Earn Money Blogging: Things to do after your first blog

You've decided on writing a blog,

You want to share your ideas with the world. You want to make a name for yourself. You want to stand out. You want to have some fun too, learn a bit and leverage blogging in other aspects of your life (both personal and business.) All true? Then get ready…

Here’s the first list of things to do after you launch your blog:

Promoting your blog

A few people get to waste their resource to promote their blog, it is always better to start promoting the blog once you have about 10 posts minimum.

Why 10 posts?
- This ideally is a number which would seem better once we start to index the blog.
- Also you will have created a rich enough content experience to keep someone interested.
- You have given Google a chance to find you,
- Some blog directories won’t add you without that amount of content.

My suggestion to you, once you have 10 posts in your blog go ahead reading the post.

Linking effectively

This is not talking about the internal links between posts

There are link exchange programs, google for the list of link exchange sites. The idea is to make yourself visible to the blogosphere. Link to the people the bloggers and websites alike to help them return to your blog and once they are happy with your content they would link to you creating a valuable backlink.
Dont be worried about who links to you, the more the better should be your thought.

Commenting in other Blogs.

I am sure you are already commenting on posts of various blogs you have visited. This is very important now that you have your own blog. Increase the amount you comment - leave intelligent, meaningful comments on blogs you’ve targeted for attention - and you’ll start to create a powerful spiderweb of contacts. The web crawlers or bots which visit pages to pages through links identify your links and visit your blog.

Add Your Blog To Site/RSS/Blog Directories.

There’s a huge (and constantly updated) list at RSSTop55 Best Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites but that list is completely overwhelming. Google for it.
You don’t need to go crazy adding your site to a million places - but it can’t hurt. Do 10 a day, every couple of days, for a few weeks as the blog develops. More important, make sure you’ve got a sitemap and it’s submitted to Google Webmasters, since Google rules the day and having your content easily found via search is critical.

Setup Blogroll

On your sidebar list the various blog related to your niche and list them with links. In the early stages of your blog it’s a great way of finding worthwhile, relevant content. You want to find that stuff so you can check it out and interact with other bloggers.

Sign up for Google Analytics

This is a tool from google which helps you to track your blog effectively. This is what provides statistics on you blog with data on visitors, page vies etc. I will talk about google analytics on another post. This post on google analytics will throw more light on what it is, how to effectively use google analytics.

Signup for Mybloglog

MyBlogLog is a popular blog community where you can promote your blog through a network of contacts. It’s easy to setup and has a few worthwhile features. First, it shows you which other MyBlogLog members are visiting your site (which is fun + interesting.) It also has some basic stats (such as visits / popular clicks on your site) and will help drive traffic. MyBlogLog is a useful way of connecting with people online, so it’s worth doing when you launch your blog. It would help if you had a Yahoo account but not necessary.

Social Bookmarking Sites.

Early on, the most effective social bookmarking/news sites will be StumbleUpon. It’s less important to write great linkbait for StumbleUpon users, and although you may not get thousands upon thousands of visitors instantly, with a bit of work you could see a few hundred per day quite quickly. Tamar Weinberg has some worthwhile instructions on StumbleUpon - How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide.
Digg is the king of social bookmarking sites. Make it to the front page of Digg and you’re looking at 10-60,000 unique visitors. But getting there isn’t so easy. And until you’re really comfortable writing (and writing great linkbait) it’s not worth the effort.

Get People To Comment On Your Blog.

A blog looks so much more alive when people are commenting on it. This is a big reason why you see “Most Recent Comments” promoted so heavily at the top of sidebars - people like to see other people commenting. There are some ways to write blog posts to get more comments, but you’ll also want to encourage your friends and contacts to participate. Get your buddies out of lurker status quickly and others will follow.

Learn How To Improve Your Blogging.

Being a blogger means you’re always learning and improving. As mentioned in the post are you ready to blog There’s no end to the road, it just keeps on winding along. There’s no shortage of high quality blogs out there about blogging. You’ll want to check these religiously. You’ll probably print quite a few posts out and pin them up near your desk.
Part of learning is experimenting. Don’t be afraid to try new things quickly. Mix up your style of posts, test out new headlines, write lists, move things around in the sidebar. The beauty of blogging is that you can make so many changes - and if something doesn’t work, change it back.

It doesn’t matter where your blog starts. It will be a bumpy few months as you get a handle on what you’re doing, experiment, and connect with your growing community. Everyone looks back at their start in blogging and chuckles at all the blog mistakes they made.

Don’t stress out about stats. It’s not worth it, and although it’ll be tempting to obsess over them at the beginning, it can also be demoralizing to see less visitors than you expected. Traffic will always go up and down, you’ll see big spikes and maybe even big drops. Since there’s no end to the blogging game, the fluctuations at any given time in your traffic numbers aren’t important - it’s the trend that matters. And since you just started there’s no real trend. So don’t worry about it.

Have fun and be prepared for a significant emotional and time investment. Blogging is easy. Blogging successfully is another story. It takes a time investment to blog successfully. As your blog gains popularity, your brand develops and you find your voice, you’ll think nothing of the time you’re investing, it will make complete sense and be totally worthwhile. You’ll have fallen into the Blogger Mindset. But initially it may seem frustrating and odd to devote so much time. Get ready to open your mind and jump in. I would cover a lot more thing to do after your first blog.