Decide Now if you want to be a Good Blogger or a Bad Blogger

You have to decide now if you want to be a Good Blogger or a Bad Blogger.

Why now?

Because you are blogging now… today… every day.

You may not even realize it, but you make decisions every day based on the little voices in your head.

Those are the voices of the “Good Blogger” angel on your right shoulder, and the “Bad Blogger” demon on your left shoulder.

Remember the cute cartoons depicting how your guiding angel (your “good angel”) sits on one shoulder telling you the right thing to do, while the little demon (your “bad angel”) sits on your other shoulder trying to get you to go down the wrong path?

Well you might want to keep that image in mind each day that you sit down to work at your blogging business.

You see, when you get to work today, you’ll have to make choices.

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Tough choices as to what to do and which path to go down.

So, yes, you must decide now… today and every day… if you want to Be A Good Blogger or a Bad Blogger.

Which one will you decide to be?

I’ve put together some of the bigger issues I’ve seen bloggers confront.

And a lot of the things they tell me about their challenges are the basis and inspiration for what follows.

1. Creating a powerful blog

The Good Blogger says:

I’m ready to blog on a powerful platform.

I will invest in creating a site that tells the world I’m serious about my blogging business.

The Bad Blogger says:

I don’t really want to go out and buy a private domain.

Everybody tells me to get my own domain.

But there’s a lot of free places I can blog.

That way I don’t have to buy hosting.

I don’t have to figure out how to set up a blog or how to do plugins or any of those other technical things.

I just want to sit down and start writing articles that people will read.

And even if I did decide to get my own blog, then I’d have to come up with a name for it.

I have no idea what’s a good name.

Some people tell me that I should use my own name for a domain name.

Other people tell me I have to focus on a niche topic name.

So I don’t really know which is right now, so I would just rather use a free blog.

Another problem with getting my own domain is that I have to buy hosting.

I have no idea what the best hosting plan is to buy.

Seems to me that everybody just wants to tell you that their own hosting plan is the best.

I don’t know.

Maybe they just want to make a sale if I click on their Link.

It just seems all too complicated.

I think I’ll just stick with a free blog for now.

2. Publishing great content

The Good Blogger says:

I am determined to do whatever it takes to publish great content on my blog.

Consistently.

Creatively.

Constructively.

The Bad Blogger says:

Of course I want to have great articles on my blog.

That’s what it’s all about, right?

But I don’t want to have to write them all myself.

That’s way too much work.

And I don’t really know a lot about any one thing.

So I wouldn’t begin to know how to write 100 articles on some topic.

I like the idea of those “article spinner” things.

I’ve heard that all you have to do is get somebody else’s article and put it in a spinner.

It changes the words around and you come up with your own article.

I think that’s a great idea.

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Maybe I should look into that.

I’ll try to find a free one.

But there’s other things I could do, too.

For instance, I’m thinking of making really short blog posts.

Like maybe one or two hundred words.

That way I could keep fresh articles always going up on my blog.

But I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time writing them.

Another thing I’ve seen some people do is that they just put up videos or images on their blog.

So their blog posts only has a few words.

But it either links to a video or maybe has a whole lot of pictures on it.

That might be a better way for me to go.

I just have to find a way to get free stock images and I know they’re out there.

One of the first jobs I’ll do is figure out how to get free images.

Then for videos, I can just go to YouTube and find ones about my topics.

That should be pretty easy to do.

And YouTube videos are free to put on my blog.

Score!

3. Establishing a loyal readership

The Good Blogger says:

I am ready to reach out to my readers and create a steady flow of traffic to my blog.

A loyal readership is the cornerstone to a successful blog.

The Bad Blogger says:

One of the big problems with blogging is that you need a whole lot of people coming to your blog to make it popular.

That’s one of the reasons I never started one before.

But now that I’ve decided to blog, I’ll have to get some traffic to it.

I hear that commenting on everybody else’s blogs is a good way to start getting people to reciprocate by visiting your blog.

I don’t really have the time or patience to do that all the time, but I guess I can do it for a while.

At least I can do it just to get my blog to be popular.

Then, I can just focus on writing my blog posts and not worrying about the traffic thing.

So you see what I’m saying is that really, I just want to be a blogger not a promoter.

I mean I’m pretty creative and have lots of good ideas.

But I don’t feel like I should have to become a professional marketer just to get people to start reading my blog.

Of course I know that when people leave comments on my blog post that I have to reply to them.

I can’t make this a big chore though.

I’ll just reply to some of them.

Or maybe I’ll just do really short replies like “thanks for your comment.”

I guess that would be alright.

I could keep up with that.

So now, another good idea to get the word out about my blog is to share my articles on social media sites.

I see most of the big bloggers do that.

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It would take forever, though, for me to copy and paste links to my blog posts all over the place.

So maybe I’ll find some kind of free or really cheap automation thing that can do that for me.

I’m definitely putting that on my list of things to do.

Now another thing I see people do is this.

They go on Facebook groups and forums and things like that.

They chat with people and put their links there.

That seems like a pretty good idea, but I have no clue as to what groups or forums to join.

I think I should just go on Facebook and find some groups in my niche and start saying “hi” to some people.

Maybe give some “likes” and things like that.

Then I can start putting links to all my blog post out there.

There might even be an automation tool for to do all that for me, too.

That’s another thing I’ll have to look into.

4. Connecting with other Bloggers

The Good Blogger says:

I do want people to share my blog posts.

So I’ll make strong connections with other bloggers, and together, we can help each other out.

The Bad Blogger says:

I don’t want to be in any kind of a blogging community.

I mean, I just want to get my ideas out there.

But one of the main reasons I want to be a blogger is so I won’t have to deal with people.

I just want to sell products and things and not have to get all caught up in connecting with other people.

Besides that, most of those other bloggers are just my competitors.

So why would I want to be doing anything to help make their blogs do better than mine?

I hear there are blogging communities I could join.

And I suppose that’s not a bad idea… just so I can put my links there and promote my articles.

But I don’t want to get all caught up in doing this reciprocation stuff.

It just takes so much time that I won’t have enough time to write my own blog posts.

And another thing I’ve heard is that you could start your own blogging community by connecting with other people in your niche.

But then again, like I said before, these people are just my competitors.

So why would I want to start connecting with them?

After all, I want to be a popular blogger so that I can get my own ideas out there, not other people’s ideas.

5. Make money blogging

The Good Blogger says:

One of the big reasons I’m blogging is to make money.

So I’ll explore all the ways to do that, from affiliate blogging to creating and selling my own products and services.

And anything else that makes sense.

The Bad Blogger says:

I want my blog to make money, but I really don’t like the idea of selling stuff.

You know what I mean?

I don’t want it to be too “salesy” with a bunch of ads and pitches all over the place.

Besides that, I’m not even sure what I would want to sell.

I know I could create my own products, but that’s like, way too much work for me.

Things like writing ebooks or doing video trainings are just way beyond what I’m capable of right now.

I don’t even know what I would do trainings about, even if I could do them.

Another thing I could do is to offer my own services to people.

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But I really don’t do anything that people would pay for.

I’m not a web designer, graphics person, freelance writer or photographer or anything like that.

So I don’t really have any services to sell.

So I guess the best thing for me to do is to sell other people’s stuff.

But the problem with that is that I see a lot of bloggers just spend so much time doing things like review posts for affiliate products, and then they don’t sell anything.

Or at least they don’t sell enough to make it worth their time.

And it seems like it would take a lot of time to write this whole long blog post about some product or service.

And then what happens if nobody comes to read the article?

Or even if they do read it, what’s the guarantee that they’ll click on your affiliate link and buy it?

So many people read an article about something they like to buy and then just Google it and buy it directly from the company.

So it seems kind of pointless.

Then I hear that there’s even a lot of people who are out there stealing affiliate links all the time.

So I’d have to really think about how much time to invest in writing affiliate blog posts.

I guess I’ll worry about how to make money on my blog after it gets really popular and lots of people are visiting it.

6. Alternate blogging content

The Good Blogger says:

I know that not everybody wants to consume information purely in the form of text.

In fact, multi-media blogging is becoming more and more popular all the time.

So I’ll commit to learning how to give my audience a variety of content forms, not just text.

The Bad Blogger says:

I know there’s lots of things you can do to make your blog posts look better.

And more interesting to your readers.

From what I understand, videos and images are especially important to have on your blog posts.

But first of all, I really don’t like doing videos.

I mean, I’ve never tried it.

But I can’t imagine getting in front of a camera and talking about stuff.

That’s just not something that I would want to do.

And I really don’t want people judging me from my videos.

I just want to get my ideas out there on my blog.

To promote it, and get it to be really popular.

Now, images are another thing I could do.

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I’d be more likely to do that.

But I need to find free sources for images.

There’s certainly no reason to carry an overhead before I’m making money from my blog.

I could do images myself, of course, but I don’t really know how.

And I don’t even know where to begin…

I know there are free services out there that help you create images to use on your blog.

I suppose I should look into that.

Because images look good on your blog, and you can also use them on your social media posts.

So, if it’s not too hard, I’ll try to figure out how to create some of my own images.

I guess that’s yet another thing for my “to do” list.

7. Becoming a Pro Blogger

The Good Blogger says:

I’m ready to do whatever it takes to become a pro blogger.

Today.

Now.

The Bad Blogger says:

I definitely have decided I want a top ranking blog.

But I don’t want to work too hard to make it happen.

And I have no intention of spending money to create a blogging business.

When people try to sell you things to make your blog better, it’s usually just a scam.

Maybe one day, when my blog is really popular and making money, it will make sense to put more time and money into it.

But not now.

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Decide Now if you want to Be a Good Blogger or a Bad Blogger

So what’s your take on all this?

What other things do you think would determine if someone were to be a “good blogger” as opposed to a “bad blogger?”

So, tell me.

Are you ready to “Decide Now if you want to Be a Good Blogger or a Bad Blogger?”

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

And don’t forget to share this post on your favorite social sites 🙂

-Donna

• Bio
• Blogging Magic

Donna Merrill

Donna is a well known blogger and creator of "Blogging Magic" - an intensive guide to blogging. "Blogging Magic" is for beginners who are trying to figure out how to bring their blogs to life with tons of visits, comments and social media interaction. It's even for advanced bloggers looking to reach new levels of authority and engagement with their audience.