The easiest way to get started on the internet is with a blog. They are easy to create, update and the search engines love them for their organizational structure and their ability to share content and facilitate social networking, but can you really make money blogging?
The answer is yes!
Millions of people visit blogs every day for information or entertainment purposes so finding a topic of interest that you can provide useful information about, whether personal or professional, can be an ideal resource for making money online.
How to get started blogging
Blogs are easy to create, in fact blogging software like blogger.com or WordPress.com are completely free and easy to set up, but for flexibility sake I personally recommend setting up a self-hosted WordPress blog. Even though this requires a few extra steps you have much greater money making options and personal control.
The WordPress software is free just as it is with Blogger.com and WordPress.com but self hosting your blog requires subscribing to a hosting service to host your blog and purchasing a domain name, however both will cost you less than $10 a month to start. Here's a free step-by-step PDF guide you can use if you’re interested in going that route.
Start by choosing a topic that interests others. Let's take for example stay at home moms. Moms all over the world are making extra money creating blogs about what it is to be a stay at home mom, they've written blogs about time management, meal preparation, home schooling, caring for special needs children, budgeting, scouting, crafts. They blog just about anything that relates to their lives that other moms would find interest in. Blogs are a good way for any mom or grandmom to make extra money by sharing their thoughts, feelings, wisdom, ideas and even daily tasks
Topics for your blog don't need to be complicated; they just need to strike the interest for others who seek that information – which is what's going to help you make money blogging.
Find a niche topic using a good keyword tool such as Google keyword tool or Wordtracker, so for example according to the Google keyword tool 'crockpot cooking' got over 22,000 searchers last month, it also shows me that there are several great subtopics or categories that I would include on my blog such as:
- Easy crockpot recipes
- Healthy crockpot recipes
- Crockpot cooking tips
- Best crockpot cookbooks
- Vegetarian crockpot cooking
- Crockpot soup ideas
- crockpot desserts
Careful research for a topic that is searched on daily, creating categories of interest and supplying creative types of blog posts will help ensure lots of visitors, interests and money making clicks.
How do you actually make money blogging?
If your blog has useful categories, tips and ideas there's no doubt that other Bloggers will take notice. I'll be honest with you though, blogging is about writing and if you don't like to write don't let that stop you, instead make videos, podcasts, invite guest writers, outsource your blog posts to ghost writers or buy PLR content for your blog. These are all perfectly great options and they won't suck up your time like writing can sometimes do.
Blogging by nature is a social media so if other bloggers like what your blog is about and the information it contains they will link their blog to your blog which will increase your reader base, that's why it's so important to write for generating interest, not sales. The more people that read your blog posts the more your traffic will grow and your potential for making money will naturally follow close behind.
Use Google Adsense ads to attract ad income – By strategically placing Google ads on your blog, you can entice visitors to click on them, each click will earn you a share of the profits Google takes in. While a couple of clicks earn you very little, a high flow of traffic and clicks earns you a substantial amount. For example, place a small leaderboard ad at the very end of each post. It's subtle but strategic.
Sell Advertising Space – Another way some people make money from their blogs is by using advertisement space. Advertisers scramble to place one of their banners on the more popular blogs. They’re willing to pay you based on the traffic numbers you generate and the prime space available within your blog.
There are many ways you can monetize ad space. You might charge a flat fee, take a commission based on the number of click-throughs, or make a deal where you get a percentage of the sale of a product, much like an affiliate marketer does. If your blog is extremely popular, then there’s more of a chance that advertiser’s will compete to have their banners placed in your space.
Promote affiliate products – Most blog topics have products or services that complement it, so if you have a blog that talks about homeschooling for example, you could promote things like books, supplies, learning games, time management info products, etc. This provides you an excellent way to earn extra money just by promoting things that anyone reading your blog might find interesting.
Drive traffic to your blog for making the most money
To make a substantial amount of money with your blog you have to drive traffic and socializing is how you do it. Blogs are social media so use them to get social, which means also getting friendly with your competitors. A lot of bloggers view their competition as the enemy, they tend to become lone Bloggers blogging only about what they know and experience and never using socialization methods to their advantage. Socializing with other blogs in your niche is a great way to express ideas, promote your authority and draw in new traffic.
Comment on blogs – When you've made a blog post look around for other blog posts on the same topic and comment on them. When commenting put your post's best keyword in the name section of the post you are commenting on and put your post's address in the URL section. This will help your post gain search engine ranking for your post's keyword phrase.
Guest blogging - I love the idea of guest blogging, in has the potential for bringing truckloads of traffic back to your blog. There's not much real world experience on how to find blogs to guest write for, how to approach a blog owner and what to write about so I found Nicole Dean's Guest blogging step-by-step guide a huge help.
Link to other blogs and blog posts - Connect with other blogs by citing and reviewing relevant posts. You can do this by using trackbacks to promote your blog. Other Bloggers will appreciate the trackbacks to link to their posts and it will also give you an opportunity for some self promotion as well. By linking to another Bloggers post you've not only let the Blogger know you have sited their post on your post, you've also put your link in front of all their blog readers who just might click on it to see what you have to say about the topic, simple yet effective!
Happy Blogging!
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Thanks for posting the article, was certainly a great read!
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