A lot of people get into blogging for money because they hear about the fantastic success some people have enjoyed. It’s hard to not envy someone who is earning 5, 6 or even 7 figures a year from their blog.

Trouble is, for many people earning the way someone else does becomes their sole focus. They do their best to copy the successful people they see around them, rather than be themselves.

The biggest problem with imitating the more successful bloggers around you is that it’s easiest to be nothing more than an imitation. You don’t stand out. And if you don’t stand out, you’re not going to get people interested in what you have to say.

It’s one thing to take occasional inspiration from those who are doing better than you are. But if that’s the only thing you do, you’ll have more trouble developing your own voice.

Be aware of what others in your niche are doing, but find ways to stand out. Take a controversial position. Have fun. Worry less about what’s working for others and figure out what works for you.

The thing about blogging is that you can learn quite a bit about what successful bloggers are doing, and still not succeed with your own blog. You’re different people, after all, and the different approaches you take to similar tasks will not get you the same results.

If you really need to compare yourself to someone, take a look at the people who are at your same level of the game. Watch the people who are doing exceptionally well, if you like, but in many ways your most direct competition comes from the people who know about as much as you do.

Even then you don’t want to focus too much on what the other people are doing. You should be focused more on what you can do.

So What Should You Be Doing?

There are some things you absolutely need to get done to succeed as a blogger.

1. Develop your own voice.

You don’t want to sound like everyone else. Be yourself. Have your own style and your own opinions. If you love covering industry news, cover it. If you don’t, leave it alone except when it catches your attention.

2. Write for your blog - a lot!

Many of the most successful blogs are posted to more than once a day. Sure you can get away with less, but you may get less attention.

Don’t overdo! You can annoy readers if you are writing so fast that you forget quality in favor of quantity. Or if you just provide too much information for them to read. There’s a balance to be struck, and it’s up to you to decide what that balance is.

3. Comment on other blogs.

Yes, this takes away from your writing time. But it’s a great way to network with your fellow bloggers and get visitors.

Don’t worry about whether the links to your site are “do follow” or “no follow.” Don’t constantly link to your own posts within the body of your comments. Don’t be self promotional in general.

Be a genuine contributor. Your comments will stick better and bring better attention to your blog.

Am I perfect with these? Heck no! I post on this particular blog far less than I should, but I have others that are more of a focus for me. I have also dropped blogging on sites that I simply do not have time for right now. As my personal life changes I may pick them back up, but for right now they’re on the back burner.

And of course I sometimes wish I could succeed as wildly as certain other bloggers. But I don’t let that get in the way of working on my blogs in my way.

As you work on your blog, it’s good to read up on ways to improve your chances for success. There are so many things you can do to bring up your readership or generally improve your blog.

You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure it all out. You’ll even find strong opinions on what seem to be little things.

Full vs. Partial Feeds

This one can get quite a bit of debate. Full feeds are great for people who use feed readers and just want to get their blog reading done, but the blog itself may lose out on traffic from those readers.

Partial feeds mean that the first part of your posts must drag people into clicking to read the rest of the post. But some readers will unsubscribe if you require this of them.

There are some strong feelings on both sides of this. Some bloggers worry about their feeds being scraped if they use full feeds. Others want readers to come to their blogs to hopefully improve the number of comments and maybe even ad clicks.

Personally, I go for full feeds simply as the most functional option for readers. Anyone who is moved enough to comment still has to click through to the site. Properly added product recommendations will still make it through to the feed reader, so you can still get affiliate commissions.

Displaying Feed Counts

Having a lot of readers is a wonderful thing for a blog. It’s one of the things that makes blogging worthwhile. Some bloggers display their feed counts, while others don’t.

And of course some fake the numbers so that they look popular. All too easy to do and generally too easily discovered.

I’ve seen general agreement that if you have fewer than 100 subscribers to your feed, you may as well forget about displaying the count. You aren’t getting the social proof that you should want from this. Some will say to wait for even higher numbers, but that’s up to the individual blogger.

Even some sites with a huge number of subscribers will prefer to not show numbers.

Don’t bother faking counts, as being caught out greatly damages your reputation. Instead, think about why it is you want your count to show.

In many cases, it is for that social proof that a lot of people are subscribing to your site. Feed subscriptions don’t tell the whole story, but it’s a number that is easily made public.

Just keep in mind that there are other ways for people to tell how much traffic your blog is getting. The number of comments is a good clue. A high subscriber count displayed with few comments (assuming comments are turned on) can indicate a problem.

Using the Right Social Media Sites

Social media websites have proven to be an amazing way to get the word out about individual blog posts. But if you try to sign up and participate in them all, you’re going to drive yourself crazy and possibly be counted as a spammer if you do nothing more than self-promote.

I’ll be perfectly clear. Social media can make a huge difference to your blog and the traffic you get. But overdoing it is not the answer.

Pick one or two to start with, and participate on them. Promote your own things occasionally, but your main focus should be on being a good member. You’re looking to build a solid reputation and some trust. Network with people doing well on those sites as well as with others just starting out. Get a real feel for what goes over well.

Don’t give yourself too hard a time about learning it all right away. There’s a lot to figure out and taking your time to understand what you’re trying to accomplish will do more than plunging blindly in.

While any of these can make a difference in how your site grows, they really aren’t that likely to make or break you. Even your own use of social sites, which can drive serious traffic at times, can matter far less than if your readers use them. Give yourself time and work the way that is best and most productive for you.

As you go about reading up on ways to build your business, you probably have found there are a lot of theories about how to get a good audience. Many tactics naturally value the search engines, without which you’re hard to find in the first place.

Over time you become more established, and hopefully start to build a good audience. If you’re writing a blog, tracking your audience can be pretty easy with tools such as Feedburner. You can find out just how many people are subscribed to your blog, and even share that information on a chicklet if you like.

The trouble comes in if you start to get too obsessed with search engine traffic, and forget about the audience you’ve been building for. Or you start aiming for the Digg front page or wanting a huge number of Stumbles to your site.

You forget your audience and write for someone or something else instead.

All these sources of traffic can be very nice, but trying too hard for them can alienate the readers you really want. Digg and Stumble traffic may not convert well. Search engine traffic is better, but it only helps if you’re writing for the people reading your site rather than the bots.

Truth be told, success is not to be had strictly in a large number of visitors or subscribers. Both are nice, but what are they doing to help you earn a living? If you’re trying to earn money and they aren’t interested in buying, you aren’t doing yourself any good just going for the numbers.

Show your audience that you value it by providing good value to them. Write interesting, relevant content. Point out solid products and services that they may enjoy using. Build trust. Be responsive.

If you’re open to what your visitors and subscribers have to say, they may well tell you what they’d like to see on your site. You can get some idea of this just by tracking where people go the most on your site (aside from the home page!), or you can ask. Start a poll or write a post asking people what they would like to see more of from you.

Providing good value is not the only step you’ll have to take if you want to succeed online. No matter how good your site is, if no one can find it no one will care about it. But it is a major portion of what it takes to maintain your success.

Marketing your business on forums is a common piece of advice. A good forum can provide access to a number of people who are interested in the products you’re trying to sell.

So why does it fail so miserably for so many people?

1. Trying too hard to sell.

Many people who try to market affiliate products on forums go about it all wrong. Marketing their product is all they do, and they aren’t the least bit discreet about it. They may post all over the forum telling people to check their product out. They may try to squeeze a mention into every conversation, whether relevant or not.

They think of their efforts there as entirely to market a product. Not to become a trusted resource.

2 . Ignoring forum rules.

Working too hard to sell is just one way people can ignore forum rules. It’s the big one, though.

However many forums won’t allow you to advertise a business in your signature, or may require that you pay for the privilege. They may not allow affiliate links within posts, even when the product is perfectly relevant.

3. Signature line isn’t compelling.

Some people do better at participating in the forum, but still fail to do well as marketers on forums. Some will put just their affiliate URL in their signature. Sure, that gives a link to click, but what is it?

Or, if the link is followed or preceded by a description, the words aren’t the least bit compelling. Most forums allow you to use BB Code, which allows you to link to your site through your words, which looks much better.

4. Too irrelevant.

You’re not going to do that well marketing pet supplies on a crime forum. Sure there will be some pet owners, but that’s not what people there are looking for. Try to have some relevance in your signature to what people are talking about. It doesn’t have to be perfect, though.

5. Too relevant.

Too close a match can be a problem as well. You don’t want to be offering something that pretty much everyone in the forum already has. Try to come up with a product that will intrigue the people who read your signature.

6. Too many links.

Most forums have limits on the number of characters you have in your signature. Some limit the number of links you may include.

Both of these things are good for you.

People aren’t generally going to read a really long signature line. They also may ignore excessive links within your signature. Keep the number of links down and be sure your signature is easy to read.

7. Never, ever changing your signature.

Remember, even if a forum has thousands of active members, after a time just about everyone interested in your current signature has seen it. Changing things up, even if you’re still offering the same product, can bring in fresh customers.

8. Fail to test your signature links.

Test. That’s right, test, test, test. And test again. Then change things up regularly.

Forum marketing is just like any other kind of marketing. An ad may be pulling well and then suddenly quit working.

But beyond that, make sure your links actually work. It’s amazing how often forum signature links just don’t work because you didn’t get it quite right. Strange things sometimes happen between typing your signature and hitting the Submit button.

The bane of searching for a work at home job is avoiding all the scams. They’re so prevalent that finding a real opportunity is a pretty long search for most people.

Ever wonder why so many scams thrive? There are a few reasons.

1. Affiliate programs.

Not all affiliate programs are bad, not by a long shot. Many sell physical products, such as in Amazon’s Associate program.

But the trouble comes in when dishonest affiliates recommend a dishonest program. Sure they’re making a bit of money… selling to you the same report that got them started, recommending that you sell the same report to new people.

It’s the online variation of the old envelope stuffing routine.

This is why you have to be so careful about when you see a product being enthusiastically recommended by many people. Some won’t have even bought and/or used the product themselves. They’re recommending it based on the sales copy and the desire for a quick buck.

2. Name changes.

Things move fast online. It takes less than $10 at most registrars to buy a new domain name. That makes it very easy for a scam to just change names and keep going anytime the old name starts to develop a really bad reputation. It also means it’s very hard to catch the owners.

3. The Internet is international.

When you’re dealing with an online business, you often don’t know where they’re located. A physical address could be nothing more than a P.O. Box. While some use these to keep their home address private, others use it to keep the real location of their business secret.

As you can see, motivation makes a big difference there. If you’re running a home business there’s nothing wrong with wanting to keep your home address out of it, but other reasons for a P.O. Box can be less honest.

The international aspects of the Internet are some of its greatest delights, but also its greatest challenges. You can interact with people from around the world. But that also means that if someone is running a scam from elsewhere in the world there is little to be done about it.

What Can Be Done?

To avoid online work at home scams your best protection is education and research.

Educate yourself about what a scam looks like. With name changes so easy to make you cannot just rely upon a lack of negative reports. Study up on the signs of a work at home scam, especially in the areas you are interested in working in.

But even in areas that have legitimate opportunities there can be scams mixed in. This is where research comes in. Check out the company. Typing their name into your favorite search engine can help, but you need to do more than that to really protect yourself. The name alone may get nothing more than the enthusiastic affiliates that are promoting products they don’t really understand.

The BBB is not always a help. Too often they have no information or the business has cleared up those negatives reported to the BBB. Check on sites dedicated to scams or to working at home and ask for opinions.

If You Do Get Scammed

Don’t let the scammers win if you do fall for a scam. Report what happened to the FTC, your state’s Attorney General, the BBB and the site where you learned about the scam. The FTC can do nothing about a scam without complaints about it. Same for the rest.