I love the Delicious bookmarking site.  I usually stop by the site once a day to see what’s hot and what people are bookmarking and reading on any given day.

Sometimes you find really good articles and resources and sometimes you find nothing of interest.  Today I stumbled upon a very cool blog called Blog Tyrant.  More specifically, I stumbled on an article called How I Sold My Blog for $20,000 in 8 Months.  It’s a great read and will give you all the basic information you need to know to start a blog, build it into a trafficed and authority site, and how to eventually sell it.

The Blog Tyrant doesn’t go into the technical details of actually transferring a site and domain over to your purchaser, but you can probably find the information elsewhere.  For anyone interested in how to build websites, how to monetize websites, and how to sell websites, this is a great read and is a good primer on how to get started today.

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When you’re starting a blog, you’ll probably be thinking about what “niche” you want to write in.  It makes sense to think in terms of a niche since it’s smart to write a blog based on a distinct topic.

It makes it easier for your visitors to find you and will ultimately be a lot easier to “monetize” or eventually sell even.  Choosing a niche really is not that hard.  Let me tell you why.

You just need to write about what you love, what you know about, what you want to deal with everyday.  Never chase the money.  Okay, I shouldn’t say never, but the truth is I’ve tried to do it in the past, with varying degrees of success, and I would much rather tell you to go after something you love.

I guarantee you that even though it doesn’t seem like it in the beginning you will make a lot more money and have a heck of a lot more fun writing a blog in a niche that you love.  Making money with your blog will work itself out.

Before writing this post, I was writing one for another blog I own in a niche I’m not exactly stoked on.  Sometimes writing for a site like that is like pulling teeth.

Why make it harder on yourself?  The truth is you will not enjoy writing a blog in a niche you don’t love and you will probably abandon the blog after a few months.  I know this is what I did.

So, my advice to you (and don’t feel like you need to take it) is find something to blog about that you don’t mind thinking about every single day and write amazing content.  This is actually a pretty hard thing to do, so good luck.  Let me know what you decide to write about.

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to this site for more like it.  Thanks for reading…

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This is a message to the 12 people who are currently following the RSS feed for this blog, Gainfully Unemployed.

Thanks for following and I hope I make it worth your while to stick around.  If I can help you out in any way, let me know.  I’d love to connect with you!

12 is not a huge number, but I am appreciative of every single person who finds it worth his or her time to subscribe to my feed.

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Here is a piece of advice for new bloggers coming from a guy who has started (and gotten tired of) a lot of blogs.  Or course, you don’t have to listen to me, but I want to drop this nugget on anyone who may care.

If you are starting a blog and you perhaps want to use it as a platform sometime down the line for making money, getting exposure for yourself, or just want to keep it running as a place to write, one of the best things you can do is choose to blog about something you really like.

Again, the advice is to Blog About Something You Like.  Something you know about, something you would do for free everyday of your life.  If you are interested in the subject matter, your blog will be ten times better and will feel ten times less like work.  Because the truth is blogs take a lot of work and a lot of time.  And you don’t want to end up hating your blog.  Even though web hosting is cheap, you don’t want to make any kind of investment if you’re going to quit your blog a month or two down the line.

Life is short, blog about stuff you like.  And the real secret is that you will make more money with a blog that’s close to your heart than if you just chase high paying keywords or niches.

If you’re new here, please subscribe or bookmark this site and check back regularly.  Leave a comment too.

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Do you like your blog?  Or do you hate your blog?

I think there are a lot of people out there who decide a few months in or even a year or so into a new blog, that they hate their blog.

I’m here to tell you that if you hate your blog, drop it like a bad habit.  Forget about it.  Start a new blog in a new niche.  Don’t worry about any of the work you put into your blog, just move on.  Life’s too short.  It doesn’t mean that you failed, it just means that you are moving on to a new project.

People do this all the time.  It’s called growing.  It’s called learning.

You may even be able to sell your old blog.  Check out flippa.com, the best place to sell blogs (and all other kinds of websites) online.  Digital Point forums also has a way to sell your site, but I’m not that familiar with it.

Just don’t feel like you need to work on a blog that you can’t stand anymore.  If you have a blog you can’t stand, tell me about it.  Heck, I might want to buy it from you.

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I don’t really know if there is a truly distinct difference between a blogger and an Internet marketer, since most bloggers delve into Internet marketing when they want to start monetizing the traffic that comes to their blogs.

Still, I think it’s an interesting question.

It seems to me that bloggers write for themselves and for their audience, whereas in the marketing realm the largest concern is supporting the product you are selling.  I don’t mean this in a negative way, but it seems that if there is a distinction between the way the content is created in blogging vs marketing, that would be one way to put it.

To be honest, I think I enjoy the marketing aspect of creating content the most.  To me, it’s fun to create great content and build traffic to it and watch it move up the search results pages, get a lot of traffic, and convert.

It think it’s important to keep a solid mixture of both Internet marketing mentality and the blogging mentality in your online content creation or whatever it is you do online to earn income.  The reason is because people more than ever crave authenticity.

If you can provide an authentic voice–truthful reviews, incredible value without really asking for anything in return (since if you do it right, you will get more back than you give), and providing useful information–then you will be very successful in Internet marketing or blogging.

If you’re interested in setting up your own website business, make sure to come by and read more of my writing here on Gainfully Unemployed, the work for yourself blog, or leave a comment or send me an email with any questions.

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Getting a lot of traffic to your blog takes three basic things. First, you have to have something to write about. The “something” you write about needs to be helpful and informative to a group or community of people.

In other words, you need to provide some kind of value to people in order to make it worth their while to come to your blog to read your content and to hopefully come back in the future.

The second thing you need to do is write a lot of content. Write a post every day if you can. If you can’t, write one every other day. The more posts you write, the more chances there will be for people to find your work. Cast a wide net.

The third thing you need is to actively promote your work. Once you are done writing your article, you’re not done. If you want traffic to come to your blog, you need to reach out to others and let them know it’s there. The amazing thing that happens is once you win a few “fans,” it gets easier to get more. Once you start to get links from other bloggers writing about similar topics and a few social media links, you are well on your way.

I read a refreshing and honest article with some real world advice about gaining blog traffic by a blogger named Ryan Schmitz (his blog is Planting Dollars) who pulled in 5,700 hits in his first month of blogging. He writes about the quickest way to build a successful blog.  

He also points out that you shouldn’t smack your visitors across the face with tons of advertisements or really think about making money early on.  That part comes later.

Read 9 Ways to Be a Better Blogger

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If you are in need of a kick in the pants in the blog brainstorming department, check out this post at Copyblogger about how to come up with great ideas for blog posts so that you have them whenever you want to start writing.

Writing a blog can be a lonely experience–especially when you’re staring at the computer screen with your hands on the computer screen but have no idea what to write.

Writing your blog posts is only half the battle.  The other half is knowing what you want to write about.  

Also, read 9 ways to be a better blogger.

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Sometimes the hardest thing about blogging is deciding what to write about.  Either you have no idea what to write about, or on the contrary, are so consumed by the sheer amount of information freely available on the internet that you lose focus.

This happens to me quite often.

Using social bookmarking site Delicious is one way to avoid not having ideas ready for blog posts or feeling the pain of information overload.

Delicious is the best place to store and find links to websites and blogs online. Since anyone can see how many times a given link has been saved by the community, it’s easy to see which stories or sites are the most valuable and interesting.

If you’re looking for a story idea, having a look at the front page of Delicious will show you what people are saving, what’s fresh, and what’s trending. This may give you the little push you need to write an epic post.  It’s an interesting site because you never really know what you’re going to find.

Well, maybe you do actually.  You’re going to get a mix of links of interest to web designers, marketers, and tech folk, but there’s always a few wild cards like news stories and random cool links that have bubbled up to the surface.

Often, you will find an idea for a story right there on the front page.  But even if you don’t, you can try the Delicious search function. Type in the category or genre of your blog and see what comes up.  The top entries will be authoritative sites that you probably know (if yours pops up, congrats) and you can work your way down to find links and sites that may interest you and give you a fresh idea or a new take on something.

You can also break down your searches by selecting tags to help filter your search and you can search by “freshness.” In other words, you can look for bookmarks that have been saved over the past year to the present, 2 months to the present, or 4 hours to the present. This will allow you to find perennially popular links and the hot, trending ones.

Delicious gives you a good sense of the authority of an article or blog post because you can see how many other people have saved it. Sure, it’s not a perfect system, but items with fake authority (ie, 20 friends saved it) stick out like a sore thumb.

You can also easily save and tag items you find on Delicious for use as research for a future post. If you’re going to do a link post, like a “100 Ways to do Whatever,” this is a good place to do your research.  Use a unique tag for the items you’re going to include in your list or use for research and you will be able to reference them at your leisure.  Pay attention to tagging saved links and you’ll make your job easier.

Also consider following the bookmarks of people you respect or listen to online.  This can give you a good inside perspective on what topics they are interested in.

Hopefully, after reading this post you can see that Delicious can be an idea generating powerhouse that can help you avoid blogger’s block.

I didn’t get hugged as a child. Show me the love.

Update (4/21/2012): Delicious sucks now. 

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It’s always inspirational–or daunting–to see how much money bloggers and internet business owners are making from their online ventures, especially when you compare it to what you earn!  I think some of the people out there have great stories to tell and can help you get to where you want to be in terms of online income.

It’s quite hard to find a solid list of blogger income online, but one of the best I’ve found is on IncomeDiary.com.  

You will recognize many of these websites, like Mashable and TechCrunch, but there are quite a few blogs you may not have been exposed to.  Check them out and see what they’re doing.  

Another good post on the same site is a list of the top 50 most influential bloggers.

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