Blogging to Make Money Online

The beauty of blogging is that you can spend as little as 30 minutes per day on it and it’s absolutely free!! The majority of people blog about their own interests and there are millions of people out there that would share that common interest.

The range of content with blogs is vast, from football fans venting their frustrations to entrepreneurs selling products and services, blogging has risen dramatically over the last 4 years. If you view your blog as an online journal offering interesting and helpful information you will find people returning to your site and potentially becoming regular readers.

The key to running your blog is simple. Become an authority in your given subject, earn the respect of the reader and your traffic/sales will increase.

In terms of setting up a blog, there are some simple websites that allow you to design them relatively pain free. The two websites offering the easiest solution to this are WordPress or Blogger (type these into Google). Both allow you to work on your blog which is essentially a web page and when you are ready and have the content you are happy with, you can publish it to the world wide web. Both have tutorials to help you along the way and will ask you to choose your own username, remember, your username will form part of your URL so choose something that’s relevant as every reader will see it!

Once you have designed your blog, come up with a username and/or a domain you will need to decide on content. Many blogs started off as small and occasional hobbies but once they gained a steady band of followers, the creators felt a duty to write more frequently and appease their “fans”. Remember, the more value you add to your blog, the more people will value you in your field.

Something I will not cover for now but will do a specialist piece on is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

This will be hugely important, especially if you are blogging about your home based business or selling products. Your aim should be to appear on page one of any given search engine so people find you and visit your blog. My advice would be to do as much research as you can or alternatively, if you are with a business group, take advantage of their training and/or mentorship.

There are some simple ways to make money with your blog if and when you are getting sufficient traffic. AdSense or Adbite will place adverts on your website (normally at the bottom or side) relating to your chosen subject, they will create revenue for you every time someone clicks on them. Other opportunities range from selling other companies products on your site such as DVD’s from Play.com or even selling your own products. If people trust what you are saying and you have become an authority in your field, they may be interested in certain (carefully chosen) products that you have decided to affiliate market. Do remember that you must value these products and have a real belief that they will help your reader, as if they do not, you will lose them forever.

The final point to remember when writing a blog is to change with the times. Blogging began with words, it then evolved to pictures and words. Now you can have videos to promote your products or back up your post, you can have fun games for people to play, the possibilities are endless and the internet is always changing. Anything that can make your blog stand out from others is a great idea. The more enjoyable the experience of visiting your blog, the more success you will have with it.