Everyone is talking about blogs, blogging and money, but no one is asking or telling, if you have in you what it takes to be successful as a professional blogger? If you want to take blogging just as a pastime then you do not need to worry much about some of the skills we are going to discuss below, but to make a living out of your blog, you need to know the things we are going to discuss. I have categorized the skills required into three categories: Framework, content and promotion.
Framework
This category consists of all the skills required to create a blog. It can be divided into three subcategories.
Web design and development
I am not talking here about the advance stuffs like creating a theme framework, our PHP coding for the blog theme, but I am talking about basic tweaking to make your blog look like yours. You need to have a basic understanding of HTML, CSS, and PHP, if you want to personalize any freely-available existing theme for your blog. This skill is not hard to acquire, and in short time you can learn the basics required for the work provided you have an analytical mind, or in other word a knack for coding. If you do not feel comfortable with codes then I will suggest seeking help from outside, though I will not recommend it.
Beside, you also need to have a basic knowledge of WordPress (I am assuming here that you will use WordPress blogging platform for your blog). For a self-hosted blog, you also need to know how to work with a webhosting account. This is no brainer; do not get scared of it.
Photoshop
To create a header image, or blog logo for your blog, you should have a working knowledge of any image editing software. I recommend Photoshop because it is the most powerful graphic editing software around.
Content
The category consists of skills required to create content for your blog.
English
You need to have impeccable English, or the language in which you want to create your blog. You should have a good command over grammar, sentence composition, paragraphing, and you should also know a proper use of punctuation. A mistake or two can be okay, but avoid creating any glaring mistake.
Writing skills
Well, the knowledge of English, as dealt above, is just the technical part of writing, which indeed is important, but not as important as the ability to write an article or a blog-post that can keep the reader hooked to your blog. To develop a good writing skill, you need to read as much as you can, and be observant of your surrounding. Always remember, writing is an art, and the more you practice the better you will become at it.
Image manipulation
A working knowledge of Photoshop will help you in optimizing the image you want to use in an article or a post.
Internet Research
You should know how to dig relevant information from the internet. This information will help you in finding material to write on.
Promotion
This category consists of skills needed to promote your blog on the internet in order to bring traffic to your blog.
SEO
A working knowledge of SEO is must. You will require this skill to bring your blog into public awareness. You should also know how to write keyword optimized articles or blog-posts because all the articles or blog-posts on your blog are going to be keyword-rich. Click here to read about Keywords.
Internet marketing
You need to know about social bookmarking, forum posting, blog-commenting, twitting, and other tools that will help you promote your blog on the Internet. I am not recommending buying banner advertising or anything like that. I am asking you to sweat, and build awareness for your blog.