Brian has put together a Blueprint for a Brilliant Blog Launch which I think will be helpful for bloggers in startup mode.

Brian’s 3 step process of starting a new blog is pretty simple:

1. Cornerstone – before launching writing some ‘cornerstone’ content that will be a great foundation for your blog. This means that when you launch your blog will have something solid for readers to read when they come and visit instead of just seeing a blog with a handful of flakey posts.
2. Networking – becoming networked within your niche is important if you want to grow your readership via other blogs and sites in it. This means connecting with other bloggers, building relationships with them and becoming a part of the niche.
3. Attraction – doing something to get attention will accelerate your blog’s growth. I’d suggest doing a number of things over a number of weeks. Like Brian says it could include writing a free report, writing some link-bait content etc

The launch phase of a new blog is one where you need to perform a balancing act between a variety of tasks and attempting to achieve a variety of goals simultaneously.

To put it slightly differently to Brian – here are some of the goals I attempt to achieve in the early days of a blog:

1. Establish Credibility/Expertise

In the early days of your blog you need to prove yourself as someone worth reading in some way. There is a variety of ways you can achieve this including:

• tell your story - tell your readers how you have grown in your topic, highlight your achievements and share what you’ve learnt (here’s an example of a post in which I told my ProBlogging story) – read more on using stories on your blog.
• showing your success – if there’s some way to prove yourself as an expert (here’s an example of a time I did this).
• cornerstone content - perhaps the best way to establish credibility is simply to provide content that is solid and helpful to reader. Write a series of posts that shows your knowledge and ability to help people and you’ll find people start to look to you as an authority on your topic.

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Wendy has written a heart felt post on her blog titled The Things That Get You Successful Won’t Necessarily Keep You That Way which is basically about the realization that her current blogging business model is not really scalable. Some of the areas she’s seeing this in:

• I cannot respond to the 30-50+ comments left every day anymore, which both saddens me and also decreases participation in the conversation on both sides
• I spend every Monday digging through 200-300 (or 400+!) emails from the previous week
• Writing for three blogs is very time consuming – and coming up with 3x more fresh ideas is at best a stretch and at worst downright stressful
• I have advertisers willing to pay for more impressions – but in my current business model, I do not have the time or resources to create more content

Wendy then shot me an email asking for any thoughts that I had. Here’s a few that come to mind as I read her post:

1. Building a Sustainable Business Out of Blogging is Hard

The realizations that Wendy is having now are ones that most bloggers come to at one point or another. While they are not easy questions to tackle – they are important ones to grapple with and the results of having done so will make any Blogger stronger (if they don’t lead them to give up – as often happens).

The hard reality is that for the majority of blogs – scaling them to a point where they’re able to sustain their authors is not easy. Some blogs are easier than others due to their topic (ie some topics have a direct commercial tie in in terms of selling advertising) but for most bloggers it’s bloody hard work.

2. It takes time

Another obvious thing (that still needs to be said) is that building a blog to a point where it’s able to earn an income from it takes significant time. Getting established in search engines, building an RSS subscriber or email newsletter list, getting active members and building up enough archives to generate significant long tail traffic all takes time.

Part of my advice to Wendy is simply ‘hang in there’.

Her blog has come a long way in the last 12 months – and the next 12 months will see it continue to steadily (if not exponentially) grow. I generally find that the second year of a blog’s life sees it grow faster and to greater heights than the first year.

3. Focus Upon Indirect Income Earners

One of the things that I think Wendy will find is that the key to monetizing her blog will not necessarily be through direct income via advertising or affiliate programs. While this might currently be the main focus of monetizing the blog – the real pay off will probably come through leveraging the profile that the blog gives her.

Wendy has been very active in participating in the blogosphere and her personal brand has grown as a result. She’s already having opportunities to speak at conferences, has experimented with different e-resources and with continued quality blogging and a little self promotion has the potential to open up bigger opportunities for speaking, writing books, selling resources etc.

The key with this is to continue to build her own personal brand and tie it closely to the blogs themselves.

One strategy that Wendy might explore to help keep the content levels up is to use more and more guest bloggers. While this is good in that it helps her to keep the content pumping out – the downside is that she also runs the risk of diluting her own profile on the blog. This is a bit of a tightrope to walk – but if I were Wendy I’d probably be a bit more intentional about selling herself more on her blog than selling other people’s products. Perhaps the blog could do with a little more ‘Wendyfying’? (from memory I think it used to have a picture of her on it for example).

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This Guest Post has been submitted by J.T Dabbagian.

When I worked for my community college’s newspaper, I was told a story about a man whose goal was to work for the Los Angeles Times. My teacher stated that it was his New Yorker. Not to be confused with the Literary Magazine The New Yorker, the term ‘New Yorker’ is given to the print, literary, or other media outlet that is the dream or goal outlet of a person.

As bloggers, a good deal of us have blogs that we greatly admire, and many would jump at the chance to work, or even contribute to such a blog. For me, my New Yorker is the productivity blog Lifehacker. For others, it could be sites like Problogger, or a Google Blog, or any other blog. Whether your goal is to actually work for the blog, or merely to continue having your own blog, you can benefit from having a New Yorker to look up to.

Remember that in blogging, it’s best to have a role model in the blogosphere. Your New Yorker should be none other then that very role model in your blogging experience. Want to write for The Motley Fool? Learn their style; it’s probably one of the reasons why they’re so popular. Don’t completely rip off their articles, obviously, but there is something to be said in copying the professional style of a blog. How does this tie in to making money? It works in two ways: Directly, with contribution, and indirectly, with reference.

Making a contribution to the site

If you’re a contributor to one of the sites, or an author, odds are for the bigger blogs that you might be able to work out a deal for either a segment of the revenue, or maybe be paid directly by the site! Often times, even the smaller blogs, or blogs that don’t rely too much on revenue can often give you something in return, such as hosting, or a recommendation on LinkedIn.

Furthermore, If you become an author of said site, their influence, their reach, all becomes YOUR reach! Also, their audience becomes your audience as well, to an extent, which means more traffic driven to you, more ads clicked, and more money!

So what do you do? Write a query email to the blog’s head writer, and send a proposal of your topic article. Later on, as you post more entries, you might consider offering your services as an editor.

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