The Ultimate Resource for the Maven ProBlogger (version 0.9)

Hi, my name is Anton Diaz and I've been pro-blogging for 3 years now @ www.OurAwesomePlanet.com. I have been blessed to be one of the maven in my niche of Awesome Philippine Travel, Dining Experience, Food Trips. I'm launching my internet marketing blog: Maven Secrets @ www.AntonDiaz.com to share my expertise on problogging and internet marketing.

I'm passionate about blogging. I love to make conversations with people online. I admire bloggers because they share a big part of themselves, risking their privacy and personal security just to reach out to people reading their blogs. On the other hand, I hate people who look into blogging as a tactical way to earn money. This is the WRONG way to approach blogging! You earn money in blogging after the first year and you need to be a recognized expert in your niche. You need to blog with a purpose and to add value to people's lives.

This Ultimate Resource for the Maven Problogger Hub reveals the strategies on how you can blog your way to become a Maven in your niche. This is my way of paying it forward for the blessings I received in my problogging career.

P.S. Sorry for the very long hub. But I can assure you each word is carefully selected so that you get value in each chapter. Hope you enjoy this! Please let me know if you have specific comments on how I can improve this to help the aspiring bloggers or those who wants to bring their blogging to the next level.

1. Blog for love. Write about things you love doing. Have an advocacy for your writing. Decide your niche. Don't blog for money -- it will just follow after a year or so when you have traffic to your blog.

2. Decide: Entertain or Inform. Write for your audience and decide if you want to entertain them or if you want to inform through your blog. Don't write for yourself.

3. Be Insightful. Only your own personal insights will make your own blog post unique. Don't just cut, paste, and quote for the sake of having a post.

4. Short is better. Get right to the point and help your readers filter through the right information. Don't create a list of 100 things because you make it even difficult for your readers. Shorten the list by giving your recommendation.

5. Show your authentic self. Express from the heart. Let your reader know if you are happy, sad, angry, envious, or flabergasted about something. This is something that no Private Label Rights article can imitate.

6. Talk about positive things. Remember the goal is to provide value to your readers and internet in general. There are a lot of trash information already in the net so don't contribute and waste your energy on negative things. Remember the law of attraction.

7. Respect Copyrights. This applies to photos, videos, audio and specially IDEAS. Don't steal someone else's intellectual property. If necessary, ask permission and give proper credit by linking to your source.

8. Disclose not Disclaim. Always disclose conflict of interests, sponsored posts, and affiliate links. You are responsible for the impact of the things that you write.

9. Start a conversation. Start talking and solicit response. Don't pretend that you know everything. Always expect that your readers know more than you.

Did we miss anything?

For anyone who is just starting, this is the most frequently asked question. I have used all the popular blogging platforms and I'll give you the insider's guide on which platform to use.

1. First decision: Get your own domain. You want to brand yourself and your domain should speak of your brand. Use Go Daddy to get your domain.

2. Second, decide if you will be a:

<a href="www.mrsawesomeplanet.com" title="rache by Our Awesome Planet, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2245/2279784167_bc40369a47_t.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="rache" /></a>

(1) pure blogger (no ads) - Use Wordpress.com but you have to pay $10 for a custom domain.

(2) problogger using Adsense - Use Blogger.com for FREE.

Typepad - paid blogging service so that you don't have to worry about the hosting. Better templates and capabilities than Blogger.

(3) problogger using all other ad network? - 2 options:

Self-hosted Wordpress - Recommended but you have to get hosting services. Use Dreamhost.

Semiologic Wordpress - Powerful SEO capabilities but you have to pay $275 for the annual license and hosting services.

1. Technorati

This is my favorite tool because you will know all the people who links you in the conversation. Once a blog links you, I would usually read the blog post and make a comment.

2. Google Analytics

You write for your readers. So one way to know who they are would be getting geographic and keywords information from google. It is also helpful to know where exactly your traffic is coming from.

3. Netnewswire for Mac or Bloglines RSS Reader

You need to keep a list of blogs that you want to continually interact it. One way to keep tab of the conversations is to use an RSS reader. Netnewswire for the MAC is recommended for Bloglines for a web based interface.

4. Feedburner

It is also very important to know who is listening to you. Feedburner provides the best tracking both using RSS and email feeds. The key measure of your success is how many readers do you have.

5. Google Adsense

Usually your readers are not the one clicking on your ads. Your adsense earnings is a function of traffic and how optimized your site is. It is helpful to know how much you are earning but forget about it until you reached 1,000 unique visitors/ day.

6. Bloglog

This is one way to showcase who are reading your blogs. This is specially helpful if a known authority in your niche is reading your blog.

7. Twitter

Use twitter to share your inner thoughts or the behind the scenes of your blog. It also helps in SEO because your site has an update always.

8. Delicious and Digg

Make sure that you post your blog post in delicious and if it is technology related, post it in Digg. This is one strategy to get your word out there.

9. Ecto for Mac, w.Bloggar for Windows.

At some point, you wil handle multiple blogs and you need to have an efficient way to access all of them. I heart Ecto for Mac!

10. Alexa

For traffic benchmarking purposes, you can use alexa to compare your blog to other blogs within your niche.

1. Write with the target keywords in mind.

Everything starts with the keywords. If your target keyword is "Google Adsense" for example, make sure that your post title contain the target keyword. Link to authority sites on your target keyword (search it in google). Keep in mind to use the target keywords in your blog post.

2. Tag your posts.

This is very tedious but you need to tag your post with all the target and related keywords. A blogging program like ecto or w.blogger would maket his easy for you.

3. Check out google trends.

Visit www.google.com/trends to see the hot keywords in your geographic area. Also make it a habit to visit www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html to see what is happening with keywords in the internet.

4. Crosslink your articles on the same target keywords.

Here is a simple workprocess. This is a powerful tip specially if you are writing a second post on the same target keyword. Make sure that you cross link them either via a related post section or inside the blog post itself. Then make sure to post the 2 articles in delicious, or digg. Pray that other bloggers will link to your post. This tactic will ensure double indented listings in google.

5. Post your favorite ones in Delicious, Facebook, and Twitter.

Make sure that you create a link to your favorite posts from your personal accounts in the social media sites. I know this is kinda difficult but do it one post at a time.

6. Ensure your photos have descriptions on the ALT tag

The google bot cannot understand the photo. One way to explain it to the google bot is by putting keywords on the ALT tag of the photo.

<a href="www.mrsawesomeplanet.com" title="rache by Our Awesome Planet, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2245/2279784167_bc40369a47_t.jpg" width="100" height="100" alt="rache" /></a>

7. Anticipate events.

If you plan to write about an event. Write a post a month before, then a few weeks before the event. The keyword search results are kinda delayed when it comes to events so let the google bot know that you are writing about it.

8. Link your articles from FREE authority sites.

My favorite authority sites are Wikipedia, Squidoo, and now Hub Pages!

9. React in your blog to other people's blog post.

If you want to react to other blogger's post, instead of putting your reaction in the comments section put a summary in the comments and more detailed arguments in your blog.

10. Limit your links.

Make sure you use your target keywords when linking to both internal and external sites. But make sure to limit your links <10 in any blog posts.

1. Plagiarism and Copyright Violation.

This happens to all bloggers I know. Don't panic about this. One of the motivations for people to steal content is to use them for their adsense site. My first step is to take a screen capture of my original content with the date and the plagiarized content with the date. File a google DMCA complaint immediately to ban them from adsense and search. Lorelle has a good post on this which serves as a bible of bloggers who are plagiarized:

What do you do when someone steals your content by Lorelle.

2. Your photo was stolen.

All photos are stolen these days because of google images. The best way to protect against this is to assume all your photos posted on the way will be stolen. Therefore, make sure that you use it as a marketing tool by putting a watermark on the photo or taking picture of people or places that you want to be promoted. Don't upload the high res versions. Post photos with a maximum side of 500 or 1024 pixels at most. This is useful for the web but not for printed magazines or other materials.

3. Your blog was hacked!

I do hope this does not happen to you. First, use blog platforms from tried and tested site I mentioned in Chapter 2. Second, always have a backup of your content. Lastly, make sure to follow the password best practice. I'll share it with you. Think of a phrase and a date. For example, "I Love Hub Pages since February 1 2008". Your password would be "ilHPs020108". Make sure that one or two of your letters in the password are capitalized. It is easy to remember and very difficult to hack with any programs.

4. Negative criticism in comments.

The best advice is let it be. Acknowledge the comment if it is a constructive criticism. Delete the comment if it goes into the vulgar territory. Remember that you have responsibility for the comments of people on your blog.

5. Anonymous comments

Most of the time anonymous comments are put by people already reading your blog and who have posted a non-anonymous comment. It is best if you use gmail to receive the comments from your blog. Usually it contains the IP address of the commenters. Don't delete them , just archive them so that overtime you build a database of IP address in your gmail account. If you receive an anonymous comment, search his IP in your gmail. Hopefully you can catch him and he will be surprised when he receives an email from you :)