Hi Grace!  Good to see you again!  Your comment that you left got me to thinking and you know me….that s**t hurts!  So to ease the pain I thought I’d write up a quick post for you and anybody else who might be lurking about.

If you have an extra domain lying around I highly recommend setting up a personal blog.  And if you don’t then just set it up on a sub-domain.  If you want to blog about a specific topic then you can do a bit of keyword research for the domain name but obviously, by looking at those blogs I showed you in that other post those people aren’t paying any attention to keywords in their domain names.  And look at the address bar for this page that you’re on right now.  It says ‘97dollarebooks.com/blog.  When I decided I wanted a blog I didn’t want to buy another domain name so I just tacked it on my 97 Dollar Ebooks domain.

But here’s why I think everyone should have some

type of personal blog:

Blogging is fun - Notice I said ‘Blogging’ and not NICHE Blogging.  Niche blogging is Work. You’re doing it to try to earn money therefore you’re stressed and worrying about SEO and keywords and content and all the other stuff that goes along with WORK.  And that’s all well and good.  There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch and a little hard work never hurt anybody.

But if you have a personal blog you can write about whatever you want.  In fact, you SHOULD.  That’s what makes your content so interesting.  People are actually learning about GRACE.  And don’t even think about keywords or SEO.  Make it an online journal if you want to.   A blog doesn’t always have to teach something.  If you notice those other blogs don’t teach you anything.   Think of it as a journal that you write in every day.  The only difference is it’s online and the whole world can see it.  And we all know how people love to snoop through journals!

A Personal Blog teaches you how to write – If you’re not a good writer to begin with, writing for SEO is difficult at best.  A lot of people are scared to death to sit down and try to write something and then when you add in SEO and keywords that makes it even worse.  By the time they get done their blog posts sound like they were written by a first grade robot.

But a personal blog, with no attention to SEO, gives you more freedom to express yourself.  You can talk like YOU.  Once you get used to putting your own words ‘down on paper’ so to speak, it makes NICHE blogging a lot easier.  And really the only difference between ‘good’ writing and ‘bad’ writing is the tone.  People would rather read something that sounds like it comes from the heart or that sounds like it’s being ’spoken’ than something that was written by someone who thinks they have to try to write like Shakespeare.

You can experiment with a personal blog – For example, that poll that you saw on the other post and the one you’ll see at the end of this post.  That’s a new Wordpress plug-in I found and I want to test it out before I use it on a Niche blog so I installed it here first.  This is the first blog I used Wordpress Unique on because I wanted to see what it could do and how it would affect my traffic.  I test out different graphics here and different writing styles.  In fact, I bet you guys don’t know this – but on THIS blog, every time I DO concentrate on keywords the traffic DROPS!

A personal blog will help you learn Niche Blogging – This blog has the most traffic so when I want to learn about traffic statistics I have a good gauge by coming here.  Like I said, my traffic actually drops on this blog when I concentrate on keywords.  So that’s helped me tweak my writing on other blogs to attract traffic but still keep them on the page.   When I need to learn how to schedule a post or how to upload a file or a video or something, I do it here first because I know you guys don’t care what the place looks like, you’re just here for the popcorn.

Whenever I hear about a new marketing method, I use it on this blog because I’m not concerned about how it might affect my traffic.   If the new method works, fine, and if it makes my traffic drop, fine.   I’m not using this blog for income in the traditional sense.  I like to ramble occasionally, you guys like to listen occasionally, but the money comes from non-traditional sources.  This blog is basically one big portfolio for me and I send potential writing clients here to see writing examples.  Most of those other blogs I showed you are monetized in non-traditional ways, too.  They’ve either gotten book deals from them or they’re getting freebies or they’re being paid to blog or something.  But you don’t see a lot of adsense and banner ads.

So it is possible to monetize a personal blog but not always in the traditional sense.  But the first thing you have to do is create one and just keep posting.

But what I’ve learned while playing around with this blog and the other personal blogs I had has helped me then in my Niche blogging.  Let’s face it, Niche blogging isn’t ALL about what you see on the page.  There’s a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes and if you don’t do it right you’re just wasting your time and a little piece of cyberspace.

A Personal Blog is a great way to start or end your day – If you notice, when I post here it’s always first thing in the morning.  I like this blog and I love hanging out here and it’s just a great way to start my day.  I’ve just started two more personal blogs as part of a new marketing method I’m trying out – See This Post – and I’ve been posting on them at the end of my day and I’m loving it.  I start off my day writing about something I enjoy and I end it that same way.

You Make New Friends – I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met with this blog.  And I don’t mean they just leave a comment and pass back out of the picture.  I get emails and instant messages ever day from people who come to this blog.  I have more friends because of this blog than I’ve had my entire life.

Give it a try…

Go ahead and try it.  Seriously.  Just post to it as often as you like.  Don’t worry about timing or keywords or SEO.  Just post.  And don’t worry about WHAT you’re going to say or how you’re going to say it.  Just ‘talk’ like you would if you were talking to a friend.  And you guys see how long my posts always turn out.  Most of them started with just one sentence or thought that I wanted to express and then I just get into it and keep on rambling.

By The Way…

If you guys are interested in putting a poll on your blog this is a Free Wordpress plug-in I found.  It’s called PollDaddy Polls and you can either download it from you dashboard or get it at PollDaddy.com.  You have to set up a Free account at PollDaddy, too.  It only takes a minute to register and it only takes a minute to install and then you can create polls right from your dashboard which is so super easy that even I can do it!

Tagged with: Blog • Niche Blogging • Personal Blog

Filed under: Random Stuff

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