If you are blogging you need to know have a few blogging instructions to make sure you are starting out on the right foot.

If you are going to start a blog there are some things that you need to consider before you take the plunge. These items will help keep your readers coming back and build a loyal following of readers.

1.) Make sure your blog is set up on the right hosting service. By this I mean, should you be using a free blogging services like WordPress.com and Blogger.com or should you be setting up a blog on your own domain.

The simple rule of thumb that I use is if your blog is for your business or for profit have it set up on its own domain name. If it isn’t for either of these purposes then you should be fine on a free blogging service.

The main advantage of having the blog on your own site is that you can add plugins and optimize the blog much easier than you can with a free blogging service. This brings you traffic and traffic brings you customers and sales.

2.) Make sure you use the right blogging software – software like Joomla, TypePad and Concrete will all make blogs but I recommend that you use WordPress. I recommend WordPress because it is the most highly supported when it comes to plugins, themes and even support. There are a number of sites that will help you with your WordPress blog besides the support that you will find at WordPress.org. Besides it is easy to learn and to use.

3.) Keep your blog in one niche – I do a lot of blog research and I constantly find blogs that have numerous niches covered. They will cover items such as custom cigars and acne on the same blog. Most of these are using some type of auto-posting system and throwing in Adsense and other advertising programs. These are the type of sites that make the search engines and PPC advertising systems change their rules and end up hurting everybody.

If you keep your blog in one niche the likelihood of getting readers to come back time and time again is greatly improved. This also brands you as an expert in your niche and builds loyalty with your prospective customers which in turn will increase the sales of your product and/or affiliate products you recommend.

Speaking of niches, your niche should be something that you have an affinity for. You don’t have to be the expert but you need to like the niche enough that you are willing to put in the work and it helps if you do know enough to know if the post you are entering is good information or bad information.

4.) Do some keyword research – Keywords are the heart and soul of your blog. If you are relying on the search engines to get traffic to your site you need make sure you are using keywords that are being searched and are targeted to your niche.

There are a lot of free keyword research tools out there but Google’s Adword Keyword tool is by far the best free tool you can use to do some quick research of your keywords and it will suggest keywords that you might not of thought of.

5.) Make your blog reflect you – this simply means that your blog should be something that reflects your personality or the personality of your business. This can be the tone of voice you use in your posts or it can be something as simple as putting your name and picture on the blog. Let people know who is doing the talking, let them see you, let them put a face to the voice and you will find that you will get a better following than trying to be the anonymous expert.

These steps will get you started with blogging, review them before you start your blog or if you already have a blog going see if they apply to your blog. They are the backbone of almost all successful blogs and if followed will give you a foundation of trust that your readers will appreciate.

At Blogging Beginners you are provided with all the blogging instructions you will need to build your blog, find your niche, do your keyword research, create posts and drive traffic to your site.

What is this cardinal rule of blogging that I broke?

It is really quite simple, I didn’t keep my blog updated. You need to add new content to your blog or site at least once per week to keep the search engine spiders happy.

Of course I have an excuse as to why I didn’t keep it updated, but then again we always have an excuse for the things we do or don’t do.

Even though it isn’t worth the paper (cyber-paper?) it is written on here is why I haven’t made a post recently.

Most of you that know me know that I am a techno-geek and I like technology and learning how to do all the technical things on the internet.

Yes, I can hear you groaning and saying, “How can you like the technical side? I hate the technical stuff!” But aren’t you glad that there are people like me that do like the technical stuff and make it easier for you to get things done.

What I have been doing is actually learning how to write programs in PHP from start to finish.  A lot of you will know that I was familiar with PHP as far as installing the programs and tweaking them to do what I want. But this is a long way for actually creating a script that will run a website.

There were a lot of empty spaces in my knowledge and although I didn’t need to fill in the missing pieces to accomplish my goals there were just some things that I wanted to do that I couldn’t do.

For example, I wanted to create a site where you as a customer could choose from 100’s of products and pick only the ones you wanted to download but you could get the “big package, special, limited time, limited quantity, grand opening, holiday, one time offer” price.

In other words you could buy a package of 20 products and choose any 20 of the 100 products available on the site or you could buy just one product or you could buy 100. This means that you wouldn’t have to buy a package of 50 products to get that one product that you want and leave all the other products collecting digital dust on your hard drive.

I looked around and there is no script that will do this on a site that I could find. Yes there are shopping cart scripts that will let you purchase a number of products but each product has to have its own price and it becomes a cumulative total of all the products with the price going up and up and there is no discount for quantity.

I wanted to provide the quantity discount you find in the big packages where you pay very little per item and the price per item would go down when the number of items goes up.

So, I though about outsourcing the script and having someone else create it for me. But to be completely honest with you, I haven’t found a PHP programmer yet that knows what they are doing and would be willing to get tied down to putting my work first. This means that if there is a problem with the script I might or might not be able to get support.

With this in mind, I decided to create my own script and let me tell you I have spent a lot of time running down errors in the script and learning new things about PHP. I learned how to integrate PayPal’s IPN into the script to ensure that the package was actually paid for. I learned how to have PHP count the number of files in a folder. I learned how to protect a download link and right now I am learning how to create a search function for the script so that you can search through all the products to find that particular product that you want.

I doing this I actually set a goal to have this script up and running by June 3 and when I set my goals I go after them whole heartedly. This means that I have at times lost track of what day of the week it is.

But I do have a working version of the script done (except for the search) and when it is completed you will be able to see it in action at www.YourChoiceProducts.com (nothing there right now)

So, there’s my excuse for not posting but remember it is only an excuse. I could have created a post similar to this earlier to let you know what I was doing and helped keep the search engine spiders heading this way.

I have to keep telling myself, “Keep posting, don’t stop, keep posting, don’t stop” The only advantage I have is that this blog is not about making money it is about providing information to you.