Writers’ world over use various platforms to showcase their work and this can be done for two purposes, either for their own compilation or to tell the world that they have this talent thereby inviting projects. They can either adopt the age old system of maintaining a personal journal or diary where they write about their daily lives and also poetry or prose, depending on their interest.

Another is making use of internet technology and creating a blog to put down their writings. Technology has advanced to a point where all one needs to do is create an account, a username and password and the doors to the wide world are open. Bloggers across the world also have the liberty to share and let their work be read by others. If there are a group of people who are into similar writing they might even get together and write on a single blog where they all have unlimited access. And one can also use the text link exchange option incase there are other blogs he frequents. Those who are interested in advertising their websites can avail a premium membership where they will be expected to pay a nominal amount every month or year.

Deciding on a theme can be a daunting task. What exactly are you going to write about? Your niche needs to be a popular topic that many people are interested in.

If you are going to blog about yourself, then you better have a very interesting life, or you will have difficulty keeping your readers coming back for more. You should choose a topic that will make it comparatively easy to grow your readership and build a strong following.

Since many bloggers write about their favorite subjects, it’s not a bad idea to start brainstorming by writing down a list of your hobbies, interests, and any areas of professional expertise. Now try to determine a niche you can target within one of those areas.

Should you blog about automobiles in general, or the latest sports cars? If you choose too narrow a theme then you may struggle to come up with regular, fresh content. And if you choose a topic that’s too general your readers may be confused by a jumble of seemingly unrelated posts.

You might consider niches within the following general topic areas which have proven to be popular for blogging:

•    Automobiles
•    Computers & Information Technology
•    Digital Cameras
•    Gadgets
•    Music
•    News
•    Photography
•    Politics
•    Shopping

If you plan to use Pay-Per-Click advertising to get traffic to your blog, then remember also that the hottest topics might have the highest pay-per-click fees.

You can sometimes get great niche ideas by browsing at Blog directories and sites like Google Blog Search: http://blogsearch.google.com

As kind and greedy as John Chow

John Chow is kind enough to share his tips on how to monetize your blog. However with every tip he gives you, there are a dozen affiliate links or CPC links attached to it. Almost half of his blog posts are paid reviews. Although he claimed to earn $30,000+ per month, he tried hard to get a free Mac Air from one of his sponsors.

As bold and generous as Shoemoney

Jeremy Shoemaker is bold, not only his head (which is bald and attractive to some girls/ladies), but his style in blogging. He throws everything out to get as much as subscribers and commentators to his blog. When he got a free spare Mac Air, he gave it away to his readers in a contest.

As passionate and tight as Problogger

Darren Rowse is the guy behind Problogger. He is passionate to put up around 4 blog posts per day and also countless tweets on twitter.  Although he is one of the top earning bloggers, when he got a spare Mac Air, he was tight enough to sell it on his blog.

As honest and fishy as Yaro

Yaro is honest enough to accept not everyone can make big money without lying. He can put up a testmonial on his blog to brag about his coachin program out of thin air, and banned anyone who found out his trick from commenting on his blog.

How do you find out about these top bloggers?

What are you going to write about? It should be a topic that you’re passionate about or are at the very least interested in. If you’ve chosen blogging as your new career, then you don’t want to torture yourself by writing about something that you have zero interest in, otherwise you might as well return to that mundane job you just quit!

Feelings and emotions show through your writing, so your readers will notice any indifference you may have toward a certain topic that you find boring. Don’t forget the advice about writing with a personality. Forced writing will not establish you in the world of blogging at all.

Once you’ve chosen your main theme — or if it has chosen you, then that’s even better — start posting to your blog and try to get into the habit of doing that at least once every day. It doesn’t always need to be a long post; it could be a comment on something you read in the newspaper today or a segment that you saw on the breakfast news program on TV. Think of yourself as a gigantic container ship, that needs a lot of effort to get moving. At first, you’ll budge just a foot or two and later you’ll trudge slowly on until you’re at full speed. Before you know it, it’ll take a lot of effort to stop you!

Nevertheless, regardless of how well you know your topic, you’re going to run out of fresh input at some point, so let’s look at some content brainstorm ideas.

1) Check out what other bloggers have to say on the current state of affairs in your field of discussion. You can find related blogs by visiting http://blogsearch.google.com/  or http://www.technorati.com. You’ll learn from other blogs and you can also comment on what others have to say on your own blog!

2) Once you’ve established contact with other bloggers, you’ll have almost inexhaustible input to keep you going for a while, so there won’t be an acute need to search for content to write about. Should you still be stuck, then you can search for news articles related to your niche in you local newspaper or online.

3) By joining a few forums related to your niche — just choose the ones that are the most focused on your particular area — you can engage in conversations with others who share your interests. This is a great way to build up a Q&A bank and interesting discussion topics to write about. An added bonus is that your forum posts will quite handily generate traffic for your blog and, hopefully, profits.

Try to maintain your daily posting habit. The major search engines love fresh content and they are more likely to spider your blog frequently, which will also result in getting you extra traffic.

The subject of traffic will be discussed in a future article, so don’t worry about that right now. Just keep writing and posting and building up that momentum — you’ll be an established blogger before you know it!