So, you’ve started a blog to share your insights, poems, dreams or rants. Now what? Blogging is easy — just a few clicks and publish! — but building a widely read blog takes planning, hard work, and (often) some luck. Here are ten steps that will help you grow your  blog’s readership:

1. Find your niche

Write about what you know best, and be sure it’s something that you find interesting– if your blog doesn’t interest you, how will it interest your readers?

2. Be unique

You may not be the only blog about sports, or food, or fashion, but your presentation can set you apart from the others. Alex Balcerski of Ride The Pine focused on using a unique format to differentiate from similar sports humor blogs:

The most unique thing about Ride The Pine is our video show (creatively called) Ride The Pine. I originally started the website to feature this 3-5 minute show that would focus on the lighter side of sports, the best videos of the week, and my (poorly crafted) jokes. After just a few weeks, it was featured in iTunes as a ‘New and Noteworthy’ podcast. There is not another sports blog out there that does a video show like ours.

3. Become an expert

Expertise can also set you apart, and give your blog value- particularly if you get in on the ground floor on a new craze or movement. Yes, there will always be someone better, smarter, or more skilled than you, but you don’t have to be the best to be an authority. The simplest way to be an authority? Teaching, says Copyblogger, “…taking something hard and making it easy” for your readers.

4. Be consistent

Update your blog regularly, even daily. Blogads’ bloggers spend anywhere from 3 hours a week to 3 hours a day working on their blogs. Start by focusing on the quantity of your posts, and build on the quality of your posts later (don’t forget spell check in the meantime). Your hard work will pay off in the long run, says Alexandra Stafford of Alexandra Cooks:

It brings me such joy to read an email from someone who has had success with a recipe and who has brought joy to his/her family or friends or significant other or just for his/herself in the process. Nothing makes me happier, truly. The pains I have experienced are pretty trivial overall.

5. Find an audience

Share your ideas and posts on the proper channels. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ are multifaceted and ready for any type of content, but other networks can be specific to your content. Blogging about food or fashion? Some bloggers have had success with Pinterest. The benefit of participating in these networks is that they have a built-in user base ready to consume and share your content. Just be warned: creating an interesting fan page is a good step, but not as important as using it to drive traffic to your blog.

6. Join a community

Interact with new readers by liking their comments on other blogs and leaving comments of your own; just remember to be specific and don’t choke your target audience with blatant self-promotion.

7. Befriend other bloggers

Share the love with other bloggers by linking to their posts and guest blogging (also an effective way to find new readers), a little teamwork goes a long way.

8. Found (or support) a cause

Blogging for a cause isn’t just good for publicity, it’s a tangible way for you to give your support to something you believe in and for readers to “…connect with the blogger behind the blog,” says Nikki Parkinson of Styling You.

9. Forget about #7 and get in a fight

It may be controversial, but if you follow the rules, getting in a “blogfight” can be a great way to grab some attention for your blog (and some readers while you’re at it). The key, says The Blog Herald, is to stick to your guns and make your argument worthwhile:

…[I]f you have something really worthwhile to say, there is a chance you’d be taken seriously and provoke a healthy discussion…good blogfights can be made by fueling intelligent discussions, even among parties with opposing arguments… some of the world’s biggest problems are better solved by throwing bright minds into the mix and get them to bash their own ideas until the best ones stand out.

As in diplomacy, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” And inevitably when there’s a blogfight, the people to dislike the person you’re fighting with will often wade in on your side and sometimes become long-term allies.

10. One last thing- keep at it!

The best blogs weren’t a success overnight. Geraldine DeRuiter of The Everywhereist took more than 2 years 500 posts to get where she is today- one of Time’s Best Blogs of 2011. With a little bit of patience and these ten steps as your guide, you’ll soon accomplish your goal of creating a great blog.

See the Blogads blog for more helpful advice and insight into blogging, including interviews with successful bloggers like Sonja Foust of Pintester and Jim Romenesko of JimRomenesko.com.

Photo by Flickr user Christopher Stephen

We’ve all seen links on our favorite blogs that say something like “buy ads here” or “advertise here,” but unless you’re an advertiser, you may not have clicked to find out where that link takes you. If a blogger really wants to make money blogging, she will have a landing page full of compelling information and options for advertisers. And that’s at the very least.

Today, we’ll learn how to make a kick-ass advertising page by looking at advertiser pages that already kick ass.

Some key takeaways from the pages above:

1. The advertiser page matches your site. Sounds obvious, but make sure your own branding is on your “advertise here” page. Some ad services, such as Blogads.com, automatically provide this page, but it’s up to the blogger to dress it up.
2. What’s your blog all about? The “about us” page has been a staple of the Internet for years. While it may feel old fashioned to tell what your blog is about, a short blurb for the advertiser in a hurry will help him decide if your blog his right for his campaign.
3. Who reads you blog? Do you use a service like Quantcast? Do you conduct reader surveys? Any demographic information that you can provide an advertisers will let her know if your audience is the right group to target. And the more you know about your own readers, the better you can position your blog in front of the right advertisers.
4. Include testimonials. Has anyone ever said anything nice about your blog? Reader testimonials on your “advertise here” page will showcase your audience’s passion. Advertiser testimonials will showcase your previous advertisers’ success.
5. Placement examples. Believe it or not, Ad-Speak isn’t a required language for everyone who wants to buy or sell ads. Rather than just saying, “buy a banner!” or “check out the 250×300,” why not show what you’re selling with a mockup or placement guide?
6. Spotlight past and present advertisers. Giving a shoutout isn’t just good practice for attracting new business, it’s also a great way to earn repeat customers.

If you’re ready to make money blogging with Blogads.com, take a moment to fill out our publisher application.

And as always, let us know if you wanna chat via our handy form, or in the comments section below!

Gala Darling, Jessica Harlow and Angel Laws at Social Media Week NYC

Bloggers have an array of community-building tools and techniques at their disposal, but don’t forget that content is the backbone of a site’s longevity and success.

Bloggers Jessica Harlow (JessicaHarlow.com), Angel Laws (ConcreteLoop.com) and Gala Darling (GalaDarling.com) all lauded the importance of producing the content that you would want to see, yourself, during their appearance at Social Media Week’s “Creating Community Around Your Blog” event.

So when searching for your niche in the blogosphere, use yourself as your target audience. Ask yourself, “What do I want to read? What do I want to watch? What questions do I want answered?”

Hesitating or and over-analyzing every creative thought can be a hindrance to publishing the original and captivating features that will keep your audience coming back. Gala drove this point home by quoting the iconic Beat Generation poet, Allen Ginsberg:

“If the muse comes to your bedside, don’t tell her you’ll f&*$ her later!”

You can see a range of inspiration-channeled-into-content examples by checking out Jessica’s Adele Vogue cover make-up tutorial, Gala’s Thursday favorites and Angel’s coverage of A Million Hoodies March for Trayvon Martin NYC.

Did you miss Friday’s free webinar for bloggers? Don’t worry. Here’s the replay of the entire presentation, and you can find the slides below.

Have a question about this webinar or suggestions for future webinars? Feel free to contact the hosts, Paige Wilcox or Nick Faber, via Twitter or send an email to blog-tech[at]blogads[dot]com. Or even better, leave a comment!

Trying to attract more advertisers to your blog? Several of our bloggers have had success winning new ads with the discount code feature, which is available to all bloggers in the Blogads network.

As retailers have known for years, discounts and coupons are a sure way to grab the attention of would-be customers. With discount codes, you can create your own coupon, start your own flash sale, and make more money blogging.

Check out our new discount codes video and learn how to make this feature work for you:

We’ll share your discount code!
Send us your discount code via comments or Twitter, and we’ll post the first 10 we receive to our Facebook wall!

In general, we recommend that you run as many of these different units on your blog as you can fit, so you can provide options to all sizes of advertisers. Also, don’t forget to put the ad code on every page. The more ad impressions you can offer, the more money you can ask for.

In this post, we’ll break these ad units into three categories, Blogads, banners and adverposts, and show you how to place and price each for maximum attractiveness to advertisers.

1. Blogads

Placement:

As we showed you in the guide to placing Blogads units, the topmost leftmost placement is the best place to attract advertisers. If you don’t have a left sidebar, then the top of the right sidebar would be the most effective placement for your blog.

You can also customize Blogads adstrips to fit extra-wide sidebars by enabling double-wide (or triple-wide or bigger) ad placements using our multi-column feature. It’s as easy as clicking a drop-down list in your blogger dashboard, as illustrated in this video:

Pricing:

Blogads are purchased as a time sponsorship, which means that an advertiser is purchasing an ad on your site for a specific amount of time. You can sell Blogads for: 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month or 3 months.

We generally recommend pricing these ads around $.50-$1.50 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). So if your blog serves 100,000 weekly impressions, you price your ads at $50-150 per week. This CPM calculator is a great tool for pricing your Blogads.

Another way to price your Blogads is to look for comparable sites on our Buy Ads page and try to set competitive prices for your ads.

2. Banners

When advertisers are purchasing ads across many sites, they sometimes create them in IAB standard sizes. Sometimes advertisers don’t have the resources to create separate Blogads for their campaigns, so it’s good to be ready for IABs.

Placement:

As with the Blogads units, advertisers like to see IAB placements “above the fold,” which means visible when the page loads without scrolling down. Wider units such as the leaderboard and marquee are designed to be at the top center, and will usually fit nicely just above or below your blog’s header.

Half page ads, rectangles and square buttons should go in your sidebar, depending on the width of the sidebar. Remember, if you have a left sidebar, this would be preferable to the right. Don’t have room in your sidebar? Rectangles also work well between posts. We recommend putting them between the second and third posts, or higher.

Pricing:

As you’ll see when you set up these units in your blogger dashboard, these ads are sold differently than Blogads. Rather than setting a sponsorship price for a week to three months, you’ll need to figure out what the ads would cost per day. Because these ads are sold by SOV (Share of Voice, i.e. 30% of all impressions over a period of time), you will set the price based on one advertiser buying 100% of one day’s impressions.

This might sound a little confusing, so we’ve added a built-in Price Calculator that you can access by clicking “help.”

Square buttons are great for advertisers on a budget, so we suggest you price those between $.25-50.

For leaderboards (728×90) and rectangles (300×250) we suggest a CPM of $2.00-$6.00.

Half-page ads, which draw more attention and take up more space, can usually fetch about $8 CPM.

For the marquee unit, which was designed to give big advertisers a big splash, you can ask for $10 CPM.

3. Adverposts

Once they realized the impact and reach of bloggers, advertisers began asking us if they could advertise “outside the box.” So we created a better box: the adverpost. Think of them as mega-Blogads. Larger image and more html-friendly text.

Placement:

The ultimate for integrating into the context of blogs, these ads will do best just below the first post on each page.

Pricing:

Because of the premium placement, size and format of these ads, you should ask for a premium price. We recommend a $10-20 CPM.

Ideal Combinations:

Having trouble deciding which ads work well together on your blog? Here are a few combinations that we’ve seen work well for bloggers:

1.) Rectangle (300×250) top right sidebar, leaderboard (728×90) top, Blogads adstrip in sidebar, adverpost within posting

2.) Rectangle (300×250) top right sidebar, Blogads adstrip in right sidebar, square buttons (125 x 125) between posts, adverpost within posting

3.) Marquee (728×270) top, Blogads adstrip top left, square buttons (125 x 125) left sidebar, adverpost within posting

If you have any other questions or need a recommendation, please let us know!

And if you’re interested in joining our network, you can apply to be one of our publishers here.

Facebook is one of the biggest sources of traffic for any web site or blog. Are you making Facebook work for your blog?

Here’s our webinar, “Facebook: Are you doing it right?” We hope these tips will help you drive more traffic to your blog. And the more traffic you’ve got, the more attractive you’ll be to advertisers.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the live presentation. Due to a couple technical glitches, we’ve edited the Q&A portion out of this video. Instead, we will present your questions here, along with a couple that we weren’t able to get to in today’s webinar. If you have any other questions, please let us know in the comments below!

Q. How is our page seen on a viewers page with the new facebook changes?

The recent changes have not effected your fan page itself, but due to the new blended (top news and recent) nature of the news feed, it’s more important than ever to post quality content. The more likes and comments your posts get, the better chance they have of making into your fans’ Top Stories.

Q. Since the new FB page started, the updates to my FB page aren’t showing up on my wall. Is anyone else having the same problem?

We have noticed that it’s tougher to get page posts into Top Stories, but a) they’re still in Recent Stories, and b) really great posts make it to Top Stories. We know it’s tougher now than before, but it’s still very possible. This is why we emphasize quality and consistency.

Q. Under which “category” should you add your blog’s Facebook page?

This isn’t terribly important for bringing people to your page, but under the category “Brands and Products” is a subcategory “Web site.” This might be the best fit for you, or there might be another one that applies to your blog. In any case, what’s most important is getting the page out to potential fans, which can be done regardless of category.

Q. The profile images at the top of the wall are random as far as I know. How did Hyperarts do it?

CORRECTION: We apologize for the misinformation, but it seems like the photo strip for fan pages does not behave the same as it does for personal pages. Rather than displaying the most recent 5 photos in order of upload, it displays them in a random order. So, in the case of Hyperarts, we just happened to catch them on a lucky page refresh. But rather than being discouraged by this limitation, use it as inspiration to do something even more creative! Here are 35 great examples of branded Facebook page using the “random” 5 photos in a creative way.

Q. We have a fanpage, and often ask questions, but it leads to fights between fans. As an admin, what’s the best way to handle such a circumstance?

This is definitely not an easy question, but the best advice we can offer is to try to stay out of it, unless you feel like it is becoming malicious. Some people on the Internet will go to any length to get your attention, and once you react, they know how far they need to go to get it. If the fights are becoming nasty, perhaps write a general post to your community about conduct. If it becomes dangerous, you can block someone from your group and flag them for abuse.

Here’s our guide to Blogads code placement, from optimal to not-at-all optimal.

Optimal: Top Left

This is the perfect spot for Blogads! Readers tend to scan a page from left to right, top to bottom, and placing your Blogads at the top of your leftmost column will maximize your reader’s engagement with the ads, and make your blog more desirable to advertisers.

Less Optimal: Right Column, Non-Contiguous

Placing your ad code at the top of a column, or “above the fold,” is always going to be better than hiding your ads lower on the page. The top placement in the right column is going to look good to advertisers, and having a second placement below it will give advertisers on a budget a cheaper option. But if you look closely at this example, the Blogads aren’t the leftmost ads on the page. When scanning left to right, the between-posts remnant ads come before the Blogads, which may make the Blogads less valuable to advertisers.

Suboptimal: Not Leftmost

Like we saw in the previous example, placing a remnant ad further left than your Blogads can seriously devalue the Blogads. Sure, the Blogads are at the top of their column, but readers (and advertisers!) are sure to see the ugly pay-per-click ad first. Blogads are designed to integrate neatly into your blog, and into the conversations your blog is sparking. Please, don’t let remnant ads “one-up” your Blogads like this.

Not-At-All Optimal: Not Topmost

Hopefully it’s obvious by now why this is the worst placement. Blogads’ advertisers are paying to be on your blog specifically, while remnant advertisers are playing the keyword lottery. Don’t gamble with this type of placement. Give the Blogads’ advertisers the premium position they’re paying for.

Have any more question about ad placement? Check out more ad placement examples, or shoot an email to blog-tech[at]blogads.com.

image by Sean MacEntee

A kick-ass Facebook page is a great supplement for any blog looking to increase site traffic and ultimately make more money blogging. Here are 5 bloggers that are making Facebook work for them.

A couple of these pages feature a fancy HTML landing page. We know that not everyone has a developer or designer on staff, so we’ll also focus on how the pages are used once readers get past the landing page.

1. Methodshop.com (Facebook page)

• – Regularly chooses interesting Facebook fan as for a “Superfan” interview and to be featured in Methodshop’s profile pic
• – Asks questions when posting links to content, encouraging fan interaction and clicks
• – Interacts with other Facebook pages, comments on and “likes” other pages’ posts

2. Trailer Addict (Facebook page)

• – Simple HTML landing page keeps with aesthetic and humor of blog, and tells you what you’ll get if you like Trailer Addict on Facebook
• – Responds to fan comments on Facebook posts
• – Publishes tweets to Facebook page using Involver

3. Web Urbanist (Facebook page)

• – Allows readers to invite friends to “like” the Web Urbanist Facebook page directly from the landing page
• – Adds playful and relevant descriptions to content links, which encourages readers to write their own comments

4. Gawker (Facebook page)

• – Highly-designed landing page links out to other Gawker content and to fan pages for individual contributors
• – Posts new content to wall using Allin1social
• – Posts interesting blog graphics as photos with links to Gawker.com stories, which drives traffic to the blog, and keeps the Facebook page’s photostrip fresh

5. Nerd Approved (Facebook page)

• – Landing page lets you know what you’ll get when you “like” Nerd Approved on Facebook
• – Offers exclusive content, like photos and contests, to Facebook fans
• – Feeds blog posts to Facebook using RSS Graffiti

Want to learn more about using Facebook to support your blog? Join us September 30 for our webcast, “Facebook: Are you doing it right?“