I’ve left blogging until the end, because it really applies to all of the topics I’ve covered here. There are quite a few blog companies/sites you can go with, but I recommend using WordPress because it’s free and you can host it on your site (and thus, put your own ads on it). It also has the best functionality among the blog software I have researched.

Niche blog can be one of the most effective IM tools you can have. The search engines love them, because they’re updated frequently, they (usually) contain great content, and most of the time, they’re not trying to sell anything to their readers. (I’ll talk about how to do that in a bit).

Keeping Readers Interested

You really have to treat a blog like an email list. You have to build a relationship with your readers, and you do that through content. If you just slap a bunch of ads and promotions up on your blog, people won’t come. But if you provide good, fresh content, they’ll keep coming back again and again.

You should also stay away from posting blatant promotions. Blogs don’t work in quite the same way as most other things; the people who are reading your blog want information, not product pitches. So, instead of giving them the good ol’ “I use this and love it” from your email list promotions, concentrate on the product comparison and case study routes. This will arm your readers with the information they want, and give you the sales that you want. Win/Win, eh?

Getting Traffic

The first thing you need to do after you make a post is go to Pingoat and “ping” the search engines. This will let them know that you’ve added a post, so they can spider and index it. Now, don’t get over zealous with this, because if you ping them repeatedly, they’re going to think you’re spamming them, and de-list your blog, which is not good at all. Aside from pinging, you’ll want to utilize all of the traffic techniques I’ve mentioned in this book, because all of them can be great ways to get traffic to your blog.