Nine Common Newbie Blogging Misconceptions

Common sense, unlike blogs in the niche of making money online, is one of the rarities on the blogosphere. Whether it’s people proclaiming that you can make millions just by giving away your SSN or by buying a ten dollar e-book, there is no absence of idiocy on the net. Here are ten newbie blogging misconceptions for your intellectual viewing pleasure.

1. “Alexa is TOTAL BS.”
And this statement is totally UNTRUE! While Alexa may have some discrepancies in it’s rankings and you may be sad that your site is still in the millions, the general positions of the sites on the web are expressed well. You shouldn’t just dismiss any form of online rankings - your competitors don’t, after all.

2. “Linking to authority sites with high pagerank will help my blogs pagerank”
You wouldn’t believe how many times this issue pops up on Digitalpoint (three, at my count). Linking to websites does nothing for pagerank - it’s only determined by the sites that link to you. Sorry, but Google probably doesn’t care whether or not you link to it.

3. “You NEED to post once per day”
There isn’t a blog police that will kidnap you and brutally beat you if you leave your blog alone for a day or two. You can still achieve high traffic levels by posting once every two or three days.

4. “Don’t monetize from the start!”
Monetizing your blog is perfectly fine at any time - just don’t splatter your page with ads like some crazed college art student. As long as your advertising isn’t intrusive upon the content, it’s alright.

5. “Blogger is better than Wordpress.”
The falsity of this statement is self-explanatory.

6. “Dofollow blog comments are worthless”
The key word here is dofollow. That means they’re counted by search engines. That means they help your rankings. They’re just as good as any other link you can get on a blog.

7. “Blogging is easy”
Even if you’re an expert in your niche and you’re writing about the passion of your life, you will be starved for ideas on some days and discouraged on others. The key is to keep on being consistent in blogging.

8. “I can StumbleUpon my own posts”
If you stumble your site more than once or twice, it starts to get suspicious. Even if you’re an active user, your thumbs up will eventually become devalued and you’ll possibly be banned from Stumbleupon.

9. Chow, Rowse, Shoemoney, etc. are blogging GODS.
While these probloggers are undeniably successful, their word is not the law - you should do your own independant research and thinking before following their advice. Hell, even Blog Badly is only right 99.9% (repeating, of course) of the time!

Posted by Max Miroff

How To Write Effective Viral Content For Your Blog

Every bloggers dream is to get an article on the front page of huge bookmarking sites and reap the rewards of having your servers crash due to the massive amount of visitors you’ll receive. Since it is quite hard to game social bookmarking sites due to their fancy schmancy algorithms and community participation, it’s not an event that can be forced. There are, of course, a few ways to nudge the masses to your favor - with a certain style and subject of writing, you can hugely improve your chances of reaching that front page and building some buzz and backlinks for your blog.

GET INSPIRED
The easiest way to get ideas for a post topic is to simply look at the front page of the bookmarking site you want to get popular on. Digg around a bit in the categories until you’ve Reddit all (puntastic!). If one of the top articles is about a bizarre animal, do some research about another peculiar being and write about that. I did this once for another blog and got a hefty number of views (and a nice sum of money as well). Don’t be afraid to steal borrow ideas.

PICK A FORMAT
Social media users don’t want long, drawn-out articles. They want something digestible and easy on the eyes. Fill your writing with loads of pictures, bullet points, humor, and numbered lists. Great examples of viral content can be found at Cracked’s “Top #” lists.

WRITE
The self-explanatory part. Just follow your format and your topic and you’ll (hopefully) soon have a ready viral article!

PUBLISH
Put your post up on your blog and wait. It’s best not to submit your post yourself unless you’re an extreme power user and you’re SURE you won’t get penalized from the bookmarking sites. Self-submission gets your stumbles devalued at Stumbleupon and makes Digg-ers hate you. Twitter your new post and hint that you’re trying to make it viral. Contact other webmasters in your niche and tell them to check it out. This should get the ball rolling.

THE CATCH
You can’t force social media popularity. After all, it’s SOCIAL - and there is no “I” in soci-

Uh. Well, there is. Regardless, gaming these sites =/= easy. There’s only so much you can do before throwing your content to the masses and hoping that someone sees how good it us.