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90 • Don't be afraid of controvercy. If you gain mindshare and authority some envious parties will hate you for it. • Add enough value to ideas that people talk about you when referencing them • Encouraging contribution from others and highlighting their contributions builds a community effect to your site Post Regularly People appreciate regularity. Some bloggers ask for guest bloggers while they go on vacation, while others pre-write draft posts that they publish periodically when news is slow. If you are short on ideas to write about then participate in your community and/or solicit feedback and questions until you find good topics to write about. Wait to Monetize It is hard to win mindshare in competitive markets with a new site, especially if you run too many ads on your site. If you place AdSense or other ads above your content on a brand new blog people are going to be less trusting of your blog. Blogs are often hard to monetize using contextual ads, but tend to have great revenue potential if you sell branded ads, create your own products, or use your blog to create opportunities for indirect revenue. Brian Clark released a great report to launch his Teaching Sells subscription site. His thesis was that the web is getting too saturated to profit from AdSense, and that it was more profitable to create your own content to sell. Even if you plan on giving away your content, if you create content that is good enough to sell that will help you quickly gain attention and mindshare. Push Marketing You have to do a bit of push marketing to get a new website noticed in competitive markets. When you launch a new blog you should: • Get involved in your topical community - online and offline if possible. • Submit your blog to some of the popular general directories and blog directories. • Consider buying targeted AdWords or AdSense ads to drive traffic to your site. Also look at BlogAds if they are popular in your space. • Guest author for other trusted blogs in your industry.