12 Lessons in My First 12 Days as a Professional Blogger

First off, I want to thank Yan for allowing me to be a guest blogger on his website. The #1 reason I am excited about this partnership is that I believe Yan has, and will soon be recognized, as the #1 blogging resource on the web. His site is useful for new bloggers and much more advanced bloggers alike. I am excited about the future of this blog and you should be too.

In any case, here are my 12 lessons:

1. Ask Questions. No matter if you have just started blogging or have been doing it for years there is a ton to learn and asking questions is the best way to do it. But first, you always need to be able to answer this one question. “Why do I want to write a blog?” This one question alone will help you answer all future questions. Why? Because the answer will help you to know what the right questions to ask are in the first place.

2. Dive In. Again, there is so much to learn and the sooner you get started the better. One of the best resources on the web is The Blogger Face-Off at Daily Blogs Tips. If you look through all the advice these many popular bloggers give you will find that most of them wish they would have started sooner. So if you are worried about learning something just dive in and do it. Just remember to back up your database first. ;-)

3. Join the Community. No blogger is an island. We are all part of what I consider to be a fairly tight knit community. And most of us are pretty friendly and helpful to each other. If you have that concept in your head from the beginning you will be a much more successful blogger in the long run.

4. Write grrrreat content! You want Tony the Tiger saying your blog is great. If you have nothing of real worth to read on your blog, why should people come? The must read article about creating great content is Yaro Starak’s article on writing a Pillar article.

5. Go Comment. Ok. So you have decided upon your reason for blogging and have started learning how it is done. You started to feel the community vibe, and you have started writing at least a few good articles. Now what? Well the reason I got so many visitors to my site in my first week is because I commented so much. I just dove into the community and started commenting on everything. A lot of people followed my links back and I had over 500 page views my first week. I attribute most of that traffic to my comments on other people’s websites.

6. Write Some More. You might not have to write everyday depending on your niche, but you should sure try when you are just starting out. It doesn’t have to be great content every single time, but it has to be good. Always strive for original content. If you got nothing for that day, highlight another article that is a great resource that you have dug up along the way. Make sure you write at least 2 or 3 paragraphs summarizing why this is a great article. For an example, check out my post entitled “Become a Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Anywired”

7. Leverage Your Available Tools. Have you got your feedburner feed going yet? Have you setup any useful widgets? These can come after writing some great content, but I think a feedburner feed is a must have from the beginning. It should be easy to subscribe by email as well as by a reader. Also, think about your REAL needs. It is almost guaranteed that there is a tool out there you can use to accomplish what you want to do.

8. Use Your Tools Wisely. Being the gadget junkie I am, I downloaded over 30 plug-ins to try out. As I activated them my page load time became slower and slower. Don’t make the same mistake. Here is my bare essentials list of plug-ins that I use. Akismet, commentluv, Homepage Excerpts, SRG Clean Archives, Subscribe to Comments, Top Commentators, Wordpress Backup, WP Super Cache, and WP Widget Cache. To make it a nice round 10 I will give a shout out to the Dagon Design Form Mailer. Feel free to ask me about any specific plug-in in the comment section. ;-)

9. Be Accessible. Make a contact page with the Dagon Design Form Mailer. Answer your emails. Respond to every comment. It’s a community right? If you don’t participate you miss all the fun!

10. De-clutter and Simplify. My web page started to be one big mess because I kept adding things and had no sense of organization. I still feel my website is too “busy”, but I am working on that. My mantra is that simple is always better. I think Apple has some great products because of that mantra. You can too! Learn to simplify.

11. Learn Some Marketing. Once you got some grrreat content, have learned how to use all the tools, and have simplified your site to make it user friendly, you still have to promote it. I won’t pretend to know how to add “1,000 visitors in one day”, but I know you can learn it somewhere. So learn, apply it, tweak it, repeat…

12. Fall in Love All Over Again. No matter what endeavor you chose in this life, you are only going to succeed in it if you love it. The key to a great blog is to love giving your readers great value for their time. If they click on your site, you better deliver something great, otherwise you are just wasting their time. And the only way to do that is to always be in love with what you are doing.

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you can take at least one of my lessons and go and make your blog better today. I look forward to the comments!

The author of this post is Jeremy Day. He runs a personal blog at www.insightwriter.com that focuses on improving your life and the lives of people around you. You can subscribe to his RSS feed for more update.

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