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A Blog in a Million

By Elle N. Dee

There are millions of blogs on the Internet. In fact, there are a very large number of regular websites about blogs and blogging. For every niche and subniche, there are thousands, even millions of blogs. For every person’s opinion or personal crusade, there are millions more.

The trick is to make yours stand out from the crowd and capture your readers. The ways to accomplish this are very similar to the steps you’d take to develop a unique spin for a product you’d plan to sell in your niche. Essentially, your blog is your first Internet product, and you would position and market it to attract and build a relationship with loyal readers.

So you’ve got a great idea for a blog? Just like the process of developing a product, all blogs start with an idea. But what makes your idea different? This is very important, especially if you are going to write a blog aimed at the blogger audience. Since this niche is so competitive, you will have to fill a need that no other site is offering. Failing that, you will have to outdo your competition by over-delivering valuable content to your reader — better yet, position yourself to do both. This applies to every niche, not just one focused on the blogging community.

One way to see if you can offer something unique to your audience is to research your competition. The most common way to do this is to search Google for blogs in your niche and visit them. Another method is to search your niche at Alexa, which ranks websites according to their traffic. Take a look at what they are doing. Study their pages and what topics they are focusing on. Then add your own voice, experiences, and personality to their strategy.

This is a very neglected step that most people skip when starting their blog. They get their great idea and put up their blog… then wonder where the traffic is. This might take you a week, but the time you spend doing it will not be wasted. It will pay you dividends in the ultimate success of your blog. You might even discover an approach that none of the competing sites are using.

Once you’ve reached this point, you need to develop a plan to attract attention and readers to your blog. This is where your content plays a big role. You’ll need lots of it, and it has to keep appearing several times a week, if not daily. Content attracts traffic to your blog. Your voice might hook the reader on that first visit, but it is your quality content that will keep him returning frequently to keep up with your posts. You will lose your readers quickly if you fall behind on adding new posts and articles.

Elle N. Dee writes for The Blog Ladies which offers tips and tools, plus a free AdSense WordPress niche theme and “Cash Blogging for Beginners” ebook at Niche Blog Designs.

Tags: blogs, publishing