Today, my blogging efforts enjoy a certain bit of inertia. It is easier for me to do things because I have an audience and I have traffic.

What if I didn’t have it? If you take all that I’ve learned over my last 12 years of blogging and told me to start over again from scratch, how would I go about it?

Let me walk you through what I’d do. In fact, this is very similar to what I did when I launched this very blog a couple of years ago.

Establish Your Platform

In order to begin reaching out in your market, you need to have a home base – your blog. So, set up some hosting and install WordPress. Then, I would look around the available themes and pick one I like. It is OK to get a pre-designed theme, but I’d recommend getting one that is close to what you want – with plans to have some modifications done to it.

Don’t get too bogged down in theme selection. This is something you can always change at any time, so there is no need to get paralyzed at this step.

I would also plan to cheaply hire somebody to get a few things done design-wise:

1. Set up a contest for logo design on 99Designs.com. Get a logo designed for your blog.
2. Hire somebody on Elance.com or 99Designs.com to perform whatever theme customizations you may want. Be as specific as you can when posting your project.

The costs of doing the above are pretty minimal and, quite frankly, you shouldn’t try to avoid those costs if you are at all serious about your blog. It beats the hell out of spinning your wheels and trying to perform technical feats on your blog when you have no idea what you’re doing. Too many bloggers bog down on the technical stuff and it is completely unnecessary – especially when you have an army of designers and developers around the world who can do this stuff for you for peanuts.

Create Your Pillar Content

Even while your blog’s design is being worked on, create your blog’s pillar content. This is 5-10 really good posts on your topic. Don’t hold back. This content is going to show people you’re worth reading when they arrive on your blog. Make it really good.

While you’re at it, create your idea file so that you have a BUNCH of post ideas waiting in the wings. You want to make sure you won’t run out of things to talk about.

Connect Your Blog

Set up your mailing list (preferably with a quality company like Aweber). Get that opt-in form onto the blog from Day 1.

Also, be sure to connect your blog up to social media so that your readers can share your stuff across the net. Make it extremely easy and attractive to do so.

Branch Out

Now is the time to begin establishing yourself. Spend some time and track down the major players in your market. The top blogs and authority sites. Then, get in touch.

Contact these bloggers and quickly introduce yourself. Be personable, comment on their blog, be a member of their community, join their list. When you contact them, comment on their stuff and offer any services you can provide (for free).

Then, offer to guest post. You want to begin guest posting on authority blogs in your market as much as you can. Combine this with active commenting and active social media participation.

Find Out What Is Needed & Wanted

Through survey of whatever audience you are developing as well as active observation and participation in the community, find out what they need and want. What are the goals of the market? What are they missing? Frustrations? Fears?

Once you find this information out, you deliver. Provide content which helps the market with what they need and want. And develop potential product ideas along the same line for future monetization.

In addition to blog posts, explore delivery in other mediums. Video? Webinars?

When To Monetize

In the beginning, it is more important to build an audience than to try to squeeze juice from a turnip. Putting banners on a low-traffic blog doesn’t earn you much at all, and if you’ve chosen your market properly, you’ll have better monetization options available to you than banners anyway (affiliate promos and your own product offerings).

What I would do is have plans for the first product. Work toward it. You may even explore offering a consulting option on your blog for personal assistance in your market. Even if nobody buys, it still establishes with your growing audience that you are a person who is engaged in business. Combine this with your mailing list and you should be well setting the stage for a future ramp up.

As you build the list, stay in steady contact. Don’t let the list go cold. Maintain your personal brand and, as much as possible, a 2-way interaction with your growing tribe. Use the list to bring people back into your blog and ask them to post comments.

Pitfalls

Some traps I see bloggers fall into that you should avoid are:

1. Not connecting with other bloggers. The key to growth in any niche is forming connections with the people already in that niche. If you just start blogging and hope people notice, you’ll probably get frustrated.
2. Not starting the mailing list. I can’t overstate the importance of this. A mailing list is going to prove invaluable in your future monetization plans, but it is also going to help you immensely in growing your traffic and keeping your tribe intact as they come by. Without the list, you have no ability to mobilize your audience in any particular direction.
3. Getting bogged down in technical crap. When your car breaks, chances are you don’t try to fix it yourself unless you know what you’re doing. So, why do it with your blog? Why is it that most people attempt to set up their own blogs and designs when they have no earthly idea what they’re doing? Just hire somebody! It is so cheap! And if you’re not willing to fork over a couple hundred bucks or so on this, perhaps you need to question how serious you really are about this whole thing to begin with. Blogs are a commodity, and the people setting them up are, too. So, don’t approach this any different than you would other things in your life. If you want it and don’t know how to do it, outsource.
4. Not Thinking Ahead. What’s your plan to monetize? Do you have a general strategy on how you plan to grow the blog? There isn’t anything complicated about this stuff. It mostly comes down to just doing it. Everything you’d ever want to know how to do can be found online, so don’t let little things bog you down.

Honestly, I don’t think getting a blog off the ground is that difficult. I think the reason people get mired down with it is because they get distracted by shiny objects and all the info overload out there, drawing in different directions. At the same time, they try to do everything by themselves.

It is important to think with the goal in mind. The most successful people out there are goal-oriented and will just do what is necessary to get there. Things like blog setup are just little hurdles to the larger picture, and they treat it as such. When you realize that there are a myriad of ways to get those things done FOR YOU, you’ll never let it be a stop. As time goes on, you’ll gain more experience and you’ll become more self-sufficient.

Does it take time to do this? Yeah, but not necessarily as long as you might think. It doesn’t have to take a long time to get a blog off the ground with respectable traffic. It can actually be done pretty quickly. The key lies in quality content and lots of outreach into the existing marketplace in your niche. Reach out and draw them in.

Happy blogging.