26. Create Progress Reports – You usually see this on Make Money Online Blogs where they make it a point to produce an income report every month. You can try what I do here at wptd wherein I show all of you my growth report. People like reading progress reports because these encourages them to follow your steps. More importantly, a progress report will show you if you are heading closely to your goals and the particular areas you need to work on.

27. Learn from the Mistake of Others – Do take note of the mistakes that are made by other individuals who have more experience in blogging. This will obviously save you time and effort. However, you must be aware that there are things (strategies perhaps) that might not work on others but could work on you.

28. Enjoy Blogging – Perhaps we might get caught up with all the planning and promoting that we forget to have fun and Enjoy Blogging. When updating your blog suddenly becomes a task and a burden, then you are
probably experiencing blogging burnt out. Never lose your enthusiasm in blogging.. If needed, take a break from it and re-assess your situation.

29. Do Video Blogging – Try to do Video Blogging if possible. This is highly recommended if you plan to showcase a tutorial. Clearly, it is more efficient to show your readers exactly how it’s done as it becomes easier to follow the steps.

30. Podcasting - This method of blogging is usually effective when doing interviews. It can get boring
reading the transcribed versions especially when it can get really long.

31. Lists or Bullets - Lists or Bullets are usually instant hits! Why? It’s so much easier to digest information this way. This is a PROVEN formula to attract lots of readers with low attention spans and a high threshold for good information!

32. Create Interesting Titles – It’s obviously the first thing your readers will see so you have to capture their attention. Titles also influences your Search Engine Rankings so always try and incorporate keywords you are optimizing for.

33. Add Images to your Posts – Images enhance posts by giving visual point of interest, grabbing attention, and drawing your readers eyes down a post beyond the first few lines.

34. Keyword Density – Why bore readers with 1000 words? Short blog posts about one subject means having a high keyword density. Keyword rich titles give search engines a good overview of your site and increases your keyword prominence.

35. Make use of Tags – Make use of tags as a way to increase the chances that people who are searching for the topics that you are writing about in your blog to be able to find you.

36. Ask and Involve your Readers – This principle is fairly simple, ask your readers what they want to read about. If you want to release a product, ask for their needs and fill it. That’s it!

37. Feedbacks – Respond and act upon feedbacks. Speak TO them not AT them. Their appreciation of this gesture will be reflected by them continually returning to your blog.

38. Be Generous – Could be different things — advice like blog consultation, free service.. just be generous. You’ll find that doing favors for others is a remarkably easy way to establish long-term relationships.

39. Contest – Either you sponsor a Contest or you run one! You will surely get traffic, subscribers and backlinks in the process, guaranteed!!

40. Market in Moderation – I know most of us would want to run a blog to Make Money but just make sure you don’t over do it. If you use too much marketing in your blog, your readers will be most likely be annoyed, thus, you are losing subscribers.

41. Be Authentic – What if you are paid to promote a product that you have never used or would never even bother to try? Instead of leaving your reputation at stake, you don’t have to tell your audience any lies. You can simply inform them about the product and the benefits that they would possibly get from it. Sending out Information is also an effective  sales strategy.

42. Social Networking Sites -  This is in  fact the easiest way to drive targeted traffic to your blog. Digg, Stumble Upon, Blog Catalog, Delicious etc.. are the popular ones. Use it positively and try not to spam.

43. Stop Being a part of the A-List crowd – Never exhaust at getting any promotion or even attention from A-List Bloggers. It’s a waste of time. What you do is to network to blogs which has the same size as yours or even the new ones. These are the same bloggers who will be needing the same exposure as you.

44. Join Forums in your Niche – Almost every possible niche has a forum or social network which is relevant to it. Find these communities, join them and start participating in discussions. Communities allow you to gain new readers quickly and also allows you get some backlinks from forum signatures and other community pages.

45. Blog’s Loading Time – Make sure you know the average of your blog’s loading time and improve it until it loads a lot faster. You don’t want to lose potential visitors.

46. Permalinks – Having www.wpthemedesigner.com/make-money-online is more search engine friendly than www.wpthemedesigner.com/?p=110. Therefore never forget to customize it.

47. Tagline – If it’s possible for you to create a smart tagline for your blog then that would be to your advantage. It kind of serves as your signature. There are billions of blogs and you simply want to stand-out, right?

48. Keep Learning – Continuously learn about your blogging material as this will help you in adding and creating more content to publish that could be interesting and useful to your readers.

49. Watch your Words – Whatever it is you publish online, you are responsible for it. Keep in mind that a blog is public medium. If you are trying to tackle a sensitive and or controversial topic, it is still best to exercise prudence and precaution. Be careful of what you are posting about other people and other things.

50. Be passionate – Be passionate at what you are doing and this will bring you success. Stay motivated and keep the fire burning.

2. Setting Goals & Planning
Why do you want to blog? What are your goals? Are you blogging because you want to earn profit from it? Don’t allow yourself to just go with the flow. With goals you will have something to work towards, something lying up ahead in the future to aim at.

3. Buy Domain and Hosting – If you really want to be considered as a serious blogger then you need to buy your own Domain Name and hosting. This will give you enough freedom to expand and modify your site later on.

4. Make your Layout Design Stand-out - If you have the resources to purchase your own Theme or Layout then consider it as a valuable investment. However, there are thousand of Free Templates you can use and modify to suit your needs. Just make sure you keep it simple and professional.

5. Content is King – Focus on your content first. Make sure your topics are useful, interesting and even entertaining. Your content is the main attraction of your site.

6. Reach out and Interact to your Readers – Think of your articles as conversation. You engage your readers to comment and send in their feedback.

7. Promote your Blog – It is essential to promote your blog. You can start at emailing your friends about it. Submitting to Blog Directories and so on and social networking sites.

8. Make your Blog Search Engine Friendly – This is important because you want your blog to be indexed to Search Engines easily. So never forget to modify your permalinks.

9. Add Useful Plugins to your Blog – Plugins help make your blogging life easier. I highly recommend, akismet, contact form with spam protection, all-in-one seo pack, commentluv and many others.

10. Tools for your Blog – There are lots of tools you can find that add functionality to your site, such as, entrecard.. feedburner.. twitter.

11. Post Regularly – This will get spiders much more interested at indexing your site and improving your serps. Not only that, it also keeps people coming back to your site and see what’s new.

12. Monetize Effectively – If part of your goals is to earn money for your site then its never too early to monetize. Common ways of doing this will be adding ppc ads, banner advertising, private ad sales and doing sponsorship posts.

13. Injecting Personality to your Blog – Try to find your own voice in the blogosphere. Create and stick to your own writing style to avoid being distant to your audience.

14. Proofread your Post – Before hitting the publish button make sure you have checked your article from spelling mistakes and grammar errors. This usually turns-off a reader.

15. Learn Basic HTML and SEO – It never really hurts to learn. Just try knowing the basics of html so you can easily tweak your lay-out here and there. Also, learn simple SEO techniques that can give your site a bit of an advantage than others.

16. Do not leave your “About Me” Page Empty – Usually the “About Me” section is taken for granted even if this is obviously necessary in a blog. Usually, the main reason is that, we kind of run out of words sharing something about ourselves. However, you must know that your readers woud want to know things about you and your blog.

17. Stay Informed – It is important to stay updated of current trends and developments in the world wide web. Simply subscribe to web portals who are offering this information first-hand.

18. Track your Stats – Check Awstats in your cpanel or sign-up and install Google Analytics. You need to keep track of your site’s growth so you will know if you are headed to the right direction. This will also help you determine the areas you need to improve on.

19. Be Patient with your Blog – Again, success isn’t achieved overnight. Give your blog a time to grow. As long as your numbers are increasing then that is a sign of a healthy blog. Do not expect your earnings, traffic and rss subscribers to zoom up right away. It all boils down to the time and effort you pour in to your blog. Be patient.

20. Submit to Important Web Directories – I am talking about Dmoz, Yahoo, and Google. Make sure you submit your site following strictly their guidelines. (It also takes time to be accepted and added).

21. Research and Do your Homework – Find really interesting or controversial topics that your readers can appreciate. Gather ideas that would improve your blogging by selecting and improving on your topic choices.

22. Showcase your Most Popular Posts/Articles – This is simply showing your best foot forward and is in fact the best way you can invite New Visitors landing to your site to subscribe. Show off why your blog rocks..

23. Network with Other Bloggers – Try to network with Blogs in your Niche. This is the best way to gain relationship with your fellow bloggers. Established blogs in the same niche as yours have exactly the type of readers you need. Therefore, they will likely follow you as well because the content you offer is relevant to their interest.

24. Link Love – Link generously.This is another way to best develop relationships with your fellow bloggers.

25. Scratch Each others Back – When you promote their blogs, most likely they will do the same thing. You gain backlink and even friendship!!

Read: Compilation of the Best Blogging Tips Part 2

I have opened the discussion with the following questions:

1. What are the hardships you have encountered being an Online Entrepreneur?

2. If you could give an advice to Newbies who wishes to take the same route, what would it be?

So I took the time to ask some respected Bloggers that I admire myself. You see, they are all talking from experience and this could simply serve as a motivation to all of us most especially those who are just starting out.

Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

One of the hardest parts of being an online entrepreneur is being social outside of your business. When you are your own boss and you work at home, unless you create social activities and look for things to do outside of work, it can become a one-dimensional lifestyle. My advice for someone just getting started in Internet business is to find a balance between the work you do and the fun you have outside of work. Yes, working is fun too – but that can’t be all you do or you won’t have anyone to share your successes with.

John of JohnChow.com

The biggest hardship would b staying motivated in face of not seeing any return. When you’re working by yourself without the support system of a typical workplace it can be hard to stay focus on the task at hand. This is where taking time out to network with other like minded people can really come in handy. I belong to many local and Net based networking groups. It’s a great way to exchange idea, keep your focus and stay motivated.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net

There are many challenges to overcome including: Finding your voice, Finding a topic to write about, Developing a readership, Dealing with unexpected hits from outside factors (like being de-indexed by Google out of the blue), Personal attacks, Work life balance self doubt.. the list could go on but I’d depress you. Advice: Take a long term view – it doesn’t happen over night and takes a lot of work.

Chris Garrett of Chrisg.com

I think the main answer to this would be the lack of security. In a full time job you have, at the very least, the illusion of security. A steady pay cheque, nice package of benefits, all that. When you are any kind of solo entrepreneur you have to provide for yourself.

This is why my advice would be to not give up the day job until you have a safety net in place and have a good idea you will succeed in still being able to pay your bills.

The Noob of Bloggernoob.com

The hardest thing about trying to make money online is that you have no one telling you what to do. It would be a lot easier if someone would dictate things to you, especially when you get started. Being productive with your time in the early stages is the only way to success. If you are not productive, your site won’t get traffic or make any money. Most then likely you will quit. I think that’s the biggest problem with most bloggers. They quit.

My advice to newbies would be this. Give yourself enough time to test out the waters. Don’t expect to make thousands in your first week or month. Be realistic. Online business should be treated like a business. Most businesses don’t make a profit until months, even years. Why would it be different with an internet venture?

Paul of InspiredMoneyMaker.com

I can summarize the three main hardships I faced as:

(1) Truly connecting to what I loved to do. I am a “scanner” by nature so I love to learn a lot of different things instead of focusing on just one. Narrowing down my focus to stick to teaching one thing online took a lot of soul searching and help from my coaches. It took a while, but I finally realized that the passion I truly loved and wanted to pursue online was helping / teaching people how to make money doing what they love; and so I launched InspiredMoneyMaker.com.

(2) Funding. Building a business when you have a large reserve of cash is one thing, but trying to build an online business on a shoe-string budget can be challenging. I built InspiredMoneyMaker.com on a very small shoe-string budget. It’s been a challenge, but it’s helped me to get creative with my marketing and forced me to tap into other ways of promoting myself besides just buying advertising.

(3) Time Management. I run my InspiredMoneyMaker.com Blog totally part time in the evenings and on weekends, outside of my regular “job”. This required me to sacrifice certain things like playing video games, watching TV, going out with friends to focus my time on building an online business. So far it’s been well worth it, and I really enjoy the process. A lot of times I hear people say they have “no time” to build a business because they already work full time etc. yet when I ask them a few simple questions I find out that they somehow have plenty of time to watch endless hours of TV, sports, movies, go out and party, etc. In reality, they probably don’t “make time” because they haven’t figured out #1 yet – Who am I and how do I truly connect to what I love to do? If you don’t know what your passion is, you’ll distract yourself with “crap”.

Advice: If you can truly connect to what you love to do, find a way to creatively get around the “I have no money” issue, and the “I have no time” issue, you’re ahead of 99.99% of the people out there.Once you’re in that 0.01% to get to the point where you’re making money online, read my blog.

JohnCow.com

Two things come to mind as the biggest hardships
1. You can not please everyone
2. There is no magic tool

When you first start dealing with customers or even just subscribers, you are going to frustrate and plain and simply, piss off some people. Even though your intentions are 100% pure, someone will interpret it the wrong
way or just be in a bad mood and want to tear you apart. They will even threaten to blast your name all over the internet and the list goes on and on.

The bottom line is you can not make everyone happy and by focusing on the one or two people who are always miserable. You will not only run yourself down but you will also be ignoring the rest of your customers. I am not saying ignore the issues but do not take them personally and realize that some people will just never be happy.

The second thing is there is no magic tool that will take all your problems away. I used to struggle by always thinking there was some magic formula I must be missing or some tool others must be using that I still need. I would spend hours scouring the clickbank directory and opt in to every email list hoping to find it. What I did find was that I was wasting time searching for something that was not there and so I removed my name from all but a few lists (the ones that actually offered info) and then looked at what I had and how I could use that to make money. That was the biggest turning moment in my online career and was what helped me be able to quit my job and run my own business.

***

My sincerest gratitude to all of them for taking the time out to answer those questions. I know they have a zillion things to do and still they have imparted their advice and valuable knowledge. Thank You. - ChiQ Montes

***

Discussion: Which advice can you mostly identify with? What are your own struggles that you wish to overcome?

Making money online provide the opportunity to buy things for your children like a outdoor wooden playset

Although manually upgrading your blog by following this step-by-step instruction from the wordpress codex site is easy to follow.. I would highly suggest using plugins to do the work for you.

First, make sure that you back-up your database. I personally use the WordPress DBManager plugin from Lester Chan. This plugin allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

Next, download and activate the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin by Keith Dsouza. Then that’s it.. upgrading to WordPress is that easy indeed!

By the way, the forum I have installed on this site is quite boring..so I think I’m going for bbPress to handle support questions. Sometimes it’s really tiring to answer the same questions over and over again. Do you guys have any suggestions in handling Support Questions?

1. ABOUT and CONTACT information – You must let your readers know the purpose of your blog/site. Why should they keep on visiting? What do you have to offer? Also, do not ever forget to make your contact information visible and easy to find. If it is possible to dedicate an entire page on the many ways they can possibly contact you, now that is even better!

2. Add Images/Pictures to your posts – Yes! You have to catch your readers’ attention! Sometimes, one paragraph after another can get really boring.. so spice it up a bit!

3. Subscribe to your own RSS Feed – It helps when you actually know what you’re sending out to everyone on your list. It will also guide you in formatting your posts because you get to see it yourself first-hand.

4. Navigation and Site Usability – You have to make sure that getting around your site is simple and consistent. It would be awesome to have a thousand “cool features” in your site but are they even useful? Or does it only confuse your visitors?

5. Too many Ads! – You have your ads plastered all over.. and even getting in the way of your content!! Yes, it is important to be able to monetize your site but do it effectively. If you actually have a good content going on.. then don’t make it seem like an MFA (Made for Adsense) at all!

6. Interact with your Readers – If they comment on your post, then simply comment back or return the gesture of visiting their site as well. If they send you an email then answer back. Make friends. Network with other bloggers.

7. Be Transparent – You want more RSS Feed Readers? Install a plugin that displays a message for first time visitors asking them to subscribe to your blog’s feed and the benefits thereof. You want more comments? Ask a question to make it easier to discuss your article. You want people to purchase your product? Persuade them.. Be transparent with your goals and how you want your site visitors to respond. Tell them! Remind them!

8. Contribute – Give something.. free icons, free themes.. run a contest with big prizes.. Somehow, you have to give-back to your audience.

9. Check your Content – Be on a look-out for spelling and grammar and errors before hitting the publish button. Also, make sure you provide fresh content as much as you can.

10. Try to Learn SEO – It doesn’t hurt to learn SEO and you’ll be surprised with the results. In fact, I consider SEO as an art as this would affect your website performance immensely. You are only half a Netrepreneur if you’ve never understood SEO.

While I was preparing for my site launch, I’ve gathered some useful tips by asking for advices from fellow bloggers around the web.

1. Press Release – Creating a Press Release can be tricky but do keep one thing in mind, is your article even “newsworthy?” The objective is not to make a Sale or a Marketing Pitch but rather to provide useful information about your product, blog, event or service. Download List of 80 sites to submit your Press Release.

2. Email Marketing – You have to remember that you have a new site and you still have a lot of promoting to do. Why not start it with you contacts? Send an email to everyone on your Contact List informing them of your new project.

3. OnlyWire – Social Bookmarking is one sure way to drive traffic to your site. I suggest you focus on StumbleUpon and Digg, however, there are also tons of social bookmarking sites or services that you can take advantage of. To refrain fro this time consuming strategy, sign up for an account in Only Wire and you get everything done in just one click.

4. Squidoo and HubPages – Creating and Joining Squidoo and HubPages will truly be worthwhile. The pages you create could serve as a gateway for people to reach and visit your site.

5. Blog Catalog, MyBlogLog and Entrecard – these are hot widgets you should not forget to install in your sidebar.

6. Google Analytics – A great tool to analyze how your visitors behave in your site, you should take on of your bouncing rate and popular keywords. Also, this will also help you find out where your visitors are coming from.

7. Directory Submission – Do not forget to submit your site to DMOZ although it could time for your site to be approved. Also, on other reputable web directories. Download Huge Directory List with PR.

8. DoFollow Blogs – Start your Link Building Campaign immediately! Comment on DoFollow Blogs and get some PR Link Juice Love. Download List of DoFollow Blogs with PR.

9. Network/Make Friends with Bloggers – Make friends with Bloggers, most especially those who have the same niche as yours. Do not go for A-list Bloggers, they’re most likely too busy to even bother checking your site. Friends become loyal readers/visitors.

10. RSS Feed Submitter – Another Great way of Advertising and Promoting your site. Download RSS Tools.

Being a New Kid on the Block can be tough but as long as you have something new to offer in this competitive market, then all you have to worry about is your consistency as a blogger and the rest will follow .. (traffic, subscribers, profit and authority in your chosen niche).s