The ultimate checklist for a successful blog. For more information check full article at: http://www.alvinhy.com/ultimate-checklist-successful-blog/

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The Ultimate Checklist For A Successful Blog
Go through each steps carefully and you will have a successful blog in no time. If you
have any questions feel free to comment.
For a detailed Text/Image tutorial you can choose to read it here:
• The Ultimate Guide to Start a Blog
• The Ultimate Guide to Email List Building
• The Ultimate Guide to Increasing Blog Traffic
Part 1: Brainstorming
Choose a Niche – Be Wise & Choose Carefully
Select a topic that you are interested in. Be it dogs or cats. Something you are passion-
ate about. If the topic you are blogging about is not your passion, you will have trouble
keeping up in the future.
Focus on this one niche market for your blog.
To Do List:
Read article to find out more about niche markets: How to choose a niche market
Think of a name – Decide On a Brand Name
Once you have chosen your niche market, think of a suitable name for it. Make sure
the name goes along with your niche or it will be very confusing to your readers.
You can also use your own name as your brand name.

2. A great way to generate brand names is to use NameMesh, it is a free tool allowing
you get generate names based on your keywords.
Check Availability – Is it Available?
Check if your name is available as a domain name and if it is available on social net-
works.
If domain and social media account names are taken, go back to choosing a name.
Things To Do:
Check Name On Social Network: Knowem
Brand Colours – Colours are important
Think of what colors you want to use on your blog. For inspiration, go to ColourLovers
to find color templates.
To Do List:
Read this article on how blog colors can affect readership.
Logo Design – 100 Concepts at the price of one
If you are good with Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop, go on ahead and design
your own logo. Make sure you keep in mind of your brand colors.
A good logo can have a big difference in terms of aesthetics and trust from your read-
ers.
If you are no good with design, consider outsourcing.
Outsourcing can give you hundreds of different concepts and be able to choose the
right design that works.
A great platform is DesignCrowd, allowing you to ask hundreds of designers to design
a logo concept but paying the price of one.
Part 2: Setting Up
Buy a Domain – This domain is for life!
Make sure you have made up your mind when choosing a domain. There is no going
back after you purchased it.
Also, Arvixe and BlueHost both offer you a FREE domain for life if you register through
them.

3. A typical domain is around $9 a year, but every dollar spent less is profit.
Get a Web Host – A Reliable Host is Key
In order for your blog to work flawlessly, you need to find yourself a reliable host. Dif-
ferent hosts provide different services.
Here are a few recommended choices for you to choose from:
• Arvixe – Great for beginners, low monthly cost ($4/month), great live chat
support, 99% uptime.
• Bluehost – One of the most reliable hosts out there in the market. They
are official “WordPress” recommended hosting.
• WP Engine – For blogs that have sustained more traffic, really fast
servers but can withstand a lot of traffic.
Installing WordPress – Easy as Blinking
Setting up WordPress is so easy that it takes just a few clicks.
If you have purchased your hosting through Arvixe and Bluehost from my blog, Word-
Press will be automatically installed.
How cool is that!
If not, head over to WordPress.org and download your copy of WordPress.
Setting Up WordPress – Get the most out of it
You should consider setting up the following:
• Categories – Different articles can be sorted by categories, and you will
be able to feature different categories on different pages. Extremely
useful when you want to sort your articles.
• Menu – Quickly setup a menu with an “about” page and “contact” page
to let people know who you are!
• Permalinks – in the settings tab on the left, choose permalinks and make
sure you use “post-name” in your permalinks. This will make your articles
more search engine friendly.
Installing Plugins – Upgrade your blog
WordPress plugins are very powerful and can change your blog into a unique website.
Plugins can be easily installed through the plugins > add new menu by searching
through the WordPress plugins database or uploading a plugin file from your computer.
To Do List:
Read this article: Top 6 Best WordPress Plugins for Bloggers

4. Part 3: Getting Leads
Join Aweber – The Money is in the List
If you do not have an email list, get one right now.
Use Aweber as they are offering $1 a month trial account that has full features. The
most important feature is that they allow affiliate links.
Many other email list services do not allow affiliates, but Aweber do.
Learn more about Aweber
Create Email List – Remember Lead Quality
Once you have signed up for Aweber, create an email list.
They make it really straight forward, just click the big green button saying “Create List”.
Once you have an email list you can redirect them to a thank you page.
Remember, this list is your gold mine and you have to look after it.
Create a Form – Capture Their Hearts
A form is where people enter their name and email address to subscribe to your list.
You can use Aweber’s templates to create your form or you can customize it to suit
your blog design.
Keep it simple and don’t over complicate it
Landing Page – Your Hook
A landing page is where you can offer a free incentive or a service in exchange for
someones email address.
To easily create a landing page, I would recommend using LeadPages.
I use Leadpages for all my landing pages as it is very easy to use and saves a lot of
time for someone that is not an expert in coding.
A/B Testing – Increase Conversion Rates
Split testing your landing pages is important to increase conversion rates.
Every % can make a lot of difference. LeadPages has an inbuilt A/B testing feature that
allows you to create many variations with analytics.

5. Setup Email Autoresponder – This is where the money is
Once you have your email list and forms created, you can then create an auto re-
sponder to send out emails for you without you having to worry about it every day.
Aweber, has an awesome auto responder feature allowing you to input dates, names
and locations as well.
To Do List:
Read this article: The Most Affective Email Marketing Strategy
Part 4: Affiliate Programs
Choosing your favourite - Selling At its best
In order to create an income for yourself while blogging, many bloggers will join
affiliate programs to earn a commission rate of the products they sell.
For example, on the resource page, there are products that I recommend and I earn a
commission if someone purchases through those links at no additional cost.
To Do List:
Read this article: Top 6 Affiliate Programs to Join
Tracking Your Links – Know where your leads come from
Tracking your links allows you to know where your traffic comes from and more impor-
tantly which of those are converting.
You can then use the data to increase traffic and conversion rates easily.
A great solution is to use LinkTrackr. It helps you track your affiliate links in real-time.
And their analytics system will help you discover which links are converting so you can
weed out the ones that are not.
It is 100% web-based and very simple to use, LinkTrackr is a trusted marketing system
for professional bloggers & super-affiliates.
High Tier Programs – Make Big Commissions
High tier commission programs are programs that give you high commissions that can
go over $1,000 per sale. Some may argue it is better to sell high tier products because
you don’t need to sell to as many people as low tier products.
For example, you need to sell 1,000 books at $10 to get $10,000, but with high tier
products that cost $1,000 you only need to sell 10 of them.

6. A good example of a high tier product is My Top Tier Business. Allowing you to earn
over $1,000, $3,000 and $5,000 commissions per sale.
They also provide a personal 1-on-1 coach teaching you how to do it.
Things To Do:
Watch this free video: Bonus Tutorial Video
Part 5: Copywriting
Finding Article Ideas – Planning it to perfection
The biggest problem with blogging is not knowing what to write about.
The solution to this is find out what questions your readers are asking about. Try to
answer them with an article.
You can go on Forums, Q&A Sites, Social media to find a lot of conversations going on
with BuzzBundle. Engage with them and learn what they want to know about.
Things To Do:
Read this article: 7 ways finding topics to write about for your blog
Writing Good Headlines – Bad headlines can kill your blog
Studies shown 80% of readers will read your headline and only 20% readers will actu-
ally read your post.
Think carefully how you want to write your headlines. Keep them short and on point.
Things To Do:
Read this article: Great Blog Headlines That Will Definitely Attract Readers
Scheduling Articles – Give yourself more time
Schedule your articles so they get automatically posted onto your blog. To do this you
would need to have a bunch of articles written before hand.
Write about 10 articles (take your time) and schedule them to be posted one at a time.
By doing this, you don’t have to worry if you skip a day of posting, your blog will still be
active.
To Do List:
Read this tutorial: How to Schedule a Post on WordPress

7. Step 6: Driving Traffic (Free)
Find Your Readers – You find them
Are you wondering why after posting a lot of quality content, no one is reading your
blog? Why not head out and find your readers?
Go to where they usually hangout in the Internet and engage into conversations with
them.
Use Buzzbundle to find where your target market is hanging out at. Talk to them and
send out links back to your blog.
Social Media – Word of mouth
Social media is a strong platform to bring in free traffic. Here are a few options you can
increase traffic with social media:
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
Be sure to include share buttons on your blog so your readers can share your articles
through social media.
Guest posting – Super Exposure
Guest posting can bring in thousands or more readers to your blog, if you get a guest
post opportunity on blogs that has a lot of traffic.
Write up the best article (unique) that you have ever written and reach out to existing
bloggers in your niche if they would like to feature your article on their blog.
If they do, ask for a link to be added so it can be redirected back to your blog.
Things To Do:
If you wish to guest post on this blog, feel free to contact me.
Q&A Sites – If theres a problem, theres always a solution
Question and Answer sites like Quora and Yahoo answers, provides a great platform
for you to help out potential readers to your blog.
If it is a question related to your blog or you have a great article written as the solution,
place a link to your answer.

8. Things To Do:
Check the Q&A section of my blog at Alvinhy Q&A
Create Tutorials – People love tutorials
Nothing is better than a great tutorial when solving someones problems.
Create quality tutorials, whether it is video tutorials or text and image tutorials they
tend to be shared a lot.
Things To Do:
Create a tutorial that is worth sharing
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