Simple & Successful Blog Design
Since blogging has grown so popular, naturally blog design has expanded with it. There are thousands of different blog designs and templates today, it can be confusing when first starting out. The best thing to keep in mind is to make the blog your own. Here are some tips to think about when designing a blog or even re-evaluating an existing blog.
1) Templates are customizable
Remember despite the face you're using a template, you can usually edit templates manually or automatically depend on your blogging platform. This means that any blog theme you choose can be molded to fit the style of you and your blog. One of the most important parts of a blog site is the header. Put some good time into a well designed header that works with your blog's theme. Blog tutorials can be a big help with this topic.
2) Keep it Simple
Simple blog designs tend to do better than complicated ones. Users like well designed blogs with a simple look, so they're easy to use and navigate. Some of the top blog designers and platforms offer well put together templates with simple interfaces for bloggers of all levels to use. Don't include too many images, keep the focus on the content of the site, unless of course you have an art or photography blog. No matter what platform or template you use, the simpler the blog the better, you want to have the most content but in an easy to read format.
3) Make Sure People Can Navigate
The pages, categories, or any other menus you offer should be easy to access and the site in general should be easy to navigate around. Blogs tend to have a lot of content, especially older ones, so make sure all your content is accessible in an organized manner. You can have a great looking site with great content and a simple blog design, but if there are not enough menus, your content may get lose. Organize posts by date, category, tag, whatever you want, but make sure those pages are accessible. Blogger tutorials can help with this concept more.
4) Check Out Add-ons and Plug-ins
Remember that many well designed blogs use common platforms we may have heard of, but you must think about what plug-ins they use as well. Some blogging platforms offer great add-ons, and if used correctly they can really help your site. Plug-ins can also help you get that blog to look exactly how you want it and save time over manual site edits.
Like I said before, the blog must be your own, no matter what you decide on make sure you are comfortable with it or you may end up spending a lot of time on design and trashing it. Designing blogs is a very hard skill, so don't get discouraged if you don't get a blog to look the way you want at first. Keep practicing.
How to Compare the Top Blogging Platforms
Nowadays there are hundreds of different ways to create a blog. The blogging platform that you should use depends on your skill level and the purpose of your blog. We have reviewed a number of the top blogging platforms and reviewed them based on their strengths and weaknesses. In order to help compare these blogging platforms, we have also considered what each of the most popular blogging platforms would be best utilized for.
Blogging Platforms Compared
- The WordPress blogging platform is widely considered to be one of the best ways to start a blog. WordPress is so highly regarded because it is completely free and has a robust CMS backend that allows amazing customization. Likewise, the WordPress community has produced an abundance of free themes and plugins that make it a breeze to make your new blog look great and function impressively. The WordPress blogging platform also works great for Multi-User blogs.
- The Blogger blogging platform, owned and operated by Google, is also free. Blogger blogs are easy to start, have a number of great themes to choose from, and have a clean, simple content management system. The blogs tend to get indexed by Google very quickly, and are easy to integrate with AdSense since they are both Google products. Blogger is great for personal blogs, but can be a bit lacking in terms of making a corporate blog or a whole website using the CMS.
- Tumblr is a red hot phenomenon happening in the blogging world. A Tumblr is sort of a mix between a blog and Twitter. It allows you to easily and attractively publish posts in blog format, but also has a very active community that interacts with each other and re-blogs interesting content. Tumblr is certainly one of the most innovative of all the blogging platforms on this list. It is worth taking a look for all bloggers, although we suspect that it lends itself to personal blogging.
- Posterous is a blogging platform that aims to be as minimalistic as possible. You don't even need to sign up for posterous: simply e-mail post@posterous.com from any e-mail account and the platform will automatically create a blog for you. Once you learn their backend, you will be impressed by just how robust this minimalistic blogging platform actually is, and whatever Posterous does sacrifice in function it certainly makes up for with simplicity.
- A number of high profile bloggers prefer SquareSpace as their blogging platform of choice. It is a commercial blogging platform that costs as low as $8. Where SquareSpace wins is for making large-scale blogs. It makes customization coding very simple. Moreover, the templates are some of the cleanest out of all the blogging platforms. For serious bloggers, SquareSpace is worth a look.
Which of the most popular blogging platforms is the best?
It's easy to say that the most popular blogging platforms are all pretty good, and probably more than sufficient for most would-be bloggers, but nobody likes to hear that. If we had to pick out the best of all t4he most popular blogging platforms, the choice, to us, is clear: WordPress. You just can't match the level of customization and function that is possible with the amazing plugins and themes available for free in the WordPress community. Better yet, if you are willing to shell out a small fee, you can have access to truly jaw-dropping themes and plugins built incredibly well. For free, you can have the best website in your niche. For a few hundred dollars, that same website will completely and utterly blow away the competition. Check it out - for free!
Can You Make Money From Blogging?
Blogging is all the rage nowadays, and everybody and their mother wants to know one thing: can I blog and get paid for it? Almost everyone that has ever dreamed of making money from blogging has a fantasy of creating an autopilot income where money rolls in quick and easy, and all they have to do is write a few measly blog posts a week. In this article, we're here to examine if that dream is a possibility, and if so, how you can start making money from your blog right away.
Can I Make Money From Blogging?
To answer your question…yes! The good news is that it is totally possible to make money by blogging. What are the steps? Well, for starters, you need a blog. You can set this up for free using a variety of content management systems like WordPress, Tumblr, or Blogger. We prefer WordPress because it is free, powerful, and fast, and has a ton of great free themes and plugins (plus some sick premium ones, if you're willing to dish out the cash).
Getting your blog set up is the easy part. Filling it with content is much more difficult. You need to write great content on a consistent basis in order to attract followers, grow your visibility, and gain organic search engine traffic. Getting traffic to your website is a whole mess of a topic of its own, so for now, we're going to focus on making money.
Once you have your blog set up, content on your blog, and the ability to steadily produce content on a regular basis, you're ready to start making money from your blog.
Ways to Monetize a Blog
There are a variety of ways to monetize your blog, but each way to make money by blogging has its own nuances. Let's explore a few ways to monetize your blog so you can start making some money!
Make Money from Blogging with PPC Advertising
This is the classic way to make money from a website. The premise is simple: sign up for Google AdWords, or something similar, and place advertisements on your website. You get paid anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars every single time someone clicks on one of these ads. You may think this isn't much money, but even a few clicks a day over the course of a year can add up to some serious money made from blogging.
Make Money from Blogging with CPM Advertising
This is very similar to PPC advertising, but instead of making money each time a visitor clicks on one of your ads, you get paid each time one of your visitors sees an ad! This is great, because you only need to get visitors to your website rather than get them there and have them click an ad. On the downside, you typically get paid much less for CPM ads than PPC ads. It is a two way street - you need to test to figure out which is more profitable for your blog. Or…do both!
Make Money from Blogging with Affiliate Marketing
You can get paid to blog about products! It's called affiliate marketing, and if you do it right, you can turn your blog into a money making machine. Basically, you write posts on your blog about other people's products. When you link to the company that sells these products, you use a special tracking code. If a visitor from your site ends up buying something from that company's website, you get a commission on the order! It's as easy as that, and it can be an effective way to make money from your blog.
Make Money from Blogging with Text Links
People buy text links for search engine optimization and for traffic. If you have a good blog that has a high pagerank, you can sell links from your websites through services like Text Link Brokers or Text Link Ads. If your blog has a high pagerank, you can make some amazing money selling text links from your blog.
Make Money from Blogging with Sponsored Reviews
Services like ReviewMe and Sponsored Posts let companies pay bloggers to write a review of their product. You can pick up a few assignments, review some products (you may even get some for free), and get paid just to write the post! This can be a great way to not only squeeze money out of your blog, but to get an easy topic for a new blog post.
Teach Me to Blog
It seems these days that everyone has a blog. People are getting into the trend for many different reasons and it is considered a major form of social communication and connection. Blogging is not stereotypical of a certain crowd like it used to be, many different people have shown interest and learned about it or even tried it out. As popular as blogging has become, there is still a crowd out there who can benefit from learning to blog or may have an interest but don't know how to start. Teaching someone the basics of blogging is easy but then it is up to you to try it out. This post should contain everything to help you get started with blogging and is the first in a series of Teach Me to Blog articles. Enjoy!
Get Started with Blogging
I have gotten a few requests in the past couple years of people saying "Teach me how to blog, I don't know what this is all about. " It is easy to see why people are eager to learn about blogging when you look at its benefits. Blogging is extremely effective for expression, art, making money, marketing, advice, and general social connection, perhaps its biggest advantage. The first step to starting a blogging is deciding what you love to talk about, or how a blog could benefit you the most. If you love running and want an outlet to share your ideas and hear about others , blogging is perfect. The content of your blog is going to depend solely on you and people love blogs with TONS of content, so decide what you really love and your blog will begin to create itself. Here are the tips.
1) Set an ultimate path for your blog. What is the purpose of the blog, to share ideas, to make money, to represent a business? You will not be able to reach everyone in the world so decide an ultimate goal and topic of the blog and think about the people who will read it.
2) Think about keywords, or target topics for the blog. If you want to have a blog about running that is great, but it is most effective to provide specific articles and topics in the blog which will bring one traffic from many different places. Instead of naming the blog "Running" how about something more specific such as "Long Distance Running". Like I said, you will not reach everyone in the world so pick a more specific target audience and that can end up being much more effective.
3) Now that all your goals and topics are basically in place, you must pick a domain name close to these ideas. Since we have been using the example of running, a good domain name would be www.longdistancerunning.com. You cannot get any domain you want however, a lot are taken. Having a domain name associated with the keywords and topics of your blog will let people know the site has a true focus and may be an authority on the subject.
4) Find a good online blog site, this can range from a blog based content manager where you create and edit the whole site or a more simple pre-made blog community where most of the setup is done for you, such as Tumblr. There are hundreds of online blog sites today, do some research to choose the right one for you.
5) Begin writing posts on your blogs and telling other people & webmasters about your work. Don't just write a bunch of articles about your love for running and leave it sitting there, tell people! The more people you get involved in your blog the more fun it will become. You'll know you made a good choice when you come home a look forward to writing a post in your new blog. If it becomes a chore for you, perhaps you should stop or decide why you're really maintaining the blog.
The Other Side of Blogging
The internet has become a crowded and competitive space, a lot of blogs these days are not what they seem. I have described the process of creating a personal blog but many people don't realize there is a whole other side of blogging where people automate this process and produce thousands of blogs in the hopes of making money from blogs. These blogs may contain repeated of bogus information and are usually extremely basic and not maintained properly. Blogging can we used to make money in a proper way but many abuse this privilege. Making money with a blog also requires research into a specific topic and market, but blog optimization is required. This is when a blog is written and designed to bring in traffic for specific yet easy terms and target the largest audience to easily make money off. If the goal of your blog is to make money you can try for quick automated results that largely vary or put time and effort into the process and create income that lasts. This all depends on the type of person who is running the process. Making money blogging is an art and teaching someone how to make money
In the End
In the end, blogging obviously achieves many purposes. Learning how to blog or the background of the culture is not hard. You simply need to try it out, that's how people learn best. Peek at the best blog sites online, the big ones are easy to find. Look at popular bloggers and posts, and read about some blogging history. The advantages of blogging are endless, so go for it. You will be writing to an audience in no time!
Sign Up For Our Mailing List
Learning How to Blog for Free
- blog
- blogging
- blogging platforms
- designed blogs
- good blogs
- how to blog
- learn how to blog
- make money blogging
- monetize your blog
- online blogging
- simple blog design
- teach me to blog
- write a blog
Learn How to Blog
- Simple & Successful Blog Design
- How to Compare the Top Blogging Platforms
- Can You Make Money From Blogging?
- Teach Me to Blog
