywords in your meta-tags.
• Stop looking stupid on Twitter or other social websites.
• Become an interesting writer.
• Get to know your audience much better using the Google Analytics webmaster tool.
• Get a good Gravatar for your online image.
• Last but not the least, treat your blog like a company i.e. an internet business if you are really interested in improving your blog and making it successful.

Hope you liked the post. Please comment below.

When new bloggers begin blogging to earn money online, there is a very important question that needs to be answered – Are You Building Assets Online?

Before we continue, let me tell you what is an asset exactly over here. Asset is basically an object that is profitable in nature. Basically, they are things that will keep pumping money for you with minimal money to maintain or run them.

For the average blogger, the strategy should be such that eventually all his money comes from automated sources online. There is a need to create a strategy such that a person is able to create a few sources of continual income online. This can be achieved with a little bit of focus and determination.

The reason why it is important to build assets online is that you would not want a day to come when you find that the day you stop blogging – the income along with it also stops coming. Overtim, the money from your blogs should all be invested smartly so that you can have even more sources of income.

The obvious question which comes up now is that: what are the kinds of asset which can be developed by an average blogger on the internet?

There are many of course, the first assets are your blog(s).

Always, start with one blog and end up with as many as you can. Hypothetically, if each of your blogs make even $100 per month, you can quickly run them with ghost writers, who you can pay $50 or so. But you still make another $50 sitting on your butt. Moreover, if you are providing consistent content your revenue will keep growing.

So it is important that you think like an entrepreneur when it comes to blogging. Please leave your comments on this below.

Branding your blog, basically means creating a permanent awareness and recognition of your blog among the readers and other bloggers who are associated to your niche. Branding is a subject which has been over-hyped and has been considered more difficult than it really is.

Decide between Using Your Name or Your Site’s Name: This is a dilemma which many bloggers face. Especially, when it comes to commenting and writing a guest post you must have a clear decision in your head whether to give with your own name or use the site name as a branding name. Both alternatives have their disctinct advantages and disadvantages – it is up to you to guage your priorities while choosing your representing name.

Invest in a Theme: Invest in a professional design. It does not cost a lot these days. Over that there are tons of options available. Apart from the obvious benefits you reap in branding your blog, you would also feel like writing on a blog that looks cool.

Professional Logo: Get a profession logo designed by some expert. Don’t sit with a Colored sketch of the blog name and call it your logo. If your blog were to become popular then is that the kind of logo which you want people to see. Create or get some one to create a professional logo which you can use on your site.

Be Consistent in Your Colors: When you have so many profiles in todays internet – the one way to reinforce your brand is through maintaining a color consistency. You would want your Blog’s color scheme to match your Twitter profile’s color theme – so on. This is a powerful way to get people to engage in your blog’s brand more deeply.

Your Photograph: Get an intelligent picture of your takes. Your photograph is basically the personality which you project. So if you look grouchy and sad in your pic then that is what people will think of you as. This is a negative branding that you are achieving. So get a professional photograph taken which you can use on your blog, profiles etc. People should recognize that face well.

So as you can see achieving branding on your blog is not as difficult as the “experts” claim. It is more about having to invest and work on your presentation a little bit. A few sensible moves towards branding and you can achieve a lot more than you expected out of your blog.

I just wanted to share this great piece of update with you. Robb Sutton from Robbsutton.com just got an interview with young internet entrepreneur Michael Dunlop. He is one of my most favorite internet entrepreneurs. Michael Dunlop teaches his readers how to be wealthy when you are young.

Michael Dunlop is the blogger of the authority entrepreneur blog – Income Diary and Retire At 21. Both focus on inspiring and motivating those who want to become internet entrepreneurs. I have been following his blog almost since it started.

(Related Post- Interview With Twitter CEO Evan Williams)

Here is a chip from the really really inspiring interview which Robb Sutton has taken for us. Here is a statement about Income Diary blog that was started by Michael Dunlop,

“It’s not even a year old and within a couple months of launching it was one of the biggest blogs in making money online. It had its first 100,000 visitors in its first month. It took me like a day or two to set up.”

You can read the FULL INTERVIEW OF MICHAEL DUNLOP HERE. It is a must read and it will be very motivating for internet entrepreneurs.

We all know that the main way to search optimization (SEO) is through keywords and there is no point blogging for money unless you have SEO clear in the back of your mind. In the internet, as the number of websites and blogs grew there became a fierce competition to rank in the top 10 of Google’s or any search engine results. Webmasters began applying all ways to get to the top and thus, there was born Longtail SEO. Longtail SEO is a boon for small blogs like mine – because it is a great way to get traffic even if you do not have a very big presence on the internet.

SEO is done with keywords. There are two kinds of keywords, longtail keywords and short keywords. Using longtail keywords for SEO is called Longtail SEO. The basic concept of Longtail keywords started when blogs/websites with no authority began to rank in the number 1 of Google and other Search Engine results. These websites did not rank for major keywords but instead longer keywords that were not searched that commonly.

To state an example of longtail keywords, suppose you have a website on Dan Brown (popular author of The Da Vinci Code and more lately, The Lost Symbol). So you may choose to search engine optimize it by inserting the keyword as “Dan Brown”. But it will be very difficult for you to rank in the top 10 of Google’s search results when someone searches for the term “Dan Brown”, especially if you have a new site. On the other hand if you choose your SEO keyword as “Facts about Dan Brown”, then you are sure to get a good position in Google’s search results.

The main reason for the success of Longtail keywords in small and new websites is that most major and big websites will always target the main keywords since they are authority sites.You, on the other hand can enter the market and the dog-eat-dog world of blogging by optimizing the advantages posed by Longtail SEO.

So what will be the type of traffic that you get from Short Term SEO and Longtail SEO? As you can guess, if you are using Longtail SEO you are sure to get high conversion (if you sell), however, the traffic that you may generate will be much lesser than what you might expect from a main keyword.

On the other hand, if your website is ranked well for a main keyword (short term SEO) then you are sure to get a high amount of traffic to your website. However, don’t expect that your conversions will be proportional to the traffic that you get.

This article is like a crash course on Longtail SEO. Longtail SEO is in fact quite an exhaustive Search Engine Optimization technique. I will be covering more topic on Longtail SEO in future posts.

Let me know Your thoughts below.

A blogtrepreneur is basically someone who makes an entrepreneurial venture out of blogs. There are many ways that you can become a blogtrepreneur. Each type of blogtrepreneur has a specific way of functioning.This post is an intensive dig at blogtrepreneurs.

Who is a Blogtrepreneur?

A blogtrepreneur is someone who makes money online by venturing into serial blogging. He earns accumulative revenue by maintaining more than one blog. Usually, by hiring freelance writers.

There are two broad types of blogtrepreneurs:

Blogtrepreneur-1: The first type are the rich guys with a lot of moolah. They start off by hiring a writer and pay per article. This type of blogtrepreneur generally only concerns himself with link building, SEO etc. whereas the content is taken care-off by professional/freelance writers. In a year or so if he worked hard and created a lot of content, then his blog will become a money-generating machine.Then, he can move on to his next blog venture. There also many blogtrepreneur’s who will start 2-3 blogs (of different niches) at the same time by hiring content writers.

Blogtrepreneur-2: The second type of blogtrepreneur does not spend on content writers initially. They begin writing a blog themselves until it begins to generate revenue, then they hire writers. Then based on the profit they get, the budget to pay to content writers is decided. Further, the first blog is continued by the hired writers, whereas the blogtrepreneur jumps to start his next blog.

How to Become a Blogtrepreneur?

Like you may have understood from the two broad classification of blogtrepreneurs you can either start by setting up a blog and spending on writers. Provided your content writers are good and you have done your share of building relationships and SEO – you will be earning money in no time.

On the other hand, if you have no money to spend on writers then you will have to write yourself and do the promotion as well. This may cause your blog’s growth to slow down but, it will pay off for sure if you are consistent.

My opinion

Not sure how much this matters but, in my opinion becoming a blogtrepreneur is much easy if you have one master blog that generates a handsome amount of revenue. Then you can invest the revenue into creating more money making blogs.

Now for the important part, What’s your take on this?