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Turning your Blog into Business

Things to consider when turning your blog into a money maker mover and shaker:

Keeping your options open: Be careful not to corner yourself into one particular topic. Think expansion. If you drill too specifically into one particular topic, you leave no room for inspiration and growth. Make sure you leave yourself some options with regard to business direction.

Accepting advertising: Determine whether a driving force of your revenue will eventually be advertising. If so, you will need to design your site accordingly to accommodate it without being totally overwhelming. Too many ads can be a deterrent, and poor ad locations can stifle advertisers, or you may even have trouble finding some.

Staying true to your content: Do not get derailed too quickly. If you run a blog about cooking and your biggest traffic bait is low-fat recipes, be sure to keep those readers swimming in them. Keep it real.

Cross-promoting: If you notice a spike in popularity in a certain area of your blog that could potentially take off in a big way, consider splitting your blog into different areas to draw your readers into different parts of your site. Divide things up but keep your readers drilling into other areas. Get the readership moving between the two blogs. You double your target audience and potentially double your advertising opportunities.

Getting help: You can do it all, and do it all in style, but everyone should know their limit. Recognize that people are out there with similar interests that can potentially make wonderful contributions to your endeavor. Bring on guest bloggers, rope industry professionals into your discussions, or have a cross-blog promotion. When you can afford to expand, do so. Finally, invest in some professional design if you cannot do it yourself the way you think it should be done.

Picking up some literature: There are lots of books about marketing and books about blogs available online or at your local bookstores.

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