Do You Have A Plan For Your Blog?

Not too long ago the advice to anybody wanting to get into internet marketing or any online business was to start blogging. This would both get your content out there for the search engines and it would allow your domain to start aging. Both good things.

OK. So now your blog has been up for over six months. Are you getting the response you thought you would? Have you attracted the right kind of readers/subscribers? Is your blog making you any money every month?

Before you answer, there are other things you should look at first. Namely, what were your goals when you started the blog? Did you research your niche before you decided on it or did it just sound like a good idea to you? If you did research your niche and determined its viability, did you establish goals for your blog? Are they written down and do you review/revise them at least monthly?

If you haven’t considered these things your results have probably not been stellar. Now is the time to go back and do the work we should have started with and determine if it’s still something we want to do or if we should sell the domain and start again. Time is just too valuable to us to continue wasting it on a site that’s not fulfilling or profitable for us.

Here are a few basic questions we need an answer to.

Did you research your niche before you even looked for a domain?

Taking into consideration both the number of searches that a keyword receives AND the amount of competition for that keyword is crucial. You don’t want a phrase that is easy to rank for but receives no traffic any more than you want one that has tons of traffic but tons of competing sites with thousands of backlinks.

I have found the Market Samurai tool introduced in The 30 Day Challenge to be the quickest way to get both of these important metrics. Neither of these are paid links.

What were your goals when you started the blog?

Did you want to created a web store with some content thrown in to help your page ranking or did you want to create an authority site with occasional affiliate offers?

How were you planning to promote your blog?

Did you look at the various promotion methods in terms of your target market and select a mix you felt would reach them? Somebody will tell you that writing articles or using Twitter or StumbleUpon or whatever is THE way you need to use to reach your audience. If you haven’t looked at what your potential readers actually use then you’re spinning your wheels and throwing darts. All tools just don’t work with every niche.

What’s the best way to do this? Testing. Plan to try different methods and measure the response in traffic or subscribers or sales depending on the measure most important to you.

Have you reviewed and revised your goals at least once monthly?

The only way to know if you’re making progress towards goals you’ve set is to revisit them at least on a monthly basis and evaluate your progress. Once again, if you don’t you’re just guessing and guessing is bad.

How did you do?

If you’ve done the preceding steps you are off on the right foot. My next recommendation would be to consider the Blog Mastermind coaching program by Yaro Starak. Yaro is one of the most successful bloggers around today. He believes that a blog can be your sole income source and that you shouldn’t be working 80 hours a week for this to happen. He can take you step by step and help you get your blog where it should be.

You can check out his Entrepreneur’s Journey blog and be sure to download his free report “Blog Profits Blueprint” while you’re there.

Best,

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[tags]blogging,niche research,blog promotion,yaro starak[/tags]