How to become a serious blogger

[Toribelle]

What would you say your top 5 suggestions would be to a person interested in becoming a serious blogger?

Looking forward to your feedback!

[rahuljrark]

Here are some tips:

Inspiration: Try to become as successful as your favourite blogger
Belief: Always believe that you are a good blogger
Hardwork: You need a lot if it
Never give up

Thats all I can think of right now.

[ChickenFreak]

Almost everything about your blog should be about content. Content, content, content, and in addition, content. Everything else should be about your readers.

- Pick a good topic.

For your topic, pick something that fascinates you, that you can enjoy writing about for a long, long time, that you can write about in a well-informed, or entertaining, or otherwise appealing way. Ideally, your topic will be something that a moderate number of people also care about, but if you have to choose between a popular topic that you don't care as much about, and a tiny niche that you love, go with the tiny niche.

It's also best if your subject isn't _too_ popular - if you want to be yet another blogger about technical products, or yet another blogger blogging about how to make money on the internet, or yet another blogger scraping and republishing news stories, you'll be lost in the sea of competitors.

If your topic is a pretty popular one, you're going to have to find a way to make yourself different - the best, the most informative, the only one who's interested in a specific niche, the funniest - something.

- Spend your time on your content

Don't waste a bunch of time on SEO, and widgets, and setting up ads, and perfecting your layout, and spamming comments on dofollow sites, and listing yourself on every directory under the sun, and all of those activities that mean _absolutely nothing_ until you have good, high-quality, entertaining, compelling content.

Write posts. Put your heart into them. Make them as interesting, and amusing, and compelling, and informative, and helpful, and _well written_ (edit, proofread, edit, proofread, edit, proofread) as you possibly can. And then try to make the next post better than the last one.

Write a lot of posts. Post at least twice a week for months. That should represent ninety percent of your blogging time. Improve your writing. Develop your voice. See what gets a response and a few comments, see what's ignored.

The other ten percent of your time should be spent on maintaining a decent clean layout and good tags and so on, and on becoming a productive participant in your niche, commenting regularly on the high-quality blogs in that niche.

- Don't make it about money, not even a little bit.

If you're blogging for money, either forget the money, or forget the blog. It will likely be a very, very long time before you make a penny, and the more effort you put into the money, as opposed to the content, the less likely you are to make money. Assume that you will never make even a single penny. If all of the interest drains out of you at that thought, then stop now.

- Find your voice

I already said this on "spend your time on your content", but it's worth a point of its own. Nobody's interested in yet another slick blog. For pretty near every niche that can be a success through anonymous slickness, there's already a corporation spending a bazillion dollars trying to do exactly that.

All you have to compete is yourself. Your voice, your personality, your knowledge your quirks, you.

- Show gratitude toward your readers.

Not with giveaways and nonsense like that. Respond to their comments, take their suggestions seriously, show respect for their time an their needs in your layout and the organization of your site, show respect for their expectations in your blogging schedule and the way that you deal with absences, participate in the community that your blog is a part of.

[Melody]

Wow, ChickenFreak listed 5 really good ones. Some of those I need to improve upon.

I guess here is my 5 suggestions:

1]] Pick a niche your passionate about, even if others can't understand for a moment why you would blog about that. And, you need to be highly knowledgeable about your niche. Write because you love it.

If you're feeling like your blog is a chore often, or there is always something else and who cares about your niche, then that's a big sign that either you've picked the wrong niche because you haven't got passion for your topic, or you are not really meant to be a blogger.

2]] Be persistent. Don't think you have load up your blog with a bunch of content in a week. Blogging is very much that slow and steady will win the race. You just have to feed it very regularly.

3]] Avoid flashy widgets.
Professional blogs are about the content. Don't get caught up in ANY widget on your site - First off, you don't need to boast to others any stats, and you can get all the analytics you need from having something installed like SiteMeter or GoogleAnalytics. It's very silly to get hung up on the GoogleFollower widget - That's tells you about someone who managed one time to click on something, and it doesn't give you any real analytics. Widgets are just a flashy distraction, that lure people into plastering them all over their blog, like a car with bumper full of stickers.

Along the lines of widgets, don't put music player widgets on your blog. You want thousands of people to visit your site? You really shouldn't assume that all those people are going to like YOUR selection of music, and you should also assume that some people will be visiting under circumstances where they don't want to have unexpected loud music blaring at them (at an office, at home with a child napping, in a library, etc ...) - Unexpected loud music may very well likely result in a fast click away from your blog.

4.]] You have to give to get.
Do NOT go around screaming at people to "Follow me" and expect people to spend long time at your site if you're not visiting them. Having a blog, to some degree, means developing relationships with others with the same interest. Market your blog this way: Through really connections over common ground, and not by spamming links on twitter, or other blogs, and somehow expecting you'll get something out of that. Look at other blogs that are successes, especially if they're in your niche.

5.]] Proof read.
A professional blog is well written. You don't see a million typos and poor grammar on highly professional blogs. Remember, you want to have people from all over the world read your blog. A well-written blog is easier to read for those people visiting your blog where English isn't their first language. And it makes you look good. Ask someone who is highly skilled in English to be your proofreader.

Hope that helps.

Melody

[Scootek]

Nice write ChickenFreak, very good points mentioned.

[Toribelle]

These are all really helpful pointers! Thanks everyone!

[New_Blogger]

Cheers for the tips!

[artizhay]

I just wanted to emphasize Melody's last point of proofreading. I actually saw someone tweet something like "Jeez, proofread your blog, please." This just reinforces the fact that not everyone uses "u" and "i" and "r" in any way that they're not supposed to be used. You can have some amazing content but I will never read if it it's not written well.

Instead of writing for money, and if you want to write for something, I write for comments. No, comments don't determine how awesome your blog is. But I like to blog for feedback. I want to create something interesting enough that someone wants to share their thoughts or input something. That is ultimately what your blog is for - to share information with people - so create something that other people want to give back to.

[terriluvsbooks]

These are very helpful. Thank you.

[Invader_Stu]

1) Focus on content - Too many bloggers focus on the idea of being successful and/or making money and don't actually focus on what they are writing. You have to give readers something of value that will make them come back, thus making you successful.
2) Don't be afraid to work hard - Becoming a successful blogger is not easy. It takes a lot of work to write the content, maintain the blog and promote it.
3) Reach out to readers - Writing a blog and hoping it will work is not enough. You have to promote it or (even better) build a community. Get to know your readers. Make them feel valued.
4) Be passionate about it - If you are passionate about your blog and what you are writing about this will show and get more readers interested. Pick a subject to blog about that you like.
5) Quality not quantity - A lot of readers will tell you they want you to post more often but never sacrifice quality for quantity. It will show.