Hi, This is Nick and i am outdoor enthusiast. Today i am going to share some of my experience of my fun blog.

If you aren’t accustomed to the hustle and bustle of the blogosphere the effort of being noticed in a sea of information can seem a tad daunting. It’s not as bad as you may think. My fun blog, I realized, had twice the traffic coming in than my business blog. In analyzing the approach to my blogs I came to see some key elements my fun blog had that my business blog did not. These lessons helped me move up in the ranks and see success that I never thought was possible, no matter how big or small my goal.

Finding My Niche

I will tell you, figuring out and defining my niche was highly important. Constantly learning and using the knowledge of my business gave the potential to bring people to me for all the new trends. Determining the areas of which I would focus allowed me to blog the best way I could. I started to be proactive and diligent with the knowledge that was gained and shared.

Being specific became my true goal. Concise planning of the level of knowledge and expertise needed has taken me far. Straying off track confused my readers, and ultimately, even confused myself. The more I learned, the more I grew in the business. Openly stating precisely what I wanted to accomplish to myself and others went a very long way in the blogosphere. I found my voice and sang to the rafters.

Visitor Interaction

There should be a definite relationship between the blogger and reader. Visitors should always feel compelled to comment and join in with the theme of the blog. As a blogger, responding to my readers’ comments strengthened the connection and in turn strengthened the interaction. I allowed myself to converse with my readers through thought provoking posts and lively commenting.

I asked and I received. Polls became a way of getting everyone involved, as well as posts which conclude with questions of opinion or fact. I just thought of myself mingling at a party and commanding the conversations. What was intriguing everyone with me? Why do they want to come back? Periodically, I offered some merchant coupons to my visitors like Rocky Mountain Trail Coupon andOutdoorplay Coupon and I learned to always think how I would want a business to appeal to me. Visitors want to be involved, so I let them.

Collaborating With Others

Sharing is caring. Commenting on other blogs, especially those dealing in my niche, formed a community that leads back to and through my blog. Sharing responsibilities, such as guest posting, allowed another kind of interaction. This spider effect created a give and take process that invokes possibilities for my readers and collaborators. Reaching out to others and allowing them to reach back to me gives a different angle to my position.

Some people think that this form of sharing ideas has a downfall because it could eliminate a blogs original personality. In some ways it’s true, but if there is a healthy balance of give and take there is the ability for growth. I’m now not afraid to fuse my creativity with others. It has catapulted me to new heights.

List Building

Forming lists of readers, experts in my area of expertise, and anyone who follows my successes through RSS feeds and email was my final learning experience. Social networking is another way I list build by forming groups aimed specifically at my business. Giving my readers prompt information dealing with the business gave more depth to the relationship.

This type of building helped me get any announcements directly to my readers. I have to be very careful of not overloading anyone’s email. These lists are only used for the most important updates and events. Also, I was sure to organize my lists with up-to-date information. I didn’t want to create spam or bounced back correspondences. My newsletter was a good way to cut down on unnecessary emails and ensure the list is utilized in the most effective of ways.

Conclusion

These lessons that I’ve learned have really helped improve my business and how people see it. Knowledge, interaction, collaboration, and list building are keys to effective blogging in the creative and business sense. Having a clear view of what I want my blog to be is essential. While this was no overnight success, these lessons had to be applied on a regular basis to have any true effect. Experiment with what I have learned and see how it begins to get folks buzzing.

Nick is an outdoor enthusiast. His latest blog is fully dedicated to the great outdoors, where he tries to share his knowledge and motivate more people live the adventure. You can follow him on Twitter @GearOutdoor

I know, you might be confused as to how guest blogging can help you make money online and I hope to have distilled your fears by the time you finish reading this article.

Now that I think about it, writing my first guest post was the most important decision I have made in my blogging career; it opened my eyes to a whole new world of opportunities and the month of writing this (March, 2012) I’m on a challenge write at least 150 guest posts for other blogs in my field.

If you visit your favorite blogging tips blogs today you will probably come across an article talking about guest blogging, but you will rarely come across any article teaching you how to make money by guest blogging. After all, how many people will really want to share their source of income?

To be completely honest with you, guest blogging isn’t only an effective technique for building traffic and subscribers for your blog, it can also be smartly leveraged to help you make money online. In fact, guest blogging alone led to me making exactly $55,753.50 in 2011, and that’s just the numbers I could calculate. What of the resulting traffic from my guest posts leading to affiliate sales? What of the traffic that will end up bringing more income for years to come?

The good news, and why I’m even happy to write this article, is that I’m not doing this alone. Jon Morrow from GuestBlogging.com, who was the associate editor of Copyblogger for years, also says he makes at least $2,000 from every single guest posts he writes.

While I’m not as smart as Jon Morrow and while I don’t actually make as much as he does from guest blogging I was able to make an average of $4,600 every month last year just as a result of guest blogging.

How Did I Do It?

This is probably the question racing in your mind right now but I’d like you to calm down first and read this article slowly. After that, read it again and start taking action. Here’s what this article is not.

It is Not an Article Promising to Show You a Get Rich Quick Approach: Nope, it took me 8 months to make my first cent from guest blogging. Of course, I was still new to the game then and hardly knew what I was doing, but even if I did know what I was doing guest blogging will probably not bring in any real income until after a few months.

It Doesn’t Explain How to Make Money While You Sleep: Nope, it doesn’t. I wrote over 270 guest posts before making my first cent from guest blogging. Although, I didn’t know what I was doing then, nor did I intend to ever make money from guest blogging, but based on my experience now I’d at least have to write 20+ guest posts to start making money guest blogging. That’s a lot for some people and that’s a good thing, because this article isn’t for everyone!

It Is Not About Getting Paid by Blogs You Write Guest Posts for: Nope, you won’t be paid directly by the blogs you’re writing for. Your guest posts will lead to you making money but you won’t be paid to write them. I explain my approach in this article so make sure you keep your ears peeled.

How to Really Make Money from Guest Blogging

You might be surprised about why I’m giving this away for free but I sincerely want to help as many people as possible build a career online in writing and I believe I’ve made enough money from guest blogging that I don’t care about sharing my tips. With that in mind I’d like you to know that the fact that these tips are free doesn’t make them ineffective.

My Main Approach

When you saw the above numbers you might be wondering how they came about if I’m not being paid directly for my guest posts. The actual numbers signifies the amount I’ve made working with various clients in 2011, all of which I got as a direct result of my guest blogging.

In other words, I’m a freelance writer who specializes in helping people get results through my writing. I use guest blogging to drive valuable clients to my business and then make money by working for them.

This approach led to me getting 4 high-quality clients last year without putting up a hire me page. I never even professed to some of these clients that I’m a writer, but when they read my guest posts and fell in love with it they contacted me to come and work for them. Mind you, I got a lot more than 4 clients. In fact, I got over 20 clients but rejected most of them and only chose to work for the ones that will benefit me most.

You are probably aware of the fact that most freelance writers are getting paid peanuts these days. That’s because they have the wrong clients and they probably don’t have an option. Guest blogging exposed me to a lot of clients and I got to choose the very best ones. I rejected some quality ones, too, because you can only take on so much work, but I’m telling you this to let you know the potential that exists.

Here are the steps you should take to start making money from guest blogging right now:

1. Start a Blog and FOCUS on a Topic: You have to start a blog and you need to be seen as an expert. The problem is that most people have the illusion that you have to have been writing online for years to be seen as an expert in any niche. Unfortunately, that is just what it is, an illusion. You can be an expert in two months with the right approach, so in this case all you need to do is start a blog and focus on a topic, my other tips below will help you become an expert relatively quick.

2. Make Your Blog Different by Creating a USP: The problem with blogging is that it is too crowded. There are so many blogs online that readers don’t know which ones to read and bloggers are making that even difficult for them.

The first key to making your blog a magnet for those interested in your services is to create a USP; they have to know your blog is the one for them as soon as they land on it and you need a clear USP to achieve this. A USP is also known as a Unique Selling Proposition and it is the factor that differentiates your blog from that of your competitors. That doesn’t mean you would blog about a different topic, it just means you will blog about the same topic in a unique way and then tailor your blog to a unique audience. For example, instead of just starting a blog of “personal finance”, why not start a blog on “personal finance for students”? That way, when students need tips on personal finance they won’t bother visiting the big personal finance blogs, they will come to yours first. That’s just an example and I’m not necessarily suggesting you tailor your blog to students.

3. Create a Service Tailored at Your Audience: Create a service tailored at your audience based on your USP. The service could be high-end or cheap depending on the people you want to attract and your ultimate goal. You should not be afraid to charge what you’re worth. It doesn’t matter if your service is $1,000+ or $20, it is all about what you have to offer. The first thing you should realize, though, is that you can’t attract every client, so don’t bother to. Work on creating a unique service tailored at your audience, choose a price that is worthy of you and get ready to start  making money. Make sure you create a page on your blog advertising this service and how it can help potential clients.

4. Build Your Profile Using Guest Blogging: This is the most IMPORTANT aspect. All the above steps are like preparation to ensure your guest blogging efforts don’t waste but this is the real deal. Once you have followed the above steps you can start guest blogging smartly for other people.

Here’s how your guest blogging approach should work to ensure you get results fast.

• Look for 20 top blogs in your niche: Guest blogging on smaller blogs is relatively easy but that’s the downside; everybody can do it! Getting real results is difficult but you have to put in the effort if you want to make money. Look for the top 20 blogs in your niche with at least 20,000 subscribers and focus on landing a guest post on them.
• Make sure your post connects to your blog: The blogs you choose might not be blogging directly on your topic but look for a way to tie the content of both blogs. For example, there aren’t much blogs on “Personal finance for students”(following my above example) but there are a lot of blogs on personal finance and money management. You can easily score guest posts on these big blogs and still profit by tying your content with theirs, e.g, “7 Personal Finance Tips for Student”. In the case of a blogger that talks about “blogging” writing for a blog that talks about “affiliate marketing” you can easily write a post titled “5 Ways Affiliate Marketers Can Use Blogging to Increase Sales” – You see how that works?
• Write a really great piece: Of course, everything is all linked to the quality of content you can produce and while some of these blogs publish a guest post a day, why should someone hire you instead of most of the other guest bloggers? The key is in your content. Make sure your guest posts reflect that you really know your stuff and always ensure you put the audience first.
• Write a bio that shows you’re an expert and link to your services page: Don’t say you’re a beginner who just started blogging 2 months ago and don’t quote your “7 months of experience”. Let your bio authoritatively position you as someone who knows his stuff, explain a little about yourself and tell people to know more about you by visiting your blog while also let them know you’re available for hire.
• Rinse and repeat.

Steps 1-4 explained above alone should get a few clients knocking at your door and you can increase your chances of working longer with them by providing quality service and strengthening your relationship with them.

You might have expected something more complicated, but it’s that simple. Don’t just sit there, take action now and see how guest blogging can help you!

Does the above sound interesting? You’re yet to see anything! Bamidele is a young blogger and writer who helps others make money writing online. He recently completed his guide to making money online by writing, The Writer’s Handbook: How to Write for Traffic and Money. The guide is available to his subscribers only and you can download it by visiting YoungPrePro.com. You can also read his article on guest blogging if you’re not familiar with the idea.

If you’re like me I subscribe to numerous email newsletters all trying to promote their product as to how to get more traffic. I don’t doubt at all that these products work provided that you put the effort into getting them to work but I have been doing online work for the past 5 years and I find that most of the effective tools for traffic generation are really just free and can be applied by anyone with a little bit of effort.

Everyone will tell you, you have to be everywhere on the internet in order to be heard or in order to have back links. Google is great fro SEO and organic links but I recently stumbled upon Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia Foundation that free and open source public dictionary, which anyone can edit. This is the one that is driving the majority of my traffic and all for free.

One day I checked my Google Analytics and noticed a 444% jump in traffic here is a screen shot:

Upon examination of this I checked to see where my traffic was coming from and Analytics gives you the top 5 traffic sources and Wikipedia has consistently been my number one top traffic source for as long as I can remember, which was for about a month.

What I did was I got myself a free account at Wikipedia and searching for terms related to my website and add descriptions to Wikipedia and leave a back-link to my website in the references or external link. I also recommend creating a public user profile for yourself with links to your websites.

Next up, was of course organic searches from Google, direct visits, the Blog Glue Network and then that Feed-burner one that came in fifth was the result of the Bring My Blog Visitors Back plugin by none other than Max Blog Press.

As with everything in life, I always firmly believe that diversity is the key to everything. Diversify your traffic sources and your traffic will come.

To be a successful blogger you require Time, efforts and passion. In this post I’m going to talk about why maxblogpress is successful.

Mailing list – If you know MBP has 70000 plus email subscribers, they started building list from the beginning. Mailing list is very powerful way to get traffic, market your new product, make money etc! If you have got a big mailing list then you can direct traffic to anywhere you like.

Here are 6 Reasons why you should start Building your Mailing List Now.

• Connect – Emails give you an opportunity to make your fans feel more closely connected with you.
• Referrals – Put you in a position to receive regular referrals.
• Easier – Make your sales process easier and more productive.
• Start conversations with people you are targeting.
• This gives you a chance to build a good relationship with them and to show them that you will only provide them with quality products that can really help them.
• Another awesome reason is “The money is in the list”

MaxBlogPress knows what they are doing – If you see every single product mbp release are very useful, that they go viral. Why? because MBP is creating plugins, that you can’t find anywhere. Some of the most popular plugins are Subscribers magnet, Ninja affiliate, banner ads and many more!

If you can’t create a product then outsource it. Some great sites to get your work outsource are:

• Fiverr – Get any work done in $5
• DigitalPoint – One of the best marketplace to outsource your work!

Giveaway – MBP had given many products for free like ping optimizer, optin form adder, banners ads etc. By giving away something free, you can build your credibility, brand and reputation. There are so many benefits of giving something away for free :

• Build mailing list – This is the most important reason why people give something for free!
• Make some money
• Build your reputation – Very useful in long run

Providing great support – Pawan and his team is doing awesome work in providing great support with awesome plugins. They are providing full guide with every single plugin.

Pawan have a great team who is always up whenever you need help regarding wordpress plugins!

Are you successful with your online business? Are you providing value? Have you started building mailing lists?

Devesh is a Young Entrepreneur & author of Make Money Blogging Blog & WP Kube. He is also running a fast growing social  bookmarking site – Blokube. You can Follow him on Twitter @tnsblog

Why? How? Who?

Guest Blogging is the best marketing tactic because it brings in hundreds, potentially thousands, of highly targeted visitors that can be easily converted into subscribers, sign-ups, or even sales.

Guest Blogging can be done using a very simple process. Write. Submit. Post. That’s the guest blogging process in a nut shell.

Guest Blogging works best when you guest post on popular blogs. Guest posting on a small blog may give you a boost in the search engines, but not many instant visitors.

MY SUCCESS

Learning from me, or OnibalusiBamideleis the smartest thing you might ever do. Looking at all of the most successful guest bloggers, Onibalusi stands out.

We both use one core process. Our content rocks! Simple, but it’s the truth. I spend at least two hours writing every post. It is a whole bunch of work, but most of the successful bloggers spend much more than that.

Yes, the title is true. I have made guest posts on Pro Blogger and John Chow. They both almost got 100 comments

Both of those posts were ones that I found to be next to perfect. I spent hours writing, editing, editing, editing, and editing just one last time.

GET TO WORK

Sitting around all lazy… Reading or watching every article, ebook, video, webinar, seminar, or report is the average internet marketer’s life. It’s time to stop. You are experiencing information overload.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve completely shut off my internet connection just for some peace and quiet to write my articles. No distractions.

Write, don’t edit. I’m pretty good about this, but others may not be. You need to write then edit after you are completely done writing. Not write a little then edit… write more, then edit again… write one more time then edit.

THE PITCH

If you address the blog owner using sir, or mam, you will not increase your guest posting success rate by 3.98%. I’m not going to sit here and teach you how to make your pitch irresistible.

The pitch to the blogger doesn’t matter. It’s the article itself.

This is how one of my most successful pitches went… (I was in a rush.)

This article was written for [blog name].

[Article content]

Surprisingly I received a reply a day later saying that the article really caught the editors eye Now, I honestly don’t think it had anything to with my overall pitch, but you never know.

WHERE?

Imagine… instead of you going to the popular bloggers, what if all of the popular bloggers came to your article, and if good enough decided they wanted to publish it?

Who’s Your Blogger? allows you to do exactly that.

I love having the popular bloggers come to me. It gets my guest post published faster, and the blogs that I guest post on seem to becoming more and more popular.

Yet, the older method (Go to each blogs contact form, give them a decent pitch, and after a week or so they might reply.) still works.

Guest Blogging has become incredibly popular. In fact, it is the only marketing strategy I use other than my Guest Blogging Secrets Facebook fan page.

My advice? Get started now. Don’t read up more about guest blogging, go write!

I get them ALL the time.

I know this specific topic or question rather is something that keeps a lot of my readers coming back to my blog again and again.

“How did she do it?” “What’s her secret?” “Was she well-connected before she started her blog?”

These are all the same questions I was asking as I lurked around popular blogs to see how they did it and what their secret was – before I started Traffic Generation Cafe.

As you know, I openly talk about all the things that worked and didn’t work for me when I first started blogging.

Feel free to go back and take a look at these posts to see what I did:

• My Perfect Recipe to Building a Popular Blog – Step by Step

In this post though, I decided to talk about something that my readers might not necessarily think of asking, but yet is equally as important:

“What mistakes have you made in the beginning and what would you have done differently?”

I am going to expand the question beyond my blog and include the things I see other bloggers do that prevents them from reaching the full potential of their blogs and their earning power.

1. Pick the wrong niche

Not too many people know that I build Traffic Generation Cafe on the basis of a different blog, which I started in 2009.

I had the first blog for an entire year before I scrapped it altogether and transformed it into what you see now.

It never went anywhere.

I found myself spending countless hours trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and what I could be doing differently until I finally got it: my blog had no direction.

I never gave my niche much thought, I had no idea what to blog about, I had no idea who my target reader was.

Result?

No readers. No traffic. Waste of time.

Picking the right niche is the single best thing you can do for your blog. Really.

How to pick the right niche?

Usually it’s a combination of what you like to do and are passionate about and if there is a demand for the information and the products you can promote within your niche.

The first one is easy to figure out.

What is your area of expertise? What are your hobbies? What is your passion?

Obviously, it’s much easier to blog about something you already have knowledge in – it will save you a lot of time doing research on your chosen topic.

It’s also quite important to like your niche – that’s what will keep you blogging through ups and downs long-term. And if you don’t see yourself writing about the same subject a year or two from now, don’t even try.

Now that you figured that out, we need to marry it to the demand.

No niche demand = no readership = no income

How do we check for such demand?

One of the best ways to do it is to do a forum search.

Let’s say your niche is “healthy eating habits“.

All you do is perform a search for forums in your niche by searching for your keyword phrase “healthy eating habits” plus the word “forum“.

Look for active forums with lots of chat on the subject. Once you find them, stick around and see what people are talking about, what their problems and concerns are, how you can possibly solve those problems through your blog.

You might find out that your niche idea not a hot one and then you go back to the drawing board.

However, if it still looks good, you move to the next step.

This is another HUGE mistake I see many bloggers make. They assume that if they are interested in the topic, then there will certainly plenty of other people who will be as well.

Not necessarily.

Not all traffic equals money.

2. Don’t do keyword research

Here’s a problem with this: most bloggers know they need to do it, but ignore this step altogether, because

a) they don’t know how to do it

and/ or

b) they don’t want to bother.

Some bloggers don’t even want to bother with keywords because they are not planning on getting any search engine traffic to begin with. SEO is too complicated they say, so why bother?

Why bother???

Unless you want to spend every free minute of your day driving traffic to your blog, you need to come up with a more passive way of doing it and that’s exactly what ranking your blog for your desired keywords will do for you: bring you loads of free passive traffic from the search engines.

And then there are those bloggers who do want to do it, but don’t do it the right way, assuming that as long as they find a keyword that many people search for, they are all set.

When I build my previous blog, I didn’t do a proper keyword research, so my blog never really ranked for anything that brought me much traffic and more importantly any blogging income.

Here are some keyword rules you need to keep in mind when doing a proper keyword research:

1. 90% of keywords will never bring you much traffic.
2. Out of the remaining 10%, 90% will never bring you any money.
3. Out of the remaining 10%, 90% are way too competitive to consider for your niche.

So you see, you have to give this step some considerable thought BEFORE you move forward with your blog; if not, you’ll just end up wasting your precious resources, like time, trying to generate traffic through networking alone.

3. Pick the wrong domain name

Yes, your domain name is REALLY important for both the search engines and for your potential readers.

This was not one of the mistakes I made with my first blog, but I see bloggers make it time and time again.

Let’s say you are looking for traffic generation tips.

You Google “traffic generation tips” and the first two results come from anahoffman.com and trafficgenerationcafe.com.

Which one would you be more likely to click on? An unknown name or a site that you know focuses on traffic generation?

Exactly.

My next point is that search engine do highly favor domain names with keywords in them.

You know what website ranks #1 for “traffic generation“?

TrafficGeneration.com. Never mind they don’t provide any real information on the topic – their domain name is dead-on keywords.

So, unless you are Seth Godin or Chris Brogan, I highly recommend choosing niche and keyword appropriate domain.

4. Choose the wrong blogging platform

This one is definitely surprising.

Back in the day when I barely knew what a blog was let alone how to create a popular one, it still didn’t take me long to do some quick research and find out that self-hosted WordPress was the way to go.

However, time and time I see many of my readers and friends trying “to make it” in the blogosphere while using Blogger.com and such.

Here are some issues to consider when choosing the right platform for your blog:

1. MONEY: free blogging platforms don’t allow you to use them to make money, that simple. That means no paid ads, no AdSense, no affiliate sales.

And if they catch you do it or if they just THINK that’s what you are trying to do, they’ll shut down your blog in a jiffy.

Imagine waking up one morning and all your hard work is simply gone?

Not a good feeling I bet.

2. SUPPORT: most of the cool themes, great plugins, and awesome forums are focused on WordPress only.

That means that your competitors are leaving you behind in the dust when it comes down to the latest and the greatest to help them run their blogs as a well-oiled machine.

5. Poor design

Mind you, I didn’t say “inexpensive”, but cheap-looking, amateur, unprofessional.

When I first started blogging, I thought that using a free site to design my header would do the trick.

NOT!

Poorly designed header and the overall feel of your site makes your potential reader run faster than a tumbleweed across Arizona desert.

Previously, I was of the “you don’t have to put much money into your blog” thought. Now I switched to “No, you don’t have to put MUCH money, but it would serve you well to put in SOME.”

How much is SOME?

That’s an issue for another post, but I’ll tell you the bottom line: knowing what I know now about blogging, website designing, and making money online efficiently, this is what I would personally do had I needed to start over:

1. Buy a premium theme, like Thesis theme.

2. Hire someone to customize it for you, if you can’t do it yourself. Doesn’t have to be expensive, but professional.

This way will save you $1500 minimum for a custom blog design and get yourself a custom looking, perfectly search engine optimized blog.

6. What is your hook?

No, it’s not enough to have a great-looking blog in a good niche with all the bells and whistles to go with it.

You need to figure out how to stand out from the sea of other blogs and bloggers.

Finding your perfect angle, your unique hook was the most difficult thing I had to do as a blogger.

There are plenty other blogs that talk about traffic generation, SEO, blogging, and such.

Waaaaaay too many, if you ask me.

I had to figure out how to be different despite of all the abundance and redundancy.

Believe it or not, my success came when I stopped trying to “find my voice” and just decided to use the one I already had.

So here are some possible angles you can focus on in your blog:

1. If you already have good personality, look no further; simply be yourself.

2. Take difficult subjects and make them sound simple.

3. Communicate to your readers via videos.

4. Create a multi-author blog and offer differing opinions on the same subject.

5. Make your blog reader-driven, meaning center your blog around Q&A (question and answer) sessions with your readers. In the beginning, you might have to borrow the questions from other blogs or make up your own.

6. One of the first posts I wrote for my blog was 202 Bite-Sized Tips To Insanely Increase Your Blog Traffic. THAT post can be a goldmine for any creative mind looking to hook their readers and keep them coming for more.

Marketing Takeaway

And there you have it.

Learn from other people’s mistakes – my grandma was right about that. Did I do it? Of course, not.

But now you have a chance to.

Take it.

Love it or hate it? Comment to show me that you’re alive!

I was running Google Adsense ads on couple of my blogs with text link ads (TLA). And I was surprised to know I was actually able to make more money thorough TLA network than Google Adsense. On some occasions, my earnings with TLA network were even double when compared with Google Adsense earnings. Here is a screenshot showing how I made $7700 plus dollars selling just text link on my free blogs created on Blogger.com:

Now let me discuss the whole process I followed to get these magical numbers into my Paypal account over the period of time:

Create Blogs

I started 3-4 blogs around the topics of my interest on Blogger.com. I used my seo skills while deciding the name, titles and descriptions for those free blogs. Once all the my blogs are set up, I started adding high quality and unique content on those blogs as per their niches. So I keep on updating all of my blogs with 2-3 posts every week. When writing about a topic, I used to a bit keyword research so that I can make my blog posts more search engine friendly. In today’s scenario, I would recommend creating blogs on your own hosting as I have noticed blogger team deleting lots of blogs from different niches without any prior notice. You will be more comfortable and will have full control over your blogs if you are having self-hosted blogs.

Link Building

Apart from regular blog postings, I started building some links for my blogs. I used all basic seo techniques like general directory submissions, blog directory submissions, article directories, RSS Feed submission websites, blog commenting etc to build backlinks for my website. I spend lots of time in various link-building processes. Apart from this, I used to do social bookmarking for some of my blog posts. So with regular content update and link building, I was able to get a page rank of 3 or even higher for my blogs.

Submission into TLA

Once my blogs get a page rank of 3 or more, I start submitted them into TLA marketplace by creating a publisher account there. All of my blogs were accepted into their marketplace within 24 hours of submission. While submitting blogs, we should make sure we submit our blogs into relevant categories only.

Links Approval and Publishing

Once my blogs get accepted into TLA marketplace, I just need to wait for the new text link ads placement opportunities on my blogs. As you know websites in all niches need high backlinks to perform well on all major search engines, LTA has advertisers in all categories matching your blog. So soon I started getting requests for text links placement on my blogs. I accepted most of link requests as they were related to my blog contents. This way I keep on accepting link requests on my blogs and keeps on earnings from my blogs using TLA marketplace.

I used selling links as one of monetization methods that I used on my blogs. Apart from text links, I used to monetize my blogs using Google Adsense ads, banner ads, affiliate product selling etc. I used to accept my earnings into my Paypal account most of time. I’m hopeful my success story with TLA network will motive many bloggers like mine to try making money through text link ads and similar kinds of network in near future.

About Author

Anil Agarwal blogs about topics related to make money online, blogging tips, search engine optimization techniques, affiliate marketing, web hosting comparisons and social media websites like Facebook and Twitter on his blog BloggersPassion.com.

On July 5th I posted a genuine comment on the blog ZenHabits which is one of the biggest productivity blogs with over 79k RSS subscribers.

What to be aware of when commenting on a blog?

There are so many things you should keep in your mind to optimize the comment that should be able to drive a great number of traffic to your blog.

Optimize exposure for most clicks

• To drive a massive amount of traffic you must comment on a high-profile blog that has normally got lots of readers / RSS subscribers / commenters/ Visitors.
• You should be the first to comment on the blog post. Because if you’ll comment on the blog post firstly, it will get most exposure.
• You must be an very early commentator. The earlier you are, more exposure you’re going to get. Not many people are going to read all the 50 comments from the same blog post. Aim to be in top 10 comments or so on.

Provide value to grab attention of the readers

• Don’t just comment for getting the benefit for it. Only write a comment if you’d liked the post and if you have something that is relevant and interesting to say.
• Write a quite quality comment that is creating some value to the reader and can grab his attention. Add something substantial to the comment you’re going to post. Add your valuable thoughts about the post, provide some additional and good information from your personal experience or from a post you have on your own blog.

Brand your comments and get long term benefits.

• Brand your comment by using only one name, one avatar, one URL and the same signature as well. This should be consistent with your social media profiles. Consistent marketing will build good relationships to your blog. When people continue seeing your name being repeated again and again in comments sections of blogs and your comments are useful and interesting, it will make them wonder that who is the person writing and will get them to click over to your blog and that’s It.

Now Imagine if you do it consistently, You’re soon going to be the high-profile blog owner and get a boost of traffic and comments as well.

This is a guest post written by Vikas Bhatt a 15 year old blogger.

I started my blog in April 2010, and in just 8 months I was able to build what I could call a successful blog (my criteria being a blog making me at least $1k online monthly and getting over 8k visitors monthly). I know a lot of people build successful blogs in that time frame, or even less, but the unique thing about my blog is the strategy I used to make it successful – GUEST BLOGGING!

A lot of people underestimate the power of guest blogging and in this article I’ll be giving you some tips on how guest blogging helped me build a successful blog and make thousands of dollars every month.

The Current State of My Blog

It is only 14 months of me starting my blog now and I’m really proud of my achievements with it, which are made possible by guest blogging, such as:

Getting over 17,000 visitors in only one month

Making an average of $3,000 online every month

Being ranked as one of the top 10,000 websites in the world by alexa

Having a Google Pagerank 4

And, being featured as one of the top 30 young bloggers making money online.

I know the above results sound impressive and a lot of people will believe I’m a kind of genius for spinning all this in a short period of time but you’ll be amazed at what a lot of new bloggers are doing nowadays and how often they’re getting their guest posts published on big blogs.

You Need a Change of Mindset

I have written hundreds of guest posts and my guest posts didn’t bring similar results, in my attempt to know why some guest posts fail and why some don’t I discovered one golden secret – and that secret is the importance of having the proper mindset in everything you do.

There are two kinds of mindsets you need to eliminate if you really want to be successful with guest blogging.

First, you need to eliminate the mindset that guest blogging doesn’t work or that guest blogging is over hyped and second, you have to eliminate the mindset that you can’t succeed with guest blogging or that your guest post can’t be featured on the big blogs.

One of my major problems when I was just starting was having a mindset that my guest post can’t be featured on big blogs, this made me write hundreds of guest posts on small blogs only to get a fraction of the results I am supposed to be getting. I later eliminated this mindset and my guest post has since been featured on several big blogs including Problogger, DailyBlogTips, MaxBlogPress, JohnChow.com and ReadWriteWeb. In case you’re still not convinced, here’s a screenshot from one of my guest posts on Problogger.

That was only one guest post – and it sent me over 1000 visitors and over 400 subscribers.

What Guest Blogging Did for My Blog

There are countless advantages of guest blogging but I’ll only be addressing how guest blogging helped me build a successful blog below.

It Boosted My Traffic and Subscribers

In case you don’t know yet, your subscribers are the most important asset you can have as a blogger and you can never get subscribers without traffic. Guest blogging gave me a significant boost in my blog traffic and subscribers. I get as much as 500 visitors for every single guest post I submit to a big blog and I get hundreds of subscribers from every single guest post I write on a big blog. As a result of this, I now have over 3,000 subscribers to my blog and over 15,000 visitors visiting my blog consistently every month.

It is true there are several ways to gain traffic to your blog, but in my entire blogging career I haven’t seen a strategy as effective as guest blogging.

It Boosted My Credibility

Do you want to make sales?

Do you want to get clients?

Do you want to make money online?

In one way or the other, your credibility has to do with succeeding online. In everything you do people need to trust you and see that you’re someone who can be related to and that you’re capable of what you promised. Guest blogging made that very easy for me because when a lot of people started to see my name on the top blogs in my niche regularly they began to respect me and that eventually landed me a solid client with whom I have made over $20,000 online till date.

It Positioned me as An Expert

Every now and then I see people linking to my blog posts, requesting an interview with me, featuring me on their blog and even asking me for help. All this is because they see me as an expert.

A lot of people now call me a top blogger, some of them call me famous blogger etc. I’m not trying to be egotistical, I’m only trying to tell you that success in blogging isn’t only about what you are or what you think you are but what people see you to be. You need to be viewed as an expert in your niche to succeed and guest blogging made that possible for me.

How to Build a Successful Blog Via Guest Blogging

The above are just some of the things guest blogging did for me and I believe this post isn’t really complete without me giving you tips on how to build a successful blog via guest blogging. Below are some tips to help you build a successful blog via guest blogging.

1. Don’t Rush Guest Blogging: A great mistake I see a lot of people make when it comes to guest blogging is that they create a blog and start submitting a guest post to every blog around them. Many of these bloggers end up burning out because they won’t get the results they expected. The only way to get real results from guest blogging is by sitting down and thinking about your reason for guest blogging. Let this reason guide your every guest post and you will become a success in no time.

2. Prepare Your Blog: Another important thing you need to do as a guest blogger is to prepare your blog for the traffic and success that will come your way. Make sure you keep your blog updated with regular and fresh content and also make sure you direct your guest blogging efforts to building your subscriber base.

3. Only Guest Post on Relevant Sites: The reason for this is that you need to be seen as an expert in your niche and a lot of people read several blogs in the same niche. For example, if you’re in the blogging niche there is every probability a lot of your potential readers who are willing to read about blogging hang out on the top blogs in the blogging niche so you won’t get much results by blogging in the personal development niche. Focus your efforts on guest blogging on relevant sites only and you will get results faster than you can imagine.

4. Have an End Game: To really make money from guest blogging you shouldn’t just sit down and expect income to be flowing in. Have an end game. It can be in the form of a product, a hire me page, a squeeze page or something of that nature. Don’t just link to your homepage directly in your guest posts but to some of your important “assets” that will keep on bringing in income for months to come.

5. Write More Guest Posts: How many guest posts do you think you need to succeed online? 1 guest post on a big blog, 2, 3? The fact is you need to write at least 5 quality, targeted guest posts on big blogs to succeed as a blogger. You will need more, depending on the kind of blog you write the guest post for and depending on how you optimize your blog for it. In a nutshell, the more guest posts you write, the more traffic you will get, so, start writing, stop waiting!

Onibalusi Bamidele is a guest blogging expert who has been featured on several top blogs online, hire him to take your guest blogging to the next level and also download his free guest blogging guide for practical tips on landing guest posts on top blogs.

Building blog followers can be a time-consuming task as you will need to attract and build followers in many other places besides your own blog. It is like weaving a big Web and it will all lead back to your fantastic, top-quality, interesting Web content.

1. Quality Posts for building followers

The most important step in building followers for your blog is to make sure that you are publishing quality material. Take your time on your posts to ensure that each one represents the best of who you really are. Some bloggers recommend publishing daily, but this is only helpful if you truly have daily content that is unique and presented beautifully. For most bloggers, this would be a significant challenge and the quality of posts would quickly become watered down.  Rather than focusing on the quantity, focus on the quality.

I personally used to find it hard to come up with new content every day. But now I use a certain web content strategy that I have developed myself that really helps me get back content flowing out.

People will know when you’ve put in the time to make your blog a great one, and people will want to come back to a blog that is great.  So, start posting, and make it great! Then, when you’ve got some really great posts to share, use the following tips to get your blog out there for others to enjoy. Once you have written your quality blog post and published it, it is now time to promote it.

Here is a quick Tip on how to make the most out of all your quality posts to ensure your time is not wasted. It is very simple, you just have to generate traffic for each new post you create!

Let’s face it; if you do not have quality content or do not intend to deliver it, then you might as well give up now. You can get all the traffic in the world to your website but if it is not good quality and valuable to the visitor they will leave immediately.

2. Friends and Family

It seems logical enough, but it’s an important step to remember: tell your friends and family about your blog. E-mail it out. Post it on Facebook each time you write a new post. Blogging is all about relationships and where better to start a relationship than with those you already know in real life? This is especially important if a friend or family member has their own blog—they can list your blog on theirs, which will drive new readers over to you.

3. Commenting to build blog followers

One of the simplest ways to get others to read your blog is to comment on the blogs of others. When you comment thoughtfully on another blogger’s post, your comment will be linked back to your blog. Upon finding your comment on their blog, many bloggers will then click over to check out your blog. What’s more, other people who read the blog and scan the comments will do the same. Boom, you’ve got new eyes on your blog. The more you comment, the more likely others will be to find their way over to you. This works especially well on popular blogs, so take the time to search out popular blogs in your content area on which to comment. One word of caution: Make sure that your comments are relevant to the content of the blog on which you are commenting. It is considered poor blogging etiquette to leave a comment that says, “please come check out my blog!” Yes, you want others to look at your blog, but it’s not necessary to state it. Comment on the blog post you are reading and trust that others will come over to find you from there.

It is even better to comment on websites that use the famous comment love plug-in. This lets you leave a juicy link next to your comment, that might entice the reader to click on and visit your website. If they do not have comment luv then the next criteria is that they have loads of website traffic. This blog is well worth commenting on as Maxblogpress has an absolutely huge following!

Actually answering comments and questions that are made on your blog is also very important. This means that the visitor has taken time to visit your website, and then leave a comment. I like to reply to all comments left on my website and answer any questions relating to the subject.

Now the only problem is that sometimes when you reply to a comment and the visitor has not checked the box to subscribe to the comments, they do not know that you have replied. This is why I installed the plug-in called replyme. It sends an e-mail to the person saying that there is a reply to their comment and a link back so they can respond. This is a valuable tool.

4. Groups

Another simple and effective way to help others find their way to your blog is to join online groups and forums that revolve around your topic.  Find them, join them, and get actively involved.  Add quality thoughts to evolving discussions and start discussions of your own.  Integrate yourself into the community—the more involved you are with the group, the more traffic will come your way. A great place to start is Blog Frog (theblogfrog.com). The very purpose of Blog Frog is to connect bloggers to each other. There, you’ll find communities of people who are blogging about the same topics as you. You can use the forums to start discussions that relate directly to your blog posts, and people will start hopping on over to your blog.

5. Turn Your Blog Posts into Articles

Another great way to find new readers is to turn your blog posts into articles and publish them online. One easy way to do this is to head over to ezinearticles.com. Ezinearticles.com is set up to provide others with easy access to content to publish on their own blogs. You can sign up for a free membership and start posting your articles quickly. On-line magazines and other online websites will then take your articles and publish your content on their website, all while crediting you and directing others to your blog. This works especially well if you are establishing yourself as a professional blogger with information and advice to share with others. If you take the time to write a few, well written informative articles for Ezinearticles.com, you’ll find yourself with a steady stream of new traffic. If you’ve got the right content to these visitors they could become your new blog followers.

You cannot just slap up any old article on sites like Ezinearticles.com. You need to do it in a way that will attract the reader to click on your link and visit your website. This is very important because it will show that they are deeply interested in what you have to offer. These are one of the best more your blog followers you can get.

6. Follow Me Parties and Blog Hops

There are many blogs out there that host a wide variety of follow-me parties and blog hops. Blog hops occur when a blogger posts and asks others to link-up their own posts; when you link up to a blog hop, many people will check out your blog.  Follow me parties are a “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”  kind of deal. You sign up to follow new blogs with the expectation that they will follow yours in return. This isn’t always the way to get quality readers, but it will certainly increase your number of followers quickly! If you’re looking for a great blog to help get you on the path to blog hops and follow me parties, Kelly’s Lucky You (kellysluckyyou.com) is a great place to start.

7. Facebook

You’ll also want to install a Facebook share button on your posts, so that readers can indicate that they “like” your posts. The beauty of the “Like” button is that when a reader clicks it, your blog shows up on their Facebook page as something they like. Others can see this and click over to your page, hence increasing your readership yet again.  As you grow your blog, you may also want to think about creating a Facebook page that hooks up directly to your blog. This will make it even easier for others to share about the blog that they love so much.

8. Twitter

Finally, Twitter is yet another way for you to share your content with others. Tweet the links to your posts and install a Twitter button on your blog so that others can do the same. Engage with other bloggers on Twitter and retweet their posts as well. Remember, blogging is largely about relationships—tweet onto others as you want them to tweet onto you.

As you work to build your followers, remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Persistence and patience are key. If you write quality posts and follow these tips, though, you’ll be blogging to a wider audience in no time.

9. Giveaways

This has become an essential part of blogging. Most blogs and websites give away free reports and information and it is for a distinct purpose. The aim of these free reports is to hopefully get them shared all over the Internet and bring more traffic back to your blog. This kind of thing can also keep your loyal followers engaged in your updates as they appreciate the great content and the occasional freebie report.

When giving away a free report you must have links back to your website contained within. You can also have affiliate links if you wish, but I have found it better to just give information, and link back to your profitable pages.

Building Followers for Your Blog That Will Stay

Here are some quick tips to get your blog followers to stay

• Make sure you have top quality valuable content that they cannot live without.
• Give them gifts on a regular basis.
• Get them to sign up and join your opt in list so you can keep in contact with them.
• Create contests and giveaways. Make your website exciting.
• Answer your follower’s questions and solve their problems. If you do not know the answer, then find it.
• Provide them with as much information as you can so they do not have to go other places.

Building followers for your blog is not an easy task but it all reverts back to the best customer service you can give. Your website visitors and followers are your customers and you should treat them as if each and every one of them is a top buyer. That is the key to becoming a successful blogger.