Creating a successful blog doesn’t have to drain your finances if you are organized and resourceful.
These are some great tips that outline many free resources that you can tap into, to help you along the way. Following some of these ideas could have your blogging back pocket looking a whole lot healthier in no time!
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Use Free Images
Sprucing up your blog with creative and appealing images is important, but there are ways to get around having to pay for them. If you have an eye for photography you could take some yourself and then edit them to perfection with a good photo-editing program. If you are looking to save time as well as money, look for some free images on the web that you can incorporate into your blog instead of paying for stock photography.
Many of the sites that provide free images for you to use will still require that you acknowledge the creator, such as any image released under Creative Commons. Although the images are free, they are not able to be used without attribution, otherwise copyright laws will be breached. You will find literally thousands of professional and captivating images for your blog, when you search in the right places. A good place to start is Creative Commons’ own website.
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Get a Better Hosting Deal
Many bloggers find one hosting company and stick with them forever. This is great if you are happy with the service they provide, but not so great when you are trying to assess your finances and save some money. It is a really good idea to compare your current hosting company with others out there, something that’s fairly easy to do given the multitude of hosting comparison websites where you can easily assess services provided and their associated costs.
Hosting is a particularly competitive niche, which you should keep in mind when looking around. If you’ve got a high profile site then use it to leverage a better deal.
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Use Free High Definition Videos and Video Hosting
Many people these days are visual learners, which means if you only provide text, you may be losing some valuable contributors and subscribers to your blog. If you host these yourself, you may find that you use up all of your available bandwidth very quickly and your monthly hosting bill could skyrocket.
Although there are advantages to hosting videos on your own site, there’s no harm on using YouTube or Vimeo to take the hit for you. Apart from reducing the costs involved you’ll also avoid slow performance as your video is hosted in a cutting edge, managed datacenter with more bandwidth than you can possibly imagine. Anyway, YouTube’s brand (for instance) is so mainstream that it may actually help your own brand through association.
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Find Affordable Writers
When you are trying to create a successful blog and increase traffic, you need as much quality content as you can get. It can be time consuming to get all of this work done yourself, and perhaps writing content is not really your thing. Many blog owners outsource writing, although the price for top quality writing can be quite high. Have a look around at the various freelance sites to see if you can contact a few writers to find those that are competent and affordable. Freelance Switch and oDesk are good places to start your hunt.
Although it is extremely important not to compromise on quality (the professionalism of your blog is at stake), finding people to write for you will free up more time for you to concentrate on areas of your blog that you may have been neglecting such as marketing and advertising. It is often the case that outsourcing your writing pays dividends as your traffic and readership increases, thus generating more revenue.
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Outsource Design Work
You either understand design or you don’t – it’s as simple as that. If you want your blog to be profitable, it is best not to waste time trying to do something you are unsure of. Again, outsourcing is a great way to get the job done to professional standards. Outsourcing for designers will cost you money, but there are many sites around where designers are offering their services at great rates. Remember, your blog is a representation of yourself, getting it right is important and will ensure your success.
When it comes to your blog, time is money, and money is something that you do not want to waste. Become resourceful and follow these tips to find free or cheaper resources to increase productivity and visual appeal.
This is a guest post written by a a UK based blogger called Tom Walker who works with an online supplier of HP 22 ink, toner and refills. You can read more of his writing about gadgets and design on their blog.
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