By Brandon Yanofsky

I began blogging just as a way to keep a journal. But after one of my first blog posts received a comment from Chris Brogan, one of my long time idols, I knew I was on to something.

I then started a small business marketing blog, which got me many business consulting gigs. And lately, I’ve been helping startups launch and manage their own blogs.

All in all, my blogging has grown into quite a business.

If you want all this, you need to set yourself up for success. Here are the five lessons I’ve learned as I built my successful blogging business:

1. Write first, design later

While your blog’s design is important, it’s not nearly as important as your writing. Think about it: A horribly designed yet well written blog will always have more readers than a gorgeously designed yet poorly written blog.

So in the initial stages of beginning your blog, concentrate on writing articles. Once you have a healthy inventory of articles, you can begin concentrating on the design.

2. Read…all the time

Whenever you’re not writing, you should be reading. Read magazines, books, blogs, newspapers, newspaper ads, the backs of cereal boxes.

Not only will reading expand your knowledge, but it will improve your writing skills.

3. The only rule is: There are no rules

I get many questions along these lines:

“How long should my posts be?”
“How many images should I include?”
“Should I write in first or third person?”

There really is no answer. Some experts will say that a 500-word article is optimal, while others say it’s 750 words. To be honest, I’ve seen great posts as short as only three words and others as long as 5,000 words.

In blogging, there are no solid rules.

4. Perfection will kill your blog

Perfection is a myth. You could spend your entire life writing one blog post and it still won’t be perfect.

So don’t try and make every one of your posts perfect. Set a limit to the number of drafts you do. For me, I limit myself to three drafts. After that, I publish.

5. Know who you’re writing for

Keep your reader in mind as you write. Most writers will create an imaginary person they envision reading their work. As they write, they think, “How will she react to this?” Doing so helps writers write much better.

Do the same with your blog. Create your own imaginary reader.

Got any questions about how to get started blogging? Leave them in the comments below.

Learn more about blogging with Brandon Yanofsky’s FREE blogging course, available through B-List Marketing.

Photo: Stock.xchng – creactions

I can remember when all I needed to know as a writer was how to write — and maybe find the ‘start’ button on my computer and launch Microsoft Word.

Life as a 21st Century writer is different, hmmm?

Among the programs I’ve learned to use — or tried to figure out — in the past couple years as I started blogging are WordPress, Moveable Type, Blogger, about three other custom-made corporate blog platforms, DreamHost, Audacity, TextWrangler, Camtasia, Scribe, Screenflow, PowerPoint, Freshbooks, Freebinar, GoToWebinar, GVO Conference, Picnik, CyberDuck…not to mention countless plug-ins for WordPress I needed to figure out how to configure, and of course basic HTML coding.

Did I mention technology makes me cry?

I’m not speaking figuratively here. My pathetic wails can be heard throughout the house as I desperately try to, say, get Mailchimp to hook up to e-junkie. Or get an mpeg-4 to embed on a WordPress page.

You name it in technology, and I’m not very good at it. It doesn’t come naturally to me. At all.

But I just keep on slogging my way through technology. Next up: Wishlist Member and iDev, so I can run a functional affiliate program and a membership community.

I know many other writers are frustrated with the technology we have to use. Some day I’m sure some brilliant technologist will make it all effortlessly talk to each other and make it easy to understand for lay people, but until then we just have to keep wrestling with it.

My rules for dealing with technology:

• Don’t let it stop you. If you need a technology to enable your writing career, make up your mind that nothing is going to keep you from figuring out how it works. Attitude is important here.
• Don’t spend a lot. Any time you’re thinking about paying for an expensive technology, keeping looking. There’s probably a free or moderately priced one available that’ll do the job.
• Hire a teen. They’re cheap and know a lot. I got one from my high school’s digital design class who worked out for about 18 months, and I spent a big $120 or so in all.
• Take a class. If you’ve been holding back on blogging because you feel overwhelmed by WordPress, classes seem pretty plentiful — find one through a networking group or your local community college.
• Hire a pro if you really need to. I just did a $100 consulting hour with a video specialist to figure out the best solution for recording, storing, and managing my Webinar files. Sometimes, if it’ll save days of agony, it’s worth it to get some expert advice to cut to the chase. I currently use my webmaster David Hogg for the tricky stuff I haven’t mastered yet such as hiding landing pages from WordPress’s navigation, and giving my writer site a complete overhaul.
• Learn to do as much of it yourself as you can. It really saves a bundle. When you hire someone to do something, make them teach you what they did at the end.
• Be prepared for setbacks. I personally had one yesterday, and it really sucked. But we’ll get it sorted.
• Know that for writers today, technology is power. The more types of technology you understand, the more types of online writing gigs you can go after. Also, it’s a real high when you finally get it. Recently, I gained the ability to pop an audio recording or screencast onto a web page and make it show up in a little recording-player thingy, with a “play” button and everything. Win! It’s a terrific feeling when you can press a button or enter a string of text and make something amazing happen on your blog, instantly.
• Join a community where you can get low-cost, ongoing help. I wouldn’t have been able to figure out half this stuff — or it would have taken years longer — without picking myself up, drying my tears, and heading off to the forums on A-List Blogger Club to ask for advice. There are also video trainings inside the club on some of the technologies that are lifesavers. I was really lost on the best way to work with audio and video files, until I checked out the A-List materials in their “Create Courses That Sell” module. What do you know — step-by-step instructions from Mary Jaksch on how to export out of Audacity, and how to use Camtasia. The technical advice I’ve been able to get inside A-List has been a lifesaver for me, over and over.

What technology do you rely on as a writer, and how easy did you find it to learn? Leave a comment and tell us about your technology challenges.

A-List Alert: I just discovered the A-List Blogger Club is raising its rates Sunday night! If you’ve ever wanted to join a community with vast resources and terrific support for your blogging journey, now’s the time. A-List Blogger Club is going to be $27 a month, but everyone who joins before Sunday stays at $20 a month, forever.

I’ll even make the deal sweeter — join through my site before the rates go up, and I’ll send you a free, one-hour recording I recently made: The Top 10 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Making Money, which features Pushing Social’s Stanford Smith.

Photo: Stock.xchng – mokra

Less than a year ago, this blog had fewer than 300 subscribers. Now, it’s headed toward 2,000.

This is the story of how I skyrocketed my blog subscribers — and how you can, too.

I tried a lot of strategies — and some of them worked. The good news is, the things that worked for me are things any blogger can do to grow their audience. You’re pretty much guaranteed you will add subscribers.

How many subscribers you add depends on how well you execute your plan — and definitely on a little bit of luck! — but your numbers will definitely go up.

Before I start, I just want to say that growing an email subscriber list should be the first goal for any blogger with dreams of earning from their blog. A lot of new bloggers are unaware of this — I know I was! But without a list, you cannot easily market and sell things to your readers.

I agree with Naomi Dunford of ittybiz — when you don’t have a list, you’ve got nothing. You can be doing a lot of awesome stuff, but at the end of the day if that stuff doesn’t build your list, it’s a waste of time.

Here are the 10 most important things I did to grow my subscriber base:

1. Make celebrity friends. A few years back, this wasn’t so important, as it was easier to get noticed in the blogosphere. Now, as Jon Morrow of Copyblogger tells in a great video on his GuestBlogging site, it’s mandatory. You can do all of the other steps below, but it’ll be slow going if you can’t get a link or mention from an influential blogger. Just like a Hollywood starlet, you can spend years touring in dinner theater and eking out a living, or you can sit at the drugstore counter on Hollywood Boulevard and get noticed by a big movie-studio producer right away.

When top bloggers notice your work, they can spread the word to everyone else and send a flock of readers over to your blog. Some will subscribe. You’ve also then made a great connection you can ask about guest-blogging opportunities on their blog, to gain even more exposure.

There are lots of ways to connect with top bloggers. The first way I did it was just by putting my blog post links on Twitter. One was spotted by Jon and he asked me to guest post on Copyblogger. A lot of good stuff rolled from there.

2. Listen to your readers and meet their needs. You may think you know why readers visit your blog and what they want to read about, but take a poll and ask them. The answers will probably surprise you. If you only have a few readers now, email them individually and get their thoughts. When you write more extremely useful posts on exactly the topics readers want, more readers will subscribe.

3. Post frequently and consistently. Initially, I posted sporadically, then progressed to once a week. I gradually upped that to twice a week, and then three times, which seems to be a good level for this blog. More posts mean more visits — it’s just that simple.

I also set my posts to all go up at the same time of day, and on the same days of the week (holidays excepted). I found readers like to be able to rely on you for a fresh post at particular times in their week. People are creatures of habit, and regular posting will make your blog habit-forming.

4. Write amazing headlines with key words. Regular readers are probably sick of hearing this from me, but most blog-post headlines aren’t drawing readers the way they could. If you improve only one thing about the posts on your blog, let it be the headlines. When I learned more about headlines and wrote stronger headlines, I got noticed by a lot more influential people.

5. Give away great free stuff. So many bloggers complain they can’t get people to subscribe, but they don’t offer any incentive to do so. Put together a short, useful free report and you’ll be amazed at how many more subscribers you get. People love free stuff! When I did my first guest-post on Copyblogger, I was so excited — I thought I would rack up hundreds of new subscribers right away. But I didn’t have a free-giveaway offer, and I really didn’t get many subscribers. So you can drive a crowd to your blog, but if you don’t make them an enticing offer, you still won’t gain many subscribers. I definitely learned this one the hard way.

6. Ask for the subscription. Back when I had about 250 subscribers, I did a consulting call with Jon Morrow. I complained about my low subscriber rate, and he said, “Well — do you ask readers to subscribe?” I countered that I had a signup box.

“No,” he said. “Ask them. On the bottom of your posts write, ‘If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing,’ and give a link to sign up.” Sure enough, making that “ask” got a steady trickle of signups going, right away.

7. Make it easy to subscribe by email. I’ve looked at more than 100 startup blogs in the past couple of months, and a common problem new bloggers have is not making it easy to subscribe by email. Often, there’s only an RSS signup, or the email signup is buried inside the RSS signup sheet.

I used to have a similar problem — I had a small text-link you clicked to subscribe, which took you another place where you filled out the subscription form. In other words, it was a 2-step process. When I fixed that and made it a one-step process, subscriptions rose. Lesson: You can never underestimate how lazy people are when they’re reading websites. Every step they have to take gives them a chance to lose interest and wander away without subscribing.

8. Remove the clutter. Last summer, I got approached by Derek Halpern of DIYThemes and Social Triggers to do a guest post for DIY. He told me my site was too cluttered and I should delete many sidebar widgets. When I did, I got more subscribers. It’s because my site became less confusing and it’s more obvious to readers what I want them to do — subscribe.

10. Market the #%(@*! out of your blog. When you write a blog post, you have created a marketing tool. Next, you have to get out there and use that tool to help people discover your blog. Retweet your content, post links on Facebook, LinkedIn, or wherever else your crowd hangs out. Comment on other blogs. Invite readers and experts to come guest-post on  your blog — it’ll make them into big fans and promoters of your blog.

Learn more about how to grow your subscribers and make your blog earn money! Early registration opens today for my next Webinar, Secrets of a Money-Making Blog. I like to reward people who sign up early, so the first 20 15 people who register can use the code SECRETS and get 20% off the $36 Webinar price.

Growth chart image: stock.xchng – guitargoa

You’ve all heard the expression that when it comes to websites and blogging, “content is king.” For a while, it was true.

Sites stuffed their pages with junk content — much of it almost unreadable, robot-generated SEO garbage — and were rewarded with better rankings in Google searches, and more traffic and sales.

Lots of bloggers went nuts, throwing up any old error-filled, half-baked, two-paragraph post, just to have a post every day of the week. Having boatloads of content was important!

This ushered in the era about 2-3 years back when it seemed like every job ad you saw was to write three posts a day for $5 each, accompanied by threats of employing Copyscape for plagiarism checking. A lot of content was really about content-stuffing, not creating anything useful for readers.

Or as I liked to say, “You want someone to write posts for robots to read. I only write pieces for people to read.”

People warned me that this was the new reality, and in the future it would be all cheap junk and low rates. But I never believed it. I knew the pendulum would swing back.

It’s already happening. Many sites I know have raised their rates and changed their standards because they’ve tried the low-rent approach and it didn’t work.

Eventually, so many sites did the junk-content thing, website readers got hip to it and stopped visiting these sites. The sites quickly lost their credibility. Rankings for junk-post sites went down.

The days when blogs could be sloppy, half-thought-out pieces written in 10 minutes and still succeed are over.

Which brings us to the new era. Know what the watchword is now?

Great content is king.

That’s right — it’s not about quantity any more. It’s all about quality.

Over time, readers ignored the junk-stuffed sites and became enthusiastic, loyal fans of sites with terrific content. I know some of the ones I read may only post once a week. Those sites still became the real money-makers.

That’s because what they post is amazing, enlightening, terrifically useful information.

As my Webinar partner Judy Dunn said earlier this week, bloggers who want to succeed today should write like they already have 1,000 subscribers. Or take the attitude I always did — that each blog post I wrote was as important to me as a $1-a-word article I would write for a national magazine or major corporation.

I always thought of the time spent on posts as an investment in my future earnings.That turned out to be a good approach.

There’s two ways to play it in freelance writing today — you can pitch companies and publications and get assignments like always. Or you can create your own blog, which in essence is like your own rolling magazine, and use it as a tool for earning. If you build a successful blog, you can use it to get gigs, sell ebooks, get consulting work, or sell products for others. This is the unique, new opportunity of the 21st Century for writers.

But it’s not easy, or we’d all already be millionaires.

It’s about really thinking about what readers want to know, and delivering it every single time.  Sharing generously from your own experiences, while offering concrete tips on what others can learn from them. It’s about writing irresistible headlines that draw readers to come visit.

The days when just great content alone could make the blog-success magic happen are also gone.

The new era of blogging is also about great design and usability — making your site look inviting and uncluttered, and easy for readers to navigate and find what they want. It’s about committing to constantly learning more about this emerging, evolving art of blogging, and making your blog better and better. If you have no natural aptitude for design (which I certainly don’t!), you still can’t ignore this critical element.

In other words, your great blog posts are like pretty pictures. Put them in a hideous frame, and people won’t want to look. You have to bring it all together — the great content and smart design — to have all the ingredients for blogging success. That’s why, on March 15, Judy and I will be talking about both design and content strategies to help your blog find its audience.

Did you see a special, limited-time offer today for my upcoming Webinar, 30 Design & Content Secrets to Skyrocket Your Blog? I sent one to all my subscribers. If not, subscribe now to get the inside line on more good stuff coming up.

Photo via stock.xchng user brokenarts