Hi Guys,

So I am starting this series to share my blogging experiences with you. I am naming this series Blogging Tips series and this series will cover many topics like

1. Where to start – this post
2. Creativity
3. Why blogs won’t work
4. How to draw traffic
5. Using Social media
6. What you should avoid
7. Making money
8. How affiliate stuff work. Best Affiliate program providers.
9. Blogging Tips
10. Advertising
11. Commenting on your blow
12. and many more to follow

Don’t forget to +1 this post if you like it. Many Links in this post are affiliate links

I never talk myself down so my experiences may be agreed by you or you can criticize my post or you can add you wonderful thoughts to whatever I write. I am in field of blogging from last many many months if not decades. So I have gained may be enough knowledge to share with you.

Ok so let me tell you where to start. Its a difficult one but I will try to address it.

Its not easy when you ask yourself what you should be writing about or even worse you have no clue what Blogging software to pick or to create one.

I should tell you that you shouldn’t spend time reinventing the wheel just to prove that you got some skills.

WordPress is an awesome software that I use for Blogging. Not only it is self efficient but extensions like themes and plugins make it really strong platform for yourself. I wrote only 2 plugins up until now just because the requirements were very unique.

So now you know what software to pick

Next for me was to choose hosting. A cheap and reliable hosting. I am using knownhost (aff link) now but I started with Hostgator

Point was that I never wanted to invest too much upfront that it would become liability. So cheap and best was my option.

So now your hosting is all set.

You should be looking to customize your WordPress the way you want to run it. You should be looking to create a good navigation menu. Sitemap, Privacy policy (A must), About us page. You have to be sure what subjects you need to work on. These subjects are categories in your WordPress install and create your categories. e.g. Before I started this series today I thought well I will be writing roughly 20-30 articles covering many topic so what should I call my category. I chose “Blogging Tips series” for my reference. But it will become more important if you are looking (which you should) to Search Engine optimize you URLs.

Now lets talk about the subject. I guess for a successful Blog its a must that you concentrate on subjects that you have enough knowledge of and try to keep them to certain topics. Thing is that if you write a blog entry and your visitors start to ask doubts about whatever you’ve posted and you have no clue what they’ve asked thats an instant cut off.

Remember: There is no hard and fast rule for success. With time comes experience.

Writing is such a wonderful experience. I tell you about myself, I live in Melbourne Australia but I was migrated here. I was so nervous with my English to starting a Blog was really something I never looked on. If say I started it in 2002-2003 how many experiences or things I’ve learned till that time. Enormous!

So If I say I wrote 10 posts per month i.e. whatever you’ve learnt during the day. In 10 years I would have 10 * 12 * 10 = 1200 articles by now.

When I started this blog I had no clue whatsoever after posting 7 articles what to write next.

So I thought well lets keep it real, and started writing whatever little problem I solved in the day. Now I have over 270 posts + pages and I know they are just going to grow.

For instance today I thought Oh! Well! what should I write about because I did not do anything new today except from concentrating on making money 🙂

But then I thought Hang On! I can start a series which will share my thought the way I do it and may someone will benefit from it.

So this is not just think and write process. Lets drill what I actually do (plan) before I write to make it helpful for myself and others who read my posts whether they are technical code snippets or post like this one.

Now at the start of this post I highlighted many topics that I wish to cover, that was not just I thought right now and started to write. Before I started writing this post I drilled my brain about what topics this series may include, I wrote them on a piece of paper. Then I thought well! are these subject capable of making a good series. Answer was No! Then I spend more time thinking about what topics should I include in this series. Bottom line is that Planning and writing down somewhere when a Post Idea struck your mind becomes the key for what you wish to write on.

A blogger can only improve with time. So you should be ready for that. You gotta think that blogging can be real fun.

I tell you something. When I started I was passionate and was willing to write say 4 articles in a day. That was too much. My workflow what messed up and then I sort of hated writing for a brief period but you never stop what you love. Thus I thought what should I do to keep my self to a level where I never become to addictive or too paranoid about writing. These are the things that came in handy.

Feel Comfortable

Well this is the key. If you think that you are sitting in your exams, then the final product will never be good. Never Ever!. It is important that you are feeling comfortable when you are writing. If you are at home then take regular breaks and when you are writing, it won’t harm to put “Do Not Disturb” sign on your doors. Writing is business and a serious one. I will show you exactly how you will turn writing into full time business. Don’t forget to stretch to keep that blood circulating in your brain.

Plan and make notes

I do it all the time. I got an iPad and whenever I have any new Idea I will quickly add it to my notes. Because that Idea will give birth to an article. Add what research you need to do before you start writing on a topic. A post idea is very short lived. You will find many times that you got a post subject and you couldn’t remember after say 5 minutes what that was. So it does not really matter where you are sitting e.g. at lunch, in train, or even in toilet :). So quickly write a brief about what you wish to write and later explore those points.

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Research on Topic

5% of my posts are based on research I do. Not only on this website but in general. When I think of anything I wish to write on e.g. When to tell if your wife is pregnant (kidding.. no offence) I would write down the topic heading and do enormous amount of research (can be anything between 5 minutes to 30 minutes) using Google, I do lot of reading on different website and note the key points that different authors concentrate on. Not all of them will make to my final post but they give me head start what I should be writing about. This is not copying but I call it research. The content that you write has to be really unique and uniqueness will only come if you can exploit a topic from key headers.

Using graphic media

You can use pictures in your post. Even better create video tutorials whenever possible. I include images in my posts all the time and recently stated working on some video tutorial using.

A picture is worth 1000 words they say. So wherever possible provide screenshots. This will help your audiences understand what you are talking about better.

Review and Publish

I never publish my post straight away unless Its really short tip. I will most of the time do a full read before posting. I generally check if the post in all makes sense to myself. If it does not seems to address the problem properly then I will edit it until it looks or read Ok. I never try to edit my post while I write them that takes the flow and brain build up and your next sentence disappear in a second. So don’t care about spelling mistakes, let them happen unless you can correct you word by one keystroke, look directly on screen and finish you post

Blogging is about fun and writing good and for better.

This series is only going to grow. I will talk about Being Creative in my next post in this series. I strongly recommend you subscribing to my Blog to get an update when I post next in this category.

Cheers,