How to Make Money Blogging

Blogging is writing about “a product”, “expressing your thoughts in words” or could be even “describing a how to method”. The topics can range anything from your hobby to your profession or about a celebrity, a sport or just simply current news. It is a medium to express yourself on the internet and also a way to impart your knowledge to everyone around the world. It is a powerful, one of the most popular and easiest ways to make money online. When used the right way, it can turn into a powerful cash making machine for you. Here is an inspirational piece of information for you; John Chow who is a popular blogger makers about 40000 dollars every month with his blog (www.JohnChow.com). Blogging is also an entry point to the internet marketing world, teaching you the necessary technical skills required to create & maintain a blog and also helps you learn the basics of opt-in lists, getting traffic and monetizing. So what does a blogger do? At the very basic, he or she writes a few pages of information related to the blog topic, so that it is available for reading to everyone on the internet.

Step by step method;

Choose a topic; It could be a hobby or something related to your field/specialization of work or about a tourist spot or it could even be about your favorite recipes. A few examples are ‘collecting stamps’, ‘Programming in C#’, ‘Cricket’, ‘Justin Bieber’ or just about anything legal under the sun. Whatever topic you choose, make sure that you are an expert in that subject area and you know enough to write at least 15 to 20 pages of information. The best thing to do will be to select a topic in an area that you are interested in. This is because usually when one writes on a topic that they don’t have interest in, boredom and monotony tends to kick in after writing just a few pages. On the other hand if one writes an on a topic of interest, they wouldn’t feel bored or tired and the energy can let them write even many tens of pages or more. You can also write on multiple topics in the same blog but it would be better if it is focussed on one area. At least in the beginning, make sure that the topic is niche enough, because if you write about a more general topic, it would be hard to get visitors to your blog because of the competition on the internet.

Free blog or own website?; Now that you have decided on a topic, you will have to choose between a free blog (like blogger.com,WordPress.com) or having your own website (and domain name) running WordPress, Joomla or similar software. It’s good to have your own domain name and website because it gives you the freedom to modify it in many ways. Having your own domain name also eliminates the risk of your blog getting closed (sometimes this happens with blogs running on these free websites). You will have to invest about 10$ an year for the domain name and about 2 to 3$ a month for the web space rental. Since there is already lots of information available on the internet about the technical details of how to setup a blog, we will skip this topic and move on to the next.

Write the homepage; By this time your blog should be up and running but without any content. This is the time to write the homepage post. Start by giving a descriptive title for the homepage, not more than 15 words. The title should be descriptive of the main topic. For example, if you are writing about gold fishes, the title can be “Gold Fishes Hobby – caring, maintenance and information”. Then start to write the main content of the homepage. Jot down thoughts as they flow by without getting held up. Don’t try to proofread the article after every line, rather continue writing as you think and after finishing the article, proof read it. The homepage post should contain the overall summary of information along with a paragraph on who you are and why you are an expert in the subject matter. It should at least be 1000 words in length but don’t expand the sentences with fillers: rather include original and precise content. Include a photograph of you as well. This is necessary because people tend to trust the information on websites that have a human touch (now please don’t ask me why I don’t have my photo in this website: I wanted to remain anonymous).

Writing the other posts; After the homepage is ready, write an article or two a day for about a week or till about your sites contains around 15 to 20 posts  in total. Write content that readers will find useful and include related images (non copyrighted). If you have the time and energy, shoot a video of yourself giving a talk on the topic along with any demonstration (if applicable), upload it to YouTube and embed the video in the post.

Submit it to search engines; If you are using your own domain name for your blog, you will have to submit your website to search engines like Google and Bing so that they can know about the existence of such a website. You have to do this so that your blog will appear in search results when people search on topics related to your blog. Submit your site through the following links:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Bing Webmaster

Getting traffic; Here are some popular ways to get visitors to your blog:

• Submit your blog URL  to popular social bookmarking websites like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon.
• Find a couple of forums that are related to the topic and register as a member in them. Update your profile and signature to point to your blog’s URL  (the domain name). Then make some useful comments in the forums and also help other members of the forums with their questions. This will help you increase your authority status on the topic and they will be inclined to visit your blog.
• Like or Recommend each of your articles in Facebook so that your friends will visit the website. If they find it useful, they will in-turn like it allowing their friend circle to get to know about your site.
• If you have a Twitter account with many followers, Tweet about the website. This will also help drive traffic to your blog.
• Find other related blogs in your niche and add useful comments with a link pointing back to your website.

How to monetize the blog?; Google AdSense is a program that allows your blog to show advertisements from advertisers around the World. The advertisements will be mostly related to the topic of the post. You need not worry about choosing the right set of advertisements to be displayed because the Google AdSense system will do it for you. When someone clicks on the advertisements, you will get some earnings and get paid every month if the earnings cross a certain threshold. Again you need not worry about getting the payment form the advertisers; Google will collect the payment from them and give a percentage of it to you. Once you apply for the Google AdSense program, it might take a few days or even a week or two to get accepted in to the program. Once accepted, you will have to copy and paste the scripts from your Google AdSense account in to your blog in order to show the advertisements. There is a lot of information on how to do this on the internet, so let’s skip this topic.
Another way to monetize a blog is by using the Amazon Associates Program. Say you are writing about your hobby (say aquarium fish): you can put a link to a list of books about this hobby that are sold in Amazon. If anyone clicks on the link and buys the book, you will get a commission from Amazon. If you become a popular blogger with many regular readers, you can even get paid by companies who want you to promote their products in your blog or just to write a review about their product.
Another way of monetizing your blog is to join as an affiliate in the ClickBank affiliate program. Using this, you can write about products from the ClickBank marketplace that are related yo your blog topic. When someone buys the product by following the link on your website, you will get a commission.
Summary; Now that your blog is all set, you will have to keep visitors coming back to your blog. Have a comments section so that people who visit it can write their thoughts. Always reply to the comments, at least once a day. Keep posting interesting articles. You might also want to start an opt-in email list because it is one of the most powerful ways to make money. You might also want to keep an RSS feed because some people prefer to use a RSS reader to read the articles. It also gives a way to inform people about new articles that you publish in your blog.
The most important thing is not to expect results early. It might take time for your blog to become popular and the money to start coming in. Keep posting good, useful information and it will surely help your website move up in search results and also keeps visitors coming back to your blog for more information. If your blog grows popular, you can also do a joint venture with members from forums like the Warrior Forum for promoting their products in your blog. You can either demand an outright sum or get paid for a sale or lead.
Once you have a blog which is making you money consistently, create a new blog on another topic and follow the same methods; i.e. rise and repeat. With every website that you create, you will get more experience and the process becomes even more simpler. With a couple of profitable blogs, you can be assured of a regular stream of monthly income.