7 Points to Consider Before Blogging for Money

Whenever I mention my blog people roll their eyes or smile in an “I don’t understand but okay” sort of way. When I mention the fact that I make money blogging, however, I suddenly have their attention.


The concept seems simple enough. I write about topics that I enjoy, people read it, and I make money off the advertising. To those of us who’ve been doing it for a while, it is simple. To the novice blogger who’s just getting into the business, however, it’s important to realize what you’re getting into.

If you’re new to blogging and interested in doing it for profit, here are a few things to keep in mind before committing yourself.

1. Blogging is easy. Blogging for profit is more difficult. I won’t go as far as to say it’s hard to draw a secondary income from blogging, but it’s definitely harder than most people think. It’s not just about producing content and slapping up some ads. Good writing, proper templating, ad placement, developing an audience… there are a lot of skills required to make a blog profitable, all of which you’ll need to learn.

2. Blog for the long haul or not at all. A huge majority of blogs fail in the first few months, falling into neglect and disuse. More to the point, few blogs see any profit during the first few months. Unless you can stick with it for at least a year, you’ll probably never see any return for your effort.

3. Pick a niche that you love and stick with it. General purpose or multi-topic blogs have difficulty developing a readership. Brainstorm the topics that you care about most, then pick one and blog about it exclusively.

4. Start with one blog. If you have a lot of items on your list of possible topics, don’t give in to the temptation to start a different blog for each one. By dividing your effort between several blogs, you increase the likelihood that all of them will fail. Put all of your effort into one blog to start. Once you get the hang of things, then you might consider branching out with additional blogs.

5. If you’re unsure, test drive. The fact is that many people don’t have the drive or stamina to blog for profit successfully. If you’re not sure, try a starter blog on a free service such as Blogger or Wordpress.com. Feel it out for a few weeks. If, by the end of this time, you’ve stuck with it and feel like blogging is right for you, go ahead and commit to the effort. This advice applies equally well to test driving new topics if you’re unsure what to write about.

6. Place ads wisely. Some people recommend not placing ads on a blog until it has matured somewhat. Others recommend putting them up right away. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Just be sure to place your ads tactfully so as not to overwhelm your readers. Put the user experience in the first place.

7. Enjoy yourself. This is the real key to successful blogging. If you pick a topic that you love and blog about it with passion for months and years on end, your blog will build a readership, generate income, and generally be a success. If, however, your blog becomes a chore to maintain, it will inevitably fail.

The main point I want to convey is that many people try to blog for profit and fail. If you approach the task with the right expectations and some proper planning, you will succeed.

Siource: http://myfirstwebhome.blogspot.com/2008/04/7-points-to-consider-before-blogging.html

451Press.com - Paid Blogging Opportunities

451Press.com is one of the largest blog networks. They are always looking for writers to contribute to their growing network of blogs which cover a wide range of subjects and topics. If you're passionate about a topic, you may think about writing for 451press's blogs.

Requirement

• Knowledgeable and passionate on the topic you write.
• Strong writing skill with unique voice.
• Creative
• Reliable

How much you can earn
As a blogger of 451press.com, you task is to write unique content for the blog you are handling. 451press will take care of promotion and generating advertising revenue for your blog. They will provide the support you need to succeed. You'll get paid 40% on all the advertising revenue generated by your blog.

To know more about 451press's blogging opportunities or apply as a 451press's writer, please click here.

source: http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/2007/08/451presscom-paid-blogging-opportunities.html

Make Extra Money With A Blog Without Spending A Dime

Blog or weblog is simply a website with frequent updates on a particular subject or topic. You can write a comment, review,
suggestion or tip on a subject on your blog. You can also provide educational resources and advice if you are an expert at something.
For instance, If your blog is about sport cars. You can post the latest annoucements from sport cars manufacturers such as BMW, Ferrari
and so on, discuss about the latest models of sport cars and the best components used for producing sport cars.

Blogger.com allows anyone to create a free blog (free domain name and hosting) without any technical knowledge. Creating a blog with
Blogger.com is easy and you can have you blog published within an hours.

There are several ways you can make money with a blog:

Become a Google AdSense publisher
You can join Google AdSense program and start earning advertising revenue from your blog. It is not difficult to set up you AdSense
campaign as Blogger.com also provides Adsense tool and guidances to help you start an AdSense campaign. This can be a great source of revenue, though of course the amount of income you can expect from your AdSense ads will depend on the amount of traffic (visitors) to
your blog.

Sell Other People's Stuff
You can promote your affiliate programs by placing the affiliate links and banners on your blog and earn commission whenever someone clicks through an affiliate link or banner to your merchant's website made a purchase.

Sell Your Own Product
Blog can be used to promote and sell your own products too. You can write about your products' features and benefits on the blog.

Drive Visitors to You Blog
To make money you need to drive visitors or traffic to your blog. The more traffic you're getting the higher your earning will be. There are
several free ways of getting traffic to your blog. Here's how ......

1) Introduce your blog to your family and friends.
2) Submit your blog to directories. You can find a list of blog directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'submit blog url'.
3) Write an article or more with a link to your blog and submit them to article directories. You can find a list of article directories by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directory'.
4) Post messages on community forums with a link to your blog on the signature of each message posted.

There are other ways (free and paid) to increase traffic for your blog. You can find a lot of free information and resources about blog promotion from search engines.

source: http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/2006/08/make-extra-money-with-blog-without.html

How To Make Money From Your Blog Content

Writing a blog can be fun and exciting, but it can also be rewarding. If you do not know how to make money from your blog content then you need to consider implementing the following suggestions in your blog.

Make Money Tip #1 Adsense
Adsense is an incredible service offered by Google to help you make money and help others advertise as well. Basically, with Adsense you choose several ads that blend or complement the information talked about in your blog. Then, when individuals click on the ads that are present in your blog, you receive money! Best of all, Adsense is free to use on your site, so this is a great opportunity to make money without really having to do very much.

Make Money Tip #2 Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate programs are another great way to make money as well and work on the same premise of Adsense. The web surfer has to click on the affiliate website’s link and when they do so they are redirected from your blog to the link they clicked on. You will get paid affiliate income for the click, and if they make a purchase when they are on that website you will get paid affiliate income again.

Make Money Tip #3 Blog Ads
Blog ads can help you make money as well. Blog ads are not too different from Adsense or Affiliate marketing, but they are in the sense that blog ads connect web surfers with advertisers. Then, when any ad placements are made a commission is exchanged.

Make Money Tip #4 Business Blog
You can use your blog to simply converse about any topic that is important to you, but you can also use your blog as a tool to help you make money. Advertise your business services; make your blog a business blog by focusing at least part of your blog on your business services. This way, you can still communicate whatever it is you need to and make money as well.

When it comes to making money from your blog you can do so easily with these tried and true tricks of the trade. Whether you utilize Adsense, affiliate marketing, blog ads, a business blog, or a combination of all of the above, you will certainly benefit and make money. Don’t delay and start implementing these types of money making strategies in your blog today. Not only will you make money, but your blog will become more popular as well.

by: Evelyn Lim

Source: http://galangdollars.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-to-make-money-from-your-blog.html

Writing Good Blogs

There's a lot of blogs out there on the Web, most of which don't entice one to go back regularly to read updates. What is missing from these on-line journals that would essentially make them 'good' blogs? Well, the answers in life usually come down to simplicities. So let's look at the problem like we were children. Children don't complicate life with miscellaneous information, and when they speak they tell you straight to the point exactly how they feel and think about a subject. First of all, we should ask the questions," Why do blogs exist? And what are they here for?" Well, in an ideal world 'good' blogs would help people connect, sharing knowledge and feelings about issues in life. As they are journals written by individuals we would hope that they'd be readable and open to comment by all other people, not just a select group of friends. The key is speaking in a way that is understandable by the masses, get rid of acronyms and local slang that only few will comprehend. Keep the sentences grammatically simple and generally short and concise. Try to write in your blog as often as possible because if people enjoy reading your thoughts and ideas they'll want to communicate or at least be filled in regularly on 'your world'. Ask questions, comment on other blogs of similar content, start communities with others you've never met, based on your interests. Keep focused; if your blog is about thoughts on war and peace, keep your thoughts on the latest movie and how hungry you are for somewhere else. The idea is to incite intelligent communication so that in time our collective stockpile of knowledge and wisdom will gradually grow like a tree in fertile soil. I think of most importance is the fact that you want this journal to be 'good' reading. Of course we all have ideas about what genres and styles we like, but writing from your heart and soul is imperative for the connection with others that you're looking for. Share yourself; don't hide behind walls of fear of ridicule and judgment. In real life relationships trust, respect, intimacy, and unity are all necessary for a bond to form. It's the same in the 'virtual' world; people want to hear from real people-not just one-sided, highly opinionated arguments from egos that don't want to hear the 'other side of the coin'. Now, in my last article I really tore apart most writers out there, and here I'm giving some pretty complex ideas on how to fix the problem of 'bad' writing. In my next article I'll attempt to go back to the simple basics of how to write for beginners. I hope I haven't come across as too judgmental, I just truly believe the 'blog world' could become a real asset to humanity, and at the moment it's missing the mark. Ideas about sentence structure, grammar, paragraphing, using a thesaurus (varying terms used so as not to sound repetitive), whether or not your blog is suitable for a personal or professional approach, are all important to creating a simple and enjoyable read for the blogging visitor. If you are a beginner, please check out my next article on the basics.
By : Jesse S. Somer

Source: http://galangdollars.blogspot.com/2008/04/writing-good-blogs.html

13 Steps to Successful Blogging

Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com, Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com, etc. The more blog accounts the better. You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

8) Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You're a Professional

You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "Old Blog has been moved to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link for future reference: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

source: http://galangdollars.blogspot.com/2008/04/13-steps-to-successful-blogging.html

Introduction to Blogging for money..

I had been blogging for quite some time now. Recently I explored the options for earning through blogging, read a lot of articles on it and tried out few options.
Some worked good for me, some didn't.

This blog is meant to share my ideas and experiences along with relevant articles on blogging for money. If you have any suggestion or thoughts to share then feel free to drop a mail at submit4blog@gmail.com