Choosing the right niche for your blog is tricky. If you
want to blog merely as a hobby, then feel free to
write about whatever you want. The important thing
here is to have fun.

If, however, you want to make money with your blog
and possibly grow it into a business, you will need to
choose your niche more carefully.
The first mistake to avoid is making the blog
gravitate around your person. This includes
using a domain with your name and surname and
writing excessively about personal matters. This has
worked for some people, but most of them already
had some notoriety before they started blogging.
Don't get me wrong. Putting yourself in your blog
and sharing your related experiences with the
audience is perfectly fine, but your site should have
a topic on its own, say small business or Microsoft
Windows, as opposed to being a personal blog.

The second mistake is trying to cover too
many topics with the same blog. You probably
have many interests and passions, but you need to
choose one of them for your blog. If you write about
technology, politics and fitness, you will have a hard
time developing a core audience. The sharper the
focus of your blog, the easier it will be to attract
readers and to monetize it.
The third mistake is choosing a niche that you
are not passionate or knowledgeable about.
This usually happens when people see someone
making good money in a certain niche, and they
decide to imitate it. As I mentioned before, making
money blogging will take time and hard work. If you
don't love what you are writing about, you won't
have the motivation to stick with it long enough.
Finally, try to focus on just one blog instead of
creating a myriad of them. It is easier to make
money with one authoritative blog than with a
bunch of mediocre ones.

The Content

It all starts with the content. Why? Because in order
to make money with a blog you need to have traffic,
and quality content is the best traffic generator.
Ask 100 bloggers what factors contributed to their
success, and I am sure that pretty much all of them
will mention the content.
In this first chapter we are going to define what is
quality content, and list some strategies that you
can use to improve the content on your blog.

Valuable, Unique and Engaging

Quality content must be valuable, unique and
engaging.
It must be valuable because people need a reason
to visit your blog. This value will have different
forms, depending on the type of blog that you have.

Readers of a tech news blog, for example, will get
value if the posts keep them informed and up to
date with the latest tech developments. Readers of
a humor blog, on the other hand, will get value if the
posts entertain them and make them laugh. The
important thing is to make sure that your readers
will get something in return for the attention they
will lend to you.
Quality content must also be unique, else people
won't need to visit your blog to read it. If you start a
news blog and simply write about all the stories that
appear on the New York Times, for example, you will
have a hard time finding readers, because most
people will prefer to visit the original source.
Finally, quality content must be engaging. Blogs
became immensely popular on the Internet because
they transformed monologues into conversations. If
you want a popular blog, you need to build a
community around it. Practically speaking, this
means that you should write with a personal touch,
share your opinions where appropriate, ask direct
questions to your readers, use their comments as
base for your posts and so on.

Killer Articles

A killer article is nothing more than a post that
packs a huge amount of value for potential
visitors. Once you publish a killer article, you want
people who will come across it to connect with it and
be compelled to take action