Welcome

May 24th, 2010 by Jack Cola No comments »

Learn How To Be A Successful Blogger Now!

Are you new to Blogging, or have been blogging for a while and haven’t quite made it to the Blogosphere? Lucky for you, that you have found the right website. At Create A Successful Blog, you will become a better blogger as we provide you with excellent tips, help and guidance to make your Blog successful. We have developed a number of different courses that cater for everyone. So if you are new at blogging, or have been blogging for a while and need some idea’s how to become more successful at blogging, we have courses for you.

Make sure you read our blog for even more free blogging tips!

What Does Create A Successful Blog Offer You?

We offer you a number of blog courses that you can take part of to improve your blogging skills. Not only that, you will learn everything you need to know to become a successful Blogger including the following

  • Blogging tips to make your Blog successful
  • How to write content that will intrigue your readers and perform well in search engines
  • Ingenious ways to promote your blog and build up your readers
  • How to generate traffic to your blog
  • Resources that every blogger should know about
  • One on one personal blogging consultation – so you can get the most from your blog

What Is Different About Create A Successful Blog And Other “Learn How To Blog” Websites?

  • You can choose what you want to learn – no wasting time learning what you already know
  • You will be working with other bloggers who are at your level
  • It is a great opportunity to promote your blog
  • Private discussions with other class members and tutors
  • You will learn on a personal level

LEARN FOR FREE – Free Entry To The First Class Of Our Blog Courses

That’s right! The first group of students to complete one of our course will get the course for free. We will also promote your websites and blogs in return for feedback of what you thought about the course and suggestions.

If you want to signup just visit http://www.createasuccessfulblog.com/course/ and register an account. Remember, if you are not in the first group of students, you will not get this course for free.

Once successfully enrolled, sit back, relax and wait until we tell you the start date of the course.

And There Is More – Read Our Blog

Don’t think that this is all that we offer. Make sure you read our blog which is updated weekly with helpful blogging tips, tricks, and useful tools.

Have You Got  A Question?

If you need more information about the courses we offer, please visit our course page. If you need more help about the course, please feel free to contact us on our contacts page.

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5 Great Articles on How To Build Your Brand

May 25th, 2010 by Jack Cola 2 comments »

I often read what other bloggers have to say about blogging and what they say is really good.

This week I present 5 great posts on how to build your brand for your blog.

Creating a brand is crucial for your blog as it allows other people to recognise and identify you. Think of popular brand names such as McDonalds and Nike, and think about what you know about them and their brand names. If you see the Golden Arches or fast food you think of McDonalds. If you think about shoes or a tick, you think about Nike. What do your readers think of you when they read your blog or your your name?

So how do you build up your online brand. I have gathered some 5 posts that can help you.

How to Build a Remarkable Personal Brand – Famous Bloggers

4 Tips To Build Your OWN Online Brand – Hot Blog Tips

The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Blogging Brand – Blog Like A Pro! – Blogging Pro

10 Tips for Building Your Brand – JimiJones

How Not to Build a Personal Brand – Famous Bloggers

 

To sum up the above posts you:

  • Need to have an established logo
  • Have a unique design or theme
  • Promote your brand
  • Stay up-to-date with latest trends
  • Utilise Social Media
  • Contribute to the Blogosphere
  • Know your audience
  • Be unique
  • Be personal
  • Be consistent
  • Get out there
  • Be active
  • Build a community around you
  • Talk to others
  • Have something to offer
  • Establish an object with your name (E.g, Cooler – Esky; Adhesive Bandages – Band-aid)

 

How have you built up your brand name?

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6 Types of Content To Write On Your Blog

May 20th, 2010 by Jack Cola No comments »

You may think that content is just content. Well in fact, this is not the case. There are many different forms of content that a blog can have. For example, your blog can be made up of video, music, images, or text. However, there are different types of content that give a different final result and do different things with your readers.

Content that will get readers to your blog

First of all, you need readers to come to your blog. So you need to create content that readers are able to find and useful to them. This content is usually a once-off thing, and would most probably do really well on social media websites such as Digg and StumbleUpon.

It’s mere impossible to create this content everyday, but once you have it, it will increase your readers dramatically, and you’ll see your majority of search hits going that that page.

An example of content that will get readers to your blog may be an InfoGraph, or something that a lot of people find very useful and want to share it around.

Content that will get readers coming back

The second type of content is content that will get your readers to come back to your blog. This should be you main focus point. Therefore, you must write content that your blogs audience is looking for, and most importantly, have a consistent publication schedule.

You should create this sort of content everyday on your blog as this content entices readers to return. It won’t be anything special, but your regular readers will always come back and read it.

Content to make you money

Thirdly, you need to make money somehow. So this sort of content may be a paid review, a sponsored post, or a product that you highly endorse and get affiliate sales for. It is important that you use this sort of content sparingly as you don’t want to lose readers as you are spamming them with products to often.

Content used for promotion

Content that is used for promotion is content that you write that promoter’s your blog. For example, it could be a blog post that outlines the rules of a competition you are having.

The main aim of writing this sort of content is to get your readers to spread your name and brand around and to increase your blog subscriber count.

Content to spread around on social media

This sort of content should be created to become viral on social media websites. The aim of the content is to be popular on websites such as Digg. By creating viral content, you will be receiving a lot of new visitors to your blog which hopefully, your content can entice them to stay and return.

Content to promote your content

The final type of content is content that promotes your existing content. For example, if you have written a lot of posts about a similar topic, you may wish to create a post that links to each of those items. It’s also a great way to bring your older content back to life.

So there are 6 types of content that you can write for your blog. Have you been using any of these on your blog? Please share it in the comments below.

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How To Build A Brand For Your Blog

May 17th, 2010 by Jack Cola 1 comment »

To create a successful blog, you need to develop a brand for your blog. A brand is essentially a recognisable name that people know information about. By creating yourself a brand, visitors can easily recognise you and talk about you which helps promote your blog.

So How Do You Create A Brand?

The first step is to offer your readers something. If you don’t have any products (or have content on your blog), it will be incredible hard to create a brand for yourself. So the very first step is having something that people want.

Have an Easy To Remember Site Name, Slogan, and Logo

For people to recognise your brand, you need to think of and create a name for your blog, a catchy slogan and logo. So when someone sees or hears about your site, they know what and who you are.

Keep A Consistent Blog Design

Find a theme, and stick with it – don’t change from on theme design to another. If your site looks completely different one day to the next, readers may get confused.

Build A Community

If you have a community around your blog, you are engaging with your readers. Ask them questions, respond to them and develop your brand to be helpful.

Be Consistent

If you are consistent with what you do, readers are less likely to visit your blog, thus promoting a negative image on your brand.

Be Out There

One final thing to mention is to be out there. If you are tucked away in your little corner of the internet, no one will find you and your brand will not exist. Interact with the online community in your niche, and help other’s out.

So how is your brand coming along?

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53 Reasons Why Readers Aren’t Coming To Your Blog?

May 15th, 2010 by Jack Cola No comments »

Have you been blogging for a while, and you haven’t increased your readers? Here’s a list of reasons why this may be the case.

  • You don’t provide readers with useful content
  • What you say, readers already know
  • You are just copying other people’s idea’s
  • There is to much information already out there
  • You are not writing your best content
  • You have no authority in your niche
  • Your writing has to many spelling and grammar mistakes
  • You aren’t doing enough marketing
  • You are doing too much marketing (spamming)
  • You write for Google and not for people
  • Your blog is always down
  • You make it hard for people to navigate around your blog
  • You have to many broken links
  • Your website is hard to find
  • You don’t have any content on your blog
  • You are not capturing your readers details such as email addresses to tell them to come back
  • You don’t know what you are talking about
  • People can’t understand your instructions
  • You don’t have any fresh idea’s to write about
  • You don’t read into the full story
  • You don’t spend enough time Blogging
  • You read more than you write
  • You failed English or you don’t speak English
  • Everything you do is put off until another day
  • You are not part of a community
  • You are too predictable
  • You don’t understand what blogging is
  • You don’t put yourself in your readers shoes
  • You don’t invest time, money, and effort into your blog
  • You hurt or mock your readers beliefs, values, and feelings
  • You don’t have any initiative or goals
  • You aren’t inspired by other people
  • You hate blogging
  • Your expect to much from yourself
  • You are too negative
  • You don’t see the whole picture
  • You don’t explore or take risks
  • You don’t make use of your opportunities
  • You have not analysed your strengths and weaknesses
  • Readers don’t know who you are
  • You always say “I can’t” or “I’ll do it later”
  • You don’t have a schedule or you do, but don’t stick to it
  • You don’t set a clear picture with your writing
  • You don’t analyse the information you have
  • You are against your competitors, not working with them
  • You are too secretive
  • Your content is lame
  • You don’t want to blog, or don’t have a passion for blogging
  • You are not consistent
  • You lie, or twist the truth
  • You break your promises
  • You think about yourself, and not about your readers
  • You spam your readers with ad’s to make money

So if you try and not do the following, you will  be well on your way to creating a successful blog. Do you have anything else that should go on this list?

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Setup Your Email List – Day 7 of 7 Day Challenge

April 11th, 2010 by Jack Cola 2 comments »

So today’s the last challenge. If you have been keeping up with the challenges, I hope your blog has improved.

Today’s challenge is to setup and create a mailing list for your blog. Having a mailing list, is a great way to build subscribers, and every blog should have one.

For this challenge, we are going to use MailChimp. The free account offers a maximum of 500 subscribers, and 3000 emails per month.

First of all, visit http://www.mailchimp.com, and click on the signup button. Feel free to browse the site and find out more information if you wish.

Once logged in, you have three options. One option is to create a list, the second option is to create a campaign, and the third is to create an autoresponder.

There are various help pages on mailchimp, and you should search around the site and get to know it. If used correctly, it is a very effective marketing tool.

That concludes the 7 day challenge, I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any comments about the challenge, please leave them in the comments.

» Read more: Setup Your Email List – Day 7 of 7 Day Challenge

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Guest Post On Other People’s Blog – Day 6 of 7 Day Challenge

April 10th, 2010 by Jack Cola No comments »

We are almost at the end of the 7 day challenge. Doesn’t time fly? Today’s challenge is an extension of day 4’s challenge. Your task today is to guest post on 5 blogs. Maybe ask your new friend that you made on day 4 to see if they allow you to guest post on their blog. If they do, that is great. But the challenge isn’t over yet. I said guest post on 5 blogs! If you already guest post on a few different blogs, that great, do it some more; but if you haven’t, find some blogs you can guest post on. I suggest signing up to MyBlogGuest.com and find some blogs that are looking for guest posters. It would also be a good idea to check out the article I wrote about people guest posting on your blog, to get an understanding of how the system works.

To get the most out of guest blogging, choose a blog that is in the same niche as you are in. This way, you could possibly get some new readers over to your blog. Make sure you careful read and abide by the host blogs terms!

Guest posting has a number of benefits, and is a proven way to increase your subscriber count dramatically, especially if you write a really good article on the host blog, and you have a really good articles on your blog to make them subscribe. If you have a solid topic, then this shouldn’t be too hard. Apart from building up subscribers, guest

Extra Challenge: If you are running short on ideas, why not have people to guest post on your blog? Your extra challenge is to write a guest post page that gives people information on how they can guest post on your blog.  Have a look at our guest blog page for example on guest blogging. Also, say that you are looking for guest posts over at MyBlogGuest.com.

Before you start to allow guest post, it is best to read about the things you must consider when people guest post on your blog.

Are you having trouble with the challenge? Ask for help in the comments. We would also like to know how you went with today’s challenge.

» Read more: Guest Post On Other People’s Blog – Day 6 of 7 Day Challenge

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Improve Your Blogs SEO – Day 5 of 7 Day Challenge

April 9th, 2010 by Jack Cola 1 comment »

I hope you have had success in finding a friend you can work with and to help each other out. It is now time to improve your friendship, but this time, it is with a robot. Yes you are going to for a relationship with Google and other search engines. Today’s challenge is to make your blog SEO friendly.

For this task, I am going to assume you have a WordPress blog. If you don’t, then you may not be able to perform some of the tasks I am going to discuss.

If you haven’t already installed the All In One SEO Plugin on your WordPress blog, it is a good idea that you do. This is a must have tool which you can download, or by searching for its name. Once installed, configure all the relevant settings, such as titles, description and keywords. The plug in isn’t that difficult to use – but gives you great results.

With All In One SEO Pack installed, go through each individual posts, and add a description to the post as well as adding keywords to it. Search engines will read this information, and display it, and not the actual content itself. So make sure you write something that will persuade the user to click on your link.

While you are editing each post, read through your content and see if you can interlink some of your newer posts to your older posts. Internal links is one factor that can improve your sites Page Rank, and it gives your visitors other articles that they may also find interesting and relevant to them. The more links you have on a page, the more chances of someone reading on through your blog. Plus, it also helps lower your bounce rate.

The next task for you to complete is to sign up with Google Webmasters Tools. This is a free tool by Google to help you analyse what keywords visiting are coming to your site on, and allow you to submit an RSS feed to help get your new posts index more quickly. Google Webmaster tools also have a number of other useful tools and reports that you should check out as well.

One other thing, to get the best SEO results and that is to post everyday. The more often you post new and unique content, the more pages Google can index, and the more entry points into your blog you have. You may also find these 10 SEO tips extremely useful for today’s challenge

In summary, you have two tasks to complete.

  1. Install All In One SEO Pack
  2. Sign up to Google Webmaster Tools
  3. Publish a post everyday

Extra Challenge: Use Google Keywords Tools, or other keyword tools to help come up with a list of 100 keywords that you can use for your blog. Every time you write a new post, try to include as many of these key phrases as you can. When you search for good keywords, low competition, and high search volume are they key criteria. But don’t over do it. Remember, write for people, and then write for Google.

Do you require more assistance with this challenge, or want to ask a related question? Please do so in the comments. We would also love to hear how you went.

» Read more: Improve Your Blogs SEO – Day 5 of 7 Day Challenge

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Find Blogging Friends and Form a Relationship – Day 4 of 7 Day Challenge

April 8th, 2010 by Jack Cola 1 comment »

How did you cope yesterday? Did you get some good results? We are now up to day 4 of the 7 day Creating A Successful Blog Challenge. Challenges are going to get a bit harder now, and today’s challenge will take a bit more time then previous ones. Today you are going to form a relationship/partnership with another blogger in your niche. Don’t be too stressed out if you have no idea how to go about this, we have some tips!

Find A Friend First

The first step to forming a relationship with another blogger is to find another blogger. Sounds simple doesn’t it. Well it is. You may already read other blogs in your niche, so you may have already found a successful candidate. If not, you better get out there and start looking.

Have a search for keywords in your niche in Google Blog Search, or other blog directories that you know of, and see if you can find any sites that you think you can form a relationship with the blogger. Make sure it is a site that is around the same age, and type as your blog with a similar subscriber count as you. As a tip, if they use Feedburner as their RSS feed, add /~fc/ in the URL between the.com and their feed URL, and if the count is enabled, you should be able to see how many subscribers they have.

If you aren’t having any luck, try doing search on related:yourblogdomain.com.

Still no luck? You can always visit commentators on other blogs that you have found to see if there site is related to you. Because you will be surprised how many people are in the same boat as you. If you want, comment on this post below your blog name and niche, and you may find your friend without leaving this page.

One final place I recommend that you look is over at Twitter. Go to the Twitter Search Page, type of few keywords and see if you find any people you think you want to be friends with.

You may also want to look into our Exclusive Group offer if you are eligible. This is an exclusive group of bloggers who work together to help build up each others blogs.

Don’t Rush Into It

Now that you have found a successful candidate to be friends with, don’t rush into it by asking them to be a friend with you straight away. Ease your way in. Comment on a few of his blogs posts. The author will regularly see your name appear, and he may comment back on your own blog. Also re-tweet some of their posts and submit them to social media websites that I mentioned in day 3. They may recognise you, and again, return the favour.

Now that your new friend is visiting your site as well, write an article that promotes one of his articles or his whole blog. You may read something over on their blog that you think is really interesting, so you may want to share it on your blog. Don’t directly copy his content, but take their main views, link to the post, and have a discussion about it. If you are unclear what I mean, do something like Tom from Build That List has done with me. (Please note that Tom has sold his site since that post was published)

Just Pop The Question

You should now be at a stage where you are commenting and re-tweeting on each others posts, and linking to each others posts in each others posts. It is now time to pop the question and contact the other blog to see if you can officially form some type of relationship/partnership/friendship. When you do so, make sure you introduce yourself (if you haven’t already in your comments), explain what you have done (promoted their work, re-tweeted), why it is a good opportunity to be friends, offer them something in return and then have a virtual bear or cocktail.

Extra Challenge: Form another two or three friends. Involve each other, promote each others work and help each other out.

If you have any questions about today’s challenge or would like some extra help, please ask in the comments below!

» Read more: Find Blogging Friends and Form a Relationship – Day 4 of 7 Day Challenge

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Spread Your Posts Around On Social Media Websites – Day 3 of 7 Day Challenge

April 7th, 2010 by Jack Cola 3 comments »

How are you coping so far? We are now up to day 3 of our 7 day Creating A Successful Blog Challenge. Today, your challenge is to explore social media websites, and submit some of your best content to these sites.

It sounds pretty simple doesn’t it? The main aim of today’s challenge is to get your posts circulating around on the internet. The first step of this task is to find 1 or 2 of your best posts. With these posts, you are going to submit them to as many social media websites as possible. I have put together an extensive list of social media websites that you can promote your content to in “Your Blogging Resource Hub” which you may want to join.

When you go looking through your blog’s post archive to find an article to promote, find a post that contains a lot of details and is thorough. You may even want to use your best performing article if it is lacking traffic from social media websites.

I can’t give out sites that would suit every blog’s niche, but some of the most popular sites include:

  • Digg.com
  • Reddit.com
  • StumbleUpon.com
  • Facebook.com

You may have other social media websites that you use, so post your content to them as well.

If you are regularly submitting your post to social media websites, or your readers are, you do not really have to complete this challenge. This challenge is only for new blogs that haven’t been discovered yet.

Extra Challenge: To further enhance your blog and gather new readers, setup a Facebook Fan page and get your readers to sign up to it. To get started, visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

» Read more: Spread Your Posts Around On Social Media Websites – Day 3 of 7 Day Challenge

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