Before starting a new blog it helps to define what your goals are
for it as that will guide you in every aspect of its development.
Somebody who wants to build a blog to promote an existing business
will do things differently to somebody who is blogging for a
political cause for example.

Whether you have already got a blog or are about to start one, take
a moment to think about the following factors and as you work your
way through the course have your answers in mind.

Target Audience
---------------

Think about who your target audience is for your blog. Are they
male / female? What is their income? Are they married? Have
children? Are they tech-savvy?

A young tech-savvy male is far more likely to Digg your posts than
a mom who doesn't even know what RSS is for instance. Your audience
will respond differently to monetization also. The same tech-savvy
male is much less likely to click an ad than the mom.

Is your target audience somebody who is likely to carefully read
through your posts in detail trying to glean as much information as
possible (older crowd for instance) or are they a
"give-it-to-me-quick" kind of person? These factors will affect
your content and writing style. The former may respond well to
in-depth how-to posts whereas the latter will likely prefer quick,
easily-scannable lists.

If any of the things I've mentioned here don't make sense to you,
don't worry as I will cover them all in the course! I'm just trying
to give you examples so that as you take the lessons you'll better
understand what aspects will be more applicable to your particular
blog.

Monetization
------------

From the outset you should try to have a clear idea of how you want
to monetize your blog. For example, if you are planning on selling
private advertising then you'll need to make sure that your blog
theme is designed to support the sizes and shapes of ads that you
want to run.

If you are promoting something that is already in existence such as
your services, or an existing business then you will want to make
sure that you prominently work your promotional content into your
blog seamlessly.

For example, look at my Internet Marketing blog:

http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/

First of all, scroll up to the top - there is a large header
section split into three parts and each one of those heavily
promotes something I have produced. One of them is the course you
are reading right now!

Now over to the right in my sidebar you'll see a handful of small
125x125 banner ads. As you can see, these are not as prominent as
the products in my header section but they fit nicely. When I first
launched my blog the theme I was using wasn't really designed to
support either one of these.

Other monetization options such as AdSense are usually easier to
slot into just about any theme as there are many shapes and sizes
of ads that you can use but then you need to ask yourself the
question, do I place ads straight away or should I incorporate them
later?

In my opinion, if you are blogging in order to earn an income then
incorporate some ads on your blog straight away. The details don't
matter at first as you'll have no traffic anyway but there is a
good reason for doing it up-front: As you begin to build your blog
readership they will come to expect that you are blogging for money
and expect to see your ads. If you suddenly introduce them some
time later some of your readers will complain, accuse you of being
a sellout and so on!

Another benefit to placing ads straight away is that the audience
that you build will often contain your future advertisers but they
won't think to advertise with you if you're not in the habit of
having ads on your blog. Start as you mean to go on!

Branding
--------

Later in this course I will be talking quite a lot about social
media which is one of the ways in which I have brought in thousands
of people to my blog and established myself in the niche. One very
important thing about branding is that it is very difficult to
change later on.

Right from the start think about what image you are trying to
project. Are you promoting yourself like I am in my blog or are you
promoting your blog name as a brand within itself (think
Lifehacker, TechCrunch, BoingBoing)? If you are promoting yourself
then think about graphics - do you have a standard avatar for
yourself that you can use? Make sure you do because when you get
social media right that avatar gets *everywhere*!

Changing Direction?
===================

I have to admit that I have changed direction a bit on my blog over
the first year. That is one of the reasons why I am writing this
course - so that you can think about things up front rather than
have to keep changing things mid-stream as you learn new things.

If you have an already established blog think about where it stands
currently on the points mentioned above. What kind of audience does
it currently attract? Is that the audience you want? What
monetization are you using and are you happy with it? Is your
audience responding well to it? Finally, what image are you
projecting, if any?

If you need to change anything that is ok, just think about the
direction in which you would like to take your blog and bear that
in mind as you work through the rest of these lessons.

Start Blogging Today

I teach everyone free, how to Make Money with Free Blogs at my new website www.makemoneybanc.blogspot.com.