Free Report

5 Essential Steps To Successful Blogging

Blogging With John Chow

John Chow & Peng Joon

So you want to build a blog. I say awesome – there is nothing more rewarding or immediately engaging than a blog written by someone with a real passion for what they do.

I know because I’ve been doing this for over 10 years…pretty successfully I might add. My name is John Chow and if you haven’t seen my blog, you can find a lot of information about me on JohnChow.com.

I’ve become something of a legend in the blogosphere – creating massive sites with tens of thousands of hits every month and a vast, loyal readership that only grows larger and more devoted with time.

What you’re reading right now is the culmination of my years behind a keyboard. When someone asks me what I would do if I had to start over from scratch tomorrow, this is the stuff I tell them, and then some.

This is the inner sanctum guys. The stuff I don’t put on the blog flat out. The notes I have jotted down in my notebooks, waiting for the day when I start teaching this stuff instead of doing it.

That day is today and you now have in front of you the basic blueprint you need to create a blog and start building a massive, eager audience overnight.

So, keep reading, write down your questions and get ready to start down a path that I’ve been traveling for years – one that is immensely entertaining and filled with opportunities.

It’s time to become a blogger.

Cheers!

~John Chow

Step 1 – The Road Map

One of the biggest problems people run into, and one that I hear a lot when asked about how to start a blog, is that there are so many options and so little consensus among other bloggers about how to start a new blog.

Specifically, questions I hear a lot are “what type of blogging software should I use, which plug-ins are best, which theme is best, how often should I write post?” and other basic platform issues.

Here’s the simple truth on all of these issues.

It’s up to you. There is no “best” way to run a blog. There is only the way that works best for you as a blogger and for your audience. Of course there are caveats to this. First, you need to determine what exactly your audience (and you) need. Second, you need to ensure that you have a clear plan in place so you can follow it carefully over time.

Finally, there are a few things that I do actually recommend over others. Let’s start there. The following are things that I feel every blogger should use when they start:

1. WordPress – I dig WordPress. In my eyes this is the most powerful, flexible and easiest to market blogging platform online and everyone should use it. You have no excuse not to.

2. Mailing List - A good mailing list is vital because it allows you to reach out to people directly whenever you want. It also allows you to follow up and bring people back to your site, generating higher

conversion rates and ensuring better payouts for whatever you are promoting.

3. Facebook and Twitter – While you can use Facebook and Twitter in a number of different ways, it’s important that you have them early on. Create a Page and a Feed for your blog and start updating it whenever you write a post.

4. Scheduling – Choose a blogging frequency that works for you and stick to it. Write content as often as is necessary and ensure it is posted to your site on time every week. Even once a week is better than 3 in a row and then none for two weeks.

These four things are vital. You can write about whatever you want, in whatever format you want, but if you don’t deliver it on time, in a format people can easily access and delivered to as many platforms as possible, you’ll have a hell of a time reaching your target audience.

Beyond the Basics

A road map does more than just build your blog. At a certain point you need to ensure your blog is growing and getting a bigger audience.

When I say build a roadmap, what I mean is that you are creating a clear plan for how your blog will look, read and operate over time. Of course, it can change dramatically from one month to the next or even one week to the next, but by having at least a basic plan in place, you know what direction to go before you make these changes.

Here are some things to consider when creating the roadmap for your blog. Some of these will be discussed in greater detail in the next four steps, while others will require you to do some brainstorming to perfect.

1. Content Calendar - Your content calendar allows you to ensure you stay caught up on your posts, and that the content you cover is unique and diverse for your audience.

2. Mix It Up - There are many different ways you can present information. For example, I mix in videos, lists, infographics and much more with my normal text blog posts. Brainstorm ways you can do the same.

3. Your Brand – How do you want people to see you? When you write a post, update Facebook or Twitter, or add a new function to your site, what do you want people to think when they see it?

4. Who Is Your Audience? – Ask yourself who your target audience is. It’s important to know exactly who you are reaching out to, what needs they have, and how you can fill those needs with your content. A good blog is one that brings value to its readers. You can’t do this unless you know what those readers consider valuable.

5. Where’s the Money? - At a certain point you want your blog to make money. That’s why it’s important early on to ask yourself how you would like to monetize your blog. There are many options, including AdSense, Amazon ads, affiliate reviews and much more.

If you keep these five things in mind at all times while building your blog you can ensure that your site is a platform that can be easily monetized and grown over time to create a powerful online business.

Step 2 – Understanding the Value of Value

Whenever someone asks me why my blog is special, I answered simply:

“Because I know what people in my niche need and I give it to them.”

I wasn’t affected by the Google Panda updates because those updates are meant to find and penalize people who focus on SEO and site ranking above and beyond audience experience and that is not a problem I have.

My site has always been built around a very simple concept and I recommend you do the same. Ask yourself what readers of your site consider valuable and create it for them.

You can optimize your site like crazy, but if your post provides no value, you’re not going to rise in the SERPs and you are not going to make any money from your blog. It’s as simple as that.

What Value Really Means

Value in a blog post can be defined in a number of ways.

Value means that when someone lands on your site, they find information and content that they could not find anywhere else. For example, a lot of bloggers, when looking for topics, will go to other blogs and rewrite content.

They take great pains to avoid plagiarism, adding their own opinions, but in the end, they are still just regurgitating information from other sources. There is minimal value in what they do.

Ask yourself right now what you will do to ensure your blog provides maximum value to your readers. Examples include:

* News Source

* Entertainment

* Volume Posting

* Social Platform

* Q&A Source

* Reviews and Inside Information

Pick a format and create content that provides value in that format. The point of all this being that you can then create a blog that will self-sustain,

constantly providing information to people in your niche in a value-based way.

It’s hard to define value because value is different in the eyes of every person. However, as you come to know more about your audience, and as you learn more about your niche, you can focus more intensely on creating content that matches what you feel those people need. You can also ask them specifically what they would like to see on your blog, encourage discussion, and work with them to create a platform that is more involving for all people who visit that site.

When you create content based on the feedback and information gathered from your visitors, you will provide them with maximum value. This means often spending a lot more time creating a blog post than you might like. However, it’s much more beneficial to create a blog post that takes hours and gathers hundreds of readers than to create 10 blog posts in the same amount of time that gather only dozens of readers.

Step 3 – Relationship > Money

People ask me all the time how my blog makes money. I’m happy to answer the question, but I feel that they’re overlooking a key part of the blogging process. Blogging is not designed for people to make money. The goal of a blog is to provide value to its readers and develop an audience that you can communicate with and build a relationship with. If, over time, an audience grows to a larger size, you will make money.

So, I want to reiterate and expand a little on the idea of relationships in a blog. The goal here being to develop an ongoing relationship with the people who read your blog so that they will trust you. That way, when you do monetize your blog you’ll be much easier to get them to click those links and continue to return to the site.

Content Before Ads

Advertising is an effective way to make money with a blog, but it should not be added to any blog before it has developed a steady audience. If your goal in creating a blog is to make a lot of money, you need to have patience. A good blog will take months or even years to reach the point where you can start monetizing at a high enough rate to replace your current income. In the meantime, your focus should be on providing content to your readers and developing a platform that they enjoy returning to.

Imagine if you are reading a blog, love the content, and then one day show up and see dozens of ads. Even if you’re not bothered by the ads, you might click one and leave the site. New readers will have an even bigger problem, leaving the site almost immediately by clicking an ad. Your goal right now is to grow your readership. That means content not ads.

Set a Comment Response Quota and Deadline

One of the toughest parts about maintaining a high-quality blog is ensuring that you have return readers and an engaged audience. To do this, you need to actively engage as well. That means responding to comments immediately, asking questions that solicit comments, and going out and commenting on other blogs.

Luckily it’s pretty easy to do.

Set aside time for yourself every day or every week for how many comments you will respond to, how many other blogs you will leave comments on, and how long you will give yourself to post a comment when somebody comments on your site.

Generate Content Based on Audience Participation

Don’t ignore to what people tell you. In fact, if someone leaves a negative comment, I like to respond almost immediately.

To me, negative comments are a sign that what I’m doing is working.

At the same time, they also allow me an opportunity to reach out to people who may not appreciate or understand what I’m trying to say. I can also use those negative comments to create new content based on the feedback I’m getting, or ask other people for similar responses.

Of course it’s not all negativity. You can also use positive comments to build new blog posts, reach out to people in your niche, or ask questions that only your audience could answer.

The bottom line is that, when building a blog, you need to put the relationships you have with the people reading your blog well ahead of the money you hope to one day make. This is not an overnight get-rich-quick scheme.

This is a long-term business model.

Step 4 – Have a Good Story to Tell

It’s one thing to come up with really good ideas for blog posts, but an entirely different thing to have a good story to tell around those blog posts.

As a person, I put myself out there every time I write a post or record a video. I do it on purpose, because I know that my face and my story have a much bigger impact than some random facts or figures that I could throw out there. People read JohnChow.com because of John Chow.

So, ask yourself what people will read your blog for, and invest that into the blog at every opportunity. I highly recommend you find opportunities to put yourself out there, whether it’s in a video, telling stories about your personal life, posting pictures to Twitter or Facebook, or inviting friends and family to post on the site.

Yes, there is such a thing as too much information, but at the same time, people want to know that you’re a real person. If you write a review of a product and want people to click on the link and buy that product, you need to give them a reason to trust you. If you want people to return to your blog, continue reading your posts and leave comments, they need to have a good reason to do it.

A personal story give them that reason.

Crafting Your Story

Everyone has a different story to tell, so how you build your blog posts and develop your blog will depend almost entirely on how you want to present yourself. I like to ask a few questions before I write any posts. They include:

1. How Does this Relate to Me? - It’s not that every post I write needs to have some relation to my life, so much as that I want to be able to tell stories related to that topic. So before I share my opinion about a story, I ask myself how that topic or specific action has affected me recently. Do the same for yours.

2. Anything Funny Happen Recently? – A good storyteller can make a joke out of nearly anything. However, it helps if something funny has happened in your life recently. Whenever something funny happens, or you have a good anecdote, write it down. Get it down in a notebook, take a picture or record a quick audio note for yourself for future blog posts. You never know when that story is going to directly relate to something you’re about to cover

3. What Common Denominator Does this Have for My Readers? – One of the biggest mistakes you can make is turning your blog into a personal journal. While people care about your life and your story, they also want to know how it affects them. The big question you must ask yourself is what is in it for your readers. Of-course, you should know who your audience is, but assuming you do this should be a relatively easy question to answer.The goal is to ensure that whatever I write is directly related to me and my audience, if it’s within the brand and persona I’ve projected with my other posts. Of course, if other bloggers write content on my site, that may not be the case. But, anything coming from my voice or through my editorial eyes will match the story that I’ve been telling since I first started blogging.

Step 5 – Automate for Big Cash

Okay guys. This is the one everybody asks me about. How do you make money from the things you did in steps one through four?

Like I said, monetization takes time. You shouldn’t have ads on your site on day one. Nor should you try to sell space or blog posts including links to

anybody on day one. Your goal right away is to build an audience with value-based content that people will enjoy reading and return for the future.

But someday, you’re going to want to make some money. And when that happens, it’s important to have a system in place that allows you to automate the tasks you perform to bring in as much money as possible.

Here are a few quick tips to automate the process and ensure your blog continues running smoothly, even if your life goes into chaos.

1. Stock Up On Posts - I like to keep at least one or two weeks’ worth of content written at all times. Right now, for example, I have a full month of content ready to be published. This ensures that I never miss a post, and that if something happens in my life it won’t affect the blog.

2. Guest Posts Are Your Friend - While I don’t submit guest posts to other people’s blogs, I do accept them on my own. This not only allows me to fill holes in my content calendar, but it allows me to get a varied assortment of opinions from other bloggers. It also brings in new readership from other blogs, and allows me to cover topics I may not be an expert on.

3. Automate Social Media - Social media is an immensely powerful tool to bring traffic to your blog. However, it can also be a big time sink. To avoid spending an unnecessarily large amount of time on Facebook and Twitter, find ways to automate. Use tools like HootSuite to post content in advance, automatically post your blog posts there, and have all messages forwarded to your mobile phone so you can reply to them quickly while on the go.

4. Maintain a Consistent Story – One of the reasons I’ve become so popular is that I quickly become a featured player in tier one media.

This didn’t happen by accident. I created a stable, consistent story that people were interested in reading about. Media included. Do the same for your own and you’ll be surprise how many people approach you

over time. 5.

6. Accept All Opportunities as They Come - Sometimes an

opportunity will arise that seems too big for you. It might take too much of your time, conflict with other things you’re trying to do, or present too much of a challenge. Deny these opportunities at your own risk. You never know when one will pop up, and even if it’s immensely hard and time-consuming right now, it may pan out as a fantastic investment over time.

7. Be Clear in Your Monetization - Know well in advance how you want to monetize your blog. Not only does this allow you to follow a clear plan for how your blog will grow, but it allows you to ensure you don’t make any mistakes as you do it.This is a short list. However, as your blog grows and you learn more about what your audience likes and does not like, you can start to build your own.Again, I recommend that you do not start monetizing anytime soon. But, keep all this stuff in mind because it’s important that you have a clear idea what you want to do as soon as the opportunity to monetize arises. For some of you it might take six months, while for others it might take six days to develop the audience needed to start making money.Whatever you do, however, if you build your blog around value-based content and a strong relationship between you and your readers, I guarantee you will make money from it.

Conclusion

If the time has come to create a blog, one of the first things you should do is sit down and ask yourself what exactly you want to provide to the people in your audience. Ignore the money, ignore the ads, ignore the fame and fortune that you think you could some day gain from your blog.

Ask yourself what you can do for your readers. When you do this, you create a blog that is based around content that provides immense value to your readers and the rest will come in time.

Follow the five steps in this guide and I guarantee that your blog will start to grow quickly, your audience will grow loyal, and you will in fact start to make a lot of money from it in time.

Enjoy and of course if you have any questions, drop me an email anytime and I’ll get back to you with my thoughts.

Cheers!

~John Chow

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