Well, are you? I understand that if you are blogging as a hobby or just getting started with blogging that you might not be able to or may not want to invest too much money into blogging.

However, if your goal is to be a professional blogger or to run an online business of any kind, you need to invest a little money to make it happen. It’s not that different from running an offline business. You have to spend money to make money.

The investment of your time, or “sweat equity”, is also important. So if you are unwilling to put the time into your online business or blogging career, then no need to plan on what you will do when you become a successful blogger. It won’t happen.

Let’s go over some of the areas where I find people who want to make their living online, but are unwilling to spend either the time or money to make it happen.

Let’s start with the basics;

Domain Names: I hear people all the time say that they are going to get their domain name at the cheapest registrar they can find. Why? Is the difference between paying $6.99 per year for your domain name and paying $50 per year for your domain name going to make or break you? Is your business plan so weak that this will eat into your profits? If so, you have the wrong business plan or you are not very confident in it in the first place.

Find the best domain name for the main key phrase you want to target. It does not matter if it is dot com, dot net, dot org, dot cc, dot pn, or dot whatever.

I can’t wait for the domainers to read this because they will come in and argue that ccTLDs like dot pn don’t do well and that dot com is the only way to go. If you think you are a domain expert and you are reading this, before you try, you have to know I can prove you wrong.

I can show you blogs with dot pn, dot cc, and others that are PR5 and above and have great search engine rankings for their main keyphrases. The ONLY way that dot com is better than other TLDs is IF you plan to advertise on the radio or TV. People do remember the domain name with dot com better than other TLDs.

However, on the web, they click links in search engines and on web pages or they click banners and ads and do not care what the domain name is. They use bookmarks and still do not care what TLD is at the end of your domain name.

So choose a domain name that is your exact key phrase you want to target in whatever TLD it is available in. Some ccTLDs will cost you more money. You might have to pay as much as $100 per year for your domain name. OMG!

Again, if your business plan will not support getting the domain name you want, then maybe you should re-examine your business plan.

Now I’ll probably get the SEO gurus saying the domain name does not matter. Again, if you are an seo expert and plan to say thyat then I warn you I can prove you wrong there as well.

I can show you many many blogs with the number one listing in google that have the exact key phrase they are targeting as their domain name.

And before you say it, of course JUST having the domain name that matches your key phrase does not automatically mean you will rank high in the search engines for that phrase. But you want to do everything you can to get those listings and it all starts with the domain name.

So the domain name is worth the investment. Invest in the domain you want. Don’t settle for something that will not help you such as abbreviations only you understand or made up words no one will ever search for just to save a few dollars.

I know I planned to continue blogging about blog directories, but I’ve decided to go back to the basics and to the beginning to help people get started on making some money on the web.

Something I have personally been a little lax in is using blog directories to pull in more traffic to my blogs. It just hasn’t been a priority and it gets moved down the list for other things that seem more important.

But I’m wrong to do that. Blog directories are important. They can help your blog with link popularity and send you a lot more traffic.

I blog and ping with the best of them, but I need to take more time to list my blogs in blog directories and so should you if you are not already doing so.

In the next few days, I’m going to stay on the topic of blog directories and blog search sites. I’m going to examine a new blog directory every day, so I welcome your suggestions of which blog directories I should review.

Today, I want to talk about one I’ve never used before until now. www.BlogCatalog.com

What is BlogCatalog?

Blog Catalog is the premiere social blog directory on the internet. Whether you’re looking to promote your own blog or find blogs on various topics, this site is for you.

That was from the blog catalog website. I’m not sure if they are the premiere directory or not. We all want to be the premiere something.

However, they do have a Google PageRank of 7 and they are ranked 1,499 at Alexa, so some of you reading this probably wonder how I never used it with as many blogs as I own and manage. Well, me too.

As I said, I’ve virtually ignored the blog directories except for the long list of sites I ping whenever I make a blog post. With just blog and ping, I’ve done very well. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t need to improve and use all the tools at my disposal. I obviously have a lot of room for improvement. How about you?

I’m just getting started testing blog directories like blogcatalog.com and want to use this blog to let you know how that improves the traffic to my blogs. I would love to hear how blogcatalog.com or other blog directories are working out for you as well.

I do a lot of tracking to see where my traffic comes from. I use those stats to drive the way I do things. I will be able to quantify the advantages of using each blog directory and in a month I will follow this post up with a review of blogcatalog.com and other blog directories I use here. So give me your list of blog directories you want me to try!

Do you check your traffic stats very often on your blog? You should because you will definitely learn a lot about what readers are interested in, which topics got you the most traffic, and one very important statistic, how long after you posted about something did you get the most traffic for that post.

In other words, this post, Blog Posting for the Future, some people that visit this blog daily will see the post today or maybe tomorrow. But how many people will find this blog post a week from now, a month from now, or longer?

We all know about timeless posts like this one where it doesn’t matter when someone reads it. The information will still be valid. But how do we use statistics to guide our posting to be more effective?

Let’s say I post about “wordpess plugins” on the 1st of september. I post about “blog seo” on the 12th and “typepad tips” on the 24th.

After checking my stats 30 days later, I see the page with that post on it got 1000 unique hits. I see the typepad post got 500 and the blog seo post got 250.

Well I also know that my weekend traffic is higher than my week day traffic, so I look to see which posts were on the weekend and which posts were weekdays and add that into my analysis. But let’s say all 3 posts were the weekend.

Then I know that people will visit me more when I let them know about wordpress plugins. I know typepad is more interesting to my readers than blog seo, and so forth.

Of course you need to keep checking every month to be sure it isn’t a fluke, but by using your stats you are learning about what brings people to your blog. Using that, you can increase your traffic.

Now that is just part of it. How does that apply to the title of this blog post, Blog Posting for the Future?

Now you are tracking your stats every month to see what posts are getting the most hits, so you also need to see when each post is getting most of those hits. The same day? The next day? The same week? Are most of the hits to a blog post you made coming a month after you posted it?

Remember, we are talking about hits directly to the blog post page and not to the main page of your blog.

If you are getting a lot of hits to your posts a month after you made them, then you can blog for the future. You can post about things that will be relevant to users who find your blog post a month from today.

If you had something you wanted people to buy on November 22nd, say concert tickets through your affiliate program, then you are posting about it on september 2oth-23rd. You get the idea.

The bottom line is learn from your statistics. Let your users guide you to what topics they want you to write about. Of course comments do that also, but for every person who comments, you might have 100 people reading your blog. So don’t just go by comments alone. You’d be surprised at what your stats teach you.