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Building your blog’s foundation requires some significant work if you want it to stand the test of time.

I’m talking about real people who engage with you in regards to your blog on a regular basis

the more you post the faster your blog will grow.

If you sit down at a blank screen every day and simply do nothing then you are a writer. If you write one word, even better. Some people will disagree. Maybe you will disagree. That's fine. We also can all disagree. Meanwhile, our DNA is telling us we are pretty much exactly the same.

I try to read pieces or chapters in 3-4 books a day or more. I read at least from one non-fiction, one or two quality fiction, and one inspirational. I try to read at the level I want to write. I do this in the morning before I start writing.

Destroy every gatekeeper.

Comment on their posts.

If you want to build a blog, the reality is that Twitter is one of the most important platforms for sharing, probably followed by Google+, at this point. If you’re in a home/food/how-to niche, Pinterest may be important to you as well. If Facebook seems like a place people talk about your topic a lot, it might be useful, too.

There are plenty of tools out there — among the most popular are AddtoAny, ShareThis, and Sharebar (which is what I’m currently using).

Search, and Google in particular (with 90% of worldwide share), still drive vastly greater quantities of traffic than all the social networks combined (some good research from DefineMG here). Given Google’s 3.5+ Billion searches performed each day, that shouldn’t be a surprise, but to many bloggers, thinking about search, Google, and all that “SEO stuff” has been put aside in favor of Facebook shares, likes, tweets, +1s, and the more visible feedback and applause that come from social sources.

Thankfully, you can resolve to make this a priority in the future. It may sound like a bad infomercial, but you can substantially upgrade your blog’s SEO potential with less than 5 minutes per post. Here’s how:

The other keyword research source I’d encourage you to pursue is Google’s autosuggest.

Actionable verbs can be visualized and acted upon easily.

That’s the basic idea: Get in front of OPA, and then publish fantastic content so you can earn that audience’s respect and trust.

Interacting with others, sharing the content of others, and participating in communities are all great ways to generate attention and build an audience.

build an audience that is relevant to what you do

How, then, do writing opportunities work? To be paid for writing, you need to look for a person with two characteristics: They’ve got money to spare. They’re looking for writers. This could be: A magazine editor who is looking for feature articles. An aristocrat or multi-billionaire who wants to support the career of an aspiring artist. A blogger who makes money from advertisements, or from selling information products, but is too busy to do all their blogging themselves. A book publisher who is looking for the next Da Vinci Code or Harry Potter. A business owner who needs help from a writer to promote their business. Do you see where this is going? There are writing opportunities out there, if you know where to look, and if you know the right people.