You Launched Your Blog, Now What?

This guest post is by Chris Pund, a full time college student and serial entrepreneur who blogs at Dorm Room Biz (www.dorm-room-biz.com) as well as many other sites. Check out Dorm Room Biz to learn about his current projects and for great resources for young student entrepreneurs!

The question was recently asked on the Young Go Getter forum, what do you do once you launch your blog, so I thought that it would make a great topic to write about.

There are many different perspectives about what to do when you launch your blog. You will find by reading different blogs about blogging that there are a ton of opinions and each one has worked, but you may think that it is not the right fit for you.

So, you have your blog launched, you a have a little bit of traffic trickling in, and you have some good articles written – now what? Here are a few ideas or directions to head.

Continue Writing – once you have launched your blog and you start working on ways to advertise and promote your site, it is very important that you keep writing. If you have written 5 good articles that you think deserve to be seen, share them with others, but be sure you keep writing. If you keep promoting the same 5 articles and people keep returning looking for more but do not see more, they will not come back.

With a new site, you are going to want to try and write as much as you can but not over do it at the same time. My suggestion would be to post about 2-3 substantial articles per week that will draw attention from your readers and get them commenting and also make others interested in the rest of your content. If you do not think that you will have time to write during the week, sit down and dedicate a couple hours to writing out all your posts at once and then just release them throughout the week. Mix in some news and links to other posts with your 2-3 big articles and you will quickly build your archives and continue to bring fresh content to your readers.

Link Exchanges – Exchanging links with other sites is a great way to get people to your website. Start emailing the authors of some of your favorite blogs or blogs that relate in content to yours and see if they would be interested in exchanging links. This is especially great for sites that you were going to link to anyway, why not email them and see if they will link to you?

Personally, when someone emails me about a link exchange and I like the site, I usually write a post about it and not just throw it into my blogroll for it to just sit there. I know that most of the sites are just starting out, so I feel like anything I can do for them to get some more exposure will help them. Many other bloggers will do the same – write a quick review/blurb about your site, and drive some more traffic to it.

Offer an RSS Feed – This is probably one of the best ways to get your site seen/read. I would venture to say that the majority of people do not want to visit every blog that they like to read individually if they can just subscribe to the RSS feed instead.

RSS feeds make life easier and that is what people like. If you are not already signed up with Feedburner, do so and start advertising your feed. Put the RSS Feed button all of your site and you can even try to beat the largest feed button if you want. By having an RSS feed, your visitors do not have to continually come to your site to read posts. Even though your traffic statistics may not be great, your feed subscriber count could be. Use your feed to give readers a reason to come to your blog – only offer part of your post and they have to read the rest at your site or point them to other posts on your site that may interest them.

Search Engine Optimization – Obviously this had to be on the list! Be sure to do what you can to make your website search engine friendly, and not just for Google but for others like Yahoo and MSN. Check out different SEO related websites for tips about using keywords, phrases, tags, etc, etc, etc. These sites will be able to give you some good help with getting your site recognized and in search results. With a little bit of hard work and time you can get your site ready to roll! Also be sure to check out Wordpress Plugins that can help with your SEO needs.

ReviewMe – I have not had much experience with the website, but it works wonders for some. If you have some money to spend, this is the way to get some traffic. You can find sites with similar content that you can purchase a review of for their asking price and then that website’s author will write (hopefully a favorable) review about your site and drive its own visitors to yours to check it out. Even if a review is not favorable, do not get discouraged, you could still get new visitors this way because people are just naturally curious to check out the link. I am sure there are other similar websites out there where you can purchase reviews of your site, but this is the hot on to use right now.

Blog Carnivals – This is a great way to get your site noticed! If you have some great content, find a blog carnival that relates to your site and submit an article or even multiple articles. Most carnivals feature different categories within their topic, so you have an opportunity to submit multiple articles. Submitting your article to a carnival is pretty painless and easy to do. Just fill out a form or email it to the person that is hosting the carnival and hope that it gets accepted. The great thing about carnivals is that most are hosted by a different blog each week. So if you continue to write great content week after week, you can continue to submit your articles to the carnivals and hope that you get something accepted every couple weeks or even every week if your content is great! Also, look into hosting a carnival at your website. It may seem like a lot of work to sort through all the articles and posts that get submitted to you and organize them all, but the end payout of traffic to your site could be amazing.

Those are my 6 top things to do once you launch your blog and need to start getting some traffic. Just remember to be patient as it will take some time for your traffic numbers to start growing, take time for you to get recognized by the search engines, and hopefully start making some money from your blog! The key is to keep writing articles and posts and do not get discouraged!

Leading the double life….

Hey guys, I’m Josh Buckley, a good friend of Adnan’s. He has asked me to do a guest post for him, my personal blog is joshbuckley.net and I run several large sites including Menewsha

Like many of you, I lead a double life. In the day I’m just your regular school kid hanging with my friends. However, by night I am managing multiple web businesses. I see it as very important to maintain a healthy balance between your websites and life. It is too easy to get consumed into your websites and forget about your outside life.

A good way to maintain this balance is to work more efficiently on your projects, get work done faster. Whenever I am on my computer I leave IM on, which distracts me from my projects. There always seems to be somebody that I talk to. I’m now trying to break out of this habit. Just have a go yourself. Don’t use im for the day, don’t use forums for the day. See the difference in your productivity! See the difference in your stress levels!

Most people are effected differently by these changes. To some of us, turning off your im isn’t a big change. You may play games in between managing your websites. I generally don’t play on the computer much these days, i use the computer to work and play offline a much healthier view on things. However, you may not see it as a sacrafice you may not want to make. For me, working on my projects is also leisure. I do not need to play games, working on my sites is fun for me. I’m sure it must be the same for a lot of you, otherwise you wouldn’t be in this business, am i right?

Another way which can help is to integrate both lives. Let everybody know about your internet business, in most cases they would be impressed and want to support you. With them knowing, people around you will understand and help you afford more time to work on your projects.

One problem that I definitely have is settling for nothing. When one of my sites go quiet, i’ll be launching a new project. This definitely has an effect on my free time, and really changes the balance between life and work.

I hope you have learned something in my post today, and you can get a healthy balance.

Blogging is Best with Great Writing

Hi. J. Angelo Racoma here, filling in for Adnan while he’s on a brief blogging hiatus. I’m a problogger and blog network manager. I’m currently the assistant editor at the Blog Herald, and I manage several of Splashpress Media’s blogs and blog-related properties, including Gadzooki, Froodee, Blog Tutorials and Travelogger. My personal blog is the J Spot.

I’ve been blogging for about four years now, and I have been problogging for about two years, in different capacities, which include being a corporate blogger (blogging for my company), a network blogger, an independent problogger (earning from ads and affiliate programs), and even a blog network manager. Here’s one thing I learned from my experience in blogging. If you want to make it big in blogging, or if you at least want to earn from blogging, you have to be a writer first.

In a post a few months back, I expressed some frustrations with the “problogger” title. Where I come from, “problogging” is a virtually unknown profession/occupation/business. So when people ask me what I do, I find it difficult to explain. So I found it easier to tell them I’m a writer. And true enough, I was. Writing is what I do, and blogs are my medium.

I don’t mean to say you have to be an expert in writing. Sure, blogs have different sets of rules (if they can be called that) than journalistic writing or even creative writing. However, it’s always good to consider crossing your T’s and dotting your I’s–that is, minding spelling, grammar, and your language in general. It also helps to mind your style–that is, whether your writing is the right length, well-organized, and that your points are easy to understand.

It’s not only easy on the eyes (and the brain), it’s also search-engine friendly (unless you’re trying to target misspelled keywords!). However, I think the best kind of blogging is when you’re writing for an audience, and not for the search engines. IMHO, the best traffic is return/repeat traffic. If your content is enjoyable and easy enough to read, your readers will keep coming back. Sure, you may not get much in terms of ad clickthroughs, but you get a solid fan base and community from your readers. There’s the trust factor.

So if you’re interested in earning from blogging, start with the basics: writing. And somehow, that helps keep the passion.

I don’t necessarily have to write on blogs to earn. And I don’t necessarily have to earn to blog.

That brings back the excitement in blogging, doesn’t it? That brings back the passion. Imagine blogging solely for the purpose of getting your thoughts published online—for sharing to the world.

The income? That comes in as a secondary concern. At least for blogging, that is.

So I’m a writer. I’m a content developer. Do I write for a living? Yes. Do I blog for a living? Well, I write for a living, and blogs are my medium. So in a way, yes, but not strictly so. Keeping with my desire to remain passionate with blogging, I should not necessarily think of blogs as solely sources of income.

I guess that’s how artists remain true to their craft. Once you think about money first, you end up focusing on commercial stuff and just produce crap.

Blogging As A Business

I’m Kevin. I blog about personal finance, setting goals, and green energy/home design over at KMull.com.

As a reader of Blogtrepreneur you’re probably interested in starting your own business. Branching out - entrepreneurship and the lavish lifestyle that comes from success. Fair enough. I’d like that too. Are you actively involved in running a business? Have you started the dream? No? Why not? Look at the opportunity around you!

Blogging can be your first business. Let’s break it down in business terms:

• Barriers to entry – very few; hosting + domain, or use a free service
• Competition – millions, and more every day, but you can carve out a niche
• Metrics – can you tell if you are successful? Yes! Page Rank, number of RSS subscribers, unique visitors, Technorati links, etc.
• Requirement of high level of skills? No, just the ability to express your thoughts.

Blogging requires advertising and marketing in a multitude of ways: you can buy ads on Google, purchase links, and participate in free Carnivals of/Festivals of [your topic]. The Carnivals are sort of like going to giant conference in your niche with attendees from around the world. Except this time you don’t have to buy a plane ticket, stay in a hotel, etc. It’s all free.

You also must network to be successful as a blogger. Comment on other blogs, e-mail the authors personally. Work the link exchange game with bloggers that are bigger than you. Reach out to less established blogs and help them, too. You would be doing the same networking in any other business and blogging is no exception.

I started putting serious effort into blogging in February. My blog currently has a Page Rank of 2, and 33 RSS subscribers. I consider it a mild success thus far, and will continue to push forward.

So consider blogging to be your first business. I believe it can teach you some of the fundamentals you will need to get started on your next business. There is money to be made with text link ads, Google, or paid posts.

And if you fail, perhaps not that many people were watching anyways.

Top 7 Ways to Tell You Need a Virtual Assistant

Guest Blogger Angela Wills of StarVA.com is a Virtual Assistant Specializing in Internet Marketing. Visit StarVA.com to grab your free ‘Outsourcing Checklist & Free Tips’ now!

A Virtual Assistant is a self-employed contractor (not an employee) who helps small business owners and entrepreneurs with various administrative tasks such as handling emails, bookkeeping, website maintenance, search engine optimization and much more.

A Virtual Assistant (VA) can live anywhere.

Since a Virtual Assistant works entirely virtually they can be located literally anywhere in the world. I’m located in Canada but the majority of my clients are US based, and it works out very well because everything is done through the internet or by phone.

Who Needs a Virtual Assistant?

Every entrepreneur (or blogtreprenuer) needs a VA! Many business owners will get very far in their business without a Virtual Assistant but there comes a point where you absolutely need help to continue to grow any further.

Here are the top 7 ways to tell you need a Virtual Assistant:

7. You have five different projects going on right now and they all were supposed to be finished weeks ago.

6. You have piles of invoices on your desk you’ve been meaning to enter into your accounting software for about two months now.

5. That press release you meant to send in is now a year out of date.

4. When friends ask you to go somewhere (if they still ask!) you’re response is always ‘Sorry, I have to work’.

3. You get off the computer long enough to grab a shower, eat and go to sleep for a few hours before getting back on the computer to work again.

2. You spend most of your day checking and responding to email and have practically no time left to do any other business activities.

1. You wouldn’t dream of taking a day off and your next vacation is booked for, oh, never!

If any of the above points describe you, even just a little bit, you might need a Virtual Assistant. The important thing to remember is that we started our businesses to have more freedom and if you are not experiencing that freedom then it’s time to make a change.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about Tim Ferris’ ‘4 Hour Work Week’. In it Tim talks about ‘taking yourself out of the equation’ to the point where if you weren’t running your business for a week, or a month at a time it wouldn’t matter because your assistants would be running it for you. Think about how you can begin to take yourself out of the equation a little bit at a time so you can have that freedom that we as entrepreneurs long for and deserve.

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