Running a blog is a great way to make money, but only if you can get enough traffic on a daily basis to support the ads, affiliate marketing, and any other ways that you plan to make money. This is why it is important to understand what keeps readers coming back to a blog and what makes them want to share it with others. Blog topics and ease of use make the biggest difference.
Write About Controversial Topics on Your Blog
One way to keep blog readers coming back for more is to write about controversial topics. Readers love controversy because it is so much fun to share opinions and argue, especially with complete strangers on the Internet. This is why controversial topics always do so well on blogs.
Writing a blog post about a controversial issue and then opening the conversation up to readers in the comments section is a great way to keep readers coming back for more because they will want to know what people have said on the topic after they have commented. And, if it is a particularly heated debate, or a controversy with a high profile in the media, you might see an increase in readership because of this one blog post.
Politics and the news are the best places to look for controversial topics – just be sure to make the blog post relevant to your blog. For instance, if you have a blog about crafts, it might not be appropriate to talk about what that celebrity did at a bar. Luckily, there is controversy in every aspect of life, so it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with topics that people will want to debate and discuss.
Write Comedy Pieces for Blog Posts
Everyone likes to laugh, so comedy pieces are perfect for blog posts. You can create blog posts with a comical edge that relate to your topic. For instance, if your blog is about office life or computer related in some way, you could talk about how Bob couldn’t figure out what was wrong with his computer and it turned out that it was just unplugged.
It is harder to write comedy pieces than it is to write about controversial topics because it is a learned skill. If you can master the art, however, people will be linking back to your blog like crazy and sharing it with others, which will increase readership and revenue.
Encourage Reader Interaction
Blog readers like to be able to express their opinions and interact with other readers. It is important to encourage this reader interaction because it is a major reason why people come back to a blog time after time. There are lots of ways to encourage reader interaction on a blog.
- Make it easier to comment and reply to posts
- Ask a question at the end of a post
- Write about topics people will want to share and follow-up on
- Take suggestions on blog topics
- Place contact information in a prominent place on the blog
- Give a short teaser about your next blog post so readers will want to come back later
Utilize RSS Feeds and Sharing Widgets
Readers will also be more likely to come back to your blog if it easy to link and share the content on social networking sites. So, be sure to have an RSS feed set up and have a blog widget for sharing on common social networks. The more popular blogging sites have lots of these widgets and they are easy to integrate.
Being able to share content has obvious other benefits, too, because it will generate more traffic to your blog, and possible increase dedicated readership. It also might be useful to do a little social networking yourself by setting up a Facebook or Twitter page for your blog so readers have yet another way to contact you.
By spending time on increasing blog readership and traffic, you should notice a natural increase in revenue. Just remember it takes time to build a good reader base and not to give up in the first few months. Focus on encouraging reader interaction, finding topics that people love to read about and share, and making it easy for people to invite others to your blog.