Freebies, especially quality free e-books and tips are a godsend when you are new to blogging. It is much better than spending money on information products as many successful bloggers give away free e-books as a marketing and blog traffic strategy. You are required to subscribe to their email lists and after you confirm, you get the e-book, news and blog posts. You do also inevitably get sales pitches but it is up to you to decide if the newsletter provides you value. You can unsubscribe any time.

Quality and free e-books on blogging come in handy even if you have been blogging for a while. There is always a new monetization method, trending traffic tactic or news at the blogosphere you should find out about.

2. Market and Competitor Research: Taking a look at the design, blog directories, monetizing methods the ad networks they work with

Studying how other blogs are structured, designed and monetized will give you immensely beneficial ideas on how you can develop your blog. Google Adsense is never a problogger’s only source of income. In fact, most of the time, even the owners of high-traffic, popular blogs are not extremely happy with their Adsense earning. Adsense comes with many disadvantages and problems and it is in your benefit to find out about other networks and other monetization tactics.

Studying a blog, you can see and read about the plugins they use, their webhosts, affiliate marketing strategies, whether or not they sell their own products and if they do, how they sell them.

Blogging is about constant improvement, studying and hard-work. Doing your research and seeing how other bloggers work will give you great insight. It is a fun and free way of market research any blogger should take advantage of.

3. News, contests, activities

The blogosphere, a.k.a the world of blogs and blogging is very fast and eventful. There is always a new something, a challenge, contest, carnival or things of this sort. These events give you the chance to put yourself and blog out there, gather more traffic, make new contacts and earn authority. You can’t afford staying behind.

4. Guest Blogging

Guest posting, especially on a blog more popular than yours is a great way of networking with others, gaining authority and new readers. You will want to study how that particular blog works and read their guidelines for guest blogging. But you will probably choose to guest blog on a blog that you have been already following, so you just have to write a good post and pitch it to the editor/moderator of the site. And with a little luck, you shouldn’t have problems having your post accepted, because the blogger and his/her community already knows you from the valuable comments you often leave.

5. Making New Friends- Both with the blogger and other commentators-

As you can see, all these 5 things that I listed are interrelated and it all comes down to authority, popularity, traffic and community. You may not be able establish a direct relationship easily if the blogger is extremely popular but there will be lots of bloggers on your level (popularity, traffic, income, etc..) among the commentators.

Not to mention the links you will be leaving on popular blogs, which will be returning to you as Google love.

Choose relevant niches, find blogs you like and get to work. If you look at the bloggers who do make a decent income from blogging, they have all been playing nicely with each other, even the competitors. There is a reason Yaro Starak promotes Darren Rowse and vice versa. Sometimes these probloggers get together and create products together. You can be the next promising blogger they might want to work with.