The “Break it Down” Blog

So, I’ve been blogging for a while… almost 2 years now and I feel like I’ve learned a lot along the way. I want to share with you how I’ve been able to turn my incredible talent for wording into a supplemental income that has made me wealthy (in Uzbekistan).

1. An Idea

First you need to come up with a focused idea of what you want to blog about. If you can’t stay focused, you aren’t going to be able to appeal to your core/faithful reader base that help spread the word.

Take me for example, I only blog about things that I read online… or stuff that happens in real life… or on TV. This allows readers to feel comfortable knowing when they come to my site, they are going to read things about stuff. They can safely recommend this site to other friends with A.D.D. or maybe a mild learning disability.

2. A Name

You need a good name for your blog, something that people will remember, like: Hot Spot or Dick Farm.

Don’t use names that are too long or URLs that are too long… definitely don’t use names that have quotations or additional punctuation in them… it will make searching for your site impossible, especially in Google.

3. A Good Design

It’s become so easy to put up a blog that millions of people are doing it. Unfortunately this means canned themes are getting overused to hell and back and it’s becoming hard to stand out in the crowd. You need to make sure you select a very unique theme that allows your site to stand out and one that will cause your users to remember your site visually.

You want to avoid canned themes that are easily forgotten

And even possibly pay to have one professionally done. You don’t want to be cheap about it.

4. Write Meaningful Content

Every blogger in the world is blogging about what they did some afternoon or why something sucks, they are a dime a dozen and worthless. What you need to do to stand out is write about interesting and unique topics, then try and get that work circulated.

Also posting “cheap traffic magnet” posts of just some stupid pictures or something cute is also a big no-no… you want to keep high quality content on your site to attract high-quality users.

5. Promote using Social News Sites

Don’t forget to do some self-advertising by promoting your sites on social new sites like Digg.

Utilizing these sites can drive tens of thousands (or just 10) hits to your site, getting readers interested and engaged in the content you put out. This can be key to growing your reader base.

6. Advertise Your Site Effectively

You have to make sure you are advertising your site effectively. You don’t want to use cheesy generic phrases like “Make things online simpler” or “Come read about hot topics!”, that would just be stupid and no one would search for that or click it.

Once you advertise effectively you can look forward to some crazy traffic

7. Provide Forums

When readers like your site, they will want to get together and talk about the topics you are discussing as well as some topics of their own.

Providing forums is a great way to seed self-sustaining traffic to your site by keeping readers coming back and interested:

8. Get a Full-Time Job

An import step to becoming successful as a blogger is to remember that you can’t make shit doing it unless you are some huge conglomerate media company. So be sure to dust off your resume and get a full-time job before you continue blogging to much.

Once you have mastered these different tips and techniques you should expect traffic to begin increasing at an alarming rate and your income to slowly begin to supplement and then replace your primary income as I have done:

I hope you found those tips useful. I know I have as I continue to wallow in all this supplemental income that makes my life so plush and relaxed.

I hope to write a book on it one day: “Rich Blogger, Poor Blogger” and “Poor” will be highlighted, underlined and the book will be focused on finding the best homeless shelters in certain cities and how to get cheap bus passes.