Most bloggers didn’t start out thinking they were going to make a living at it. They were usually just starting a blog to have fun, realized they were good at it, and then suddenly found themselves in a business they hadn’t anticipated starting in the first place.
Take your blog seriously and treat it as a business from Day One, especially if you have even the slightest hope of turning it into a source of income. If you want your blog to be successful, you have to treat it as if it’s already successful.
That means planning for long-term growth from the beginning, so you don’t box yourself into a corner later. Here are some missteps that bloggers have taken early on; make sure you don’t make these same mistakes:
Started a blog on Google’s Blogger and used the default URL of http://blogname.blogspot.com instead of buying your own domain name. If you do the simple thing and leave it at that, much of the work you do is left behind if you ever need to upgrade to a more functional and scalable self-hosted WordPress blog.
You can’t automatically redirect readers from an old page to a new page, and in some ways, it’s like starting over from scratch. Moving from Blogger to WordPress is a big endeavor; you’ll probably need some help with the technical aspects, and the whole process will be much easier and more effective if you control your own domain name.
The extra hassle can be avoided if you start on WordPress from the beginning. It may be a little more work to get up and running, but the flexibility, functionality, and scalability you get with a WordPress blog is absolutely worth the upfront time investment.
Wrote many profanity-laden blog posts sprinkled with a lot of TMI. Okay, if your audience really wants that sort of thing, it’s absolutely fine to do whatever builds a personal brand you can leverage into other opportunities — as long as you don’t expect to attract advertising. This kind of content scares away advertisers in droves, because companies are fearful of associating their brands with controversy.
Controversy leads to angry customers, and angry customers boycott companies. You’ll limit your opportunities if you want to work with brands at some point in your blogging career. Don't change your personality or who you are — there may be other ways to show your true self without scaring away future opportunities.
Failed to focus on a niche. Specializing in a specific field is extremely important to almost every aspect of the future professional opportunities that can come your way. Your media opportunities, advertising opportunities, and branding opportunities will be extremely limited if your content is too general.
You don’t get on the Today Show by being the mom who talks about anything and everything. Broadcasters look for moms who can speak on topics that fit into specific segments, such as online bullying, Super Bowl party planning, or being a mom entrepreneur.
Failed to define your personal brand. If you don’t take branding seriously, you can’t control the image you’re projecting to your colleagues. Worse, you run the risk of letting others define your brand for you. The longer you ignore branding, the harder it is to take it back and define it yourself.
dummies
Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/dont-fail-to-plan-for-success-as-a-mom-blogger.html
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