Blog Design is Crucial to Earning Money Online…
This is very much an opinion piece, as I’m sure many people have many differing opinions on this matter.
What is a good professional blog design?
For a professional blogger - monetization is paramount. Many might say this is selling out. To be able to Blog full-time, and devote more energy into blogging, is the goal at hand, am I right?

You also need to let your visitors know up front what your site is about. Yaro Starak, and pretty much every blog guru out there will tell you, that you need Pillar Articles.

Pillar Articles, are huge blog posts that get lots of attention, these are the posts that make it on Digg. They don’t always make it to the front page, but they do get perhaps 40+ Diggs, or a bunch of stumbles.

These are the best of the best - these are what your readers are coming to your site for. These are the meat of your blog, and if you don’t have any yet, then you might as well, close down shop, sequester yourself for a weekend and write up a few. It’s recommended that you have at least 5 Pillar Articles.

I recommend that you write at least 1 per week, at least for the first 3 months you’re blogging. After that you can lay off a little - but you have to be dedicated.

Once you have some great articles, also known as flagship content, you absolutely must post them out in the open for everyone to see.

As you can see, I use the popularity plugin by Alex King, to show off my most popular articles. 
Advertisers want to be seen!
It’s pretty simple, those advertising on your site want exposure for their blog, product, website, or brand.

For direct advertising sales, it is best to put the ads above the fold. Don’t go overboard 4-5 ads should be plenty, 8 would probably be max. Unless your design supports it well.

Personally, my choice for ads is the 125×125. It’s nice and sleek, and fits most designs pretty well.
If they Subscribe - They Will Comeback (hopefully).
Next part of a good design, again in my opinion, is to have a good call to action subscribe area. (I’m still tinkering with one for my new layout..)

It is also a good idea to make sure your bases are covered, when it comes to getting subscribers.

You should have the following:

 An easy link to your feedburner feed. (I highly recommend using feedburner.)
A Link to your comments feed. Some people like to read the comments as well - don’t neglect these people.
An easy subscriber box so they can subscribe by email if they don’t have a clue what a feed reader is.
Your subscriber count. Show it bold, and show it proud(unless you have less than 100 or so). The more subscribers you have, again the more clout your website has.
Another tip is having a good catchy graphic icon is a great way to attract attention to your feed, and get subscribers.

Additional Nuggets of Wisdom(ok, so they might be chicken nuggets, but who doesn’t like chicken nuggets?!)
 Other than these basic principles, you want to try and make your blog not look too cluttered. If you’re going to use widgets be sure that they appear neat and orderly.

It’s better to go without the newest awesomest widget, if it makes your site look like crap.

Take these words in stride, I’m not perfect, and as I said this is open for opinions - as everyone has their own style, what say you regarding this topic?

Another thing to be aware of is the SEO of your theme, this isn’t as much a concern though as there are plugins that help with seo. my favorite SEO plugin is: wpSEO.

Another great seo plugin, that is highly recommended by many bloggers is: All in One SEO Pack.
 What say you? (My beloved readers & fans!)
Speaking of the topic, how do you think my site compares with A-listers like JohnChow or John Cow, Problogger.net, Shoemoney.com - etc? I’m always open for suggestions!

Also stay tuned, as I will be posting some of the best of the best professional themes that I come across.

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UPDATE!!!! THIS POST WAS ONLY A JOKE.
Apparently someone posted it on Darren’s Wikipedia page, and all hell broke loose.

In order to keep seo continuity I won’t delete the post entirely - BUT I do want to let everyone know that it was just an April Fool’s day Joke. For all of those who say I was early. It was April Fool’s day in Australia at the time. Remember not everywhere in the world is sharing the same day / time that you are.

Apparently some have taken offense to this post, I do apologize to those, including Darren. I did not mean to defame your character or person. I hope this addendum to this post will prove that point.

Problogger is Bankrupt!
Darren Rowse, probably one of the most famous and talked about bloggers in the blogosphere is filing bankruptcy. Apparently, his blog has been a farce, and he was ‘faking it till making it’.

The truth is that he never was making it. The most he’s earned is $1000 in a month, which went to bandwidth fees, and server hosting. His wife is threatening divorce if he doesn’t call it quits.

He has spent his savings, and built up a lot in credit card debt, in order to be able to go to all the blogging conventions, and build up connections which he swore would make him rich, but never really delivered.

He states, that if I fail, then everyone does. Which makes sense since his blog is one of the most trafficked out there. He is the authority on making money blogging, and to find out the Authority is broke, is quite dis-heartening.

This truly is a sad day for blogging, as it - pretty much means that all of us trying to make money on this should give up and go home. Go back to school, or get a real job, at a factory or something.

Wait - why am I wasting my time writing this post then? I quit!

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Wouldn’t it be nice to be best Friends with an A-list blogger? How about ten A-list bloggers?
1. Comment often - Commenting on A-List blogs is a good way to get your name in front of them.Remember they are regular people like you and me, the more they see your name, and see that you contribute to their site, the more likely they are to say yes when you try and offer a joint venture, or a guest post on their blog.

*One big tip on this make your comments stand out, build upon the original post, and make your comment provide extended value to their site, and even cite other posts that back up what you say, and you will soon become an authority.*

2. Follow them on twitter, and respond to them often, many of the A-list bloggers are on twitter, and contribute frequently.The bottom line is the more you provide to the conversation, the more they see your name, the more likely you are to get noticed.

3. Blog, blog often, and make it count. If you do happen to get noticed by an A-lister, it is likely they will subscribe to your feed, if you do receive their attention, you need to blow them away with great content so that they stay attentive to what you say.

Note this is often, just a good practice as it will ensure that you current subscribers stay very happy, afterall the more attention grabbing your blog, the more visitors.Even if you don’t build a ‘friendship’ with an A-lister, you may gain their attention enough to have them link to your blog, which will bring a lot of google-juice and traffic your way.

4. Diversify your efforts, as in all friendshipping efforts, you just may not be able to build rapport, they might not like you, something you said might push them away, or tick them off. Especially if you’re religious or political beliefs differ.

Don’t focus all your efforts on building rapport with one person, instead spread yourself across maybe 5-10 different high trafficked blogs that are relative to your content.You might make it a daily thing to post 1-2 comments per blog, or you could post like 5-10 comments per day on a different blog each day. For instance have monday be JohnChow, tuesday you might head over to Shoemoney, and wednesday might be Problogger Darren Rowse.

ONe more important tip - whichever strategy you implement, to be truly successful you MUST be consistant, the #1 cause of failure to any blog is failure to be consistant across the board.Blogging can provide a great income and be a lot of fun, once you get popular it can become a bit easier than starting out, but to get there is very hard work, consistant effort is a neccessity if you’re not willing to put in the hard work, then this business is not for you, and perhaps you should find something else that works better.

Harsh words, I know, but when you treat blogging like a business, it will begin to reap the rewards of a business.

5. Fake it till you make it! A lot of the stuff you blog about may be new to you, it may be confusing, you may not know all there is about blogging, or about plugins, or about social networks, and social media. The fact is you don’t need to know everything, but you need to act like you do - in a word. Confidence.

The “A” in “A-list” does not stand for Awesome, or A+ as in school work. It stands for Authority.

Whether or not you are an Authority on your Niche, you NEED to act like you are, and keep learning as much as possible, so that one day you will wake up and it will dawn on you…”Woah, I am an Authority, not just a BS’er!”

6. Your blog must say “I’m a professional Blog”.Here are a few tips for this:

Must have your own domain name. It is true, some blogs have taken off from blogspot, such as Kumiko’s, but eventually even she wised up and registered cashquests.com.A domain name basically says that you’re here to stay(at least for a year, till it expires - hopefully you make it past that 1st year).A domain name also helps with search engine rankings, for your brand (and yes your name can be your brand like John Chow or if you’re name is overly popular you can brand yourself as anything you like, eg: Shoemoney).

Lastly, wouldn’t it be terrible if you could’ve been John Chow, but started out at blogspot, someone saw that you were becoming famous, and they went out and bought yourname.com. Sure they might sell it to you for a couple thousand dollars.
Your blog design must be professional looking, it’s a wise idea to get a professionally designed blog theme - if you can afford it. I recommend starting out with a free one though, until your blog starts to take off, then purchase either a commercial one, or a custom.Also, here is a good post citing the pros and cons of pre-made blog theme vs custom blog theme.
You need subscribers, the more subscribers to your feed, the more trust you have, and ultimately the more, professional you will appear.Check out what Dosh Dosh has to say about why you absolutely need to build your blog’s subscriber base.
You must hold yourself to a higher standard.Nobody wants to communicate, follow, read, rantings of someone who is fast to start a fight, or demean someone.(Exception would be political blogs, where most of your readers are going to either support your same views, or be against - politics is one topic that can’t please all sides.

Though you can even be professional here, for instance, I usually refer to Bush in private as “the idiot”, “Dumbass”, “Retarded Drunk Monkey Boy”, but I might be a little more tactfull on my blog…or perhaps not(I’m using this as an example - and perhaps a sneaky way to vent & be unprofessional.))
Don’t over-do the plugins or widgets.Yes you can have too many plugins.Widgets and plugins are great, they add a lot to your blog, but they can also break your theme, and some plugins can conflict with each other and break your blog for a time, which equals less visitors.
Again I reiterate consistant effort, and you need a schedule for posting, which should include at least 1 post per day. Just figure you need at least 300-1000 posts to be on the level of the A-list bloggers, and if you post 1 a day, it might take you a whole year, maybe even two.Did you know to be on the level of Problogger (20,000 posts in 4 years!). That’s a bit much but you have to be posting consistently to measure up!Personally I strive for 2-3 posts per day or 14 minimum in a given week.

7. Last but not least, flattery goes a long way, as long as you’re sincere about it!You want to be sincere and let them know how much their tips help you, or you could simply link to their posts often, and re-iterate a lot of the things they say.

This might benefit you in pingbacks / trackbacks, but most importantly it is a good way to catch their eye, and let them know that you’re a reader.

Most professional bloggers want to make their readers happy, and knowing that you are enjoying their blog, linking to their blog, will catch their eye, and if they see something they like they might link to it.

One last bit of advice, if you do manage to become an Authority, think you have what it takes to guest blog on JohnChow, Shoemoney, Problogger, DoshDosh, etc… The best way to do it is write a list of topics you’re passionate about.

Write a sample post relating to one of those topics, be sure it includes lots of pictures as the best posts do use images in almost every post, (mine lack it sometimes because it’s hard to upload photos while I’m at work, and I usually write a lot of posts while on break. )

Your post needs to be extremely informative, and use a lot of line breaks, and be easy to read, as well as easy to scan. The more insightful, truthful, and witty the better. Adding humor is also welcome, but don’t go overboard.

Once you’re ready you should write up a professional letter and send it to their email if you can find it, if not submit it by their contact form, most of the top bloggers list at least one way or another to be contacted.

If you don’t hear anything back in 7 days, you should submit another letter, and ask them if they’ve considered your offer, if not - ask them if they could give you some tips on how you can better your chances of being accepted as a guest blogger(or insert another goal, if you want them to sponsor something, like perhaps your weightloss).

One last tip - give them love - digg their best posts, stumble a post if you like it, or share it on one of the many networks out there……And on that note, please do me a BIG favor and Digg this post. I would really appreciate it, and you’d definitely get on my good side.

Cheers!

Oh yeah, here’s some related articles:

Confessions of an A-List Blogger
Tips for joining the A list
Secrets of the A-List Bloggers
Yes, Mr. Calacanis, The A-List Exists.

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