If you have been blogging for a while and you still aren’t finding much success with the business, you might want to examine your personal attitude toward your blog in order to determine the problem. As with any business, it is important for you to take ownership of your business and to look at yourself as a serious business owner. Yet, when it comes to blogging or to the craft of writing in general, many people fail to identify themselves as a writer or blogger. Unfortunately, this lack of confidence becomes projected onto your audience and it becomes much harder to convince them that you are an authority on the subject or that you are someone they should trust.

Taking Ownership of Your Business

One of the reasons many bloggers and writers have difficulty taking ownership of their business is because it is something they do on a part-time basis or as a “side job.” Therefore, they don’t look at themselves as being professionals or as true business owners. Unfortunately, when you look at your business as just a part-time gig or as something you do as a hobby or in your free time, you likely will not put forth the effort necessary to make it a success. Even worse, those around you will fail to take you seriously.

So, how can you take ownership of your blogging business and help make it more successful? First, you need to identify yourself as a blogger. Sure, you may also be the manager of a restaurant or a retail salesperson, but you are also a writer. Therefore, the next time someone asks you what you do for a living, be certain to identify yourself as a writer as well as by the title of whatever other occupation you may hold.

When you start to identify yourself to others as a writer, you will find that something amazing happens. First, many people will ask you to elaborate on what you write about. Obviously, this gives you an excellent opportunity to spread the word about your blog and to potentially draw in new readers. Second, you start to feel more confident in your business, your writing abilities and your knowledge regarding your blog topic. Your readers will pick up on this confidence, which will help your community grow.

Using Your New Found Confidence

A lack of confidence in your knowledge and abilities is a big turn off with blog readers. Your readers aren’t looking for someone who appears to be wishy-washy or who seems to be trying to fake his way through his posts. If you aren’t knowledgeable about something that has to do with your blog, take the time to research it or to admit it to your readers rather than writing a blog that is nothing but fluff. If you do know what you are talking about or if you have a strong opinion about a certain topic, express your opinion to your readers. Not only will this help to shape your voice and personality, it will also give your readers something to debate – which is sure to draw even more traffic to your blog!

Are you planning to start a new blog soon? If so, one of the most important things you need to determine is your niche. In other words, you have to decide what you will be writing about and who your target audience will be. By honing in on what you will write about and who you will writing it for, you can better determine your topics while also more effectively winning over and retaining readers.

Step #1: Examine Your Personal Interests

The first step you need to take in order to determine your niche is to examine your personal interests. After all, in order to create a successful blog, you will need to post to it on a regular basis. Ideally, you should post at least once per day while your blog is still in its early stages. Therefore, you certainly want to select a topic that will retain your interest and that you will enjoy writing about. So, sit down and create a list of all of the general topics you would be interested in writing about before you move on to the next step.

Step #2: Fine Tune Your Topics

Now that you have an idea of the topics you might be interested in writing about, it is time to start doing a bit of research. Obviously, you want to write about a topic that will be of interest to as many people as possible. That way, you can bring more traffic to your site and you will have a better chance of making money through your blog if that is your goal.

In order to get an idea of what topics are of interest to people searching the web, use a tool such as Google adwords. Here, you can get an idea of the phrases that people are researching on Google as well as the amount of competition there is for those particular words. While looking at Google adwords should not serve as your final determining factor, it can give you a better idea of how to fine tune your niche. For example, if you listed pets as one of your interests, you may find that there is a great deal of interest in organic pet food. In this case, you may want to focus your blog on eco-friendly pet products or on healthy eating options for pets.

By fine tuning your niche, you can really focus on the topic and delve deeply into it, which will help you establish yourself as an authority on the topic. Later, if you want to address more pet topics, you may add another specialized niche topic to your blog or you may create a sister blog to compliment the first one you developed.

Step #3: Do Your Research

Once you have determined some more specific potential niche areas to explore with your blog, you should do a bit of research regarding blogs that are addressing this topic. Do some searches with the major search engines to learn more about other blogs that fall within your niche. Ideally, you should choose the topic with the least number of blogs already in existence. That way, you can keep your competition down, which will increase your chances of enjoying a larger audience.

If there are already several blogs addressing the topic, see if there is a way you can offer a different angle. That way, you will still have a good chance of carving out your share of the market.

Are you trying to increase the amount of comments your visitors leave on your blog? One of the most frustrating scenarios for a blogger is to know that his or her blog is being visited by many people, but that no one is bothering to leave comments. After all, it is the comment and the community that builds within a blog that truly helps the blog become successful. Therefore, if you have the traffic but you are missing the interaction, you might want to consider hosting a contest on your site.

Of course, if you want to use a contest to help increase the amount of communication taking place on your website, you have to put some careful thought into your contest and how you will implement it.

The first step in hosting a successful contest is to come up with a prize or prizes that would be attractive to your target audience. If your blog is experiencing some success already, you may be able to talk a company into providing you with the prizes for free. If not, it is a worthwhile investment for you to purchase an item that would excite your target audience and make your audience members want to participate in the contest.

Once you have determined the prize, you need to find a creative way for your readers to win the prize. Some ideas include:

• Giving the prize to the person who makes the most relevant comments over a certain number of days

• Giving the prize to the person who posts the most recipes, tips, photos, etc over a certain period of time

• Giving the prize to the person whose recipe, tip, photo, etc is voted number one by your community

When determining how the contest will be won, be certain to keep the content of your blog in mind. If your blog is about being a homeowner, for example, you might ask your readers to post cleaning tips, home improvement tips or even money-saving tips. If your blog is about baking, you might ask readers to post their favorite cake recipes.

By having your community members vote on their favorite entry, you can further get your readers involve in the process. Just keep in mind, however, that voting on things such as which recipe is the best can be difficult because you may get dozens of entrants and your community members won’t have time to try them all before the contest ends.

Hosting a contest on your site is not only a good way to get lurkers to start leaving comments, it is also a great way to boost site traffic. After all, as word spreads about the great contest you are having, more people will decide to visit. If you do a good job of posting interesting and relevant content throughout while the contest is in effect, you just may be able to hook your new visitors into coming back even after the contest is over.