How To Make Money With A Blog?

Have you heard about the young entrepreneurs who made it to the list of top bloggers for the year? Did you ever dream of having the same financial and time freedom that they are enjoying?

Nothing beats doing a job that you like and earning from it at the same time. No wonder why many people of different ages and social standing earn from blogging. It is because they have the choice about what to blog about depending on what subject interests them. And that is without an annoying boss telling them to do what they don’t want to do. You are basically your own boss in your own business.

You too can work from home, earn money, and spend your time in leisure the way they do! If you have a brilliant idea, a wonderful experience, a line of expertise, or useful information that you want to share with the world, then definitely blogging is for you.

So I have made a compilation of all the vital information you need to set up your own blog and make money out of it. Whether you are a newbie or have been blogging a while, these tips will be very helpful to you.

First, to answer a few questions:

What is a blog?

A blog is a diary of sorts, a mixture of personal experiences; worldwide news; a room where opinions are shared; a political arena; a collection of private thoughts… it is a hundred different things that various people post and constantly update in a website. In other words, it is a website log, or weblog.

Is it possible for me to start a blog?

Yes! It’s very easy for anyone to start a blog. Should you find any difficulty, there is a constant supply of information on the net – all you have to do is make a search and the web will yield more answers than you will ever need. In no time at all, you will become an expert if you are diligent enough.

How and where do you get the money?

Ah yes, the magic question. Money won’t just appear from nowhere when you’re doing your blog. You get most of your earnings from ads which depend on the volume of your readers. It’s much like how television broadcasting companies get their earnings from television ads. So the key thing to this is to attract more readers in order to attract more advertisements to your page.  We’ll take up more on this as we go along.

Let’s get started…

Consider the circumstances

Before everything else, know that blogging is not a quick money-generating endeavor. It takes a lot of patience and dedication to make a great money-earning blog that even the highest earning bloggers actually started ‘earning’ about a year after they started blogging. So if you have an ample-earning day job, it’s best not to give it up for the sake of your infant blog. Start your blogging as a hobby and it will grow into a hobby-business if you are diligent enough.

Find a trending niche

Do a market research to find a niche you want to work on. It is really important for you to find one that is interesting not only to your target but to you as well. This should be a long-running topic instead of a short-term one so that you will have a long term run with your blog. For example, instead of making a blog focused on the reliefs for hurricane Katrina (which in this case has long passed), make one about reliefs for all hurricanes and disasters.

Self-hosted blog or not?

The biggest question to start with is whether to get free blogging services or to host the blog yourself. So if you are still a beginner, it’s good to have a little practice with free blogging services to be familiar with the basics of writing a blog, editing the layouts and tweaking the themes. Some of the best free blogging services are:

• Blogger.com: This Google-owned free blogging service proves to be one with the most customizable features that gives you a wide array of choices of layouts and themes.

• WordPress.com: WordPress is easy to set up which makes it friendly for beginners who want to start earning through blogging. Though not as customizable as Blogger.com, WordPress.com is a good ‘prerequisite’ to its big sister, the self-hosted WordPress.org.

• Tumblr.com: Probably this is the simplest one to practice with you writing but it’s not so good for customization.

Set up your self-hosted blog

Unlike free blogging services, self-hosted blog comes with a price, but you can use your own domain name. It’s not that expensive though and it can’t deal so much pain especially if you have a running job to support the early stages of your blogging business. It’s just as cheap as spending $10 per year for your domain name and $4 to $20 per month for hosting your blog depending on your hosting company.

I’ll tell you the ways on how to set up your own self-hosted blog. The first three are the most essential but they may come in any order but I’d prefer you’ll follow this order.

Register a strategic domain name

This is the first thing you should do and you only have to do this ONCE if you want to keep your loyal visitors to yourself. By now you already have the general idea of what your blog will be about. Once you have chosen a strategic domain name for your blog, go to trusted sites such as NameCheap, GoDaddy to book your domain name.

Choose and register a host for your blog

What is a web host anyway? A web host is one that houses your blogs or web sites. It is like the ‘hard drive’ of your blog since it stores everything that you want to be published in the internet.

There are hundreds of web hosting services all over the world, but I’ll recommend you some of the best of them.

• BlueHost: Shining with a 50% discount banner for visitors, BlueHost ranks top in web host reviews. It has money back guarantee, free domain, fast server, fast account activation and the best control panel.

• HostGator: You get premium web hosting with 25% of your money going back to your pocket if you give the coupon code. It’s so cheap it’s almost free.

Get a good blogging platform or program

I would recommend you install WordPress blogging software over other blogging softwares. Why? Because it’s simply the best by far. You can download the software from wordpress.org. I will also recommend you will set it up by installing All-In-One SEO and Google Sitemaps plug-ins for future use when you have grown familiar with SEO.

Acquire a highly versatile and customizable theme

For a start try using a free theme and modify it yourself or you can buy a WordPress blog theme. Some of those may cost from $30 to $100 which includes features like Dynamic Text/ Image Logo option, Custom Widgets, SEO Options, Drop down navigation menu and more. Some of the best WordPress themes are Thesis, Elegantthemes etc..

Write your first best contents for a grand entrance

Write 5-10 of your best or ‘teaser’ pieces to make up for your pillar content to showcase your blog to new readers. Don’t be shy to publish each piece right away. Nobody’s reading your blog yet anyway until you start marketing your blog.

Remember that it’s crucial to keep writing for your blog at least once a week to keep your blog fresh. Make around 5 draft contents to go with your initial contents so that you can make your regular update if you have a tight schedule in one of your days.

Start earning

Here’s where the fun starts… or continues. As I have mentioned above, making money from your blog depends on the two M’s of basic factors: marketing strategies and monetizing programs. The two are inseparable and are totally dependent on each other. You have to market your blog to attract a lot of traffic and monetize the traffic using ad networks, affiliate and direct product sales. We’ll take each of them one by one.

Monetizing programs you want to consider adding to your blog

Cost per click Ads (CPC’s)

When it comes to cost per click networking ads, Google’s AdSense Program is first in your bubble, Chitika is also popular for CPC based programs.

How does it work? A number of companies enroll in Google’s AdWords Program to advertise its website or blog for a certain bid of price. If you use AdSense, you put the ads of those companies which are related to your content. A reader will read through your content and if he finds the ad has some relevance to your content and clicks the link, you will be paid for that click.

Cost per impression Ads (CPM’s)

In the CPM ad networks, you are paid per total number of ad impressions to your page. If you’re wondering what an impression is, it is a single appearance of an advertisement to your page. These may not earn well in the beginning but once the traffic comes in, the dollars will start pouring. Try exploring some CPM ad networks like AdClickMedia, Casale Media, ContextWeb, and Adbrite .

Affiliate product sales programs

The basic principle of affiliate programs goes back to the vintage commission-based selling where sales agent sells some from a supplying company and gets a commission for every product he sold. In this internet age, there are affiliate programs such as Amazon, Sharesale, Commission Junction, and LinkShare where you can do referrals for items or services and get commissions from it.

Direct ad Sales

You can sell your ad space directly to advertisers. Now this may not work well for some sites with small ad space or an uncomfortable target market but it will work well for an already high-profiting blog.

Marketing strategies for your blog

Before you market your blog to readers, your blog is virtually invisible to the public even though you already published it. This is basically the true publishing of your blog. Bring more traffic to your blog by attracting readers using these following marketing strategies for your blog.

Attract more visitors from search engines

Attracting visitors directly from search engines is a process I’d like to compare to an acorn. It’s hard to grow but once it grows, there’s no stopping it. A high rank in search engines is surely a reputation booster. Time is your best asset here. If you are new read – Google Search Engine Starter Guide.

Set up your mailing list

Keep in track with your prospects by setting up your email list from your blog. This is best done in the first day you publish your blog so that you can add your first reader to your mailing list. I recommend that you use Aweber for your broadcast mails and email blog post updates.

Join the open-house on Blogcarnivals

If you’re a newbie, try signing up for blogcarnivals and submit your best written articles from your blog. If your article is good with a catchy title, traffic from blogcarnivals and incoming links from related sites will bless your blog.

Submit in directories

A directory is different from a search engine. Unlike search engines whose listings are done by webcrawlers or robots, listings in directories are done by humans. Some popular directories are Yahoo Directory,DMOZ.org etc..

Create lenses

For what, glasses? No. The lenses I mean are those pages you create for free on Squidoo.com & Hubpages.com. You only have to create a simple page for one specific topic. It’s easy to get your Squido page a high rank in search engines and ultimately, the link to your blog will bring in more visitors from search engines through that solitary Squido page of yours.

Be generous enough to submit articles

It always pays off to give away a bit some of your best articles to article submission sites like ezinearticles.com, buzzle.com, goarticles.com, articledashboard.com and articlecity.com. What good does it do? These sits will allow you to make a bio about yourself—a perfect place to put a link back to your blog. More links, more gateway for traffic.

Join social networking sites

Let’s face it; once you’re in the internet community you can’t count networking sites out of the equation. Sign up for Twitter or Facebook and link them to your blog. Never underestimate the link back you can potentially receive from networking sites especially if you’re really socially active. You can discreetly or openly promote your blog to these sites.

Go for a strategic guest posting

Nothing gets you a mass of quick traffic than guest posting especially if you know the secrets of a successful guest posting. Guest posting gets you more link backs that posting for your own blog. All you have to do is first to build a rapport and establish a good relationship with bloggers in your marketing niche.

Socialize in blog community sites and forums

Personal networking just got better in the internet. Build up your network or contacts by signing up on blogging community sites such as mybloglog.com, blogcatalog.com and technorati.com. Get in touch with other bloggers sharing your niche, join their networks and make friends out of them.

Helpful Tool : I also use these for my blog …

Google’s Keyword Tool – Research and find best keywords for your site.

Google Analytics – Analysis your visitors activity, daily visitors, bounce rate, country, popular content etc..

Google webmaster tools – Check hoow Google views your blog and also check your problems if have with your blog..

Aweber Email Marketing Service – Best tool for email marketing and deliver content to your readers.

SocialPoster – Help you to submit your link to multiple social sites.

BigStock- The best place to buy cheap stock photograph.

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