Being a blogger used to be cool. When people first started blogging back in the early 2000’s, it was very fashionable for someone to say: “Well, I blog in my spare time.”Blogging has changed a lot since then. Nowadays, blogging can be a full time business. And that is generally what most bloggers ultimately want.
However, being a Muslim blogger adds an extra dynamic. A Muslim blogger can’t just blog about anything, and has the akhirah in mind. It is very important that a Muslim blogger make good use of their time. We’re all busy and have a limited amount of time to work on our blogs.
I’ve been blogging for about 3 years now. I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to become a productive Muslim blogger. I’ve put together this list of tips you can use to improve your blogging efficiency. These tips are useful for many areas of life, not just blogging. Even if you’re not a Muslim blogger you’re sure to find something here you can use insha’Allah.
1. Clarify Your Intentions
The very first hadith in Sahih Bukhari states:
“Verily actions are judged by intentions.”
You must make sure you’re blogging for the right reason (and not just fame!) .
If you don’t have a clear purpose for your blog, you’ll find yourself blogging about everything from Palestine to pocketbooks. This will confuse and isolate your audience, and not really provide benefit to anyone. And without a clear direction, chances are you’ll eventually abandon your blog.
2. Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan
Without good planning and work habits, your blog will disappear into cyber limbo.
Here’s what I do: Every week I go through my emails and comments. I look for trends that would probably interest my audience and that I feel comfortable writing about. I like to post two articles a week; one on Monday and one on Thursday. Therefore I keep a deep well of article ideas. In addition to having these ideas written down (on Evernote!) I also type out a quick outline for each idea.
There are too many things a Muslim blogger has to deal with in the average week, and having a well-planned blogging process makes everything a lot easier.
3. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
If you listen to all the internet marketing gurus out there, you’ll see that there are a million tweaks you can do that are supposed to make your blog irresistible. But if you try to implement all of them, you’ll never get around to actually blogging. It’s best to leave most of that stuff alone. Too many bloggers worry too much about design, SEO, and social media.
My advice: stick with the basics, especially in the beginning.
If you’re considering becoming a Muslim blogger, I wouldn’t suggest you design your blog. Just get a decent theme (they start around $30) and go from there. There are even lots of free themes you can use that will get the job done.
As for SEO, you only need to worry about three things:
- Making sure you choose a good topic.
- Making sure your keyword is in the title, headline and description.
- Making sure you write good stuff.
Marketing your website is another topic and can take some time. But if you post articles regularly, have a decent blog design, and do a little SEO, a lot of your marketing efforts are taken care of insha’Allah.
4. Don’t Be a Muslim Troll
Nobody likes trolls, be they Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. Don’t be a troll. You’re going to run into people who disagree with you. It is inevitable. Just accept it.
When someone blasts your post or trashes your beliefs, you have three options:
- You can load up your verbal arsenal and come at them with uninhibited fury.
- You can ignore them and delete their comments.
- You can engage them in polite, intelligent discourse, respond to their criticism, but limit the extent of their abuse.
If someone has a genuine disagreement, it would be best to involve them in the conversation. There are three benefits to this:
- They might be right and you might be wrong. It’s possible you may need some correction.
- Your audience will benefit from seeing a different side of the story. And then they’ll want to chime in with their opinions.
- All of this activity is great for SEO. The more comments you have, the more love Google will show your blog.
5. Be Persistent
This happens to bloggers, Muslim or otherwise:
You’re blogging on a regular basis.
You’re responding to comments.
You’re doing all the SEO and marketing tricks available.
But only six people are visiting your blog everyday and you know two of them are your parents.
It might be time to reassess your strategy. Maybe you need to choose a different blog topic. Or maybe you need to reassess how you’re tackling your chosen topic. But don’t give up. If you enjoy blogging, and this is something you want to do on a regular basis, I encourage you to be persistent.
You should make an honest assessment of your goals and where you are thus far. See if there are some changes you can make.
- Check your analytics software to see which topics attracted the most people.
- Leverage Facebook and Twitter to reach a wider audience.
- Don’t be afraid to pay for marketing advice.
The point is, don’t give up on your blogging dreams. Anything worthwhile is going to take patience, persistence, skill, and time. Evaluate your intentions, your content, and its benefit.
If you look through these five tips, you’ll see that they can be applied to many other aspects of your life. Take the time to see which one you need to work on the most and how you can use them to lead a more productive lifestyle insha’Allah.
About the author:
Abu Ibrahim Ismail is a Muslim speaker, writer, and da’ee. He has studied Islam in West Africa and the Caribbean. He founded the website IslamicLearningMaterials.com where he teaches and preaches about Islamic principles. He tweets about Islam and Muslims @IslamicLearning.
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Same apology to you as Sr. Claudia.
IMHO, it is best to have your blog or website focus on specific issues. The more focused it is, the better it will be for those who read it.
If you’re inclined to technology, I’d suggest you have one blog dedicated to tech and maybe even a specific sub-category in technology, or perhaps a sub-sub-category (like Nintendo 3DS mods).
And even though it is difficult, you should create a different blog for your second topic, whatever that may be.
The reason I suggest this is that you don’t want to confuse your visitors.
For instance, your blog articles about technology are going to attract people from all walks of life, Muslim and non-Muslim.
If you have a bunch of Islamic articles on that same blog, you might alienate those visitors of yours who aren’t interested in Islam or any other religion.
The only way a mixture like this would work is if you blog about Islamic technology, like Quran software and Islamic apps.
JazakAllah for taking out time to write about it. Will keep this in mind :)
I apologize for taking so long to respond. This apology is extended to everyone else who has comments or questions. Just a busy and hectic week, what can I say.
The best way to make some income from your blog Sr. Claudia is to sell your own products. Digital products work best, but you can also sell physical goods and services.
I don’t know if the moderators of ProductiveMuslim will allow it, but if you leave a link to your website I’d be happy to check it out and give you some ideas. You can also follow me on Twitter (@islamiclearning:twitter ) and leave me a link.
I actually have 3 blogs:
One of them is not about Islam, although my target audience is Muslim women most of the time, but it can be applied to non-Muslim women as well: http://muslimwifesecrets.blogspot.com/
The other 2 are about Islam. The one in English has more than one author, as i use to ask sisters to be volunteers and make da’wah, sharing the reward, and this is mainly for Muslim women. The one in Portuguese is only me but it’s the oldest of them and it’s all the Muslims that speak the Portuguese language.
English – http://themuslimahcorner.blogspot.com/
Portuguese: http://islamemportugues.blogspot.com/
P.S.: I know the designs of the 2 last blogs have some problem in the menu and header (i really don’t know how that happened) but inshaAllah i’ll take care of it soon. The problem is that I might have to do a design all over again, since I use Artisteer 3 to make them and I didn’t back up the template when it wasn’t having problems. I just happened suddenly and I didn’t install any new feature to the blogs recently either. Kind of confusing…
I checked out your websites and the potential is amazing.
For the Muslim wife blog, I would suggest two things:
Sign up for an affiliate account with Amazon.com. Then review and suggest different items on your blog that you think your readers would be interested in. When they buy, you’ll get a commission.
I also see you have a few recipes on your site. This is a no-brainer to me.
Write a cookbook and sell it online!
You can do it all for free. Put a cookbook together and load it up on Amazon’s Kindle service. When they sell, you’ll paid (though Amazon will get a cut).
I can give you more details but there isn’t enough time on this blog for it. If you want to know what else you can do or the detailed steps for the two ideas above, shoot me an email at [email protected].
you can use a “adsense for content” adsense. so the ad will match your blog’s content. or you can sell Amazon books – that would be more controllable than adsense. hope this helps
I’ve just started my own blog (
http://ilmaeduplay.blogspot.com/ ) a few months ago and this is really handy.
Excuse me for my ignorance but what does SEO mean?
SEO means Search Engine Optimization. This is the science/art of making your online content appear as high as possible on search engines (like Google, Bing, etc) results page.
I checked out your website and it is about education for Muslim children. When I go to Google and type in “education for Muslim children” Google sends back tons of results.
Don’t get offended, but your website doesn’t appear on the first two pages (at least not in my neck of the woods).
SEO done properly should get you at or near the top of that list, perhaps on the first page. And most people searching for things in Google are going to click on a link on the first two pages.
But take this with some caution. Google has done so much tweaking of their algorithm that a lot of the tips you find online are outdated and obsolete.
The best way to get traffic to your sight is build a community. Create an email list, create a facebook page, create a twitter account for your website brand. Then offer good stuff, and be consistent.
Before long, people will join your community and you’ll have a nice following of fans. I currently have about 3000 people in my community. But that’s nothing compared to Productive Muslim which has over 30000!
-Umm Qamar
Not at all. I say this because I give away so much free material on my blog. And all of the true dawah material (information meant to call to Islam) is free.
Articles. E-books. E-courses. Podcasts. Audio recordings. All of it is available for free. I don’t even ask for an email address for much of it (I do for some things though).
So, for me to try to offer a few things for sale that I’ve worked hard to put together is just a drop in the bucket compared to how much I give away.
Then I look at famous Muslim speakers like Bilal Philips and Siraj Wahaj. These brothers have given so much of themselves to help Muslims, yet you can find pirated material of their books and lectures all over the internet and even in Muslim shops throughout America.
Someone is out there taking their stuff and profiting off of it and the authors never see a penny of it. I’ve even found some of my books pirated online.
But if you’re just blogging as a hobby, then go for it and write whatever you want.
so infrmative … ALHUMDULILLAH
Here is a link to the new re-vamped Quranists Welcome Pack
I checked out your blog. Mostly the design looks nice and it’s easy to read. Judging from the posts, you do update the blog frequently.
I would suggest using larger text to make it easier to read. And some of the images on the sidebar look a little garish in my opinion.
Otherwise, I think it’s a fantastic site.