Top 5 Tips For A Successful Blog • Scott's Money Machines (2024)

If you are planning to start a blog, or your current blog is not generating revenue, it is likely that you are not doing one or more of these things I provide to you here. Sometimes the simplest things make the biggest difference.

This post will help you become a more successful blogger quicker. These top tips form the cornerstone for a successful blog. Follow these tips and you will be traveling down a proven road!

I made this an easy read for you, PLUS I provided 2 BONUS tips (also very important) for a total of 7 top tips. Enjoy and prosper!

Counting down from number 5, these are my five top tips for building and running a successful blog (and the bonus tips follow):

#5) Post only useful content

It is important to provide value to your visitors. Actually, it’s more than important… it’s crucial. As you build and grow your blog, you can only cultivate a dedicated audience by providing them with useful information that they find valuable. Otherwise your visitors will not return, and much of your efforts will be inefficient and unproductive.

I know it is temping to try and find content to post to get your blog built out quicker, but doing that will only slow or even block your success. There is a reason most people are not successful (that is a fact). Don’t be tempted to take the easy way… this is a business that is front-loaded (work hard now) and enjoy the multitude of benefits once everything is set up and built properly.

Instead of looking for just any content, CREATE your own content that is useful and valuable to your readers.

Treat your blog like any offline business. Your content is your service, and your results will be directly related to the service you provide.

#4) Publish on a consistent basis

It is vital for you to have fresh new content for your visitors. Unlike a grocery store, where customers come in every week to buy the same consumable products, your blog must provide something new and different for them to use, implement, or learn. New content will keep them coming back. If you wait too long between posts, your visitors will go elsewhere and you will lose them for good.

Your Google ranking is another great reason to publish new content on a consistent basis. Google loves blogs with fresh content. Your Google rank will continue to rise, which leads to more organic traffic to your blog.

For most bloggers, I suggest publishing new content 1 to 3 times a week. You may want to read my article How often should I publish content?

#3) Secure and protect your blog

Your blog is your baby. It’s your business, it’s your best friend. Protect it! Because your blog is a website exposed to the whole world, there are things you should do to ensure protection. Always make sure you have a recent backup just in case.

There are things you can do right now to add security and protection to your blog, and I share them with you right here.

#2) Choose the right niche/topic

Choosing the right topic for your blog is one of the most important decisions you will make. You cannot be successful if you don’t have anything valuable to offer, and it is hard to be valuable if you don’t enjoy, or have some kind of passion for your topic.

I strongly suggest that you avoid choosing a topic because you think it will make more money. The money is not in the topic, it’s in you.

One great way to find your topic is to ask yourself what you would be doing if money and time were of no concern. Whether you’d be fishing, traveling, knitting, gardening, teaching, inventing, or climbing mountains, only you know what you really want to do. That’s probably what you should be blogging about!

#1) Choose the right host

Choosing the right host is more of a technical thing, but getting it wrong can cause all your efforts to backfire on you… that is why I listed it as number 1.

My advice is to have a self-hosted blog. This is important so that you own your “Internet property”. Self-hosting means to have a paid host. You can do this for just a few bucks a month, but it is critically important because if you use a free host you can never grow your blog to handle massive traffic. When your blog grows and gets a ton of traffic (that’s what we want to happen), you cannot move it from a free host to a dedicated host without changing all the links that bring the traffic to your blog. You’d need to start all over again.

When you have a paid host (self-hosted blog), you can change hosts if you are not happy with them and still keep all your links (because you own the web property). It’s kind of like changing phone carriers and keeping your number. There are also other good reasons to avoid free hosting, such as not being able to run WordPress, use themes, and use plugins… but owning and controlling your links is by far the most important.

I self-host with Bluehost for this blog and all my niche websites. They are super affordable, secure, and with responsive support. They are also designed for bloggers, and are an approved WordPress partner.

The above 5 tips are essential to building a solid blog as quickly as possible, but if you want to make money you’ll need to check out these 2 bonus tips…

Bonus Tip 1: Get started EARLY driving traffic

Wish I did this! Traffic takes time to build, and the sooner you get started, the sooner you will be generating income. I made mistake of focusing only on content at first, and didn’t even think about traffic until after I wrote about 40 posts. I was afraid I would not have enough content for the people visiting my blog. I underestimated how long it takes for traffic to start coming.

As long as you continue to produce quality content, you can also get moving with traffic generation. Seriously, this tip can save you a lot of time and get you profitable sooner!

Bonus Tip 2: Monetize your blog with affiliate marketing

This tip goes hand-in-hand with getting your traffic started. Once people do begin visiting your site, there should already be a way to generate income.

There are lots of ways you can monetize your blog. I am recommending affiliate marketing because you can do it while you are also working on content and traffic.

If you are not sure what affiliate marketing is, I will tell you. Affiliate marketing is selling (promoting) products by others and making a commission for the sale. All of the sales activities are tracked with your unique sales link called an affiliate link. And the best part is you are helping your readers find the products they need at no additional cost to them. Everyone wins.

Affiliate marketing is great because you do not have to produce products, which takes a great deal of time.

Just remember, as you promote, to be sure you are helping your readers in some way. Never promote a product or service that is unrelated to the needs of your readers. As an example, above I recommend that you have what is called a self-hosted blog. I also provide a recommendation with a link to the host that I use (Bluehost). That is an affiliate link, and that is one way you can use it.

If you want to find out to use affiliate marketing and how to find affiliate products, check out this post that I wrote.

Summary Of What We Learned

Here’s a recap of what you need to know…

• Produce content that your readers will find useful and valuable (no fluff or bs)
• Publish content consistently
• Secure and protect your blog (and run backups!)
• Choose the right niche
• Choose the right hosting platform
• Get started early driving traffic
• Monetize your blog with affiliate marketing

If you found this article helpful, may I ask if you can help out by sharing it? It would mean the world to me. Thank you.

Resources

• Best blogging education
• How to find your writing style
• The truth about starting a blog
• How to write a great blog post

Pro Blogger Resources

• Pro Blogger Training (all-inclusive)
• Self-hosted blog platform for bloggers (with Bluehost)
• Bloggers best email list management (with ConvertKit)

I’m happy to answer your questions to make this as easy as possible for you. Let me know what’s on your mind in the comments below.