Learn the Rules then Break Them!

Rules for creating a successful blog:

1. Keep blog postings to less than 500 words
2. Put an image in each blog posting
3. Put Ads on your blog
4. Write great content
5. Promote your blog
6. Mispell words so bad spellers can find you

How I broke these rules:

1. My favorite blog posting is over 2000 words long. Are you serious? Yes. And people stick around to read it? You tell me: How I made money (someday!) from my website without selling anything!

2. So far I've only put one image in one posting and I have over 50 blogs - why? Because it was a relevant graph I wanted my readers to check out - not just some pointless picture of a person's head.

3. Technically I don't have Ads on my blogs - although I do have google adsense.

4. Well this one isn't broken literally - you do need to write great content - I'd alter this to say: Don't pander to your audience. They don't want to hear a sales pitch. Trust me they rather hear the truth. See how I did this in my blog posting titled: Who's really selling you?

5. Okay well maybe I haven't broken this rule really - but let's just say I haven't gone out in every possible direction spending countless hours writing in forums trying to get people to view my blogs.

6. Why sacrifice good spelling? Besides which you would you rather read:

nemona is the leding cause of ilness this seson

or

pnemonia is the leading cause of illness this season

Plus most search engines give spelling suggestions at the top of the search results: Did you mean....? with the correct spelling and the user only has to click on it to get the right results.

After you've learned the rules, and have broken a few, then go back and apply the rules. What??? Seriously, go back.

Break down lengthy paragraphs into 3-5 sentence stanzas.

If you're way over the "suggested" 500 word length - see if you may have 2 posts you can derive out of this one and split it up

Put appropriate ads on your site but not necessarily right across the top - ads are okay just not intrusive ones - you know what I'm talking about

Check your content to make sure it is "great" - are parts of it "lifeless?" Spice them up! Use your adjectives! Add hyperlinks! Make a joke! People like to laugh and there's bound to be at least one more person online who thinks you're funny

Be yourself - don't try to pretend to be something you're not - but what if I'm totally cheesy? That's okay some people want cheesy and those who don't probably know someone who is cheesy who they can refer your site to - who do you think is going to come to their mind when they see your cheesy commentary inside your blog posts? Their cheesy friend of course! "Hey Bob you should check out this website - they are cheesier than you man!" See what I mean about breaking the rules this paragraph is now longer than 5 sentences! OH NO MR. BILL!! lol It's okay, you're still reading it, right? Why?

Well here's something that may be new to your ears: Put your best information at the top of your blog posting in the suggested length of 2-3 sentences per paragraph and that will hook your readers! Once hooked, they keep reading! Yeah, isn't that great? I think so! Of course it doesn't hurt if your entire post is full of great information and pithy and dare I say funny comments.

Do go to relevant related blogs and comment on their postings that you enjoyed and put a link back to your blog posting - the worst that can happen is the moderator doesn't publish your URL

and

Last but not least don't be self-conscious about errors - one or two may get away from you - it's okay people do not expect you to be perfect - in fact being imperfect proves you're not an automaton.

Yours Truly,
CB Webmaster - Rule breaker ;) lol