A Complete Guide to Blogging

How to start a blog
A quick guide to starting a blog!
Starting a blog is easy, so easy in fact that damn near everyone has one and for the most part they don't last long. People get bored and forget about their blog or just get tired of it. Before you start a blog or think or ask about how to make one, are you going to stick to it? If not then you're wasting your time and further polluting the internet. Now there are a few options when starting your blog, you can use one of the various free services on the internet like Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger (Which I use) and many others, or you can go the way of the person that has money to spend and go create your own from scratch and get it hosted... I guess there are some other options as well but that's for a later post.
Personally, I choose Blogger because it is free and is widely used and it has quite a few features. I would recommend it to a new comer to the blogging world. And seeing as I've mostly have used blogger I'll use my experience with it for this post.



To start a blogger blog you simply go to blogger.com and follow the steps, you have to make a google account but that's all pretty easy. Them you just start writing and posting stuff. I'm going to make another post about how to blog... all so I can have more posts.
Starting a blog is one of the easiest things to do on the internet... blogging on the other hand is also pretty easy, but being a good blogger is one of the hardest damn things in the world. It's like having a small business that in order to profit from you have to spend ungodly amounts of time on.

As a key point, please don't be like me and start a blog for the sole purpose of making money, blogging sound be fun and after a while you'll see a return. I'm not saying I'm a master blogger and can make money from day one, what I'm saying is I am willing to pull all nighters and get out to the social spheres from the get go in order to get some profit.
How to blog
There is a huge difference between blogging and starting a blog, in this post I talk about actually blogging.
Now that you have your blog made its time to start blogging. The first step is to figure out what to blog about... which is easier said than done. Blog about something you enjoy and something you won't get tired of. You'll be writing about this subject everyday or so until you quit or make it big. It also helps to be well versed in the subject. What I usually do is have a main focal point and then writing a little about other stuff in between so I don't get bored.



The most successful bloggers write about their niche and write about it well. Blogs like mine without a niche usually don't do well because search engines don't really know what the hell to do with us. Writing a niche-less site pretty much entails you writing about various things you enjoy and hoping its done well enough that you'll get traffic.
Try to set aside a few hours a day to just write, a new blog needs content and needs to be updated regularly. you can write gigantic posts or small ones, people have sort attention spans and a long post better be amazing and entertaining so that readers don't loose interest. Short posts follow the same rule, they have to be entertaining but they also have to be informative otherwise they seem like they lack credibility.
Another good thing to keep in mind is that it's all up to you and there is no single grand rule and that what works for others may not work for you. You should always be thinking of ways to get your blog to stand out from others and how to make it better. This includes coming back to posts and making them better or fixing mistakes or generally just updating them.
How to get traffic
Getting traffic and people to read your blog is the hardest part about running a blog... hopefully this post will help you.
Getting traffic should come naturally to your blog after you have a fare amount of content but if not then there are ways to boost traffic to your blog. First make sure that you have entertaining and/or informative content if after that you still aren't getting traffic then maybe it's because your blog is new and it hasn't been indexed by any search engines or maybe its because its just hard for search engines to find you. getting indexed comes either naturally over time or there's ways to speed it up, but this subject is best saved for a later time.



To make sure your blog is search engine friendly maybe look into some SEO tutorials, which I'll add later. It pretty much means adding links to other post or to completely different sites as well as some other simple stuff.
Another way to get traffic is to use social media like Facebook and talking to your friends and trying to get them to go on it. Just posting a status update leads to a possible influx of however many friends you have as traffic to your blog.
Other sites like reddit and stumbleupon are great as well. With reddit it is best to be active in the community as well as posting links to your blog. It is a great community and to be on their good side is like having half the world behind you. With stumbleupon you can kinda just post your link and leave but being active is also good.
There are countless other ways and hell you can probably get creative and come up with your own.
Picture Posts
Pictures are great for a post and are almost needed, but are posts with only pictures good?
Having a post that the majority of the content is generally a bad idea. search engines focus primarily on text however people enjoy pictures, especially cool or sexy pictures. In cases where you feel like you want to just post pics be sure that they fall under cool or sexy... or whatever other major categories there are. Have an introduction paragraph and post the pictures. it is best to add links to the source and add some form of description. Any added text will help and i for one love it when there's a story accompanying an image.
If its a sexy pic, add something even your reasoning for picking it or just what you like about it. having to many posts like this is a bad idea unless you already have a reader pool or something and even then it's not wise. I know that Google Adsense doesn't like posts like this and will even deny an application if you have one or two posts like this.
The Power of Porn
The internet is for porn, and having some on your blog and really help get views.
Whether you want to believe it or not porn is what the internet is founded on and it makes up most of the damn thing. if you want to make money on the internet porn is the way to go. hell, just post a few porn pics on a site and in no time you'll get a shit ton of traffic. but here's the catch most blogging platforms are real sticklers on pornographic material and in the case with blogger, you'll get your self in real big trouble. your blog will be flagged, you can get un-indexed, you google account may be deactivated, there's a whole slew of things that can happen. if you want to do porn you'll have to make your own site and have it hosted. I've done this as an experiment and to be honest it worked, I damn near made 100 bucks in one day.



Here's what I did once, i posted a bunch of hentai pics of attack on titan and put a link on reddit by the end of the day i had received over 20,000 views on that single post and everyday after that it was about 10,000. It's incredible when you think about it but it's true, porn is a major thing and people are making a lot of money on it.
But how can this help the everyday blogger? you can make a "Top 10" list of something like "Sexiest women" or something like that and do what i did. with a list like that people are only going to look at it to see the pics but also to join in on the debate. I'll touch more on the concept of pics and porn in "picture posts".
The Importance of Links
Links are important... but how important?
Links are highly important to your blog, not links from other sites to yours but links from your site to theirs and to your own. First of all if you put links that link to other posts on your blog it creates a better flow for your readers to use, getting them to read more of your content, it also helps get you recognized by search engines whih is really important.



Linking to other sites creates a sense of legitimacy and is a friendly way to get people to link back. It's  also a key part of SEO, getting backlinks. But beware backlinks are only good if there from high quality or trusted sources. You can even be penalized in a sense if some shady site links to you.
You can have to many links in a post, it comes down to a link a sentence is okay but anything more than that is a little outrageous. As well as where you link to. 300 links in a post all going to Wikipedia might not be the best choice... but is a choice remember that. If your blog is nichless and the topics covered are wide spread it might be possible to have many links to posts within a single post.
Getting back links can be a challenge and in all likelihood won't be the reason for a shortage in web traffic. one easy way to get a backlink is to simply ask for one on someone else's blog. another option is to link to people that are know to link back or just link to people in general and hope that they will link back.
The Secret of Getting Traffic to Your Blog
The secret to getting a lot of traffic is one that dwells within the very fiber of humans... we read everything really and we all have opinions. I don't read reviews to see whether I wanna watch a movie or play a game, I read them to see if people think the same way as me. It plays with the concept that everyone wants to belong and be apart of the group, or something bigger than themselves.



There are many ways to achieve this goal, the one of getting more traffic through communities. One way is to actively read other peoples blogs and leave comments stuff like that. Like, as an example, lets say I like anime and have started a blog about it, I could go to someone else's blog and leave a comment like "Sweet blog/ Nice article, I also have an anime blog, I really think that you guys will enjoy this." And link to a related article of yours. This may work if you're an active reader and actively post positive comments on that blog. No one likes spammers and your comments can be set so they go directly to spam.

Another take on this concept is to be apart of one of the larger communities like reddit or something like that. Every now and then when ou have a high quality post and you think a lot of people will like it, you can post a link to that post. This way can drive a large amount of traffic to a post fast, which if your blog has good navigation and its post have interesting titles, the visitors should spend more time on your blog. I had a problem with navigation on my site and to fix it took me quite some time but in the end people were viewing about half my blog in a setting (though most were picture posts).

People always talk about SEO and I personally wouldn't sacrifice the entertainment value of my blog for any form of optimization. Your viewers should come first, if the posts are good people will see them. Believe me.
There are so many more ways and gimmicks but from what I've seen, it's best to just get out there and get down and dirty with your audience.
Launching
How to get ready and launch your blog.
This is a pretty simple one and not many people have a problem with it and that's launching your blog. i don't mean making it and then putting it on the internet, i mean the prerequisite you should complete. It is a good rule to have at least 5 posts ready to post before launching the blog and then posting daily after that for a while. It helps with the indexing process and helps secure readers being as if they visit a blog with just 1 post they may not come back.
But the thing is that most new bloggers post a lot in the first few days and then taper off and burn themselves out. It is important to stay motivated and follow a schedule.
Sticking to a Schedule
How sticking to a schedule can help your blog and increase profit.
Its hard, believe me, but sticking to a schedule is important. I don't but i try. i try to post a few things everyday or get about 100 posts a month. thus far my blogs content is pretty terrible and I'm not really following my own lessons... however in due time i will. here's my blogging schedule, 4 to 10 posts a day (usually 4) and after about 20 to 50 posts i go back and edit and update all my previous posts. so by the middle of the month I will be going through and conducting maintenance on the whole blog.

Updating and posting regularly will give you more views by the fact that you're adding content but updating will breath life into old posts and you'll reawaken traffic to those posts. seeing as the method that i usually write my blogs is unavailable my posts aren't as high of quality that i'd like i have to make a specific schedule just for adding content to posts and fixing mistakes.
How To Blog
Another version of a previous post I wrote...
Blogging is the simplest thing on the internet, right after Facebook and checking your email. All you do is write about something, anything, and hope that someone reads it and likes it.
This post will be updated regularly to add more information to help wondering bloggers. This is also the start of a series of post that are about blogging and various milestones.



What to write about?
Write about either something you like or something you know can make you money. I chose anime because I like it and its easy to write about. I've seen people who have blogs that dont have a particular niche succeed but I've seen a lot more fail. Make sure that if you dont have a topic that your posts are well written. Whatever you write about enjoy doing it unless youre actually trying to make blogging into a job, which isnt really a good idea. But don't listen to me, i suck at this and I only do it when im bored.

More to be added later

How to Get a Million Views
Hahahaha Okay this is apart of my how to blog series as well as my traffic drive campaign. There are a lot of how to's for getting a million views on your blog, website, youtube video, and a whole lot of other internet thingies. I'll only talk about blogging in this post. To be honest I have no idea on how to do it. Write better articles, dont use my blog as an example because it sucks but google top blogs and use them. Another thing you can do is the SEO stuff, i have no idea what that is but you can google it as well.
This is another post I'll be updating a lot and eventually i want it to be helpfull.
How to get some views?

Pander to your audience, i sold my soul really quick on my blog. I was supposed to be about anime reviews and because i wasnt getting any views I had to start posting about "sexy anime characters"... and guess what, almost all of my views are from them! I hate being a sale out but it's got me views. Hell try doing a post about how to get a million views... it's probably get me some views XD.
More will be added tomorrow :)
Goals are important to have and when blogging they help keep you motivated. Right now my goal for this month is to get this blog going to a degree in which I can make a little money from it and get a fare amount of views. My goal for views is half a million. I'm sure I can do it once I get all my articles posted. See the way I do this is I make a lot of word documents with nothing in them and name them the stuff I want them to be about and then i write about 5 of them a night, quite short and post them the next day. I then go back and add stuff to them. I know my goals wont be met until i have posted all of them and have gone back and revised them. By the time I'm ready to do that ill have about 200 posts that need to be fixed but that wont take long.
Running a Nichless Blog
It really is an uphill battle.
Having a blog that doesn't  have a niche is a bad idea if you are looking to make money off of it or have many visitors. I am only talking from experience. For me I never have a niche, i have a main point or something but i usually write about what ever I want. It has always been an up hill battle and i never really win. But here are some tips to help you.



Link posts that are similar to one another so that when people do read them thy can easily navigate to the next. it also helps to use proper labels.
when you have a post that you believe is really good post it on reddit or as a comment on someone else's blog. Follow some SEO practices and make sure that there are plenty of keywords.
Try to post similar things. one of each little genre isnt enough, have quite a few of each.
Guest Bloggers
Is guest blogging a good idea?
I have never had them and I have never been one. I dont see the appeal in it. however I do see the use in having friends or associate write for your blog. but that is a blog with multiple authors. in which case i find that to be a wise desicion. it adds a variety of voices that is really nice. But guest blogging is a bad decision... unless...



lets say you start a blog and it does really well, someone from aother blog that is doing really well asks you to write an article for them for some money... then its okay. or, you have money or some one whose name is well know wants to write an original post for your blog and just having there name attached to that post will bring in a diffinite amount of viewers, in that chase it is okay... there are actually many instances in which guest blogging is okay. the one thing you want to avoid is posting something that has been on a dozen other sites.
Content: A quick overview and helpful guide to content and the role it plays for your blog.
Content is literally everything. A blog without content is empty so this post is going to state some obvious stuff.

Some people write long post and spend hours on them, others write short posts. there are examples of both kinds being successful and of them failing. I usually write posts that are some what short... But i usually come back to them and make them much longer. its how i do it. I like to get the main idea in there and come back and expand it and write more precisely. I don't like having half finished articles laying around my PC so I write them up in a way that they seem complete but I can go back to them, thus i post them.

For some people this strategy might not be the best and even I get lazy and never go back to them.
Lengthy articles can make your blog have better results on search engines and they create a form of legitimacy, though its just the essence. With long posts more visual stimulation is required, which more pictures can be helpful and it all adds up to more outgoing links. But its hard to stay entertaining the longer you drag a post out. With shorter posts you have to make sure the article is to the point and says what it needs to say. And on top of all that it needs to be entertaining, which is easy.

Pictures are always a good thing, they make the article entertaining and better looking. People usually skim an article to get the main idea and a picture will redirect their eyes... usually to whats underneath it.

Here's a somewhat useful article about how long a blog post should be,
How Long Should My Blog Post Be?