Although being a successful blogger is not an easy task, it’s not one that should frighten you. Before asking yourself if you can be one, take a moment to think about what you do and how you do it, and see how many characteristics you can tick off from the following list.

1. A successful blogger knows what he wants

He always has a target and a strategy. He likes to be organized and has solutions for “unexpected situations“.

2. A successful blogger knows what he’s doing

He is well informed and likes to read a lot about many things, not only about niche related stuff. He has a good background and solid experience in his field.

3. A successful blogger knows how to do it

He knows that “quality is not an act, it’s a habit” (Aristotle). He takes time writing and rewriting if necessary, until he achieves the best result. Also, he knows that being consistent is his strength.
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Sometimes, having a great idea to write about can give your blog posts a boots, but most time it’s not enough. In order to establish a good, effective level of communication with your readers you should consider a few essential factors that could improve your writings and clear their path to your readers’ minds.

When blogging on a certain topic, you’ll be automatically considered either a specialist, or an enthusiast. While enthusiasts have more premises to write using a natural tone, specialists tend to overuse industry specific language which could make it hard to spread ideas through a general audience.

In terms of communication, William Butler Yeats – Irish poet and dramatist – said it best:

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

We’re talking about your blog, which means it’s about your thoughts, your advice, your skills, but if you don’t manage to get your ideas past the screen, they can be totally brilliant and still won’t get you anywhere.
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We’ve all been there, whether we’re talking about blogging tips, games, gadgets or celebrity gossip! Content crisis is one of blogger’s biggest nightmares, making us lose sleep hours, jump meals and drink tons of coffee. Facing such a situation could be a daunting task especially for niche bloggers, since their topics are much more restrictive that those of a “all-about-everything” type of blog.

When starting a new blog, every blogger feels like he/she has lots of interesting things to share with the world. If you follow closely one such blog, you’ll definitely see a higher publishing rate in the first months, but as time passes, bloggers publish less often.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, as long as it is consistent, and consistency is one the greatest things a blog can achieve. With time, people get over that publish-everything fury and start dealing with more important matters, writing more insightful posts, in one word, they evolve.

But even when taking their blogging skills to a higher level, bloggers have to face the challenge of creative new, interesting and why not, intriguing content.
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After reading Kevin Muldoon’s review of PicApp.com, I’ve though about sharing some tips on where and how to find free images to use in your blog posts, like I do.

I know for a fact (and Kevin confirms this too) that many bloggers use Google’s Image Search to find free photos to use on their blogs, which is cool, but not necessarily legal. Let me explain.

The Google bot has a nasty habit of indexing every information and file that is linked from your pages, which basically gives him access to the /images directory of every website. This can be fought by using a robots.txt file to prevent search engine access to directories and files.

By indexing these folders, Google will share through his results copyrighted images used to develop the websites, or images from professional photographers’ portfolios. So, these images are not free. And so says Google:

“Image may be scaled down and subject to copyright.”

So, why risk using copyrighted images when you have quite a few options of free or extremely low-cost photos available? Check them out below.
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With the amazing amount of blogs available out there, a question raises naturally. Why do we read some blogs, and not others? Why do we follow certain bloggers and become more active in their comments section? Content, information is definitely one of the key factors, but what is information if it’s not nicely wrapped in a good delivery package?

Think of your articles as if they were products on a shelf. Are you going to pick the cheapest looking? Surely not! That’s also available for bloggers. The way you deliver your message is extremely important and finding the right tone should be a top priority on your list.

Different people have different personalities. Your own style can help you connect with some people, while pushing others away. So, basically the keyword should be: Balance.

Shifting from classic media to blogs

Over the years we’ve seen a migration of readers from classic media like newspapers to blogs. No matter how talented some journalists are, they still have writing guidelines to follow when writing an article in the paper, which means that their own tone will be moderated by the overall publication’s tone. Knowing this, many of them decided to publish additional blogs, where they could express in a more natural way.

This is the advantage that bloggers have over the classic media. We can be ourselves, 100%.
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