If you are about to start a new blog it can be a useful exercise to think through the direction that you want to take it in as these decisions will direct just about every aspect of your blog work. For example, somebody using a blog to promote an existing business is going to have different goals to a political blogger.

It doesn’t matter whether you are just starting out on your blogging career or you’ve already started. Read through the factors in this article and begin to form the answers in your mind.

Know Who Your Target Audience Is

The first step is to figure out who your target audience is. Are they primarily men or women? WHat is their income level? Are they likely to be family-oriented with children? What about their technical / computer skills?

These questions can help you develop a profile which will affect some of your blogging practices. For example, social media works well with young tech-savvy readers but might be lost on an older audience that is not comfortable with the Internet.

Is your target audience somebody who is likely to carefully read through your posts in detail trying to glean as much information as possible (older crowd for instance) or are they a “give-it-to-me-quick” kind of person? These factors will affect your content and writing style. The former may respond well to in-depth how-to posts whereas the latter will likely prefer quick, easily-scannable lists.

Plan Monetization Strategies Up Front

If you intend to generate a revenue from your blog you need to be thinking about how to monetize it from the start. For example, a popular method is to sell private advertising space but you can’t do that if the design of your blog does not have prominent ad spots so this is something you need to think about before settling on a design or blog theme.

If you intend to promote some kind of product or service (whether your own or somebody else’s) then your monetization will differ as this will work best if you work your promotion efforts seamlessly into all aspects of your blog, including the writing.

Other monetization options such as AdSense are usually easier to slot into just about any theme as there are many shapes and sizes of ads that you can use but then you need to ask yourself the question, do I place ads straight away or should I incorporate them later?

In my opinion, if you are blogging in order to earn an income then incorporate some ads on your blog straight away. The details don’t matter at first as you’ll have no traffic anyway but there is a good reason for doing it up-front: As you begin to build your blog readership they will come to expect that you are blogging for money and expect to see your ads. If you suddenly introduce them some time later some of your readers will complain, accuse you of being a sellout and so on!

Also, you will often attract potential advertisers from within your own blog readership but if you don’t have advertising in place then they wouldn’t even know that advertising with you is an option. By placing some ads right away, you are setting yourself up for better advertising opportunities in the future.

Think About Your Brand

One very important thing about branding is that it is very difficult to change later on. Right from the start think about what image you are trying to project. Are you promoting yourself as a person in your blog or are you promoting your blog name as a brand within itself (think Lifehacker, TechCrunch, BoingBoing)? If you are promoting yourself then think about graphics - do you have a standard avatar for yourself that you can use? Make sure you do because when you get social media right that avatar gets *everywhere*!

Moving In A New Direction With An Existing Blog?

It is not unusual to start out a blog and then later on realise that you want to change the direction it is going in. If you have an already established blog think about where it stands currently on the points mentioned above. What kind of audience does it currently attract? Is that the audience you want? What monetization are you using and are you happy with it? Is your audience responding well to it? Finally, what image are you projecting, if any?

If you do find that you need to make some changes, don’t worry about it because it’s better to figure that out now rather than blindly going on in a direction you’re not happy with.

Caroline Middlebrook has been blogging about Internet marketing since 2007 and her popular blog earns a 4-figure income each month. She teaches you how blogs make money and has downloads of her free ebooks, guides & courses from her website.

This post was submitted by Caroline Middlebrook.

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