Factor one: is the headline of your latest post as this will show at the top of your blog. If the headline is weak, then traffic will be slow unless you already have tons of faithful readers. Most of us don’t have this luxury, so we have to make do with other attraction hooks that keep readers on our site.

Also, if the post is interesting enough to your readers, then the chances of them hanging around for more are much higher.

Factor two: is your blog design. The design doesn’t just incorporate the look of your blog, but also navigation, usability, functionality, interaction and feel.

Navigation is perhaps the most important part of the blog design as nothing is more frustrating than having to click around a blog to find relevant information. The easier we make this for our readers, the higher the chance of keeping them on your blog a little longer.

Usability is directly related to navigation and helps your reader to find his/her way around your blog with ease.

Functionality adds interactive interaction in the form of plugins and widgets.

The feel is really the feeling we get when we visit a blog for the first time. Does it look cluttered or too loud with too many bright colors? Or worse, is the blog stuck in the 1980s in terms of looks? All these and more can have a huge effect on how we perceive a blog to be and determines on whether we stay around or not.

Some bloggers spend hundreds of dollars to have a blog make over done by a professional designer. While this may sound like a lot of money, in terms of the potential payoff, it really isn’t. One of my friends bragged that her traffic increased tenfold after a re-design.

But before you freak out and say that you can’t afford an expensive make over, don’t worry. Most people can’t. So what do these guys do?

Well, if you are a little bit knowledgeable about coding you might want to take a shot at redesigning your blog theme and clear up your sidebar. Often small changes can have a huge effect. Changing a few colors, will sometimes be just enough to give your blog a brand new appearance.

For those that are interested in affordable custom designs, there are two blog designers that come to mind.

The first is Siah at BuyMeaBlog.com Siah does custom Wordpress templates for only $167. He just finished a project for me at my personal blog BrentCrouch.com.

Another designer that comes to mind is Garry Conn. In addition to providing excellent information on his blog, Garry creates some awesome WordPress blog designs. He doesn’t have prices listed on his site. My guess is he quotes prices based on what you are looking for.

Do you know of any other great designers? If so, leave a comment and let everyone know about them.

The Importance Of Your Blog Design

To start a Niche Marketing website, you need -

1. Profitable Niche

2. Keyword Research

3. Content

4. Platform

5. Traffic

6. Monetization

Profitable Niche – A profitable niche is one that pays over and over again. It is a niche that carries demand and never diminishes. It is also a niche where you can build a passive income over time with an almost zero maintenance.

Does such a niche exist? Yes it does. In fact there thousands of such niches that fit the above description. Your job is to find them. I use a software called Micro Niche Finder to unravel hidden niches with low competition and high profit factors. The software, when given a generic phrase or word, digs Google database and gives up to 250 niche topics off the main keyword.

For example, the first time I used it, I typed in the word “Cure”. It gave many results, one of which was Acne Cure. I dug the word deeper found certain profitable niches within with medium to low competition. Thereafter, I made a list of these micro niches and setup a blog geared towards them.

Keyword Research – This goes hand in hand with the previous heading. I wont go into much detail except that Micro Niche Finder helps you to accomplish this in simple steps. Please make sure to read the accompanying guide.

Content – This is a tricky one. This is the mode where many niche marketers get discouraged and quit. Unless you are interested in the topic you have chosen, you will have a hard time preparing content. Couple the fact with the issue of duplicate content. It is imperative to have original content if you are in for long term success. Niche Marketing, even though it sounds like a get rich quick scheme, or is portrayed that way, is in reality a long term money maker.

You have 2 choices here. First being Private Label Rights articles which you can easily re-write and give the required unique flavor. Private Label articles are pretty cheap and have reasonable quality. Rewriting them is not really difficult. Read my experiment with Private Label Articles for a better understanding.

Your second choice is to outsource the content writing job to a writer. This can cost you anywhere between $4-$10 per article and set you back a bit. If anyone of you is interested, get in touch with me and I can put you through some very good writers who are reasonable priced.

Platform – Upfront, Wordpress is my choice. The days of static websites are fading. They are not over definitely, but are slowly getting into the back burner. Wordpress is the most up to date dynamic content management system available in the market. Wordpress is open source and hence 100% free. There is no strings attached.

There are many web hosts that come with ‘1 click’ installation of Wordpress. I recommend Doreo.com. They are the best I have experienced in the past 4 years. Read my Blogging Guide to understand how to operate Wordpress and make it more Search Engine friendly.

Traffic – For a niche marketing blog, Search Engine traffic is the order of the day. Search Engine traffic is what makes this business a passive earner in the long run. If you do proper SEO and build legitimate backlinks with related anchor keywords, you will eventually start receiving organic traffic and this will only increase as you keep building relevant links. Traffic from Search Engines is your first success installment. Thereafter the game becomes easier to play.

Monetization – By now, your blog will be receiving quality traffic from Search Engines and other sources. When your analytics confirms that you are receiving at least 40-50 visitors from Search Engines, you can go ahead and monetize your blog. Do not overdo it. Start with Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher and slowly move to affiliate marketing and eBay auction products.

Let monetization be a gradual process. Never compromise with the appearance of your blog for a few bucks. Keep it clean and with quality content. Money will follow suit.

A Simplified Guide to Niche Marketing

Guest Blogging. We all know what it is. You draft a post, contact another blogger in your niche and request your article to be published. If he accepts, good. If not, you move onto another blogger and repeat the process.

Guest Blogging can make or break your career in the blogosphere. A good post can bring you excellent and targeted traffic with a good possibility of increase in your RSS Subscribers and a bad post can do equal damage.

There are bloggers I know, who believe that an average post is good enough as guest post, and that the best posts should be reserved for their own blogs. In my opinion, these bloggers have no idea what Social Marketing and Networking is. They really don’t. Imagine, you guest post at a blog that has 5000 subscribers and a daily traffic volume of 10000 visitors. What do you want to do? Produce an average post or your best ever?

Now, why did I give the title as “Politics of Guest Blogging”? Because I love the dirty art of politics. Kidding of course. If you are smart, you can do more than just a guest post. Your guest post can be a sales letter to pitch, say, a service you offer at your blog. If you play your cards well, your guest post can perform better than a $450 paid review at JohnChow.com. You need to have the mind of a politician to do that Have you ever given a thought to it? Let us quickly run a comparison.

A paid review is:

• A commercial Ad.

• Can be biased.

• Can hold a positive or negative impression on the reader’s mind.

• Can be completely ignored by the reader

On the contrary, a guest post is:

• Considered a piece of knowledge

• Treated with respected by the reader

• Responded to positively 99.9% of the time.

• Not given the commercial picture.

• The writer is generally viewed as an authority and so, the follow-up is great.

If you are smart, you can subtly and gently indicate the crowd to follow you, without painting the commercial picture. There is no harm in providing a link back to any part of your blog and talking about it. The point is, avoid the obvious sales pitch. You don’t want to make it your last guest post by ruining your reputation.

Practice moderation. Develop the Brain of a politician. Do not write a mediocre post like I just did. Fortunately, this isn’t a guest post. My bed rest has killed my focus that has resulted in a post like this. LOL.

The Politics of Guest Blogging

Why should you offer a partial feed?

1. If you offer a partial feed, your readers have to visit your blog every time they want to read your article. This counts towards Alexa average and pushes your blog up in ranking.

2. Every time your readers come online, there is a chance that they might buy an advertising spot there. After all repeated exposure can lead to such an action.

3. You do not want to post full posts in your blog. You always use the “<more>” tag for people to click to continue reading. You basically do this to stack up more posts in the front page.

Why you should offer a full feed?

1. If you offer a full feed, your subscribers do not have to go through the “inconvenience” of visiting your site every time you post an article. They can read it right from their desktop or online reader. After all they have subscribers to many other blogs too.

2. The chances of retaining your readers are high. Even if a subscriber doesn’t like your content, he may stay for the heck of it or due to laziness of having to manually un-subscribe.

3. It also portrays the picture of a responsible blogger who cares for his readers and wants to make it as easy as possible to read and benefit from your content.

Personally I like full feeds. I offer full feeds to my readers too. I share my sentiments with them. So far all the feeds I have subscribed to offer a full feed except one. His name is David Ledoux and he is a make money online “expert” who shares his money making “tips” at didyousmellthat.com. Oh, you are wondering why the quotation marks. Well, read on. I have been a subscriber of his blog for sometime and even though he offers a partial feed that drives me nuts, I have not closed my subscription. I may never. He amuses me with his content. He really does.

Out of sheer concern, one day, I penned a comment. You can see it in this link.

“Hi,

Been reading your blog for sometime now and I think you should avoid posts like these. I come here everyday hoping to find something valuable and get disappointed seeing these. You may want to meet them, but how will it help me?

Kindly take my feedback positively.”

My comment was out of a genuine feeling and I decided to let him know so he could do something about it. Pat came the reply:

“If you were on the list you wouldn’t say things like that…

How will this help you? Why is this not valuable? Allow me to enlighten…

Do a search on Google for “link bait”. And then do a search for “Google Alerts”. I have a Google Alert set up for anytime my name appears on the Internet. So do a lot of celebrities with publicists…some of which are web savvy and want to get blogged about and appear on Dave TV.

Incidentally…I blog for myself. Not you. Sorry my trained monkey act didn’t entertain you this morning. Feel free to post a rant in the forum about how shitty I am at xyz forum”.

I was blown away. What an attitude. I wasn’t even offering help, for him to feel so inferior. My comment had victimized him after all. I thought we bloggers were community people and so expressed my thoughts about his content. Re-read his response in red. He says he is blogging for himself. Wish I knew that before. So, I concluded that he was a make money online “expert” sharing his “tips” for himself and not the world. I wonder what kind of ROI will I get if I advertise at his place.

The above is the reason why I decided not to close my subscription to his blog. He amuses me, you see.

I apologize I got carried away a bit, but reading this experience should be a lesson for you on a better behavior with your blog readers and not the “Trained Monkey Act”. LOL.

So, if you want to offer a full feed while offering a “Continue Reading” option in your blog, here is a sweet little Plugin for you. It does all the job for you. Just install and activate. Its called Full Text Feed and can be downloaded here.

Lastly, make up your mind, what you want to offer your email and RSS readers. If at all, I land up at your blog, I definitely will be looking for a full feed.

Full Feed Vs Partial Feed: The Debate Continues