So you want to be a blogger? You want to quit your wonderful 9-5 job and work from home, make your own hours, come and go as you please and just hopefully enjoy your life and freedom a bit more. I got news for you; it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s certainly not easy, and it’s not going to be something that just happens overnight. If you want to do this full time, don’t quit your day job as you most likely won’t get rich from blogging.

I’ve been doing this for several years now for my own sites and other sites. Sadly, over the years, I’ve developed bad habits, and most likely you will too. It is human nature after all; we get into habits of doing things, or not doing things as the case may be.

When you first start out blogging you’ll do it because you think you enjoy it, notice I said ‘think’ there. When you start out you’ll have the best intentions, you’ll want to do it every day, or multiple times per day. You’ll update your blog all the time, but after a while you won’t do it as often. Or not, you might be one of the few that succeeds.

If you really want to be a blogger, professionally, when you start there are a few things to keep in mind. These aren’t in any real order though; just thoughts tossed together more or less as I think of things.

In the beginning the most important thing is the topic of your blog. I don’t think I can stress that enough, it’s the most important part of your blog, and it’s actually a part of you essentially. The topic should be something that you are not only passionate about but it should be something that you know very well. It should be half passion and half knowledge really. The topic should be what you enjoy; it should be what you know about. If you look around pretty much every topic out there is taken so you’ll need to do something to make yours different than the others. You’ll need to be unique and certainly differentiate yourself from others out there. A lot of what I do is product reviews, so my topic is sort of hard to be different really; tech itself is a very broad subject. Part of the topic should also be the name of your blog; it’s hard these days to find a domain name as most all are taken, not by people using them but by squatters who just hold onto names hoping to sell them at a profit. You can get lucky though sometimes and find the name you want.

The next thing you’ll want to do is come up with a design for your blog. Depending on your knowledge this can be hard and rather tricky. I personally learned as I went because I wanted to do things myself, but you could hire someone to help you. Chances are you’ll use WordPress, it’s the most common blogging platform out there and it’s easy to learn and use. The easiest thing to do is find a free template then modify it to your needs like changing colors and the basic design. The problem there is you’ll have watch for copyright info. Many people put out free templates but with the caveat that you can only modify it so much, like leaving in certain links back to the creator. That’s the cheapest way to do things, you can get templates inexpensively though and modify them how you want to and not worry much about copyrights and links, but template can also be rather expensive to license. If you’re just starting out you most likely aren’t making much money so free is the way to go in the beginning. One other thing about free templates is that most likely there are already hundreds if not thousands of other sites out there using that template so you’ll be spending a lot of time making it your own. If you have the extra cash though you could pay someone to design a site to your specifications but that can get very costly and you’ll have to find someone who knows what they’re doing. Finding someone to help you though can be tricky, it’s the internet and finding someone who’s actually trustworthy can be an issue. The best thing to do is find a reputable service or even find someone you know to help you. If it’s someone you know though, don’t expect a discount, especially if it’s a family member. Just because you know them doesn’t mean you’ll get a discount and it doesn’t mean they’re available for you 24/7. Knowing computers as I do people think they can call me all the time and have me do stuff for them and not pay me, then they’ll actually get mad at me because I don’t have the time to do something for them which I’m not getting paid for. So look around and see what people are charging for the service and expect to pay close to that.

If you’re doing it yourself remember the colors should match, they should flow and go together. Make sure to pay attention to the contrast between the text and the background. There’s nothing worse than visiting a site and finding it just hard to read. Speaking of text, watch your fonts, don’t use all sorts of different fonts, pick one or two or even three and stick with them. Maybe use one font for your titles and then another for the rest of the text, and then maybe another font for sidebars, but that’s about it.

On the topic of writing make sure every post has a good title, not just some generic thing. Try and make sure it relates to your post and that it’s interesting. People will read the tile and right there decide whether or not to keep reading the rest of the post. Following the title you need a nice strong introduction or opening paragraph, here you’ll hook your reader in and make them want to read more. Then the closing paragraph could be a summary of everything you said, it all depends on the subject matter of your blog. Make sure you ask questions in your posts, you want people to contribute or participate and interact with you. You might just learn something from the comments you receive.

Another tip is images and resizing them. I learned quickly that you shouldn’t use the full sized images your camera takes in your blog. We all like to look at pictures on blogs but if you use the original pictures they can be megabytes in size and your site will have to load each of them and it will slow the site down considerably in some cases. Resize the pictures before you upload them to your blog, don’t let the HTML do it for you as it’s still loading the original pictures and resizing them taking time and resources. If you’re doing a lot of pictures take them at full size and resize them down. You can always downsize pictures but when you try and upsize them it usually never works.

The next thing you’ll want to think about is hosting for your site. If you’re first starting out you’ll want to go inexpensive. You can upgrade your hosting as your site grows, there’s no real reason to jump in and pay for a full dedicated, uber-powerful server if you’re not getting any visitors, it just makes no sense to essentially waste the money on hosting you’re not using. The other school of thought is to do that though, so it all depends on your cash flow and your thoughts on it.

Working from home can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. Sure it’s great to wake up and grab your coffee and sit around in your pajamas while at your desk, but you may have a tendency to sleep in which in some cases doesn’t matter much really. I’ve got kids so normally I’m up to take them to school early in the morning, unless they’re off then I sleep in as well. There’s also the possibility of getting too comfortable, and even going so far as taking a nap in the middle of the day. Time management is something that people who work from home have the greatest problem with, that and I think second would be distractions. You’re on the internet you’ll most likely be browsing searching for things, watching some interesting video, and time will just pass, you’ll be sitting there and a couple hours will just go by. The best thing to do is make yourself a schedule, just like you would if you were working a 9-5 job. Blogging though, isn’t really a 9-5 job, I’ve come to learn that it’s something you do all the time really, and so doing a schedule can be hard. You could though make a schedule for certain things, or set time limits for yourself. Time limits for work but also for your own enjoyment time. Expect to work all the time really, well depending what your subject is anyway.

You’re in this to make money most likely right? Making money online is a tricky thing; sure you can sign up for all the ad services like Adsense or Infrolinks and/or dozens of others out there but without traffic you won’t make any money. The old adage that you need to spend money to make money is very true on the internet, you need to advertise. Just like any real business you’ll need to set a budget for yourself. When you first start out you’ll be spending more than you’re taking in, but it’s like that with any business so there’s no surprises there. I can’t tell you how to advertise, there are plenty of options out there, but I can tell you to use a reputable service. On the internet if it sounds too good to be true then it is. Someone offering you hundreds of thousands of hits for ten or fifteen dollars is most likely a scam. Sure you’ll get the hits but they’re not worth anything really. It’s not ‘real’ traffic most likely.

There’s plenty more I could say I’m sure, but this is just the basics.

Are you a blogger? What are some of your tips for time management? Do you like working from home? Have you come up with a system that works for you?

This is a guest post from Kristofer Brozio at TestFreaks.com, a gadget review site. TestFreaks is the world’s largest review comparison site with over 10 million reviews and 30 sites worldwide. We help 6 million consumers every month find better product information at our TestFreaks sites.

You’ve likely heard the old phrase that permeates through online web marketing forums and message boards – Content is King. Why is this? In an online environment where videos are growing in popularity and the average visitor reads about 20% of a page, what makes high quality web content so necessary for success? Well, as you begin to explore the scope and value of content, you might find that there is no single more profitable investment that your online business or web site can make than high quality web content.

Search Engine Optimization

One of the more obvious reasons that high quality web content is necessary for success comes in the form of search engine optimization. Good content is written in a way that includes the main keywords that should be addressed on a specific web page. When the crawlers come to view your site from Google, they will be looking for how relevant your content is for a search term. Although there are other factors, you can generally expect that the more relevant a page of content is to a search term, the higher your web site will rank for that specific term.

However, there is another factor – one that high quality web content can also address. The ranking of a web site also depends on the amount of back links that are pointed at it. A back link is exactly how it sounds – a link back to your web site. However, you cannot secure back links without high quality web content. If the back links are pointing at a web site that is not sufficiently relevant to a topic, the crawlers will know.

Web Site Visitors

If you only need one reason to invest in high quality web content, this should be it. The better the quality of the content on your web site, the more likely a web site visitor will:

• Trust your opinions or statements
• Order your product or service
• Continue reading other information on your web site
• Recommend your web site to your friends
• Consider trading a link with you

This reason makes it apparent why it simply isn’t enough to draft content from an SEO standpoint. The robots may like your content but if the human visitors that you are relying on to pay your bills do not, your web site is worthless.

Consider an example:

Two physical stores are built directly across the street from one another. One store launches an aggressive advertising campaign, clearly states their name and service on the enormous sign and sells the exact same products as store B. However, once you enter the store, the shelves are a mess, the products are broken and there is no one available to assist you.

Now, store B has a simple sign that says only their name and service. Once you enter, the shelves are clearly organized and labeled, the products are in new condition and there are plenty of associates waiting to help you out.

Sure, store A likely had droves of visitors when they first opened. However, you can be almost certain that store B was ultimately successful. When you compare this example to content, the difference between high quality web content and poor content is clear. If you begin with high quality web content and work to improve your traffic as you improve your web site, you have a very good chance of being successful and seeing good results. Start a web site with poor content and you’ve already failed.

Corry Cummings owns a content creation company, called Content Customs. They provide a variety of different writing services for webmasters and small businesses. For more information on developing high quality content for your site you can also check out his blog over at Content Customs.

Local search is becoming one of the most affordable and simple ways for local businesses to connect with prospects and get involved in their community. Did you know that 82 percent of local searches online result in further action: a phone call, site view, in store visit or immediate purchase?* With statistics like this, creating and optimizing your local presence is more important than ever.

The reality is, there are many facets to optimizing for local- including on-page factors such as title tags and meta data, and utilizing your geographic modifiers with your keywords as you optimize your content. While each component is important, one of the most critical pieces is off page: your local listing. For Google, these listings are often given prime placement- right at the top of the page. This placement is key, providing local businesses with visibility that was previously unattainable.

Here are 10 easy steps to help your listing get in to that coveted “7-Pack”.

1. Submit your listing. This step alone is the most important. Just submitting and verifying gives your listing a higher level of trust with the big G.
2. Include your city name and industry in your title. This is helpful not only for the search engines when aggregating results, but also for users as it reiterates your location and helps your listing to stand out.
3. Choose the categories for your listing wisely. Google local business center gives a plethora of choices for the categories for your listing. Make sure to thoroughly look through and pick those that best suit your products and services.
4. Be thorough in your description section. This is the most content you can provide about your business in your listing, so make it count! Be descriptive and give people a reason to choose you over your competitors.
5. Use a local phone number. Providing a local number helps the search engines ascertain that you are located where you say you are.
6. Ensure your listing is 100% complete. This is one of the simplest, and most effective steps to do. Include pictures, videos, coupons, etc. Google is all about the user experience and the more complete your listing, the more helpful it looks to them.
7. Be sure there is only one, optimized listing for your business. I have seen this make a huge difference in the position of a business listing. Make sure to research and find any existing listings, claim them and suspend or optimize where necessary.
8. Update your listing whenever you can. It can be as simple as adding a new coupon, but ensuring your content is current helps Google know that you are relevant and provide up-to-date information.
9. Reviews for your business are essential. In certain industries, the amount of reviews you have (positive or negative!) can mean the difference between first and second page for your listing. Try encouraging reviews from satisfied customers.
10. Make sure your information is accurate and submitted to other directories as well. Google actually aggregates information from other directories, along with the information you provide when you submit. It’s recommended to submit, standard information to as many other local directories as you can to ensure accuracy.

It’s really that simple to get started with your local listing. While there are no guarantees, optimizing can have an extremely positive impact on your listing position. Have any tips from your experience with local listings? We’d love to hear them!

*Source: TMP/comScore, October 2008

Emily Thompson is the Online Marketing Coordinator for Kutenda Internet Marketing Software. Kutenda offers software and services for small businesses to succeed in online marketing and grow their business.

We all know that it takes hard work to get the project going and continue. Managers need to be realistic about the expectations that they set forth in the beginning of a project. Overdelivering or scope creep on a scope of a project is common because there are a number of factors including how well people communicate within the internal and external project members. Yet, the 70 percent failure rate from their original scope. This is why creating a great relationship with your project members prior to starting the project is one of the most important aspects of the project.

This is where I want to focus my attention into what is called making “magic” amongst project managers and their stakeholders. By being open and share moments like going for a group dinner or playing a common sport outside of work hours, you bring a new personal bond to the work environment so to speak that increases communication and thereby increasing productivity and efficiency. Project managers (and many operations managers) fail to do this simple exercise because they do not see the relevance in making friends with their co-workers. But it has everything to do with gaining trust and respect with each other. Also, be sure to provide encouragement for each of them. Ultimately, this becomes the vehicle for buy-in to all stakeholders involved. Not only that, your work ethic will be remembered by each individual on the team. This often overlooked ability is what sticks in their minds and can be an asset when you’re looking for new opportunities.

For those working remotely, make the attempt to try and speak with your colleagues’ in their mother tongue. This shows them that you are open minded and are making extreme efforts to ensuring to connect with them. They will appreciate the fact that you respect them as people and they see you as being a globally open minded person. If you’re in the country and working remotely, incent them by rewarding them with sending them gift cards (Starbucks is a great gift all year round). That gives them the option to use it personally, or for themselves (often while working on your project). It becomes a win-win for all parties to keep team morale up and increases your chances of getting your deliverables accomplished.

Victor is the key consultant at Clarity Live Global.  He focuses on progressive management and development which connects everyone’s ideas and efforts within the workplace and the community be it online or off.  He’s worked at small startups and large conglomerates focusing on bringing about positive change.