This is a guest post by Mandy Allen @ http://learn-to-blog.org

One of the most difficult process for newcomers when they start building blogs is to find a niche that will become popular and bring in some income.  Most, but not all, new bloggers make serious mistakes when they first start blogging by thinking about their blog as a fun project and not a distinct business.

The abundance of free WordPress blog templates, free plug-ins that will do almost anything you can think of and free hosting can blur the importance of adopting a business mind-set when all you initially need can be downloaded for free.  Effective business creation requires some tight focus and a good dose of learning about new processes and techniques that can make or break your hunt for success.

Try as hard as you might, mistakes will happen.  They do not have to be a blogging disaster, however.  You can learn from your mistakes.  In fact, I don’t believe a successful marketer exists that hasn’t made several mistakes while they were building their businesses.  You can learn a lot by stepping back, fixing your mistake or repairing accidental damage in your journey.

Let’s look at five common mistakes many new bloggers make.

The first mistake many make when they start blogging is to avoid the costs of getting a domain name and paying monthly hosting fees by using free blogging accounts like, Blogger and a long list of others.  When you use free blogging sites, you lose control of your own blog.  The hosting site will put ads on your pages and, at times, control what content you can publish.  When that happens it is not truly your own blog and any hope of establishing a blog that starts your branding and building your reputation doesn’t exist.

Another mistake to avoid is not using a designer to create your own logo.  It’s part of branding you and your products just like any major company on the globe and it is usually not expensive.  Think about it!  Major businesses do not spend money on any processes that do not work.  All those logos on sporting equipment, T-shirts, major commercial businesses are branding the company involved.  Can you visit any page on Google and not see their colorful logo?

If you are serious about making an income from your blog, you can add Google’s Adsense or direct links to products you are promoting as an affiliate.  Another way to make money from your blogs is to sell space on your blogs to businesses with products that bear some relationship to your focus.  Don’t waste the opportunity for those first inroads to your online income.

It is important to remember that your readers come to your blog to read the information you post and any other enticements that take them off your blog might be a problem. Carefully consider the possible results before you jump into selling commercial ads.  To keep your members happy with you, do not promote any product you haven’t used or read yourself.  If the product is useless or poorly written, you will lose a customer.

On my blogs, I’ve never promoted a product I haven’t used myself.  Neither should you.

Finally, if you are serious about making money with your blog, you have to be serious about building a list of customers to market to.  Emails describing your latest post or announcing your latest freebie or product will be welcome by your members and keep them visiting your blog.  Another way to get the same result is to send a regular newsletter to your membership on a monthly basis.

Any good autoresponder, like Aweber, will do the “sending” for you based on whatever time frame you set up.  You should start list building as soon as your blog is online.  Offer a good free gift for registering and allowing your email marketing efforts.  Aweber will take care of the double opt-in required by the Can-Spam Act.  Make sure you use a reliable auto responder right from the beginning.  Many big name internet marketers lost their early lists due to using cheaper alternatives that don’t guarantee the same service.

When you are starting out with your first blog and make some mistakes, just remember that, at the end of the day, mistakes can be repaired.

This is a guest post by Mandy Allen @ http://learn-to-blog.org

I know you want to get right into the details of setting up your blog and taking the steps to monetize it immediately.  Without doing some work BEFORE you get into running the actual blog, you just have to work for a time in the background.  Most of the value you are looking for in your blog comes from the details you complete in the background.

The first thing you have to do is settle on your focus for your blog.  The most popular and lucrative blogs on the Internet are sharply focused on a specific topic that has a lot of online interest.  Start with your hobbies or interests, make a list of topics that are pertinent to your interests.  Think about how potential customers are going to search for your information or products.

Let’s start with “gardening”, for example.  That term, “gardening” is very vague, but useful for a first look at keywords.  Use any of the keyword tools you can find with a Google search and either print out the list or make notes of the keywords that relate to your focus.  If you write notes, make sure you include the number of searches for your favorite keywords.

Select the top 5 or 10 keywords that have some value for your chosen niche.  For “gardening” you might want to focus on “patio gardening,” “container gardening” or “flower gardening,” for example.  There are many other gardening topics you can choose.  Even the three examples I’ve listed here can be focused more tightly, like “patio herb garden,”  “growing tomatoes in a pot” or “orchid tips.”  Start searching your keywords in broad terms and drill down until you have a nice balance between the actual keywords and the depth of  the interest.

Once you have a few powerful keywords, move your focus to actual online interest, like blogs, forums and membership sites related to your major keyword selections.  Google will be your best friend here.  For example, I just searched “patio herb gardening” on Google and discovered this interesting detail: “About 452,000 results.”  Those 452,000 sites focused on patio herb gardening are your competition AND your market.

Visit several popular sites and notice everything about them, including colors, use of photos, items for sale, presentation, Google adsense, comments and the information provided.  One fact you might not know is that if your Google search delivers a list of related sites, but there’s no paid ads down the right side of the results page, there’s not enough interest in the subject for businesses to spend money on an ad.  What does that mean?

NO ADS = NO INTEREST = NO VALUE TO YOU As A Subject To Create A Blog Around.  It really is that simple.  That old saying, “Follow the money,” is accurate.  It’s always worked for me.

Once you get this far in your research, it is time to think about creating your products.  What your potential customers will want from you is some very good information on your selected topics.  Do not settle for a PLR ebook or short report without rewriting it extensively and adding a good dose of new information.  As a newcomer to blogging, you need to remember that, while those PLR ebooks might be well-written, they also will be on other blogs all over the Internet, offered by those too lazy to rewrite them.

You will need a good cover for your products.  If you cannot design one for yourself, outsource it to a designer.  The same advice applies to your header.  The Internet is a visual production and looks are everything, including colors, spelling and grammar, graphic placement and the use of white space.  Don’t cram blocks of text together.  No one will read it.

Take your time and use the Internet, particularly your competition, to see how successful bloggers do the same steps you will be walking.

This is a guest post by Mandy Allen @ http://learn-to-blog.org

In today’s failing, world-wide economy, the thought of making money online has become more popular every day. Dreaming about working from home and making a good income while you sleep or play with your kids has become a major topic on thousands of wish lists.

Many might believe that it is way too difficult to generate income with unfamiliar Internet marketing processes or that it is too complicated and expensive to set up and run a blog. Others might believe that blogging is just a pastime and not a powerful and lucrative tool that will create a steady Internet income. They all would be wrong!

If you do a Google search for “blogging,” you will find almost 80,000,000 blogs online and dedicated to almost as many niches.  That number alone indicates how popular blogs are.  Blog topics can be related to hobbies, family ancestry, health discussions or making money online, to suggest just a very few niche topics. Putting the numbers aside, setting up a blog can be free and, other than the few processes you will have to purchase, like a domain name, a money-making blog will be very easy on your wallet.

Before you ever put anything online, it is vitally important that you define your goals. Do you want to make an income by blogging? Is it your intention to just promote your offline business? When do you expect to make money from blogging? Do you just want to have fun with your blog? If having fun is your goal, this discussion and the following posts are not for you.

After you identify your true goals with your blog, you will have a running call to action that can keep you focused on making money online. While you are examining your initial options, be sure to keep good notes and keep YOUR goals in your mind, so you don’t wander off topic and get lost in the Blogging wonderland.

Just putting up a blog will not do anything to help you succeed. What you need to do as soon as possible is to identify your market. You have to know what the members of your blog want to learn and what they need to really accomplish their own goals for making money online. How do you do this? You could simply ask them or add a questionnaire to your blog. You could also check out forums and other blogs focused on the same or similar niche that you selected. Reading posts in competing blogs will give you great insight on the needs and interests of your market.

Your next step would be creating your content, including a product to sell on your blog and one to giveaway for registrations. Those products can be anything that suits your blog’s focus, but most of the time it will be an ebook or report with related information for your members. You could sell physical products, but that would include shipping fees, packing materials and trips to the post office. eBooks that fill a need or solve a problem are sent attached to an email or downloaded directly from a webpage…no fees to pay or trips to the post office.

If you are unable to create your own products to sell or giveaway, I suggest you outsource that part of your marketing plan. Freelance ghostwriters can be found on many websites.

In future posts, I will address, in more detail, how you can create your own blog, get it online and making money for you. Right now you have a simple skeleton for your beginning. Plan your goals, make notes of what you want to do and don’t want to do and choose your first products to sell or giveaway on your blog.

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