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Being a professional blogger is not easy if you are not passionate about it. You can’t simply write for money. You make money from blogs when you are dedicated and completely passionate about it. I still don’t consider myself a professional blogger because I am involved with so many things right now that it is sometimes difficult to keep up with my blogs. I own several forums and blogs but, MasterMind Blogger is one of my favorite ones and I do my best to provide the ultimate tips to my readers.

Professional Blogging involves a lot more commitment and planning. I love blogging and helping out people to get success online. I have learnt a lot from my past experiences and mistakes and I will try to bring out all the information to the table so you all can benefit.

So What is this Professional Blogging?

Professional blogging requires complete passion and dedication. You must be committed to it all the time. Your blog should have a dedicated niche and also a targeted audience. Let’s make this easier by giving examples: John Chow talks about how to make money online and that is his niche. He makes money by telling people how to make money online and people who want to make money online are his audience. Same goes for Darren Rowse from Problogger; he writes about how to make a better blog and succeed online which is his niche. In this blog, I write about how to build a successful blog, make money online and making the best use of social media tools and network. Every blog must have a niche and a targeted group.

1. Choose the Best Brand Name for Your Blog

Brand names are very important because it tells a lot about your blog. They give the first impression to a visitor. Problogger clearly tells you that it is related to blogging and definitely professional blogging. Entrepreneurs-Journey would attract any entrepreneurs or people who are interested to set up their own businesses.

There are tons of blogs that have taken all the names you can possibly think of. You can’t get learnblogging dot com or professionalblogger dot com but you can definitely find one similar to these and make use of it. Take this blog as an example. Why did I choose MasterMind Blogger? It sounds cool and it is dedicated in helping you create your first profitable blog.

You can Google several popular blogs and try to find similar names but go your way; get a unique one that stands out; the one that reflects your brand.

Also, secure the names on popular social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Find out if your brand name is available with them. This is very important because these social media tools will greatly help your blog grow.

2. Choose the Best Host

Hosting is very important because this is where you will save all your blogging details and data. There are some hosts that shut you down for getting massive traffic to your blog and this can be a big loss and annoying. If you are serious about blogging and making money online then you must be prepared to invest some money on the best web hosting. Believe me, its dirt cheap these days. I would recommend WpWebHost or JustHost because I am with them for a while and had no such big issues.

3. Choose the Best Blogging Platform

WordPress is by far the best blogging platform I have ever seen. All the top and popular bloggers use WordPress without doubt. Although, I won’t say that other platforms such as typepad and bloggers are bad because famous author and founder of Squidoo, Seth Godin uses typepad for his personal blogging; I just prefer WordPress because it is user friendly and simply awesome. Whatever you choose (I know it will be WordPress), choose it wisely.

4. Get the Best Design and Appearance for your Blog

Design and appearance will give your visitors the first impression. If they don’t like it, they will simply leave, PERIOD! All the good blogs have the best designs because they are serious about blogging. If you think you want to be a pro blogger and have the ability to take your blog to the next level then try to work with a good designer. There are tons of freelance designers out there for hire who can provide very decent designs for a good price.

I haven’t worked much with designs because at the moment, my blog is neat; I hope you agree with me. I know some coding plus Photoshop so I try to take care of my blogs. But, there are hundreds of reasons why you should get a pro designer to design your blog.

Most of my blogs run on Thesis which is one of the best themes so far. It is built in such a way that the author/blogger can easily navigate, design, post, change colors with a simple click. If you are a newbie, get Thesis and get started with your blogging right away.

5. Learn the Basic SEO and How to Implement It

SEO which is the short form of Search Engine Optimization plays a vital role for taking your blog to the next level. You might have no knowledge about it but if you Google; you will find a lot to learn about it. If your blog doesn’t get listed on the search engines then you won’t get enough traffic and will lack in revenues. To get noticed and well ranked in the popular search engines such as Google, yahoo, you must know the basic of SEO and implement in on your blog. I would recommend you take some time and check out Matt Cutts blog; you can learn a lot from it.

6. Say NO to Advertising Banners and Affiliate Marketing

If you have noticed, a lot of blogs can’t resist the temptation of putting up banners and filling the pages with affiliate links instead of valuable content. You MUST not do that. If you want to be a professional blogger, you need to build up your reputation first. You must provide value to your blog and show that your content is worth reading. Once you reach a certain level, you can consider putting up some banners and links to attract advertisers. But the main purpose of blogging is to provide valuable information to the public.

7. Write At least 1 Pillar Article a Week

I have mentioned this before in my previous posts that pillar articles are really important especially for the new bloggers. Articles such as How-To and tutorials bring in great traffic and remain popular all the time.  Try to write at least one pillar content a week.

8. Keep Up With Your Blog, Write Frequently and Write Quality Content

So now you have setup everything for your blog, all you need to do is keep up with you blog and engage in conversations. To be a professional blogger, you need to post at least five times a week. Always remember, quality and unique content is the main key to blogging success. Never copy and paste articles on your blog, this can piss off the original authors. Stick to your niche and be passionate about what you are writing on. Once you reach the level when you can consider yourself a ProBlogger, you can take it easy and come back to this blog and tell me that you finally did it.
I hope you had fun reading this and hope you found this useful. Please feel free to spread the word!

To your Blogging Success…

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