Blogging has become very popular on the internet. The search engines love blogs because they are always getting updated fresh content. Well, the successful blogs are always giving the search engines updated fresh content.

You can get a free blog with blogger or wordpress. They will even host your blog for you. But if you really want a successful blog then I suggest that you get your own domain name and hosting service. Be sure to get a hosting service with access to your cpanel and has Fantastico. Click on the Fantastico icon and you can install a wordpress blog on your site in minutes with a few clicks on your part.

Installing wordpress on your own domain gives you total control of your blog. If you have your blog on the wordpress domain your blog can be deleted without notice and then you will have lost everything.

Now that you have a blog, here are 4 elements to a successful blog

1. Get a theme for your wordpress blog.
You can use the generic theme that wordpress supplies or you can get a theme that is designed for your niche. Your blog will look much more professional and people will come back to visit your blog. You can find free wordpress themes by searching in google.

2. Content
You need your blog full of useful unique content. This is the best way to keep your readers interested and keep coming back to your blog. At first, try and put a new post on the blog everyday. After you have a good amount of useful unique content, then you can scale back to 2 or 3 times a week. In your content educate your readers about your niche and find problems that most people in your niche are having. Research the solutions to the problems and post them on your blog.

3. Give away a free report
Have an opt in box and make them give you there name and email address. This way you can start building a subscriber list and you can email them more information about your niche and also tell them about affiliate products they can buy which gives you a commission on each sale.

4. Monetize your blog with Adsense
Google adsense displays ads that are relevant to the content on your blog. This is very important because the visitors to your blog will be interested in the ads that are being displayed. It is a win-win situation for everybody. The visitor clicks on the ad to find the information he/she is looking for and you get a paid for the click.

When putting adsense ads on your wordpress blog, I would recommend that you find a wordpress theme that already has the ads in the code. Good wordpress adsense templates will have the ads in the high click areas.