Top 5 Tips for Professional Bloggers

If you're ready to move from personal blogging to become a professional blogger, where someone else pays you to author a blog for them, then you need to familiarize yourself with the following 5 success tips for professional bloggers to ensure you're positioned for a long and prosperous career.


1. Specialize
In order to have a chance at becoming a successful professional blogger who is capable of becoming a well-known paid blogger, you need to identify where your areas of expertise lie then focus on them. Position yourself across the blogosphere as an expert in that area by focusing your blogging efforts in 1-3 subjects then look for blogging jobs related to those subjects.
2. Diversify Income Sources
To succeed as a professional blogger, you need to start out by diversifying your income sources. You never know what might happen to a blog you're writing for another person or company. Unfortunately, the blogosphere is turbulent and a blogging job that seemed solid one day could disappear the next. Give yourself added security by finding income sources from more than one blogging source.
3. Provide Original Content
As you diversify your blogging jobs to multiple employers, it's critical that the content you provide to each is unique. Even if your blogging contract doesn't explicitly state that content you provide should be original and not copied elsewhere, it's a good practice to follow if you want to develop a reputation as a first-rate professional blogger.
4. Plan Ahead
One of the biggest downsides to professional blogging is the lack of time off. Professional bloggers are expected to be available and working 365 days of the year. With that in mind, your success as a professional blogger hinges on your ability to plan ahead in terms of taking time off for vacations, illnesses or emergencies. Regardless of what is going on in your personal life, you'll still have to meet the requirements in your blogging contract.
5. Don't Undervalue Yourself
Bloggers who are just starting out in paid blogging have a tendency to undervalue themselves and accept paid blogging jobs that pay less than minimum wage. Take a moment to calculate the per hour pay rate for each blogging job you pursue. Make sure the pay is truly adequate. Think of it this way - time spent blogging for too little pay could be better invested in searching for a blogging job that does pay well. Of course, all professional bloggers have to start somewhere, but as you gain more experience and develop your online reputation as an expert in your blogging niche, additional opportunities to diversify will present themselves to you if you look for them. Don't sell yourself short.

By Susan Gunelius
source :weblogs.about.com