How to run a successful blog in under one hour a week
You don’t have to turn blogging into a full time job to become successful. It’s completely possible to run a successful, and highly profitable, blog only working one hour a week. There aren’t any secrets or eBooks you have to pay for containing false promises.
All you need is a simple plan and commitment.
A simple plan
Start by choose a niche. Any niche will do as long as you’re interested. Niche marketing is the smartest way to fast success. Focus your website on one niche that you will stick too.
Next, you will need a domain name and web hosting for your blog. You want to apply this method to a new blog or acurrent niche blog. I wouldn’t recommend you just try to devote a section of a current website to it. It works best when it has its own domain name.
Picking a domain is an art. I wish I knew what I do now, because I would have never picked this one. Without content Google thinks my website is about natural jelly. So, when picking your domain use the main niche keyword within the domain. For example, if you’re looking to write about Cell Phones, then make your domain cellphonelover.com or cellphoneguru.com; it will take you time to come up with one since most are taken. Just make sure that it contains your keyword and is easy to remember.
Now choose a Wordpress theme that will pull attention to your content. A bold simplistic two column theme like Grapejelly is ideal.
Building traffic and income
We now need to build two things important for any blog. Content and backlinks.
We can start by using Google Blog Search. Search and make a simple list of bloggers who write about your niche. These are going to be the individuals who you’re going to befriend. Relationship building is important for the survival of any blog. But these bloggers have already established authority within the niche, which means if you’re looking for help from them, you need suck up. Start by taking a screenshot of their current design.
Now, for your first post, write a short review of one of the blogs on your list and make sure to include the screenshot you took. Be sure to include a few links to individual blog post to create some trackback links. Add tags to your post and include the blogger’s name within your header. Once you have finished the post, send an email to the person you have written about, informing them you have featured them on your new blog. Within the email ask them for support with your blog, if possible.
Rinse and repeat this process once a week on the same day.
Add a simple advertisement for an affiliate along with links to any other projects that you wish to promote. Stay committed and you will have a growing source of traffic and income.
Wynne on March 25, 2010, 10:03 pm
You’ve got a great theme here Zach. It’s clean and typography is outstanding.I’ve found my conversions on affiliate products to be greater with clean no-nonsense websites.
In terms of hosting what you’ve mentioned looks like a good deal. But I’m really looking at cloud servers at the moment. No good for someone starting out of course because they need a lot more support.
In terms of making money. Sometimes it’s just a matter of doing indepth research up front to get a really targeted niche with targeted keywords. It still surprises how easy it is to ranked for apparently competitvive keywords just by writing good content and having a well structured blog or website (seo wise). Not only do you get nice converting free traffic that way, but if you use adwords the click costs are significantly cheaper (in some instances only a quarter of the cost).
I think the key is to do your best on researching a good niche, with enough people searching for solutions in that niche to make it worthwhile, and just to start with a nice simple website and write good content. Once you’re doing that you can decide how to capture leads or promote products.