Some blogs are big, some blogs are small, some make $10000’s and some weren’t created for making money at all. (I’m no poet) But when you think about it, they all have the two major things in common, blogs enable you to share your thoughts on a certain topic or a wide range of topics, and blogs give your visitors the chance to voice their opinions on what ever it is that’s been discussed. It’s a pretty simple formula really. Lets forget about making money, Increasing your traffic, getting backlinks and so on. I’m going back to the beginning with this post. I’m going to look at probably the most important thing to do with blogging, the blog itself.
1. The Look And The Feel
Making a good first impression is very important. When a person visits your blog they don’t pick up on content to start with, they pick up on the look and their first thoughts are probably going to be one of these two things. ”Hmmm, this blog looks nice” or sadly it could be something along the lines of ”Wow, my eyes are on fire” I’m not a Web Design Guru but I’m proud of the fact that I’ve had many people tell me that my blog looks nice. All I’ve done is keep my blog looking as clean as possible. If I don’t need something I wont use it. To many blogs nowadays remind me of websites, they’re crammed full other little things that draw the reader away from the most important thing, the content. If you’re not giving your content maximum exposure and making sure it’s the second thing a visitor picks up on, why bother using a blogging platform?
Even if you’re useless at Blog Design it shouldn’t stop you from improving the look of your blog. Nowadays people are more than happy to give you a helping hand. Yes, sometimes you will have to pay but if you look around forums and on web design blogs people are more than happy to do it for free. It helps them improve their skills and it’s something extra to add to their portfolios. If you’re adventurous? Google search is packed full of tutorials on blog design, I’ve used many and after a few attempts it pays off.
I’ve posted a little something here about how a slow loading or what I like to call ‘’sloth like” blog will scare aware visitors. It’s very important to keep your blog as user friendly as possible.
2. Stranger Friendly
If you’ve worked hard enough on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the traffic visiting your blog via search engines will most likely have searched for a subject relating to your blogs content. But every now and then you get what I like to call a stray. Someone who wasn’t searching for anything relating to your blog but found your blog anyway. As you can see in the image, some poor guy has searched for a way to get home and the results have brought up my blog. So, I have to think to myself, if this person stopped bye would they instantly close their browser? Or would they be a little curious and want to find out what my blog is about? As I mentioned in point 1, the first thing the ‘’stray” will pick up on is the look, I think the look is o.k so I probably don’t have to worry about that. The next thing is letting the lost boy know what kind of site he/she has discovered. This is an area I feel my blog fails badly in and is something I need to work on straight away.
You see, this blog offers blogging advice, tips for making money and I discuss my other online ventures, yet when you first visit funk13.com it’s very hard to notice any of these things straight away. You’re greeted with a big picture of five funny looking dudes, some crap about advertising and a link to a custom graphics section. It’s giving Mr can’t get home the wrong impression of my blog.
How Can I Improve My First Impression?
- Change my header and make sure it relates to the subject of my blog.
- Remove ”Advertise for free” and ”Custom Graphics” links from my nav bar and place them in the side bar. I should then replace them with something to do with making money or blogging.
- I could bring my ”Recent Posts” section further up the page so the visitor can see what is actually going on here.
- I could bring my ”Recent Comments” section further up the page too. This will show the visitor that my blog is active and it might also draw the visitor in to a discussion.
If you’re able to keep hold of new visitors and make them want to return to your blog then you’re definitely on to a winner. Being able to do this with a make money blog is even better. The more visitors, the more chance you stand of actually making money.
3. What Are You Trying To Acheive
If you aren’t quite sure about you goals, you need to have a good think about them. Not knowing what your blogging for is going to slow down the rate of your blogs progression. If you’re a personal blogger, your goal is provide people with stories of what has happened in your life today. A fairly simple goal and easily achievable. But when you move in to niche topics, sorting your goals can become a little more difficult. If you’re in the make money blogging area, which specific area of that niche are you targeting? Are you looking to make money of your visitors? Are you hear to simply offer advice on making money? Make money blogging is such a huge area, it would be very difficult to cater for all aspects of it. I feel it’s best to pick one area of make money and stick to it. I offer random tips and share my own experiences, I’ve tried making money from this blog but I just wasn’t cut out for it.
One thing you must always remember is what ever your goals are for your blog, your readers are the most important thing. You need to listen to them, interact with them but most importantly, give them something to come back for!
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May 10th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Interesting post. Liked the point you made about ’strays’ and how there should be something to perhaps keep them on the blog.
Must admit haven’t really thought of this before. I’ve simply worked on the assumption that all traffic is good and can make money.
Mike.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Hey Mike.
Yeah, all traffic is good. But you’re not really going to make much money from people who blog about the same things as you.
They already know about the stuff you’re advertising. If someone from google pops along who has never really looked at Make money online for example, he might be curious and interested in the ad links that tells you how to make $9875892 a month from a blog.