When you have an online blog you need to keep it updated frequently to maintain reader interest. This needs to be done at least every other day, and ideally it should be updated daily. You need to make sure that you set aside some time for this housekeeping task.

Of course if you are limited to only certain times that you can devote to writing then you can prepare some updates ahead of time. Just use your writing time to create extra blogs that you can post during the week. Everyone with a new blog is worried about generating high interest and being able to direct traffic to their sites, but you have to have a good amount of online content before this becomes your problem. What it all boils down to is that you should work hard to get your blogs live and online so that you can really get that traffic moving in the direction that you want.

Choosing the niche for your blog should have been based on something that you really enjoy, or something that you have experience with. This makes writing the content for your blogs something that is fun and easy to do.

There will always be some type of PLR material that is free for you to use when you are creating your blog posts. These articles may not be of the quality that you prefer but you can glean some useful ideas and information from them. Besides, who said that each of your postings needed to be a masterpiece in order to be successful? What you are really looking to do is to pass along some interesting ideas and maybe a bit of useful information. You can stress yourself out in search of perfection, but it really is not as important as you might think. Something fun, interesting and easy to read will always come out on top in the blog ratings.

When you begin to start seeing some success, you can contract with others to do some of the writing for you. This is very helpful for people that really don’t like writing in the first place. Check out listings on NAA, forums, Elance and other freelance sites for people that will write material for you to use for very competitive prices. You can even read samples that these writers have created in the past so that you can judge their talent and abilities before hiring them.

The best way to build traffic for a new niche blog is to have lots of content and to post it regularly. Many new bloggers don’t realize this and are often disappointed with their traffic when they start out. They write a post or two a week and the traffic just isn’t increasing. It’s demotivating and makes you question whether or not you should waste your time niche blogging.

To help generate steady traffic and attract loyal readers, you need to have a content schedule. This could mean blogging five or seven days a week or it could mean just posting on the same two days of the week. Your readers want to know when to expect new stuff from you. So, why is it good for your niche blog to have a content plan and how should you develop it?

Why do you need a Content Plan?

Having a content schedule helps build loyal readership. If you write about specific things on specific days, readers will know when to come back. Readers will also take you more seriously if you have a methodical plan behind the blog, that is they know it’s not just the aimless ramblings of a procrastinator. It will help foster community and turn your blog into a favorite amongst your audience. A content plan keeps people coming back for more, especially with Niche Blogs.

Time Management

A content plan also helps you manage your time. When starting a blog, you’re often awash with tons of ideas for posts. So many, that you quickly get burnt out as the drudgery or writing about the same things sets in. If you organize your blog into content categories, you can spend your time focusing on several targeted ideas a week, as opposed to hundreds. This will fill your blog with relevant content to your niche, increasing the likelihood that people will find you via the search engines.

Good Habits

A content plan also helps to create good blogging habits. To maintain a successful niche blog community, you need to regularly update your blog (and not just with blog posts), respond to comments and overall monitor the site. You’ll create a production state of mind - meaning that you’ll get in the habit of writing a post a day, or even writing them all in one day and scheduling them to post. This will make the creation process much easier to begin and end.

Establishes Niche Authority

If you’re regularly writing about particular subjects, the sheer amount of content that this creates will establish your authority in your niche subject. Who are you going to trust more? The blog with a few sparse posts written at odd times, with very little information? Or the niche blog that is filled with relevant content to the subject your interested in that’s updated in a methodical fashion?

Helps with Ideas for posts

Often, as you write in a more regimented, methodical fashion, you’ll come up with even more ideas for relevant posts. Then, you’ll find yourself altering your own content plan to fit in new and interesting ideas.

How to Develop Your Content

The first step in developing your niche blog content plan is to sit and think long and hard about what you want your blog to be. Do you want to be a rockstar in your niche? Or do you want to be part of the scenery? Or do you just want a creative outlet?

If you want your niche blog to take over the world, then you need to post every day (and maybe more than once a day).

If you want to a part of a larger niche community, post 2 to 3 times a week.

If you just want a creative outlet, then post once or twice a week, depending on how the mood moves you but be sure to make sure it’s the same days.

What are Others Doing?

Research is so important when building your niche blog. Hopefully, you found people blogging about the same things as you. What are they doing? Do they have a schedule? What do they regularly write about? What are they doing wrong? And then ask the most important question a niche blogger faces:

How can you do it better?

Think About your Niche

Think long and hard about what interests you so much about your niche subject. What would you like to read about? Compare to your competition. Find some way to differentiate yourself while still focusing on the subjects that interest you the most. If you lack passion for any of your posts, it will show in your writing and will turn off readers.

Then think about how you can express your interest the most effective way. Think about the types of posts you’d like to write. That can be lists, interviews, reviews, features, videos, etc. Keep those in mind when it comes time to layout your content schedule.

Features and Small Posts

There are two types of posts that are relevant to niche blogs, features and small posts. Features are long posts (like this one) that focus on a subject and develop it fully (essay like, lists, interviews, etc). A small post is much shorter and focused on something that can be digested quickly (a video, photo slideshow, 2-3 paragraph post, etc).

You need to ask yourself what your feature to small post ratio will be. You will probably get burnt out if you post a long feature every day. Similarly, you niche blog may get stale if you only write quick short posts and don’t give your readers something MORE. Features are also more likely to gain attention on social media sites than a short post.

So, how many feature posts can you write for a week? How many short posts? It’s been my experience that one or two features is plenty for the week while 3 to 4 small posts will keep things interesting.

Always be Ahead

The most important aspect of developing a content schedule is to always be ahead of yourself. If your posts aren’t time sensitive, then schedule them out a week or two in advance. This will ensure that if anything comes up, you have a post going out no matter what.

Have a Backup

It’s not a bad idea to have a well full of articles that haven’t been published in your back pocket to use when you have nothing else to write about. It could be a longer feature you’re waiting for the right time to post or an idea your still wrapping your head around. Having these types of posts will help you when you’ve hit Blogging Burnout and can’t bear writing for a couple days.

Choose the days of the week you want to post

When planning your content schedule, keep in mind that there are blogging cycles during the week. There are days when your traffic will be down, such as Monday or Friday. People are getting back into the week on Mondays and people are exiting the week on Fridays. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days of the week to have big, content rich posts go out.

On some of my blogs, I use Friday as a link roundup day. I write about cool links that I found that don’t warrant their own post, but are worth sharing. On Monday, I usually put out a video or quick tip. Something light. Save the meat for the middle of the week when more people are paying attention.

Choose themed days

Some people might think it’s lame to picked themed days, but it’s a very effective way for people to remember your niche blog. It immediately lets people know what the column is about and gets them interested. I also recommend creating separate categories for each of these themed days, that way someone can find your themed posts all in one place when they are browsing your site. It’s not a bad idea to create category links for your themed days in your blog sidebar.

When should you schedule posts to post?

I’ve already talked about choosing the right days to post but what time of the day is it best to post? A general rule of thumb is to set your scheduled posts to go out mid-morning. People often are looking for something to read after they’ve settled at their desks with their cups of coffee. Also, by posting in the morning you’re more likely to get somewhere on social media sites because your content will be in front of people’s eyeballs for most of the day.

Always Double Check

Many bloggers don’t think of it, but they should be subscribed to their own blog feed. That way they will know if their scheduled post has gone up at the right time as well as making sure it’s formatted correctly. It’s also a great way to spot errors that can be fixed before your post hits critical mass. Also visit your own blog. Make sure the posts display correctly, respond to comments and interact with your readers. Engagement will keep them coming back.

Tweak

If something in your content schedule isn’t working, then by all means don’t be afraid to change your plan. If your regular posts on the mating habits of feral cats are not bringing in the traffic you expected, shift the topic into another category. Your niche blog should be an ever changing, ever growing organism that can change as quickly as it needs to in order to stay relevant.

Source: ProBlogger

Owners of multiple niche blogs often face the daunting task of writing and publishing blog posts on a regular basis.

Serving as the foundation for any sort of search engine traffic you will possibly receive in the long run, creating content for your niche blogs is usually the most time and resource consuming part of niche blogging.

The frequency, quality and amount of content you are able to consistently produce will determine the eventual size, sustainability and most importantly, profitability of your niche blogs.

There are several methods to easily generate content for your niche blogs and they are largely divided into two main categories:

Creating content yourself and getting others to create content for you.

Here are some posting guidelinesto follow when developing content for niche blogs:

• Alternate Posting. This simply refers to posting on alternate days for each blog and not on a daily basis. This should be initiated after your niche blogs are set up, indexed and already receiving search traffic. This spreads out the workload and keeps your productivity level high. You don’t want to abandon the niche blogs early on because writing for them has become a chore.
• Future Posting. This is a useful technique for those of you who prefer to work in concentrated spurts or have unpredictable timetables. This involves writing up several posts at one go and then editing the post time stamp so that they will be published at a future date. Note that this method is not good for time-sensitive material but rather general informational/opinion-based articles on the niche topic.
• Weekly Linkbait. It is important to write at least one detailed and extensive article every week. These type of articles attract the most incoming links and referral traffic. Write these types of articles little by little over several days or slowly over the weekend, because they can be too difficult to finish in just one sitting.

Seven Types of Content for Niche Blogs

Here are seven types of content you can create for all your niche blogs.

Mixing up different types of content gives you flexibility and allows you to prioritize effectively. For example, when you’re writing a linkbait article for a specific blog, use a simple video post for another blog to save time and energy.

1. News Blogging. This involves timely posting about breaking news or developments in your niche topic while adding a brief personal opinion, which usually comes in the form of one or two paragraphs.

Method: Use social news aggregators or meme trackers to source for the freshest news on any topic. Techmeme, Megite and PopURL.com are the three websites that I recommend and you can easily pull a story out from these sites for a blog post.

Time needed: 10-15 minutes

2. Speedlinking or Link Posts. This is the one of the quickest ways to drum up a blog post. Depending on how you write them, they can be seen as a networking tool and a way to make your blog seem more relevant to the niche.

Method: Grab a social bookmarking account from a website like del.icio.us and set up an online feed reader account with a list of the relevant blogs in your niche. Track your feeds daily and when you come across a link-worthy article, bookmark and tag it. Do the same for sites you come across while researching online. Whenever you need a speedlink post, pull up all the links under the specific tag and publish them. Remember to editorialize the links by adding your own thoughts to them.

Time needed: 5-10 minutes.

3. Video and Image posts. Visit Flickr, StumbleUpon or YouTube and type in your keyword. Grab an image/video and then write one or two keyword-rich lines about it. Publish and you’re done.

Time needed: 5 minutes or less.

4. Roundup Posts. A roundup post is simply a post that includes links to note-worthy articles on your blog within a specific time frame. This can be published on a weekly basis if you write two or more posts every day. If you only write one post a day or every alternate days, publish the roundup post either bi-weekly or on a monthly basis. Here’s an article on how to create your own roundup posts.

Time needed: 10 minutes

5. Article Republishing. This involves using relevant articles from free article directories. Visit a website like Ezine Articles and do a keyword search. After which grab the entire article and publish it on your site. I recommend only using free articles if you are going the smaller and multiple niche blogs route.

I don’t really use free articles because it’s rather easy to come up with a similar unique article in a few minutes. The high republish rates for some articles means that there are already several other websites already ranking for the same specific key phrase you are targeting.

Time needed: 10 minutes

6. Linkbait. Linkbait is simply detailed and original articles that are likely to attract links and traffic from other websites. Depending on your ability and the type of linkbait, they can take several hours to create. However, the overall structure of successful linkbait is no mystery when you carefully examine some social websites. The Del.icio.us Popular pages can easily allow you to see what types of articles attract the most attention.

Time needed: Indefinite

7. Opinion posts. These are usually the easiest to write because you don’t need to perform much research online. Drawing upon your personal experiences will let your audience feel that they know you better as well, which is important for visitor loyalty. Pick a specific topic and share your experiences or thoughts about it. These posts usually do not require too much energy to write.

Time needed: 10 minutes to 2 hours.

Outsourcing Content

There are many benefits of outsourcing your content. The two most important factors are:

• Allows you to cover more niches. Delegating content work means that you’ll be able to set up more blogs in profitable niches. Now this is very useful if you decide to follow a multiple niche blogs strategy to make money.
• Saves you time and energy. Everyone who has ever owned a blog can attest to the fact that developing content is by far the most grueling process of blogging. Getting others to write for you allows you to avoid this taxing experience, especially when you don’t have a strong passion for the niche topic at hand.

Four Ways to Outsource your Niche Blog Content

Outsourcing your niche blog content usually involves paying someone to create content or sharing of potential profit. It is difficult and nearly impossible to get bloggers to create content for free, unless you are able to offer them something in return.

That specific ’something’ usually comes in the form of publicity, links and money. With this in mind, here are the four main ways to outsource your content needs:

• Use Guest Bloggers. The guest blogging method is usually divided into paid or non-paid categories. You can choose to pay guest bloggers with money or perhaps they will be will to blog in return for the publicity they will receive. Which category your guest blogger falls into depends on your relationship with the blogger and the size or audience base of your blog. Guest bloggers are more likely to blog just for the publicity when you have a semi-popular blog or when you have a close relationship with them.
• Collaborative Blogging. Round up a couple of your friends who are interested in the same niche topic and take turns to blog in a week. Technically, you’ll still have to create content but this lightens the content load considerably while diversifying the blog marketing process. A drawback is that you’ll have to split any revenue that you’ll earn.
• Adsense Revenue Share. This is a process whereby the content writer stands to earn a share of the Adsense revenue on your blog. His or her Adsense publisher id will be used for the ads within the specific blog post page. The blogger’s publisher id will be rotated alongside your own publisher id. A 50% revenue share rate is the minimum and I recommend going up to 70% if your blog is very new and does not yet have much traffic. The beauty of this method is that you don’t need to bother with payments and accounting as Google will take care of that. There is also no limit to the number of bloggers you can include in the program. Wordpress bloggers can use the Adsense Revenue Share Plugin.
• Hire Staff Bloggers. Staff blogging is usually one of the most costly options and it involves paying a blogger to blog full or part-time on your blog. You can either choose to have the blogger take care of the marketing aspect and hence give him or her a cut of the overall ad earnings.Alternatively, you can limit their duties to content creation alone. Payment can be made on a per-post or monthly level.

How can I find a Writer/Blogger?

Finding a writer for your blog is not a difficult process. There are three main methods you can use to seek out bloggers for any niche:

• Approach Bloggers Directly. If you are familiar with the bloggers in your niche, approach those whom you think whose writing style and ideas you like.If you are not familiar with a topic, do a quick search through Google Blog search, MyBlogLog or Technorati and spend some time looking at various blogs. Contact the ones you think will do a good job.
• Get Recommendations. This is often overlooked but recommendations from friends and other bloggers can be very useful, especially if they read widely. Ask around for bloggers within a specific niche and make a list of the recommendations.
• Put up a Job Ad. If you don’t have time for initial research, put up a job ad and then screen the bloggers who apply. The ProBlogger job board is a good high profile spot to start.If you’re not keen on spending money for an ad, I would suggest visiting the appropriate forums in your niche to broadcast your ad. This usually allows you to find targeted individuals with a high level of interest in the niche topic.

There is a simple way to increase the amount of daily traffic your blog receives. It doesn’t involve elaborate linkbait articles, contests or advertising.

You don’t need a link from a popular blog nor do you need to pimp your site by commenting aggressively on dozen of other blogs.

In fact, this method doesn’t involve any extraordinary efforts on your part. You don’t need to learn the intricacies of search engine optimization, nor do you need to even focus on networking within your niche.
Volume Blogging can Increase Your Visitor Traffic

The trick is rather simple, you’ll only need to create new content as often as possible for your blog. This means increasing the volume of your blog posts substantially, in an attempt to attract more search engine and referral traffic.

‘Volume Blogging‘ follows a basic logical process, one that is perhaps so matter-of-fact that I have not come across any articles on this specific topic. The traffic equation here takes the following form:

–> The more content you write..

–> The more blog posts get indexed by search engines or social websites

–> The more long tail keywords you eventually rank for which leads to..

–> Increased search engine visibility and referral traffic and..

–> A greater number of visitors arriving at your website daily.

I’ve personally tried this process with some new blogs and have noticed upwards of 30% growth in terms of overall monthly traffic over a period of several months.

It’s not hard to imagine why: Content is the source of all traffic and the more content you have, the more opportunities you have for search engine or referral traffic.
Is Volume Blogging for You?

This traffic strategy can be very beneficial for new blogs because they really need visitors to develop an audience.

Blogging as often as possible allows you to fill your archives with content, while attracting traffic naturally from search engines. I’ve also noticed that if you have an established weblog with an decent number of backlinks, volume blogging is an excellent method for you to grow your audience base.

Established websites have the uncanny ability to rank well for whatever keywords that are in their title tags and this is something you need to exploit if you’re weak or lazy in the marketing/linkbaiting department.

The sheer volume of blog posts forces search traffic to your website, which you can then convert into regular followers by highlighting your flagship content or providing incentives which entice them into taking specific actions.
Testing the Volume Blogging Strategy: Something You can Undertake

In a bid to increase Dosh Dosh’s traffic levels, I’ve decided to experiment with volume blogging in this month of July 2007. As such, I’ve made a choice to add at least one more blog post everyday and measure the effects on overall visitor traffic.

If you’ve just started a new blog or have been blogging for a while, why not try the volume blogging tactic for a month to see if it helps to bring in more traffic? You can always write shorter articles for your additional blog posts so as to save energy.

A lot does depend on the specific keywords you are targeting as well, so make sure that you pick a bunch and include them regularly in various blog posts. If you haven’t already, be sure to read my article on how to find your longtail keywords.

If you have some time to spare and desparately want to increase your daily traffic ratio, try working the volume blogging angle. It might be just what you need.