How to build and design your gambling blog

Designing your gambling blog is about choosing the template, arranging positions and making it graphically pleasing. Most bloggers spend too much time selecting the most confusing template instead of thinking what kind of visitors their gambling blog will target and what its main purpose will be. Depending on the target group and the blog's content, the designing of the blog should speak for itself. However don't over think about designing in the beginning, since most ideas will come up as you will be adding content into your blog. The most important element you should seek for is the template's capabilities and expandability.

Today's article is the second post in the series of blog tips about gambling blogs and how to make money out of them. We have already discussed how to start your sports or poker blog talking about domain registrations, blog hosting and installing blog software. It is now time to talk about how to effectively design your blog right from the beginning so you take advantage of the opportunities you will come by in the future. And by opportunities I mean available advertising space and capabilities.

1) Decide on your blog's layout

A lot of new bloggers are eager to start blogging about gambling and don't spend much time on the template. They simply install the most basic template available, choose a couple of colors, pick up a title and begin writing their ideas and thoughts. Surely the content is king as they say, but internet users come across blogs on a daily basis. They are tired of seeing the same template over and over again. The content will keep them returning to your blog, but the template is going to impress them right from the beginning. Stand out from the crowd and pick a template that is not just an endless list of your posts with a right column full of all kind of links and banners. Try to remember a blog with that kind of layout that made you visit it because of the design. I myself can't remember a single one. On the other hand you might not have the time or knowledge to spend that much time on choosing and learning a new layout. No problem with that, but a basic blog layout will give you basic prospects in the future.

2) Design your personal blog logo

Most gambling bloggers, the blogs of whom I have visited, choose a theme for their blog title's background where they write their personal phrase. I myself used to have such a phrase, it was like "Make money or die trying" or something but I have abandoned it long time ago. Yes, a motto is good and would be the same a blog reader will read in your gambling blog, but wouldn't it be better to see your personal logo? Apart from making your blog instantly recognizable, you can use your logo for many other reasons like your RSS feed, your emails and your signature and it will help your traffic increase without doing anything difficult. If you have contacted me in the past, you would have seen my blog's logo in my emails' signature which is actually a link to my blog. If you haven't, feel free to contact me to see for yourself. I always reply to emails although I may delay responding from time to time. But you will always hear of me. So, spend some time drawing your own logo and it will pay off.

3) Interested in building a community in your gambling blog?

We all love blogging about gambling but we most of all love knowing that someone actually reads our articles. The best proof of that is the comments and memberships. Now most gambling blogs offer some comment system for readers to comment on the blog posts. Depending on the article's content you will receive hundreds of comments or... none! However, you should always implement a comment system in your blog, as they will add value to it. Additionally, you may also want to allow memberships in your blog and building a small community of your readers. In that way you can create a mailing list of your most loyal readers and communicate with them regularly. Finally, if you are really into community building, you can create a forum in your blog. Although it may sound too difficult, there are actually very good forum solutions that are entirely free! I would strongly suggest using phpBB but that is something you can decide on.

4) Include as many posts as possible at the front page

Make room in your front page for many blog articles. While the visitors may keep coming back to check out your latest addition in your gambling blog, there are others who would have just found your blog! Give them the opportunity to quickly get a feeling of your blog posts. Most of them won't be interested in your latest publication but they will find some other article worth reading and commenting on. Besides including the intro of quite a few articles in your homepage will help your blog rank higher in search engines, since your introductions should be rich in keywords, but that is something we will talk about in the following days. If you haven't got the room in your blog's layout to include many articles, simply add the latest posts' titles as links to your articles. That will also help.

5) Make room for link exchanging and advertising

Link exchanging will be something you should be focusing on in the beginning, contacting with fellow bloggers in order to include your blog's link in their established blogs. While you would be mostly interested in known blogs, less famous blogs will also help your blog's traffic, so don't neglect them. You really don't know when that blogger hits it big time and traffic skyrockets. Since your blog will not have adequate traffic starting out, you should place other blogs' links in an attractive position, since that is actually the only thing you have to offer them for the time being. Why would a trustworthy blogger care to exchange link with your almost empty blog, if you are going to add his link in the footer or in the bottom right corner? Give something back. On the other hand have in mind where you would be placing the advertisements. We try to make money out of our gambling blog, remember? You don't have to worry a lot about that at the moment, but plan ahead for ad placements as it would be rather difficult to do afterwards, when tens of advertisers will compete for a placement in your blog's front page. I started off with just a couple advertising positions and I now have more than enough for gambling ads!

6) The front page's bottom is valuable

This is something I learnt during last year. Bottom space of your blog can actually make you some additional income. To tell you the truth I always considered it a position where I placed all the necessary items of my blog. Copyright words, disclaimers, links, traffic meters, etc. Upon visiting and studying blogs owned by professional bloggers, I found out that not one of them doesn't make something out of the footer area. The bottom area is a perfect place to include your categories' links, some banner, a couple of interesting links pointing to the most popular content of your blog, affiliate links and social media networking links. Yet the best addition you can make in that space is your personal brief résumé. The new visitors need to know who wrote those articles. Don't write a lot though, just a brief mention to your expertise and a link to your about page, which will be one of the most popular page in your blog.

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