Panducity

First, do the basic research about blogging

Once I decided to begin blogging, I started researching the ins and outs of blogging. My initial instinct was to go the Nike way and just start doing it. But I wanted to do this right and turn it into a fun way of making a living and be very good at it. Luckily, the very nature of blogging makes it easy to learn because there are plenty of blogs out there offering wisdom on things to avoid, strategies to use and even step by step procedures.

Second, go for a niche blogging strategy

Initially, like most bloggers, I wanted to start a general blog about anything and everything. Most of us have diverse interests and its easier to write on different subjects than to focus on one subject. This is not bad per se, but it is weak strategy if you want to attract visitors and monetize your traffic. If you do a quick scan of the most successful blogs, you will notice that most of them are focused on one area - technology, politics, showbiz, making money, etc. Therefore I decided to focus on the niche blog strategy - instead of having one blog with a general theme, have multiple blogs each with specific and narrow areas of interest.

Third, pick a topic for your blog

You would think it would be easy to pick an area of interest for your blog. Simply start with what you like, narrow it down until you have a specific niche. Then, figure out if you have the skills to talk about it. You like art and say what, you like calligraphy? Fine, start a blog on calligraphy. Take it one step further and focus on Chinese Calligraphy. Well, I wish it was that easy for me. This was the hardest part of the initial process. On the one hand, I wanted to start blogging yesterday and it was very hard to control my excitement. On the other hand, if I did not start with a good strategy I would burn out. So I forced myself to brainstorm. I am not sure why this was hard to get started. I started by typing my initial list of interests. I enjoy business news and wanted to start a blog about the top business stories of each day. But business news itself is very a broad area - there is personal finance, entrepreneurship, Wall Street, international finance, technology, etc. Some of these areas were interesting to me and others were not. Essentially this can be very easy or very difficult. At any rat, it is worth doing the soul searching to pick the right blogging topic.

Fourth - if you cant decide on a niche, start with a practice blog (with a niche)

It was important that I picked a topic that was very interesting to me. I was able to narrow down my niche blog to one technology blog and one business related blog. But I was not satisfied that I had found the right niches. I wanted to refine the topics further. In the meantime, I was running out of patience. So I compromised - I decided to start with a blog about my blogging journey with a narrow focus on blogging and making money online (the blog you are reading). This would also be my learning process. At the same time I am continuing to develop my niche topics and hope to launch a couple of more blogs. If you find yourself in a similar predicament, start a practice blog with a practice niche. As long as it allows you to practice writing and marketing - the two most important skills, you can always start other blogs later.