In a nutshell, here’s what you’d do in running your own business blog:

1. Write 2 or 3 articles / blog posts every week (Hint: we’ll show you how to affordably outsource this in a few weeks time).

2. Upload your content onto your blog, and promote your blog using the traffic strategies that we’ll be sharing with you.
3. Covert visitors to your site into subscribers or paying customers.

It’s that simple.

Business Blogging Benefits

1. Allows you to reach a worldwide audience with the entire world.

   Blogs have become a part of the internet technology craze and have become exceedingly popular.  They offer writers freedom of speech with an audience that is world wide. 

2. Allows you to build a following of “raving” fans. 
   
   Use your blog to provide valuable information that will help others… and watch them flock to your site J
3. Allows you to create “Buzz” for your product release.

   You can announce that your book is on the way, as well as post “snippets” or chapters from the book and invite comments and feedback from your audience.

4. Allows you to build trust with your list via ongoing posts.

   Every time you add a new post to your blog, notify your database.  This keeps you in regular contact and builds trust.

5. Allows you to generate “free” traffic to your websites.

   Bottom line: Search engines LOVE blogs!

The 4 Phases of Your Business Blog System

You should anticipate that your real estate empire will evolve in three phases.  Recognizing these phases and working within the framework of each will give your efforts structure and will help you to realize that nothing happens overnight.  You know where you are going; you just need planning and patience to get there.

The three phases with which you need to become familiar when you are building your business blog traffic system are:

1. The Foundation Phase:

This is where you lay the foundations for your blog.  Don’t skip this phase or give it try to cut corners here.  Like all foundations, this phase of must be strong or you will be building your business on a foundation of sand.

During the Start-Up Phase you will…

Determine your target audience; your domain name; your preferred hosting account; and your content “categories” for your blog.

1. The Production Phase:

In this phase you will begin to post regular, regular and interesting articles as well as research and comment on other blogs in your “audience”.

1. The Promotion Phase:

   You will begin to actively promote your blog through advertising, discussion forums, other people’s blogs, and social marketing sites such as (Ted, add some examples here). 

   Finally, you will have created a name capture device to add visitors to your database and build your “list” of subscribers

1. The Monetization Phase:

Once your blog is up and running, and your traffic begins to flow, you’ll begin to actively monetize your traffic and visitors.

This can be done in various ways…

ü      Blogging sites can often be set up with banner ads that provide the blogger with a percentage of profits generated from that advertisement. 

ü      Other ads can be set up that pay a blogger a certain amount for each time a reader clicks on the advertisement from the blog’s page. 

ü      You can also run Adsense advertising on your blog, and link it to your products and other websites.

ü      You can quickly create a “paid content” area with just a few clicks of your mouse.

ü      You can promote your products.

ü      You can promote other people’s products.

What You Need To Get Started

To get started, you will need to get the following in place…

1. Your domain name

2. A web hosting account with “C=Panel”
3. One WordPress blog
4. One article /blog past

Of course, there are many other “small” steps involved with the system, sp we’ve created a “quick start” checklist to successfully launching a business blog site…

10 Steps to Starting Your Business Blog

1. Determine your target audience / niche

2. Declare and register your domain name

3. Designate your web hosting account

4. Decide on your content categories

5. Decide on your content delivery

6. Devote yourself to creating your blog

7. Design your cash-generation strategy

8. Develop your writing style

9. Demonstrate your knowledge

10. Devote yourself to active promotion

The biggest pitfall of them all is getting your affiliate cookie on the prospects computer.

People can see your affiliate link and decide they don’t want you to get a cut.

Even if you use a link cloaker, many people are now aware that all it’s doing is hiding an affiliate link.

So what’s the answer?

WP Cookie Dropper

If your goal is to create a blog that is completely productive, the question of “why start your own blog?” may become even more crucial, as you probably see starting a blog as a potential time trap. If this is the case, you may want to bypass social networking altogether and instead create something with an easy-to-manage and easy-to-update template, such as Blogger. If you do this, you will find yourself asking the question “why start your own blog when you’ve already got a website?” less and less.

You may want to block comments altogether to prevent extended conversations between blog viewers. Even though comments can improve how fresh a blog appears to search engines–and can also add new content–they can be seriously abused if you do not have the time to monitor them closely. They can be the source of perpetual fights on your blog–or a means for blog spammers to post their irrelevant and unrelated comments on your blog. Additionally, if you’ve ever been involved in a heated forum debate, you can understand why allowing viewers to interact could seriously detract from time you could spend marketing.

Your third option is to create a blog that combines both productive goals with social interaction. This might seem impossible, as social interaction can only decrease the amount of time you can potentially spend working, but it actually isn’t.

If your goal is to position yourself as an industry leader for your topical blog, then you will want to have some means of interacting with other industry leaders; and you will also want to prove your worth through responses to questions. Additionally, you can also use social controversy to market your product. For instance, if you own a dieting blog and you have a defensible, controversial stance on something like low carb diets, you could benefit significantly by stirring up controversy on low carb blogs — and then sending them your way. You can then use your blog to reel them in to your salespage.

So, to answer the question of “why start your own blog when you have a website?” : blogs can be created for completely social reasons, for completely productive reasons, or for something in between that involves both. In many cases, this simply isn’t substitutable for a website.