In my experience as a blogger, one thing that I have learned the hard way is how to blog effectively. There are days when I’m sure you’d love to write about how you shot one under par, or why your new job is a drag… but you need to take things from the readers point of view in order to boost your numbers.

It is my firm belief that one of the best ways to retain blog readers, encourage commenting… and ultimately increase your traffic is to simply stick to your niche, your focus area. Sure, there are a few blogs about nothing… but it’s tough to get any interest if your readers are interested in internet marketing and you get side-tracked into talking about web design.

The Net Fool Dot Com Trims the Fat
Over the past few months, I have taken a blog that had WAY too many “focus areas” for its own good, to a fine-tuned machine capable of unspeakable destruction producing great growth numbers. The following is a little about my history. TheNetFool.com was originally started up with three focuses: stock market, sportsbooks and get paid to programs. You’ll notice that nowhere on that list is the more obvious “make money online” niche. I started out making myself way too many promises. I was going to update sports spreads and my personal wagers every week, post multiple stock pitches and review GPT programs. What was I thinking? I suffered through 4-5 months with less than 25 subscribers because I didn’t understand how to trim the fat and focus on what I really wanted to say. :shock:

“Make money online” was ultimately a combination of my interests, as all three topics were essentially ploys to try and make revenue on the internet. It wasn’t until I rejuvenated my blog into a focused website that I really saw growth develop. This brings me to the most important rule of blogging:

Rule #1: Start Small, and Gradually Increase Your Niche Focus Area

There’s no doubt in my mind that every successful blogger has started small and gradually expanded their focus outward as subscriber numbers grow. There is really no other way to do it, because without a following you can not… and should not… attempt to diversity your portfolio. Nobody is going to be able to follow along, and you are throwing away otherwise interested subscribers that will boost your rankings and exposure. Don’t sacrifice quality for quantity! :D

Taking a Break v. Taking a Break
There are two different types of break-taking activity that I would like to talk about here. I feel that it’s nearly impossible to keep putting out techniques, tutorials and the like day after day. With this in mind, lots of bloggers, myself included, like to fill dead time with some personal time with readers… anywhere from looking at payment proof to talking about a new website you think is interesting in your niche. However, many bloggers confuse this type of relaxation with taking a break from their focus areas, and put out posts that, quite frankly, are a complete waste of time.

The Net Fool Calls You Out!
A few examples of this that caught my eye: Garry Conn, an internet marketing blogger, wrote about… rotator cuff excercises? The Germz, a make money online blogger, wrote about… T.I. music lyrics? This happens all the time. While I can give these guys the pass because they are obviously doing it just to try to place higher on Google for random search results, I still feel that articles like this are a waste of time. Why? Well you aren’t trying to sell your product to a hip-hop dance crew (or a rotator-cuff injury ward?), so you are probably putting out useless content.

Don’t get me wrong, traffic is great… but we want the traffic flowing to our blog to be real, not from something completely unrelated that will soon dwindle. For me, I want to cater to the subscribers that I already have and expand my reach gradually. If you get so large that you have nothing else to write about but your cousins new truck, be my guest. Until that point, you are much better off focusing on your target area, trimming the fat, and increasing your rss subscriber numbers the right way… with superior, and relevant, content. ;)

-The Net Fool

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!