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Do you want to learn how to start to make money with absolutely no initial money investment ? Being able to get started on the Internet without having to invest any kind of money is a possibility. There are many different programs and …

Do you want to learn how to start to make money with absolutely no initial money investment ? Being able to get started on the Internet without having to invest any kind of money is a possibility. There are many different programs and …

guest post by  Kelly Diels warning: there are lessons and even actionable advice in here, but it is buried inside a story. I write stories because I love you and don’t want to bore you and because if you laugh then chances are that you’ll remember the educational bit, too. There’s actual research that this works – it is not just because I am in love with  bloviation but hey, tomato tahmahto. I have big love for tech. You could not pry my dishwasher out of my house without bloodshed and death, most likely yours. And the internet?  Don’t even get me started. I want to french-kiss the web. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s my job or at least my blog’s mission statement. Still, I’m more of install (or pay someone to install) and hope-it-works kind of gal. I want the fuss without the muss. And I have this theory about tech: some key pieces of hardware and software make a huge difference and everything after that amounts to tweaks and hacks. But the good tech, like a great love, (initially) inspires awe, affection, and respect and make your life much better on a daily basis. You think:  how did I ever live without you, front-loading washer? We wasted so much time . And then, after the infatuation fades, you get on with your happily functioning and newly-enhanced life and start taking your love, machines, shockingly-white-whites and programs for granted. I like it like that. I like low-maintenance relationships (don’t tell anyone) and I LOVE that electricity just works and I don’t have to think about it. I like finding the right things, that work, and let them do that in the background. Nearly invisible function is  hawt . WordPress is one of those key pieces of tech that made a big difference in my life. It is like a long distance lover. I don’t quite understand it and I should probably spend more time with it but damn I like it a lot. It does me right, mostly virtually. Actually, let’s be honest: I LOVE WORDPRESS. My blog is my boyfriend. I adore it. I spend all my time with it. Because of all the fabulous people who love me up in the comments, my blog sates my unabashed lust for attention – which, in turn, has started saving me from terrible IRL relationship decisions. (Wordpress is saving the world from needy girlfriends. Someone call the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.) So the thought of someone getting their sweaty, malicious hands on my boyfriend blog and doing dirty things to it makes me nauseous. It happened to a friend of mine,  Kelly Livesay . One of her blogs was hacked and posts and theme modifications deleted.  It happened to journalist  Helen Mosher . If you Google her name, the first search result is now “Cheap Viagra Online”. This is not – perhaps obviously – what she intended for her blog. It happened to  Robert Scoble , who lost two months of blog posts and gained a very serious sense of personal violation. And that sense of violation is exactly the prompt for this post: the movie  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo completely FREAKED ME OUT ( capitalization absolutely appropriate and required ). Do you know The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? It is the first of a trilogy of books by Swedish author Stieg Larsson who completed this epic series and then promptly dropped dead. It is a gripping book and it almost killed me, too. I read it in five hours. And then I got my hot little hands on the movie. Lisbeth, the main character and dragon-wearer, is one tough chick. You don’t want to mess with her. She’ll hack you. Because that’s what she does. Lisbeth is a freakishly talented hacker. She works as an investigator and conducts her investigations from the convenience of her laptop. She gets into your computer and reads your naughty e-mails, your work memos, your sexts, your bank statements, your browsing history, and then uses that information as she sees fit, for her clients, or herself. And if you’re on her side – I mean, who doesn’t want her to catch the lady-killing villain? ( the villain ) – then you’re with her, all the way, as she uses her scary powers for good. So: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Wrenching read, haunting movie. Great entertainment, especially if you’re looking for a new reason to become deeply paranoid about all the ways people can screw with you online. Robert Scoble’s not kidding when he says that he feels his virtual house was burgled. Thanks to this paranoid movie, I now feel his  paranoia pain and I’m deeply worried about my  boyfriend blog. Still, I don’t  understand the point of hacking blogs, so I asked my friend Dave Doolin ( Website In A Weekend ), who knows Serious Stuff about WordPress, code, programming and How Things Work. Kelly Diels : What’s the point of hacking a blog? Why would someone want to break into a blog and make it say BUY VIAGRA! instead of just building a sex blog to sell Viagra? Dave Doolin: Honestly, I’m not really sure, but I’ll hazard a guess: it’s cheaper to spray spam by the trillions than it is to create your own site and work at building traffic. It costs next to nothing to hire people to send a e-mails, so even a really tiny conversion rate generates profit. Kelly Diels: So how do we keep hackers out of our blogs? On your site,  you recommend that bloggers change “Admin” to something specific and then delete the Admin user , so I did that, and  Amanda Farough told me to make a unwieldy, ridiculous password that is actually a sentence with random capitalization and characters. Dave Doolin : Yeah, those two things are a good start. You do want a long, complicated password. The other thing that everyone should do is read the WordPress Development Blog and Other WordPress News. They’re both in your dashboard, and they’ll keep you up to date on the latest hacks and security threats. (I studiously ignore those two boxes in my WordPress dashboard but now, as of right this minute, I’m going to pay attention.) And, now that I’m paying attention, I checked in once again with Amanda Farough, who is my designer/developer/chief-cupcake-sharer/coder-extraordinaire. She takes care of my site, because, as I mentioned, I like my tech to work but I’m not really inclined to make it work myself. Kelly Diel s: So, Amanda, what are we doing to keep my site secure? And by “we”, I mean you. What advice do you have for bloggers to keep their blogs on the unhacked side? Amanda : Here’s my security short list: Change your .htcaccess to protect your database name and password by adding the following line of code:  deny from all . In the event of someone hacking your blog, they won’t be able to determine where your tables are, protecting you from losing everything. WP-DB-Backup is your new best friend. Get it emailed to you once a week or, if you’re really paranoid, once a day ( note: Dave Doolin said  we should do it once a day and I heart paranoia. That’s totally where  I’m living right now. Thanks, Dragon Tattoo conspiracy ). Don’t trust your server or your email server. Save copies of the database to your local drive as soon as you get the email. That way, you’ve got two copies: one on your email server and the other on your local drive. Update Wordpress every single time you’re prompted to. These releases are the blogger’s equivalent to driver updates: they fix holes in security, functionality, and usability. If you’re running 2.8 when we’re on 2.9.2, then run that update. You’ll be glad you did. And that – according to my friends in the know, because trust me,  I didn’t know – is the short story of how to keep your blog safe and out of the sweaty, dragon-tattooed hands of malicious hackers itching to delete your hot copy and sell us sex aids in your name. WordPress Security Summary: Get rid of your Admin user account have a long, complicated password keep up to date on WordPress tips and news by reading WordPress Development Blog and Other WordPress News BACK IT UP, baby Protect your database name and password UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE  __________________________ Join the Dragon Tattoo Blog HUNT – an internet wide scavenger hunt tied to the feature film launch of bestselling book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Win great prizes – free movie tickets, books, movie soundtrack, posters and more. To join the contest, start at the beginning of the HUNT by visiting www.dragontattoofilm.com/contest for full details and the first clue. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is in theaters near you starting March 19th. THE NEXT CLUE: This site explores everything Apple , but don’t tell Steve Jobs because this weblog is officially unofficial .   Kelly Diels writes for ProBlogger every week. She’s also a wildly hireable freelance writer and the creator of Cleavage , a blog about three things we all want more of: sex, money and meaning. Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger . Blog Security: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Scares Me Into Taking It Seriously. Share This

guest post by  Kelly Diels warning: there are lessons and even actionable advice in here, but it is buried inside a story. I write stories because I love you and don’t want to bore you and because if you laugh then chances are that you’ll remember the educational bit, too. There’s actual research that this works – it is not just because I am in love with  bloviation but hey, tomato tahmahto. I have big love for tech. You could not pry my dishwasher out of my house without bloodshed and death, most likely yours. And the internet?  Don’t even get me started. I want to french-kiss the web. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s my job or at least my blog’s mission statement. Still, I’m more of install (or pay someone to install) and hope-it-works kind of gal. I want the fuss without the muss. And I have this theory about tech: some key pieces of hardware and software make a huge difference and everything after that amounts to tweaks and hacks. But the good tech, like a great love, (initially) inspires awe, affection, and respect and make your life much better on a daily basis. You think:  how did I ever live without you, front-loading washer? We wasted so much time . And then, after the infatuation fades, you get on with your happily functioning and newly-enhanced life and start taking your love, machines, shockingly-white-whites and programs for granted. I like it like that. I like low-maintenance relationships (don’t tell anyone) and I LOVE that electricity just works and I don’t have to think about it. I like finding the right things, that work, and let them do that in the background. Nearly invisible function is  hawt . WordPress is one of those key pieces of tech that made a big difference in my life. It is like a long distance lover. I don’t quite understand it and I should probably spend more time with it but damn I like it a lot. It does me right, mostly virtually. Actually, let’s be honest: I LOVE WORDPRESS. My blog is my boyfriend. I adore it. I spend all my time with it. Because of all the fabulous people who love me up in the comments, my blog sates my unabashed lust for attention – which, in turn, has started saving me from terrible IRL relationship decisions. (Wordpress is saving the world from needy girlfriends. Someone call the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.) So the thought of someone getting their sweaty, malicious hands on my boyfriend blog and doing dirty things to it makes me nauseous. It happened to a friend of mine,  Kelly Livesay . One of her blogs was hacked and posts and theme modifications deleted.  It happened to journalist  Helen Mosher . If you Google her name, the first search result is now “Cheap Viagra Online”. This is not – perhaps obviously – what she intended for her blog. It happened to  Robert Scoble , who lost two months of blog posts and gained a very serious sense of personal violation. And that sense of violation is exactly the prompt for this post: the movie  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo completely FREAKED ME OUT ( capitalization absolutely appropriate and required ). Do you know The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo? It is the first of a trilogy of books by Swedish author Stieg Larsson who completed this epic series and then promptly dropped dead. It is a gripping book and it almost killed me, too. I read it in five hours. And then I got my hot little hands on the movie. Lisbeth, the main character and dragon-wearer, is one tough chick. You don’t want to mess with her. She’ll hack you. Because that’s what she does. Lisbeth is a freakishly talented hacker. She works as an investigator and conducts her investigations from the convenience of her laptop. She gets into your computer and reads your naughty e-mails, your work memos, your sexts, your bank statements, your browsing history, and then uses that information as she sees fit, for her clients, or herself. And if you’re on her side – I mean, who doesn’t want her to catch the lady-killing villain? ( the villain ) – then you’re with her, all the way, as she uses her scary powers for good. So: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Wrenching read, haunting movie. Great entertainment, especially if you’re looking for a new reason to become deeply paranoid about all the ways people can screw with you online. Robert Scoble’s not kidding when he says that he feels his virtual house was burgled. Thanks to this paranoid movie, I now feel his  paranoia pain and I’m deeply worried about my  boyfriend blog. Still, I don’t  understand the point of hacking blogs, so I asked my friend Dave Doolin ( Website In A Weekend ), who knows Serious Stuff about WordPress, code, programming and How Things Work. Kelly Diels : What’s the point of hacking a blog? Why would someone want to break into a blog and make it say BUY VIAGRA! instead of just building a sex blog to sell Viagra? Dave Doolin: Honestly, I’m not really sure, but I’ll hazard a guess: it’s cheaper to spray spam by the trillions than it is to create your own site and work at building traffic. It costs next to nothing to hire people to send a e-mails, so even a really tiny conversion rate generates profit. Kelly Diels: So how do we keep hackers out of our blogs? On your site,  you recommend that bloggers change “Admin” to something specific and then delete the Admin user , so I did that, and  Amanda Farough told me to make a unwieldy, ridiculous password that is actually a sentence with random capitalization and characters. Dave Doolin : Yeah, those two things are a good start. You do want a long, complicated password. The other thing that everyone should do is read the WordPress Development Blog and Other WordPress News. They’re both in your dashboard, and they’ll keep you up to date on the latest hacks and security threats. (I studiously ignore those two boxes in my WordPress dashboard but now, as of right this minute, I’m going to pay attention.) And, now that I’m paying attention, I checked in once again with Amanda Farough, who is my designer/developer/chief-cupcake-sharer/coder-extraordinaire. She takes care of my site, because, as I mentioned, I like my tech to work but I’m not really inclined to make it work myself. Kelly Diel s: So, Amanda, what are we doing to keep my site secure? And by “we”, I mean you. What advice do you have for bloggers to keep their blogs on the unhacked side? Amanda : Here’s my security short list: Change your .htcaccess to protect your database name and password by adding the following line of code:  deny from all . In the event of someone hacking your blog, they won’t be able to determine where your tables are, protecting you from losing everything. WP-DB-Backup is your new best friend. Get it emailed to you once a week or, if you’re really paranoid, once a day ( note: Dave Doolin said  we should do it once a day and I heart paranoia. That’s totally where  I’m living right now. Thanks, Dragon Tattoo conspiracy ). Don’t trust your server or your email server. Save copies of the database to your local drive as soon as you get the email. That way, you’ve got two copies: one on your email server and the other on your local drive. Update Wordpress every single time you’re prompted to. These releases are the blogger’s equivalent to driver updates: they fix holes in security, functionality, and usability. If you’re running 2.8 when we’re on 2.9.2, then run that update. You’ll be glad you did. And that – according to my friends in the know, because trust me,  I didn’t know – is the short story of how to keep your blog safe and out of the sweaty, dragon-tattooed hands of malicious hackers itching to delete your hot copy and sell us sex aids in your name. WordPress Security Summary: Get rid of your Admin user account have a long, complicated password keep up to date on WordPress tips and news by reading WordPress Development Blog and Other WordPress News BACK IT UP, baby Protect your database name and password UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE  __________________________ Join the Dragon Tattoo Blog HUNT – an internet wide scavenger hunt tied to the feature film launch of bestselling book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Win great prizes – free movie tickets, books, movie soundtrack, posters and more. To join the contest, start at the beginning of the HUNT by visiting www.dragontattoofilm.com/contest for full details and the first clue. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is in theaters near you starting March 19th. THE NEXT CLUE: This site explores everything Apple , but don’t tell Steve Jobs because this weblog is officially unofficial .   Kelly Diels writes for ProBlogger every week. She’s also a wildly hireable freelance writer and the creator of Cleavage , a blog about three things we all want more of: sex, money and meaning. Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger . Blog Security: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Scares Me Into Taking It Seriously. Share This

When I started writing this blog , I had no idea the full-scope of the subject I was taking on. Growing up in Toronto in the ’90s, homelessness – as best I knew – was a part of the fabric of city life. My Dad would take me downtown … “ Unlike the United States and the United Kingdom , who have already launched major initiatives on homelessness in recent years, Canada has neglected the issue, as well as other core issues like poverty, urban development and housing security. …

While I get many questions from bloggers asking for advice on ‘ how to blog ‘ perhaps one of the biggest questions a new blogger needs to ask themselves before they move on to the HOW to blog question is ‘ WHAT will I blog about?’ There is no real right or wrong answer to this question as blogs come in all shapes and sizes and focus upon all manner of topics. However thinking through the question before you start a blog will help you make some of the other decisions that you’ll want to make later on in this guide (for example the domain name and the name of your blog will probably come out of this decision). Reasons to Focus Upon a Niche with Your Blog Choosing a niche to blog about is important for a number of reasons. These include: 1. Niche Blogs Appeal to Readers My first blog was a personal blog with no real niche focus. It did start with a main focus upon Spirituality, but over time began to cover a large range of topics including blogging, photography, culture, politics, personal stuff that I was doing etc. The more topics I covered the less I appealed to everyone. Sure a certain group of people were interested in Spirituality and Blogging, but less of them were into photography, even less also liked my stuff about Australian Pop Culture….. each topic narrowed the chances of me writing something that would appeal to all of my readers. I started to get complaints from them – ’stop writing about XXXX’. When I began to break topics out onto their own blogs my audience responded well – those who were into photography gathered around that topic, those that were into blogging gathered on that blog. In the end this is about relevance – people seem to be drawn to niche focused blogs because they know that they’ll see content on them that focuses upon the things they are specifically interested in. 2. Niche Blogs Monetize Better I tried to make money from my personal blog for a while but found the going really tough. At the time I mainly tried to make money from advertising and found that sponsors were simply not interested in promoting their product (which had a specific focus) to an audience who were there to read about a whole range of things. What camera manufacturer wants to promote their latest camera on a blog about photography that also touches on spirituality, politics and what movie I saw on the weekend? Niche blogs also tend to work better with contextual ad networks like AdSense. AdSense is getting better are providing ads that related strongly to what is on a specific page of content but I have seen instances where blogs covering lots of different topics attract ads that don’t always relate to content on a particular page. The other thing about AdSense is that it is a system that gives advertisers the ability to target specific sites. These types of targeted campaigns can be quite profitable but they are less likely to happen if a blog covers a large range of topics, many of which don’t relate to that advertiser. When I went niche I found monetizing with advertising a lot easier. In fact monetizing with a variety of methods seems to be easier on niche blogs. Affiliate promotions and selling your own products work better because your audience is there to get information on certain topics – so when you promote products on those topics…. they’re much more likely to buy. 3. Niche Blogs Do Better in Search Engines It is possible to rank well for all kinds of topics on a generic/multi topic blog. It’s possible – but I find it is easier when you have a blog with a focus upon a niche topic. If your whole site is about the one topic Google treats it as more of an authority on that topic the more content you add, the more you interlink the posts, the more other sites in your niche link to it etc. There are certainly exceptions (mega sites like Wikipedia are obvious ones) but unless you have the pulling power of a massive site like that a niche focused site could be the way to go. 4. Niche Blogs Build Credibility and Profile One of the consequences of moving to more of a niche focus with my blogging was that I noticed I was starting to become known for that topic. The first time this happened was after I started my first photography blog and 2 months later had a phone call from a city-wide newspaper asking for a quote on a photography related story. This had not happened to me before as a result of my personal/multi topic blog but having a site purely focused upon a single topic gave a perception that that topic was ‘my thing’. For me having niche focuses has helped me to become known on different topics – which has led to all kinds of opportunities in those niches – including writing books, speaking opportunities around the world, main stream media appearances and all manner of partnership opportunities with wonderful people in my industries. Not everyone wants to build their profile and become known in an industry – but if that’s part of your goal then a niche blog on those topics can be powerful. Note: Niches Need Not Just be Topic Related Before I conclude this post on niches I thought it might also be worth noting that a blogs niche need not only ever be focused upon a topic. I explored this more fully in a post titled – Does Your Blog Focus Upon a Niche Topic or a Niche Demographic? As the title of that post suggests – there are some successful blogs around that cover a variety of topics – that appeal to a similar type of person or demographic. So instead of just writing about video games – a blog might choose to blog about topics that appeal to teenage boys – video games being one of the topics that they might have an interest in. Worth noting though is that if you do decide to target a niche demographic rather than a niche topic – you could be opening yourself up for a lot of work. Covering a diverse range of topics can certainly work – but to cover them all comprehensively can take a lot of time and energy. How to Choose a Niche for Your Blog Now that we’ve looked at some of the reasons WHY a niche can be a powerful thing to think about before you start looking at HOW to blog – later this week I’m going to continue this post with a followup post exploring a number of factors that those looking to start a blog might consider when choosing a niche. Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger . How to Blog: Choose a Niche for Your Blog [Why Niches are Important] Share This

While I get many questions from bloggers asking for advice on ‘ how to blog ‘ perhaps one of the biggest questions a new blogger needs to ask themselves before they move on to the HOW to blog question is ‘ WHAT will I blog about?’ There is no real right or wrong answer to this question as blogs come in all shapes and sizes and focus upon all manner of topics. However thinking through the question before you start a blog will help you make some of the other decisions that you’ll want to make later on in this guide (for example the domain name and the name of your blog will probably come out of this decision). Reasons to Focus Upon a Niche with Your Blog Choosing a niche to blog about is important for a number of reasons. These include: 1. Niche Blogs Appeal to Readers My first blog was a personal blog with no real niche focus. It did start with a main focus upon Spirituality, but over time began to cover a large range of topics including blogging, photography, culture, politics, personal stuff that I was doing etc. The more topics I covered the less I appealed to everyone. Sure a certain group of people were interested in Spirituality and Blogging, but less of them were into photography, even less also liked my stuff about Australian Pop Culture….. each topic narrowed the chances of me writing something that would appeal to all of my readers. I started to get complaints from them – ’stop writing about XXXX’. When I began to break topics out onto their own blogs my audience responded well – those who were into photography gathered around that topic, those that were into blogging gathered on that blog. In the end this is about relevance – people seem to be drawn to niche focused blogs because they know that they’ll see content on them that focuses upon the things they are specifically interested in. 2. Niche Blogs Monetize Better I tried to make money from my personal blog for a while but found the going really tough. At the time I mainly tried to make money from advertising and found that sponsors were simply not interested in promoting their product (which had a specific focus) to an audience who were there to read about a whole range of things. What camera manufacturer wants to promote their latest camera on a blog about photography that also touches on spirituality, politics and what movie I saw on the weekend? Niche blogs also tend to work better with contextual ad networks like AdSense. AdSense is getting better are providing ads that related strongly to what is on a specific page of content but I have seen instances where blogs covering lots of different topics attract ads that don’t always relate to content on a particular page. The other thing about AdSense is that it is a system that gives advertisers the ability to target specific sites. These types of targeted campaigns can be quite profitable but they are less likely to happen if a blog covers a large range of topics, many of which don’t relate to that advertiser. When I went niche I found monetizing with advertising a lot easier. In fact monetizing with a variety of methods seems to be easier on niche blogs. Affiliate promotions and selling your own products work better because your audience is there to get information on certain topics – so when you promote products on those topics…. they’re much more likely to buy. 3. Niche Blogs Do Better in Search Engines It is possible to rank well for all kinds of topics on a generic/multi topic blog. It’s possible – but I find it is easier when you have a blog with a focus upon a niche topic. If your whole site is about the one topic Google treats it as more of an authority on that topic the more content you add, the more you interlink the posts, the more other sites in your niche link to it etc. There are certainly exceptions (mega sites like Wikipedia are obvious ones) but unless you have the pulling power of a massive site like that a niche focused site could be the way to go. 4. Niche Blogs Build Credibility and Profile One of the consequences of moving to more of a niche focus with my blogging was that I noticed I was starting to become known for that topic. The first time this happened was after I started my first photography blog and 2 months later had a phone call from a city-wide newspaper asking for a quote on a photography related story. This had not happened to me before as a result of my personal/multi topic blog but having a site purely focused upon a single topic gave a perception that that topic was ‘my thing’. For me having niche focuses has helped me to become known on different topics – which has led to all kinds of opportunities in those niches – including writing books, speaking opportunities around the world, main stream media appearances and all manner of partnership opportunities with wonderful people in my industries. Not everyone wants to build their profile and become known in an industry – but if that’s part of your goal then a niche blog on those topics can be powerful. Note: Niches Need Not Just be Topic Related Before I conclude this post on niches I thought it might also be worth noting that a blogs niche need not only ever be focused upon a topic. I explored this more fully in a post titled – Does Your Blog Focus Upon a Niche Topic or a Niche Demographic? As the title of that post suggests – there are some successful blogs around that cover a variety of topics – that appeal to a similar type of person or demographic. So instead of just writing about video games – a blog might choose to blog about topics that appeal to teenage boys – video games being one of the topics that they might have an interest in. Worth noting though is that if you do decide to target a niche demographic rather than a niche topic – you could be opening yourself up for a lot of work. Covering a diverse range of topics can certainly work – but to cover them all comprehensively can take a lot of time and energy. How to Choose a Niche for Your Blog Now that we’ve looked at some of the reasons WHY a niche can be a powerful thing to think about before you start looking at HOW to blog – later this week I’m going to continue this post with a followup post exploring a number of factors that those looking to start a blog might consider when choosing a niche. Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger . How to Blog: Choose a Niche for Your Blog [Why Niches are Important] Share This

While I get many questions from bloggers asking for advice on ‘ how to blog ‘ perhaps one of the biggest questions a new blogger needs to ask themselves before they move on to the HOW to blog question is ‘ WHAT will I blog about?’ There is no real right or wrong answer to this question as blogs come in all shapes and sizes and focus upon all manner of topics. However thinking through the question before you start a blog will help you make some of the other decisions that you’ll want to make later on in this guide (for example the domain name and the name of your blog will probably come out of this decision). Reasons to Focus Upon a Niche with Your Blog Choosing a niche to blog about is important for a number of reasons. These include: 1. Niche Blogs Appeal to Readers My first blog was a personal blog with no real niche focus. It did start with a main focus upon Spirituality, but over time began to cover a large range of topics including blogging, photography, culture, politics, personal stuff that I was doing etc. The more topics I covered the less I appealed to everyone. Sure a certain group of people were interested in Spirituality and Blogging, but less of them were into photography, even less also liked my stuff about Australian Pop Culture….. each topic narrowed the chances of me writing something that would appeal to all of my readers. I started to get complaints from them – ’stop writing about XXXX’. When I began to break topics out onto their own blogs my audience responded well – those who were into photography gathered around that topic, those that were into blogging gathered on that blog. In the end this is about relevance – people seem to be drawn to niche focused blogs because they know that they’ll see content on them that focuses upon the things they are specifically interested in. 2. Niche Blogs Monetize Better I tried to make money from my personal blog for a while but found the going really tough. At the time I mainly tried to make money from advertising and found that sponsors were simply not interested in promoting their product (which had a specific focus) to an audience who were there to read about a whole range of things. What camera manufacturer wants to promote their latest camera on a blog about photography that also touches on spirituality, politics and what movie I saw on the weekend? Niche blogs also tend to work better with contextual ad networks like AdSense. AdSense is getting better are providing ads that related strongly to what is on a specific page of content but I have seen instances where blogs covering lots of different topics attract ads that don’t always relate to content on a particular page. The other thing about AdSense is that it is a system that gives advertisers the ability to target specific sites. These types of targeted campaigns can be quite profitable but they are less likely to happen if a blog covers a large range of topics, many of which don’t relate to that advertiser. When I went niche I found monetizing with advertising a lot easier. In fact monetizing with a variety of methods seems to be easier on niche blogs. Affiliate promotions and selling your own products work better because your audience is there to get information on certain topics – so when you promote products on those topics…. they’re much more likely to buy. 3. Niche Blogs Do Better in Search Engines It is possible to rank well for all kinds of topics on a generic/multi topic blog. It’s possible – but I find it is easier when you have a blog with a focus upon a niche topic. If your whole site is about the one topic Google treats it as more of an authority on that topic the more content you add, the more you interlink the posts, the more other sites in your niche link to it etc. There are certainly exceptions (mega sites like Wikipedia are obvious ones) but unless you have the pulling power of a massive site like that a niche focused site could be the way to go. 4. Niche Blogs Build Credibility and Profile One of the consequences of moving to more of a niche focus with my blogging was that I noticed I was starting to become known for that topic. The first time this happened was after I started my first photography blog and 2 months later had a phone call from a city-wide newspaper asking for a quote on a photography related story. This had not happened to me before as a result of my personal/multi topic blog but having a site purely focused upon a single topic gave a perception that that topic was ‘my thing’. For me having niche focuses has helped me to become known on different topics – which has led to all kinds of opportunities in those niches – including writing books, speaking opportunities around the world, main stream media appearances and all manner of partnership opportunities with wonderful people in my industries. Not everyone wants to build their profile and become known in an industry – but if that’s part of your goal then a niche blog on those topics can be powerful. Note: Niches Need Not Just be Topic Related Before I conclude this post on niches I thought it might also be worth noting that a blogs niche need not only ever be focused upon a topic. I explored this more fully in a post titled – Does Your Blog Focus Upon a Niche Topic or a Niche Demographic? As the title of that post suggests – there are some successful blogs around that cover a variety of topics – that appeal to a similar type of person or demographic. So instead of just writing about video games – a blog might choose to blog about topics that appeal to teenage boys – video games being one of the topics that they might have an interest in. Worth noting though is that if you do decide to target a niche demographic rather than a niche topic – you could be opening yourself up for a lot of work. Covering a diverse range of topics can certainly work – but to cover them all comprehensively can take a lot of time and energy. How to Choose a Niche for Your Blog Now that we’ve looked at some of the reasons WHY a niche can be a powerful thing to think about before you start looking at HOW to blog – later this week I’m going to continue this post with a followup post exploring a number of factors that those looking to start a blog might consider when choosing a niche. Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger . How to Blog: Choose a Niche for Your Blog [Why Niches are Important] Share This

While I get many questions from bloggers asking for advice on ‘ how to blog ‘ perhaps one of the biggest questions a new blogger needs to ask themselves before they move on to the HOW to blog question is ‘ WHAT will I blog about?’ There is no real right or wrong answer to this question as blogs come in all shapes and sizes and focus upon all manner of topics. However thinking through the question before you start a blog will help you make some of the other decisions that you’ll want to make later on in this guide (for example the domain name and the name of your blog will probably come out of this decision). Reasons to Focus Upon a Niche with Your Blog Choosing a niche to blog about is important for a number of reasons. These include: 1. Niche Blogs Appeal to Readers My first blog was a personal blog with no real niche focus. It did start with a main focus upon Spirituality, but over time began to cover a large range of topics including blogging, photography, culture, politics, personal stuff that I was doing etc. The more topics I covered the less I appealed to everyone. Sure a certain group of people were interested in Spirituality and Blogging, but less of them were into photography, even less also liked my stuff about Australian Pop Culture….. each topic narrowed the chances of me writing something that would appeal to all of my readers. I started to get complaints from them – ’stop writing about XXXX’. When I began to break topics out onto their own blogs my audience responded well – those who were into photography gathered around that topic, those that were into blogging gathered on that blog. In the end this is about relevance – people seem to be drawn to niche focused blogs because they know that they’ll see content on them that focuses upon the things they are specifically interested in. 2. Niche Blogs Monetize Better I tried to make money from my personal blog for a while but found the going really tough. At the time I mainly tried to make money from advertising and found that sponsors were simply not interested in promoting their product (which had a specific focus) to an audience who were there to read about a whole range of things. What camera manufacturer wants to promote their latest camera on a blog about photography that also touches on spirituality, politics and what movie I saw on the weekend? Niche blogs also tend to work better with contextual ad networks like AdSense. AdSense is getting better are providing ads that related strongly to what is on a specific page of content but I have seen instances where blogs covering lots of different topics attract ads that don’t always relate to content on a particular page. The other thing about AdSense is that it is a system that gives advertisers the ability to target specific sites. These types of targeted campaigns can be quite profitable but they are less likely to happen if a blog covers a large range of topics, many of which don’t relate to that advertiser. When I went niche I found monetizing with advertising a lot easier. In fact monetizing with a variety of methods seems to be easier on niche blogs. Affiliate promotions and selling your own products work better because your audience is there to get information on certain topics – so when you promote products on those topics…. they’re much more likely to buy. 3. Niche Blogs Do Better in Search Engines It is possible to rank well for all kinds of topics on a generic/multi topic blog. It’s possible – but I find it is easier when you have a blog with a focus upon a niche topic. If your whole site is about the one topic Google treats it as more of an authority on that topic the more content you add, the more you interlink the posts, the more other sites in your niche link to it etc. There are certainly exceptions (mega sites like Wikipedia are obvious ones) but unless you have the pulling power of a massive site like that a niche focused site could be the way to go. 4. Niche Blogs Build Credibility and Profile One of the consequences of moving to more of a niche focus with my blogging was that I noticed I was starting to become known for that topic. The first time this happened was after I started my first photography blog and 2 months later had a phone call from a city-wide newspaper asking for a quote on a photography related story. This had not happened to me before as a result of my personal/multi topic blog but having a site purely focused upon a single topic gave a perception that that topic was ‘my thing’. For me having niche focuses has helped me to become known on different topics – which has led to all kinds of opportunities in those niches – including writing books, speaking opportunities around the world, main stream media appearances and all manner of partnership opportunities with wonderful people in my industries. Not everyone wants to build their profile and become known in an industry – but if that’s part of your goal then a niche blog on those topics can be powerful. Note: Niches Need Not Just be Topic Related Before I conclude this post on niches I thought it might also be worth noting that a blogs niche need not only ever be focused upon a topic. I explored this more fully in a post titled – Does Your Blog Focus Upon a Niche Topic or a Niche Demographic? As the title of that post suggests – there are some successful blogs around that cover a variety of topics – that appeal to a similar type of person or demographic. So instead of just writing about video games – a blog might choose to blog about topics that appeal to teenage boys – video games being one of the topics that they might have an interest in. Worth noting though is that if you do decide to target a niche demographic rather than a niche topic – you could be opening yourself up for a lot of work. Covering a diverse range of topics can certainly work – but to cover them all comprehensively can take a lot of time and energy. How to Choose a Niche for Your Blog Now that we’ve looked at some of the reasons WHY a niche can be a powerful thing to think about before you start looking at HOW to blog – later this week I’m going to continue this post with a followup post exploring a number of factors that those looking to start a blog might consider when choosing a niche. Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger . How to Blog: Choose a Niche for Your Blog [Why Niches are Important] Share This

Blogging has become the craze of the day, with over 10000 new blogs being started every day. Some of these have gained a great degree of notoriety and money. In fact, quite a few people are able to make money online through blogging.