For those with an itch to immediately launch a new online business, starting a blogging home business could be a good route to take. Sure, this requires more effort and, more importantly, some form of content strategy, however, the rewards could be a money generating ‘labor of love’. Let’s get to strategies which can lead to success and others which may end in less favorable results.

First, you need to pick a topic or theme for your blog. It is important to do a quick inventory of your passions and begin the brainstorming process from there. Are there topics which work and those that do not? NO! For instance, one of the greatest blog ideas I’ve ever come across is located at stuffwhitepoeplelike.com. No worries, the website has appropriate content and is a great read for anyone.Its founder, Christian Lander, launched the blog in 2008, which now has hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Before beginning the journey to blog super stardom, two questions must be answered;

1. What are you passionate about?
2. Are there others as excited about the topic as are you?

Key to success with any business, whether local or global, is matching website content (and afterwards monetizing it to make profits) to a blogger’s personality! Not only are there hundreds of thousands as passionate about the same subject, many are waiting for you to take the step and serve content.

Next, we strongly discourage veterans launching a blog using a 'free blog' hosting website, such as Blogger.com, Wordpress.com or others. During my years in the Marine Corps, I learned to "Go FAST, Go HARD, Go Long or Go HOME." I've found this principle true in civilian life as well. There are many issues with depending on free Internet platforms for hosting business purpose. The main reason for choosing a custom domain name for your blog is that custom domain named websites receive keyword (industry) specific traffic at a rate of almost 50 to 1 when compared to free blogs.

Here’s an example of the difference between the two"

1. Free blog name example: mynewblog.wordpress.com.

2. Custom Business Domain example: – mynewblog.com.

Free blogs are hosted on ‘sub-domains’ which, with few exceptions, never perform well in most competitive industry search markets (Google, Yahoo and Bing page rankings) while custom solutions do perform well. Think about that principle and answer a question: when is the last time you’ve made a purchase from a free blog versus transacting an online purchase from a custom domain?

When your blog’s topic is chosen, it is time to find a website host and an industry descriptive domain name. Let me be clear, it does not matter whether your business relies on ‘foot traffic’ or is purely online driven, website hosting and a domain name are crucial to building a customer base. Would I describe it as success' deciding factor for local more traditional businesses? NO - but to build trust in an environment where 87% of customers locate services online, this is one of four areas which can determine either success or failure.

Quick tip , when conducting research on how to position content for readers to, use an online Thesaurus to better understand what words are interchangeable. You may find a ‘niche’ market with huge sales opportunities.

Here is an example of why defining your content and products online, requires understanding how customers will find them. In the below example, we'll provide keywords used by customers desiring to buy shoes;

1. Purchase shoes
2. Purchase shoes online
3. Buy shoes
4. Buy shoes online

Once keywords are located, search each using an online Thesaurus. As was proven above, some customers use 'buy' while others use 'purchase'.

Once you’ve chosen hosting and an industry defining domain name, another question must be answered - how will blog posts or articles be produced? I am a blind believer in ‘personality based’ article marketing so what I say now, I do so having been right where you are now! Whatever subject and business idea chosen, passion equips you as both a subject authority and great blog writer.

There are those who will say; “In order to be an effective blogger, you must take a technical writer’s course or get pay a copy editor before posting content to look as professional as possible”. As the great Mr. Scrooge once said, "BAH-HUMBUG!" Like anything else, becoming a competent blogger and, thereby, building a serious blog based business, requires nothing more than practice.

Here are other considerations when starting a blog home business;

1. Will blog posts be part of your main website or an entirely different domain name?
2. What industry keyword market will be targeted?
3. How many posts, per week, can you reasonably produce?
4. What training resources will be used to set a website up effectively?

Of course, many more could be listed but the point is made.