If you have ever contemplated making money online or thought about how you can leverage the online channels to sell more of your products and/or services then you’ve got to start your own blog; starting your own blog is the single most important decision you’ll ever make in your quest to making money online.

Why Must I Start My Own Blog?

You see, there are 3 types of Media: Paid (Advertising), Owned (Your Blog) and Earned (Brand Advocates or word of mouth).

Paid Media alone will cost you more money than you realize; let me explain, every time you advertise on TV, Radio, Print or SMS; you only hope that your target consumers will call you up or visit your office/shop to patronize you; and the truth is that many of them will not patronize you largely because they might not be ready at the time for the patronage, so you lose the sale and the money, because you paid to reach them.
You do not have control whatsoever of this type of media; so you shouldn’t build your entire business model or advertising budget on it.

Owned Media as the name suggests means you own it and have full control of it, this is where smart marketers and businesses should focus on; it just makes sense to do this.

Let me explain; If you ran an ad online, ideally that ad should lead to a uniquely created landing page on your blog; on this page you’ll collect the Names and Emails of everybody that clicked on your ads and they are added to your mailing list (I can create a mailing list for you for free) even if this people are not ready as at yet to patronize you, but because you have their names and email addresses you can continue to keep in touch with them and nurture them with relevant messages and info till they are ready to buy from you; you see? Can’t you already tell which model is far better?

Now you may say but Dan I already have a website, why do I need a blog? The truth is your website is static, nothing changes; your about us page, meet the team page, contact us page, those things don’t change; so visitors will not visit your site because they know nothing changes there and also search engines will not send people over to your site too. So your site will do poorly compared to your competitor’s websites that have a blog attached to it.

Earned Media is a state where your customers and audience are so satisfied that they are willing to refer and recommend your products/services to their circle of influence/networks; the truth is, it's very difficult and money-consuming to get to this point without a blog, your blog will always be the rallying point for your business, that’s where you build the community that will push your business.

Now that you’ve seen why you should start your own blog (and this should take utmost priority), let me show you the really easy steps to go through; keep an open mind, it’s not rocket-science, but even if it is, I can always help you with your professional blog design to get up and running.

Here are the 10 Steps;

1. Decide on the Niche Your Blog will Specialize on

I wrote extensively about this in my post http://danewah.com/7-ways-to-consistently-drive-quality-traffic-to-your-blog-posts/ with particular reference to #3 which I titled ‘consistently offer valuable contents’; so because I’ve already done justice to this point, please permit me not to dwell much on it here, just to reduce the length of this post.

But just know that your choice of a niche to blog about must be driven by passion and expertise in the chosen niche; kindly read up the rest in the above link.

2. Decide on Ways to Monetize Your Blog

In my post titled http://danewah.com/6-powerful-ways-to-make-money-on-your-blog/ I actually over-delivered and mentioned a total of 13 ways to make money; I’ll encourage you to read it up too, I promise that you’ll most definitely have an Ah-Ha moment while reading that post.

Deciding how you intend to monetize your blog is very important, so before you start your blog, do make sure it’s clear to you how you’ll make money from it.

3. Get a Professional Designer to Create Your Blog

This point can’t be over-stated, the odds are for newbie bloggers to want to put up a cheap blog or worse still to have a hosted blog; this is counter-productive in the long-run and you’ll wish you didn’t take that route; one of my jobs is to guide you in the right way through your blogging journey.

Having a blog is like using all the money you’ve worked for to build a mansion on a rented land; how wise is that? The land-owner will definitely ask for his land one day, and guess what? He’ll own your house too.

Google owns and according to the terms & conditions you accepted prior to using , Google also owns your blog and Google can decide you have breached their terms and wipe off your blog for no reason and without explanation… this is not unusual of Google; So why would you want to take this major risk because you don’t want to pay a professional designer? It’s your business we are talking about here; you’ve got to spend money to make money.

Moreover, for your Internet Marketing efforts to really take off, your blog has to have some tools on it; like opt-in forms, landing pages, Squeeze pages, mailing list to mention a few, a professional designer will be able to put these things together for your blog.

You can send me an email and I’ll be very glad to be the one birthing your blog and you can be sure you’ll get the best blog development from me.

4. Write your First Blog Post

Once your professional blog is ready, it’s now time to write your first post; write about the solution to a common problem in your niche/industry, this is a guaranteed way to make certain that your post will go viral, the FAQs that your customers ask, now is the time to blog about their solutions.

5. Promote Your Blog Posts With Advertising

Now that you’ve taken the time to write a post that your audience will love because it’ll solve their problems, it’s now time to let your audience know that you’ve got a solution to their problem and you do that by advertising your post; it’s not expensive, you can start with as little as $5 on Facebook.

This post is not about Facebook advertising, so I want to keep it focused; but if you want me to help you with your Facebook advertising, then you can send me an email

6. Network with fellow Bloggers in your Niche/Industry

You have your professional blog, you have created your first post or couple of posts, you have done some Facebook advertising; it’s now time to network with fellow bloggers by sending them an email, not all bloggers will be right for you, but the ones whose audience will be interested in what you’ve got to offer.

Don’t be scared to reach out, ok; let me tell you something, all bloggers love networking, we understand we can’t succeed online without it, so package yourself and reach out; Ideally have something valuable to offer the blogger.

Let me give you an example; I could email a blogger telling him/her that I want to give his/her audience a copy of my eBook for free; why would I want to do that? I’d have built business relationship with this blogger, his audience would love him more for hooking them up with my valuable eBook and I’ll get more visitors to my blog and subscribers to my mailing list; can you see that it’s a win-win-win situation?

So get your creative juices flowing and get networking- you can test this strategy by reaching out to me, once I respond to you, you’ll see how easy it is and you’ll be more confident to reach out to other bloggers.

7. Solicit For Comments and Shares on Your Blog

At the end of your blog posts always ask your readers to comment and share your post; research has proven that the act of asking your visitors to take an action boosts conversion. So go ahead and ask; remember- Ask and you shall receive.

8. Respond to Your Blog Comments as Quickly as Possible

Now that you have asked and they have commented, it’s your responsibility to respond to them in a timely manner; this will make them always comment because they know you are sure to respond; this is one way to build a community around your brand/products/services really fast.

9. Act on the Feedbacks You Get on Your Blog

Treat feedbacks on your blog as gold, as a matter of fact, your visitors gave you these feedbacks because they want to stick around your blog, so they want it improved; ofcourse you’ve got to be able to different constructive criticisms from destructive ones; please stay away from toxic people, they are energy-killers, when you get such responses from these kinds of people simply ignore them and move on; I’ll recommend not to delete those comments, most times your subscribers will rally round to defend you and that’s how building a community starts, but you need to be dedicated at adding value first.

10. Rinse and Repeat what works

You’ve gone through these 9 steps, the last step is to repeat the strategies that worked for you and be consistent at doing them and you’ll be on your way to building a really popular blog that adds value.

Wow… you made it to the end, I’m aware that this is a really long post; I hope it’s well worth your time and I say a very big THANK YOU for reading to the end and I believe you’ll practice these steps.

Let me appreciate your time by giving you a FREE access to 2 of my Internet Marketing eBooks >> http://danewah.com/secrets-to-viral-contents/ <<

Action Point: Which of these steps are the easiest and which is the hardest for you to implement right away? Let me know about them in the comments area and I’ll be sure to respond.

Nice one there Dan. I'm in the process of planning my blog but I think its taking a lot more time than usual. I'm used to the "do it now" cliche but the only thing holding me down is money for hosting,autoresponder etc. Your 10 steps were very informative. Keep it up. Also, you mentioned you can set up a mailing list for FREE ? I'll like to know more about that.

Hi guys, very valuable info there. Am using a blog. Please feel free 2 critisize www.hotlatestproducts.com

j.tenna:
Hi guys, very valuable info there. Am using a blog. Please feel free 2 critisize www.hotlatestproducts.com

Nice blog there sista, but u still need to fine tune the site. I noticed that some categories in ur pages tab are still empty. Also, I think you should try to focus on one niche when starting out. later on once you have learnt the ropes, you can begin to diversify.
I'll be really glad to answer any questions you might have so call me on 08060944967

ndubisik: Nice one there Dan. I'm in the process of planning my blog but I think its taking a lot more time than usual. I'm used to the "do it now" cliche but the only thing holding me down is money for hosting,autoresponder etc. Your 10 steps were very informative. Keep it up. Also, you mentioned you can set up a mailing list for FREE ? I'll like to know more about that.

I have a promo running now, where I'll do the following;

-Buy a domain for you
-Host the Domain
-Install a Wordpress Blog for you
-Give you my 2 latest Internet Marketing eBooks
-FREE acces to my Facebook Graphic Creation Software (I sell this for N15,000; you can see it here http://danewah.com/fb-fanpage-makeover/buy/)

I'll do the above for only N8,000 (time-limited)

If interested send me an email dan@danewah.com

ndubisik:
Nice blog there sista, but u still need to fine tune the site. I noticed that some categories in ur pages tab are still empty. Also, I think you should try to focus on one niche when starting out. later on once you have learnt the ropes, you can begin to diversify.
I'll be really glad to answer any questions you might have so call me on 08060944967

hi. Thanks 4 taking time out 2 review my blog. U are right, some pages are empty but they wont be for long. Just started n will soon post on them. For d niche, i already have one. My blog is a trend spotter. It points to intrestin, innovative products to check out and buy... It celebrates creativity. Thanks i will surely hold you to your offer of help. Lol

j.tenna:

hi. Thanks 4 taking time out 2 review my blog. U are right, some pages are empty but they wont be for long. Just started n will soon post on them. For d niche, i already have one. My blog is a trend spotter. It points to intrestin, innovative products to check out and buy... It celebrates creativity. Thanks i will surely hold you to your offer of help. Lol

You are welcome dearie. Feel free to discuss any problems you might encounter

Nice thread !

GentleFrank: Nice thread !

Thanks Bro