4 Questions Every new Blogger Wants to Ask ? Finally Answered

Posted in Blogging

Well these are some of the basic questions that might crop up to a newbie blogger’s mind. Even I was looking for these answers but found them nowhere. So I decided to write the answers myself as feel a bit experienced now.

I wrote this post after I received a mail from a Friend (Shrinivas Prabhu) which said : Hi Debajyoti das,I loved ur blog and have suscribed to it via rss feeds.Actually I came to know about blogosphere some time before and then eventually started blogging.But as I am new to this world I am facing certain doubts and hence require your advice.

1)From Where do you find topic for blogging ?

2)How much time do you spend online for blogging?

3)What is the average time you spend on each article? It takes me around 4hrs to complete once is it normal

4)How did you promote your article during your initial stages of blogging

Wow, For the first time I felt like Darren Rowse or Harsh Agarwal. Anyways these seem simple questions at first, but the answers are actually quite elaborate. So, this are my answers to all new bloggers out there.

1) How to Find the Topic for Blogging

Well this means both “What Topic to write For” and “Where to Find Post about that Topic“.

What Topic to Write For : Anything that you feel interested about talking about with your real life friends. Well maybe it means that one will write about Lindsay Lohan’s assets or about Why should you Vote ?. That’s so Good about Blogging. BUT, if you want to make a blog that gives you a readers base as well as some search visitors so that you might make some money out of your blog posts using Adsense, then you need to find a Niche. I didn’t even knew what’s a niche. What it means to me is your interests. For Eg. -My Blog is about Internet & Web and Computing Stuff. Similarly you should find your Interest about what you are going to Blog about. Some Ideas I think you can be blogging about are Blogging, Computing, Tech, Motivation, Entrepreneurship, Music, Bollywood, Parental, Personal & Education.

Where to Find Post about that Topic : You don’t have to Find Posts. You have to Create Them. For that you need ideas. So where to Find Post Ideas ? What I do is I subscribe to a lot of RSS Feeds of many popular blogs of my niche in Newsgator FeedDemon. What is does, it shows all the latest headines from the blogs you’ve subscribed to. So it keep you a track of what’s happening in the Blogosphere. If you are a Technology Blogger then the List of top tech sites can be found at Labnol’s Favorites. You can subscribe to these blogs for the top news in technology.

Sometimes even you can get random ideas from TV shows, Newspapers & even by asking your friends about an issue. For Eg : My Post How to Connect a PC or Laptop to a TV was written when my friend & I were discussing about how would it look be to play pc games on his large lcd tv.

2) How Much Time Should a Blogger Spend Online

Well, Blogging is not about the amount of time you spend, It about the quality of the post you write. You see that’s why Labnol is Labnol and Snaphow is Snaphow. But, ya initially some time needs to be spend not for posting posts but for the learning process. Its all about the mistakes you make. The more you make the more better you blog become. I did a lot of them. Too many. And I have learned a lot from them.

Anyways I think 3-4 hrs is nice. But if you are a professional blogger then read Labnol’s A Day in the Life of a Part-Time Blogger Who Has a Full-Time Job.

3) How Much Time for an Article

Again Its all about quality. One can take a full day of research if you want to write really well. Sometimes its can even take a month to create those amazing lists of stuff, for example my post 80 Most Romantic Hollywood Movies took me 3 weeks of hard work Googling. After which I decided never to write list type posts again. Since the post hardly gave any value to my blog. Again a Mistake (I learnt : Do not waste time on stupid stuff). My Advice Read Problogger’s Post How To Write Excellent Blog Content.

4) How to Promote your New Blog & Posts

The most important in a life of a blogger. Promotion. Everybody needs to promote to make it visible to a lot of eyes. What I hate when some Gurus say that’s its not important to promote instead CONTENT IS KING. Dude you believe them ? They themselves promote & promote via Twitter, eBooks, Ads and what not ?

Promoting Means letting other people know that you have written something and you want them to read it. And why ? So that you can get traffic to your blog. More Traffic… More Readers…. More Linkbacks … Higher Rankings … Much More Traffic… Fame… More Linkbacks…Massive Traffic… Good Earnings.

Some of my must read Posts about promoting your blog :

Promotion is everything … you are reading this because I promoted this post…

Finally, I am no guru or the master etc. I just wrote some of things which I have come to know about.

BUT, noting is complete if you don’t see the video in this post : A Must Watch Video For Getting Success in Blogging

Share your Comments !!

Bapun :

Simply excellent. Lovely post with deep observations and brief explanations.

But I would like to slightly disagree with some of your points. As you have said (Point – 4) that pro bloggers advice newbies to concertate of contents instead of promotions, well, I guess they are 100% right in that. Lemme explain why..

They are being called pro bloggers because they have some excellent contents in their blogs. Everything starts from the root and they grows. Initially you will get nothing out of promotions if you have not made some quality stuffs for those people who come to your site via your promotions. So, it’s very very necessary to write for a long time and then think of promotions. Pro bloggers are marketing (yes, it’s the correct word) their blogs just to compete with other pro bloggers, not with newbies. We need to be in this field for a longer period to read pro blogger’s mind

To sum up, pro bloggers market their blogs/products using email,ads,affiliate schemes,ebooks etc as they have something worth marketing. But as far as newbies or middle level bloggers are concerned, I would strongly recommend them to give full efforts to content, promotions come next.

Just my 2 paisa..

Dinesh :

Well written…………nice work, keep it up !

Mohit :

I like your promotion trick of sending email for open comments to reader. Also there are much other ways of promotion. Well one of my big problem is regularity in blogging. I don’t write post regularly in a routine. You should provide some solution for that too.
Gr8 job dude.
Keep it up!

Simran :

Hey debo ! You have written your experience in words very nicely but you should write something more under heading “How to Promote your New Blog & Posts”

You can find articles from latest discussions at forums too

Shrinivas Prabhu :

Thanx Debajyoti Das, Thanx for your good advice I may surely try to follow it

Harsh Agrawal :

Hey Deb
Good to see that you started helping people here , Meanwhile “Darren Rowse or Harsh Agarwal” , I can’t be compared with Darren as he is a pro’s pro.
AnyHow…
I’m adding my 2 cents here
1) From Where do you find topic for blogging ?

IMHO before your start blogging , one need to decide and find out why he wants to blog?
Money
Fame
Popularity
Interest

That will help you to determine your niche and you will be able to decide do you need a personal blog, and entertainment blog or a niche blog.

Once you have purpose, Start mindmapping your ideas, With Mindmapping you can have lots of ideas for your blog…

Rest follow Deb tips..they are good enough

One last thing : Never blog for money, blog for yourself and money will ultimately follow you.

Debajyoti Das :

I agree with Harsh that One should Never blog for Adsense … it will only make matters worse

Debajyoti Das :

@ Simran – Ya I have already started working on that post…. Thanks for the Tip bro..
@ Mohit – Ya… Its an experiment for my next Blog post .

Debajyoti Das :

Thanks a Lot Bapun …. you are absolutely right about problogger.
In fact I wanted someone to disagree to this thing only.. bcoz i once read in Darren’s Post that a good way to get a good discussion on a blog post is to write something which make people disagree. SO I was trying it out…

In fact, the thing is that the pro bloggers understand something which new guys like us don’t…. So its obvious their ways may or may not be liked…

Rohit Sane @ Tech-Freak Stuff :

Good advice and points Deb! But one thing I will want to stress on again: If anyone doesn’t find fun in Blogging and is Blogging only for money then He is going to fail!

Release Candidate :

Being a new Blogger, the same questions did haunt my mind! Thanks for answering them before I could ask it out!

chinmoy :

That sure helped a lot. I like the way you attract organic traffic from google. Any tips on that? BTW, any plans fer returning to college? The bandh is getting quite erratic!

Seopositive :

Nice article! Thanks for the blogging tips. keep on posting new articles

online coupons :

Thank you very much for this nicely written entry.

Arijit Das :

Wow!! Awesome tips you gave out Debajyoti!! iabsolutely agree with your words, you wrote . These words touched my mind “initially some time needs to be spend not for posting posts but for the learning process.” As, i did most of the time.

Debajyoti Das :

Thanks Man … I am glad you like It…