But every time, and it’s not important, if it was success or failure, you have to learn from it as much as possible. It’s because you must avoid wrong behavior and continue proper actions.

So today, you can find here 10 lessons learned from the first month of blogging on NoPassiveIncome.com.

In reality, this blog was started at the beginning of this year, but in January and February only some posts were published, without any marketing effort. Work on this blog was restarted in the middle of April, so the first, full time month of blogging was May 2012.

 10 Lessons Learned from First Month of Blogging

 1.       Build Great Blog First

It is one of the most important (and difficult) things – If you want to be a successful blogger, you should have great base for it. And concern not only on appearance and content of the blog – there is a lot of other things, you must care about – visibility in social media, strong relationships with other bloggers, SEO, link building, credibility of you and your blog.

If you want to have great content on your blog, please start with reading two of our articles about it:

10 Article Writing Tips, How to Write Killer Article

How To Attract Your Blog Posts – 20 Tips For Normal People

 2.       Make Strong Relationships with Other Bloggers

As I wrote above, having great content isn’t enough –it’s only beginning. You have to build close relationships with other bloggers. Two most important steps in building such type of relationships are commenting on other blogs and guest posting. If you don’t know, how it should be performed, please read following posts:

How Commenting May Help You Build Your Credibility And Traffic For Your Blog

and

Great Guest Post and another 9 Secrets of Guest Blogging

3.       Give First, Take Later

If you really want to build great and devoted audience around your blog, you must offer them something special. So, prepare for giving, not for taking. For example you can create some series of killer articles or lists, where you can link to other sites, blogs and resources. Below you can find two killer lists, which may be helpful for every blogger

Top 100 Websites for Bloggers

150 Great Topics and Ideas for Bloggers

 4.       Participate in Social Networks

There are a lot of social networks. We have Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest,  LinkedIn and lot’s more. Even for bloggers we have plenty of networks – for example Bloggers.com or Networkedblogs.com. It’s almost impossible to participate in all of them, but you must try to be here Relationships make on social networks are almost as valuable, as direct relationships with other bloggers. In May I concentrated my effort on Bloggers.com and on Twitter. But except networking, you should make something special, for example tutorial for chosen network:

How to use Twitter – tutorial for beginners

 5.       Don’t Consume, Create

Reading other blogs, participating in social networks or even commenting on other blogs is very good for you, especially on the beginning of your blogging way. But all of these activities are “passive” – you consume others work.

So stop consuming and try creating something new – write article for your blog, prepare guest post for others blogs or create an ebook, which may be used by you on your blog.

Spending your whole time on reading other stuff will cause, that you will waste your time for blogging. Your time is your money, so don’t waste it, because Blogging isn’t passive income

6.       Concern Your Effort on 1-3 Things at The Same Moment

Making a lot of things, at the same time, is very ineffective. As a blogger you must prepare great articles for your blog, make relationships with other bloggers and build traffic for your blog. If you don’t have enough money for outsourcing it, and you aren’t problogger, you must do it by yourself.

For good results of your work you must prioritize your activities and concern on 1-3 tasks. For example – in one week(month) concern on 1-3 social networks, comment on 1-3 other blogs, be active on 1-3 forums, etc.

7.       Fight with Distractions

Distractions are very dangerous and time consuming blockers for you and your blog. Only you know how much time you spend on Facebook, Pinterest or by reading emails. Here you can find some tips, how to fight with major distractions.

Top 10 distractions of work in online business – how to operate with them

8.       Traffic First, Monetization Later

As you can find in one of the first articles on this blog (Goals for this blog), goal of this site isn’t making money. And even if your goal is to make money from blogging, firstly you must build credibility and huge traffic for your blog. If you will do it in the wrong order, you will fail, because people will not read your blog…

9.       Monitor Your Progress

If you want to know, where you are, you must monitor your progress. You can analyze your stats, your followers, your fans or even amount of your subscribers.

I’ll give you some examples of numbers for this blog:

So you can see huge progress in Alexa rank, Bloggers.com and in Twitter followers. Amount of Facebook fans is really small , but in May I didn’t make anything to get Facebook fans (and for the next two months I’ll continue it).

And here you can see graph of stats for NoPassiveIncome.com since the beginning of this year:

You can see here, that internet users start visit my site in May

10.   Don’t Give Up

This problem concerns all of the bloggers – beginners and probloggers. Sometimes we feel tired, exhausted and unmotivated. There are a lot of reasons for that – too much work, drop in statistics, only virtual contact with other people or even noisy environment at your work place.

But you must be strong and don’t give up – you are BLOGGER, and bloggers don’t give up!

And how about your experience? What are your most important lessons learned? Do you remember your first month of blogging? Or maybe it was long time ago and you don’t remember it? Please share your lessons learned with us.

But why guest blogging is so popular?

Let’s go into some facts. Most of privately hold blogs, are updated once or twice a week (or even less often). There are only few blogs, which are updated on daily basis.

Why?

It’s not because bloggers don’t like to post or don’t know, what they should post about – mostly it’s because they don’t have time for blogging. Solution for this problem is really simple – guest blogging. In my opinion, it has only advantages.

Blogger, who is writing guest post, has a new audience. Readers of the blog, where the guest post is placed, can read some new content and become acquainted with another point of view. And the owner of the blog also has profits from it – he or she get free (and mostly very good) content for the blog. Besides, it saves his or her TIME – and it’s very important!

So, how to prepare for this win-win action – read our tips

10 Secrets of Guest Blogging

1)      Find proper blogs for your guest posts

Firstly, you should find 5-10 blogs, which are in your niche. You should check, if their owners are open for guest blogging (there is a little amount of bloggers, which doesn’t agree for guest post on their blogs), and which type of articles they are waiting for. If you can’t find, if it’s possible to place your guest post on the blog, please gently ask about it – you may send an e-mail to the Blogger.

2)      What’s cool on the blog?

If you have found at least 5 proper blogs for your guest post, you must decide, on which you want to write this time. After making a decision, spend at least 10 minutes, investigating who is reading the blog and which articles has the most amount of comments. A lot of comments below the article means, that it’s cool on the blog. Besides, on some blogs posts with a lot of comments are promoted in the sidebar. So, try to write your post in “cool” category, but remember about one thing – bloggers don’t accept articles, which were already published. They don’t like duplicated stuff…

3)      Quality is a king!

This is most important thing in almost all aspects of blogging, and especially in guest blogging. If your guest post will be weak, how do you think, will it be published by somebody? I assure you, it won’t be. Besides, it’s better to don’t have guest post, than having guest post with poor quality. Nobody will read it, and your reputation as a writer may suffer. So, your great guest post should be really great!

4)      Use proper linking strategy for your guest post

If you want to get some “link juice” from your guest post, you should also give something from you. Spend some time looking for similar topics on the blog and link to them inside your guest post. The same is with your backlinks – find some useful posts on your blog and link to them. But be very careful with it – if your post will have too much links (comparing to length of your article) it may be treated to spammy. So, like Google said – it should be good for your readers

5)      Put some live into your post

Include images, tables or videos into your guest post. It makes your post easier to read and optically diversify the text. Don’t allow your post to look like a phone book – who will read it? Some of the blog owners add pictures on their own. But ask them – maybe they want to get “fullpackage” of your guest post?

6)      Create landing page on your blog

Prepare landing page on your blog for new readers. If you made a free ebook (as a gift for signing into your e-mail list), please try to prepare your guest articles around the topic of the ebook.  If it’s not possible, prepare some related articles on your blog. They should be related with your guest post, of course. If you already have your landing page or related articles, link back to them in your guest post (using your smart linking strategy of course ).

7)      Make it easy to publish

Preformat your post in order to make the publication as easy, as possible. If you prepare your article easy to publish, your host will be very grateful to you. So you should check, how your guest post may look. Take into consideration titles, boldings, bullets, HX tags, etc. The best solution is to send it in two formats  – in MS Word (doc) and in html (you can prepare it on your blog and copy text from html view in your WordPress).

8)      Promote your guest post

Finally, after publishing your article, you may think it’s over – but it’s not. You should notify your blogosphere about your guest post. You may use Facebook and Twitter for it. Even your own blog may be good for it – you can write a short info about it, send it to your subscribers or even ask your blog commentators what do they thing about it – there is a lot of possibilities for doing it.

9)      Follow and answer comments below your guest post

There is one more thing, after publishing and promoting your post. Try to start (if it’s not started yet) a discussion below the post. Most comments = most traffic to your blog. Try to answer on each comment. It’s not needed, that you answer on all of them separately. You may answer on some of them in one comment. And be ready for criticism or another point of view– everyone has each own mind, which may be different from yours.

10)  Don’t give up

On some blogs you may find information, that guest posts are welcome. So you spent a lot of hours on preparing great guest post, sent it to the owner of the blog and… Nothing’s happened. It’s normal situation. Most popular bloggers get hundreds of guest posts each month. And only some of them will be published. Besides, they examine guest posts not every day, but once or twice a month. So you must be patient and don’t give up, in case your post will be rejected.

For example in May, I prepared 3 guest posts – two of them are accepted:

3 Vital Tips For Creating A Successful Blog

20 SEO Tips for Beginner Bloggers

Unfortunately one of my guest posts isn’t accepted yet (what’s more, I even didn’t get any response about this guest post). But I’m patient…

And what’s your experience with guest blogging? Are all of your guest posts accepted or not? Or maybe you want to write guest post for us? Please tell us about it below!

So, you want to write an article or post, which will fall your competition into oblivion, right?
Or, maybe you want to have a lot of viral backlinks to your post?
It doesn’t matter, what’s your reason for doing it – if you want doing it, you have to write a killer article.
Most of the bloggers persuade, that killer article should be long – I don’t agree with them.
For me killer article is something, which is as essential, as possible, and as short, as possible. Simply saying – it should be PITHY

So, what are the 10 tips for writing killer article?

1. Write for your readers.

You may think – are you joking? Of course I’m writing for them.
Are you sure? Maybe you are writing for your blog, for Google or for You itself?
I know, that writing about your monthly income is very interesting for you and for some of your readers too. But how do you think – how many bloggers or other site owners will link to your 667th report about your earnings? I assure you – I wouldn’t (but I know one “smart” blog, in which earning reports are brilliant!).

2. Carefully choose topic of your article

Please find, what people in your niche are looking for. What are they problems, what’s controversial, what’s HOT at the moment. People like reading guides, how to articles, advises for newbies, etc. Some interviews, rankings and even breaking news (but you should be the first) also may become a killer post for you

3.      Carry out a little investigation and research a competition

Maybe it sounds a little strange, but you  have to know, if someone didn’t write a killer article on almost the same topic before you. It’s important, especially if your niche is really small and bloggers knows each other.

4.      Respect time of your readers

You should write your articles as good as possible. But remember – there is so much other sites and blogs on the web, that it’s not enough for your article to be killer one. So you should save time of your readers – if you are writing about something, but you don’t have time to explain it in details – refer to it by linking for proper source. If you don’t know where it is, you should find it and share this knowledge with other. And don’t waffle!

5.      Try to make your article as a point list.

People love to read lists. Even going to shopping, they prepare a list of  goods for buying. So why don’t  make them happy? Besides, post written as a list is easier readable.

6. Plan some time for writing your powerful article.

Maybe you are a SUPER Writer – I’m not. If you also aren’t , read carefully this point. You killer article must be good or better than good. And as we all know, good things need time for preparing them – just like your article. If you don’t have at least 1 hour – don’t even try for preparing something good. Most of my articles take me about 2-4 hours. But some of them take me a little longer…

7. Use PROPER keywords in your article

It means, that you should find keywords related not only with the topic of your post, but also with the whole blog. At best, your keywords must be SEO competitive – a lot of searches in Google should be done for them and a few people should write articles using them. For finding your keywords you may use Google Keyword Tool – it’s free tool or Market Samurai – free trial you can find here

8. Add some related images, photos or videos to your article.

It liven up an article and your readers will read it more curious. There is a lot of services with free, almost free or paid stuff (Flickr.com, www.sxc.hu, www.freeimages.co.uk, fotolia.com, istockphoto.com), which you may use to illustrate your blog. One important thing, before you take a tour looking for your free image – please read copyrights carefully.

9. Link up to other articles or resources

If it’s needed, you should link to related articles or posts. It’s impossible to cover the whole topic in one short (as I wrote at the beginning – it should be short) article. So if you have something more to say – please prepare (or find) another article and link to it from your post. It’s better, than having never-ending article (who the hell will read it?).

10. Write and publish it!

A lot of people is working on something endless. I know, that in your article a lot of things may be written better. But you are THE BLOGGER – you need to write posts and share them with your readers. So – what are you waiting for – go ahead and write your killer article NOW!

Do you have another tips for killer article? Or maybe you don’t agree with mine? Please comment below