Like any business, the chances that you will succeed at getting paid to blog is very small if you don’t know what you’re doing.  And chances are, you don’t know what you’re doing. Even though blogging is easy enough for anyone to do, it’s not easy to do it right and even more difficult to succeed in a competitive niche such as “making money online” blogs. John Chow, Darren Rowse from Problogger, “Shoemoney” and other super bloggers have worked hard to get where they are in status and success, but when looking at their sites from the outside it’s hard to tell how much hard work they’ve done in building their blog to achieve their current levels of success. This gap between their hard work and our perception of their hard work is what draws the masses to start blogging, but the odds are that you haven’t worked nearly as hard and won’t work that hard in the future either, and that’s why you’ll fail at blogging.

Here’s the good news: You can succeed if you really want to. If you really really want to, you too can be a successful blogger but it won’t be easy. You’ll have to posses certain qualities in order win at this game, and I’m going to show you how to do it.

Build Relationships

If you’re a blogger, chances are you know of other blogs in your niche. You have your favorite blogs and know who your favorite bloggers are. You know what they write about, you know what you like and you know what you don’t like.  If you’re a good blogger and want to be successful, you need to build a relationship with these bloggers.  Send them an email and introduce yourself.  Participate in discussions with them on blogger forums.  Kiss up a little bit.  Swallow your pride if you have to.  These bloggers are people just like you and welcome communication with fans and people from that admire their work.  Get to a point where you feel comfortable with your writing and then ask them to do a guest post.  Keep in touch with them and maybe they’ll share the love with you. A guest post is a great way to build an audience and in the long run, your relationship with the bigger bloggers will only serve to strengthen your blog.

Don’t be Stuck Up

As a newbie blogger, you are already fighting an uphill battle. There are countless other bloggers just like you, likely talking about the very same things. If you come off as a stuck up blogger right from the start, then chances are your readership will flatline in no time and you might as well pack up quit blogging. Nobody wants to read from a newbie blogger who sounds stuck up and has no credibility to back their words. If you are going to be controversial and challenge your readers, you need to first prove yourself by providing real content and value to your readers. They are the ones to whom you need to cater. You need to have a helpful attitude, treat your readers like you really want them to be there, and make sure to cater your posts to your audience based on post comments and feedback they provide you. Keep your ears up and listen to what your audience has to say…without an audience you will be failing fast!

Stick to it!

Finally, the last thing you can do (and in my opinion, probably the most important) is to keep blogging. Even if your blog starts off slow. Even if you haven’t been able to meet a lot of other bloggers. Even if you get criticism from your readers. Keep doing it. This is the reasons why so many blogs just die. The author will get tired of writing and will stop at some point. When they get back to it they’ll notice that their audience has dwindled and their influence has gone down the drain. They’ll then notice that getting back into the swing of things will be more difficult than they expected so they’ll just give up. If you really want to make in blogging, then you’ll never give up. Don’t quit typing. Set a schedule and stick to it. Make yourself goals; be it a number of posts per week or a number of of people to contact. Keep your list of goals visible and handy, and keep yourself accountable.

This article was meant to give you a scare and a jolt. I wanted to write an article that would make you to realize that blogging is getting to be big business. There are millions of ad dollars to be made every year and you should realize right now, that blogging is a business. You have to have a certain entrepreneurial spirit, competitive drive, and “stick-to-it-iveness” in order to grab a piece of the advertising dollar pie. Do you have what it takes? Will your blog be around in a year? If you build it, they will come. But if you build it right, so will the advertisers.