The Three Learning Stages "How To Become A Professional Blogger"

In our previous post on skills required to become a successful pro blogger some commented that how is web designing related to the art of content writing. They are linked so tightly together that they are the loops that form the chain required to strengthen your online existence. Development in technology has broken all past records and new tools and gadgets are out in market every second. People are slowly turning their businesses Online. After 9/11 even IBM shifted to cloud computing, which means even they realized the importance of online media for their safety. Different Content Management systems like Joomla, Blogger and Wordpress are spreading like a crazy wave. Those who can afford are switching to Wordpress and those who can not stick to Blogger.  Since you are going to start a profession, that will serve the rapidly increasing internet population with ideas, tutorials, guides and resources, therefore to survive, you need to be extra ordinary in your skills. You must know how to make design changes to your webpage. You need to understand and learn how web hosting works, how data is transferred via ftp and how webpages are structured along with how to market your blog and skills smartly.

Note: These series in no way highlight me as a Pro Blogger. I prefer the title of a peanut blogger and would remain and live so always.

Pro Blogging SERIES

Part1: What skills are needed by a Professional Blogger?

Part2: "Three Learning Stages" To Become a Professional Blogger

Part3: Why Your Blog Makes No Money?

Part4: How Come Web Development is the Key To Become SIX FIGURE Blogger?

 

Should you Follow Pro Bloggers?

People like Darren Rowse, ZacJohnson and JohncHow are accidental millionaires. You should never take them as role models at initial stages for becoming a successful blogger but do follow them once you reach stage#3. They had started their careers 8-12 years ago when even social networks like Facebook was hatching out and new to the world. The traffic that they have today is due to those Golden days when competition was Zero to what it is today. To be simple and straight, you should follow them once you start earning at least $500 per month. Before this stage, following their tips wont help you a lot. Most of them talk about affiliate marketing and Ebook promotion. You can surely make money out of these two golden tools but first you need to build a repo online.

Blogging Learning Stages:

Stage#1:

Duration: 6 Months

Traffic: Zero

At this stage you must learn and apply the following:

1. Start a blog with blogger.com and never with free wordpress
2. Choose a Topic that may help you Make Money. You should not start writing on anything you like, only selected niches work wonders for a Blog. You need to be logical in the choice of your Blog Niche. People who often end up blogging career with disappointment are those who don't understand what drives money and what keywords actually mean. This will be discussed in Part-3 of the series
3. Submit your sitemap to Google, link to Yahoo.
4. Apply all SEO related tweaks to your template. This will turn you into a SEO. Give great focus to SEO articles published at MBT because we share everything here that would work for any blog, may it be running on wordpress or blogger or typepad.
5. Do not apply for Adsense! It comes in stage#2
6. Read tutorials on how to customize your template. This will polish your web designing skills. 
7. Keep learning and applying HTML and CSS3 tutorials
8. Write at least one Post per day of at least 500 words. Adopt the written formatted style of your favourite bloggers. See how they present their ideas with a post and how they format the text to make it appealing.
9. Always Write on social media no matter what your blog topic may be. Do mention Facebook and Google Plus updates to your readers and keep writing on them when the news is worth sharing. The initial push in traffic depends on social networking sites.
10. Buy a Custom domain

Stage#2:

Duration: After six months of your start. Lasts for Six more months

Traffic: Above 500 daily unique visitors

Now when you have been applying all tips of Stage#1, you qualify for stage#2. Here you should do this:

1. Apply for AdSense. Add 336 by 280 just below post titles. Enough! Add Text & image/rich media ads. You should not turn your blog into a fish market of ads. This wont increase your revenue, instead would discourage readership. Read next tip..
2. Give more importance to readership and less to Revenue for at least 1 Year.
3. Build your twitter, Facebook, Google Plus Fans and most importantly your RSS Subscribers. How? This will be answered in Part-4 of the series
4. Write Guest posts to build rich backlinks. Give your best shots with your guest posts. win the heart of the admin as well as his readers. There are many sites that accept guest posts. We accept guest posts from loyal subscribers only.
5. Don't waste time commenting on forums and blogs. Write only quality guest posts to drive PageRank juice and consistent inorganic traffic.
6. Work on your Alexa Rank. The best tip to improve Alexa is Post Frequency and nothing else. Keep your posts focused on social media to boost Alexa Rank.
7. Learn how Web Hosting works.

 

Stage#3:

Duration: stage3 1 year of your start. Lasts forever

Traffic: Above 1000 daily unique visitors

Target: Succeed in receiving 5000 visitors per day the second year of your blogging.

At the point where you succeed in receiving above 1k traffic daily, you then qualify for stage three.

1. Apply for Banner Ad services like BuySellAds
2. Don't increase the Ad spot prices when you start seeing sponsors. Maintain a fixed price for at least 20-30 days. Display no more than 12-15 Ad spots per page.
3. Never Compromise Blog load time for anything. Beauty matters too but use only those widgets that may help your visitors and do not add widgets just for the sake of attractive design.
4. Share posts based on Affiliate Ads.
5. You can now confidently Follow Pro Bloggers! Learn their Marketing strategies and apply them.
6. Increase your post frequency and make sure to increase traffic by 200%. You must now be able to understand what brings traffic.
7. Choose Topics wisely now and keep fascinating readers with free goodies and resources
8. Write at fixed time and don't just publish posts randomly at any time you find your post ready. Schedule your posts to a fixed time. This boosts Alexa greatly.
9. Start valuing every single hour in a day. Work at most 6-8 hours per day.
10. You sole purpose should be now building readership, maintaining traffic, interacting with readers more and more.
11. Keep reading on how to Choose Ad spots wisely.
12. Choose just one Affiliate product and promote it
13. Subscribe to biggest technology blogs and keep yourself updated with latest developments. Publish a post on biggest headlines always!
14. Be polite in your tone even if someone tries to pull your legs.
15. Each day you must see a change in your Alexa Rank, Fan Count, Subscriber count and unique visitors and PageViews.
16. Always keep an eye on your competitor. If you think he has shared something you have not yet published then do not wait just post on it in your own unique style with more enhancements.
17. Be unique in your tone, style and strategy. Success will be waiting at your doors to Hug you soon.

Need Help?

If there is anything I could not clearly explain just let me know pals. I tried to be as honest in sharing this valuable information as I could. I have share almost everything that I have learnt so far. Indeed due to lack of time I could not explain some points in detail but I am sure once we publish the remaining parts of this series, you will have a clear picture in mind about how blogging is done and practiced.

Do let me know how much did this post help you in making your minds clear and in guiding you to the straight and correct track. Peace and blessings buddies. :)