I want to assume that you have heard so many things about blogging. You are aware it's a way to share your thoughts with the world, and have also heard the tales of people who made thousands and millions of money every month on their own blog. You soliloquize that you know so much about a certain subject and have started considering starting your own blog. I want to confirm to you that what you have been told which are in line with my assumptions here are true. Now that you have started considering joining the blogosphere, I have written this post specially for you, to inform you of things you need to know, do and put in place as you begin your blogging career.

Before you embark on any project, it is good you count the cost. Counting the cost and planning in advance are the two factors that help to guarantee success in life. As we have tales of successful bloggers, so also are so many untold stories of failed bloggers. Most bloggers failed because they are not aware of some of the information I shared in this post before they started. They began blogging with a wrong notion, they acted based on their notion, when things didn’t work out as they expected, they gave up. As you are about to start your blogging journey, I want you to know and do the following:

1. Define exactly why you want to blog: It has been said that when the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable. Every activity is always aimed towards an end, and when the end is reached, such activity is discarded. Before you start blogging, you must define why you want to blog. Are you blogging to establish yourself as an authority on a specific subject? Is your goal to be famous through your blog? Do you want to use blogging to promote your business? Or do you just want to make money blogging? Defining why you want to blog will help you to chart the path to follow as you begin your blogging journey. I started taiwoemayosan.com to establish myself as an authority on the subject of success, and also to promote my public speaking business, that is why you will never see any news on this blog. All the articles on this blog as at the time of publishing this post are written by me. The contents are the product of my mental labour. They express my knowledge and inner convictions about the various topics I have written on.

2. Choose your niche carefully: A niche is a blogging term which means the key subject or theme your blog is about. It describes the problem your blog solves for your readers. Example of blog niches include, news and entertainment, personal development, health, relationship, travelling, fashion and so on. Taiwoemayosan.com , is in the personal development niche. Don’t just create your blog and keep churning out random posts on various subjects. Many bloggers are guilty of this, and this practice has great negative effects on such blog. Let your blog be a "go to" for a specific problem. This will help you in two ways, first your blog will position you as an authority in your unique niche, and second, it will make the monetization of the blog easy.
When choosing your niche, consider a subject you know so much and passionate about. It has to be that way because blogging is a marathon not a sprint. You may have to do it for many years; your passion for the subject you love is the only thing that can keep you going. I decided to choose the personal development niche because of my knowledge in that area and my passion to help people succeed. No wonder the tagline of taiwoemayosan.com is success tools for smart people.

3. Consider an evergreen niche: I decided to add this because it is very important. An evergreen niche is a niche that does not get obsolete or outdated. Articles written under such niche will ever remain relevant till the world ends. Most of the things written on personal development will always remain relevant because human nature does not change. Man needs will always remain the same for generations, but the means of solving them may change from time to time. The news and entertainment niche is ephemeral. News that is relevant today will no longer be relevant in the next few months. So if you stop blogging, after a while, your blog will remain irrelevant because it is not up to date. If you want to build a high traffic website that will keep being relevant even after you are gone, then consider a niche whose content will be ever green.

3. Get your domain name from the beginning: Most bloggers started blogging using free platforms such as blogger(), wordpress etc. Each of these platforms will offer you subdomain, eg yourname..com for blogger and yourname. for wordpress. Many bloggers continue using this free subdomain for their blogging for a very long period of time. I suggest that you get your own domain name right from day 1, don’t settle for subdomain name. Having your own domain name will make your readers perceive you as a serious blogger and your domain name will stand as a unique brand when your blog becomes popular. It is generally believe as at the time of writing this post that Google rarely approve blogs with the default blogger sub-domain for Adsense. Now imagine you have been blogging for a while using the blogger sub-domain, wanted to sign up for the adsense program only to be turned down. To increase your chances of getting approved, you will definitely want to buy your own domain name. One thing is that Google rarely approve domain name that is less than six month for adsense, though this restriction is only for bloggers in some countries. If you happen to be from one of those countries, you may have to wait for six months after buying your domain name before you can apply for google adsense. Buying your own domain name is one thing you have to consider and act on as you kick start you blogging career.
When selecting your domain, select a name that is relevant to what your blog is going to be about. For example when you see domain names like www.love.com, www.success.com, www.sex.com you can easily imagine what the blogs are about.
Also you need to select a short name that people can remember easily. I choose taiwoemayosan.com as my domain name because I am using my blog to promote my brand(Taiwo Emayosanlomo)that is why it does not depict what my blog is all about. My goal is that when people hear taiwoemayosan.com, I want success coaching and personal development to be what they will think about. It is so, because of my purpose of blogging. You can check for the availability of your domain name and purchase them on websites like godaddy, namecheap, domainking etc

4. Be familiar with blogging terms: One thing you need to do as you kick start your blog is to try to learn the basic blogging terms and how they determine your blogging success. Some of the terms include, traffic, seo, links, blog promotion, guest post and so. Studying about blogging generally will help you to know many terms that are associated with blogging. Don’t just learn these terms; also learn how you can use them to grow your blog.

5. Start writing blog post in advance: Having defined your blog niche, it is essential that you start writing your blog post. Don’t wait until the day you create your blog before you start writing. I suggest you have at least 20 blog post ready before you launch your blog.

6. Hire an expert to design your blog: As an individual who is new to blogging, you may not know how to design a blog that will make your readers come back. I suggest you consult an expert who can design a beautiful blog for you. How your blog looks can make or mar it. When you have great content on your blog on an eye-catching design, nothing will stop readers from coming back to your blog. Don’t put great content on a mediocre design.

7. Get a good laptop and mobile phone: Two basic tools you will need for success in blogging is a good laptop and mobile phone, or anything that can serve the purpose of these two. You need a good laptop or tablet device to write and edit your blog post. With your mobile phone you can easily interact with your readers e.g. answer their questions and respond to their comments. When you lack these two devices, blogging will be tough for you.

8. You need a stable income: If your goal of blogging is to generate income, it is important to know that you will need money to put body and soul together before your blog start generating money. Blogging is not a get rich quick method. You will need to give, invest over and over before you start reaping the fruit of your labour. This may take several months and in some cases years. Some people who are new to blogging have the notion that blogging is a get rich quick method, with this on their mind; they quit blogging after a short period of time when they fail to get the kind of result they envisage.

Also there are cases when some people can no longer blog simply because their laptop is damaged and they have no money to fix it or buy another. You should also have it in mind that that you are going to be spending so much on data to connect to the internet. All these require money. Having a source of income will enable you to put things right when they go wrong.

9. Be ready to write lengthy and great content: The bottom line of blogging is to provide valuable information for your readers. To be a successful blogger you must prepare your mind to provide rich and valuable information to your readers. You must be willing to write on the average 700 words article on every topic you choose to write about. This post you are reading contains over 1600 words. My average post contains 1000 words. Everyone who is not new to the blogging system must have come across this saying “content is king” severally. When you post valuable content on regular basis, your readers will keep coming back for more. They will tell other people about your blog and before you know it, you will start seeing massive traffic coming to read your content.

10. Access to electricity: It is important to inform you that for you to become a successful blogger, you need constant access to electricity. As a blogger, you need to write and publish articles regularly on your blog. To achieve this, you need your laptop to be powered on regular basis; failure to have access to electricity can crumble or alter the growth of your blog. In Nigeria for instance, lack of access to stable power supply is one of the major challenges bloggers are experiencing.

Source:www.taiwoemayosan.com/2016/05/10-blogging-success-secrets-for.html?m=1

Great tips I must say. I'm not surprised its coming from you.

Particularly on your second point, most of the blogs I see today don't have a focus. They write about just anything that comes their way, be it farming, entertainment, education, technology and so on. With this, there's no way you can get a loyal reader. Readers will never come back because most of them are looking for a specific topic.

Imagine you blog about business and income. And with that you gathered a number of loyal readers. And they keep coming back just to read about business tips.

Now tell me, what do you think will happen when your next post becomes "Can you believe what happened to Tonto Dike yesterday" or "Iyanyan shows off his hot six packs"... they may see it as a mistake the first time but if it happens again, they're gone. FOREVER.

So, always think it through before choosing a niche. Nice tips once again.

Julius2214:
Great tips I must say. I'm not surprised its coming from you.

Particularly on your second point, most of the blogs I see today don't have a focus. They write about just anything that comes their way, be it farming, entertainment, education, technology and so on. With this, there's no way you can get a loyal reader. Readers will never come back because most of them are looking for a specific topic.

Imagine you blog about business and income. And with that you gathered a number of loyal readers. And they keep coming back just to read about business tips.

Now tell me, what do you think will happen when your next post becomes "Can you believe what happened to Tonto Dike yesterday" or "Iyanyan shows off his hot six packs"... they may see it as a mistake the first time but if it happens again, they're gone. FOREVER.

So, always think it through before choosing a niche. Nice tips once again.

You are very on point @julius. Thanks for your contribution. I have learned a lot from your articles on blogging.

Blogging is a marathon not sprint. Marathon is a long distance race while sprint is a short distance race.