by Randy The Hermit

If you are going to start a blog there are some things that you need to consider before you take the plunge.

1.) What type of hosting service should you use – I am not talking about specific hosting services I am referring to whether you should be using a free service like WordPress.com or whether you should purchase your own domain name and hosting.

If you are planning on using your blog to promote an existing business or if you are planning to use it in any way to make money I recommend that you set up your blog on your own site. If you are just using a blog to tell your friends what is going on or to let out your personal rants with no plans to make money with it you should be fine on the free services.

The main advantage of having the blog on your own site is that you can add plugins and optimize the blog much easier than you can with a free blogging service. This brings you traffic and traffic brings you customers and sales.

2,) What blogging software should you use – you have the choice of lots of software but I recommend you stay with WordPress because it has the most support, the most plugins and the most themes and almost all of them are free and easy to use.

3.) Stay in your niche – when you create a blog you should know what niche you are going to be working in. Make sure you stay in this niche. If you stray too far you will loose readers because no one wants to go to a blog about fitness and read about the new triple chocolate supreme delight being offered around the corner.

If you keep your blog in one niche the likelihood of getting readers to come back time and time again is greatly improved. This brands you as an expert in your niche and builds loyalty with your prospective customers.

You should also make sure that your niche is a topic you like. You don’t have to know everything there is to know about it but you must be interested in it enough that you will put in the time that it takes to make your site popular.

4.) Use keywords that get searched – a lot of the traffic you get to your blog comes from keywords that are searched in the search engines. Do a little research and see if the keywords you are targeting actually get searched.

You can do some quick keyword research using the Google Keyword tool. This will at least tell you if you are working with keywords that get searched.

5.) Make your blog reflect you – this simply means that your blog should be something that reflects your personality or the personality of your business. This can be the tone of voice you use in your posts or it can be something as simple as putting your name and picture on the blog. Let people know who is doing the talking, let them see you, let them put a face to the voice and you will find that you will get a better following than trying to be the anonymous expert.

If you know all of these things then you are ready to start blogging. If you follow these policies and you stay true to yourself, your readers and your niche you will succeed with your blog.

About the Author:
About The Author: Randy The Hermit Baustert has been working online since 1994 and is the top rated SEO expert according to ExpertRating.com the industry testing services. You can find more free blogging instructions at his newest blog How To Blog Site

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