I’ve kept this post on hold for a while because I had to look over not only other’s blogs but also mine. We’ve seen several blogs come to the main arena in the blogsphere with great popularity. I learned a lot and witnessed a lot when it comes to a blog being successful. Bloggers are in constant struggle to make their blog a successful. I have written a lot of articles dealing with improving a blog to reach the next level and yet I don’t think it’s still is not a enough for the average blogger to gain the confidence and direction to make their blog a unsuccessful one. Therefore, I decided to write a post that will give a direction of creating a good blog.

What does it means for a blog to be successful?
Being a successful blogger doesn’t always mean making a lot of money. Anyone can make money online, but for a blog to be a successful there should be activity among the readers within that blog discussing on issues the blog posts relates to.

The following is a my version of a blueprint of taking any ordinary blog and making it into a successful one. Or, making a great blog from scratch.

1. Plan
Planning a blog should be the first thing in your mind, before doing anything. When planning, decide on what should be the main focus of your blog, as in what topic should your post revolve around. Think about what you want topic you want to focus on.

2. Register a Domain
Don’t make the mistake of starting a blog, which you are serious about, on a free blog host. If you want to create a successful blog, register a domain. I recommend Yahoo’s $1.99 domain, which is available for new Yahoo customers.

3. Get a Good Hosting Service
Paying for services doesn’t just stop with the domain name. Now you need a hosting service to host your blog. You don’t need to pay much since blogs are composed of images and words so you can sign up for a low bandwidth hosting plan. I have been using Hostgator for a while now and their service is really good. I can host unlimited sites for only $10 a month.

4. Set Up Your Blog
This may be the hardest part, but setting up the blog is a must. I recommend you install WordPress for your blogging. WordPress is widely used and it has a wide variety of plug-ins available. Also, choosing a nice template is a must; readers are attracted to clean, fast-loading templates so, try your best to get a nice template for your blog. Also, you should tweak your blog for SEO and easier navigation for your visitors.

5. Blog Away
Don’t you just blog on anything, blog about what you planned about; also, write well with correct grammar and spelling. Also, blog for a week to pile up some posts for your archives before you move in to the next step.

6. Work on Linkbacks
After you get a good number of sites linking back to your site, start working on getting linkbacks.

Also, a great way to get quality links along with traffic is with writing articles for article sites. Article directories are a bank of free traffic and high ranking links.

The more relevant linkbacks you get, the higher the chances you’ll have for an increase in your PageRank of your site.

7. Let your Blog Age
One of the strongest recommendations I can give is letting your blog age. Blog at a constant frequency for three months. Make sure you have a good number of quality posts within those three months. Within those three months your blog will gain credibility and get a good number of readers, if you have done your SEO.

8. Market your Blog
I mentioned before that it takes money to make money, and you actually need to invest on your site in order to boost it up. Matt Coddington of NetBusinessBlog.com only had two paid reviews done for his blog, according to his bloggers’ face-off interview. He marketed well for his blog and therefore he has over 1400 RSS subscribers.

Paid Reviews Work
For those in doubt of paid reviews, I think you actually have to see the effects of paid reviews to actually understand why they are worth paying for. I’ve gotten a paid review done for this blog and it made my blog very lively. Check out the John Chow Effect.

NOTE: Don’t just get any blog to review your site, make sure that blog your paying is related to your blog, as in if that blog’s topic revolves around the same topic as your blog.

9. Be Interactive
Do your best to invite your readers to comment; let them interact with not only you, but also with your other readers. Keep your commenting option on, otherwise your readers may loose interest if they don’t get a say on an issue you wrote. It doesn’t stop with just comments on your site, continue interacting with them via e-mail if your readers e-mail you.

For each step, which I have listed, there are A LOT more details, but I simplified it for easier reading and understanding.

What do you think? Have you done anything on the list?

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