It must be irritating to be a seasoned blogger these days.

It used to be that you wrote for months or years before gaining an audience, learning through trial and error how to blog and build an audience.

Because of blogging’s embrace by the business community, solo-prenuers and hobbyists alike, there are now online and offline classes, programs and books galore, to teach you how to blog, what to say, and how to attract an audience.

One of those events is coming up Saturday, Sept. 11, 2010 at the first ever Minnesota Blogging Conference. And one of the speakers there will be Christina Hiatt Brown (I’ve included her picture below). She’ll be talking about how to make money from a blog.

Don’t bother coming.

The event is already sold out.
It sold out in merely two hours.
That should tell you something about the rising popularity of blogging.

Here’s the good news.
I received the distinct pleasure of sitting down with Christina and her blogger husband Aaron Brown recently. And we talked to both these writers about the basics of how to blog, what they’ve learned through years of blogging, and what they’d wish they’d known starting out.

What follows is a summary of all their great advice, and the tools they’ve relied on.

Aaron Brown

Aaron Brown (at right) launched his blog, Minnesota Brown, in 2006.
His is a hyper-local blog, meaning it’s specifically about politics on the Iron Range, which is the area typically described as Northeast Minnesota, north of Duluth.

He also uses it as a vehicle to showcase his book, “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range”, not as a renvenue generator. (Tip: set a goal for your blog early on. Is it designed as a lead generator, so people get to know you through the blog, and then call you up to do business? Is it to provide thought leadership in your industry? Is it to generate traffic, and then you earn money for being an affiliate? Is it purely a hobby? It is designed to showcase something you’re trying to sell, like a book?)

Aaron initially started his blog on a website. Then he switched to Blogger platform, and has never left.

Both having been former reporters, Christina said she decided to start a blog in November of 2007, after having twins, and because she wanted to continue to write. “I’ve always loved writing.”
(Tip: A blog can at times feel like drudgery, or at least a big burden, so make sure you try and enjoy it as much as possible, by using the medium that most fits you. If you enjoy writing, then mainly write text. If you love shooting video, rely more on that avenue. Don’t worry about a certain medium turning off viewers or watchers. Whatever you do will turn off some people. That’s step one of learning how to blog.)

Her bar for success was quite low to start with.
“I never thought anyone would read it,” she said.
She by the way, started on Blogger, but switched to Wordpress, because she wanted more flexibility.

Christina also started the blog in order to keep her own mind sharp.
(Tip: a good ancillary benefit to blogging is it forces you to think, often. It causes you to spend a lot more time contemplating your field, instead of simply going through the daily routine.)

Aaron’s blog has about 200 regular readers, 650 Facebook friends, 50 e-mail subscribers and a small group who receive the blog through a real simple syndication feed.

Christina’s blog meanwhile, in addition to the 1,000 daily page views, has a 1,000-person fan page, 4,200 Twitter followers (which is fully automated) and receives around 1,400 feed subscribers.
(Tip: note that there are several metrics for measuring readership. When you have a blog, it’s best to encourage readers to subscribe through a feed, or e-mail. Because most people won’t make a point of physically visiting your site daily.)

“It’s rediculous how much bigger her blog is,” Aaron jokes.
(Tip, audience size is dictated heavily by content, post frequency, quality of posts, and how big a potential audience a blog starts with.)

While everyone likes to save money for example, few people beyond those in Northern Minnesota are going to care much about politics in northern Minnesota.
(Tip: Watch out what you name your blog. Christina said if she would start hers over, she probably wouldn’t label it “Northern Cheapskate” but instead call it Cheapskate, or some other name that doesn’t denote that it is somehow tied to the Northern part of the country.)

Aaron points out however, the smallness of your niche doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not read by a very small but influential minority of people.
“I got to interview all the governor candidates,” Aaron said. He attributed that mainly to his small but influential readership, and the fact that political campaigns don’t necessarily know the readership statistics of different bloggers, so they treat them all as important.

Both bloggers warn that it’s easy to get wrapped up in number of readers. They argue the key to learning how to blog and build an audience, is by producing lots of increasingly good content.
(Tip: Relevant content, regardless of the form, remains king. And it has to be regularly posted, not intermittently).

Aaron once tried to post three times a day, but scaled it back to once a day. Yes, you read that right. He CUT BACK to merely one post a day.

Christina tries to post at least once a day.

In order to post that often, Christina said she devotes 15 to 20 hours a week. She also places her posts on her Facebook page, and has an automated feed for Twitter send out the blog post announcements.

Because Christina often posts relevant information, she’s amassed a good-sized Twitter following as well, and those readers often in turn pass on her posts, thus naturally spreading her words.

(Tip: People want to spread relevant content. Even though many argue you shouldn’t “automate” a feed, it works out for Christina, because automated or not, people like to pass along good links.

Blogging’s Benefits

Does it pay much in dollars? While Aaron’s blog doesn’t make anything directly, Christina’s blog pays her something close to minimum wage, they estimate. Deriving direct financial gain isn’t what Christina is focused on, so the goal isn’t increased profits.

Aaron considers his blog as a loss leader, a way to highlight himself for speaking engagements, and as a platform to get the word out about his book.

“The blog opens up a lot of doors,” Christina said, like her speaking engagement Saturday at the blogging conference. She and other mom bloggers were invited to tour the General Mills Betty Crocker Test Kitchen as well, showing how much companies value the attention of bloggers with niche audiences.

“Companies realize if they have enough small bloggers, it has an impact,” she said.

One of Christina’s friends, Heather Hernandez writes the blog Freebies 4 Mom (which launched around the same time as Christina’s blog). That blog boasts 50,000 subscribers, and is a full-time job for Heather, who started it around the same time as Christina launched Northern Cheapskate.

Christina attributes the difference in audience sizes partly to the website being highlighted on the Tyra Banks show four times (three times in reruns) and being even more focused on the niche of Freebies, not frugality in many different areas.

“If you’re doing varied content, you run the risk of turning certain readers off,” Christina said.

(Tip: A narrow niche is often better than a broader one, so long as there’s plenty of interest in your narrow niche.)

She said Heather also launched the blog with an audience of 100 e-mails, and is really good at giving a response to each person. Oh yeah, she also posts items seven to 10 times a day.

(Tip: posting frequently, while important, isn’t necessarily what it takes to run a popular blog. Some blogs attract a very loyal audience, because the blogger posts once every week or two, but really provides a lot of rich, detailed analysis. Again, good content is critical.)

Lately Christina’s also said she’s seen increased traffic, thanks to her Facebook page and Twitter. But says in order to really gain from those mechanisms, you have to consider them part of your blog, or business, and pay attention to them. A company with a Facebook page that no one is in charge of monitoring and updating can be a real negative, she said.

She also uses Hootsuite, in order to pre-schedule Twitter and Facebook messages for distribution.

Even though she and her husband consider themselves fairly tech-savvy, and can fix most aspects of their website themselves, she still hired a designer for her website’s look. (Tip: much of what a blog consists of you don’t need to know code to do yourself. But the design of the website is something you may need an expert’s help with).

She spends a lot of time learning the tips and tricks of blogging by watching other blogs, like Problogger.com, writetodone.com, mashable.com and sheposts.com.

Christina sometimes guest posts on freebies4mom as well.

(Tip: another good way to gain visibility and traffic is to guest post on bigger blogs, sort of like being the opening act for larger bands. That’s really what the whole program GuestBlogging.com is all about.) and is amazed at how quick readers gobble up the goodies.
Christina doesn’t aspire to being that large, but would like to grow somewhat, and earn a bit more with the blog.

So far, she’s written 1,400 posts, and says the key to continually coming up with new material, is to read a lot, and always be ready to write down ideas as they come to you throughout the day.

While it’s still a hobby for Christina and Aaron, both say they can see it increasingly turning into at least a true part-time business.